Interviews

Hi, Zac! Congratulations about your first DVD! Definitely this DVD was expected very much - all the same Tarot is one of the oldest and authoritative Finnish bands.
Thank you, it was really expected for fans and the band itself.

At first tell us please what gig was assumed as a basis for this DVD, how has it been recorded and I am particularly very interested to know who was the author of the artwork of the Undead Indeed concept. I liked the idea very much, it evokes recollection about Metalocalypse cartoon. By the way, have you seen it?
We wanted to record the live in the our home town Kuopio for different reasons and one of the reasons was to honour our home town fans. At the Crows Fly Black tour, we got day off between Helsinki and Kemi gigs and the first was in the south and second in the north, so it was easy to do the decision to make this happen here.
Although in the Kuopio place was enough big to get good audience and vibes recorded.
The main idea for the cover work came from Marco and Toxic Angel made it seem just right. He’s done our couple of latest albums and single covers, so we wanted him to do it. You can find his work in then and he’s really talented with computer graphics.
I haven’t see Metalocalypse yet.

As I said before, Tarot is quite an old band to metal scene, but it’s great that you keep yourself up-to-date. To tell the truth, I started to listen to your music exactly with Crows Fly Black, and dammit, when I knew that the band is 20 years old, I was surprised very much with such modern and interesting album. In fact, you’ve witnessed Finnish scene’s rise through all this time, so do can you tell us some recipe for achieving this “Finnish success”, i.e. the fact so many bands from your country make themselves known, becoming popular and taking extreme heights in charts?
Yep, we are starting to be the old guys, he he!
It’s has been great to be this scene so long time and having ok success in Finland.
Of course the level we are outside Finland could been better, but you can’t always get everything you want, although after every album things has been better, so maybe after next studio album…
We don’t have any recipe for anything, just trying to make metal in the way we have done and it has been growing heavier and heavier all the way long somehow.

Did Tarot’s audience grow much after Marco had joined Nightwish, which reached fantastic popularity up to that moment? E.g. here in Russia people started to pay attention to Tarot only after that – just because of curiosity. Well, of course some people knew about you before, but on most of the forums people called Tarot as “project of Marco from Nightwish”. Don’t you feel yourself hurt by this fact a bit? Or does he see Tarot as his beloved and only child (after playing so much in the band I’d surely take it as my own child!), despite all other projects, in which he takes part?
Of course it has been a great help, but Nw has got a fans through us, so it’s done good both of us really.
The naming us the project hurts, but we been used it in now on and in every interview which Marco is doing, he reminds that Tarot is not a project and been longer in the scene than Nw.
We all got side projects, but Tarot is the only real band for us.
Marco loves both of the bands and consider them equal, that’s it.

Do your ties of blood bother you in the creation process? Or do you just forget about everything besides the music when you write it? By the way, who of you is older?
I’m three years older. Our composing style is bit ought though…
Me, Marco and Janne are doing bit and pieces of our own and then we try to get time for introduce the parts to each other and put things together, after couple of rehearsal weeks, we normally got material for next album and it’s been demoed already with beat machine for Pecu and Tommi to practice the songs for the recording.
We have done all the composing shit like this from Stigmata album, so why to change the method?

What is the reason for more or less known musicians in Finland to take part in many projects simultaneously (e.g. Marco or your keyboard player Janne)? Do you have kind of lack of people, and so you have to involve musicians from other bands? Well, I don’t believe in that! Or do you just have so strong propensity for creation – and diverse one? Do you handle some side-projects yourself?
I have done studio works, solos, composing, producing and Guitar Heroes album. Right now me and Janne have been composing the songs for one female singer and hopefully the album is coming out this year under the name Marenne. We’ve done 10 very progressive metal songs for it already and I’m starting to put down real guitar tracks this week. Janne is so productive musician and done Virtuosity album couple of years ago and doing his second Eternal Of Tears of sorrow album soon and he’s been playing in the industrial metal band called Turmion Kätilöt for years now.
He is studio owner, so it’s easy to go there to do studio stuff or projects. Tommi has couple of projects as well, but they are not recorded yet, actually he’s doing a lots of backing vocals sessions and Pecu has done cover bands besides Tarot.
So we all have different things going on, not just Marco, which obviously is doing music 24/7, he he!

How did the idea of taking stage names – almost identical to the real names, but still different a bit – was born? And why have you taken such a scriptural name, are you a believer?
It has nothing to do with religion. Back in the Eighties, all the musicians have to had a artist name and those we got back then, we have kept.

Back to the cover-art design – such “gothic-style” appearance of “Crows Fly Black” reminded me about the movie “The Crow”. Was that a deliberate move or it just happened by it’s own and you didn’t think about that?
Yee… It just happened, after the release of the album, somebody noticed the connection to The Crow movie, but it happened accidently, we didn’t think about it at all when Toxic made the cover concept.

Many people say that heavy metal is almost dead nowadays. Sell, actually they keep telling this for almost 10 years or maybe even for 15. But still some new bands keep on appearing playing in this vein, and with their own view of heavy metal (e.g. Agonizer), and besides veterans of the scene also don’t lose their ground and gladden us with some new traits of their music, which are often called “modern”. How do you think, how many time will Tarot’s music still be actual? As I mentioned before, your music sounds very fresh and original, so we could guess your ideas won’t become obsolete for sure. But still – maybe the day will come and you will realize that you don’t want to carry on anymore. Or won’t you?
I’m opposite, I think metal lives strongly now on and surely we don’t want to stop Tarot. Of course every musician sometimes thinks is this the thing I wanna do rest of my life, but in my opinion we have got over that kinda thinking years ago, now we just do our thing.

I’ve seen your profile on Tarot’s official site, and it seems you’re listening to just good old heavy metal and hard rock. And what about some nowadays styles of metal – black melodic death or something? Or have you just grown too old for all this speedy jumble and you just want to listen to something calm and powerful in the same time?
Our roots are in to older metal stuff like Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, etc. But in the same time we all are listening almost everything else, from pop to rock, jazz to metal and surely the new comers of metal.

You are all adult and mature people, so I won’t be mistaken if I say that everyone (at least many of you) has his families and children. What do your families think about your musical tastes, which last for so long? Have they just got used for that or do they even share and understand it?
I don’t have children, but if I have understand correctly, the boys kids are so much in their father doing and listens metal as well as kids music, no prob about that.
Our wifes and girl friend are with us full hearted for sure.