Interviews

Abrasive Rock: First off, I’d like to say that I got my copy of Suffer Our Pleasures about a week ago, and I’ve been listening to it non-stop. It’s absolutely amazing. It completely blew me away! So congratulations on that.
Marco: Well… ok. I guess I’ve gotta say thank you now [laughs]

Abrasive Rock: [Laughs]
Marco: Well, to be honest I’m really pleased to hear that from somebody who’s from the native language area and to hear it’s been going down well there.

Abrasive Rock: How does it feel to finally have a label in the US and distribution in the US?
Marco: Um… well, of course it feels great, but then again this isn’t the first time we’ve done an album, as you probably know, so I’ve grown to be quite down to earth kind of guy these days. So I’m excited about this, but I’m still keeping my feet on the ground and really just watching and waiting to see what’s going to go down.

Abrasive Rock: The album, if I’m correct, was out last May in Finland, and around September in Europe. What took so long for the US release?
Marco: Well, now you’re asking me something that I don’t really know. I guess the people from Spinefarm, when they got the masters they sent them out to different companies at that time, so I can only think that it’s taken the other European companies, and Metal Blade in the US that much time to get to listen to the album [Laughs] and make a decision about it. I really don’t know.

Abrasive Rock: Are there plans to re-release the back catalogue in the states now that you have a label and distribution and everything like that?
Marco: This is another thing that I don’t really know about, because the former albums were made for another company. So I’ve been talking to Mikka from Blue Light because we’re still friends and all that, and he said that we’ll see how things happen with the new one now that we’re on a different label, and if he sees that there’s gonna be success, he will definitely print new copies of the former albums because he still has rights to them. Well, I suppose that if somebody’s interested, they should contact him. I’m sure he would be really enthusiastic about that.

Abrasive Rock: Since the album just came out recently in the states, there probly hasn’t been a lot of press about it yet, but what about in Finland and the rest of Europe where it’s been out for quite some time? How has the response been?
Marco: Um, Finnish response has mainly been just great. Of course we have a few sore voices too, but mainly it was something like, if you take for instance reviews, it was mostly like four stars out of five, nine out of ten, some tens even. Then there were basically, if I remember right, two Finnish magazines that I saw that gave it two or something and didn’t understand it at all. I guess if they don’t understand it, they don’t get it. And mainly with Europe, what I’ve seen, mainly German magazines, some Swedish, they’ve been basically quite the same. So yeah, I think the reviews, like the critics, they’ve been taking it really well. And about European sales, I can’t really tell that much. I think that we maybe done somewhere between 16 and 20 thousand, and I think in Finland it was four and a half, so it’s been marginal, but it’s been on the plus side, on the positive side, so the only thing we can do is make things work, try to do as many good gigs as we can. See if it goes even further.

Abrasive Rock: For people who are just getting into the band, how do you feel this new album differs from your back catalogue?
Marco: Well it differs in the way that with all the former albums, we had not that much studio budget and not as much chance to take it as far as we could have to the end, and now with this one we actually had that chance, because now there’s our keyboard player. He has his own studio, so we kind of used that to record the whole album and that gave us time and gave us a chance to try out demoing things and change parts and all that stuff in a lot more ways then before. So we could take it more to the end what we really wanted it to sound like. And also, there was a five year break between this one and the last one, and I really felt, and so did all the other guys as well, that we should take the whole thing to this millennium sound wise and like plain anger and that you’ve got in all of that, but still retain all those 70’s and 80’s roots in order to have a melodic backbone and the depth of the music also. So those were the two points from whereon we kind of tried to put things together, and I think we did it pretty well.

Abrasive Rock: I definitely agree. Like I said I’ve really been enjoying the album quite a lot. I’ve listened to it quite a few times. Also, you have the video for “Pyre of the Gods” on the website. Why did you choose that song for the video as opposed to the single, which is “Undead Son”?
Marco: Well, it was mainly because we shot the video about a month and a half after the release of the single. It was really a fast job. I think maybe not a month and a half, maybe a month. So the single had been out here in Finland for a few weeks already, and we thought “If we’re going to shoot the video now, then let’s take something from the album.” That’s the reason.

Abrasive Rock: What about touring outside of Finland? There are a few dates scheduled for Finland, but what about the possibility of Europe or even the US?
Marco: Well, if someone should book us, then we will come. There has been some discussion about that and some plans already, but some things have been offered from our side and some things have been offered from other sides, but there hasn’t been chances to use those. What I can tell is that if there is a chance to do some support touring, we would do it. But I know that now we have the same booking company and management and all that as Nightwish, and they have a new album coming out this summer and there’s a lot of gigs lined up with them. So basically it’s just a matter of economics at the business side that they will do a lot of headlining gigs and a lot of festival stuff this summer, and a lot of touring next fall, and whatever dates there are left in between, we will probly do with Tarot as well. But I don’t know if there’s time for doing touring or anything like that. If there’s a chance whenever Nightwish is on a break, I would like to do everything that’s possible to make the band go forward as well.

Abrasive Rock: About the album, you wrote all the lyrics on the album. Where do you get your inspiration lyrically?
Marco: Um… Sorry… what did you ask?

Abrasive Rock: Where do you get your ideas for your lyrics?
Marco: Ideas, ok. I really don’t know. I basically get my ideas from… just its in there! I try to write as much as possible. I usually have this little pocket book and a pen always with me so that whenever I get some free time, like when I’m sitting on a plane or a bus or whatever, if I get an idea I can write it down. And of course you can hear some of the things I have been feeding my head with, for instance I read a lot of science fiction, that kind of stuff, and I also watch a lot of movies, so you can hear what kind of influences I have in that way. I basically don’t run away from any kind of idea, like if I get some kind of a basic plot or an idea, I definitely use it.

Abrasive Rock: Yeah, the lyrics on the album, I was really impressed reading through them. They just flowed really well and just everything about them was really great. Much better quality than in most bands you would find today.
Marco: Thanks! This means much to me.

Abrasive Rock: Do you have difficulties writing, since English is not your native language, do you have difficulties writing lyrics?
Marco: Yeah, but I think everybody who writes lyrics has difficulties. There are of course things that sometimes I have to check. I have quite an extensive library myself with English science fiction and dictionaries and all that stuff, and my father is a retired English teacher, so he can help me out in some ways, but I basically write by myself, and only rarely, like there were maybe two or three things I had to check on during the album. There war probly only one or two times I had to call my father and one or two times I had to check my dictionaries. I don’t know, there’s probly some mistakes anyway, but I try to be fluent.

Abrasive Rock: I think you succeeded for sure, it’s really excellent!
Marco: Thanks. This really means something to me because… well, as you can hear I really put a lot of effort into it. I’m not a native English speaker.

Abrasive Rock: One of the things that struck me about the album the first time through, and then every time since I’ve listened to it is the intro to the song “From the Shadows”. It sounds almost Country Western in a way. How did that part come about, and was that the intention?
Marco: It’s actually me playing guitar there. I remember this thing, it was a few years back and one of my friends, another guitar player, I was with him and we were having some drinks, and he was seeing some Albert Lee notation and trying them out and I was saying “Oh shit, this shit is tough”, and he showed me a few of those things and I just remembered them myself when I was at home, and it just came about and “Well, ok, this sounds nice”. And then it fit the rhythm and the style of riffing that the song has. Also with the double bass drum and the distorted guitars and all that stuff, so it just ended up there as a joke.

Abrasive Rock: Yeah, when I first listened to it I thought it was just the coolest thing. I thought it sounded really neat and just added a little bit of fun to it and it was just a really good choice I think.
Marco: Yeah, and the technique to the way the song goes forward, the guitar riff there is pretty much similar, just more played on the low end.

Abrasive Rock: Ok, since you mentioned that you were playing the guitar on that, you also play the acoustic parts on both that album and also on the song “Written in Stone” from Sinergy’s “Suicide by my Side”, the intro to that song. What is your background with that and how do those parts come about?
Marco: You mean how did that part come about?

Abrasive Rock: First of all, what’s your background with the acoustic guitar? Can you go into that a tiny bit?
Marco: Yeah, it was the first instrument that I really started playing because, well, [our] father, he used to have a couple of acoustics at home and he used to play them. When Zach got his, he started beating them up and I soon followed after, so that’s how it started. Soon after that, we got into the school bands and I started to play bass at that time. But when I went to college, it was a musical college and I studied classical guitar for about three years there, playing with the nylon strings and all that. But I’ve always had a guitar, one or two of them at home, and I’ve always played them because I just find it a lot easier, well, you can imagine it’s a lot easier to compose songs, play riffs and find things out with a guitar than a bass, so I’ve always tried to keep up with that as well.

Abrasive Rock: Alright, and then the second part, with the song “Painless” from “Suffer Our Pleasures” and “Written in Stone” from “Suicide by my Side”, you played the acoustic on that as opposed to the ones who were playing guitar on the album. Why is it that you decided to play [those parts]?
Marco: Because the intro was written by me on “Written in Stone” so it was kind of a natural thing since I didn’t have to show it to the guys, and since I play the acoustic anyway, so I played that. Same thing was with “Painless” as well, because the song was mainly written by me with some help from Janne, the keyboard guy, so it was just a natural choice. If we ever do Painless live, we’ve gotta have some kind of a background tape with the machinery loop and all that weirdo rhythm stuff, but I will be playing the acoustic anyway, because there’s no real bass anyway.

Abrasive Rock: Ok, a couple years ago you joined Nightwish. Did that move (you joining Nightwish), do you feel that that has brought more attention to Tarot, or are the Nightwish fans kind of Nightwish fans and the Tarot fans Tarot fans?
Marco: Well, I think it has probably moved the boarders a little bit. I think there are people who have been interested in Tarot because of Nightwish and the other way around as well. Of course, if Nightwish fans get interested in Tarot, it’s a situation where probably Tarot will win more, because there’s a great fan base with Nightwish already. But, if that happens, well, if they like both of them… I wouldn’t want to see anybody “move” from one band to another, and I don’t really consciously think about how much we could gain by having two bands around. All my best friends are in those two groups, and I wouldn’t want to give them any priorities and put one ahead of another, so that way I don’t really care about that. But I hope for the people who dig one band that dig both, I hope they dig it because the music speaks for them.

Abrasive Rock: Then if I may just wrap up with a few questions about Nightwish, there is a new album coming out, like you said, this summer. What can we expect from the Nightwish album? What kind of sound?
Marco: It’s gonna have a really huge sound. There’s a lot of heavy classic orchestra arrangement stuff going around and choir things. And then we took a lot of effort when we started to record to have the basic bass guitar, drums, all the basic sounds without any mixing or anything, we tried to get that as powerful as we could get. Now that I have heard a couple of songs mixed already, I think we have succeeded pretty well. I myself have had to listen to the raw tapes a few times to understand a few things. It’s really versatile in a way that it has a lot of different atmospheres, a lot of stuff going around. It’s really an ambitious album.

Abrasive Rock: And how much do you sing on that album?
Marco: So far there’s been like like four or five songs that I’ve been singing. At least three of the songs will have me doings things you’ll recognize like “He’s singing the lead”. And then there are a lot of little background things to create a certain kind of a harmony atmosphere. It should be quite close to the Century Child album; the only thing will be that parts will be this part there and this part there. It’s not going to be like… you know the song “Dead to the World”?

Abrasive Rock: Yeah.
Marco: It’s not going to be that much leading on one song.

Abrasive Rock: Alright. Then the first video for the new album is going to be coming out soon, I assume.
Marco: It will be out here in April.

Abrasive Rock: Ah, ok. How was the experience doing that one?
Marco: It was real nice, because usually when I’ve been on the video set, it’s usually been like you take tens and tens of takes from different positions and different angles, but these guys, they acted like real pros. They kind of adjusted the lights and cameras and all that stuff and then they took a couple takes from there, then they arranged the stuff again for like half an hour or maybe an hour, then they took a couple of takes again, and you could see they knew what they were wanting and what they were doing. And actually when I went to see the [video] from the monitors when there was some shoot they were doing of just Tarja and Jukka, and I was watching just the raw picture, I thought it looked really [good] from there already, so I’m just hoping that there is some kind of a plot there, and when they add the effects there I hope the whole thing will carry through. The single pictures I saw, they really looked nice, so I’m just waiting to see the whole thing.

Abrasive Rock: Ok, that pretty much wraps up my questions. Do you have anything you would like to say to the fans of Tarot?
Marco: Any particular thing I would like to say?

Abrasive Rock: Sure
Marco: Um… Multiply and fill the Earth!

Abrasive Rock: Ok, well thank you very much for doing the interview, and good luck with everything.
Marco: Ok. Thanks to you as well.