Interviews

When and how was your band created?The band was created at year 01 when signing a record deal with BMG Finland. I had been working with our singer Rami Raski creating music to his poems since year 99. We started just with piano and vocals playing very artistical and teatherical music. One point I started to arrange our music more rockier direction and pretty soon after that we got that record deal.

Were is the name of the band coming from?My girlfriend invented it. We tried to find a perfect name to fit the mood of the music and the lyrics. Raskis poems are based on mistakes in love-relationships between two people in good and bad sometimes theres is also very psychedelic poems with fiction inside.
The music is pretty hard rocking so we wanted to have both sides the moody and emotional side and still pretty hard and bitter. The "tip of blood" seemed to be a right choice.

What musicians or artists did have a major influence in your life / work?I have always been exited about Led Zeppelin and David Bowie, I also like Finnish artist Vesa Matti Loiris albums from 70s when he was singing the famous folk poets Eino Leinos poems. I´ve always liked the early 80s heavy rock a lot too.

What are the positive and negative aspects of being a musician / singer (in Finland)?Negative side: It´s hard to make a living in such a small country and Finnish people are always very suspicious about everything, so it might take some time to get respect as a musician or as a band.
Positive side: It´s such a small scene here in Finland, so you can easily get to know a lot of people working with music, and if you have a some talent to make music and you are ready to really work hard with it, it should not be impossible to try to make it somehow as a musician.

How could you qualify your style of music?Sensitive Concrete! The music between 70s rock and progressive stuff with artistic poem-singing stuff with lots of hard rock influences. We also have some ethnic infulences.

Have you ever considered the possibilty to change totally your style of music?
If so, what style of music would you choose?Well we have made 2 albums and we are still doing the basic work (trying to find the big audience and play a lot of shows) with this band so it´s not a time or a place to think about changing style of music. Maybe we could explore a little bit to ambience music directions such as Portishead. Maybe use more keyboards too.

What are stories/topics you tell/treat in your songs?There is lots of poems to do with ups and downs (mostly downers) in a love-relationships. There is lots of bitter and dark lyrics. Sometimes Rami is spitting out all hate, jealousy, accusation stuff in his poems, sometimes he gets romantic too, but not that often.
There is also some self judging poems and some others. The last album Happosadetta is more we-oriented in a lyrical side than the first one and it covers a lot of themes (uppers and downers) from a "normal" relationships.

What is your favorite song in your repertoire and why?It could be "Galleria" from the new album. I like the acoustic Zeppelin kind of feeling. and the growing of the song till the end is great!

Do you tour regularly?We try to tour regularily, but we still have to sell more albums to make a tour the the whole Finland, but at this point we are going furher up north than never before!

Do you actually prefer performing your music live or in a studio?I think the gigs are the best thing in musicians life, I don´t like studio work that much, it´s more like a day-time job kind of thing when you are working on a album in the studio.

During the process of making an album, what is the moment that you prefer?I like the moment when I get the single or the album to my own hand and I can put it in my CD shell. I think it´s a ending point to one srtessfull period and after that the fun part with all the gigs (and hopefully tours) start!

What kind of music / What artists do you currently listen?I used to listen to a Finnish band called Liekki a prog-band. Couple of days age I listened Hellacopters By the grace of god and some other promo CDs. Now I´m waiting to get Iron Maidens newest album. I listened the new Radiohead album thru couple of times last month.

A stupid question but... what is among all the songs you've been listening in your life the BEST song?David Bowie: Space oddity.
I don´t know why, maybe because it such a good song and the idea of the lyrics is great! I was 7 years old when my big-sister played it all day long, I was playing some small war scenario in my room and got exited about that song for rest of my life.

Internet is something interesting for musicians because it gives them the opportunity to touch a larger audience but it is also a threat for them (regarding the copyrights). What is your opinion regarding this medium?I think internet is a great way to promote the albums especially for unsigned bands. I´m not sure how it will turn out, will the big record companies be able to take under their control the freestyling of the internet or not? It´s a problem which is so open at this point, it is impossible to say anything. To a copyright issue all I can say is that I worked to get our CD not-copy-protected. We thought ´cause we are a pretty new band so far we´ll need all promotion we can get, even the pirate/mp3 sharing promotion.

What are your actual and future projects?Verenpisara, Amorphis, "Gothic Machine" which is still a working title for our goth-band, I have one hippie/acustic and ethnic kind of unnamed band, stress-free Jam-bore -our small club jamb rock/fusion band. I´m also working hard to get my disco project started which has been in the naftalin waiting to get started since 97. My friends new band Chaobreed is making an album in our studio at the moment, so theres a plenty of work to be done.