With (former) members of Amorphis, Dark Tranquillity, Insomnium, Dimmu Borgir and Sentenced, CEMETERY SKYLINE has formed an all-star project that makes you sit up and take notice. In this interview, keyboardist Santeri Kallio talks about the gothic rock of the 1990s, the pros and cons of an all-star project and CEMETERY SKYLINE’s future plans.
I find the cover of your album aesthetically very beautiful – however, skyscrapers (in the shape of a cross) would not be the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of your Scandinavian countries of origin. Why is it still the perfect cover to illustrate “Nordic Gothic”?
Well, I like the idea that the cover is not actually from Scandinavia. The artwork represents more of a dystopian city where this all is happening. It would have been quite generic just to put out a building from Sweden or a cottage in a field from Finland. The artwork as it is now is much more universal – something everyone can dive into and feel the atmosphere throughout the music. The lyrics are very easy to transfer to the listener’s own adversities in life. So, in that sense, the Gothic vibe Metastasis (the cover artist) created for us fits pretty much perfectly into a „Nordic Gothic“ context, in my opinion.
The album title itself seems like a no-brainer, but it’s often the simple things that come to mind last. How did this title come about?
The album title came from the lyrical context. The album is about Scandinavian loneliness and self-chosen solitude, struggles in life, and contradictory observations growing up and aging. Mikael, who created the lyrics, suggested “Nordic Gothic” pretty early in the process, and we all in the band thought that’s a pretty much perfect title for these melancholic stories we are presenting. It was hanging there a long time – pretty much the whole process. We bounced a few other ideas around, but this one seemed to fit and represent the context best. And it is always good to trust the lyricist’s vision about the title since he knows the context always deeper than any other member in the band. I think we approved this as a title at the time we started to get artwork from Paris.
How did it come about… is, of course, interesting in general: You are five musicians from two countries and together you are active in ten different bands. Forming another band doesn’t necessarily seem like an obvious decision – especially during the pandemic, when you couldn’t even come up with something like this over a few beers in a bar…
I think we all had a passion for melancholic dark rock – like Type O, Mission, Sisters of Mercy, to name a few. We all have been in metal bands for a very long time, and they are more based on heavy riffs, complexity, and aggressiveness, so I think everyone got excited about the fact that this could be something nobody has done, even though we’ve lived through the golden era of gothic and dark rock scenes in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. This was different enough to give it a shot. I don’t think things would have gone that far with just another melo-death project compared to where CEMETERY SKYLINE is now.
How long or well have you known each other, or how exactly did this personal constellation come about?
We were touring with Amorphis and Omnium Gatherum in North America in 2018. The bus was floating somewhere in the night in the Rocky Mountains, and Markus and I started to get drunk. We spoke through the night about how we should make music together someday, as we both knew we have a pretty similar sense of humor and visions toward music. Two years later, I got a phone call from Markus. He called me up and asked if I would still be interested in a project that honors and respects the “spirit” of Type O and Sisters of Mercy, Mission, and Killing Joke. That sounded very promising, and I said yes. After sending a couple of demos back and forth, we thought of our mutual friend from Sweden, Mikael Stanne. He said yes pretty much instantly – he is a great fan of this kind of music from the 80s and 90s. We kept doing demos with vocals, and Mikael suggested Victor from Dimmu Borgir – a friend from Göteborg – to play bass. He was also very excited about our vision of the genre and joined immediately. Then, looking for a drummer, an old friend from the North, Vesa from Sentenced, popped into our minds since we knew he knows this drill and is a relatively free bird besides his new band “The Abbey.” Vesa said pretty quickly that he would join. And there we have it, CEMETERY SKYLINE’s lineup was ready to start.
The pandemic should at least have ensured that you all had more time at your disposal – forcibly. How did the songwriting and album recordings go?
The first start with Markus (still no others than Mikael) was very interesting since nobody knew what we were actually doing. Markus dropped a demo track for “Violent Storm” and “The Coldest Heart,” and I think I dropped “In Darkness” and some others. Then the demos were sent to Sweden for Mikael. We really did not know how he would approach the songs with vocals – he is a growler or screamer, after all. After the first vocal track he dropped back to us, we were sold. His performance was something totally different from his other band, which is metal. The approach was dark, melancholic, and the main thing: melodic. The vocals somehow wrapped up what we were really doing. And now that we knew how the vocal performance (aca style) would be, it was much easier to compose further and narrow our musical “box,” so to speak. With this method, we made our first production demo to get interest from record labels – more to see if anyone would be interested, to be real. We sent the demo to the five biggest and best metal companies in Europe, and they all immediately said yes. That was a very positive surprise, and we kind of got confirmation that this is actually happening. Later on, the album recording was a pretty normal album tracking process and took, excluding all the breaks and pauses, about 8 weeks in total, including the mixing. We basically did everything remotely, one by one, except Markus and I, as the songwriters, were present for the drum recordings to make sure the drum tracks were solid enough for everyone to keep on tracking remotely without an external producer.
For you, it was the second band alongside Amorphis at the time – unlike Mikael, for example. Did the whole thing suddenly seem like a stupid idea when the pandemic was over and the shows and tours with your actual bands started again? How well does CEMETERY SKYLINE fit into the schedules of you and the others?
Well, CEMETERY SKYLINE was not formed because of Covid; actually, we founded it already before Covid, so I have no particular answer to this. But yeah, surely all our other bands – DT, Halo, Amorphis, Dimmu, Inso, OG, and so on – will take some time of their own. On the other hand, they are such big bands that the productional planning and booking are done almost a year ahead, so I would think there are plenty of opportunities for CEMETERY SKYLINE to fit into the calendar. Also, the excitement in the band is huge, so maybe we can also demand some time for this too. We actually already have, and no booking agent had a problem with this, so we have already booked almost 10 shows in Finland, including festivals and clubs, and one for ProgPower USA. Europe is giving us some offers, but at the moment, that territory is still under construction on our behalf. Time will tell.
Interestingly, several of your colleagues in Amorphis have started new projects during the pandemic. How do you explain that – and did you know from each other that you were going to start different projects?
I have no idea how these albums all popped up at the same time, but I think when Esa from Amorphis released his solo album, it may have kicked off the snowball effect for the other guys to start thinking about their solo albums. For me, it did not affect CEMETERY SKYLINE in any way – we had already agreed with Markus that someday something would happen and formed the band before Covid. It may very well be that the extra time during Covid gave us the chance to do something else than Amorphis. Omg, there were so many Amorphis shows that got canceled; after 150 canceled shows, I stopped counting. Basically, we were sitting at home for two years straight, so I totally get why people wanted to do some music projects instead of just staring at the wall.
What difference did working on the CEMETERY SKYLINE album make for you – personally, but also from the keyboardist’s point of view – compared to working for Amorphis?
The biggest difference was, of course, the fact that we did not use any external producer when building the album. So we had total freedom of expression in that sense. Also, the music is not metal, so there is much more space for keyboards, and considering the genre we were aiming for, the keyboards can be very present. Also, the fact that we only have one guitar gave me more freedom to experiment with my tracks. There were plenty of keyboards in both Markus’s and my demos already in the first place, so it felt natural to keep them there, so to speak, instead of cutting them out, which is very common in the metal scene. Keyboards are more like a spice – a cherry on top – element for the intros and c-parts. I also mixed our preproduction demo for record companies where the keys were loud and clear. We also selected, after a sound engineer competition, Alexander Backlund from Fascination Street Studios not just because of the very good overall sound but also because he understood the role of the keyboards in this band pretty much immediately.
In general, I would be interested to know how you approached the songwriting – as far as I know, none of you have written music in this genre before. Do you listen to certain albums first to get into the vibe, or how did you get into the right mood to write this music?
Absolutely, we did not listen to any nor tried to copy anything. We have already lived through the golden ages of goth rock and dark rock, so the atmospheric and spiritual approach was already there – in everyone’s head and hearts. We just composed songs that could fit into the genre we spoke about, like melancholic, atmospheric, and gothic soundscapes, in the spirit of these legendary bands, to honor them and to honor the times in the 80s and 90s in this kind of music, not to copy anything. Making something that is already made would have been way too trivial for our band, with musicians with 30+ years of careers in the business.
Did you write exactly the songs that ended up on the album, or are there already ideas for more songs … and therefore for another album?
We have a few leftover songs from „Nordic Gothic“, which are actually of the same quality as all the songs in „Nordic Gothic“. Time will tell whether we will release them as separate singles, an EP, or maybe create a sort of deluxe edition. We have not decided yet, but I can promise that those songs will also be heard in the future, and people can enjoy a little bit more added to the „Nordic Gothic“ context. The next album… I have not given it much thought for that now, so let’s just enjoy the debut album release, reviews, feedback from people, and some touring. When the time is right, we will (guarantee) start working on the new album, but as said – in the future.
If so … how is it all going to continue if there isn’t another pandemic (let’s hope not)?
Next year, some shows, but so far, we don’t really have any big touring plans. But if the urge and the pressure get too big, or we get a very good support slot offer from a big band, we may have to think about it too. So far, we are trying to make the shows we have booked as good as we can, with the proper productional level they deserve. And the audience can really enjoy „Nordic Gothic“ as it is supposed to be heard live.
Can we still hope for a tour from CEMETERY SKYLINE?
Shows, yes – a tour, most likely not. Mikael is releasing DT and Halo albums right now, and I don’t think we will have the resources or time to go on tour with CEMETERY SKYLINE. On the other hand, as said, we have multiple festivals booked in Finland with a four-show club tour. Also, ProgPower USA 2025 is confirmed. Time will tell if there will be more shows still, but I think everybody is up for it since the excitement in the band is high!
If it won’t be a headliner tour … which band (no matter if realistic or unrealistic) would you like to support with CEMETERY SKYLINE?
There are so many… Depeche Mode, Ghost, or even Sisters of Mercy? Let’s wait and see what’s in the cards!
You also revived KYYRIA in 2023. How did this come about after the band had been on ice since 1998 – and what can we expect from it? New music? Tours?
I think the time was right… a quarter of a century… 25 years. We’ve been thinking about it many times, but now was the time. The reunion tour was a hell of a lot of fun, and as I planned beforehand, we needed some sort of redemption from the past, as the breakup was not that beautiful in 1998. I think we all got our personal redemption from the bitterness and anxiety that the sudden breakup back in ’98 caused. The tour went as well as it could; we played to full houses, and the audience was ecstatic about it. We may release a live album from the tour, but nothing more is set for the future.
Thanks for your time – let’s finish with a short brainstorming session:
Ville Valo: Legend, put Finnish metal on the world map
Kamala Harris: Hope she wins
Your favorite „Nordic Gothic“-song: The Coldest Heart – with its funky pianoline.
Vinyl: Lets Make Vinyl Great Again!
If „Nordic Gothic“ were a car – which type? A Hearse with Cyber Truck twist
CEMETERY SKYLINE in 10 years: On stage at Royal Albert Hall
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7. November 2024 Moritz Grütz
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