Finnish metal has made an astounding rise in the United Kingdom. A showcase of Finnish metal at Wembley in December underlined the fact that the nation now has a firm grasp on metalheads worldwide, with Amorphis pioneering so much in the local scene. Who better than to ask but Santeri Kallio of the band, who gives us insight into why Finnish metal has become so important not only in the UK, but worldwide.
The band were on an extensive run of UK dates when we caught up with Santeri, peforming to the highest qualities every night, and giving the Brits a full Amorphis headline show to present their latest stunner ‘Under the Red Cloud‘. With the insight into the rise of Finnish metal, we of course talk about the development of Amorphis, and what ingredients make such quality records time and time again.
Listen to the interview or read the entire transcript below.
Santeri, thank you very much for speaking to The Metalist today, really appreciate it! First question we have to ask – it’s every musicians dream to play Wembley, how did that feel?
[laughs] It was very nice! Of course it was Nightwish’s show and stuff like that…but it was a really nice ending of the tour. It’s a very legendary place and it’s in London, one of the most famous cities in the world! It was really nice that the crowd was already inside when we started – but there was some extra tension in the backstage area! There were a lot of journalists from Finland and Nightwish was shooting some DVD there, there was a lot of tension…
So you guys were a little bit more nervous than you usually are playing this show!
Definitely. But also it was the 32nd out of 32nd show of that tour, I wouldn’t say I was nervous – just more excited! [laughs]
Sure, finishing up the tour!
I never saw it coming that we would ever play that venue – it was really nice.
I definitely think you guys turned a lot of heads this time around at Wembley. I was there and people who hadn’t heard of Amorphis before were like, ‘God this is great’. Do you think that it really helped the band in the UK performing there?
I hope so. I hadn’t met that many people from the audience in that show, but of course now we are doing 6 shows in the UK and 1 in Ireland which is more than we usually play. So it definitely affected the promoters side of it, they thought now was the time to build it up. I’ve been seeing a lot of people – yesterday I met one guy in Wolverhampton who saw our show in Stockholm – he had never heard about us before, also lots of people in Germany who had seen us on the Nightwish tour and then came along [to the headline shows] because they were like, ‘wow, what is this band?’.
I hope Wembley did the same for the UK, but I didn’t get the chance to speak to fans. We always leave pretty soon after the show…
It’s a tight schedule right?
Yea. We are the last band…everybody leaves the venue while we are taking showers and stuff like that.
Playing with Nightwish…well they are such a big band. I know you guys have been around longer, I think you started in 1990 or something?
Yea, around ’90. I remember one time Nightwish was supporting us!
Wow! [laughs] How times change!
Well you could kind of see back then, this band was going to be huge! Maybe we were co-headlining…but they played before us in Finland.
Well it’s nice to see you guys together again!
Yea! It was very nice. Nightwish are very old friends of ours since a long time, and a lot of their technicians are old friends of ours or they used to work for us at some point. It was like a big family going.
What’s pretty amazing is that Finnish metal has become so big in the UK, I don’t ever think anybody would have seen that a country of 5 million people would have such a big metal scene! You’ve toured the UK, do you know of any reason why that might be?
Well…of course a couple of points and views. One would be that Finnish metal is of pretty high quality. There are so many metal bands, and new ones are coming out all the time. Also we have a lot of Celtic melodies and ethnic influences [in our music], they really seem to touch the UK audience – I think that’s one of the reasons. But the main reason is there are so many bands [competing], so there are a few that are really high quality. And they tour their asses off! [laughs]
Yup, just keeping going and pushing!
Yea, and now the UK is waking up!
Well talking of high quality, you have your album out ‘Under the Red Cloud’ that came out recently that came out recently – I think with Amorphis we feel that every time you guys release and album, it’s like ‘Oh my God this is amazing, I don’t think they will ever do anything better’, and then you released the last one and it was bloody outstanding. How do you keep going – I know you release an album every two years!
Well in our band there are many composers, so not all the pressure goes to one guy. Esa writes most of the songs, and Toni the guitar player brings a couple of songs…so the composing spreads out. I think that’s one of the reasons that we haven’t had one of those huge gaps in our career. Also the fact that we are all really good friends, and we tour all the time. We don’t rehearse at all. Maybe once or twice when we go to the studio to make a new album, but not between the shows. Maybe if there’s like a two month break we’ll do a quick rehearsal, maybe just for one hour, never any of the big hits, just the smaller songs.
When it’s time to make a new album we just concentrate on that. The amount of rehearsing – well we never rehearse and I think it makes the whole process actually fun. It doesn’t feel like work! We don’t say ‘oh let’s rehearse once a week’ or play around every night. It’s a good plan, it doesn’t feel like working.
But when we make the songs it’s just normal, there’s no real plan. We don’t say to each other ‘OK, let’s make a good album’, or ‘This is going to be heavy’. Esa and Toni just make the songs how they do. Because we tour a lot, we get a lot of feedback from fans on where our music is going, and when we get reactions from songs. Maybe that’s the only thing that really develops.
But we don’t overthink anything. We just develop the songs and we practice them. In the last years maybe we have had a bit more of an ambitious musicianship things, like small tiny things here and there, and maybe that’s what separates ‘Under the Red Cloud’ a little bit from the past.
Well you got Chrigel Glanzmann from Eluveitie playing flutes on ‘Death of a King’. Was that planned?
We always try and get some real instruments. I made those [the flute sounds] with keyboards, but of course it’s nice to get a real flute. It was Jens Bogren, the producer, that had the idea to use him, as they had been working together for a long time and knew that he could just send the tracks to him and that he would deliver super quality. We didn’t have to practice with him or that he would do something and it would be shit. He was a very trustworthy guy.
But yea, it really created some tempo and cut out some typical Amorphis structures. Maybe that’s one thing that he [Jens Bogren] had a pretty strong role in – kicking our asses to bring something more to the table than we usually do than when we produce it by ourselves.
So raised the bar a little bit?
Yea! He was really strict! Especially with the drums and guitars. ‘You have to make it feel – more more more feels!’ Like more musicianship, more interesting arrangements…I have to say the songs were pretty fucking good already before Jens came into the picture, but he pushed us a little bit harder out of the comfort zone.
Normally if we produced it ourselves, well not for the last album, but we pretty much went about 80% [effort]. [laughs] But Jens really kicked our ass!
So Jens was looking for 100%!
Well he was looking for 110%, but maybe he got 92%! [laughs]
God, I wonder what we would get from you guys with 110%! Maybe a career-defining album?
Yea, maybe like in 2020? [laughs]
Are you still pulling the same influences? With the first album I know it was a bit more death metal, but you’ve always had that Kalevala [Finnish national epic] influence. Do you still pull those lyrical themes today?
Well we used a lyricist, an older Finnish guy who is a Kalevala specialist and an artist. We asked particularly for this album, like we did with ‘Circle’, let’s not go with Kalevala, let’s go with something else. So he brought us a modern world story, with some flashbacks and some Finnish mythological elements. Now he basically didn’t use any Kalevala connection with ‘Under the Red Cloud’. He explained that later on in one press conference, for the first time in his life that he didn’t have a frame to write around. He had free hands to do whatever, or what he always wanted to do.
Of course he knew it was going to be with the metal music, so it’s always better not to be about Mickey Mouse. There should be some deeper level. But ‘Under the Red Cloud’ was basically nothing to do with Kalevala. Even though it’s in our roots and his roots.
That’s really interesting, as I always thought that you had that connection [in all the music]…
Well there is. I mean this guys basically lives through the Kalevala, and everything in his life has something to do with Finnish nature, Finnish arts and the book. But the stories this time around are not from the Kalevala at all. They are from his mind, and how he sees the world.
It must have been very interesting to read what he wrote…
Yea, he writes it in Finnish first. So we first read it in Finnish and then we get the translations. It’s much better, as somehow the language barrier doesn’t quite translate it [to English] very well.
Well I know you have Finnish letters that are like 50 letters long!
Yea, and there’s certain elements that remind you of things…
Would Amorphis make an entirely Finnish language album?
Why not! We are pretty open minded for basically anything. We’ve done acoustic stuff, we’ve done special shows for ‘Eclipse’ inside a castle…
I remember at Wacken maybe 2013 – you guys played an acoustic set…
Yea half of the set was acoustic. We had a saxophone player and stuff. Also in Japan we did the same thing, and on a tour in Finland. I wouldn’t say we are not definitely going to do it, of course we can do anything if we keep our minds open – but if I told you the music we listen to in the tour bus, ranging from metal to stoner rock to pop to even the ethnic stuff…maybe some day…but I see it as a little bit limited in vision. Most of our fans are from outside Finland, and I don’t think it would be that fair to do a Finnish album.
We did one song in Finnish actually…yea it was in that castle show we did…we played ‘Eclipse’ and other’s in the setlist. Our singer Tomi got the idea to do ‘Tales of 1000 Lakes’ that basically means the beginning of the world, so he wanted to do it in Finnish so he performed it like that…so we actually already have done it once! [laughs]
I didn’t even know!
I forgot it also! I only remembered when I started to talk about it! We did it in the beginning in Finnish!
So I guess the last question – I know you are finishing up this leg of the European tour – but are you doing summer festivals with special shows or anything?
I don’t know…with special shows I don’t think so as we are only just starting to present ‘Under the Red Cloud’, as obviously the Nightwish tour we were supporting and we only played 40 minutes with only 4 new songs from ‘Under the Red Cloud’. I think in the summer I think we are just going to do the same thing we are doing now…but unofficially we are working on something…we have a couple big shows planned for Finland. You know that’s our big cultural hub, something maybe later in the summer…
We’ve been talking about maybe in the fall to do a Finnish tour with ‘Eclipse’ as now it’s been exactly 10 years since it’s release, and it was a huge thing in Finland and a huge thing for us. And we already practised it last summer in the castle! [laughs] But let’s see! Everything’s open, but of course right now we want to promote ‘Under the Red Cloud’ as well as we can, and because it’s such a big album we want to play every song basically.
The calendar looks good – we probably have 60 shows booked!
Well it’s such a big album, it was on many album of the year lists and stuff like that. You need a big tour to fill it’s shoes!
Yea we have to tour a lot! We can change the songs a bit later if it starts to feel a bit boring. With these songs we can always do 3 out and 3 in…I think I also heard plans that we are going to play the whole album at some point…from the beginning to end…and some oldies and goldies! Let’s see! Everything’s open!
Well Santeri thank you so much for speaking us today, again really appreciate it!
