Interviews

So, how are you? Have you recovered from your health problems?
No not fully. I'm on sick leave from work at the moment. It's a problem that will take some time to fix.

Hevein have many times been entitled the new band of Max who is a former member of Apocalyptica. Does that annoy you as Max wasn’t a founding member?
No it doesn't bother me. I haven't heard many people say that. But I understand [it] because he has been in a successful band.

When Max joined the band, what kind of feeling was it for you to have such an experienced musician on board?
The time when Max called me (after listening to our crappy demos) and said he was interested in joining [the band], I was very happy cause I knew he had a lot of talent and could bring some great ideas to make this band something better than it was at the time. And that’s what he did. I don't think we would have got a record deal this soon without him.

If I’m right you were singing in the first days of band. Why did you decide to get a full-time vocalist?
I started singing on our 2nd demo just to see how it feels. And I noticed that I can't do the growl/scream vocals at all. It's really hard to scream and make it sound good. So I wanted someone who would take care of that and also help out with the clean vocals. On the album I sing all the clean vocals and most of the choruses and Juha does the screams and he is happy with that. And because we usually have harmonies on the clean vocals Juha sings them when we play live.

On your website you describe your music as “mainstream rock/metal” which surprised me a lot because I a) didn’t hear many mainstream soundings parts and b) most bands are afraid of being labelled mainstream.
I think that might be from the record company… shit... this bio was written by Spinefarm Records... the webmaster must of copy/pasted it from their site.

So you don’t agree?
Well I don't think we are mainstream and it's deleted now... I really don't care what we are as long as it's good but I wouldn't call us mainstream. Perhaps some of the softer songs could be called that but I didn't hear much of us on the radio so...

I would consider you one of the most outstanding bands when it comes to combining extremes of music. Did you already have in mind what you wanted to sound like when you started the band or did that develop throughout the time?
The band developed quite a bit during the 5 demos we did, and I think during that time I became confident what I wanted it to sound like. More development came when Max joined and we are currently moving into new territory with the new material that is being written. I have a broad range of musical tastes as does everyone else in the band. And I think we developed it because we got bored playing just one type of music. At one stage I thought about just sticking to one style but I just got bored with it.

I think if I had to describe your album with one word versatile would be the answer. Your versatility has however distracted some people and led them to the conclusion that you haven’t found your own style. How would you counter that?
Yes versatile would be a good word to describe our music. To counter the point that we haven't found our own style, I'd have to say that they might be right. But I do believe that mixing the music up the way we do is also a style. Why should we play one style of music? I find it to be very boring, I mean I don't listen to just one style of music so of course that influences what I write. For e.g. today I wrote a new song that is an acoustic song but I've been listening to everything from Slayer to Bob Marley. I think people just get confused because it's easy to label most bands, but when one comes along that is hard to label it's easy to say we don't have a style.

Do you remember what it was like for you to hear the album for the first time? Did it sound the way you had expected it?
Well I was present for the recording, editing, mixing and mastering of the album so when it was finished I didn't listen to it for a few weeks. But when I did I was quite happy. Could have been better, I would have changed quite a lot of things if I had the chance but I guess I'll never be 100% satisfied. I remember my girlfriend cried when she heard New Hope, that was great for me. I knew I had made something that moves people in a certain way. But all in all it turned out the way I expected.

Your album has about the same amount of ballades and calm songs on the one hand and fast and heavy songs on the other hand. Was this planned or rather a coincidence?
That was planned. I wanted to leave “Only Human” out because I thought it was the weakest song on the album but the rest of the band voted against it. We had a few heavy tracks that we're half ready but just before we went into the studio we decided that it would be good to go 50/50 on this album.

Thank God the others voted against you because I love “Only Human”!
Hah I've heard that before...