You toured with Paradise Lost already a couple of times, longest on
the tour for Draconian Times/Elegy. Meanwhile you´ve shared a crew for a
long time. Isn´t it a bit ironic - or a blast from the past - to be on
tour
with Paradise Lost once again after quite a long time?

Esa: Yeah, that´s what we talked about with them as well.

Santeri: It was great fun...

Esa: It´s always nice to tour with people you know from before. You know

what to expect and there´s not much nasty surprises. Hopefully we´ll
have
one show in London with them, I still don´t know if it´s going to happen
or
not. For us it´s too much expenses, because it´s only one show there.

Shouldn´t you tour very much more all over England? At least you´re
now
signed now to one of the main English record companies.

Esa, laughing: That´s true. But it doesn´t always go that way.

So you´re not booked for one of the bigger English festivals next
summer
till now?

Esa: Let´s see, let´s hope. Would be interesting. We never played in
England, and that way it´s a little bit ironic. But, the people at
Virgin in
England they are quite "in it", they´re excited about our album, so
we´ll
see. Hopefully they will work for us.

Did they try to push you to the English press?

Esa: I don´t think so. No, they didn´t. I think they have an other
strategy.
(Smiling.) It will be much more stronger. But we don´t know yet what it
is. I think
they´re still thinking about it. They´re English, so we´ll see. Perhaps
they
want to see us first.

Years ago you introduced Pasi to me as your "shaman". But I think
then
you must be the prophet because the name of AMORPHIS still fits after 13

years.

Esa, now laughing out loud: That´s true. Yes, I think I am a prophet.
No. It
was accidently that we´ve choosen that title for the band name. I
remember
we kept calling, Tomi, Jan and me shared comments with each other: "Now,
what would this sound, and what will this sound?" And at some point we
decided that the band is AMORPHIS. Well, it´s alright. American people
like
it because for them it doesn´t mean anything and they just think that
it´s a
cool name. And I think it´s better than if the name would be like "Rotten

Sound" or something.

Rotten Sound is a cool motto. Entombed did say: The world needs a
Chaosbreed. Isn´t that the title of a project band of yours?

Esa: Yes, yes. It´s - humm... nice.

Nice is a nice description for an oldschool death metal band in the
style of
early Entombed, starring besides Esa the former singer of Sentenced,
Taneli Jarva, Olli-Pekka Laine, former bass player of Amorphis, Nalle
Östermann (Gandalf) and Marko Tarvonen (Moonsorrow).

Esa: Yeah, it´s a 30 year-crisis-band, so...

Santeri: Midlife-Crisis-Band, to name it. In Finland there´s so many
Death metal bands rising all the time - with old guys.

Esa: Not THAT many.

Santeri: Maybe not today, but soon!

On your homepage is a nice feature, a video where you and Pasi are
doing an interview (see: news -> Electronic Press Kit or href="http://www.amorphis.net/farfromthesun/downloads/real/Amorphis-EPK.ram"

target="_blank" class="link3">directly. You´re mentioning that this album was more
like a team player album compared to the last two.

Esa: It is definitely, it´s the quite straight band album. We´ve produced
it ourselves and mostly we´ve recorded it by ourselves at the CCPC studio
of Sande and Niclas.

Santeri: We´ve recorded some overdubbing materials there. But the Seawolf

Studio is in an old castle where we´ve recorded the vocals. It´s the old
castle in front of Helsinki.

There´s a studio at Suomenlinna?

Yes.

So it was quiet and outside of the city and you didn´t have to miss
the last boat back to Helsinki?

Santeri: It was horrible! It was December and a very cold winter and the
whole ocean was totally frozen. Sometimes when we went for the boat it
was -25 or -27 °C. And sometimes the boat didn´t arrive at time, it
might
took an hour or something and the harbour was in some construction area
and you had to wait like in a bus stop. It was a very, very, very silent
and
peaceful place to record the vocals, but for us who went there just for
listening and to hang around or have a few beers it was a hard time.

Did you have a vocal coach for Pasi?

Esa: Yes, a guy called John McGregor. He´s a friend of ours. I think
Sande knows.

Santeri: Well, a little bit. He used to sing in one of our project bands.

I
think he was titled "producer of vocals". But originally he was invited,

because he´s an English guy, so he was a little bit helping with
pronouncing
and maybe checking the context and stuff. I don´t really know how they
worked, but Pasi was really excited about it. He said that...

Esa: He wants to marry John.

Santeri: ... he wanted to record all the vocals with John. First we´ve
had
just
the idea that he comes there and we´ll see like how it goes and after
the
first day Pasi was screaming like (with a deep voice): "John has to be
here
every day." So he ended up sort of producing the vocals. The old singer
of
Havanna Black, a finnish band which made a couple of albums in the 80th
and early 90th, Hannu Leiden, was recording and also producing a little
bit.
So it was a very interesting combination I think.

I think it´s the darkest lyrics Pasi ever wrote in contrast to your
more
straight music.

Esa: The darkest lyrics? Probably.

Santeri: I think he became a father before he started to write the
lyrics.
He
was thinking like "What should I write?" People went on saying: "Hey,
write
what you want."

>Who of you has already got children, till now I only knew it of
Tomi.

Esa: And Pasi. And me.

How does it get together, being on tour and having a child at
home.

E: Not that well. Hey, it´s alright. It´s just a matter of an attitude.
I think
it´s even better when you go back. I think a short break is always good
for
every relationship and every familyship as well. I think, you start to
respect
people even more. So it´s rather a consideration than a problem. Many
people work overseas or are occasionally away from home like weeks for
work.

Isn´t it a question of timing and organisation as well?

Esa: Yes. And if you get a balance into it between the touring and your
life, I think then it´s really no problem.

Santeri: A little bit it depends I think. Our last drummer, the Pekka who

left,
he had one daughter and then he got twins. So he was like "Fuck! I can´t

really go anywhere anymore." Pekka is now a home dad.

Where did you dig out Jan after all this time?

Esa: He´s been a friend since former years, still after leaving
Amorphis.
He´s been playing projects with Tomi. Actually, we knew to expect it for

some time that Pekka´s going to quit. When he told it to us we did one
last
show together in Istanbul and had a nice party afterwards and then we
started to think who would be this good drummer to replace him. It was a

really impossible idea. And somebody said "what about if we try Jan". I
think this was Niclas idea. "Because he´s been in the band, and he´s a
friend of us and knows the songs and that was all about it.

Why isn´t he touring with you?

Esa: He´s got some problems with his family back home, But he´s
continuing with us after this tour, we´ve already been talking with him.

And who´s helping you out?

Esa: Atte Sarkima. He´s a friend of ours, he also plays in a project
band with Sande, Tomi and Niclas, Verenpisara, and he´s been playing in
Havanna Black as well. He´s a good "credit drummer", he´s very, very
good.
He learned all the songs within one week before we came here.

Santeri: He´s done very well. It´s always a question mark if you ask a
guy
in
that short. We´ve had only four or five rehearsings. And some of them
were very short so we only ran through a couple of songs. But he really
got
the songs rocking pretty fast. I was amazed, this in less than one week.

Who did do the last two videos of yours? Because, all your videos
before
don´t really seemed to have a detailed story.

Esa: "Evil Inside" was made by a Finnish director, Taku Kaskela. She´s
quite
famous as a music video director in Finland.

So she wrote the storyboard and did production?

Santeri: She had a couple of ideas before we started to shoot and this
was

the one we choose. Well, we didn´t know that it´s gonna look like that
but
it was her ideas like the circle and people running and band is playing.
It
looks like a band video because you can see the band playing.

Did she tell you what she meant by the circle or was it just like an
eye
catcher?

Esa: She gave some rough ideas about the storyboards. I think we simply
agreed that this was the best one. Because we didn´t want one of those
character type videos where there is an exact storyboard and some dwarfs
are playing for example.


Santeri: And we didn´t want some with addicts and needles.

Esa: Yeah there was one idea about the video where some narcotics should
be applied.

S: ... or piercing...

E: She wanted to shock. But it doesn´t fit for us.

Well, the video did remind me a bit of "Song 2" of Blur, because of
people being falling against a wall. But I even didn´t get the concept of
your
video for "Alone".

Santeri: That was a different guy, he´s a bass player of a famous Finnish

band, Tuukka Temonen.

Of which band?

Apulanta.

Never heard of.

Santeri: It´s a teen punk band.

Esa: "Help shit". That´s the strict translation.
Santeri: Anyway: He wanted to put a younger feeling on the video. That
the young people would find something in that video. And we were just
laughing like hell, let´s make a video fast. We didn´t have that much
time.
But luckily it ended up to be pretty good. We were really in a bad hurry
with him and that video. But he managed to do it well. He seems to be
still on the same profession.

At least "Alone" got airplay at german MTV and VIVA.

Santeri: Yeah, it´s sad that the video for "Evil Inside" hasn´t been
shown
anywhere. In Finland there was one cable channel which showed a lot of
music videos. And the same day our video was finished the cable TV was
bankrupt. So in Finland there is no show at all anymore which shows
music videos so all videos you can see is from the Pepsi chart show or
MTV, so it´s such a crap, only R´n´B and Rap-Shit.

Thanks to VIVA Germany that they offered half an hour more per week
for a new metal magazin...

Esa & Santeri: At least there is.

Everyone interested can have a look at both videos on the official
homepage, whether via the link "Jukebox" or via this
href="http://www.amorphis.net/farfromthesun/downloads/real/Evil_Inside_Video.ram"
target="_blank" class="link3">link.

Time for a little game. I´m starting and you´re completing the
sentence.

Helsinki is...

Esa: the Capital of Finland.

Santeri: a fucking cold place.

... is something to rely on/somebody to rely on.

Santeri: Well, we rely on Juha, he´s our bus driver.

Your personal favourite up-and-coming band from Finland?

Esa: I think there isn´t.

Santeri: Chaosbreed

Esa, smiling: Yeah, right.