Wednesday, February 29, 2012

"Busting The Candy Machine"

Studio Diary- Day 0 minus some. Trollhorn´s private diaries, February 2012.

Note to the reader: Despite of the two (!!!) prologue- esque writings, this is how this blog kinda really starts. You probably already read the two other posts so it´s maybe a bit futile to tell you to start from here, but at least better late than never, right? :D

No- one wants to be a has- been. That´s exactly how I thought when I thought about Wacken and the main stage. Can you actually pull it off year after year playing Trollhammaren, NINE YEARS after it´s release? Thought so. While I personally think our albums get better by each (with a semi- exception on Ur Jordens Djup, but that´s another story) release, I also painfully realize that we´re slowly sliding into the category of the band who has made something in the past and somehow manages to still get good slots on festivals on that basis.

Sometimes it´s really hard to play in an semi- known band; On the other hand you kinda know you could probably pull it off by releasing some crap demo material or whatever circus music ( ^^ ) but on the other hand, sometimes you find yourself wondering what will the audience think of this and that, what are they expecting and are you going to make a musical suicide if you do song X or riff Y. While we´ve never though a flying fuck on the fact that "this might cost you your record deal, wife and that car loan you were finally granted with a shit- expensive interest", it sometimes scares me how easily people could be tricked with some "ok- ish" material, putting out an album in 2 years, doing 2 tours, 19 t- shirt- designs and call it a day.

And this is exactly why I feel like doing the complete opposite. It´d be such an easy job to name bands who have wimped out in order to preserve their earned status. You know, to maintain the audience and give them what the want and safe and familiar and HOLY FUCK WHAT IS THIS I DON´T EVEN? GET A FUCKING REAL JOB INSTEAD OF MILKING THE FANS, THANK YOU. With Finntroll, we could probably make an album every second year. Would it be good? No. Would it get us a slot in WoA main stage? Probably, if we agree on playing Trollhammaren and Jaktens Tid. Would that make us sleep better? No. Maybe with a bit more expensive pillow, though. But the thing is that we´re at least not getting any bigger than this, so why not to continue making the music we like instead of pleasing the major audience and earning the WoA main slot 2013?

But here´s the deal- try to do music with this kind of Motley Crew. 90% of the people are touring constantly and when they come home, they have their own lives, families, hobbies and tax- sheets to fill. We´re not exacly 21 anymore. You seriously think that when a 30+ year old guy comes home after spending 6 weeks in a filthy bus drinking heavily, the first thing he thinks at home is that "Wow, I can´t wait to see the guys again and meanwhile I´m gonna do some serious music for my band right away!!!!11" And then the physical part: One guy lives in Germany, one in countryside. Some have kids, some have very consuming day- jobs. Some have other bands while others are dying to get up the stage as soon as they return home. (Yes, there are some, believe it or not!) We are a very different bunch of friends, where each other have their own ambitions and priorities which don´t usually meet something than the others have. For example, my definition of a relaxing weekend is quite different to Vreth´s. And Beast´s 2- hour travelling to work isn´t exactly like Virta´s. You get my point. Everyone has so much to do in order to even maintain their normal lives that actually sitting down and even thinking of writing music is a fucking Guinness World Record- kind of event.
We like each other, see each other "voluntarily" to have beers and stuff like that but most of the time we´re tied into something else than writing music for Finntroll.

Except for now.

Since last November, we´ve carefully started to discuss about the process of a possible new album. With no- one taking the R- word into discussion (yes, recording), we´ve noticed to have more frequent phonecalls on "this one riff I did" and "I might have a small piece of song, would you be interested to hear it quickly if you don´t have anything better to do" and "heyyyyy, well, should we like...uhm, meet some day and do some music?".

DUDE, YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW LONG I´VE BEEN WANTING TO SAY THE SAME.

Today, in two hours Routa and Tundra are coming to visit and we´re gonna have our first official  "making music- sessions". We always call them "sessions",  you see. I´m fucking thrilled to hear what the guys have done, thought and I want to hear their opinions on my stuff too. I haven´t actually felt this involved in Finntroll since goddamn.....ages? Look mom, I´m playing in a BAND!

Fuck yeah.

2 comments:

  1. You HAVE to tell me why... Why Ur Jordens Djup isn't to your liking?! I mean I listen to it while driving to work, while working, when going to the gym. If it wasn't for this album, I would have taken my project into a completely different direction... And I've been listening to it for years...

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  2. Ur Jordens Djup suffers from bad production and way too long songs- we should had trimmed the songs more in order not to become so dragged. For example, 6 minutes of "En Mäktig Här" is way too much retrospectively speaking.
    The material in itself ain´t bad- just those two things make the album not that keen for myself. But as I´ve said before, it´s an album which had to be done in order to learn how to do Nifelvind better. And it´s still a product of us, and of course I´m still proud of it. Not just that proud that I am of many other releases we´ve done!

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