MN: Well I think it’s been brilliant. We didn’t really know what to expect because we toured the UK in September which was really great, but we played the main cities that bands usually play. We wanted to add upon that tour, not going to the same places but the more remote places that other bands don’t really cover on UK tours. We didn’t have many expectations when we came here but every night has been really packed and the reception has been awesome, so we’re really happy with the decision we made.

LH: Yea you’ve done quite a lot of dates on this tour. I must say you’ve got some great support bands this time as well; I’m looking forward to watching Alestorm…I heard their debut album recently, and Norther are label mates of yours. Did you have any say in choosing these supports, and have you hung out with the bands much on the tour?

MN: Well of course choosing the supports is not only our call but in the end, it kind of is our call. So we got suggested this and that, and going with Norther kind of felt good in a way, ‘cause there’s the Paganfest going through Europe straight after this tour and that’s a really conceptual package tour and it didn’t really make much sense to compete and to have a similar package, so we would rather have Norther who may not be that well known in the UK but they certainly have their own crowd in Europe, and after the last UK date in Brighton we set off to mainland Europe. So I think that kind of works, even if musically the bands are slightly different. With Alestorm, I noticed they have a really big fuss around them in the UK and it’s cool. We haven’t actually managed to see their set yet but we’ll have to try to get to do that on one of the dates as well.

LH: Yea, they seem to have really exploded since the album came out. Erm, so Lisko, your accordion player, has disappeared and you’ve got Netta Skog replacing on this tour. I have seen some very positive messages building up about her on the internet already which is a good sign! Has she had a good response from the fans at the shows?

MN: Yea definitely, I think it works very well. She’s a really good accordion player. I mean she was already filling in when we toured with Iced Earth and Annihilator in Europe in November so she was already there and we kind of knew her, but both that tour and this one were so last minute and we had to get somebody to fill the line up and we didn’t really have time to start auditioning - we had to really go with the ones we know that are really, really good and she definitely is! It’s working well.

LH: Feel free to correct me here, but as far as I know this is Netta’s first…maybe second, at least, experience of touring with a metal band so I imagine its a little daunting for her, especially as she isn’t quite of legal drinking age in this country. How is she handling life on the road with a bunch of mead-swigging metal warriors?

MN: She’s doing fine! She’s a tough girl, and I think you have to be to survive…we’re sharing the bus with Norther so we’ve got 16 people on one bus, and she’s the only girl in that lot…so I think she’s doing really well and it’s probably an experience for her. We’ve actually just talked about that. She will probably take over doing all the summer festivals because our tour schedule will go straight into the summer, so we won’t really have time to audition…and there’s really no need after 70 shows with someone. This is quite a tight package, you know, everything is kind of welding together so the group of people we have now is definitely what we should aim for, keeping the tour party as it is now.

LH: I wanted to ask how you came to invite Netta on the tour. Is she a friend of yours, was she recommended…or…

MN: Well that’s actually funny, in Finland there’s this national competition of accordion playing…

LH: Yea, I saw something about her winning some competition when she was like 12 or something…

MN: Yes something like that. This is a competition which…it’s kind of funny ‘cause, well if you’re not into accordions then you don’t really pay attention but for them it’s like THE competition. It’s called the Golden Accordion and beforehand, Lisko had won the competition one year, so when we had to get a replacement that we needed to know was really good, as I said we didn’t really have time to start trying people out so what I did was just open the file of winners for that competition. I started Googling out their names and seeing like “Well that looks like a total dork!” Then there was Netta. I think she played Nightwish or something in that competition, and that already signalled…well, at least she’s not that kind of stiff…

LH: She’s into the sort of music you’re playing!

MN: Yea! This was just before the Iced Earth tour last fall and I phoned her up. I think it was the Tuesday I called her up and said “Hey, you don’t know me.” I introduced myself and I think I said something like “This is no joke or candid camera or anything like that. So we have a one month tour coming up and we need accordion and it starts on Friday...like in 5 days. Will you do it?” And she was like “Yes!”

LH: Had she heard of you?

MN: I think she’d heard of the band before, but that really was funny how someone can actually phone you with 5 days notice and get on a tour with…yea, I think we had 1 hour rehearsal before as a full band.

LH: From what I’ve gathered, Lisko disappeared mid-tour, refusing to board a plane with you guys and apart from a couple of text messages you’ve not really heard from him since. Was this something you saw coming, or was it a complete shock to you?

MN: Well to be honest he’s always been the kind of guy in the band who, you know, he’s done the tours, done the shows, but we’re not really that much in touch with him outside the band. He always had a lot of different projects he was working on and we were just one of those projects, where as all the rest of the band are really dedicated to this band, or this is the main priority at least. And as a personality he was a bit hard at times, so he could just take off and disappear, or whatever. So you know, it wasn’t a big surprise but if it had been somebody else saying “Yea, I won’t come home now with you, I’ll come home later” it might have been a bit different, but with him it was kind of expected in a way. But then, you know, we didn’t really get in touch with him after and the tour was starting out and everything had to be set and it just got so difficult to try to work with somebody who is uncooperative. But I’m really happy because right now we have a really tight package on stage and everything seems to be working fine.

LH: So you don’t think there’s much chance of him returning then?

MN: Well after Netta jumped in on this tour we haven’t really bothered to think about it too much because we have someone just as good.

LH: Clearly you’re happy with the way things are right now.

MN: Yea I feel it works. It’s always hard to work in a band where there’s one who you always kind of have to drag behind you so it’s much easier when everyone is on the same level.

LH: So onto a few questions about the album The Varangian Way. The concept is based on the Varangians, an 11th century tribe who migrated from Scandinavia down through the Caspian Sea to the ancient city of Constantinople. I’d like to ask firstly how you came to use this as the concept for your latest album, and what made you first realise this would make a good concept to use?

MN: I can’t really remember how I came to the idea. I think Viking thematics have been exploited in heavy metal music; some more successful and some a bit more…kitchy. And as such, we end up using all the same elements, but we always try to find a more interesting perspective or angle. If you do want to have a folk song or whatever rather than just kind of doing the generic half Celtic, half Saxon or Nordic violin melodies up and down and put guitars on it rather than…you know as we did on the new album. We wanted to get a more Eastern European flavour and do the, as we say, the folk metal thing but trying to kind of utilise it in a not-so-overly used way. Same with this concept, it just felt that this idea of making an album, first of all, on an area that hasn’t been that exploited and then the fact that it’s kind of geographically tied; the whole album throughout is tied to a place and that gives it a lot of extra depth to start working from when writing music to the songs, when you actually have a location or event or something you’re writing about. The more I started getting into doing the background work for the album, the more everything started falling into place and it just worked out.

LH: You began working on the album in 2004, spending a lot of initial time researching the concept before you really started the writing process. I imagine it was very important to you that you could have a real insight into the subject, and could maybe enter into a certain mindset to write the lyrics, rather than just sort of saying “I want to write a concept album”…researching it a little and a week later it’s done.

MN: Yea, I mean we’re not trying to teach anyone a lesson or anything and I don’t think that comes off with the albums or music either, but somehow, its very easy to just sit down and write songs with a “Sail out an conquer” kind of text, not that there is anything wrong with that because I think we also do that and it’s still tied somewhere. To be able to actually be credible in a way, I saw that it’s necessary to be able to have a good insight on the whole. To be able to put yourself in somebody else’s eyes, or in a different time or place. You’re just giving out a fraction of that, but if you don’t go through that then you make mistakes or it doesn’t really keep together. It’s like writers who write theatre pieces - they always sketch up a deeper background for the characters than they actually give away, just to be able to portray it in a credible way. You know, the writer has to know the family roots of the character even if its not told in the story directly.

LH: I believe you actually went to visit one of the places which was a key part in the concept as well, so would you say that visiting the place has kind of helped you to bring the concept to life?

MN: Yea, I think the whole time was really exciting…not writing music but when you’re kind of plotting, taking in ideas and putting things together, trying to find all the different ideas and seeing what can come out of that. Right now I’m already on the next one, but I haven’t written down much at all. It’s more [that I’m] kind of thinking of something, trying something out and just letting it float and I’ll get back to the same thing maybe half a year later and see how things sit together. But yea, I think of course it was so much easier to write the last song on the album after having a contact with the place…obviously Istanbul today is very different from the capital Constantinople, but it’s still geographically the same place.

LH: You created the music to fit around the concept and the lyrics, that seems to be really important. And I understand you come up with most of the compositions but I was wondering how much input the rest of the band have in the creative process?

MN: Well it’s not like a dictatorship in that way. For this album I was in charge of producing it as well as writing the songs, but I think a lot of ideas come when we work with something together as well, like the really early themes for albums; I usually work those together for myself, and then we take it to rehearsal room so we’re able to try out different things rather than reprogramming everything if we want to change something. It’s much faster and easier working with live musicians than computers.

LH: So the other guys have their own ideas they put into it.

MN: Yea, as a trio; usually the guitar player, the drummer and I. We kind of jam around with keyboards trying to get a picture of how it will sound with adding guitars and drums and all that, so a lot of ideas come from us together in that way.

LH: You’ve been around as a band since quite a while before you released Battle Metal. I was interested to know how you got together in the first place, was it simply a case of a bunch of musicians get together and jam and everything else followed?

MN: Well to start out with we were 16 or something, ten years ago, so it wasn’t like highly ambitious at that time. We actually used to go to the same school and there was a music class where we used to go and play during our time off between lessons. Then at some point, I think it all started one summer when we learnt to know each other better, and we were bored, and [the two of us] just decided to start a band and got someone else and finally got a rehearsal room for the band. Half of the time we spent drinking beer and making our home brew stuff…so it wasn’t highly ambitious at that time. I can still remember there was this demo band in the town we are from an they had actually released a cassette demo and that was like “WOW!”

LH: (Laughter) You were really impressed by that!

MN: Yea, like “Wow, we wanna do that!”, so step by step things grew and visions went up so I think we’ve come a long way.

LH: I know you released one demo before your debut. Did you play many gigs before you got signed, and had you built up much of a following in your own country by the time you signed with Century Media?

MN: No, not really. I mean, we released a demo and there was some kind of underground fuss about the band just based on a few shows and the demo we released, but then it took quite some time cause there was all kinds of stuff [that got in the way]…there were military services and stuff like that that happened and that kind of killed the band for a year or so, but at the same time we were negotiating the record deal for one and a half years and finally ended up signing to Century Media in 2003. When we were signed to Century Media we were basically just a demo band and Century Media had no clue what to do with us. So most of what the band, image wise is and what you think of when you hear the band name, that has definitely come from us, not like some marketing guy. But it’s just the difference when we were releasing the 1st album and the 2nd album, it was quite big because we took 3 years in between, growing the band on the debut which was just kind of put out. It didn’t kind of explode in the scene or anything, so it kind of grew steadily and by the release of the Varangian Way, Century Media also definitely had a better picture of what the band was about and what to do with us, how to work with the band and of course we also knew how they worked.

LH: You haven’t always had the violins and accordion since the very beginning. What was it that made you realise the potential of having these instruments in the band, or certainly to such an extent?

MN: Well, I write quite a lot of final stuff in the studio, I don’t really like to have everything set and just go and tape it down, but rather it’s an evolving process and if you get an idea you have to change everything and then go again. So I like to have it that way, so in some way the thought of this is the final product and you still can get excited about it in the studio, that really helps. So when we recorded Battle Metal it just kind of ended up having quite a few live violin parts and accordion. Maybe it wasn’t intended from the beginning recording session and Olli played violin on the 1st album as just a studio session guy and when it was finished we just realised it will sound really stupid to reproduce with keyboards, it would lack a lot of the real, authentic sound.

LH: Yea, it does sound a lot more authentic having the actual instruments rather than using samples.

MN: Yea, so we just asked him to join the band for the summer festivals in 2004 and since then we haven’t even thought about playing shows without violins and accordions, it kind of became an essential part of the band.

LH: You released a cover of Rasputin as a single. I was wondering what made you choose this song in particular to do as a cover?

MN: Well, that was…I think, you hear something, or think of something, and you kind of store it somewhere and might get back to the idea at some time, and this was something like that. It was a long time ago in 2000/01 and I was taking a ferry from Finland to Sweden, or the other way round. That’s a funny concept. Before the EU especially, the taxation was different so the booze was actually much cheaper [on the ferry] when not in Sweden or Finland. It was tax free, that’s not the case any more. So people would get on there, book a room and get utterly wasted over night. It’s like a floating discotheque so it can be quite annoying when you’re just trying to travel over. It was like a holiday camp, or party ship. I was sitting in a bar or club or something, and there was this 70’s disco cover band playing Abba, Boney M and stuff like that. They played it and it just hit me that this song would work really well, you know, kind of update it quite a lot but I think the most essential thing is to be able to redo something not copying the original…our version of the track is different and it sounds like Turisas not Boney M.

LH: Yea, you’ve put your own mark on the song. So you have some fairly eclectic musical tastes and influences. Is Boney M, or disco music, amongst them?

MN: Well I wouldn’t say influence, but you know…

LH: Personal tastes perhaps?

MN: I like Abba for instance. Boney M is a bit…(Mathias screws face up for a second at this suggestion)…it’s kind of corny! But there’s Abba, lately we’ve been on the bus listening to some Finnish crossover jazz, and 80’s has been quite hip on this tour so far.

LH: 80’s pop?

MN: Yea the kind of 80’as pop stuff.

LH: When I mention Turisas to some people their reaction can sometimes be a little negative, dismissing you as a novelty band, maybe because of the image, or because of the lyrical themes. Unlike some bands I think you’re playing music and I’m sure many will agree that it stands alone as good music, you’re not relying solely on your image to gain success. Does it annoy you that people think of you in this way and people think it’s just a fun band that will be gone after a couple of albums once the novelty wears off?

MN: Well I guess. On the other hand, of course the more people that get into us, the more kids that show up at our shows, the more there’ll be people who don’t really know. I think the fanbase we have is bit scattered, because it also includes the kind of people who come and have a good night out or don’t really care about heavy concepts and stuff like that, they’re just there because they saw the band in Kerrang! These people are coming to see us, and it’s still cool for us and we are fine with it. We have to balance it between the two things in a way. When we’re in the studio we are a serious band; we write serious songs and serious music but live you don’t always bother to take that angle. We could sit down in our jeans and just play songs but we do it a bit differently and sometimes have a really good time. Yesterday, we just had a really good time together on stage with our audience in a way and it just becomes good fun, but I still think there are the people who come and want to hear the songs in a serious way and they can do that, but we still offer a good night out without too much…somehow its strange how you can either be serious, and if you’re serious then everything that’s supposed to be serious is worth somehow more, which to me is kind of a strange equation. Because there’s so many bands who are totally serious, who are crap musicians and write shit songs and have no originality in their music, or anything whatsoever. Okay they can be serious about the art but, you know. We know what we can do and we know we are confident enough to go on stage and be able to laugh at ourselves or have a good time and still know that what we do is still worth something.

LH: I’ve noticed more and more bands coming about that are simply relying on the novelty of the fact that they are playing metal with folk influences or battle themes, and the music isn’t all that good – you get a few bands that stand out, and a lot of bands trying to imitate and get in on the success. I was wondering what are your opinions on the whole thing?

MN: Yea, I think I agree. It’s funny, when we started out there was the second wave of black metal; the kind of melodic black metal was all over the place in the mid 90s or so and we just kind of came…I think the Finnish band Amorphis actually did death metal combined with Finnish folk imagery already in the early 90s, and they were a strong influence for ourselves, and also for all these bands you see touring now. I think Moonsorrow are playing the Astoria tonight which is kind of funny. They are good friends so it’s kinda funny that they are actually in the UK at the same time we are.

But anyway, I think for all the bands starting out, we didn’t know each other before starting to meet. When you see the same face at a Belgian festival for the third time it kind of forces you to say “hi” and you learn to know each other, but when starting out all the bands started out separately and it was just funny that so many bands that today are, on some level, seen to belong to the same scene even if musically and image wise they’re quite different. We didn’t share rehearsal rooms, we didn’t even come from the same city as the other bands, so everything kinda happened without knowing the other bands.

I remember buying the first demo of Moonsorrow, it was recommended to me but it was just funny to know there’s another band who are actually somehow doing something similar as us. Now it seems that bands that people bring up are just copying what these bands have done before them, and to me it was always about …Okay, there’s so many vampire, corpsepaint bands around with keyboards and black metal that…it seems funny now because we’re obviously far away from that, but when starting out I think we kind of saw ourselves more as belonging to that scene because there was no folk metal or battle metal scene in the same way as today. So we just wanted to stick out from that and be different and come up with something different and original. I am sure there’s bands now who think the same way that I think.

People often ask what is behind Finland; the population is smaller than half of London, so how can we have so many bands? I think something has to do with the fact that there are a lot of bands that dare to try out things differently rather than just copying your idols, because that doesn’t really lead to anything.

LH: I think as a band you are quite difficult to categorise, even if now you get lumped in under the “battle metal” tag…I guess this can be a good thing and a bad thing really. It’s funny I think how some people can be swayed on their opinions about whether or not they like a band based on how a magazine or record label categorises them. Do you think there is too much emphasis on trying to categorise bands, or do you consider it to be a necessary evil in order to get your music out there to reach the right people?

MN: Well probably both. Ourselves as musicians or songwriters, we don’t kind of categorise our music. How we play or what we do…we do what we feel in a way, rather than what we should do or what we are expected to do. They say one thing, and on this album it sounds like this, and in two albums it can sound completely different. We don’t see ourselves tied to doing the same thing, and I think its definitely a strong point. I see our band as being a band that’s kind of in constant motion; the live show and the, kind of, image keeps evolving every time. The band is now quite different from the time when battle metal was released, so we don’t really care or bother thinking about that much at all, and I think all the bands say that.

Of course, it’s the media, when it comes out with an idea or something new then I think, if you like one thing it’s easier to find something else when you can be categorised…rather than just having 1million metal bands and trying to find what you like from there. But sometimes of course it can go totally wrong. It can be like, if people call us Viking metal, I don’t know if that matches. Some people say we play folk metal, but to be honest, we have a violin and an accordion on stage, but we use [them] in very different ways, and what’s actually folk is not like a leading theme in our music. So it can help people’s understanding of what the band is about but in our case I think all the boxes that we are sort of in is overlapping in so many different places its really hard to actually put the band in any kind of box.

LH: In a number of interviews I’ve read you’ve stressed how much you admire progression in music, and that some bands come out with something great but then stick to the exact same formula to the point that it gets boring, often losing what was so special about them in the first place. I think from Battle Metal to Varangian Way there are obviously enough similarities there but also a lot of differences and the song structures comes across a lot more mature than the debut. Would you say that moving your sound forward is something you consciously tried to do between the two albums?

MN: Yea, I mean it shouldn’t be too conscious, you shouldn’t try to keep changing stuff just for changing it, but like now with the live set, we had a discussion back stage. Yes, we could change and kind of try to make it different for all the people every night, but on the other hand if we have a set that we feel very good about, when everything seems to be in place, then just changing songs for the sake of it, for that two people who maybe came for a song a show earlier, it doesn’t makes sense if it kind of makes it not as balanced as the one we had before but with a different set.

So I think in the same way we don’t intentionally try to break what we’ve done in the past and do something else. I think it’s essential in our case that there’s enough time between albums to be able to think of things and see things differently and get inspired by different things. There’s so many bands that come out with an album every year, or every 1 ½ years because that’s the kind of optimal release cycle; when you just starting to fade out then there’s a new album and you’re back in the press, back in the media and people cant forget. That’s the way you sell records. It doesn’t really have so much to do with if the records are like brilliant or just good…if it’s like fairly alright, if you release an album every 1 ½ years you will get so much exposure through that, that you’ll probably sell more records in the end than if you do 2 excellent albums in the same time, but I just feels wrong. There’s so many bands that had something about them on the 1st album and then by the 3rd its like “I’ve heard this so many times already!”

LH: You have a full time accordionist and violinist already. Would you consider using any other instruments as part of your sound, maybe on future records?

MN: Well like with this album I had to kinda tell Olli, “well sorry but there’s not actually that many violin parts in there” and then we set up and do different things and kind of rearrange stuff for playing live. I would say that the accordion and violin definitely have more emphasis live than on the studio recording, and that kind of makes the live experience a bit different than just listening to the CD at home. Not having a keyboard player in the band we’re relying half on backing tracks, half on arranging things differently to suit the live surrounding. I think if I feel that this part needs a saxophone, and we end up having so much saxophone on the album then I think the same thing will happen well have to have that on stage as well, but right now I think were satisfied with what we have.

LH: Okay, that’s all the questions I’ve got for you. So I’d just like to say thanks for the interview!

MN: Thankyou! All I have to say is it’s been excellent in the UK so far and so thank you all for coming to see our shows!

Visit the band at www.turisas.com
Visit the band at www.centurymedia.com
Read a live review of Turisas at www.metalteamuk.net/review-turisas.htm

If you enjoyed this interview you might also like the following:
Interview with Moonsorrow
Interview with Kampfar

Interviewed by Luci Herbert

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