finnbands: For those who don't know Moonsorrow please describe your band and your musical style in a couple of words.
Henri: We play long songs, we use shit load of distortion and we hate people.
Ville: That's true.
Henri: (to Ville) Your turn.
Ville: I refuse to comment.
finnbands: You've recently been touring with Swallow the Sun and Debauchery. How was the tour?
Henri: I wasn't on tour.
Ville: It was great in all acpects. Nice group of people to travel with in the same bus for three weeks and lots of fine gigs. Some not so fine ones but that happens on every tour anyway. Nice sightseeing around the different cities and lots of tourist pictures.
finnbands: How are the audiences in the different countries? Are there differences for example in Finnland, Germany or Italy?
Ville: I don't really know. It varies there's no real pattern you can follow actually. In some countries you can predict how it's gonna be. Like in Hungary where it's always crazy like hell and we had one gig in Italy there were only hundred in a hall that could take a thousand that looked weird.
finnbands: How did you like todays show?
Ville: It was great!
Henri: It was pain in the ass cause I was handicaped.
finnbands: Handycaped, why?
(both start to laught)
Henri: Because a couple of band members were seriously injured and we still managed to play the gig.
finnbands: What means seriously injured?
Henri: In Markus case his leg was swollen to the size of my leg. He was bitten by some weard bug when he was up north. At the moment his leg is like a tree and he can barely walk. For myself I broke a couple of ribs last week.
finnbands: Oh my god.
Henri: This day I have been mostly in painkillers.
Ville: (Grinning) And he wasn't drunk at that time.
Henri: No, I wasn't drunk at all. (both are laughing)
finnbands: That's when the worst accidents happen.
Ville: He was drunk.
Henri: No, actually I was completey pissed and dropped one meter into a cable box which was made of wood and metal. But things happen and people die.
finnbands: That sounds really bad.
Henri: Try to sleep one night in my pants. No, no that's probably too dirty. I mean like try to imagine yourself waking up every hour from pain.
Ville: That's everyday in this band.
Henri: It's always pain and the next day we will play 'The Cure' covers (to Ville) and you will become the next Robert Smith (laughter).
finnbands: Your can already look back on a bit longer carrer, is there anything you did that you would say it was a big mistake?
Henri: The first album.
Ville(interrupting): In the beginning our first record deal.
Henri: Not the album but the deal.
Ville: We were young and we had to learn and we learned quite fast.
Henri: We were young and we needed the money. (laughter)
We made is shit deal with a shit company who ripped us off.
But in the end if we wouldn't have made this shit deal we would not be here.
So, after all experiences imagine doing three records for Plasmatica Records.
Ville: (with forced smile) Oh.
finnbands (to Ville): I heard you are studying at the moment. How far is your study?
Ville: I haven't been studying for almost three years now. But still hanging on the phone that I could return there one day.
Henri: Future mathmatics teacher.
Ville: I just found that working is much more profitable.
finnbands: So, are you just musicians or do you also have normal dayjobs?
Ville: I have several.
Henri: Let's put it this way: I work in the games industry. It's a long story. You will have a laugh about it because I work in mobile games industry. It's always cool to say 'I work in the games industry' (caugh) mo (caugh) bile games industry (grinning). My normal dayjob is to be sound designer. That's it.
finnbands: What about your best moment on stage or excellent shows you remember?
Ville: Best moments on stage? Hm. One of them happend last week in Belgium. When I realised...
Henri (cuts him off): You are somehow naked. (laughs)
Ville: Yeah, it felt like that. A couple of moments before the intro started I went to check behind the curtain what it is like in the tent and I realised that the tent that had a capacity of ten thousand people was totally full and there were also people outside as well. Then I was like 'What the fuck am I doing here?'
Henri: Meanwhile I was having beers.
Ville: No, it was really great to see so many people on our gig. That never happend before.
finnbands: And one of the worst moments when touring with Moonsorrow.
Ville: We had a lot.
Henri: Norway.
Ville: Yeah, Norway.
Henri: We started to drink at 10 a.m. or something.
Ville: We started to drink when we arrived there.
Henri: And we had to play at 1 o'clock in the morning. We drank like 14 hours, beer and booze and then we went on stage and after the gig when we played like crap we all started to accuse eachother of playing bad. I had a fist fight with Ville and Ville had a fist fight with Mitja and then we got more drunk an settled the thing.
Ville: He actually had a broken jaw bone.
Henri: Oh, that's true. I didn't remember that. The drummer hit me on the head.
Ville: But it was a joke fight.
Henri: Yeah, it was a joke fight. We were wrestling and on some point I had my jaw as hanging freely like not beeing in tension and he accidently put his elbow upwards to my jaw. My teeth went in my lip like half a centimetre. I still have a scar there and I couldn't speak properly for five days.
Ville: But at least he got silenced because during the show day he was talking so much and we got fed up of all the taking. So, we decided that we have to be silent for thirty minutes. It was a challenge and to emphasis the whole thing we also shut down the lights and just had a candle.
Henri: And suddenly the Norwegian gig arranger came to the room. He opend the door and asked 'Do you guys want a beer?' And we were sitting there like this. He was like 'Okaay' and shut the door and left. We are Finnish we don't like to talk.
finnbands: Yeah, he must have thought this.
finnbands: You just released your Album in the beginning of the year but do you already have some new material?
Both: No.
Henri: There's never new material you try. When we start to go for a studio album it's always from the scratch and you can never predict what the next album will sound like. We've done some stuff a couple of weeks ago. That was in vein of an earlier album but just made for fun. Let's see if the material will ever be used. As I said when we go for the studio we always start from the scratch and what ever we like to listen to at that moment it will affect our songwriting. There are a lot of 'The Cure' influences. Poor Robert Smith. I mean he must be really poor in live not monetarily but c'mon this guy has been singing for 25 years how crappy everything is.
Ville: Maybe it is and he's the only one who can see the truth. (laughter)
Henri: This mansion with playboy chicks and pool doesn't bring me happiness what can I do? Write more songs and get more money. (laughter) I like Robert Smith.
finnbands: So, I'm done with my questions. Is there something you want to say to...
Henri (interrupting): We can go on praising Robert Smith for half an hour!
Ville: Can I ask you a question?
finnbands: Yes.
Ville: Did you enjoy the finnish summer? (laughter)
[Editors Note: The weeks before the weather was rainy and chilly with just a few days of sunshine ]
finnbands: Not this year! But we had the same weather in Germany. So, what can you do...
Henri: But at least we don't have this things here that we in Finnish call 'saksan ampiaiset'
finnbands: What's that?
Henri: German wasps.
finnbands: You mean the big ones.
Henri: Yeah, they are so bad so we had to call them not regular wasps but German wasps. They are evil.
finnbands: We have a different name for them but I can't remember the English name right now. In German they are 'Hornissen'
Henri: Ah, Hornets.
Ville: He loves all kind of bugs and things like this. (grinning)
Henri: I've been in our parents summer cottage three weeks ago and even I've been there many times before it was always fun. But this summer the hornets, this fucking beasts, not the German ones but the Finnish equivalent had built a couple of nests underneath the door. So when we were sitting outside eating it was living hell for me because I'm scared, I hate them and I'm allergic to them. The combination of those three is hell.
Ville: I hope you get something out of it.
finnbands: I hope so too. Especially because the background noise is so loud. Thank you very much for the interview.
Moonsorrow
live pictures
June 2007
Interview by Sonia © finnbands.com