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 UNDER THE ROOT OF MOUNTAINOn one rainy and moody afternoon somewhere on the boarders of Budapest, I have met Skrymer from Finntroll. Actually, in this particular moment while we were chatting, Sun was still shining upon us and it was a spring in Hungary. As a matter of fact I was visiting Metal Fest and decided to do few interviews and this one turned out more into some kind of chatting (not so usual for me) but below you can find the final result, a sort of a shorter interview but still a cool one. We were mainly speaking about the new album ’’Nifelvind’’, the two videos that follow this new issue and some other things about Finntroll as well...
You’re very active when it comes to live performances. You are just playing on Metal Fest and also you’re going to play in Metal Camp and you have also finished huge tour a few months ago. This could be indeed hard sometimes. Not tours and club-shows, but the festivals are really problem esepcially when we have two different festivals, like this summer we have one in Northern Finalnd and the next day we play in Belgium which makes us crazy because of driving and flying and waiting... so I don't like festivals that much. Also, there’s too many bands. I really like tours and club shows – it’s more intimate and it’s not so wearing out, but the tours go pretty easy. The festivals could be two per week, and then flying home for a two days and then again the same time.  ’’Nifelvind’’ is your latest record, released just few months ago. This particular release is more mature in comparing to your previous works. Some tracks are more black metal oriented with classic BM riffing, while others still have this polka/folk feeling, but yet the atmosphere is very dark. Also, several songs are pretty different from each others. I wouldn't say that it was intention, but I think that nobody wanted to do the same songs over and over again. It’s like self-criticism within the band. So, there’s not a point to record the same tracks. Comparing to our previous full-length it’s more complex, better produced. Where did you record and produce the new album? Was it hard to get this more bombastic-like production this time? No, because we actually have paid attention this time in pre-production, on guitar-sound and everything. But, on the previous albums we didn't have that much time to record guitars. It was like day or two for the recording of the guitars and one day for bass and two-three days for vocals. But, on this one we decided to play everything really properly, proper sounds for guitars. And we spent hours and hours on guitar's sound and sound engineering which we have not done before. So, it comes a natural when you like to evolute. Also, there and this orchestrations that we have done. So, how would you label the music of Finntroll? It’s music! Ok, it’s metal music but it’s just music. We don’t want to have labels or any other restrictions. I think Finntroll its still Finntroll! Also, let’s speak some more about the video-clips of Finntroll. So far you have filmed several videos and a new ones are ’’Solsagan’’ (The Saga of the Sun) and "Under Bergets Rot" (Under the Root of the Mountain). We are not really happy about ’’Solsagan’’ video - it doesn’t look like Finntroll. It’s the second time that we have let some outsider to do something for us and for the second time we are not happy with the result. Usually we are doing things by ourselves. This video turned out to be very usual, if you get what I think because you can just add any kind of music in the background and it will work - you can even add Nightwish on the back! A girl in the video turned out to be a main character but she wasn’t supposed to be a main character - she looks like Tarja Turunen in white dress. And for the second video- clip "Under Bergets Rot" we wanted to do one animated video like from ages and ages and we finally found a small company for that one. And that was the third time that we allow some outsider to do a video-clip for us and I think that it went really cool! And I like this one! If you need to choose the best or the most important record from Finntroll which one you will choose? I don’t know because any album of Finntroll hasn't really push the band beacuse we didn’t have so far a big promotion except for the new one. When it comes to Spinefarm - it was like good part and bad part in everything, but I am really happy with Century Media so far. And the changing of the labels was pretty easy because CM have done distributing and have the license dealing on us since the first album so we are working with them since the first record. Now, we have just skipped Spinefarm and we are concentrated on CM. So, it works fine, so far. After a more of decade of recording and publishing several very successful records, how do you see Finntroll now as one of the more prominent bands from Europe? Are you satisfied? Yes, because we are still weird touring circus sight. We still do stuff in our own way, no compromises and I’m really happy with what we are doing. We’re playing now and we don’t need to make any compromises. We have always do what everything we wanted to do, we’re happy with that and so we will still keep doing it. Are you popular in Finnland and in which county are you the most popular? No, we are not popular in our home-county. I don’t know - maybe in Iceland or Faroe Inlands (laughing)! In Germany probably but that’s beacuse there are the most people. Its like just over 80 million Germans. Do you remember you worst and the best show ever and where did it happen? It’s impossible to say the best and the worst one...I mean, the worst one is gonna be somewhere in the beginning, but the first show was cool! Half of the band didn't know half of the songs and we were just playing. But, it was a bad show because back then we just didn’t care, but for the worst one, I don't know, its hard to say...ot of 800 or 700 shows…And what the really good one? I don’t know, but maybe the closest one was the really good, sounds was really good – it’s still in my fresh memory. Also, Hollywood was really good (spontaneously laughing). So, you like to play in USA... Yeah, actually I really do! I mean the show was very cool! People there just went really crazy, violent mosh-pit, in one place in USA we played for only 36 people. 36 people in the mosh-pit - that's cool! And what kind of metal music do you like to listen? Ah, all kinds of music...Bolt Thrower, Entombed, Dismember, Grave - old Swedish Death Metal. Answers by Skrymer |
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