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theplaguezine · 6 years

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SENTENCED

Interview with Ville Laihiala by Daniel Hinds

(conducted May 2005)

As the summer fades and the festivals draw to a close, the final chapter is being written for Sentenced. After sixteen years of bitterness and joy, Finland's finest have mutually agreed to go their separate ways, leaving us one final emotional release in the shape of The Funeral Album. Infused with all of the hope, melancholy, anger and wry humor that have long defined Sentenced, this terminal opus also covers much of the musical ground of the past while incorporating a few new twists as well (check out the children's choir on "Vengeance is Mine" and the harmonica at the start of "Despair-Ridden Hearts").. To help alleviate the grief and see us through this time of mourning, vocalist Ville Laihiala delivers his eulogy for the serial self-killers… I know you guys took a break prior to The Cold White Light - was there a thought at that point of putting the band to rest? No, not at that time. We were really tired of touring and starting to get into arguments, but nothing really serious. That break we took before The Cold White Light was really good for us and you can hear on that album that we really needed the break. In regards to the new album, the song "Where Waters Fall Frozen" really stands out - what inspired that one? The guys were actually waiting for me to arrive at the rehearsal place, so maybe they got this sudden burst of anger because I was late or something, I don't know. They started to jam on that song and we all felt it deserves to be on the album. It's something that nobody would really expect. We left it the way it was at the rehearsal place, like this kind of a crappy-sounding, shitty-playing violent burst of diarrhea or whatever. Still you can also see kind of a reference to the past of the band, this kind of dyed-to-the-roots, but it wasn't made with that in mind. I like the fact that with the last couple albums, you really took your time and worked on them until you were satisfied BUT you didn't spend six years agonizing over every little detail either. Is that a difficult balance at all, deciding at what point a song is truly finished? That's one reason we use a producer when we record. We record the songs in a way that we want in the studio and also try the sounds that we think would fit and that's where the producer comes in, to help us reach even deeper into the sound or whatever. If you truly concentrate on what you are doing and the song you are working on, it's pretty painless to find the right sounds and right atmospheres. Obviously, some songs don't work so we just kick them out of the fucking album. (laughs) Is everyone in the band usually on the same page in terms of which songs work and which ones don't? It doesn't really matter who brings the song to the rehearsal place, we all five contribute something because it has to go through each one of us since we play the song together. So everybody does their own part in a way and usually all the arguments happens at the rehearsal place. When we go into the studio, it is more or less working and trying to do the very best that you can. What is the process like as far as uniting the lyrics and the music? Does the music evoke the lyrics or vice versa or do they both come independently? First is music and then lyrics. We usually write what the music makes us feel or the vibe that we get out of the song. To us, it is really important that the music and the lyrics work together. The song should be one whole thing and not just one guitar riff and crappy lyrics on it or whatever; they have to work together. Yeah, it seems like the emphasis has really gone away from meaningful lyrics with a lot of bands in recent years, but you guys have always written songs that meant something. Like I said, it's a big part of the song and our main lyric writer [Sami] Lopakka, he's really taking time when he's writing those things. His principles and humor are kind of in a way weird but still really healthy, if you understand. To me, when I read his lyrics I always find something totally black there. Sentenced is one of those rare bands that writes such dark lyrics, yet when I am feeling down, they always manage to make me feel better. They lift you up. To us, it's the same way. It's kind of therapy to us, to get rid of everything, the depressive feelings or whatever, so maybe it's the same kind of experience for a lot of [other] people, too. Which is really great to hear. The cover artwork is very minimal - was it difficult at all to decide what direction to go with the artwork for this one? The theme is 'funeral' so obviously we wanted it to be more or less black and dark images. All of the booklet images and art were made by our drummer and he took pictures all over Europe. It's really hard to explain the pictures because they don't really….uh…… (laughs) You should really see the pictures. He did more of like, not that much colors and a theme throughout the whole booklet. I understand there is a DVD in the works. What can we expect from that and when will it see the light of day? We're going to play our final show in our home town, Oulu, in September and we're going to record the DVD out of that show. The reason for that is that we know that there are a lot of people who aren't able to come to the final show so they can at least watch it on DVD, the last five minutes of the band. There will also be all of our videos and also lots of stuff that we have recorded with our own personal video cameras throughout the years, so there should be a lot of twisted and funny weird shit to put on there, too. We also are going to record two videos from this last album. Oh, which songs are you going to do? "Everfrost" and "Despair-Ridden Hearts." Oh cool- I don't think it's cool because I hate making videos. Maybe it's just me because I don't really watch music television so I just think it's a waste of money. That's very cool that you are filming the final show though, since like you said, there are many people who won't be able to see you on this last tour but really want to. We've got two days before the show to prepare everything, so it should look okay. (pause) Even though the band sucks. Can you tell me about what plans you have for Poisonblack? The second album was recorded already eight months ago, but I have to remix it because I don't like the sound and also we will record four new songs for it and kick out some of the bad songs. Try to make it as tight as possible and it will be out at the end of this year, so for me this touring and playing music will continue at least one more year. How does this Poisonblack album compare to the first one? I'm going to say that gothic girls will be truly disappointed - it's not gothic anymore. Do you have any plans beyond that? No, after the touring for the next Poisonblack album is done then I'm going to take a long, long, LONG break from music and maybe produce or record or whatever but it will be something with music because I've been doing it since I was eleven years old and now I'm nineteen. (laughs) But yeah, just spend time with my boys and see them grow and I've already lost so much time of my fatherhood so I want to get some of that back so it's time to put the music aside.

www.sentenced.org

#Sentenced #interview #may2005

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theplaguezine · 6 years

Text

SENTENCED

Interview with Sami Lopakka by Daniel Hinds

(conducted February 2000)

Finland has unleashed a number of potent acts on the metal scene in recent years, from Nightwish to Babylon Whores to Children of Bodom to name just a few, but Sentenced have been there for over ten years and were key to really making a name for the scene in the minds of international fans. Evolving from a brutal form of death metal into their current state of melodic, suicidal metal, the band has only gotten better with age. Surprisingly, they have also only had one major line-up shift in all that time, which was the departure of original bassist/vocalist Taneli Jarva following the Amok release. His vocal replacement, Ville Laihiala, brought a much moodier, cleaner style to the band and the match was perfect for their new sound.

After the excellent Down and awe-inspiring Frozen, the band began to receive some much-deserved recognition, ending up with a gold record in their homeland for the latter and a great deal of airplay. Just this past month, the band's latest opus, Crimson, was released to usher in the year 2000 in style. Guitarist Sami Lopakka gives us the details behind this album and other activities related to the Northernmost Killers...

How has the response to Crimson been so far? Well, the album has only been out for a week here in Europe, but so far the critics have been very good all over. It was the Album of the Month in many magazines, including Metal Hammer of Germany, one of the biggest ones. We just heard that after one week, it is #1 on the charts in Finland. So, it has been really good, but we still have to wait for a while to get the real reaction from real people.

What are your feelings about the album? We are totally satisfied with the album. It turned out just the way that we wanted it to be and we worked on it for almost a year, from the first note to this final result. So it was pretty satisfying to get it done finally and the result we got finally from all these 4 studios that we were in while recording this. It's a relief that it is now ready and everything went fine, so we have nothing to complain about - no regrets about it. Now we're just waiting to get people's reaction and getting to play these songs live.

I understand you were more involved with the production on Crimson? Were you at all nervous about doing the production on this album yourselves? Not really, because we've been around for almost-- not almost, we've been around for ten years and we trust ourselves that much that maybe we can have our own opinions about something and maybe we finally know what we are doing. On the other hand, we also had this kind of co-producer who was with us all the time and he was taking care of all the technical side that the studio has, so we could concentrate completely on the music and the playing itself.

Do you think you will go that route next time too? It's too early to say. It could be we will work the same way next time as we did on Crimson, but I just couldn't say yet. We keep changing music-wise, so we also keep changing production-wise.

Why did you decide to sequence the tracks so that each song led directly into the next? I think the songs have kind of a relation to each other and it's not very interesting to put one song and then four seconds or five seconds of nothing and then the next song. We just wanted to do something different and with these songs, it was pretty easy to do it because they fit together quite easily. On the other hand, the songs are really quite different from each other, so the atmosphere keeps changing. In the mastering, it was possible to make a whole package of all the songs, and we just took that possibility.

How was "Killing Me, Killing You" chosen for the first single? It was kind of a hard choice for us, because there are like four or five songs that could have been the one, so we had to ask some people that are close to us and also Hiili, the co-producer, and some other people what they think. But in the end it was pretty obvious because you need to have this four-minute edit of the song for the radio stations and for that song, it was really easy to cut it in pieces and make this edit, and it's also a catchy song, so maybe it was a commercial choice as well.

I understand you did a video for the song, too. Can you describe it a bit? Yeah, we went to northern Norway for the video, to a place that is almost the northernmost place that you can go on Earth by car this time of year. We were shooting it on the shores of the Arctic Sea and it was very cold there. We had to take little breaks all the time, just to keep our fingers moving. I think you can actually see from the video how cold it is. This freezing atmosphere gives another aspect to the song itself, so it was an interesting process. It's kind of hard to explain a video in words, so maybe you should just check it out if you have the possibility.

I don't know if they would ever play it over here. Yeah, I know the situation over there. (laughs)

Who directed it? It was a Finnish guy and I don't think he has done anything international yet. He is rising in the business, but he is very talented and the video seems a lot more expensive than it really is, so he will be known worldwide someday.

The cover art on Crimson is very striking. Did Niklas come up with the entire concept himself or did you suggest some of the ideas? Yeah, we were working together, but he did all the art. He was giving us different motifs and different kind of stuff for each page and the cover and we just picked out what we wanted. It was very easy this way. He always put the new designs on the Internet, on his home page, then we could check it out right then and decide what we wanted to change and what we don't want to change. But in the end, we really have to give him all the credit about the cover.

I understand you played a ten-year anniversary show in your hometown around Christmas. How did that go? It was very good, we were surprised how good it was. The place here in Oulu was packed, we had almost a thousand people and we had little special things planned for it, like we played songs that we hadn't played for many years. We did songs from almost every album that we ever did, it was pretty interesting. It was the first time in five years and I think probably the last, too. It went very good but it just didn't feel right. The people were excited though, so what the hell?

You also did a show on New Year's Eve. What was that like? That wasn't as good. I think this whole millennium thing was like over-advertised. We had 700 people in there, but if I compare it to the anniversary show, it was nothing special. The whole new year was just another day that fucking sucked. It had no meaning to me personally and I think maybe it had some effect on the show itself, as well. We just took care of it and got drunk like hell.

The theme of love comes up a lot in your lyrics. With all the potential for pain, do you feel like love is a worthy goal to be pursued? Yeah, I think so. In the end, there are not many positive sides in life, but love is one of them and you should aim at it no matter the cost. Even the pain that comes with it is better than nothing, or boredom.

One of my favorite lines is in the song "Farewell," where you wrote "...The enchantment lies in the moment of good-byes..." Can you explain a little bit about what inspired this line? That one was written by Ville, the vocalist [d'oh!!--ed.] but I can relate to him pretty good. This kind of thinking is so natural for us. All the depression and all the negative things in life, in some way they are romantic to us. Any time we write music, we write the music first and then write lyrics from the feeling that we get from the music. When the music is quite sad, it always turns out that the lyrics are that way, too. Having romantic views over death or good-byes, it's just something that has strong emotion and it's interesting to deal with these kinds of things in our lyrics.

Another line I like is at the end of "Grave Sweet Grave:" "...the dawn shall steal my dreams no more..." Do you think there is some kind of connection between death and dreams? No, not really. The song starts with the words, 'I have seen my funeral in a thousand dreams' and the last line is kind of hoping that this time it wouldn't be a dream. About death in general, I really hope there is no afterlife or another life waiting for us. I hope this life is enough and we suffer enough. (laughs)

When Frozen was re-issued in the digi-pack, why was the track order re-arranged? Well, this whole thing was not something we were comfortable with, releasing the whole album again with these 4 cover tracks, but we had these covers and the idea was to put them out with Frozen again. We wanted to make the digipak of Frozen a little bit different, more than just to have a couple of extra songs that aren't even our songs. There's no special reason, just that we wanted to have something different.

Did ever consider just releasing a MCD instead or was the whole thing the record company's idea? Yeah, more or less. There are two sides to music - the artistic side and the business side - and you just have to find a way to make it satisfactory for everyone.

Was it difficult choosing the tracks for the Greatest Kills collection? Yeah, it kind of was. Already when that came out, we had quite a bit of songs and of course there some obvious choices, like "Nepenthe" and "Noose" and "Awaiting the Winter Frost," but then we had to leave so many songs out that we would have liked to have been there. You just have to limit it to something and it was kind of difficult, but it turned out okay and all the songs there represent some time in our history.

Do you keep up much on what is happening in the metal scene at large? I'm not very much following it and the one reason for that is that I don't have much time. This band is already taking so much of our time, we don't have any more time to give to music. When we are rehearsing for three hours and I come home, the first thing in mind is not music. I've had so many disappointments when checking out all the new bands, usually the all are just full of crap, like 98% are a total waste of time - a waste of time that I don't have. So I just wait and let the music find me. If I'm interested in some band, I believe that sooner or later, it will find me and I don't have to look for it all the time.

Do the guys in the band hang out much outside of actual band activities? Eh, not much, but we hang out sometime during the weeks. We all live near Oulu here in northern Finland, so we see each other whenever we go to a bar or so on. So, maybe a couple of times a month outside the band.

Is there any chance of a US tour this year for Sentenced? We are making decisions right now and we decided that in the spring, we will do a lot of Finnish shows and all the big European festivals and the Finnish festivals in the summer. After that, we are doing both, like a full European tour headlining and also it seems that we're coming to the States finally, in September or so. We'll tour with Iced Earth for 3 weeks or so.

Great! Are you looking forward to that? Yeah, we are. We've been getting so much response from there. We've got this e-mail address that people can send any of their comments or questions to, and we receive a lot of messages from the States and they all are asking, 'Why aren't you coming?' and 'Why haven't you come already?' and 'When are you coming?' It seems that at least some people over there even like our music, so maybe there is even a reason to come.

www.sentenced.org

#Sentenced #interview #feb2000

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