Juha: Well of course with the first album you don’t know exactly what is going to happen. With new songs and getting people together it is more exciting, it is always exciting doing albums but it was different with that one. The first album was also really easy to do with the songs but the second was really, really hard and it took about 6 months and the recording process was really hard and everything. But that’s our best album for me!

PW: I have to admit of the two I find ‘The Morning’ a much easier album to get to grips with, it is the one with more instantly recognisable songs especially when it comes to your live shows. Would you agree with this and do you think that ‘Ghosts’ saw a perhaps less melodic slant to the music?

Matti: It is more melodic and more straightforward.

Juha: I think ‘Ghosts’ is the hardest album to get into.

Matti: Along with ‘Plague Of Butterflies.’

Juha: For me, ‘Ghosts Of Loss’ and ‘Plague Of Butterflies’ are our best albums.

Matti: The whole album for me is very tight and full of feeling. Maybe the thing that makes the first album easier is that four of the songs were on the demo we did [‘Out Of This Gloomy Light’ 2003 PW]. Of course it was a bit hard as we had not played together that long.

Juha: The important thing is that it is not even how fast or melodic the songs are it is about the feeling, the atmosphere on the whole album and I think that ‘Ghosts Of Loss’ is from the beginning to the end is a dark ride. If you compare that to the other album it is colder.

PW: It really has been a very busy year for you. I caught the band at Party San earlier this year and believe this may have been the first time you ever performed new song ‘The Woods Breathe Evil’ to an audience. Was this the case and were you nervous at all, the reaction should have put your minds at rest for the rest of the show.

Juha: I was nervous as my guitar was in the wrong tune hahaha that is what I remember really about that gig.

Matti: The band before had a different tuning and it was a half step or so higher.

Juha: You always remember the mistakes and the whole tuning was off but everything was cool, it’s rock and roll!

PW: Funnily enough I would have missed the set, I think you came on a band early but I was summoned from the tent by the Twin Peaks intro. Was Laura Palmer a muse in any way on the new album or have you decided to lay her ghost to rest.

Juha: No, no, no she is always there and will always be an inspiration as will Twin Peaks. There are actually a couple of quotes in the first song ‘These Woods Breathe Evil,’ The owls are not what they seem’ and then there’s a ‘black lodge.’ It’s quite Twin Peakish that first song. I like those kind of songs even if they are not that serious, you cannot do it all the time as it would be boring.

PW: Obviously Twin Peaks and David Lynch are admired by the group and I was interested if there were any other directors or films that you hold in similar esteem?

Matti: That’s a difficult question.

PW: Funnily enough it seems I am asking the same question to Dayal who is quizzing singer Mikka for Metal Hammer at another table as the words ‘Lars Von Trier’ and ‘Antichrist’ wash over.

Juha: Maybe some Finnish director who has that ‘Ghosts Of Loss’ colour, where everything is grey and there is white snow, so maybe Aki Kaurismäki.

PW: You have been on the road a lot during the past year, how do you occupy yourselves and stop the boredom of life on the road setting in and what have been the most memorable places you have played?

Matti: The tour we did in the US was so long, so many places we played.

Juha: For me the Apocalyptica tour one year ago in the UK with such large venues. It is always good to come here and play places like Bloodstock and do a big tour with a band like Apocalyptica. Of course now we are playing much smaller places but I really liked that tour. I really enjoyed playing Spain and Portugal and would really like to go back there.

Matti: They had good audiences and seemed to appreciate slower music.

PW: You are currently on tour with Insomnium and Omnium Gatherum, I can imagine a lot of heavy drinking going on with three Finnish bands sharing tour space?

Juha: You are right about that but I don’t drink, so I have been listening to it all upstairs on the tour bus for one week now. I knew it was going to be fairly rough, three Finnish bands but I was mentally prepared.

PW: What is it that you think makes Finland such a damn metal country? You have tons of talented bands and release records that go to the top of your charts something unheard of for metal bands in places like the UK.

Matti: Yeah that is a cool thing.

Juha: It is hard to answer but if you are somewhere like in the States and you like metal you are looked on like a child but in Finland it is totally natural. You like metal and play it and even the parents like, say, Black Sabbath and bands like Led Zeppelin.

Matti: When you start a band, you start a metal band and when you grow up you still play metal.

Juha: One thing I always say when people ask about our kind of bands coming from Finland is that we are melancholic and it goes back to the songs we were hearing when we were kids, which were really sad and had sad melodies even with our lullabies.

Matti: And our nature or course very dark, and the weather. Nowadays there is not that much snow anymore and it is always raining.

Juha: Last year was a bit better, the snow always comes but it is later and it has changed since we were kids.

PW: Another thing that strikes about the band is how consistent you have been member wise. You have only recently had your first line up change with Kai replacing Pasi on drums. What is it that keeps you all together and how was it with a new guy fitting in?

Matti: Actually we did one tour with him when Pasi was still our drummer and he couldn’t make it to our first US tour so we asked Kai being our friend and knowing his skills.

PW: So what generally kept you all together?

Juha: I don’t know, ha there’s basically no other option. No it’s like there are tours coming and then we have to do an album and there is a timetable.

Matti: And we started playing young and it all happened very quickly.

PW: Moving on to the new album were you surprised to discover that a teen romantic vampire movie which is undeniably a huge success came out around the same time with the title ‘New Moon’ and do you think it might have had an impact with potential new audience members stumbling across you?

Juha: [Laughing] I hope so. I suddenly heard about this teenage vampire movie coming out and was like well ok. Nobody can seriously think that we are the soundtrack for that movie. The title actually came from the likes of Type O Negative ‘Wolf Moon’ and even Duran Duran ‘New Moon On Monday.’ I am a huge fan of both bands and ‘New Moon’ sounded good as a title. Then when I heard about this I just had a big laugh and thought we are not going to change for a movie that is there for a little while and then goes away. Albums are forever but these kinds of movies come and go. Yes [as far as search engines are concerned] that’s going to happen, and people thinking this is the soundtrack is probably the worst problem. At least they are going to get good music.

PW: How did the recording of the album go and how long did it take, there is so much depth and ideas packed into the album I cannot imagine it was something done fast?

Matti: Actually we rehearsed that album in only five days together but as for the time taken writing the songs….

Juha: Making the music took maybe 3-4 months in total, the lyrics took maybe a month, I was writing them on the US tour actually, when you are lying there in between seats on the bus you get into the feeling of it for sure.

Matti: The tour of the US was over about 52 days so there was plenty of time.

Juha: The writing was actually pretty easy, the same thing happened with Hope even though we were touring and playing the whole time.

Matti: Also, we play together so often that 5 days in rehearsal was enough.

Juha: Well after having heard the demos for a couple of months, that is.

Matti: And during those five days we had one headlining gig to play.

Juha: But it is better like that and I think it sounds pretty cool.

PW: I absolutely love the album artwork and the whole design of the complete package with every song laid out like a story. Who was behind this and did you all work as a band to develop some sort of concept behind this?

Juha: Well our keyboard player [Aleksi] was keeping things together with the guy who did the actual artwork. I actually had the name and the cover artwork in my head on the US tour at the beginning of the year in January. I was thinking about the snakes and it doesn’t look like what I was thinking about but anyway it is great how it is.

PW: The songs and lyrics strike me as being a really dark sort of fairy tale. The opening track really accentuates this. There is a haunted feeling of ghostly dread and doom behind things which I take it is purely intentional, is there however any deeper meaning behind things conceptually?

Juha: Well it has always been like the same sort of theme within lyrics such as ghost stories and the whole mystic feeling and yes like that first song has the whole kind of Twin Peaks going on. It has a sort of continuity from our other songs even though they are a little more serious but that song is a sort of murder song. I don’t like to explain my lyrics too much as I like it for people to make up their own minds.

PW: You also chose to return to the horror with ‘Lights On The Lake’ there is a fair bit of HP Lovecraft behind this one perhaps?

Juha: Ha, I have heard that before too. I have read some of the stories but not that much. I like these kind of songs and they are kind of eerie and that is why there are three of them ‘Swallow’ and a continuation. They are really kind of personal. Yes I wrote all the music and six of the songs lyrics for the album.

PW: How satisfied are you with the album and what has the reaction been like so far? You have already told me that it is not one of your favourites, something a band never says of their current release.

Matti: It is really hard to say right now when we have just done our newest album, is it the best album? With time…

Juha: It always feels like ‘ah, it is the best we have done’ but we have to be realistic and I think we have such good albums; it’s the same thing though when you have an album that you really connect to. Of course I have to say this; they are all my babies so if you had to smack your children then ‘Hope’ would be the first one.

PW: The more I listen to it the more I find it getting beneath the skin and it could be an album I look back on as an atmospheric classic along with the likes of ‘Blackwater Park.’ Your music is not something that people can simply find accessible straight away but something that grows the more you listen would you agree?

Matti: Yes there are far easier songs and more progressive songs and I can imagine it is hard to get into the album.

PW: Before we finish I wanted to mention some other projects members are involved in. Barren Earth has singer Mika in and have a great EP and album to follow and Juha has new collaboration Trees Of Eternity and Plutonium Orange. How do you fit it all in and will Swallow The Sun always be the main priority?

Juha: Yes of course Swallow The Sun will always be number one. That is the thing I don’t know really. Plutonium Orange I will give you a promo (Review to follow in Jan update – LH), it is like metal, rock, party music, some of those songs are eight years old written even before Swallow The Sun. So we just cut the deal and put the songs together quickly. Trees Of Eternity is quite Swallow The Sunish with a female singer, the cool thing is that she is doing the songs, well most of them.

Matti: She has been on our album, singing on ‘Lights On The Lake.’

Juha: We have just got the promo done and are sending it around to the labels at the moment. I hope the album comes out maybe next year.

PW: What next for the band I believe USA is on the cards with Fintroll and Moonsorrow, more Finnish chaos I assume?

Juha: We are hoping that we are going to tour Europe with a bigger band too this coming spring before we go to America, we don’t know yet.

So there you have it, the show following the interview was absolutely packed with all three bands getting a great reaction. See Luci’s report on the site of the Leeds leg of the tour and photos of both shows. It does not look like next year is going to be any less busy for the band but one does hope that they might get to visit somewhere like Spain again, but it might encourage them to start singing something jolly, ‘The Sun Has Got Its Hat On’ perhaps, now that would be a turn up for the books.

For more on the band check out http://www.swallowthesun.net/newmoon
http://www.myspace.com/swallowthesundoom

Interviewed by Pete Woods

MTUK HOME