For The Imperium – 24-06-2009

Interview with: For The Imperium
By: Sabine van Gameren & Elvira Visser

Sometimes there are musicians you can’t get a grip on what they are about, what is their inspiration and why they choose to do things the way they do. Some bands like to create a mysterious scent around them. Every once and a while there comes another project staying in darkness for the sake of mystery and right now we found a band that has these properties.

The mystery band we are talking about is called For The Imperium. They are coming from Finland and we spoke with them. What secrets are there to unravel? We invite you to find out!
For The Imperium chose to stay in darkness, the question is why would any band like to do it. It can be seen as a smart marketing stunt, but there can be other reasons for doing so. Frontman Ville explains us more about this: “We mainly want to speak through our music, that is why we are not showing our faces and are a bit mysterious. The main goal is our music”.
The band tries to hide their identity, but it is not like they walk around like Slipknot or compatriots Lordi who are both hiding after their mask at all times. In the promotional photo’s the band has posted on their MySpace site, which seems to be pretty much the only place where you can find something about them, all the guys are hiding after photo’s of animals. It is not for a special reason that they choose to represent themselves as animals. After all, it are not any dangerous animals, but four cats and a dog. A little joke is made when they tell that they play like animals but the real explanation is that there is not a specific reason for it. “We just made it up in the moment when we were taking the promotional photo’s”, Ville tells.
Yet, there is still to wonder why they choose to let one person represent himself with a dog, while the others are cats. Ville could not help out, as he had no idea either why the keyboard player decided to go for a dog. In general he did have a statement about this which won’t be hold back on you: “The band is a cat and the audience is a dog. We are chasing the audience with our music”. How this relates to the keyboard player is up for each one’s own interpretation.
In live situations the band does not bother to hide too much, no masks, no demands on the light engineer to turn off the lights and no curtains of smoke during their show. “When we are playing live, we do show our faces. Just not in any pictures”.

The band did publish a music video on their MySpace, in which a cartoon version of them can be seen. The band got help from a friend with making the video. He also designed the MySpace site for them and did a lot of graphic work. The cartoon version only has four musicians, the keyboard player entered after the video was made. But the idea of the mystery came from before that already. “The video is kind of a simple video, we had the idea of not showing our faces before we made the video. The first idea was to make the cartoon pictures of us. You can’t see our face in the video and you won’t see our faces in the future”. Ville states about it.

Quite recently, 13-05-2009, the band released their second EP called: ‘In/Die’. The band have gotten more attention in the underground scene by this EP which they released theirselves. Even though the band does not have a label they did not feel bothered to whine about it but chose to take action themselves: “At least the Finnish publishers are not very keen on releasing music that is this challenging. We did have got people who are interested in us who manage gigs but we do not have a record company. That is not an issue, you can do this by yourself if you are willing to do a lot of hard work”, Ville says.
What could listeners expect from this band is the next thing to wonder, there must be some light in the darkness for the sake of getting an impression of this band. ‘In/Die’ is an release the band has its own description for. Mainly, the band uses the term ‘avant-trance metal’ for their work. An interesting term. Genre blends are on top of the reality nowadays and so this band seems to jump in this trend. “It comes from avant-garde and trance” explains Ville. To make the blend sound more approachable and clear, he adds: “You have Scooter, a rock band with a metal touch and then you get For The Imperium. We want to bring Scooter into rock music, no one has done that”.
The response on the EP has been good so far and the band got loads of positive feedback on it as it seems. Seems like little success are booked already as the band is headlining on the day of this interview in Virgin Oil, Helsinki. Ville explains that the underground scene has been good for the band. “We have caused a lot of underground buzz here in Finland. At least here in Helsinki. We have shown that you don’t need someone to arrange gigs for you, we can do it all ourselves. At least until now, until a certain level”.
So even though the band works it out all by their selves does not mean we can expect the band will record a full length on their own. Ville warned before he got asked: “As long as we release music independently, it will be just EP’s. It is easier for people to buy those than a whole album from a band that you don’t know”.
This kind of puts a mark on how the band is looking to the future, the band spoke about the Finnish publishers who are not keen on the music genre they make, but where is the ambition of the band. United States has way more to often for bands like them. “There are a lot of things going wrong in that country, so I don’t idolize America” says Ville. This does not mean he does not see a future there though: “I think there are a lot of American influences in our music. There are a lot of good new bands from there. Underoath is a good American band”, he continues. He also has a good word for the Dutch band Textures: “Their new album is a metal masterpiece”. At the end of our interview we get the ambition level up even more when Ville says with the shine in his eyes: “We would most definitely like to expand further in Europe and in the United States”.

Links:
For The Imperium Myspace