Interviews

Dimitris Melidis: How the metal press reacted to your new album?
Marco Hietala:

So far what people say to me, most of the journalists like the new album and the reviews are very good. And the rest of the band gets positive reactions from the people who've heard our new album.

Dimitris: Can you give us some info about the recordings of the "Crows Fly Black".
Marco: The album was supposed to be recorded since last winter, but this didn't happen because we have some trouble writing the material and the lyrics and everything. For me it was a problem because I had a little bit bad year with NIGHTWISH for obvious reasons that everybody has been reading about that. So we had to slow down the writing of the stuff. After spring we have released the single already in Finland. Then came the summertime and we started recorded the album, making rehearsals and albums' demos. We also made some shows in the summer festivals with TAROT. Everything had to be really scheduled, 2 days there, 2 days here because I had also the rehearsals with NIGHTWISH. The album finally recorded. As for the songs, we chose our best ideas. Everything happened really fast.

Dimitris: "You" is the first single of the album. Why did you choose this track?
Marco: Well, at that time we had only a few songs written for the album, we didn't have all the material written. So "You" was probably the simplest track that had the qualities to be a single. We probably wouldn't have released this single at that time, in the spring, but there were festival people who wanted some new stuff from TAROT because we have already been booked to the summer festivals and we should release something. Then we have released "You" which came straight to No.1 of the Finnish singles charts. It was a very good thing for the band.

Dimitris: During the last years many bands of Finland have done huge success around Europe, not to speak about LORDI which won the Eurovision song contest... Which do you think are the reasons why your local scene has such success around Europe during the last years?
Marco:

Should be honest?

Dimitris: Yes.
Marco: Well, there is a good combination of luck and coincidence when all the movement started. At the end of 80s in Finland the things started to grow up, first with some thrash metal pioneers. And then came STRATOVARIUS (e.n. the truth has to be spoken), which got really big outside of Finland first. Those things kind of started the movement. Many bands influenced by bands like RAINBOW, METALLICA, DIO, JUDAS PRIEST, BLACK SABBATH etc. were creating bands to express their musical feelings. There is also the Finnish mentality that has something to do with this success; we do things to the end. Now we have a really good heavy metal scene with a lot of good bands that play great music and I hope that this will last for a lot of time.

The complete interview is online at metaleagle.com