Interview с Reflexion : DARKSIDE.ru

Your band was founded 10 years ago, but your first album “Out Of The Dark” came out only this year. Why did this take so much time? Why couldn’t you release your first record a few years earlier?

Juhani Heikka (guitar): There’s no need to hurry. (laughs)

Juha: There were lots of reasons. There were periods when we were active, and there were periods when we were not so active. It took a long time before we found the right record company to work with. We held negotiations with other companies over the years, but the right company was found only two years ago.

Your first single “Undying Dreams” was a big success in Finland, it was in top 20 for several weeks. But what can you say about the full-length album “Out Of The Dark” – did it live up to your expectations as far as both music and commercial success are concerned?

Juha: According to the information from our record company, it’s been successful enough. It wasn’t a big success, but it’s only our first album, and taking that into account, it’s doing pretty good.

Why did you call the record “Out Of The Dark”? Do you think that the years before its release was a kind of dark period in the history of the band, and you remember it now with a heavy heart?

Juhani: Yeah, sort of. We played for 10 years, and nobody knew us, and now we’re trying to present ourselves to the people who haven’t heard us before.

Juha: And these years were indeed dark. (laughs)

A lot of people believe that if a band comes from Finland and plays metal, it will be offered a record deal immediately. How much truth is in that? And how did you personally get a deal with A1 Metal? Why not Spinefarm or anything else?

Juhani: We have had negotiations with other companies, but we found out that this small label is more suitable for us, it’s maybe flexible enough.

Juha: It means that we don’t have to sign long-term contracts. Smaller com

panies are good for their flexibility. Both big labels and small ones have good and bad sides, and we decided that we wanted to start from a small company.

Juhani: It’s easy it get drowned, when you’re on a big label with lots of bands. With a small label it’s easier to communicate. You can get in contact with them personally.

Will you continue working with A1 for the next album, or will you search for a bigger label this time?

Juhani: No, we’re going to continue with them.

How would you describe the music you’re playing? Journalists often describe it as “love metal”, but bands like Charon don’t like it at all when they are called this way…

Juhani: Actually I don’t think that the first album is metal at all. I would describe it as hard rock. That’s my opinion.

Juha: People want to set us into the metal category, gothic metal or anything like that. But I would not agree that this band is metal, it’s more rock.

Can you tell me in a few words how does a song develop from the original idea to the studio version? How much does it change in this process?

Juha: Yeah, it changes a lot.

Juhani: It’s like night and day, it’s totally different.

Juha: The songwriting process in the band is very long. Usually it begins with the acoustic guitar and ends with hard production work. We spend a lot of time on arrangements, it’s the biggest job we do, and of course, the final product is very different from the original version.

Juha, you say that when you write lyrics you get inspired by everyday life. But your songs are mostly about broken hearts, tragedies and other unpleasant emotions. Do you mostly write about yourself? Or do you just look around and get inspired by other people’s lives?

Juha: Both of them. I do write about my everyday life and what I see around me in everyday life, but it goes in combination with some dreams and fantasies that

I have in my head. Mostly the lyrics are quite simple to understand, there’s no big secret behind them. It’s all there when you read them. I like to write like that, I want people to understand what I’m singing about. I don’t want to hide anything behind the scenes.

Was there any particular event that inspired you to write “Sleeping With Death”? This song has really heavy lyrics…

Juha: Yeah. We wrote some other lyrics for this song, but I found out that these lyrics have a really close meaning to me. Life isn’t always that beautiful, there’s diseases and death, you never know when your days are gonna end, and in this case I know what I’m talking about. It’s a song that’s based on my personal experience.

Is there a chance that you will write a happy song one day? “Something like “I love you, and the world is beautiful”?

Juha: Yeah, why not? If I feel like it, then of course. The fact is I’m in love, and I mostly am happy, but it doesn’t feel right to write about these things. Writing lyrics is like therapy, and mostly I put my bad feelings on paper, not good feeling.

Juha, you write on the website that music has ruined and saved you many times. Can you explain what do you mean by that?

Juha: Music is a vicious circle. You can’t live without music, it’s in your head. I tried to quit this thing so many times, but it just keeps following you. It ruins people, I’m nothing without my music, but I still want to have some other life, I like other things beside music. I love to do music, but I hate to do music at the same time.

Before recording your first album you did as many as eight demos. Do you have any plans to re-release or re-record your demo material to make it available to a broader public?

Juha: No, not like that. Maybe some clips will be uploaded on the website, but not for an official release.

What kind of music were you playing in the beginning, when

you were still called Barbarianz? How much in common does it have with Reflexion of today?

Juha: Barbaric metal! (everybody laughs)

Juhani: It was heavier, more riff-oriented, more in common with heavy metal.

Juha: The music has changed a lot. That’s just a natural process when you have played 10 years together. And we’re still developing all the time.

What kind of reaction did you have when you were offered to play in Russia? As far as I understand, this is your first gig outside Finland…

Juha: Actually it wasn’t like they asked and we came. We had talked about this for years, but earlier it wasn’t possible. There were money and time issues involved, but now we’ve made it! When we realized that we are really going to Moscow, it was indeed a big thing for us. It’s our first live performance outside Finland, and of course, it’s very important.

Your website says “Out Of The Dark” will be released in Russia soon. But what label will handle it?

Juha: Irond Records. There’s no release date yet, and further information is not clear to us as well, and we don’t want to post any unverified information on our website.

Juha, you performed live a lot with other bands, such as For My Pain and To/Die/For. How much are the gigs with them different from your performances with Reflexion?

Juha: I wouldn’t say a lot, because I’ve done two gigs with For My Pain and just one with To/Die/For. When you’re doing so few gigs, it’s always great to be onstage, but it’s too few to get a real feeling. When I describe my feelings on stage, it’s always with Reflexion.

On the website you call For My Pain “a therapy project”. What is the reason?

Juhani: He got tired of us. (everybody laughs)

Juha: When we did the For My Pain album (“Fallen”), it was a time when we didn’t work so much with Reflexion. I had a lot of spare time, and the music kept c

alling in my head, so I had to put my energy somewhere. For My Pain became that “somewhere”, and that’s what I mean by “therapy”.

Do you think the success of For My Pain helped Reflexion gain more exposure?

Juha: Of course it did! For My Pain includes a lot of guys that have been doing music for years in bigger bands (Eternal Tears Of Sorrow, Nightwish – ed.), and of course, it helped us. I wish it would have helped us more, but I don’t deny that it did.

And will this “therapy project” have any continuation? Right now it seems that all of its members are busy with their own bands…

Juha: There are no plans for anything like that.

And now it’s time to talk about the future of Reflexion. On the band’s official forum you said that the new material is going to be heavier than “Out Of The Dark”. How will it sound like? And what is the reason behind these changes?

Juha: It’s gonna be heavier and also lighter, it’s more pop and more rock. I think the correct word is that it’s more variable, more interesting.

Juhani: And more complex, maybe.

Juha: There’s more to listen to, for example, there are longer songs, and there are more guitar parts in them. The album is going to be a little looser as far as the songs sound now.

Juhani: It will still sound like Reflexion, but with new spices.

And finally - Reflexion has been around for 10 years. How many musical goals have you achieved? And what do you want to achieve with Reflexion in the future?

Juha: Our big achievement is that we’re here now, we’re living our dream.

Juhani: We have achieved many goals during the past few years. We had our first record out, we played a big gig with 30,000 people in the audience, then this first gig we’re playing outside Finland, and of course, when our single got into Top 20 – that was one of the biggest achievements.

Juha: As to the future, we want to make a great album with great songs, we want it to be interesting and have more to listen. We have some gigs in Finland coming at the end of the year, then we are to make the album, and the rest we will see in the future.

Special thanks to Stas “Mendor” for arranging this interview.

Interview by Natalie “Lynx” Khorina
Questions also composed by Roman “Maniac” Patrashov
Photos by Dmitry “Ward” Kulikov
November 25, 2006
17 дек 2006 the End

Reflexion

Journey To Tragedy