[schema type=”person” name=”Rainer Nygård” jobtitle=”Singer-guitarist” worksfor=”Diablo” ]
Interview by: Reija Myllynen
Diablo is of the most notorious bands in the Finnish metal scene. Their melodic death metal has developed throughout their all albums and their unique sound and style doesn’t follow the traditional paths of the genre, making them highly distinguished from many others, earning them a solid fanbase and a status in the Finnish scene.
Interviewer: R
Singer-guitarist Rainer Nygård: N
R: You have a gig coming up later, how are you feeling about it?
N: Well, we’ve our show at 1445, so let’s hope the gang has got out of their tents by then. When we arrived, we did a small lap of honor with our Talbot and people raised their fists so I reckon some will find their way to the stage as well.
R: You have a wonderfully distinguished car, when that came around?
N: I bought this after Christmas in the winter 2014 with last year’s Nummirock in mind. We were releasing our Silver Horizon album and thought we’d drive this summer 2016 with it and then sell it in a charity auction.
R: Okay, what’s going on and what’s coming up?
N: The summer goes by editing promovideos and I’ve bought a new laptop and upgraded sound tools so I’ll get to play for fun in the autumn when we’ll have a small break, perhaps creating something new.
You can’t call this work but you can’t start jamming on stage like, hey I’ve got this riff so let’s play this for half an hour because we’re under quite tight specs and the audience and the band wants to hear their favorites, so that’s how we roll.
R: Yeah, everyone has their favorites, what are yours?
N: They’re in these newer songs when we’ve played them less. They have a little tension to myself too, like how the next part was played, you’ll need to be on your toes a little.
“Savage” is a really good live song. It’s fun to play despite being technically really hard. “The Call”, despite being really progressive. And then there’s older songs as well, of course, even if we’ve been playing them for 15 years already. You’ll get a new angle on them by singing them in a completely different way than they were recorded.
R: Then about the songwriting process, you’ve surely been asked this before but I’m still asking that, who does what and how it gets started?
N: Yes, like some may know, for us it goes like Utriainen (Marko, guitarist) does more those riffs and the lyrics and visual side is my territory.
However, there are exceptionally much riffs that I’ve done on the last album. Well, I knew it myself that the ideas are good but Marko does the bigger job with the music and refines the unfinished ideas into the form that we hear on the album, ie. squeezing diamonds out of shit.
R: Then about those inspirations and influences to creating music?
N: For me, like surely for many others, they go by life situations, according to what you experience and see in it.
Thinking of the future, the development of the Earth and what we’re heading to next, now that the signs aren’t exactly good. Maybe Andrei descends from space, down to the earth and looks that ‘oh my gosh,’ we’ll begin building it from there.
I have a mystic itch that nature will be very strongly related to the next release and especially on the visual side. It’s quite hard to make riffs about nature.
R: Those influences are quite difficult to name. I’ve been told at least that they usually just comes into your head, like just coming from somewhere.
N: Yeah, in a way they’ll just come, sure, but they’re also influenced in your sub-consciousness by just the movies and books you’ve read. And then by just how you’ll adapt and mature as a human along the years, and look at this Earth in quite a many views.
We were in Shanghai, China, for 6 months with our family and you’ll look a little differently at all this hassle from there. When people whines here about this and that but there they live happily and proudly in really inadequate habitats.
R: When you said that you read, I have to ask what you’ve been reading lately?
N: Now I am going through a Kiss biography, to see how Rock and Roll business works (laughter). But there has also been Hillary Clinton and all kinds of biographies on my nightstand, war history and other historic stuff.
R: Then the final one, free word for you.
N: I want to wish everyone a really great summer, the hell is loose today.
Photos by: Juho Karila
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