Interviews

Hello there ! I just got back from the Sonic Pump studios in Helsinki and I was watching Tundra record some bass and I got a chance to listen the demo versions of the songs. Skrymer told me that you made those all yourself in your garage, even the vocals… How long did that take?

From may to september. First I did rough mock- ups at my work. :D and then when the song was pretty much finished, I went to my studio to record it properly with proper sounds and arrangements whenever I had time. Usually demoing one song (from the mock- up) took something like 6-7 hours. But the composing and arranging- part was of course longer.

Did anyone help you with that? I mean you have a day job and a family…

Tundra and Routa were sometimes present, and it was especially helpful to have Tundra engineering while I was performing drums or vocals, so I could just concentrate on the actual takes and not to pressing buttons or running to check out the record levels. What it comes to time- sharing, I tried to balance everything in order to have enough time for each.

How about the vocals ? Why don't you take over more vocals in the record?

Because I SUCK at them. Did you actually listen to that demo at all, hehe? And besides, why should I when we already have a kick- ass vocalist who doesn´t need shitloads of distortion, compression and delay to make his voice sound even a small bit convincing.

I heard that you had to work a lot with Vreth? Why and how? What was the result?

Had? Well, it wasn´t exactly something I hated, so I´d use the word “opportunity to work with”. I was extremely happy about the fact that we now have a vocalist who actually takes part of the pre- arranging- process as well.

Is Aleksi (Virta) going to take part in the recordings also or will he remain the 'road keyboardist'?

Maybe something, if he´s present at the studio when we record the keys and he has an idea to add somewhere. Otherwise, he´s just the “road guy”.

Some of the new material sounds a lot like Moonsorrow, especially the intros… Is that deliberate, or is that just the Sorvali style?

I´d say it´s the collective style. You´ll see the song- credits later so make your own decisions!

Will there be Moonsorrow type male choir choruses on this record? (there were almost no vocals on the demos)

Yes and no. They will not be “Moonsorrow- type” but “Finntroll- type”. Lots of stuff coming, so you´ll hear later. No Red Army Choir with this album, though.

What is your composing rhythm?

120 BPM? I don´t know. I usually start with a melody or a riff, and somehow the songs just finish themselves when I start to compose them.

What inspired you?

Nature, video games and esoteric shit. Katla´s lyrics. Depression. You name it!

Can you quickly pin point (I know this is already on the finntroll forum) the different steps you had in the recording and the main difficulties you had? How did you solve them? (Tundra's grizzling bass f.e.)

We started with drums, naturally. After that, Guitars and bass. And then keys, vocals, extra stuff and choirs. Difficulties? Well, we didn´t rehearse even *once* together before the studio, so because of that a lot of stuff had to be checked out just before the recording to make sure everyone knows exactly what to play and how to play it. Of course we all had the demos (and different mixes of those, so that e.g. guitarist could only hear the guitars, etc) to listen to, but it´s still not the same.

Besides that, Beast had some problems with his feet, which were infected earlier this summer. And both Skrymer and Tundra had some problems with the electricity of their instruments, which caused a lot of trouble as well in the beginning. Oh, and we noticed that too thin strings for bass makes you totally out of tune. And my great uncle died in the first week, so the aura of death is always present when we´re at studio.