Poisonblack 28-09-2013

Interview with: Ville Laihiala
By: Sabine van Gameren

Poisonblack has released a brand new album and as the band scheduled a concert in their hometown, we went to interview them about the new release.

Lyijy
“Lyijy” is the name of the record. Frontman Ville Laihiala sat down with us to talk about the album and go into some of the tracks a little deeper. But first we wanted to look at the album as a whole and what has been different since the release of the previous album “Drive”. According to Ville the musical style of the release has not really changed that much, which the fans can probably relate to, but what has been different this time is that they took some more time to get the album ready. ‘The main thing compared to “Drive” is that this time we took more time for the songs develop. I think that was something that was lacking on the “Drive” album’, Ville comments.
When looking at themes of the album it must be said that Ville did not write his lyrics in the way that it would form a theme album, but there certainly is something that pops up more. ‘I have been looking at how we as people behave . I am feeling kind of frustrated, used and pissed off. I am not trying to be holier than god, because I am human too. There are some songs about the vanity of people and how things are like me.. me.. me and no one else’, he explains.

Songs
The first song of the album we discussed is “The Flavour of The Month”. Recently the Huffington Post has published an article about why ‘Generation Y’ is not happy in life and the article got viral in a sort time. (click here for reference ) and we wondered whether the story behind that article was the same as what had inspired Ville. He starts by telling us that the song came forth out of a frustration of watching television: ‘I watched the TV and there are like the so-called celebrities. And when you write down your CV or whatever there is a part ‘profession’ and you write down celebrity, I think something is really wrong’. But as an addition to that he remarks that people may get things a bit too easy nowadays. ‘The way I was brought up I was taught that I have to work for something if you want to get something’ he concludes.

The television has not only been an influence on “The Flavour of The Month” but also has a relation to the song “Death By The Blues”. The story that sticks behind it is that nowadays there seem to be some cooking shows on television in which artist come to promote their album while cooking. Ville has been invited to come into such a show and even though he says he likes to cook, he feels that this is not the right place to promote music. ‘I just feel that with our band we do the music first. I have been asked to be in that show, but it is not my cup of tea. It is about death by the music, music first an nothing else’, he says. We speak a bit about the strange relation of cooking and music to put in one show, but Ville simply states about the song ‘The song is about the importance of making good music first and then to go make food if you want’.

“Them Walls” is a song on which Ville does not really want to comment a lot. Understandable as it is written for a good friend of him who passed away about a year ago. ‘There are really a lot of people living the same lifestyle, what killed him and are being hypocrite but that is not the main thing about that song. It is a song that I can remember him off’, he tells and we leave it with those words.

While going on we come to discuss “The Halfway Bar” which is an actual bar somewhere at the countryside of Finland. Ville took the name of the bar for the song while overthinking life while roasting some sausages when he turned 40. ‘I was just thinking about life when roasting the sausages and thinking: I am halfway my life, I have been digging three meters and still have three meters to go’. We could restrain ourselves from joking about the relation between cooking and music being there.

The last track on this releases carries the Finnish name “Elämän Kevät” while the lyrics are in English and we wondered if there was not an English expression that would cover the load. Ville explains it translates to ‘”The Spring of Life” but that it is basically a sarcastic expression in Finland which everyone immediately knows. He said: ‘If I would have put that in English it would not point out the meaning of it. Maybe it is just for the Finnish people, but I don’t know… this is how I wanted to present it’.

Home Is Where The Sty Is
As final track we wanted to know some more about we come to the single that the band released. “Home Is Where The Sty Is” it is called and the band have recorded an quite story-explaining video for it. As we noticed it is probably the most straightforward song on the album and we asked if that was the reason why it was chosen to be the single. Ville confirms that and starts telling ‘There were three candidates for the single and I was listening to the radio,, what kind of music there is playing. We could have put out “Down The Ashes Rain” maybe, that was also one of the candidates, but there was not really a song like that with the lyrics like that. So we thought let’s put that out and hopefully people get pissed off. It is this chauvinistic lyrics which are not really chauvinistic. It is just describing how we are, but not reality… you understand?!’

As we spoke about the lyrics of the songs on “Lyijy” a lot, we wondered if the lyrics have become more important to Poisonblack during the years. Ville agrees with that and starts telling: ‘Yes. At least for me they are more honest. Maybe when I am older I have more balls to say what I want to say and not just paint these landscapes. My goal is, if people get pissed off, I am happy’.
With their choice for the single it seems like he stuck with that principle in mind, though it is all to be taken with a slight dose of humor of course. ‘My wife tells me, and I am not really understanding what she tries to say, that I am maybe writing too much for myself. That there is too much between the lines. Maybe I expect people to understand more than I write down‘, Ville continued.

As a final question we asked Ville which songs have surprised him most on the album, for as an initial idea can turn out such different than the final result. Ville has two songs to mention as most surprising: ‘“Them Walls” because it was just acoustic guitar and singing and we as a band made it come alive and I am really happy about that. And maybe “The Absentee” as it was just an idea that was based on one riff. It is pretty much one riff through the song but still the way it turned out was a surprise, so those two‘.

Links:
Poisonblack Official