Hi Tony!
First of all… I have to say I’m absolutely THRILLED to interview you! I’ve been a huge fan since 2006, got the Sonata logo tattooed on my arm, went all the way to Finland to be at the Live in Finland DVD shoot, and well, I can fill a bible with the reasons why I love you so much. But enough about that… it’s you and the new album we wanna talk about!
Wow, that´s quite a way to start an interview! You surely caught my attention, haha! Cheers to that! Fire away!
So, first I’m really wondering.. What’s with the new hairdo’s? Looks like everyone except Elias has a new (shorter) haircut. Got tired of untangling everything after an evening of headbanging?
I, and I think Henrik as well same as Marko, got all tired of it and felt we´re old enough to cut it now. Haha! Really, I just wanted to refresh my appearance some, change something. I will never cut my beard, that´s for sure, so it had to be the hair.
I already wrote a review for Stones Grow Her Name and I must say, it’s a fantastic album! But I do notice the opinions among reviewers are varied. Some people still review you as a power metal band, while clearly you aren’t power metal anymore – or maybe even never been. Personally I think you’re too diverse to be labeled with a single genre, and power metal being the last thing I think of. what do you have to say about people still confusing you with power metal? And from what you have read so far, are you satisfied with the overall score the album got from the reviews?
I have not read any reviews. I usually get around that late on tour, when the dust has settled. I am on the same line with you here. I think we´re like a stylistic paint bomb spread over many genres. And yes, I´ve been saying it for years already, we´re not really power metal, not anymore. Unfortunately our label seems to think it´s very valuable and necessary to slam us on that box, so that people can find us. We managed to get our own genre in though. Melodic Heavy Rock. It seems we´re the only band there for the time being anyway. I am happy with the album. That´s the only thing that really matters for me. Reviewers are just humans. Sometimes equipped with very limited keyhole view on the music scene, due to their young age or just…some people just seem to like some certain thing. Does not really move me one way or another. I´m too old for that shit. :)
A lot of people are also talking about SGHN going back to the roots. Personally I think it’s more the Tricky Beans roots they’re talking about, though a lot of people got their hopes up now for you returning to the Ecliptica sound. Is this really a ‘back to the roots’ album? Or is it just a new branch on the ever growing musical tree that somehow seems to point backwards?
I´ve been talking about this roots thing on my interviews a lot lately and what I really mean is the early beginning, Tricky Beans stuff. We were a rock band. Metal elements arrived some years later. I can assure you all there will never be another "Ecliptica" or any other old album for that matter. That era has ended a long time ago, good riddance. I enjoy writing new an innovative things instead of playing it safe and doing the same well selling thing again and again and again…I love music. All kinds of music. Sonata will probably keep evolving in some way as long as we´re around. These kids who get little upset about these things should remember the old albums are always there. I keep reminding people that had Pantera stayed true to their early beginnings, the world would have missed one hellova metal band.
Now you seem to retrace your steps to earlier sounds, especially towards the sound of Reckoning Night, does that mean the drastic style change with Unia and Days of Grays didn’t turn out to be successful after all? (I do love both albums, for the record!)
We do? I can´t hear it, really. I thought we are embracing something that is totally new and different for us, once again. I think we gained a lot of attention and the awareness towards our music rose a lot with these two albums. Some people had absolutely hated that "dick swinging fag metal" we represented with our first few albums, but totally fell in love with our new style. All the changes we have done have been pushed through because we have, or I have, wanted to make it so for selfish artistic reasons. "Unia", the great weird, saved this band, gave us a new start, and thus was a very necessary breath of fresh air in the band. I think both of those albums did pretty well sales wise. Interesting to see, however, how this new way of doing things is received by people. We aim to stir the nest. :)
On SGNH the somewhat psychopathic story of Wildfire continues. Personally I love all your psycho songs, like the Caleb saga for example. What inspires you to write such great psycho thrillers? One could even start to wonder if there’s a psychopath hidden somewhere inside you, because with those songs (especially when played live) you seem to translate the psychopathic emotions so well into music and, and with the added drama you put into it (think: Juliet) it’s almost creepy! Phenomenal though, but creepy!
Wildfire is actually about the battle between us, the human animal, against this planet we inhabit. The story morphs from this tale, where a person gets ostracized for the sake of his family name, into a more general, "we´ve struggled to survive in the nature, so now tables have turned and the environment is struggling to survive us"-story. And not actually even a story, but the actual way things are. We are destroying this planet only to be able to leave one day, providing our technical abilities have reached high enough level. It may take another million years, until we find and are able to inhabit another planet, but then we´ll invade it and destroy it just the same. Unless our way of thinking changes. But yeah, thank you. I do like writing stories I can see as movies. Caleb-Juliet-drama has been an interesting to do, I´ve had fun with it. Those songs have always been among my favorite ones on those albums. There´s a little psychopath and an actor within each of us. Who do you choose to see is in the eye of the beholder.
It could be just me, but I didn’t find any wolf songs in SGHN. Is it hidden in some kind of bonus track, or did you decide to quit the wolf song tradition? How did you start the whole wolf song tradition anyway?
Someone asked me this same thing on one of the very first interviews I had over this album, answering her own question with a suggestion "did Caleb take the wolf out for a walk?" I like that. I think he did. The wolf is not really present on this album, unless you want to hear the pack on the "Wildfire"s. I just noticed in some point that we had had one or more wolf related songs on each album. So the tradition kind of established itself. I just got aware of it one day, making it a more aware decision to get there again and again. It was also my safe-place in case I got a too long white paper period. I´m confident wolf is just around the corner, so don´t let your kids or pets out to play. Buhaha!
I can imagine that if you create a melody, you might find things in there you have already used on a previous song. Do you find it harder creating new songs than it was seven albums ago?
No, not really. When I notice same moods and feels on more than one song, and there are, naturally, it is merely because I am a person with certain personality and knowledge-experience range, something that makes me…me. I think it´s the same with every song writer. I would call it "a style" or "a thing". I have my own "style thing". But yeah, I do sometimes come up with a melody that makes me suspect I might have used it before somewhere. Just have to ask around then or accept the fact that it might resemble something me or someone else has done before. Or make the thing you´ve come up with even better. One of my reoccurring nightmares is that I´ve written a great song, it plays on radio when I suddenly realize it´s actually a copy of a Queen song or something.
You are playing on the Zwarte Cross Festival later this summer. Did you know it has a kind of ‘hillbilly redneck’ reputation? I find it quite a funny coincidence because those terms pop up everywhere when people talk about Cinderblox. So any chance it will show up in the setlist for the occasion, one time for the hell of it?
Had no idea. Everything is possible. We´ll be playing it in some point anyways. That´d be a good start, I think. :)
The World Wide Web is filled with tons of weird/crazy/goofy pictures of you guys. I swear I even read a sex story featuring Marko once! (got a link from a friend of a friend of a friend… don’t ask) Did you ever wished you could remove certain pictures/story’s on the web? And are you satisfied with the image the world gets from you from that kind of stuff?
Fabrications are not always very nice, but as with everything in there, it´s near impossible to remove once online. Naturally there are both good and bad pictures of each of us and artists are always on the line of fire. I would actually remove the whole existing internet, given the chance. I don´t like it very much. Someone should reset it and rebuilt it again, with rules and laws. Everyone in there should be identifiable. Personally, I don´t have faintest idea what kind of stories there are circling about me and I don´t even care or want to know. I´m sure my happiness does not increase tremendously if I read these things.
I heard here and there you recorded a cover of Genesis’ I Can’t Dance. Is that gonna be released somewhere anytime soon? And since you have a lot of covers already, ever planned on making a cover-only album?
Yeah, we try to put one new out with each album. This time a Genesis song. No plans for the release yet, but we´ll get it out in some form someday. Cover album…If someone is willing to pay us the expenses, that might be possible. I don´t think that kind of thing would be a real money maker. Fun idea, anyway.
I can imagine you already received hundreds of gifts from fans all over the world. From artworks, to bottles of vodka, stuffed wolves and candy, but what is your favorite thing to get from a fan? And what is the craziest/funniest/weirdest thing you ever got?
Favorite thing to get? I collect Hard Rock Cafe bears, these beanie-bag-things. I must have like 40 of the already from all over the world. Bough the vast majority of them myself. Nice souvenirs. Those are nice. Other thing I like very much is a nice smile. Weirdest-funniest thing I´ve gotten… well, I think it must be something I got from Japan. They have all sorts of things we Finns call oddities. It´s all good. :)
Are there any Dutch words you know? (we already heard you say ‘dankjewel’ a lot of times on Lowlands 2009)
Damn.. I did learn some others too while on tour with Epica. Never mind the way I write them now… I know "snoepjes" and "lipgloss", which probably just sounds like Dutch, but is in fact an English word meaning…drumroll…lipgloss!
If you had to take a single song from your work, put it for all to hear and say "-This- is Sonata Arctica" what song would it be and why?
Impossible to choose. Our catalogues style range is so wide I find it too hard to pick one song without explaining the living shit out of my choice and naming 10 others at the same time. Depends on the person I am supposed to impress, I suppose. :)
In the beginning when Sonata was formed, how did you meet the other band members? Or did you already know them for some time? So what happened… You guys just decided one day; let’s start a metal/hard rock band and see what happens?
Marko, who then played guitar ,and our first bass player Pentti started this band with their school mates Jani and Tommy asking me to join in as a singer. I played with Marko in the same band of very different sort at the time, so I knew him from that already. …yeah, it went pretty much like you said there. The guys just decided to form a band and asked me to join too. Rest it past. :)
How do you feel about being able, not only to share your mind and express yourself in music and lyrics, but also to reach so many people’s hearts in many different ways?
I feel good about it. I´m grateful for all the feedback I get. At times it feels…something in the neighborhood of weird, funny and honored, when people ask me to help them with the situation they are having with their sweethearts. Makes me feel like a love doctor, haha! Which I am not. But if the songs help people with whatever it is making them feel uneasy, that´s great! Music serves a purpose.
And now the most random question of them all: If you could pick 4 superpowers, what would they be and why?
All super powers seem to have some tragic downside. But…birds fly. Is it a superpower? Let´s play it is.
Flying
invisibility when needed
super intelligence that can be turned on and off, so it does not drive me crazy.
Ability to stop time. I´d stop the clock to sleep and create myself a 36h day. That´d be great!
I think me having those four would effectively destroy this planet, haha!
Are there any questions you have never been asked before, but liked to be asked?
"Can I pay off your mortgage?". I´d answer: yes.
So, that’s the end of the questions. Thanks a lot for answering them, and I hope to see you guys soon on a festival or on the European tour! And on a more personal note: I’d like you to know that you and your music have made a huge impact on my life, and I’m extremely thankful for that! And knowing a lot of other Sonata fans, I’m not the only one who thinks that way and we all just want to say one thing: kiitos!
Makes me happy to hear that. Kiitos teille kaikille. Thank you all. I would not be able to do what I do without you.
See you on tour, folks!
