Turisas. Battle Metal. 3 words who are since Turisas' glorious marches through Europe stand for something special. Something extra. Folk, viking inspired metal on one side, intelligent songwritting, epic warcry's and discofans on the other hand. With "Battle Metal" they set a new standard in the too crowded (finnish) viking metal scene, and with "The Varangian Way" they set cruise for other horizons. The last year they did a huge promotour (several times in the UK, biggest European festivals, support for Iced Earth/Annihilator,...). So it was about time to ask mr. Matthias Warlord a little bit more of last years expierences.

 

 

Quite allright. Been keeping busy, and email interviews have piled up. Trying to sort this out while sitting on the train on my way to rehearsals.

 

Yes, a lot of things have happened this year. I think there was so much energy stored up after our lengthy recording sessions for "The Varangian Way" which came to an end this spring, that we just wanted to go out there and do other things as much as we could. It was such a huge relief to have the master finished after months of hard work, which towards the end and under heavy pressure became quite heavy. We headed out for festivals and the excitement of being back on stage really showed. In autumn we got out touring, first in the UK on our own and then on the mainland supporting Iced Earth together with Annihilator. Now it looks like next year is going to be far more intense with already three months of touring booked for spring.

 

A lot of things happened. In three years time we grew from more or less a band no-one knew, to what we are now. I’m happy things didn’t quite “explode” on the release of the debut, but we really worked hard for the years in between to make ourselves a name. What comes to the time in between albums, I don’t see it as particulary long, as some seem to think: We could have released a second album much similar to the debut in under 12 months from it, but what would have been the point? We wanted it to take its time to clearly be a step forward from that. I think there already is far too many bands putting out mediocre or even bad records because of trying to keep a “healthy” release schedule. There’s no way you can keep up a standard like that, or at least not progress without being forced.

 

At the time writing this, quite a few months have actually passed. Sorry about that! The reactions have been great and pretty much as expected.

 

Yes, it came totally expected, that some of the people who liked the first album would neccesarily not like this one as much. However, this album is much more demanding and will not unfold as easily as "Battle Metal". Some may genuinely like the songs on the debut better, but some may also not have given "The Varangian Way" the intensity it requires, thus loosing interest. On the other hand, I think we have a lot of people not really digging the debut, but loving the new album. I think it’s still better to share opinions than to please everyone. It would be easy for me to write an album of songs like "Battle Metal" and "To Holmgard And Beyond", and I guess a lot of people would love Turisas just like that, but to me it’s not about giving people what they want – for that you have pop music. I write about what I find important and in a way I feel it requires, and in the end the opinions of other people don’t matter that much. Maybe not the best way to sell records, but it’s a very dangerous way to take trying to please everyone...

 

Yes I am. Everyone is free to submit ideas though. However, as it is now it seems to be working quite well and I think as long as everyone is happy and the results are good, there’s no need to change how we work.

 

I love the creative process in the studio, but I hate the time pressure because of small budgets etc. It’s a strange thing. I always seem to take a bigger bite than what the resources allow, resulting in the only way to pull it through is to push yourself to the extreme. The studio session recording the album was over three months and I did around 12-16 hour days without a day off the whole time. During the last week when mixing "The Varangian Way" at Finnvox, I was also doing the last programming, and even recording some stuff in the nights, so it ended up in me working for 48 hours straight, sleeping 3 hours, 48 hours of work again, 3 hours of sleep for the final 10 days with "The Varangian Way". It surely isn’t the best way to work as your creativity is definetly affected by the strain and pressure you’re under, but you can’t really leave it either. If for nothing else, this is the reason I wish people would buy our albums, so that we could be granted bigger budgets and work a bit more relaxed. But knowing myself, I guess I’d just go for a bigger bite again and find myself in the same situation hahaha. 

 

I think a big part of this band is about playing live. It shows you maybe a slightly different angle to the band to what might come off from albums. We all enjoy ourselves on stage, and it shows. Touring is cool too even if there’s quite a lot of bullshit around the 60-90 minutes or so on stage. Let’s see if I change my opinion by next summer...

 

It has really come as a big surprise to us. I think it’s about being in the right place at the right time with the right package.

 

Not really. It’s nice to be able to play sets of different lenghts. A 30 minute set has a very different approach than a 90 minute set, it’s so compressed and there is no time to build up anything with the audience. You just have to go on stage and win over the audience from the first song. Of course it’s nice when having more time to build up a balanced performance as 30 minutes is really only about playing the 4-5 songs that get the crowd going and doens’t maybe have the chance to be as diverse as the full headlining sets.

 

Wacken in 2005 was pretty cool yes! We played in the middle of the night and everything really fell into place there. This year we were stuffed in the tent there and even if it was a really good shows and an extremely good audience, I think it was a bit strange as there was double the amount of people outside the tent who couldn’t fit in. It’s quite hard to point out best live-experiences, as often it happens that when you come off stage and aren’t too thrilled about how the show went, the feedback might be totally opposite.

There are numerous big open airs to mention, but I still think some of the really greatest shows have been really small headlining shows in small venues. I could mention the first UK-show ever in London some years ago, which seemed to have some sort of a magical atmosphere, also the headlining tour we did there in September had some really intimate moments and crazy fans with all the paint and regalia showing up. We played in Arnhem in Holland at a small venue called Goudvishal a couple of years back – actually straight after Wacken 2005 – and this was also a small intimate and energetic show. I also have good memories of sitting up all night drinking beer and vodka there...

 

Putting together an European tour is quite a puzzle. We’d love to play all over the planet, but when some countries are not included in the tour schedule, it’s usually because a) there was no interest on the bookers end or b) routing / schedules did not match.

 

We just got back from the UK-tour after which we did a supporting tour for Iced Earth together with Annihilator all across Europe. We’ve just announced a headlining European tour for March-April 2008 after which we will be touring in the States for a month just to make it back for summer festivals. So there’s not much sign of things easing up hehehe.

 

This track was something we played live for a year or two just for fun and we never expected it to go down so well. A lot of people were begging us to record it and when recording the new album, we did. We didn’t want to release it together with the album though, as obviously this toungue-in-cheek track has nothing to do with the "The Varangian Way" –concept. We also wanted to put the album out first, so it could stand on its own and not become an album remembered for a strange coversong we did. I think releasing it as a single together with the video this autumn was quite a good way to do it. Now it’s been wrapped on the Director’s Cut –version of "The Varangian Way" as bonus, released in October together with some live DVD footage and other stuff.

 

 

Hah, maybe our fans are just quiet and calm by nature? Nah, I think it just lacks the kind of persons who become the forum moderators and starts kicking it alive. Our job, however, is to tour and write music, so this is a service which is there for the fans and what they make of it is up to them.

 

Thanks, and sorry for the delay on this one. Everyone reading this, check out the upcoming European livedates for 2008 and see you on the road!