Interviews

Hi Jari, thank you for taking time for this interview while being busy with the recordings for the new album. How are you doing?
I´m doing fine at the moment. I´m really really busy working on the new album and sometimes I have felt "littlebit" stress about the deadlines. The fans and record company want my "blood" so bad :) But things are moving along everyday.

On your homepage you wrote about "seven epic and quite long" songs. This sounds like there won't be any short directly highspeed songs anymore on this album, like "Beyond the Dark Sun" on "Wintersun". Does your description fit to every song on the album or will there still be a shorter ass-kicker?
Nope, there won´t be no short songs. But there will be few long highspeed ass-kickers :) "marathon songs", it´s gonna be fun playing those live. I can´t really tell how I ended up writing those long songs, I have to just say the cliche "they just came from somewhere, from the sky, from the heart or whatever" :).

Are there any plans about releasing audiosamples of the new album?
I´ve thought about it yes, time will tell :P But when the album is mastered, I think I will put some samples online, or even roughmixes sooner, but I don´t promise anything at this point.

In some interviews, you did in 2004, you told, your clean voice would take more place on "Time" than on "Wintersun". Will your screaming voice still be an important aspect or will it move further to the background?
It´s still gonna be important, as it is one big part of me. But yes, there´s gonna be lot more clean vocals, maybe like 50%. I´ve found that I can express more with clean vocals since they have melody and lots of more variations/character/more dimensions you know what I mean... and I really like singing clean, but I still need lots of practise. And I always try to sing with the songs terms, like if this one part needs some agression, then growling it is.

Which equipment will be used for the recordings of "Time", looking especially at the guitars, amps and effects? On "Wintersun" you did some great work with your Telecaster, which is not a very typical Metal-guitar. Will it appear on "Time" again?
Last record I wanted little "western/dirty" sound on some of the songs, that´s why I used the Tele. But I also used Jackson Dinky in half of the songs. Now we are using Ibanez guitars, especially Jems. This time I was looking more "accurate/tight/"clean" sound. On rhythm guitars I used Mesaboogie Triaxis preamp (goddamn that piece of crap :P we had big problems with it, technical problems, still the sound kicks ass, it´s like love&hate relationship with it). That one going into Simul-Class 2:90 power amp to a Mesa cabinet. We made suprising miking choice with SM7 which gave us the best of the both worlds of SM57 and SM58 and some extra balls too :). That going into Tube-tech MEC1A.
The lyrical themes don't sound very different to "Wintersun". What can you tell us about the direction and new aspects your lyrics will contain?
This time they are more personal and sometimes more direct, less metaphoras, but not forgetting them. It´s kinda theme album since every song is dealing with "time" in different perspectives, it´s a very wide subject, there´s so many things you could write about "time". But still every song is a individual and tells different story.

At this years Eartshaker Festival both Wintersun and Ensiferum will enter the stage. Is there planned any special guest-performance concerning you and Ensiferum?
Not that I know of :)

Last but not least:Some weeks ago, finnish hard rockers Lordi won the Eurovision Song Contest. What do you think about this event generally, and do you think Lordi's victory will have a bigger influence on the name recognition of Heavy Metal?
Every event always causes some kind of reaction in time :P But it´s hard for me to say what will happen, as I´m not a fortune teller. But I think metal music is getting more popular now and it´s everyones personal opinion, if it´s a good or bad thing. Personally I don´t really care. And yes I watched the Eurovision, I did enjoy Lordi´s victory. But I liked Carola more, that was a better song :) And damn that woman can sing!

Well, that's it for now, thank you again, good success for the recordings. The last words are yours.
Thanks for the interview. And remember, "muista nukku!" -Jari