Bylec-Tum / February 2000

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Answered by Ville Sorvali


Sincerely talking about your old demo-release ”Metsä”, it didn’t shock me very much, not such your last ”Tämä Ikuinen Talvi”, which is for my point of view one of the best demos published by a Finnish BM band in the last two years. Would you present it to the readers?

[Ville] Well, thanks for your compliments! To me ”Tämä Ikuinen Talvi” really was a successful release, although ”Metsä” is not a disappointment either. ”Tämä Ikuinen Talvi” (this eternal winter) is our demo-release of 1999, consisting of 5 heathen anthems: ”Taistelu Pohjolasta” (the battle for pohjola), ”Vihreällä Valtaistuimella” (on the green throne), ”Talvi” (winter), ”Luopion Veri” (blood of an apostate) and an instrumental one ”Kuun Suru” (the moon’s sorrow). Henri and I worked with these songs during the whole 1998 trying to record them with very misfortunate results, namely talking about the double-booking of the studio, the ”borrowed” equipment and the self-destructing master tape. So when the demo actually came out, it already was more or less old to us. However, I still haven’t totally stopped listening to it - as I haven’t stopped listening to ”Metsä”.

Listening to ”Tämä Ikuinen Talvi”, I’ve noticed a strong viking-metal sound, a little in the vein of Enslaved (those of ”Eld”) but with powerful guitars alterned to humminh ones, like very few bands are able to do (perhaps the last Old Man’s Child and Emperor of ”Anthems...”). Which are your greatest influences and fonts of inspiration?

[Ville] Sounds like a compliment again, eh? If you ask me, I’d say that the demo is not just a little in the vein of Enslaved, nevertheless our attempt never was to copy anyone. Similarities just appeared. I don’t even think that these new Black or Viking Metal bands would be of much influence when considering the actual music-writing process of Moonsorrow, but then again, I don’t know which bands could be. We write music whenever we feel like it, and it can be as well after listening to 70’s prog as after Black Metal, or even after hours of silence. If we however talk of inspirations in general, three bands that certainly have had the biggest effect on what we do are Bathory, Enslaved and Emperor.

How much are history & legends important for Moonsorrow? In which ways those subjects influence your music and in which ways your music should influence the listeners?

[Ville] History and legends are interesting, and I cannot deny their influence on Moonsorrow’s music and lyrics. There are other subjects dear to us as well, but I seriously don’t think that we will ever do a Moonsorrow-release without drawing from history or legends, so I would say that they are more or less important to us. Our music should influence the listeners in the way that they can feel the presence of the glorious past times, or if they’re out of imagination they should at least hear good music. We’re not here to give any lectures about how to think, so I wouldn’t like to see our music inspire an extremist ”pagan” movement or anything like that.

”Taistelu Pohjolasta” is surely one of the nicest tracks taken from your last demo, split in 3 parts. The English traduction of the title is ”The Battle For Pohjola”; seen that I am not so much into the ancient Finnish history and mytology, I would want to know something more about ”Pohjola”, word used also by many other bands in their releases, coming from Finland...

[Ville] Pohjola is simply the old Finnish word for ”North”, an area that usually counts Finland, Sweden and Norway. It’s a strong concept, often referring to the pagan lands of the area, and thus ”the battle for Pohjola” refers to the battle between pagans and christians for the rule of North. As Sweden and Norway, however, were suppressed under christian control before Finland, one can also interpret the text as the Finnish heathens’ fight against the Swedish and Norwegian christians.

Moonsorrow is exclusively formed by Henri and Ville; have you ever though to insert other musicians in the band?

[Ville] Since spring ’99 the entity of Moonsorrow has consisted of three invididuals, a hellish beater called Baron Tarwonen being the newest member. Everything works really well with this expanded line-up, so we at least have no intentions on firing this man hehe. We feel that Moonsorrow is complete at this stage, so to preserve the functioning structure, new members shall be introduced only as session members in live occassions.

What do you think about the other bands under Meat Hook Recs.? What do you think for example about Thornfrost, Kharadrai or Gorewinter (author of a majestic demo-cd entitled ”Buried By Night”)?

[Ville] As I am the one who mostly runs this ”label”, I naturally like all bands on it - more or less (”less” referring to our very first releases). Talking about the best metal bands we have/had, they are Unhola and Gorewinter, and the worthy ambiental acts contain Kharadrai, Mikhail Atom and Lunar Womb (not forgetting its side project called Solar Tomb). Unhola is now signed to Plasmatica Records, Mikhail Atom does his own thing, and I also heard that Kharadrai got signed to a real label. About Thornfrost, I’m not too sure whether it works anymore, but I used to play in it. It would be nice to do something under that monicker again some day, though.

Have you had any interesting proposals by some labels? On what format (cd, 7”, lp, ...) should we expect the next Moonsorrow’s release?

[Ville] Thanks to the sligthly reckless promotion for ”Tämä Ikuinen Talvi”, we actually got several offers from foreign labels. The proposals were all interesting, but only the one offered by Swedish Plasmatica Records was worth considering and so we signed it. The next Moonsorrow release will thus be on CD/LP format, and actually it is recently recorded. It carries the name ”Suden Uni” (a wolf’s dream), and it will hopefully be released in spring 2000.

Surely all the musicians of the today’s Black Metal / Pagan Metal world-wide scene are seen by the mass like fanatics which spread their obsessive creeds through music, making only propaganda (religious, mythological, political...) and bad ”noises”. Do you see yourself as an obsessed man which try to escape its creed thanks to Black Metal? If you couldn’t play music, for one or other reasons, should you express your inner beliefs in any other forms of art? Which?

[Ville] Perhaps I have a slight obsession for my political and religious views, including that ”pagans vs. christians” thing, but it’s not on a level of activism, meaning that I just sing about it (and make noise about it at pubs sometimes...). As I said earlier, I am not trying to make any propaganda; my target is more like to make people think for themselves. If I couldn’t play music, I wouldn’t ”express” myself by trying to play it nevertheless as too many incompetent fellows do already. I would then only continue with our precious Meathooked ’zine, which is more of a forum for different views than any music. If I lost my ability to compose text, to play any instrument or even to make evil voices from my throat, I think I wouldn’t do anything to ”express” myself and my views then, as there is nothing worse than bad art.

How is today to live in Finland? What kind of relationships do you have with the other mew infesting Helsinki?

[Ville] Living in Finland is actually pretty nice, or at least nicer than I could think of living almost anywhere else. We have a proper social funding system (which unfortunately means high taxes, but you can’t win everything, can you?), a suitable number of people around, good beer etc. In general, the climate on the coast where I live is not the best around, as a half of every summer is cool and a half of every winter is warm, and everything between them is simply wet, but at least we do not have any major natural catastrophes. All in all, I like to live here even if it wouldn’t be too perfect. These shores are my home after all. What comes to my relations to other people here, they are somewhat limited as most Finnish people are very introvert and it’s hard to get any contact to them. An exception is when they’re drunk (which Finnish people often are), when everyone is either very talkative and ”social” or very angry and violent, and then it’s impossible to avoid contact with these people. However, I have my circle of friends and they’re mostly whom I deal with.

What Henri and Ville usually do in their private life (jobs, etc.) waiting for their corporal death?

[Ville] At the moment I’m serving my civil (non-military) service at a local high school doing all kinds of things you can imagine happening in a school building. I am fully served in July 2000, after which I’m attending the university to study mathematical sciences with a propable intention of becoming a teacher. Most of my free time I spend with music in a way or another, listening to good albums and demos, (besides playing the bass) playing the drums in May Withers (dismal rock) + in several projects, writing things to Meathooked ’zine and partly running Meat Hook Productions. Besides these activities, I just hang around with my fiancée and friends and occassionally drink a beer or two. Not much more happening in my life, I suppose, but I do not look forward to my death; it comes whenever it chooses to. For what I know, Henri is educating himself to be a professional musician. He plays in several good bands, of which Finntroll (troll metal) and Luokkasota (instrumental prog) must be mentioned, and drinks a lot more beer than most people could. Also Baron plays in many bands, including Gorewinter (battleblack metal), Circus Of Flesh (attitude wrenching) and Kuha (weird progpop). He is the only one of us who has an honourable job, ehh, though I never remember what he was doing.

Moonsorrow has the fame of ”Viking Black M.” band and all the warning followers of Nordic BM acts have supposed that your tracks are based on mythology and history. ”Tämä Ikuinen Talvi” however doesn’t encloses the lyrics, so we don’t know what are the contents of your tracks. Can you share with us about the lyrical subjects?

[Ville] Our lyrics deal with various topics from a heathen point of view. The lyrics Henri wrote for ”Metsä” were strictly about northern mythology, but since then I went to a bit more abstract direction with my lyrics. I already explained a part of ”Taistelu Pohjolasta” in question 4 and I won’t go deeper in detail on that one, but perhaps the rest of the lyrics on ”Tämä Ikuinen Talvi” deserve some dissection. ”Vihreällä Valtaistuimella” is all about nature, our mother and creator, ”Talvi” tells a legend of eternal winter (weather report) and ”Luopion Veri” is a gory telling about how the Finnish heathen folk eventually crush the betrayers who came from the west and forced everyone their faith. ”Kuun Suru” is just an effective title for the last piece, it is a strong name under which one cannot write lyrics. The new lyrics which appear on our debut album several times involve the fight of heathens and christians, just as many verses on ”Tämä Ikuinen Talvi”, but the scale within that subject is wide enough, so the lyrics are not too similar with each other. The other themes I handle on the album could be for instance nature, home, death and those sorts of subjects. Naturally I hope that my lyrics will be interpreted in many personal ways, as poetry as they are, so I absolutely am not trying to explain their meaning.

In the past, to be a ”Black M.” band meaned to be ”satanists” or occultists. Today instead many BM acts are going to sing about legends, folklore, poetry, pornography, political (see to all the neo-nazi bands, for example...), etc.. How do you see this way of performing Black Metal?

[Ville] To me, being a Black Metal band still and forever means to be satanists, as simple as that. Black Metal is satanic music exclusively, and thus, I have awaited to say this until this question, Moonsorrow is not a Black Metal band. I don’t see anything wrong in bands singing about the themes you mentioned (except the neo-nazist subjects which are total idiocy), as long as they can proudly disconnect them from the label of ”Black Metal”. If a band states to play Black Metal but only sing about vikings, there is a major contradiction. Who are the ”satanic vikings” anyway?

If you could kill someone, in what way would you commit the homicide? What are your points of view about the violence between the humans and what do you think about the words ”peace & love” or ”make love, not wars”, etc.?

[Ville] The hypothesis should not be ”if I could kill someone”, for I know that I can kill a person. I just hope that I never confront the situation where it’s necessary to kill for protection of someone, including myself, because I am not willing to go to jail for someone’s worthless life. But actually I think that you meant it ”...without getting caught”, or am I wrong? As the only scenario in which I could think of killing is a severe defense situation, I would go for the fastest and the most effective way. Nothing too violent, just a releasing death. Speaking of violence, I think it is a false way of using power. I use violence only when there’s no other option, i.e. in such a situation where someone in need of protection, including myself, is attacked, meaning that I wouldn’t use violence at all if other people weren’t. I despise violent actions very much and I wouldn’t like to display such myself ever, but unfortunately there are situations in which I’m forced to. ”Peace & love” is much better than ”war & hate”, or what do you think?

I know that some Scandinavian countries (Denmark for sure) in some periods of the year they remember the old viking-hystory, making travels and using old uses and customs, eating and drinking old foods and drinks, dancing and singing old music, etc.. Has also Finland some of these tradictions? What do you think about this way of remembering the ancient glorious times?

[Ville] I think there’s nothing concrete going on on that field in Finland. Of course we have our folk music festivals and a seemingly annual ”medieval carneval”, but nothing that could be compared to what you described happening in Denmark. It seems that Finnish people aren’t used to glorificating their past, which is a shame. All kinds of such events would be a very nice way to escape reality if they were made to look as authentic as possible.

Well, winter is going to end and soon the hot and lighted rays will blind our eyes... How has been the last winter in Helsinki? Do you feel yourself influenced by these natural climatic changes?

[Ville] The last winter in Helsinki has been a joke for most of the time, for the snow has melted quite a few times due to the temperature rising way over 0°C and sometimes it has even rained water! At current, looking outside it seems pretty alright with a few degrees of frost, but who knows when it’s going to change again. I await for the summer already. I don’t know if I’m influenced by any climatic changes, perhaps just pissed off because of the unstability of the coast weather.

What are the future plans of Moonsorrow?

[Ville] While waiting our debut CD to be released, we just hope to keep in touch with some cool metal people and to play as many gigs as possible. After the release, we haven’t planned anything, and why should we? The future will bring what it wishes to.

It’s the end... last words from a bleeding apostate...

[Ville] The bleeding apostate doesn’t say a word for he’s the one we killed, but I would like to use this space for thanking you very much for this intelligent and personal interview! You have done a great job with these questions, and I just hope my devotion will reach your expectations. And to all readers who consider to contact us, do not hesitate but do it! Keep the pagan flame lit! Hail!!!