Just when we thought that Wintersun’s problems were over, mainman Jari Maenpaa released a statement openly criticising the band’s label Nuclear Blast for not properly supporting the band in the development of their follow-up to ‘Time I‘. Seems like the curse of Chinese Democracy has hit Wintersun again.
Maenpaa originally released this statement about the new album ‘Time II‘, supposed to be released in 2013. It is long-winded but a worth reading. The vein of the statement comes in light of fans offering a crowdfunding solution to help ‘Time II‘ finally see the light of day:
“Reality Update About Crowd Funding, TIME II And Future Albums”
“I’m very happy to see that we have so much dedicated fans that would be willing to pledge and be a part of funding a studio for Wintersun, so I could make the next Wintersun album without it taking another 10 years again.”
“I’ve been thinking about this Kickstarter/Pledge crowd funding thing for a while and I’m very confident now that there is enough of you guys that would help us raise the money for the Wintersun studio! This would give me the freedom to make music efficiently and nonstop. It would eliminate lot of the problems I’ve struggled with all my life and still continue to struggle everyday. For example right now I need a studio to reamp guitars for TIME II. And not just any studio, my own studio where I can craft my sounds exactly like I want them. 3rd party studios have never worked for me and I’ve never gotten satisfactory results for the insane prices they charge.”
“I live in a small shitty apartment building and I have neighbors. It is very very hard to work like this. I can’t record vocals, can’t practice my singing, I can’t record guitars, I can’t record guitars even with modeling amps, because the electricity is so bad in this shitty building so I get lots of interference, I even play and practice the electric guitar acoustically without an amp 99% of the time in my home, I can’t record drums or basically any acoustic instruments, I don’t have the room or cool space for a big computer farm which is a must for the orchestrations for the next album (the place is too small and hot even for the one computer I have), I can’t mix properly, ’cause the room is so bad and there´s always ambient noise in and outside the building. That’s why I usually turn my sleeping rhythm around and mix at nights, but that causes problems in my everyday life. I can’t do pretty much anything properly in this situation. Building a professional studio for Wintersun would erase all this and give us the freedom to make music nonstop. It would upgrade our album sound significantly and most importantly speed up the album making process significantly. This would even raise our live game. With proper preproduction, able to tweak our live sounds and setup properly we would sound pretty incredible live. We would also be able to rehearse more and that would allow us to be able to play live more often and come to places where we normally have not been able to come. The studio would allow us to have more time for everything.”
“But the problem is this. I have a record deal with Nuclear Blast. If I would do a Kickstarter with a downloadable album for example, they would come with lawyers and take % share (more than half) away from the money that is your money meant for the Wintersun studio and the album production. Would you even want to pledge if Wintersun didn´t get 100% of the money you´ve pledged for the album production? Then our management would take their % share away. Then there’s taxes of course. The Finnish government would take something like 40% away. This would leave me nothing. I would be totally screwed. I’ve been trying to have a discussion with Nuclear Blast about crowd funding, but they are totally freaking out. They see the crowd funding as a threat to their business and they would rather see Wintersun dead, than me doing a crowd funding. I think this would not hurt them at all, only benefit them, but they cannot see the big picture of Wintersun doing well. They actually told me point blank that I should just stop making music and they will never release Wintersun from the contract. It´s really like this, because they can’t or won’t loan me enough money to build a studio and fund an album, they don’t want other people (the fans) to fund it either… unless they get a crazy big cut of the funding (for doing absolutely nothing).”
“This is the way a record deal works: The label gives an advance to make an album. This is a loan and they will recoup every penny back from the record sales. The reason why TIME I&II has taken so long to make (and still is taking long to finish TIME II), is because I haven’t gotten enough advances (money) to make these complex albums. Not even close. So I´ve been struggling all these years and sacrificed everything to make these albums. I have never really made any money from Wintersun. All my money has gone to album production, but you can guess who have made tons of money from Wintersun. The point is that I need my own studio to make the future albums, but Nuclear Blast won’t be able to loan enough money to make that happen and then they won’t allow me to do a crowd funding campaign either that would make it happen. And even if Nuclear Blast would be able to loan me the money for the studio, our management would take their share of that money and I would get only part of the money, but I would still have to pay back 100% to Nuclear Blast from the record sales. So I would actually lose big chunk of the album production money straight away, which makes no sense at all. And then there´s the taxes. So there´s no point of taking these ‘loans’ either.”
“This all is stressing me out very badly and it’s slowing my workflow. I’ve got enough technical problems to deal with making these albums. I just want the freedom to make music, but I guess it is what it is. Honestly, I feel like I’ve signed a deal with the devil and I’m just a slave in the system.”
“I’ve got probably 5 long albums worth of new insanely good material! And there´s no filler material at all! The music is much more refined, much more advanced in arrangement/composition/productionwise. It´s diverse and beautiful, heavy, chaotic and exploring different styles&themes and some new dimensions I feel no band has explored before… The stuff is simply on another level, in a different universe than the debut album and the TIME albums combined. I wrote the TIME albums around 2006 and before, that was a lifetime ago. Think of the stuff I’ve written ever since to this day! And I just keep on writing, I feel like I´m on fire. The music is just flowing out of me. I’m so excited about all this new music and I can´t wait to start recording and sharing it with you… BUT I can’t without a studio, that´s the problem…”
Jari
“p.s. Should have stayed working in the post office!”
Our take on this statement is that it’s a double-edged sword. Yes we do understand the extreme difficulties of the music industry these days, but it also seems that Maepaa is making problems for himself like he has done before (i.e. 2006 where he fired another shot about not having enough RAM on his computer for ‘Time I‘). Being very specific about how he wants to write and record the album given his circumstances are not ideal to create the albums, and has previously used writer’s block as an excuse not to complete ‘Time I‘. With this statement there is no doubt Maenpaa has strained relations with Nuclear Blast, who have never really been publicly criticised about their business model. Nuclear Blast responded with this statement:
“Hey everyone,”
“We are aware of Jari’s recent statement on his current situation and business experiences with Nuclear Blast regarding the most anticipated “TIME II” album. We highly appreciate the strong reactions this statement has caused in the metal community as it once more shows how much people care about their fellow metal heads and especially the musicians that go through many hardships to give us what we all enjoy the most: A good blast of METAL”
“We also have always been metal fans at heart and we still strive for the same goal we have since the formation of Nuclear Blast 27 years ago: To support our artists in the best way possible and to get the music everybody deserves out to our fans worldwide.”
“This being said the business side of music can often be rough and especially with a project as extensive as the TIME series compromises have to be found to make an album both beautiful and feasible to all parties involved – the musicians, the fans and the label. This process includes many things that should not be discussed in public as debates sometimes get heated and misunderstandings occur, but we take great pride in the relationship with our artists until this day.”
“So be assured that we all love Wintersun as much as you do – nobody at Nuclear Blast wants to see them gone and we are working together with Jari and his management to find the optimal solution for his concerns.”
I think we all want to see Wintersun back on the scene, and of course with another fantastic album. Crowdfunding certainly is becoming more prominent as artists can make more of a cut from the records and is a good idea, but we can’t neglect the fact that Wintersun signed a record deal with Nuclear Blast back in 2004 with what was likely for a couple of albums, and if the albums were completed in a timely manner it is likely the contract would have been up before crowdfunding existed. We know there was problems in production with ‘Time I‘, but it just seems too many of those were self-inflicted.
All aside we really hope this all gets resolved and ‘Time II’ see’s the light of day sooner rather than later.
