Interviews

2007 was in many ways a breakout year for Finnish Battle Metallers Turisas, with the release of both their latest albun 'The Varangian Way', and their critically acclaimed cover of the Boney M classic 'Rasputin'.

2008 is looking to be an even busier year, with the band heading back to the UK in March for a two week headline tour, which kicks off at the Soundhaus in Northampton on March 1st, following a triumphant performance at last years Hard Rock Hell Festival, before heading back to the United States to take part in the upcoming Paganfest Tour which will see them lining up alongside Ensiferum, Tyr and Eluveitie during April and May. Komodo Rock's Krissy Elliott caught up with front man Mathias "Warlord" Nygård to find talk about the bands successes in 2007 and where they will be heading during 2008.

Krissy Elliott: Happy New Year to You! So what do Pagan Battle Metallers do around Christmas and New Year?

Mathias Nygård: Well last year we spent all of it in the studio recording our new album “The Varangian Way”, but this year we actually just got back from a European tour together with Iced Earth and Annihilator, and did a few scattered shows in Finland in December. On New Years Eve we played one of the main venues in Helsinki. Totally sold out – totally crazy audience and totally the best New Years Eve I’ve ever had!

KE: Do you feel that the extensive touring you did last year made a positive impression on sales of your album “The Varangian Way”?

MN: To be honest we haven’t really toured that much. I mean look at all the crazy Polish bands doing 3 months in a row-tours without a day off! Of course gaining some foothold in the UK and also playing more there than maybe the average European band has its effect on the album sales.

KE: Your schedule is very busy for 2008. Do you see yourselves taking a break in the summer, or will you continue onto the European festival circuit after Paganfest?

MN: Yeah, we start out by doing 2 weeks in the UK from March 1st and onwards and then continue over to the rest of Europe. After that we join the Paganfest tour in North America almost directly after, just to make it back to Europe for the festival season start. We don’t have any festivals confirmed yet as we’ve been quite busy working with these over 60 shows we already have in front of us before the summer, but I’m sure those confirmations will start to fall in as spring moves on.

It will for sure be a busy year and by summer I think we can actually start speaking of extensive touring, but nonetheless it is clear, that at some point we will need to take a break to get some ideas together for a new album. It’s just too hectic right now to write anything.

KE: Is the future of music like yours in the live arena, rather than recordings?

MN: I hope not. I like doing both and could imagine, that if we ended up touring and touring only playing the songs we did in the early days of our career it would quickly become dull. I think the income is definitely swifting over to all things other than the sale of the music itself, but without that, there would hardly be none of the other either. I think the world is moving towards a direction where music itself becomes “theoretically” free, so that the consumer pays for it by side products as the live shows, merchandise and other and most importantly, seeing adverts here and there. 

KE: Do you think that the live experience is now even more important with the accessibility of music online?

MN: To be able to make living yes, but for the consumer – not really. There will always be the group of people who like going to shows, theatre, seeing movies on the big screen, but at the same time, there’s also a group of people who are just happy to listen to the music digitally at home or on your iPod, and watch movies from a DVD on a small laptop screen.

I mean, there’s people who are totally fine with Facebook being their only social activity, and in a way, that’s completely alright. It’s just different. To me listening to music on CD or seeing a show was never on the same line anyway, and with our band it’s probably even more obvious.   

KE: Where do you stand on music being available free on the Internet? Do you think fans can be trusted to pay for albums which are available in this way?

MN: I think instead of the music industry ranting about the low morale of the fans, they should focus on finding alternative solutions. Trusting fans to pay for albums voluntarily is comparable to not locking your door at night out of the principle that one doesn’t want to live with people who would steal your stuff. It’s just how humans are and it’s silly to try to keep up this principle when it will not work. It’s just better to lock your door.

I think the bands who have experimented with giving out their music online towards a voluntary payment have shown that by doing so, they at least have managed to cut down the illegal spreading of their work. This way they are in total control of when and where and in what form people will get the material. I mean, if I know I’ll get the new Radiohead album in good quality off their site, it doesn’t make much sense for me to hunt for it in a p2p jungle.

Labels should just work up the structure for sponsorship and advertising for these controlled download sites so music could legally be free, and the artist would get a compensation for its work though other channels. I’m not saying, that our next album should include hidden ads in the lyrics or our live outfits would have NOKIA-logos on them. No! The art should remain intact, but who cares if you’ll have to see some corporate logos when and while downloading the product?

KE: Do you intend to make any future Turisas recordings available online with optional payment available?

MN: Well at this point it’s up to the label. On this level it’s a joke to think you’d actually get any money on record sales anyway – never seen a penny – so for me it would obviously be totally cool to make it available for more people. If we weren’t signed to a record deal, I would for sure have a bunch of ideas. It is the curse of artists of my generation, that we are working in a time where the traditional sales die out, but the new system isn’t there yet.

I would be very careful to sign a traditional record contract these days as I think it is the labels – especially those who don’t find a way to completely renew their way of working and main product - who will be the biggest losers in the whole. Any band tied to a label like that will obviously suffer.

KE: Many bands think that providing their music reaches more fans, whatever happens with music online does not matter. Do you agree? If not, why not?

MN: I think that what the spokespeople for free spreading of music online seldom see is the point that right now bands are still working on budgets provided by the labels. Those budgets are based on the sales and estimations of records and keep getting smaller and smaller as the income goes down. Cutting down production budgets definitely have an effect on the end product.

As I said, we’ve never earned a penny on record sales, and there are a huge number of bands like us out there who just want to make music out of their hearts and not for making big bucks. These bands are of course happy if their music reaches a broader audience, but as the setup is right now, I think the shrinking production is really a problem that is putting the bands in a corner.