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Turisas



Terrible faces - kind hearts



Prologue
Out of the locked doors of “Tavastia” there were heard the sounds of violin and accordion. The concert was to begin in one hour. Listening attentively to the sounds of “Homeguard And Beyond”, the last composition that Turisas played during the sound check, I tried to imagine what I was to face during my interview with Mathias Warlord Nygard. My mind pictured a terrible creature in furs and with a face covered with blood, and a Celtic axe atilt. In the long run I had to call Mathias to understand that the decently dressed young man (without any metal chains and all the stuff) standing in the opposite corner of the bar was the eat and horrible Warlord...
Turisas
The name Turisas comes from Tursas, the God of war in Kalevala. When did you first get interested in history and mythology?

My interest .. I remember already in low school grades being fascinated by it, but I think it wasn't until I was 12 or 13 when I read Kalevala and got into it and also got inspired by Amorphis. If I had to pick one band that had the biggest influence on this band it's gonna be Amorphis. Their music was something groundbreaking, what they did in the 90s. There are a lot of bands nowadays doing the similar thing. There are a lot of people in metal bands right now that grew up with that and really are into that sort of music.

Do you think you limit yourself by your stage costumes and overall battle look and prevent people from seeing the music you create broader?

Yes, the problem is the image might be a turn-off for many people. Well the image is the first picture you get of the band, like a band dressing up in firs and painting themselves... I am sure a lot of people will be turned off by that and bothered to look deeper into it... but I still think it's not the essence of the band, just the outer shell you see first, when you look through magazines.

But it's also a way to attract attention of a CERTAIN audience.

I think there are people who fall for that. First they're not interested by the image and stuff but then they listen to the CDs and they come to see the live shows, even people who don't really go into the CDs kind of get it when they see it live, it all comes together.

You have had some very colorful, resource demanding shows in the past. How would you want to expand what’s happening onstage during a Turisas problem if money, location and people were not an issue?

Oh, that's a fascinating idea. I think I would enjoy to go in the direction of a build up show. For instance when you come to Tavastia, you just see the band play, there's just the band and the audience who came to watch, and that's all the depth to it.. I would want to break free off that. I would like to work on some big production if money was not a limit. So that it was not just about the band playing songs but to make the whole thing look like a musical theatre. Kind of what you see at musicals and opera. Big props, but kind of music is part of it but there would also be a show part to it, dancers, video installations. To use different medias, instead of just having a band standing on stage playing songs. To create something for all the senses, in each area of stage arts.

How many people are usually involved in your show?

Right now we don't have a real big production anymore, we don't do shows that we used to have with all kind of circus on stage, like dancing girls.

Why not
Turisas
anymore?


We do it occasionally but we don't want to get stuck into that. It's only something we've been doing in Finland and obviously when we go abroad we can't financially do that. We can't afford to pull tens of people in a single show. But I think that you also learn to not always fill the stage thinking that more is more, it's better to concentrate on different areas. Right now we are 6 in the band, and pleased about how it goes.

There are a lot of difficulties band have to overcome in the beginning of their career - looking for a label, management, financial troubles. What was the most difficult time for Turisas?

I think in the real beginning, when you're not up to take the whole world and are just playing for fun it's not difficult actually because you don't have any ambitions. It's a nice hobby and it's not that difficult really. But at the point we are now.. this is the most difficult stage in the way. The band takes all our time, it takes a lot of resources, and we have to concentrate 100 percent on the band. But on the other hand it's not what keeps us alive, we are between a rock and a hard place financially, it's hard to get a monthly wage from playing in a band. So I would say that's the difficulty at the moment.

So is the band your only job?

Well for me it is, I haven't been doing anything besides the band for a couple of years now, but also probably 60 per cent of that is band management and working on production, sending emails, that kind of a job rather than rehearsing and playing.
For the rest of the guys, some are at schools or universities, some are working now and then, they have to lead a bit of a scattered life in a way since they can't tie themselves into anything too deep.
I am looking forward to the point when we can break out of band-only duties - when it's much more relaxed.

How far do you want to go with the band? At what point do you think you could relax and try to concentrate on something else?

It's hard to say. You grow all the time, your goals change. There's no absolute state to achieve. If you look at it, when we started out we only wanted to get a show at the local club in Haamenlinna, and now we've just come back from the European tour, and I am sitting in Finland's most legendary rock club to do the show. And right now I am not feeling a bit starstruck or very enthusiastic about it. At some point all we wanted was just to record a demo tape because our friends released a demo on a c/casette - that was a media in those days and that was so cool because you could even have printed covers on it! And that's what we were looking forward to. We got it at some point but we didn't want to stop there. The same can be applied to where we are now. There are aims for this year, aims for next year, and then comes the hole snow
Turisas
ball effect.

You created a genre of Battle Metal. Which bands do you think also fit the closest into the niche besides yourselves?

I am personally not bothered about all the battle metal fuss and everything going around it. Our first album Battle Metal was a striking name, but we never thought it would grow into anything more. I am not into genres rating and labels for music and all, if there's a band that plays 100per cent one style it puts you into some kind of a box. I don' t want to play 100 per cent battle metal... or metal even, I want to be able to do silly disco covers and put in some electronics, or accordeons, or folk music, or jazz... whatever comes into my mind.

So might Turisas sound as a completely different band in the future, with you having such broad tastes in music and a will to experiment?

I don't see it that way either. There is still a strong essence to the band. But I don't yet want the band to stay perfectly the same all the time. There are bands like AC/DC who you want to stay AC/DC and they should never change. Or Motorhead, they should still release the albums similar to like 30 years ago. But I don't see our band as one of those. We want to rather be the kind of band that modifies the sound on each album and another principle I have is not to relase albums every year if you don't have anything fundamentally new - just for the purpose of releasing something. We change - the second album is already different from the 1st one in some parts. Not changing to attract more people is not safe. You have to live forward and not get stuck doing the same thing for years and years.

What are the objects you can't do without on tour?

Can't do without on tour... (pause) . There's not that much you need on a tour. You have catering, you have breakfast, it's actually when you're coming home you feel lost as you have to do shopping yourself and your fridge is not filled up...and there's no catering at 7 so you can just go and eat. That's a bit strange on tour - everything seems to be easier than in normal life. It's in a way like a holiday when you don't have to think too much about the small things. There are people who are hired to be there for you and see to it that you don't need anything.

So you're not a kind of person to pack bags?

No, I mean you don't need much. Well, clothes, and there are laundry services on the road so you can do the laundry somewhere. And I like to have several books to read, but that's something you can easily buy wherever you go.

How do you spend your free time on the road?

All of our tours have actually been a bit hectic. We've been doing some support tours, when you can't take a look around, you stick in one place and wait for things to hap
Turisas
pen. You can't decide the schedule yourself and have to live by someone else's. It's usually waiting around for action without a chance to go anywhere. I like to if I have the time, 2 or 3 hours, to see the city and sometimes it really kills me to come to a place I've never been to before and all I see is the bus and the backstage. Or a bit of a street in some industrial area. That's the downside of it - I can say I've been to Barcelona but I never saw any of the city or architecture. I only have time to take a walk around if I am traveling without the band for my own fun on holiday. Then I read a huge sample of information on the place beforehand and make myself a schedule of what I want to see or where I want to go. On tour you prefer not to get stressed about trying to see something in those 2-3 hours of free time you have.

In some interview you mentioned you can play a lot of instruments. Have you got any personal preferences?

Oh. Well, I m not some kind of technical virtual and I never aimed to become really skillful at some particular instrument anyway. I played a lot of different instruments, but I would not like go on tour with a band playing base or drums or something like that. But since I am writing music for all those instruments I have to have the basic understanding on how the instrument works and what you can and can't get out of it and how things will work together. My main instrument is playing with keyboards and computers basically when working on songs. I am far from being a skilled guitar player, yet... Every now and then I pick up a guitar... it' just a different way to write songs - experimenting with different instruments. You come across ideas you wouldn't come across if you were stuck to one instrument.

Which folk or ethnic instrument's sound do you find most pleasing?

Of the folk and ethinic instruments the combination of woodwings and accordeon is really a distinguishable sound, really Irish or Celtic when you have a melody which goes in unison on a recorder or flute. It's a sound that always brings a lot of associations to you so it's really easy to make people think about, for instance, the mountains of Scotland. It's very easy to achieve in a way. Much easier than achieving, for instance, on the new album we wanted to have an element of Slavonic influence into it, but it's a bit harder to get that across to the people. Irish and British music has been on a raise and there is a bit too much of it, so easy to come up with. Certain instruments can make a whole tune sound Irish even though it's actually not! But in any instrument there is a kind of grandior, like with french horns you can use them only in one line of a track to get a majestic feeling to the whole song.

And finally, what do you think your life would be like if you lived in the 14th century?

14th century? (pause). I don't know. Probably I'd be living somewhere in the forest cultivating land, and my life would not be too adventureous. There are great tales and storybooks, but when you look at the reality, there would be just simple life. All the battling would be just fighting over women and beer in a tavern!

18.11.2007, Tavastia, Helsinki.
Interview by Jana B.
31 янв 2008
the End


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