Interview mit Mathias Lillmåns von Finntroll

It took you seven years to finish „Vredesvävd“, longer than ever before in your career. Did you take a real band break or did you just work longer on the album this time?
Well, first off after we released the “Blodsvept” album we toured a lot, went everywhere we could with that record and after that we sort of went straight on a 10-year Anniversary Tour of the “Nattfödd”-album. We had been writing some stuff during this time, but it wasn’t 100% right, felt like something was missing. We decided to do a little more gigs and just wait for inspiration. Went to a bit more off-the-normal-grid-gigs, like Japan, South America and even Africa. At this point we were in 2017 already and hadn’t found that right sound for the album.

We decided to just keep playing and when material that felt right we would slow down with gigs and make the album. In the summer of 2019 me and Routa had some interviews and we were asked when “we will do a come back” and I decided that it’s enough and that we need to have the album out in 2020, otherwise people will forget about us, so I sent an email to Century Media and asked for a deadline for a 2020 release. We got the deadline and then all of a sudden we started write good stuff again! So here we are now a year later with a finished album that will be out in September!

Were the many other albums that the the musicians of FINNTROLL have produced with other bands like Moonsorrow, Shape Of Despair or in your case …And Oceans in the meantime a consequence of this „rest period“ – or the reason for it?
Somewhat more a consequence. I wouldn’t say that these bands had any greater impact on the delay. Not finding the right inspiration for new FINNTROLL music actually more or less allowed us to concentrate on other stuff. (laughs)

Do you feel a certain pressure of expectation when the new album comes out after such a long time?
Definitely! I think it became some kind of a vicious circle at some point after that 3-4 had passed. With that big a gap you can start feeling the pressure of making something worth the wait, which also led to us being more picky with the riffs that led to us taking more time to write, and so it went on and on for a while.

I have the feeling that the Pagan scene has also changed in the meantime, not necessarily for the better. While FINNTROLL always stood for sophisticated music that was presented with a wink when it came to troll ears, many bands in the scene now only make party music, which unfortunately can no longer be taken seriously musically. What do you think about that?
I think that bands are entitled to do what they want, but I never saw FINNTROLL as a band that would make 20 “Trollhammaren”-songs in a row, no matter how much people would want us to. FINNTROLL has always been about evolving and introducing some new elements to each release without loosing the original sound.

You were on tour with all these bands quite often – do you still see yourselves there, do you still fit into this scene?
After 2010 the whole scene got so oversaturated with folk metal bands that just were in it for the money, so we decided to take a step to the side and tour with a little bit different bands. Having Rotting Christ and Samael warming up for us on one tour is a good example of that! These folk bands are still good friends and I bet we’ll be touring with some of them in the future again, but we are not interested in being defined by just one genre.

The album itself sounds very typical for FINNTROLL, I would say – so nobody should be disappointed. On the other hand, it sounds almost more typical than the other albums, each in its own way: „Ur Jordens Djup“ was very Black Metal-influenced for example, or „Blodsvept“ had some really crazy parts. Do you also see it that way, and if so: was it a conscious decision to continue a bit more „conservative“ after all the years passed, or maybe a consequence of the break?
When we started working on this album we wanted to create a bit faster, rawer but still melodic album. This for some reason took us a bit back in time to our black metal roots, this also made it sound like a more serious album.

The title „Vredesvävd“ means „wickerwork of anger“, right? What was the idea behind it, and what is the album about, also in the context of the cover artwork?
This time in the lyrics we are focusing on different types of journeys, both physical ones you do geographically, but also spiritual journeys. All the stories seem to be related to or done in some kind of state of anger, hence the name “Vredesvävd” or “Wrath-woven” that we have been calling it in English.

Mit dem Laden des Videos akzeptieren Sie die Datenschutzerklärung von YouTube.
Mehr erfahren

Video laden

YouTube immer entsperren

For the track „Forsen“ you have released a music video in cartoon style – aesthetically it doesn’t necessarily fit the image you have of FINNTROLL. How did it come about and was everyone in the band directly convinced of the idea?
We had been talking about doing a “deluxe lyric video”, but couldn’t find anyone suited for doing it. Then all of a sudden we realized that 10 years ago we had an animated video for the song “Under Bergets Rot” done and decided to contact the same people again. They (and we) were immediately interested and “Forsen” is the result. Couldn’t be happier with this decision!

The album should have been released in August, but was postponed to September. What was the concrete reason for this?
This was actually a production delay in the making of the physical album. Staff cuts and other unforseen stuff due to the COVID-19 situation. Nothing that we could do.

How hard is it to accept that the long awaited release date will be postponed again?
Luckily it was only a month and it feels like people understand things like this can happen in times like these.

But the Corona pandemic is not over yet – how are things in Finland?
We have been a bit more spared here and things are returning back to something resembling normality (slowly).

Do you fear negative effects on the success of the album?
I don’t think it will have any effect in terms of sales and success of the album itself, but we can definitely see the impacts on our touring schedule. Everything has been moved with at least half a year into the future. And even though the album has been out for some days there hasn’t been any release shows announced yet.The earliest you can go on tour is in spring, and if you are honest, there is no guarantee that a tour can take place then. Everybody knows that in business most of the money is earned on tour. How hard does the current situation and uncertainty about when you will be back on stage hit you as a musician financially?
Since I am personally getting 90% of my income from touring this has been very hard on my personal life. I have had to find other sources of income and if we can’t get back on tour soon I don’t know what to do.

So, you make your living with music?
I have been totally depending on music the last 15 years (as I stated above), but luckily I figured out how to pay most of my bills now and started my own “vocal academy”. I’m doing screaming lessons over Skype and these are doing pretty well! So to anyone interested reading this: contact my official pages on social media and we’ll book a session!

Thank you for the interview! Please let us do a short brainstorming in the end of this interview:
Black Metal: The 90’s
Climate Change: Finnish weather changes
Your favorite Album at the moment: PH – Osiris Hayden
Humppa: Eläkeläiset
Belarus: Passport trouble at the border (cool show though!)
The first drink you order in a bar: IPA beer
FINNTROLL in 10 years: Probably working on our next album. (laughs)

Once again thanks for your time. Take care and stay healthy! The last words are yours – is there anything left you want to tell our readers?
Stay strong and safe! FINNTROLL is coming as soon as this crap has passed!

Mit dem Laden des Videos akzeptieren Sie die Datenschutzerklärung von YouTube.
Mehr erfahren

Video laden

YouTube immer entsperren

Publiziert am 9. Oktober 2020 von Moritz Grütz