Interviews

I´d like to start out by going back in time to your early days. I know you were in a band called Kyyria. Can you tell me a bit about the band? I guess this was where you learned studio work and all the ropes in the music business.

Well, the band I grew up in was Kyyria in a way. It was the first band we started from the cellar and got a record deal with. In a way, it was the first real band for us and we built it with some friends from nothing but somehow we split after a few recordings, probably because of the bad blood from musical differences and opinions about the music and stuff like that…to say it politely (laughs). But I met the Amorphis guys at the same time, replacing Kasper who played on TALES FROM THE THOUSAND LAKES for a couple of shows in 1993. That´s how I got into the Amorphis band and started to know the guys. We played two shows in Helsinki just before TALES was released. We discussed me joining the band but I couldn´t because I was seeking fame with my friends. But when we split up in 1998 I really had a chance to have a go with the guys and since then I´ve been playing with Amorphis.

Besides that band, did you have any other musical background?

I´ve been playing piano since I was five years old and electronic organs and synthesizers since I was eleven. When I was eleven I had a band in the school and even in high school we had some sort of band. But Kyyria was the first band I had which did a lot of shows and did albums so that was the first real band.

Since you had done shows with Amorphis as far back as ‘93 I guess it was a pretty easy decision when your band broke up to join Amorphis, was it?

It was pretty easy because we did a couple of shows before I joined the band, then we did the TUONELA album and then my band split up. In a way, it was an easy choice but of course, there were a lot of other options in Finland. It´s a very small country and in the late 90s there were less than ten professional keyboard players that could play real keyboards. So everybody was asking "Can you join our band?" and stuff. Luckily, I had some good memories of Amorphis so in that way it was easy because when we did those shows in ‘93 it was great! It was a really active band that did a lot of shows and had studio time, so yeah, it was really nice.

You were obviously a fan or a follower of the band before you joined. So what were some of your early impressions of the band and what did you like about them musically at that time?

When TALES came out, I really liked the mixture with the keyboards and even clean vocals, it was our band´s singer who did the clean vocals so it´s a small world, a small country. I really liked TALES. When ELEGY came out we were really busy with our band touring in Germany so I didn´t have much time to listen. After when I joined the band, I really liked and listened to ELEGY a lot. I loved TALES FROM THE THOUSAND LAKES, it was and still is a classic album.

In terms of keyboards throughout the whole discography, what songs have been more challenging or most enjoyable to be playing on keyboard?

Enjoyable are of course the ELEGY ones since there are so many tracks, even too many to play live but I try my best. On TALES there are only a couple of chords and melodies, it´s really not that challenging but it´s still great to play the old classic tunes. ELEGY is one of my favorites, any track we pick there will be a lot of stuff to play and at the time the band was doing a lot of 70s stuff like Deep Purple and so on so it gives a musician free hands, especially on keyboards. I don´t have to play everything like it is on the album, but I´ve done them tons of times and kind of have gotten the feeling of what Kim was trying to get to.

On your new album ECLIPSE, as everybody knows, you have a new singer, Tomi Joutsen. He came to you from the band Sinistra. You guys went after him, I don´t think he submitted a demo to the band.

That´s right.

Were there any other contenders who came close to being asked to join?

Yeah, there were a couple of guys that we asked. Actually, during the auditions, it was a worldwide search for a singer from any country, but since we don´t have a huge pile of money we can´t buy a jet for a singer to come to the rehearsal or rent an apartment for half a year and pay the rent. At least not at the moment, for the future, let´s hope so! Luckily, we found a Finnish guy. During the auditions, we became more and more certain that it would be best for us if we would find a Finnish singer. We tried a couple of the best ones and luckily they were Finnish guys, but while there were a couple of singers who sang really well, they couldn´t do the growling vocals. That was the main issue and it gave us the most stress to find a singer who can do the clean vocals and the grunt vocals. Actually we were pretty sweaty because we couldn´t find anyone. So we were thinking about what would be the next move because we had already gone through all the singers who wanted to join the band and had sent us a CD without really finding the right one. Maybe it was pure luck what happened, but I think we found a really good guy for the job and the more shows we have done, the more sure we are about that. He´s really the perfect type for this band. He even has Amorphis tattoos!

From before he joined?

Yeah!

So he was a fan obviously.

He used to be a fan at the time of KARELIAN ISTHMUS. But at one time he said "I wasn´t even sure if the band still existed!" But it did.

Did you have to do any convincing to get him to join or was he excited?

Actually, his commitment was just what we were looking for after Pasi, because Pasi wasn´t motivated at all. He just kept doing his side project and stuff like this. When we asked him about the new vocal melodies and lyrics he was always like "You guys have to wait". Then we had waited about two years for them and he had done a couple of albums with another band. So we were looking for a front man and singer who really gives the same amount as the rest of us. We have given up day jobs and studying and stuff because of the band. The one thing Tomi said that convinced us after he had sung a couple of songs in the studio and we asked him what he thought was that he wanted to do it 100 percent. He didn´t want to join an old band that is lazy and that was what we were looking for, the guy that really wants to work and pushes all the energy out from the stage like nothing else matters, no concentrating on anything else. Of course, we all have side projects and he has too, but we prioritize Amorphis. So we shared that and after he said that, it was easy. We had a five week US tour booked so we decided to do the tour first and then start composing more new songs. We were lucky because we even had the tour to try him on.

It was a proving ground for him I suppose?

Yeah, because he hadn´t been doing any tours except for a couple of shows in a row in a small café. It was the perfect opportunity to see if he liked the stuff and for us because it´s very difficult to just grab a guy you don´t know at all and drag him to a band that has been around for 15 years. It might crash the whole thing. But luckily he´s the perfect guy for the job and the tour was pretty good because he had a chance to see if he really wanted to do the rock band front man thing.

Speaking of being the front man, I know your former singer Pasi was known for being quite calm on stage, he didn´t move around a whole lot. I hear that Tomi is quite the opposite. Does this have much of an impact on the live atmosphere on stage for the rest of you guys?

I think so, yeah. I´m only the keyboard player so I can´t really join the party, but I think that Tomi´s energy and attitude has made a big difference on what we used to be with Pasi. Pasi used to stand in one spot and sing the set, concentrating on singing. I can understand that, he broke his leg a couple of times and went straight from the show to the hospital, so he couldn´t really move. But I think the new singer is putting so much effort to the live performance that I think the front row, the guitarist and the bass player are really getting some kicks out of it. We´ve done a European tour now with only a 45 minute set and I think the performance is growing all the time. It´s becoming really good and we are really excited about it. I think the festival shows will put the final nail in the coffin, you know, because the stage is big, there´s a lot of space and we even have some pyrotechnics. It´s going to be a lot of fun!

Pasi´s final performance with Amorphis on the album FAR FROM THE SUN has been referred to, by both the band and some fans, as being somewhat unmotivated. Why do you think he lost interest with Amorphis? Do you think it was more the music that he lost interest in or was it more of a personal situation?

No, no, we are still really good friends. We share some projects, well, not me personally. I´m doing sound engineering for Niclas and he has a grindcore project that he has with Pasi. And Tomi Koivusaari is playing with Pasi in his kind of solo band Ajattara. I don´t think there was a clique within the band in a friendship way. I think it was probably lack of motivation for this kind of music. He has said some pretty bad things about us like that he had wanted to do growling vocals or that the new songs didn´t sound so good, but I think that´s just normal when you run out of stories about why you left. I think the only reason was that he wasn´t motivated by this band, he wanted to do his solo project Ajattara more. It´s black metal kind of stuff where he sings in Finnish. Of course he has a family as well, he has two kids and that puts some pressure and takes away some time from the band. If you have a lot of bands, you have to choose. Then you choose the easiest way. Maybe Amorphis was taking too much time for him. Everything went well and we are still good friends. It was the best solution for us and I think it was the best for him too.