Interviews

Hello Mika. If I look at the period 2006 – 2007 I see that you: have released the 'Pro Patria Finlandia' album, did go on tour, recorded 'Manifest', saw Celtic Frost live and released the 'Manifest' album. So your life must be great, right?
Ha ha, yes, I saw Celtic Frost live and that was fucking fantastic, but for the rest it was a disaster. After the release of 'Pro Patria Finlandia' we did go on a long tour, and this tour ended in a fucking disaster. There was this bullshit East German agent that was going bankrupt, and we didn't know about it. So in the end we lost a lot of money there. And then there is this German ban. We had eleven out of thirteen shows cancelled, and also shows in Austria were cancelled. And I'm sorry, but I am not going to talk about all this again, if you want to read more details about this you can check out about it on our website. So, after that tour we came home being very disappointed. This should have been our best tour ever, but we lost money, we didn't gain anything and we got this bullshit ban! Then we wanted to do a gig in Poland, but when we arrived there this show had also been cancelled by some Catholics! At this point we really thought about splitting up!! Then we did nothing for a long period, and after a while we were asked to play in the South of Europe. And there we got the fire back. The fans in Italy got us going again, this is why we play in a band! So then we wrote the new 'Manifest' album rather quick, because we wanted to forget about all the 'Pro Patria' bullshit as soon as possible.

But is the German ban still on?
Yes, and it gets in the way. We want to do a new European tour, but no agency will book a band for a European tour that cannot play in Switzerland, Austria and Germany. And so we still cannot go on tour. It is ridiculous. And I don't understand why. Let's face it: Sodom is a German band and they sing about a Bombenhagel, Slayer plays in Germany, performing a song about Auschwitz and nobody cares, and then we, a Finnish band that sings about Finland are being banned. It makes no fucking sense. I really think that some high political asshole has something against us, what else can it be?

Well, I can't help you with the ban, but you could do some more gigs in The Netherlands instead of Germany?
We would love to play some festivals next year, so please request Impaled Nazarene at Waldrock!

When you work on an album such as 'Manifest', do you still learn about writing and playing music while creating the album or is it more like: been there, done that?
Basically every day is a learning process for me. When I write the lyrics for the songs I still have to be very focused. I don't want to repeat myself, and so I think about doing things different. But this is difficult because my voice is limited, I know that. My range is limited and my voice is only good for the typical screaming. But I still wanted to expand my singing and therefore I practiced a lot on the more grinding style and the more death metal style of vocals.

So this means that the low voice on 'Funeral For Despicable Pigs' is really you?
Yes, and it costs me a lot of rehearsing time. When I heard this song for the first time I immediately felt like it needed this dark death metal vocals. And do you know what so difficult is about this kind of singing? It's to make sure that people can actually understand what you're singing. I mean, everybody can put his hand on the mic and growl a bit, but it's another thing to sound understandable.

I like the old fashioned tom tom drum rolls that come up in a song like 'The Calling'.
Huh? Well I can tell you that this song sounded like a fucking power metal song to me. And I said to the rest of the band: no way, fuck power metal vocals, I'm going to do this with my own voice, and I will also write anti power metal lyrics, no shit about an eagle who will fly free! And so I wrote some very dark satanic lyrics, ha ha.

Just like the lyrics for 'The Antichrist Files'. But aren't they a bit too much over the top?
What do you mean?

They are so satanic, they made me think that you wanted to have an opener that will be as black metal as Venom….
Hmm, I don't agree with you here, but let me explain how the song did develop. Our drummer wrote the music, and when I heard it I thought that in this short track nothing was really happening. But then he sad that this song is in the vein of the 'Ugra-Karma' album, and that it would be cool to start the tenth studio album with a song that is very old school, and therefore I wrote some lyrics in the style of the first albums.

And how are things for Impaled Nazarene going in the meantime in the Northern U.S.A. and Canada? I thought that you where aiming for more fans over there?
Are you kidding me? Things got even worse there last year. We did get some offers to play there, but all those agencies over there want you to pay first, and after the tour disaster in Germany… well, at this moment we just can't do that. And then we also noticed that our last records where not promoted at all over there. So after some time we finally got Herve (the boss from Osmose Records – T.E.) convinced to let a company named Red Stream do the release for 'Manifest'. We agreed on releasing the album three weeks after the European release and guess what? It will be out there somewhere in January! That's two months after the European release. This makes no sense, by then everybody already has downloaded the album or has even already forgotten about it.

Back to Europe then. I understood that 'Manifest' will also be released on vinyl?
It will only be released on vinyl as a double ten inch version, that's it, it will not be on LP format.
This is mainly because of us, we fell in love with that format since we released the live album as a ten inch. The ten inch will have a different song line – up, it has another lay out and it looks fucking great!
But we are Impaled Nazarene and therefore we also had a problem with this ten inch version.

What was it?
They somehow fucked up the master process. We were very lucky that Herve listened to the test pressing… I mean, who listens to test pressings of vinyl anymore… but he did and he thought "what the hell??" So we had to rectify this, we had to send over the back up files to France and now the ten inch will be out in December.

You also re-released the 'Rapture' album lately. Why?
This was an idea by Osmose. They stopped pressing the album years ago, so it was not available anymore. Herve asked us if we wanted to re-release the album, and then we said okay, but with re-mastering and with different artwork and with live tracks and stuff. Let's face it, the old artwork was horrible, the new issue is a lot better in many ways and we also will do the same thing with the 'Latex Cult' album next year.

Okay Mika, last question for you. Seventeen years of Impaled Nazarene and ten studio albums = a lot of songs. If I would pick just a song right now, could you still sing it immediately?
Ha, well I pretty much now everything about our set list songs, and I do remember all the songs we played live, but everything? No. When we were re-mastering the 'Latex Cult' album I sometimes even went like "Huh? Is that us?" ha ha.

Well Mika, that's it for me. Good luck with the new album and let's hope that this ridiculous ban will be stopped!
Thanks, and people of Holland: DON'T FORGET TO SEND YOUR IMPALED NAZARENE REQUEST TO THE WALDROCK FESTIVAL ORGANISATION