By Andrew Bansal
Despite the recent surge in popularity of the sub-genre, Finnish folk metal band Finntroll are successfully able to distinguish themselves from the pack and are among a rare breed of bands that find the right balance between the ‘folk’ and the ‘metal’. Their latest album ‘Blodsvept’ which was released in early 2013 via Century Media Records is sheer vindication of this statement, and their live shows are an even more accurate portrayal of it. Currently on a European tour, the band did their first North American headline run in support of this album in late 2013 with opening acts Blackguard and Metsatoll, and visited the Grove Of Anaheim for the only Southern California show of the tour. Vocalist Mathias “Vreth” Lillmåns and guitarist Mikael “Routa” Karlbom spoke to Metal Assault about the tour, songwriting, folk metal and other topics. Enjoy the conversation below.
First of all, how are you doing today and how’s everything been going on this tour? You’ve been on this for a couple of weeks, right?
Vreth: Three weeks, day 21 today, I think? Yeah, it’s been great! Really good shows, good venues, good people on the tour, nice bands and good concerts. Everything is going pretty smoothly.
Routa: And now it’s going to be even better now that we’ve come to the warmer places. We’ve been mostly in Canada so far, so we were stuck in the blizzard and whatnot.
Today is actually cold for LA standards, as you can tell by how heavily dressed I am. But I guess it’s much warmer for you than the other places you’ve played.
Routa: Oh, definitely. Today when we stepped out of the tour bus, it was like ‘Hallelujah!’
Vreth: We arrived in San Francisco yesterday, I declared summer and had my shorts on. We were like, ‘Yes!’ (laughs)
I think you played Slim’s last night in San Francisco. I’ve been there a couple of times and I love that place. What was that like? It holds a good number of people but it’s still pretty intimate.
Routa: Yeah, I don’t know how many people there were yesterday but it was pretty packed. The venue is super-good. The only thing they are missing is the shower, but then again, who needs it? But we enjoyed playing there. We liked the local stuff and there’s good bars next to Slim’s as well to go after the show.
You guys have been touring a lot in the States but compared to the past tours, have you noticed that folk metal has become a bigger thing here? There’s more people every time you play here.
Vreth: Yeah definitely. Folk metal I think is going down in Europe a little bit and it’s going up in the US. Probably in a couple of years we’re going to play more in the States than in Europe!
Why do you think it’s going down in Europe? Are they just tired of it?
Routa: Well, personally I think there were a couple of years with way too many of these folk metal bands. They just kept popping up like mushrooms and then of course, a couple of big organizers in Europe made so many of the folk metal tours that basically every weekend you could see some folk bands somewhere. I think that’s the reason, mostly.
It’s almost like that now here. A couple of weeks ago, Alestorm played and Arkona played the night before that. So the same thing is happening here now.
Routa: Yeah, I was just about to say! You can clearly see that folk metal is going up here and you see so many folk metal tours at the moment.
So, your latest album ‘Blodsvept’ came out quite a few months ago and this is your first tour for that album in the US. In a way it’s a good thing because people are used to the songs and it’s not like brand new anymore.
Vreth: That’s how I like it. We’ve done these tours where the first gig was on the release day, nobody knows the songs and everybody wants only the old songs. So I really like that our new album has been around for a little while and people have heard it at least a few times already.
In terms of writing new music, because you guys tour so much I can imagine that the biggest motivation for you must be to keep it interesting for yourselves, rather than album sales or any of that stuff. You simply don’t want to get bored of playing the same old songs.
Vreth: Yeah, of course. That’s why we do it. It’s for ourselves. Finntroll is all about having fun anyways. It we were having a really, really bad time, we wouldn’t do it. And of course we’re happy when people like the music. It’s the best feedback you can ever get if people like what you do.
Routa: We’re actually really strict to ourselves about when we write to start new material. We just always have to come up with some new approach to our new music. We don’t want to make album after album of the same sounding stuff.
Vreth: Yeah, it’s all about the fresh ideas and it was really hard with this album. We were really going back and forth with what we wanted to do on this album. We were rewriting, rearranging for I don’t know how long, until we found the right thread that we wanted to have.
I was about to say, you usually take at least 2-3 years between albums so you do take your time and make sure that it’s what you want to do. So you’re not rushed by people in your label or anybody else?
Routa: Not really. We have very good connections to Century Media Europe. The label manager is more like a friend to us than a boss. So he might ask, “Hey, how about a new album?” But he’s never officially rushing us, and the label pretty much lets us do whatever we want, which is great.
So, no deadlines?
Routa: Well actually, we kind of do have some deadlines (laughs).
Vreth: Yeah, but that’s only when we’re at that point where we’ve written the whole album and we start booking studios. That’s when they put the deadlines on us. But it’s not like, “Oh, you guys released an album one-and-a-half years ago and it’s time to start writing.” None of that. It’s usually good and the communication between the band and the label is brilliant.
You were saying that musically the band doesn’t like to repeat itself but you’ve been around for a while and by this time people have an expectation. You’ve come to a point where you’ve reached a formula for success. You don’t keep that in mind when you’re writing?
Routa: No, not really. Of course, we want the music to sound like Finntroll, whatever our sound is (laughs).
Which is hard to describe at this point, isn’t it?
Vreth: (Laughs)
Routa: Yeah exactly, because there’s a certain amount of craziness and mental illness in our music.
Vreth: And a little bit of the middle finger, of course.
Who’s the middle finger directed towards?
Vreth: Towards people who take themselves way too seriously. That’s a big thing in the metal scene, specially amongst the black and death metal bands. So sometimes we just feel like directing a bit of sarcasm and irony towards them.
Routa: Yeah, no matter how ‘metal’ you are, music should be about having fun and good times!
On that note, I have just one more question for you guys. With folk metal, it’s obviously fun and everything but do you think bands overdo it to an extent where it’s not metal anymore? I wouldn’t take names but I think there are a few bands like that.
Vreth: Yeah, the thing is there’s too many bands that want to sound like another band. They don’t go in there to play folk metal. They want to just sound like Eluveitie for example. They don’t have anything of their own. That’s the biggest problem.
Routa: Usually it goes wrong when people form a band and are like, “We’re going to have this band that sounds like this other band.” It shouldn’t be like that. Do your own stuff! (laughs)
Visit Finntroll on the web:
Finntroll-Music.com
facebook.com/OfficialFinntroll
twitter.com/FinntrollMusic