"Hotel Interiors Present"

Somehow it struck me.

The problem with "Rivfader" was that while there was nothing wrong with the actual song, it was played in so high key that it sounded too "light" to the other´s ears. So I took an hour to re- record all the stringed instruments again in different tune (transposed, not down- tuned) and blatantly pitched manually all the keyboards. Then I added a bit more variation to the last chorus and gave it a spin.

The result was uncanny. Going from C- minor to A minor did not actually make it sound heavy -like the other songs-, but I could also go lower in the places when the original riff clearly needed it. And, if you play guitar or bass, you know how much nicer it is to be able to use more open strings.

So, I boldly renamed the song as "rivfader_demovoxVITUNKOVA.mp3" ("vitun kova" would be directly translated as "fucking awesome") and posted it to the guys. An hour later I got an SMS which said "Rivfader_VITUNKOVA on oikeesti ihan vitun kova!!!!" (...".is really fucking awesome!!!!").

Trouble well spent. Moral of the story? Sometimes you can´t see the forest from the trees no matter how far- sighted you should technically be. Also, Blodsvett was greatly appreciated. This is awesome!
Now I need some coffee and a small break from composing alone- don´t want to end up repeating myself too much. Or I might call Tundra and ask him to drop by later if he´s cured from his Czech tour hangover by then....then again, knowing him, he´ll be having the same hangover still at thursday. :D

Later, peeps.

PS: Don´t forget to participate on the question "How are YOU imagining new Finntroll- material sounding?" on Facebook!

"Hotel Interiors Past"

"Rivfader säger, nu ska vi äta någo kyckling

Nu ska vi äta någo kyckling
Och vi tycker det är GOTT!
Och vi tycker det är GOTT!"

-Trollhorn, 2012 a.y.p.s.

Usually, there are no lyrics done before music. Then I tend to use some old shit. Like, for example mentioned earlier, one new song went in 6/8 so I just took Blodnatt´s lyrics and used them. But sometimes there´s nothing old which would fit the exact rhytm I´d want to demonstrate in "how I imagined the vocal lines to sound like". So, enter complete and utter bullshit lyrics!

This above-quoted line is the chorus of "Kyyppari" which fits like a glove. Everything is always debatable and I don´t want to give super- detailed instruction except for some certain parts where certain timing is absolutely necessary. And this part was CRUCIAL to have this certain timing, so I just took the first words that popped into my mind, twisted them a bit to match the pattern even better and that was it.
It seems that I need some lunch, I guess.

On the other hand, "Blodsvett" got completed this morning. After I spent four (!!) hours trying different things from certain point onwards, I woke up this morning and realized which of them I should definitely go with. And when I had recorded that, I instantly knew how to proceed.
Oh, and there´s a guitar solo coming up.

I wonder what people will say when this album is going to be out. It´s really hard to say if this is the same band that did Vätteanda and Svampfest, but more of the band who did Mot Skuggornas Värld. Then again, every time I start to listen to the new songs thinking if this is going to be too "straight- forward" album, I tend to be positively surprised with the lurking evilness behind.
I´m going to promise myself I´ll do some faster shit now, otherwise we´ve got too much of that groovy shit. Even though how good they are supposed to be, no- one wants to listen to an album which has only straight- forfard mid- tempo- ish punk songs with palm- muted guitars. :D
And folk! We definitely need some more folk. Luckily the three songs I´m working with are all very heavily based on that stuff. Let´s see!

I guess it´s Nexro tiem then. Seven finished songs already and studio starts in three months. Do we actually have time to think about them with the whole group and make them even more better together? I really hope so.

"News"

Don´t tell my boss but I accidentally Finntroll the whole day.

Nexro is completely arranged and cleaned from crap riffs until 2- minute mark and I spent the rest of the day doing a new song. (!!!) We´ll call it "Blodsvett" for now.
It started as a cheap Amon Amarth (!!!!!!!!) riffing, but evolved out to be quite sporty piece in the true Finntroll style (tm). But then that bad Amon Amarth- riff got kicked out as I started to hate it, and I replaced that with a completely new, good main riff. Today´s wisest decision.

Add that to the "upcoming list" in your head, now I gotta flee home from the office.

MOUNTAINS!

"Visited By IRS"

(This summer has been busy as fuck, everyone being on vacation at different times, which has left us not so much time to do music together. However, something has been done indeed. So hear, hear!)

1. Prologue

Did you know that I have 142 game music soundtracks, of which roughly 25% are official soundtracks and the rest ripped out from game files? My most beloved soundtrack is the game music rip from World of Warcraft, containing every single musical snippet ever existed in the game.
Which are a lot. 1722 files, to be exact. I usually put it on shuffle when I´m driving my car and enjoy the orchestral soundscapes of Azeroth while trying to not to lose my temper in that usual traffic jam.

So, why am I telling you this? Because I spent one week of my summer re- arranging, polishing and tidying my collection and uploaded it into a cloud where I can stream the right into my mobile phone or tablet. Some might say I´m insane, but I´d rather use the term "enthusiast". My wife tends to lean on the looney description, though. Good thing I´m already married; if you´re not, I suggest you still keep on pretending you like her music collection and "are bored with yours right now, so just put on anything you want, honey" for now.

No, that wasn´t what I supposed to tell. I was supposed to tell you some updates for the new Finntroll album, that´s right! Routa has made one semi- ready song now, and me and Tundra finished one of Tundra´s half- made song. Or rather, buttraped it with Balkan influences! (Yes, we´re apparently Trollfest now. Or Finnfest? Trolltroll? Nevertheless, I´m sure you will like it. In fact, I´m pretty sure it has some potential hit material within.)

2. To the point, Batman!

Speaking of hit material, I´m starting to be convinced this is actually going to be the best album we have ever released. Apparently 65% of the material is now written, and each song has turned out to be almost better than another, having individual hooks and melodies to remember and they all groove like David Hasselhoff on poppers.

To wrap it up for you, in May we had:

 

1. Rivfader (ready)
   
2. Marilyn (ready)
   
3. Rocklolbster (old version which was ready at that point)
   
4. Nexro (total mess, not nearly finished)
   
5. Tomboijohnson (somehow later this became Jorma and...Jorma, well, disappeared?)
   
6. Jorma (??? :D )
   
7. Soutu (same situation in May and in August)
   
8. Tonttuparaati (killed in action)

So, what has happened? It´s August and we have.....

Ready songs (5 pieces):

1. Rivfader
2. Marilyn
3. Rocklolbster a.k.a new title, "Piraattilolbster" (new version, complete but needs demovocals* recorded and that´s it)
4. Halkodisko
5. Jorma (or Tomboijohnson??) a.k.a new title anyway, "Kyyppari" (complete but needs also demovocals*)

 *(I´m going to the office at Saturday to do the vocals, which means that they are 100% finished demos then)


Not ready songs, but certain when finished (3 pieces):

1. Nexro (60% complete, main melody finally nailed, arranging is a mess, absolutely no more riffs needed)
2. Routa´s song a.k.a new title, "Kiguli" (70% complete, arranging is a mess still, need to sit down with Routa and Tundra)
3. Soutu (40% complete, not sure if it´s good until the point it stops and nothing is written since. Main riff is awesome, though.)

Uncertain (3 pieces):

1. Tonttuparaati (this has been done to death, turning it into 6/8 shuffle made it sound like the first Covenant album. Maybe I´ll do it, maybe not. Probably not.)
2. Samin uus, a.k.a Tundra´s new song (no idea of the process, I just know he´s doing "something")
3. Punkki  (a.k.a Routa´s (unheard) punk song which might fit combined with one punk melody- idea I have.)

3. Epilogue

We´re probably going less synth, less producing and polishing this album, and aiming more towards a rougher production. The package you will hear will be much simpler this time, as the arranging and synthetic ear- candy in (especially) Nifelvind is pretty much unbeatable for us. So, while others paint themselves into the corner, we´re eating our way out of it. And yes, you can draw parallels to Kivenkantaja- Verisäkeet- leap if you will. Or even Now, Diabolical, if you will. We are skipping the "11th ending of this riff is having a different crash cymbal here" and "let´s add a third synth bass here to emphasize that seventh quarter- note of that riff on the last round". Instead, we´re bringing you mountains.

MOUNTAINS, I SAY.

This album shall bring them to you. And to Mohammed. Be warned.
(In fact, it will probably split Mohammed and whoever stands there in fucking half. Hey, he asked for it after all, according to that phrase.

MOUNTAINS!

MOUNTAINS!

THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUM...oops.
  

"Sleepwalking"

Oh boy, have the last couple of weeks been interesting or what? At least in the Camp Finntroll, I can say. And, if you know your Poirot, you´d say "I say!".

Another other way of arguing besides "the silent treatment" is the traditional verbal flaming, mockery and threatening. Which, of course, never happened, if you ask me as there´s a line one must draw before all this ends into sounding like a fucking metal- soap- opera. And the end of the line is here, sorry about that. Let´s just say everything is quite fine- ish again and no- one quitted the band after all. Besides, you don´t really give a fuck about that drama anyway. At least you shouldn´t.
Also, the quarrels were never concerning the whole band but rather a couple of members only clashing against each other´s views. So, spread out, nothing to see here, I guess. Which is nice.

To nicer things: Some new stuff has been made! While me and Tundra turned his song into something....rather, ehm, Bungle- ish (and he´s still not certain about that idea, hehe) we also decided to ditch "Tonttuparaati". They sounded so much alike that we thought it would be better to do one good song than two stretched semi- ok- ones which are too close to each other riff- and groove- wise.

Another song, "Halkodisko" got it´s name from the Finnish word "Halko" ("log") and...well, disco. While the latter part should be quite obvious to you, the former part is an abbreviation of the term "Halolla Päähän"- beat we tend to use too. So, as the direct translation would be "log into the head", it´s rather more like a visual image of the drummer playing fast 4/4 beat with the kick drum in every beat instead of every other one. Just imagine the drummer having logs instead of drumsticks and beating the FUCK out of the kit with them with extremely exaggerated up/ down hand- movements.

Some examples of "halolla päähän"- beat would include:

Hurriganes (FIN) - Get On (1974) (mind the lyrics!!!)
Demented Are Go ("UK") - I Wanna See You Bleed (1996)
Larharyhmä (FIN) - Tsingis Khan (2003)
Finntroll (SWE) - Under Bergets Rot (2010)

If you ask me, it´s pretty much the grooviest drum beat on Rock/ Punk you can imagine. Which explains why I shove it everywhere. Sorry about that, really.

What´s next? Oh yeah, Spa! No, seriously, we´re going to spa with the band in 15 minutes. :D
Most of you have probably been in some kind of "company summer /christmas party", "company refreshing day out" andyouknowthedrill. Well, I thought we´d get a fucking Finntroll- refreshing- day too! :D It all started when I was in that particular spa with my wife, and I got this crazy idea of getting all the bandmates there and going to this "wellness- section" with them, having fun and relaxing in steambaths and whatnot. One thing led into another and suddenly, thanks to our awesome label manager Jens, I actually got it arranged and we´re actually going there!
This is going to be so fucking cool. Seriously, take a look at this place. :D
 
So....now excuse me while I put on my white and fluffy bathrobe and enter the world of different saunas, steambaths and girly asian scents with cheesy music.

*leaves the room stylishly, Austin Powers- theme song playing in the background*

"Honeymoon Suite"

Apparently, some members of the band now refuse to talk with me.
What is this, a fucking kindergarten?

In between: Working Titles, a.k.a "mynewriff.wav"

Did you know that when bands make up "working titles" for their songs, they use a LOT of other bands´ names for naming them?

Why? Mostly because one riff reminded the composer of a certain band, or it had the "feeling" a bit similar to another. It usually strikes at the point where you have to give the bounced- out file a proper name instead of "mynewriff42.wav". So, this riff had the vibe of early Morbid Angel at some point? No problem, we´ll name it "morbid.mp3" before archiving or sending.  Plus, it greatly helps you to remember what it was and how it sounded. Especially if you archive everything ever done, like me.
At some point Marko from Moonsorrow ran out of "bathorys" so he started to name the songs and ideas as (freely translated) "nicebathory", "kathory", worldsbestbathory", "bathowar" and so forth. Actually, "Bathowar" was the working title for "Jumalten Kaupunki". And "Unohduksen Lapsi" from the same album was called "Thyrfing". Suprised? Don´t be. Everyone does it. I´m just stating it aloud. :D

So I use a lot of bandnames in my riffs, sometimes because they are very obvious or sometimes I have to come up with something, so even a small hint goes. You have to have a filename, after all.
A brief digging into my archives finds Finntroll -riffs like "monkeyisland", "drepdenorske", "boingocarpathianforest", "psychoemperor" and my all- time favourite, "totalvitunklezmerbonanza".
And usually, when the upcoming song has a main riff which now has a totally original name like "absu.mp3", it usually ends up  to be the ready song´s working title as well. So this is why we have working titles for this upcoming album like "Rivfader" (similar drum beat), "Nexro" (main riff reminded me of Nekromantix) and "Rocklolbster" (main riff had some B52´s vibe on it...later it wasn´t the main riff anymore but the name still stayed).  "Tonttuparaati", on the other hand, is an old German song made later into a popular Finnish christmas- song. The main melody of my song has the same rhythm than the abovementioned, hence the naming.

Now Tundra, though...Tundra´s made art out of naming his riffs and songs- in- progress. Titles like "räähxdualvenomous", "eliytres" (yes, it was Tundra´s gibberish- filename and Wilska turned that into a character in a story, which was fucking genious if you ask me :D ), "pirttikyrpä" (!!), "vcxhfsdghwgwsdgqawegqae-syfilisyfilis, Entire Mix, Mix (4)" (!!!!!!) and "ööööööööööö" are still after years giving me spontaneous laughter every now and then when they pop out from my hard disk. Extra credit goes also to Routa, whose "spendrupps", "nattapiisi", "grimash" and "tommiläntinenmidnattens" have given some serious amusement.

Right now it looks like we´ve started or already finished the following songs:

Rivfader
Marilyn
Rocklolbster
Nexro
Tomboijohnson
Jorma
Soutu*
Tonttuparaati


* "Soutu", a.k.a "rowing" is an old Finntroll- meme dating from late 90´s where some bandmember, most likely Skrymer, mentioned that slow folky BM (preferably Norwegian, also has to go in 6/8) has this distinct "rowing" feeling which he always used to back up with mimicking sloooow and hard rowing of a boat. The term sticked since, and now "Soutu" is a synonyme for slow scandinavian folkish BM- styled stuff (like the song Nattfödd) in the Finntroll- camp.

Now I know that I mentioned possible studio in late 2012. Behold, it will most likely happen. WAY more certainly than two months ago, and getting more certain every day with every new idea and riff. "Hide your daughters" is quite a used phrase, besides, we´re all married or "reserved" so maybe you should hide your...I don´t know....videogames? Yeah, HIDE YOUR EPIX AND PREPARE FLASKS FOR THE RAID, WE´RE COMING.

Nah, that sounds awful.