Insomnium – 08-12-2009

Interview with: Insomnium
By: Sabine van Gameren

The Finnish band Insomnium is on tour with compatriots Swallow the Sun and Omnium Gatherum. When I am driving up to the venue to speak with them about several subjects there is this big bus standing where about 18 Finns live in for a couple of weeks.

On the day I speak to them it is halfway their tour. The day before they played in London so they had quite a trip before getting here. The guys all look tired when I entered the venue. Nevertheless the band did not hold back on any strong quotes. It was quite clear that the bands considered the UK-part of the tour as too long. Eight gigs in total about which guitarist Ville said: “Could have been squeezed into four”. Today the day, they are back on the continent and it seems like all of them caught a flu. The frustration comes out of the tired men as soon as the topic comes up: “Everything is cold there, they don’t have decent plumbing and the clubs are shitholes”. Vocalist Niilo seems to be captured with the worst flu and later on in the show he mentioned that as well. So the band is happy to be back on the continent, “Everything is better here, the food is better and you can actually get decent bread here” as they explain. They are not all negative about it, the band tells they are pleased with the crowds and the fact that even people showed up on a Monday night.

The tour has actually started in The Netherlands also. Those who have read the review of the Rotterdam gig, had seen that Aleksi of Swallow the Sun joins the band on stage to play keyboards, just as he contributed on the last two albums. When asking the band how they see this situation, they make clear that Aleksi is not a part of the band, even though you can see him live and hear his parts on the album. “Whenever it is possible, he is our live keyboard player and I think we want to keep it that way” is what they said and they took a lot of effort in explaining that they can work it out with just the four of them as well as if I would not believe them on their word.

After this we moved on to the albums. They tell me that the sales are doubled with each album and after their third album “Above The Weeping World” things started to get rolling even more. Now their fourth album “Across The Dark” is released the band is again on an European tour and facing America that calls for them as well. The band has a history of having troubles with recording the album. What has been said in the past is not a subject the seemed to be something they want to be remembered to. About the recordings of “Since The Day It All Came Down” they look back with a smile when speaking the words: “It was really a desperate session”. Their latest album seemed to be going smoothly. “Actually, we were ahead of schedule all the time” says Ville. That is not a surprising fact knowing that the band have spend days of 18 hours in studio. The band had done a lot of pre-work also, “We had the songs quite ready and we had recorded demo’s of songs so we knew what we were doing”. They even bothered to speak about the next album with a lot of positivity: “The fifth album will be easy as well. We can’t say that for sure, we don’t have songs for it yet, but we’ll see”.

When we were talking about the concept of the album, it seems to be that the main difference between the last album and the ones before is that it is more riff orientated. The band has been experimenting with different tempo’s and they are planning to keep that going in the future. Nevertheless they do want to bring to heart that they won’t change from who they are. Ville says: “The main thing will always be the same. Melodic death metal. It will always be riff and guitar oriented, that is what we are.”
The songs were all pretty done when the band went to the studio. The last one on the album, “Weighed Down With Sorrow” was made more naturally. “Ville Friman had three riffs and when he came to our rehearsal place we started doing it and kind of puzzled till we had what we wanted to do with these riffs. We played them for a year and then decided that this is the song”. The band also told that this song is more or less their tribute to the Finnish band Sentenced, who called its quits a couple years back. “Miika Tenkula’s guitar playing has always been really an inspiration. He died before our album was released” they explained.

Another song we talked about a bit more was “Down With The Sun” which has a video. It is one of the shorter songs of the album. The video was made by the same people who made the video for “Mortal Share” from their third album. At the first place their label, Candlelight Records, didn’t see the need for a video, but the band decided to do it anyway. Afterwards the label was giving in. “The guys at the record label were impressed and eventually they paid for it” they said with a smile. The video is recorded in Tampere, Finland. “In Finland we have this festival called Ilosaarirock in Joensuu. We were there drinking like four days in a row and one hell of a party. It ended on Sunday. We were in coma on Monday on Tuesday we drove to Tampere and did the video and drove back to Joensuu” they told and added laughing: “Luckily we shot in black and white so we didn’t look that bad”.
In the future the band would love to do another video, not from this album though. Right now they are negotiating for a new record deal as their deal with Candlelight was only for four albums. With the success of the last album, they must surely get some opportunities, but only time will learn where the guys of Insomnium end up.

Links:
Insomnium MySpace
Insomnium Official