Ville Friman (INSOMNIUM): „Мисля, че нито веднъж не сме свирили песента „Winter’s Gate“ изцяло!“

Ville Friman

First of all, we want to thank you for taking the time for doing this…

No worries!

… we are from Bulgaria, Metal Hangar18… and that outside was the quickest hour in my live. Like *puff* and it was gone, I don’t know what happened.

Haha, okay, I hope it was a positive quick hour!

Yes, yes, of course. When the music is good, the time passes really quickly. 

Yeah, yeah, okay, haha!

We’ll improvise a little bit, let’s just start talking about your upcoming album… So, how long ago Niilo wrote the story behind Winter’s Gate?

I think, the story was actually written before we turn it into a song and release it. Niilo has written it probably around 4 or 5 years ago, so the story was there, but it was written only in Finnish so we haven’t translated it to English or anything. It was just a lyrical concept of the story, it was already there and we just decided to make it to a song.

Is the whole story covered in the lyrics or just some parts of it?

I would say that the lyrics are kind of a summary of the story in a way because you can’t really fit everything into a song. It’s kind of an abstract of the story in the lyrics as well, so Niilo wrote those and turned them into song in that way. But then you have the actual story in the release so you can read that as well.

Alright. How did the whole process of composing and recording go, considering that you’re not living in Finland, right?

We already had some parts ready I would say in 2014^th when we released Shadows of the Dying Sun. That was the time when we had the idea, but we haven’t really working on that actively before. Last fall, about a year ago we started working more actively and it took quite a lot of time. Not the writing process, but just getting started, because we were touring all the time as well. You go on tour, then you come back home and you get to live your normal life for a while and then you go on tour again. There is no space to concentrate. But then, I think the actual writing phase probably took only like three months to put everything together.

Do you write on the road?

We do write on the road as well, because you have a lot of spare time, so you might just pick up a guitar, but we’re not demoing that material. It is just ideas played on guitar, so some good stuff might come up during that tour as well. But it was actively written outside of the touring phase. We had a time off for a couple of months and we just wrote the song and finished it. I’m living in the UK, but I’m just writing and recording our home studio demos and we’re just communicating. I thing it works quite well.

So it’s good that we’re living in the era of internet.

Yeah. We’re definitely working day-to-day on the internet and taking all the advantages. Of course we’ve written quite many albums already and we know how things work, so we don’t necessarily need to see each other to make it happen.

Niilo Sevanen

I’m really interested in one thing – how do you rehearse?

We don’t, haha! We don’t rehearse. I think we didn’t play the “Winter’s Gate” song at once. Normally when we have an album coming out we have one or two weeks when all four of us get together, but most of the time we’re working through the internet. We’re recording stuff, everyone’s commenting. I might make a song and I get the comments from other people, then I just listen to the comments and the feedback and make another version and so on.

So you have around two weeks to play it together?

Yeah. Normally we don’t always get together as well and play the songs. It’s nice to do that live feel. And normally we have just two guitars, one bass, it’s quite simple set up that works very good. This time we just didn’t have time.

Sounds pretty tight live!

Yeah, haha, okay, that’s good!

This will be your first album mixed by Dan Swanö.

Yeah…

How did working with him go?

It worked pretty well. Our other guitar player Markus, who plays also in Omnium Gatherum, they mixed at least two or three albums with Dan Swanö, so he knew the guy beforehand. We haven’t work with him with Insomnium. Actually before Shadows of the Dying Sun we released “Ephemeral”  as a single and there were actually two mixes.

Yeah, two versions of the song.

Two versions of the song. And Dan Swanö did a good mix for that song as well and we just decided “Ok, let’s try it out”. But then Dan Swanö’s version was really good, equally good so it was a bit hard.

It was the first version or the second?

Both versions were mixed by Jens Bogren, but there is one unreleased version by Dan Swanö. But he did mix that song and of course for us Dan Swanö was a natural choice, because we’re big fans of Edge Of Sanity, especially the song “Crimson”. So we wanted something similar for the “Winter’s Gate” song, make something long and epic. I think Dan was the right guy for that job. He understood where we came from and it was really easy mixing process. I think he dig the song and got the idea.

I think he gets everybody. He is a mastermind.

Yeah, he is really talented. And a nice guy as well, really nice guy.

How is Winter’s Gate going to build up your previous albums, except for being concept album?

I think it’s kind of a natural continuing of the Shadows of the Dying Sun. It’s very diverse – we have all of the influences that we had on the previous albums. There is a bit of black metal, death metal, a lot of progressive stuff, a lot of acoustic parts as well, clean singing, growling. It’s really a mix of everything.

I want to ask you about something else. A few weeks ago you announced Winter’s Gate and all the details about it. I saw you released this drawing of two figures, a man and a woman maybe, hugging in the winterstorm.

Yeah, yeah.

I wanted to know what is this about, what’s the story behind it? Is it part of the album cover?

It’s part of the cover art, you have some illustrations in the booklet as well.

So it will be in the book, maybe if I read the story I will figure it out.

Yes, you’ll find out when you read the story, it’s related.

Who you were working with for the cover art? Cause it seems more simplified and more minimalistic compared to your other albums.

Yeah, we used different guy. We hired him originally just to do the illustrations for the book, but then we also asked to do the cover album as well in the same style, so we used the same guy. He has more minimalistic approach, but I think it works quite nice…

Yes, definitely… I really liked this picture, I didn’t know a thing about it, but it was touching…

I really like the cover, it’s cool and it says a lot for the story.

Speaking of this – have you ever thought about visualizing Winter’s Gate in like… well, it’s one giant song, so you can’t shoot a usual music video…

No, no, it would be quite expensive, hahaha…

… so maybe, in future, some kind of a short movie of the story or something like that?

Well, let’s see how it goes and what happens. Of course it would be great if somebody come to us and give us a couple of millions euros, so let’s make this short story a movie, that will be great. I think that would work out quite well. So we decided not to do video, even to take a bit of the song and make it a video. Because it doesn’t illustrates something if you just take it out of the big thing. So we thought we’ll just make a couple of video teasers interviews, because Youtube is quite good media and you kind of get some of the music out there.

With your previous albums One for Sorrow and Shadows of the Dying Sun, at least I think so, you made a huge step in terms of composing. What changed, how did you do that?

We got new guitarist in – Markus Vanhalla. He was also making music and having big influence as more guitar solos and stuff like that. Even with Winter’s Gate – if I wrote pretty much the first twenty minutes of the song, but then he had a big influence and he brought his own solos and influences. And of course when he wrote the lines and so on we were working kind of complementing each other in a way. And I think this happened already with Shadows of the Dying Sun, we got brand new thinking into our band, different kind of personal approach.

Markus Vanhalla

So he brought a new impulse to the band.

Yeah. Kind of new influences. So I think that’s the big difference. Otherwise we would just try to develop and become better in what we do, but at the end of the day I think that was the biggest change.

Do you think you have a unique sound? Like, I know that this is f*cking abstract question, but I really haven’t heard a melodic death metal band sounding this way.

Yeah? I think out kind of sound is just mixing things and we don’t really like, especially with Winter’s Gate, we didn’t really think about how the song should sound or if it’s going to use some kind of bias. What felt right and was good, we just used it. We really listen to a lot of music and we decided that we can do whatever.

So it comes naturally.

Yeah. And I think it has been like that for a couple of albums, so we’ve been more and more into just thinking… not thinking really. So we feel like whatever feel right we just do it and I think we still have the ability to keep it together and have the Insomnium sound. But we just explore and we could probably just add to our sound.

So what kind of music are you listening to? Cause considering your sound maybe you’re not just into metal?

We’re listening to all kind of staff really. I like punk, I like hardcore, I like postrock, very minimalistic electronic stuff, classic rock like Doors or Bruce Springstreen. I even like jazz, I have a great collection of jazz, it’s awesome – Louis Armstrong. Woody Allen movies, you know – that kind of feeling is great. You have different kind of music to suite to different kind of feels. You know – you’re waking up on Saturday morning, the sun is shining, you’re having a coffee… you probably wouldn’t put on Cannibal Corpse.

I did that, I did that, haha…

Yeah, you could do that. Ok, I’m more like laid back, so I listen to some more laid back stuff.

Ville Friman

What about some world music? Because one of you songs – Mortal Share, the rhythm goes in a specific way, it sounds like Bulgarian national music, it has the same rhythm pattern as our traditional dance we call rachenitza.

Haha, yeah, the rhythm is 4/4 or 7/4, we like to play around with rhythms as well.

But you thought it yourself, you didn’t get it from elsewhere?

No, it wasn’t influenced by Bulgarian folk music.

Haha, I’m far from this thought.

Nothing against Bulgarian folk music, but it wasn’t influenced by that. I think it just came naturally, it just felt right.

Speaking of folk music and stuff – you know that death metal puts some kind of boundaries. Did you think of doing something that will cross them? Like, Including some kind of instrument that is more exotic to melodic death metal?

Well, we’re definitely not against that. A lot of band use those kinds of national instruments, like Eluveitie. We’re definitely not against that, but it takes a bit more organizing and maybe you also have to think about that when you’re composing the songs, you have to come up with the beat, the idea, and then you have to demo that. But it would be great, I would be interested. I’ve been trying out more acoustic stuff and so on, like an acoustic Insomnium kind of approach with this kind of tradition instruments would sound better. But it’s kind of hard to mix them with a wall of shredded guitar. But if you have more acoustic approach it might work really well.

Have you thought about acoustic approach for this album?

Well, you always have a lot of acoustic guitars, I’m composing a lot of the stuff with acoustic guitar, it’s always there in my living room. You play around, get an idea, you have your cell phone and just record that. And that’s kind of note, maybe something out would work.

What about acoustic versions of the songs?

Maybe it will be the next step, when you run out of ideas, then you make acoustic album.

Haha, I think it would sound beautiful, but we hope that won’t happen soon.

Maybe it’s just like a special thing.

I haven’t thought about how Niilo’s harsh vocals would sound over that.

Yeah, maybe just make it more instrumental version.

So you’re planning a big tour for the Winter’s Gate, we hope that it will come by Bulgaria.

Yeah, we hope to come. We’re going to do short European tour in the beginning of January and if we don’t have Bulgarian dates, you haven’t been pulled there, but we just need to do another tour, maybe come to Poland and also do Eastern European countries at the same time.

We surely hope so.

I think that’s the idea.

You’re planning to play the whole Winter’s Gate on the tour?

Yeah, that’s the plan.

It’s 40 minutes or something like that?

Around 40 minutes, yeah. You have naturally pauses there, I think it should be alright.

So how are you going to combine it with the other few song that people want to hear?

It’s going to be like two sets – we’ll play the Winter’s Gate and then we’ll have another short set.

We can’t wait! We hope to get Stam1na with you, haha!

Haha, ok, cool.

Okay, that was the last one, thank you so much once again, really.

No worries, nice meeting you!