When you are chained to a wooden pole and Sonya Solitaire is going to remove your balls from your body you have not much to laugh about. Except when you are Riku. This cheerful Finnish guy has survived Sonya’s attack and he can be proud of the new Solitaire album called ‘Predatress’. ‘Predatress’ is a timeless speed metal album and it left a big impression with some of the Lords Of Metal members. So it was about time to check out on this guitar playing singer and his band.
Hello Riku. How is life? Did you get cured from all the damage done to your body by the ‘Predatress’? Hi, there! I'm doing fine, thanks for asking. My dick and my balls are still a bit sore, but otherwise there's no permanent damage... haha!
My ears are also damaged, because I played the new album often and loud. What can you tell us about the music from ‘Predatress’? To me it sounds like a sharp speed metal album in the vein of older bands like Exciter and Agent Steel. Did these bands influence you and what made you decide to go for this kind of metal? Yeah, ‘Predatress’ is a hell of a mixture between traditional heavy metal and old school speed / thrash metal from the eighties. These are the two main influences we've always had and this is the direction we've always been aiming for since the band was formed in 1995. We've been compared to Exciter and Agent Steel many times before and I really like those bands, but their influence to Solitaire is actually quite secondary. I prefer the traditional metal bands like Maiden, Priest and Motörhead but I also like faster and more thrash orientated stuff like Slayer, Kreator and the early stuff of Metallica. We never decided to go for this direction, it was always very natural for us to play our heavy metal this way.
Although there are many popular metal bands from Finland this type of music is not so common anymore. How are the responses to the new album? Are there still people hungry for this speed metal thing? The response has actually been very good. We've got a lot of positive feedback for ‘Predatress’ and the sales have started better than ever before with our previous albums. Anyway, it's still pretty much in the underground. We have a small but loyal fan base and we're really proud of it. These people definitely are hungry for our speed metal, but it's very unlikely we'll ever make it big or break into the charts or anything like that. We're much too extreme and marginal compared to the bigger Finnish metal bands which are actually really mainstream.
Does Solitaire play a lot live? Can we see the band in Europe somewhere this year and what can we expect when we see Solitaire live on stage? Will it be blood and metal? We play as many gigs as we can get and normally it's been about ten gigs a year, but last year we only played three because we spent most of 2008 recording the ‘Predatress’ album. We'd like to do much more gigs, clubs, festivals and tours, but we don't have a booking agent, so it's all up to ourselves. Also many of the Finnish underground rock clubs have gone bust lately, so there are not too many venues left where we could play, at least here in Finland. Right now we don't have any gigs scheduled, because we're looking for a new drummer and a new bass player. The previous guys didn't have enough time for Solitaire anymore, so we had to start looking for new guys or quit the band completely. Luckily we have already found the new guys, but there's still a lot to do until we get the new line-up working properly. But hopefully we will get our act together again soon so we could play some gigs again. I hope we'll get to play in Europe again some day and yes, it's gonna be a wild headbanging and running berserk kind of show with a lot of metal but hopefully not blood, although we have a habit of bumping into each other on stage and we can never guarantee there isn't gonna be any cuts or bruises... ha ha!
The lyrics from the new songs seem to be plain metal lyrics. But the song ‘1988: Revenge Lives On’ is a bit different, more personal perhaps. What can you tell us about this song and the lyrics in general? Yeah, ‘Revenge’ is definitely personal and probably my favourite piece of lyrics on the new album. It's based on a true story that happened but there's not much more to tell about it. I have already told everything in the lyrics. I have given the exact date and the exact events, so everybody can figure out the story on their own. In general we have a lot of war, action, “taking justice into your own hands” and good old fashioned heavy metal fantasy in our lyrics, plus on the new album there's also some sexually oriented stuff we never had before in songs like ‘Predatress’ and ‘Rat Studded Maniac’. We write aggressive lyrics with a lot of energy to fit the aggressive energy and feeling of the music itself.
’Predatress’ is the forth album from Solitaire. What is there to say about the other albums? Are they in the same spirit as ‘Predatress’? Are they still available? Musically they're pretty much in the same spirit as ‘Predatress’, but on the previous albums we had a different vocalist. We were a five-piece band back then and I only played the guitar. Our previous vocalist had a very different style compared to myself, it was actually a very punk styled of shouting, you know, a bit out of tune and a bit out of time all the time. It worked very well on some of the songs, but most of the time he had trouble with the melodies and timing. My voice is deeper and a bit darker, my style is more melodic and a bit more technical, so the vocals on ‘Predatress’ are much more closer to traditional heavy metal vocals than Solitaire vocals have ever been. ‘Predatress’ is definitely my favourite Solitaire album, but I'm also very proud of the previous three albums that we have released. They are all portraits of their time and an important part of the Solitaire history. I'm not sure if these early albums are available anymore, maybe there are some underground mail-orders or distros where you could still buy them but mostly they're pretty much sold out and we're not going to re-release them. We like to keep them as they are, you know, as collector's items.
The cover from the other albums where all drawings of a woman, while the new album has a picture. Is this your fantasy woman that is now a living mascot for the band? Yeah, it's Sonya Solitaire and she's come to life on the cover of ‘Predatress’. The fuckin' bitch is real and not just a cartoon type of character she has been before. We wanted to do something different this time for the album cover. Previously we've always had a drawing, but they always ended up with a feeling they could have been better. So we decided to have a cover photography instead of an illustration. We also decided to do it all by ourselves, the band and the record company and we had a great time doing the photo shoot. It was totally outrageous and uncompromising and that's what we wanted, something very similar to the eighties album covers with a definite shock factor and it's by far the best album cover we have ever had.
The new album is released via Ektro Records, also from Finland. What can you tell us about this label and are we talking about a worldwide release? Ektro Records is run by Jussi Lehtisalo. He has been doing this record company thing for many years and he has over fifty releases. Ektro Records is an independent label which has released mainly alternative rock and more experimental stuff, so it's actually not a metal label at all. But Jussi is a big fan of Solitaire, he has seen many of our gigs and he wanted to sign the band. For us it was a really good deal, since the "normal metal labels" didn't really care about Solitaire. Ektro Records has many underground distributors all over the world, in USA, Japan and Europe plus there's of course the Ektro web store, where you can buy the album via mail-order from any part of the globe. So yes, I would say it for sure is a worldwide release.
Okay Riku, that’s it for me so far. Would you like to finish this interview with some final words for our readers? Alright, thank you very much, it was a pleasure. All my best regards to the readers of Lords Of Metal and hopefully there's gonna be an over flood at the Ektro web store with Dutch orders for Solitaire’s ‘Predatress’ CD! Stay hard, wet, hungry and heavy, boys and girls, we'll keep it hot for you too... Cheers!
The lyrics from the new songs seem to be plain metal lyrics. But the song ‘1988: Revenge Lives On’ is a bit different, more personal perhaps. What can you tell us about this song and the lyrics in general?
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