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Charon



Natural Way Of Self-Expression



Prologue
A tour bus may be the most common way for bands to travel in Europe and America, but nearly nobody uses that in Russia. So believe it or not, for us the interview with Charon in Moscow was the first time we actually got inside this unexpendable attribute of a big rock’n’roll lifestyle. Well, what can we say? A really nice means of transportation which has everything a person needs on the road, and in which you can comfortably spend hours, especially when you have such a nice company as singer Juha-Pekka Leppaluoto…
Charon
We’ve checked out your touring schedule for this and last year, and it looks really impressive. Do you remember how many gigs you’ve done in the past couple of years, and what were the best and the worst ones?

I think the worst gig was in Belgium, in Gent. Nobody knows us in Belgium, and there were only like 10 people in the audience. (laughs) That was really bad, and our guitar player Lauri (Tuohimaa) was throwing up during the gig. (everybody cracks) He had some kind of disease in his stomach going on, so it came from both ways. (laughs) And the best one was in Belgrade, that was really great. I can compare it to the first gig we had in Moscow or St. Petersburg in 2003, the same hysteria going on.

In your opinion, what are the components of a good gig? What is required for a gig to be good and memorable?

I think the audience makes the gig, that’s the most important part. I don’t mind if there are technical problems or something like that, that’s the live situation, that’s what happens every time, and that can’t spoil the gig. I like the way the audience is acting, and of course, the interaction between the band and the audience, that’s the most important thing. And it doesn’t matter how many people are there.

What can you say about your previous gig in Moscow in May last year? You looked very tired onstage…

Yeah, it was my fault. (pause) Maybe we drank too much the previous night, to be honest. We took it as a lesson, we don’t do it anymore, because it’s really stupid to spoil the gig because of having fun the previous day. And the audience doesn’t know that you had a rough night going on, they come to see the show and expect the band to be what they’re looking for. We were really ashamed of that gig, even though it went pretty good, but we try to do our best every time.

It’s your third time to play in Moscow, so we guess you have had the chance to see a bit of the country. What do you like about Russia, and is there anything that you dislike?

The first time we were here I didn’t like Russia at all. I got a huge fever, and I was really frustrated. The second time it was better, and now it feels even better, because we’re getting a bit used to the Russian lifestyle, we are getting aware how the people at the customs and the authorities behave. It doesn’t even matter that the police robbed us when we were driving here. (cracks) We had to give them some money. (starts speaking in a low and irritated voice) “You’re all drunk, you’re all drunk, including the driver!”

Wow!!! Is that really what happened on your way to Moscow?

Yeah. Everybody was passed out here in the back of the bus, and they were like, “Nobody can drive this bus! You gotta pay me!”

Unfortunately, that’s what Russian police are like…

But I like the country. We had a day-off last time, and we spent the whole day sitting in a very nice park next to the Moskva river, where Russian families and companies were making food and drinking wine, it was a really nice day.

You’ve obviously seen – let’s call them - Russian die-hard gothic girls from the stage and outside the venues. Do you ever get tired of always being in the spotlight and in the center of public attention? Does it often happen that fans cross the line and their affection gets annoying to you?

(laughs) That’s
Charon
such a fresh thing for the band. It’s totally different from the way things are in Finland, it doesn’t happen to us every day, so of course, it feels nice!

Judging by your lyrics, a lot of people think you are very depressed persons and have a broken heart all the time. How far are they from the truth? And how much the persons that people see onstage are different from the same persons at home?

They are really far from that. (laughs) I feel myself as a positive person in my personal life. And the lyrics and how I perform onstage are a different thing. In the lyrics I try to write the things that are hard to tell the people, so I try to bring every one of these issues out in my lyrics. It’s some kind of exploring myself.

But why did you choose this particular way of self-expression? Why explore the dark side, if you are a positive person?

I don’t know any other way to express myself. That’s the most natural way for me to write.

How much is the image important for a band like Charon?

What image? (laughs)

OK, let’s put it this way: do you develop the way you look with the help of a stylist, or do you feel free to look and dress any way you want?

No, we do whatever we want. It’s always been like this, we have always decided ourselves what to wear except neon colors. (everybody laughs)

In the booklet of the latest album “Songs For The Sinners” you published the spelling of the band name: [haron]…

Yes, because we are frustrated with the way the Finns are saying it: [sharon]. (cracks)

For the third time in a row you use a different designer for cover artworks. Were you dissatisfied with the works of Niklas Sundin and Travis Smith?

No, we just wanna try something new all the time. It doesn’t mean that the old covers are bad or the artists are bad.

Which is your favorite Charon cover artwork?

I like the one for “The Dying Daylights” (2003).

It’s very different from the rest of your covers…

Yeah, I like it very much, but it’s also very close to Katatonia covers…

The new album was produced by Mikko Karmila, while on your previous album “The Dying Daylights” he was listed as an assistant producer. Does it mean he had more influence on the music and the sound this time?

No, he was the producer who only said the word when he believed something was wrong. When it sounded good, he didn’t say anything. It was because our songs were so ready when we went into the studio, it was basically finished stuff. He didn’t have to say much in this case, except for some vocal lines and pronunciation matters.

The music on “Songs For The Sinners” is a bit different from your previous albums. Why did you use so much female vocals this time? And who is Jenny Heinonen that is doing it?

It has always been an important part of our sound, so we didn’t hesitate to use the female vocals more this time. But I think it’s the last album where we’re gonna use so much female vocals, because we’ve discussed with the band that we want to sound more like we are in a live environment. And we want to give more space for Lauri to sing.

What do you do with female vocal parts on stage? Do you play
Charon
them from a mini-CD?


No, only in the song “Colder”, and Lauri is doing the rest of the backing vocals. The live situation doesn’t have to relate to the album very much, it can be quite different.

We’ve noticed that none of your albums have a title song. The “Downhearted” album (2002) doesn’t include the song “Downhearted”, and the same is true for all your other CDs…

It’s a little bit corny, I think. When we choose an album title, we’re trying to find a sentence that describes the album in the best way. Actually our drummer Antti Karihtala is the one who always comes up with the names for the albums.

Sitar on “Songs For The Sinners” is played by Tomi Koivusaari from Amorphis. How did you get him to do this job? Are you friends with Amorphis?

We got to know each other when I was singing in Amorphis for a little while. Me and them had an intention to do an American tour with Type O Negative a year ago, which failed because Peter Steele got sick and cancelled all the dates. Then they were calling me and asking if I wanna be a member of Amorphis. But I said I lived too far and it was impossible. If I’m going to be in a band, I wanna be involved in the band, and not just by speaking on the phone or rehearsing alone at home. But we rehearsed with Amorphis a few times, and I got to know the guys, so that was easy asking them to play on our CD.

We’ve recently talked with Mike Gaspar from Moonspell, and he was telling us about his impressions from visiting and recording in Finland. He says that Finland has a very healthy metal community, where all the bands are helping each other. Do you agree with that? Is this really a big group of friends? Or do you have enemies on the Finnish metal scene?

I think it’s only in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, where everybody’s playing with each other. It’s not like that in the north of the country, where there only us in Raahe and a few more bands in Oulu.

We remember that last time in Moscow you didn’t like it when a reporter called your music “love metal”. How would you describe the music you are playing? Do you feel that Charon is part of the same scene that also includes HIM and The 69 Eyes, or do you feel you rather belong to some different scene?

That’s the scene that every reporter wants to include us. That’s OK, because the audience has to know what they are paying for. But I don’t feel like we’re playing love metal, it’s more like gothic rock, even though I don’t like the word gothic, and I don’t feel gothic myself. It’s just rock-oriented metal music.

Charon has existed for 14 years now. Many bands get burned out after such a long time, and music is no longer interesting for them. How do you manage to keep making music fresh and exciting for yourself? Isn’t playing in a band some sort of routine after all this time?

(agitatedly) No, every song you compose is a new one! It’s always fresh! I don’t know, I like doing work like this, it’s creating something new. I don’t feel frustrated with music.

Does it mean you’ve never had the mood like, “To hell with this, I don’t wanna do this anymore?”

Of course, sometimes I have it. But it comes easier for me to work if the record label calls me and says, “You have a studio booked in two months!” I work better if I have some stress on my back.

By the way, why did it take
Charon
the band more than five years to get the first record contract? You had so many demos and promos out in the 1990s, but it wasn’t until 1998 that you released the first CD…


I’m glad that Charon didn’t get the record deal earlier, because it seemed like the band wasn’t sure what they’re gonna do. When I joined the band in 1995, we started to develop our own style. The first album is like a collection of the demos we had made, so it kind of shows the way we covered. And it wasn’t easy to get a record deal in Finland at that time. It only became easier in the late 1990s, and now every band that has been formed is going to get a deal, which is a shame. (laughs)

Now record labels think like this, “A metal band? From Finland? OK, here’s the deal!”

Yeah, yeah! I don’t wanna sound like I’m loving myself too much, but if a member of a popular Finnish band decides to put a project together, he can be 100 percent sure that he’ll get a record deal. It’s no problem. For Poisonblack it was no problem at all, because Ville Laihiala from Sentenced is in the band. You ask a label for a record deal, and you get it. It’s a shame, because there are so many new bands, and they are only lasting for one year, after which they stop and quit the business.

And when you were starting Poisonblack, did you know that you were gonna quit after the first album? Or did you have an intention of going further?

When Ville asked me to join Poisonblack, we had an idea of making just one album and put this to rest, because that’s the way how we could enjoy the stuff. I knew that I didn’t have more time for it, because we live in separate cities, and I have Charon. I don’t wanna do anything else than Charon except some guest vocals. Or I’m gonna do a project, I want it to be totally different.

And what about new bands in Finland? We mean the bands that don’t feature any famous musicians. Is it easy for them to make it?

It’s really easy as well. We have a huge old school in our hometown, which is filled with rehearsing rooms, and there are about 15 bands playing there. But from what I heard, it’s a problem in Helsinki to get a decent rehearsing room. As to Raahe, there are a lot of players, and we have a kind of association that we are hosting, where we arrange jam sessions, put musicians together, and organize concerts.

Your first album “Sorrowburn” (1998) is very hard to get at the moment. We know it is sold out, and your old record company refuses to give you back the rights. Do you see any solution to this problem? Is there any chance of seeing that album again in stores?

I think it’s a time issue, we have to wait until we get the rights back from the Danish label (DieHard Records). As far as I know, Spinefarm has bought master tapes from that label, so we’ll see what we’re gonna do about it.

You have worked with Spinefarm for a long time. Do you like being signed at that label? Or would you prefer EMI Finland or Nuclear Blast or some other bigger company?

Yeah, we’ve been thinking about Nuclear Blast or Roadrunner or something like that. But we’re still gonna release an EP through Spinefarm in January next year, there will be about six new songs and a couple of live tracks. We have so much to do with our gigs at the moment, we have gigs scheduled for one year ahead, so we’re gonna be on the road. But we are still looking for something bigger. Even though it’s no
Charon
t always better that way, because a small label can be a better solution for the band to get noticed. Let’s imagine that we go to BMG – but we are too small for that label, and they wanna promote big names, and the smaller ones are only to wash the fuckers’ money. We have tax-free bands at that label. It’s not the optimal situation for a small band, which I consider we are, because we’re not Robbie Williams. (laughs)

If you were a record label boss, whom would you sign first of all?

Whom? (laughs) I guess, something fresh, something new, something acoustic.

Acoustic? Are you getting tired of loud guitars?

No no no! I’m just trying to find something opposite to do once in a while. Now I have a project band that I’m doing with our drum player, and we have 6 musicians in the band – three singers, one of them playing piano, plus two acoustic guitarists and one electric guitar and bass player, who is, of course, Antti. We’re playing Nick Cave songs. That’s a really great alternative to this kind of music. After doing the same stuff for many years, you get the need to do something else.

How have you as musicians changed since the release of your first album?

I’m afraid that we haven’t changed a bit! (laughs) We’re still the same children. These are still the friends that I got when I was 10 years old.

Honestly that’s the first time we’re hearing from musicians that they haven’t changed! That’s fantastic! (everybody cracks)

(imitates a grumbling aged voice) Oh yeah, we’ve changed in the artistic way, of course! (back to the normal voice) But seriously, we’re the same children, we’ve been together for 20 years, and they are my only friends. If somebody starts to change or mentions it, we’re like, “Get back to the ground!”

And as always, please say something to your Russian fans in the end of this interview…

(sighs) What do I have to tell?

Anything.

I don’t know… It’s really nice to be here again. And it’s really nice that we get requested here, and we can come back every time. We’d like to be here every year, because I’m starting to like this country more and more. Of course it sounds corny, when musicians say, “I love your country!” Everybody says that, but I mean it. You know that I hated it the first time (laughs), like I hate Finland every time when I come back there.

Why is that?

It’s too familiar for me. I like being in new places. That’s why I like sitting in the tour bus. And that’s why I prefer playing live to working in the studio. Even rehearsing new songs is more rewarding than being in the studio, because in the studio you just record what you’ve rehearsed. And there can be moments of great pressure in the studio, people act so differently there, you have schedules and stuff…

But anyway, when can we expect a new full-length studio release from Charon? You said an EP is due in January…

We gotta see if we can collect enough ideas. I have three to four new songs, and Lauri has four. I don’t know yet if it’s gonna be an EP or an album that will come out in January. We just want to release an EP because it will give us time to seek something new, for example, a new record deal. But maybe we will continue with Spinefarm if they can offer us something more. It seems like Spinefarm know how to promote bands like Children Of Bodom and others playing the same style of music, but I feel like they’ve done everything with us now and can’t help more, so we have to move forward.


Special thanks to Me La More (www.crimsondawn.ru) and Marianne (Art and Design) for arranging this interview.

Interview by Roman “Maniac” Patrashov, Ksenia “Wolfin” Khorina
Photos by Ksenia “Wolfin” Khorina
April 29, 2006
27 èþí 2006
the End


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