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<< Interviews this month
file under death metal / grindcore
Elenium is one of those yet undiscovered gems hailing from Finland. A few young guys started this band in 1995 because they were truly impressed by the album ‘Tales From The Thousand Lakes’ of their fellow-townsmen Amorphis. Unfortunately the band struggled with lots of bad luck; that is why the first full-length album was released not earlier than 2003. This ‘For Giving – For Getting’ however drew my attention because of the high quality music. One may call it progressive death metal, but with lots of depth and compelling melodies. The successor ‘Caught In A Wheel’ is in the shops now, though this excellent piece of work once again demanded much perseverance from the musicians. Vocalist J, bass player Tuomo and keyboardist Johannes tell us in this interview what it took to get released such a first rate product in this jungle of shallow business. Give this tormented band all your support and buy ‘Caught In A Wheel’ so that they can make more of this engrossing music in future! They deserve it more than anyone else.
Text: Vera
First of all I want to congratulate you with the stunning new album ‘Caught In A Wheel’. Really impressive! Are you a bit satisfied yourself with the final result?
Johannes: Thank you Vera! I’m really glad that you enjoy ‘Caught In A Wheel’. It is a quite satisfying package to me too.
J: Thank you very much. It was a difficult road but we mastered it and gave you ‘Caught In A Wheel’.
The first full length album ‘For Giving - For Getting’ was a very fine album as well, but I think the achieved success could have been better (with Rage Of Achilles stopping its activities and so) isn’t it? Or am I wrong?
Johannes: Success could have been better. It’s a quite hard album to listeners at least if you don’t have a clue what to expect. First some thrash, then more progressive parts, then HIM-alike clean vocals etc. People can be a bit confused. Rage of Achilles liked ‘For Giving – For Getting’ much and they gave a lot of attention towards us. Limited resources and investments for many bands made some boundaries. Promotion to a single band was quite small. There are some thoughts to re-release “For Giving – For Getting” someday with bonus material perhaps.
Tuomo: It could have been worse as well. We did receive a lot of great reviews and feedback and we got even featured in Kerrang Magazine’s “Hot bands you have to hear” section.
Are there any better prospects for publicity and distribution for the new album?
Johannes: Not to this date. In this moment things run smaller in world wide.
Tuomo: If you are into distribution business and you happen to read this, feel free to contact us or our label. ‘Caught In A Wheel’ deserves a wider distribution and Kampas Records are working on it as we speak.
Johannes: However, you can still order ‘Caught In A Wheel’ world wide. Kampas Records, the End Records, MoreMusic and Recordshop X or straight from us.
Coincidentally I read a long time ago your studio diary from the Sonic Pump recordings. It is recorded in 2005. How come it took so long before it was released?
Johannes: In 2005 Elenium lived without a recording contract, so nothing was sure about the release date. In this case we had to wait two years! It’s a hell of a long time, but luck has never been on our side.
Tuomo: There were at least two international companies interested in the release of the album. They both backtracked in the last minutes and the other one first delayed the release for six months and then announced they cannot release it. We had reached an agreement with the deal and everything was looking good. There is always a risk involved when releasing something a bit different from the mass and current trends. Besides that we are much stronger as musicians than we are as promoters. We just felt we have something really special in our hands, but it is a tough business and there is an ocean of great bands out there. You always need to have a bit luck to succeed no matter how good you are.
To be honest, I never heard of Kampas Records. Is it a worldwide distribution?
Johannes: Kampas is a new and small Finnish label.
Tuomo: They are just working on the worldwide distribution issue. I hope there will be a breakthrough soon because there are a lot of people around the world waiting for the album and bombing us with questions about how to get the album.
On ‘Caught In A Wheel’ you have grown towards an identity of your own I think. How did you – for example – come to the decision to use no more clean vocals?
Johannes: There was no need for clean vocals. We are not necessary dropping them all off in future. They are useable if the songs need them.
J: I felt that this album works better without the clean vocals. The material given to me was so intense and I immediately heard that this album has to be sang aggressively. So growling was the natural choice.
I think progressive influences have increased as well as the technical abilities of the musicians. Don’t you think so?
Johannes: Both albums are quite progressive and maybe this new one is even more. I believe that progressive music fans can get some good vibes from this album. What comes to technical abilities, songs need them to be in certain level, but it is more rhythm, groovy and touch we’re talking about. The most technical element is Kasperi’s guitar solos.
Tuomo: There are also much more really simple things on this album. Surely some progressive elements as well. The main focus is on the songs, not in the technical abilities. We also played a lot more gigs after ‘For Giving – For Getting ‘ and I am sure that had an impact on us. It definitely added more groove to our sound.
Let’s now go back in time for a while. The band was founded in 1995 in Vantaa. Can you tell a bit more about your influences and give a kind of history of the band. What were some important events in the band’s history?
Tuomo: It all began in a suburb called Martinlaakso; it is actually the same place where Amorphis started their career. Amorphis were naturally the biggest reason for the birth of Elenium in the first place. They had just released ‘Tales From The Thousand Lakes’ and it was something huge for us. Johannes had played the piano since he was three years old and he, J and our first lead guitarist Okko were good friends. It was a natural choice to start playing melodic death metal with keyboards. I pretty soon ended up into the band through some mutual friends and after almost getting into a fight with J. We were bunch of troubled teenagers at that time and it was a pretty wild suburb then. Elenium kind of saved us and that is one of the main reasons that keep us going despite all the bad things happening.
Can you tell a bit more about the recording process itself? Was it the first time you recorded at Sonic Pump and was it a positive experience? Are there any specific differences in the recording process, when comparing with ‘For Giving - For Getting’?
Johannes: It was our third time in Sonic Pump Studios. ‘Them Used Gods’ demo (2002) and ‘For Giving – For Getting’ debut album (2003) were also the products of Sonic Pump. The session was a great experience as it is always in SPS. Sonic Pump had just moved to a new place and we were running it in. The place was still a bit under construction and there were some workers building during the sessions, but their existence didn’t bother. Recording/mixing time doubled from two weeks to four weeks which was nice.
Tuomo: The biggest improvement was surely the longer duration of the session. We did not have the same infernal hurry all the time as with ‘For Giving – For Getting’.
In the meantime singer J also became the new front man of Omnium Gatherum. Isn’t it too busy to combine those two jobs (knowing that a vocalist usually happens to be the main lyricist as well)?
J: well I try to manage to get my timetables to fit all my musical interests nicely side by side. Of course it sometimes can be hard. But both of these bands are really good and deserve my time equally. I also have other projects in my back pocket. You just have to stop sleeping; then you’ll have the time to do everything.
It was striking news to find out that both guitarists Kasperi and Tommi have left the band. Why did they leave and what is the latest news on finding new six string axe-men?
Johannes: Motivation went down by both of the players.
Tuomo: Tommi had been in the band for eight years already and he just kind of grew out of it and decided to concentrate on other things in his life. Kasperi is a professional musician and I think he got enough of the bad news that was coming in regularly. He wants to make his living as a musician and at the moment that is not possible with Elenium.
But I see that bassist Tuomo and keyboardist Johannes are the main songwriters, so it will not have a huge influence on style and material of next albums, I guess?
Johannes: You are right. Tommi brought some great riffs, which was nice to mix to the soup. On the other hand, Tuomo and I have got zillion ideas, so Tommi’s takeoff just makes things somewhat easier.
Tuomo: My thoughts exactly. The biggest problem in having to bring in several new members is the personal chemistry between all the band members. I am still quite confident that some fresh blood will give a nice boost for our future material. The new members won’t surely lack any motivation.
It will probably do have an influence on playing gigs as at the moment. So tell me something about the gigs you did in the past. Which events were highlights and isn’t it difficult to reproduce the complex music in a live situation?
J: Every gig is a dark and hypnotizing event in the Elenium-continuum. We’ll manage our instruments as well as we manage ourselves, by that I mean we whip the music out of ourselves and from the instruments as well. For my opinion the best gig has been in Ankkarock, a big Finnish festival. That was back in 2004.
Johannes: There are a lot of great memories, but I totally enjoyed our two last club gigs in September 2006.
Who did the artwork and can you tell anything more about it?
Tuomo: I have been responsible for our artwork since our 2002 demo ‘Them Used Gods’. That is probably one of the reasons why we have had some problems to attract labels (laughs). Our music is all about different emotions and dynamics. Calm and aggression; hope and the loss of it. It has quite a lot of soundtrack-ish elements in it. I just tried to create something that support the vibes that are going on in the music, so that you can read the lyrics and look at the sleeves and get even deeper into the music. There are way too many skulls and flames and other “rough” shit in metal albums. I have to admit they can be pretty cool sometimes as well, but our music and lyrics are not all about skulls and fire. There are much more brutal things in the world if you bother to look around.
What about the position of drummer? On the record plays Jussi Raatikainen, but is there a permanent drummer at the moment?
Tuomo: Yes there is, but we prefer to announce it a bit later. Hopefully at the same time we announce a whole new line up. Greets to Jussi who did a great job, thanks mate!
It looks like Elenium has almost become a studio project… or do I see this completely wrong?
Johannes: It may look like that for now. Elenium has been quite dead for the past year. Things change!
Tuomo: We already have some live dates confirmed here in Finland and we are going to do a mini-tour with Kalmah before the end of this year to mention something.
J: The rebirth is coming once again.
Since recordings of the album took place two years ago, are you already working on new songs? Do you have plans for new recordings pretty soon?
Johannes: All the time there is something going on behind the scenes. Both, Tuomo and I compose stuff at home. Lots of riffs, ideas and songs as I said. No plans for recordings yet. When Elenium is fully armed with players we know more.
We all know about J, but is anyone else of you involved in other projects or bands?
Johannes: I have done keyboard arrangements to Merging Flare and Heavy Metal Perse and I have my home projects.
Tuomo: I just joined a Finnish pop/rock band called Piina which is a great opportunity to get some diversity to my playing. We also have a quite therapeutic project called Tortuga which includes some Amoral and Codeon dudes. But Elenium will always be the number one band for me.
What can we expect of Elenium in the near future?
Johannes: Hopefully we can announce a new line-up soon.
Tuomo: Expect the unexpected!
The final words are for you guys…
J: Get yourselves ‘Caught In A Wheel’! You will not regret it!
http://www.eleniumband.com
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