Interviews

It was a huge surprise when a masked metal band from Finland won the 2006 Eurovision song contest. It’s a very popular contest in Europe with nearly 40 countries participating. The people chose Lordi and their anthem “Hard Rock Hallelujah” as the winner. It launched them to superstardom in their native country. They opened a Lordi restaurant, and have all kinds of products including their own credit card, soft drink, candy and comic book. Their album The Arockalypse was extremely popular all over Europe, as they brought their theatrical stage show with pyrotechnics and over the top antics. Lordi is now trying to conquer North America. Their album has been released here, and they plan to tour the U.S. beginning in April. I spoke with the band’s founder and vocalist Mr. Lordi about their success in Europe and plans for the U.S.

Chad Bowar: Lordi are hugely successful in Finland, and have done very well in Europe as a whole. What are you plans and expectations for the United States?
Mr. Lordi: Plans and expectations can be two different things! The plan is to tour there and see how it goes and see how the audience will react to us and our music and the whole package. Our expectations are to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Everybody in the band is optimistic about everything, but on the other hand you have to be realistic at the same time. We are hoping we’ll be a huge major act there, but we have our feet firmly on the ground. We’ll see what happens.

It must have been an amazing experience to have 600 million people watching you win Eurovision, and then be welcomed home by the President of your country.
We’ve been doing this for a while, and we’ve been doing our own thing against the mainstream. Any critic in Europe will say that we’re just about the image, it’s just a gimmick. But that’s not true. We’re 100 percent honest in what we do. With Eurovision, we didn’t think we would win. We thought we could win, but we didn’t think that kind of miracle would happen. To suddenly go from being a marginal heavy metal band dressed up as monsters to national heroes overnight has its pros and cons. It’s nice to get recognized and be treated well by important people in your own country. Orf course that feels good. But then again Eurovision is something no rock band should do if they want to keep a shred of credibility. But we won and still did our own thing. It was nice we won. We got all sorts of good stuff because of that. One thing leads to another.

How would you describe Lordi to someone that’s never heard or seen you?
There are some cute quotes from other journalists that have been quite precise. One said we are “Kiss for the new millennium.” That was the highest compliment a bunch of Kiss fans could get. Lordi is a mixture of Alice Cooper’s theatrics and the Kiss pyro effects. The music is pretty melodic, and we are not trying to hide or deny our influences. It’s an eighties style pop rock heavy metal. It’s like Kiss, Twisted Sister, Alice Cooper with big singalong choruses and a lot of hooks with a vocal sound that sounds like Lemmy or Rob Zombie. We are monsters who play melodic hard rock.

How did you line up all the different guests for the album?
It started as pure coincidence. It was 2005 when we were recording the album, and we had a two week European tour right in the middle of the studio sessions. We had a day off, and the Eric Singer Project was playing in Copenhagen, Denmark. We went to check it out. After the show I was pretty drunk so I went to Bruce Kulick and asked him if he wanted to appear on a Lordi album. I gave him my information and figured I’d never hear from him again. I didn’t think there was any way Bruce Kulick would want to guest on a Lordi album. But when we got back home there was an email from Bruce saying he would do it. The more you eat, the hungrier you get. So we decided to ask Jay Jay French from Twisted Sister if he would do a solo on another song. He said yeah, so we thought if we got Jay Jay we could probably get Dee Snider to speak on the intro. Then we contacted Udo Dirkschneider, one of my favorite heavy metal singers of all time. He agreed to sing on the album, too. When all these people said they actually wanted to do it we had a positive problem. We didn’t plan on this. About half of the album was already done, so we had to figure out what they would do and on what song.

Chad Bowar: You mentioned you’ve been living with The Arocalypse since 2005 even though it’s new to U.S. listeners. Do you have a timetable for your next album?
Mr. Lordi: The plan is that we will hit the studio next year and hopefully the new album will come out in November or December of 2008. That means we need to get into the studio this December or next January. I write material all the time. We actually end up with too many songs to choose from. On all our albums there have been 50 or 60 demos to choose from. Only 1 of 6 makes it to the album. You would think the more songs you have the easier the selection process is, but it’s the other way around. It’s going to be interesting once again. We have a bunch of new songs, and also all the old demos to go through. It’s going to take a while to choose the songs.

Will U.S. audiences be seeing your full light and pyro show on this tour?
If it were up to me, I would say yes, but we are newcomers and nobody knows us over there and we don’t have the budget to bring over the whole show. We want to bring as much as we can. This is our first album there. Hopefully everything goes well and then we’ll be able to bring the full production. Thanks to the internet we already have a small but loyal fan base in the U.S. that have been there since our first single. Those guys have seen the DVDs and videos and have watched You Tube to see our shows in Europe. But they know they won’t see that full show the first time we go there. But there is one thing for certain: we’ll look prettier than any other band.

Speaking of that, how long does it take you to get in and out of the costumes?
For me it takes around three hours for the face. I have to glue all the prosthetic pieces on my face and hide the edges of the pieces. The costume takes 10 to 15 minutes to put on. The rest of the band can get into their costumes and characters a lot faster. It takes them anywhere from a half hour to an hour and a half. Then after the concert it takes me an hour and a half because I have to get all the latex and glue out of my hair and beard before I go to sleep.

Have the costumes evolved over the years, or have they remained pretty much the same?
The characters don’t change, but the outfits change a little on each album.

How is the restaurant doing that you opened in Finland?
Good. My friends and I talked about it for a long time. It’s in our hometown in the north of Finland in the Arctic Circle. It’s doing well. It’s a horror and rock restaurant. There are a lot of costumes on display from us and things on display from other Finnish and international bands. It’s a really cool looking place that’s pretty unique.

How did Lordi get started?
The first incarnation of Lordi was in 1992 when the first demo was produced. Back then it was just me. I thought the band would never appear live, that I would just play all the instruments. In 1994 I started making it into a real band. That’s when the image thing came. In 1996 the first lineup of Lordi met. I was and still am the president of the Kiss Army in Finland. I gathered all the people in the group that I knew played instruments. I asked fellow Kiss fanatics to join the band. I wanted Lordi to be an extreme version of Kiss. That was the original lineup for Lordi’s first album. The current lineup has been together since 1999.