Amoral – 30-06-2012

Interview with: Ben Varon and Ari Koivunen
By: Lara Cappelli

The Finnish metal band Amoral was one of the first to play on Saturday at Tuska. After their show we had the chance to have a nice chat with Ben Varon and Ari Koivunen, respectively guitarist and singer of the band.

Hi guys, thank you for your time. How are you?
Ben: We’re good, thanks! We’re pretty happy with the show, although Masi, our other guitar player, hurt his finger right before the gig so he didn’t have the best show ever. But otherwise it was fine, there were a lot of people and we had some pyros which is always fun.
Ari: Although the big bang at the third song was quite scary! I did know that it was coming but it was still kind of a surprise when it came. But this show was definitely bigger than the other festivals we have played this summer. And it’s a metal festival, which is fun.

Are you anxious to see any band in particular today?
B: We wanted to see Textures but we had to make interviews then so we missed their show. But we’re going to check out Behemoth for a while and then run to check our friends For The Imperium. They’re a really good band so I can’t wait to see that show.
A: I’m kind of waiting for Huoratron, they’re going to play tomorrow. We were also waiting for Lamb of God but since they’re not gonna play, we’ll check Finntroll instead.

How was the tour in Asia you have recently experienced?
A: It was so cool. Tokyo is one of my favourite places in the whole world. I had been there with my solo band and Amoral was there with the old line-up, so it was the first time for us there together.
B: It was also the first time in Shanghai. People are so amazing there, they take such good care of us. The food was excellent, the fans were great, they brought us presents and drawings. It was just a great week.

You’ll be touring together with Ensiferum and Profane Omen this fall. Where did the idea come from?
B: I guess the management worked it out, but it’s really cool. I like the idea that three Finnish bands different enough in the music that go play together. Because after all we all play a quite melodic kind of music, so the fans can join together and enjoy another kind of music, which still has something to do with the band they came for. There are good chances that Ensiferum fans can also like Amoral, right?
A: Of course, there’s clean vocals and growling vocals in every of those bands so it could be. I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun!

Amongst the countries you have played in, is there one that particularly surprised you for the response you received?
A: Bulgaria, for sure! That was the biggest surprise. We played there in 2009 as a support for Amorphis and the audience was so into it. Hands up in the air all the time and… they were screaming our names! We don’t get that at any of our own shows, we couldn’t expect that from a supporting show. We were shocked but it was so much fun.
B: But of course it’s kind of different every time. Every country has its own way of attending concerts… As you might have noticed today for example, Finnish people are still somehow reserved when it comes to our shows for whatever reason. Because we’ve sold out, we changed our style, we have Ari as the new singer so sometimes it’s like they feel like not liking it but kind of doing that anyway. You might not see as many hands in the air but I think that just the fact that they stood there for the whole show and watched it, is good. It didn’t start with many people and ended with less people, it was more and more all the time. I guess they liked it if they watched it for 45 minutes so that’s what matters.

You have played live almost all of the songs of your latest album “Beneath”. Is there a particular song that works better than the others, and one that just doesn’t?
B: We played almost all of them. There are two songs which we haven’t properly done yet. We did them at the acoustic shows, but we should try at least one of them, “Closer”, as a part of our shows.
A: And I don’t think that we’re ever gonna play the Japan bonus track, “Staying Human”, because these guys can’t play it! I would love to do it but they just can’t play it!
B: Oh right, that’s true. We recorded some bonus tracks, one for the States and one for the Japan release of the album, and the Japanese one is so damn technical, a fast kind of one. We barely knew how to play it in the studio and we promised our selves we would never play it ever again. But for example “Wrapped in Barbwire”, the short one we just shot the video for, feels really good live. It’s even more powerful live than it is in the album.

Do you have any particular backstage rituals that you do before the shows?
B: We all have our own thing. For example Ari wants to stay with himself some time before the show. The guys are practicing their instruments but besides that, there’s nothing in particular.
A: We have actually started to do a half-an-hour warm-up set backstage lately. We started to do that less than one year ago, we have practice amplifiers backstage so we can actually play, not the whole set but few songs just to warm up the voice and the fingers. It really helps, we noticed it’s a good way to get the guys together before the show. As Ben said already, I personally like to be left alone for half an hour. I don’t know if you can call it meditating, it’s just being still and focusing. That’s kind of my thing.

Do you prefer the idea of composing songs for themselves or songs that are functional for an album?
B: So far it’s been pretty much every song for itself, but now for the new album for example we have already written two parts, that are gonna be two separate and long songs that have similar themes going in them so it’s supposed to become one whole package. But other than that it’s always been about the songs on their own. But I noticed that for the last album I wrote a lot of these not exactly slow but mid tempo songs, so I intentionally tried to push myself to write some faster songs as well, so that the album could be more like a blend.
A: And maybe that’s because of me, because I remember I told you that we needed some more up tempo songs. I guess we were right otherwise it would have been maybe a bit more of a boring album. But that’s the only thing we think about when writing songs. Usually we just let them come out as they come and then see what kind of package we can get out of them.
B: For example the last time we had more songs than we needed so we just got the best package we could out of that and see which songs we should leave out. So we didn’t actually write any bonus track, we just took the ones that didn’t work in the package and turned them into bonus songs. This was how those two bonus tracks came from and actually the very first time in the story of Amoral that we had more songs than we needed when we went to the studio. For the last four albums we had exactly the right amount of songs that we needed. It was fun because for once we had the choice to decide what to put in the album and what to leave out, we were not forced to include any of the songs in “Beneath”.
A: And actually last time we had this song which was supposed to become the bonus track for the Japanese release but then we decided to include it in the actual album. It was such a good songs that we just couldn’t leave it out.

Is it the music that influences your lyrics or vice versa?
B: It goes both ways. Sometimes you have lyrics that call for a certain type of riff or music and sometimes we have a whole song ready and if it’s an aggressive song you know you can’t write about butterflies and flowers and hugging. I like the way we do it, although maybe it would be interesting to have a death metal song about hugging and butterflies.

How are the projects for the new album going?
B: We have just started. Me and the new guitar player Masi have been writing, both separately and together and just now we started to present the songs to the guys to see what they think about them. We played them for a couple of times together but that’s it, everything is still at early stages.

Now that you have settled down with Ari as the singer of the band, are you looking for an ageless sound that will stick to the name of the band even in the future, or do you want it to change with time instead?
B: It’s maybe going to be a combination of both. Probably it will always change a little bit, or in some cases a whole hell of a lot, as it was with Ari. But I feel pretty sure that the sound on Beneath is gonna be very close to the sound Amoral will be remembered for in the future. I think we have a very good thing going here, all of us are enjoying it and it’s kind of our own thing as well. Only future will tell, maybe we’ll do black metal in two years from now!

There was quite an interesting relation between the title of “Beneath” and the under-water promoting photo-shoot that you made for it. Are you planning to do something similar in the future?
B: No idea on that whatsoever. We were joking about that actually, when we saw the pictures underwater, we wondered how on earth we are ever going to top that. That stuff looks so cool, so what could we possibly do next to top that?!
A: But that experience was a lot of hard work, we swallowed a lot of water. And I can’t swim so it was kinda nasty for me; they just threw me in the water telling me I would be fine. It took a few hours and it coasted lots of money because of course we had to rent the whole swimming pool. Then we had to rent the cameras to go underwater and the lighting as well, but the overall result works so good with the album and it looks so cool and different.
B: But if you have any idea for the next photo-shoot we’re still open for that. Maybe we’ll go parachuting, who knows! Although we’ll have to take the normal band pictures too every now and then, I’m sure we’ll find something as fun.

Is there a certain goal you are aiming at, as a band?
A: Just satisfying ourselves without forgetting to have fun. You have to always enjoy what you do.
B: There are different kinds of goals, in music for us it’s about satisfying ourselves and making sure that every album is better than the previous one. We actually feel that way, we’re not just saying in interviews that the new album is the best of our career. Another goal is to keep growing as a band, getting more fans, making he band bigger so hopefully we can get a proper living out of this and focus even more energy and time than this. Band bigger, music better, that’s what we want for Amoral.

Ari, you have been mentioning something about a side project of yours recently. Can you reveal something more about it?
A: I still can’t say anything about that! Let’s say that it’s something different.
B: Maybe he’s just trying to keep secret the fact that he’s doing gay porn…
A: That would be interesting but no, it’s something different but not that different!

Links:
AmoralFacebook
Amoral Official