The Art of War Pt. II

This is a second part of a longer entry named "The Art of War", where I go through the whole preparation process of the new, yet untitled Finntroll album, namely to be out 14.8.2020 by Century Media Records. You can read the first part here. Now, where was I again? Yes, it's....

The Art of War, pt.II

a.k.a "a little less conversation, a little more action". 

STEP FIVE – The (sadistik) Exekution.

November, 2019. We had three ready songs, three reworkable ideas, a zillion of new ones, half a tank of nicotine liquid, it was dark out and I wasn't wearing sunglasses. 

The plan, ca. late December 2019.

“Hit it”, I said to myself and started working. At this point, I had the idea that as the album should be more about energy and less about developing and prolonging musical ideas, it shouldn't be too long either. In fact, it should last less than 40 minutes in order to not to become too tiresome and my plan was to have nine full songs and a proper intro. And an outro, if I come up with something. 

Being at the point my plain text file just wasn't cutting anymore to keep my ideas structured, I came up with a spreadsheet instead. Which is actually what I always do at some point. I wonder if Cannibal Corpse uses spreadsheets too? That would be so cool. 

The first draft was just having all the ideas marked down with tempos, musical keys and possible comments. It was only to keep myself sane within the countless ideas I was juggling around, and letting my instantly see what I had. Or rather, didn't have. 

There was now simply an “A”- list and “B”- list for the songs at this point. The A- list was full of ideas I wanted to develop into full songs for the album and the B- list had songs that don't seem to make it. And every time I came up with a better idea for a new song, I replaced the worse ones in the A- list with it. (I can also happily reveal at this point that there hasn't been any of those "worse songs" anymore in the A-list since late January. Yay!) 
I still didn't bother to finalize any songs except for the one that I had already did on late August, but just on kept writing, evaluating, and iterating things until to the point I was completely exhausted.

Yes, it's piano and drums. Can you play Slayer with this?

Whenever I used the computer for making quick demos, I wrote down everything with a piano - yes, even all the "riffs" as well - and a shitty drumkit first in order to find out if it actually works. My general idea was to “fail fast” - something known from the games industry as well. There was simpy no point on polishing something that wouldn't work in the first place, so it was crucial to see first how the initial idea worked. Because if it worked with a setup like this, it would most likely work within the actual context as well!

Every now and then, the idea evolved into an actual, structured song. At that point I played quickly one guitar on top of it to give it some “glue” and a synth string patch for general atmosphere and melody emphasizing. And if I was really "in the zone", I sometimes added some Ville's (Moonsorrow) vocal syllables I had sampled earlier to mark out the vocal parts. (Yes, I actually have a sampler-patch made of those and it's a godsend when marking down those vocals!) The demos sounded absolutely horrible but contained everything that could tell if it's a good song or not. The guys laughed about the shitty production and performance, but admitted that the tactics worked really well as I could push out new ideas faster than ever for evaluation. Naturally, this approach doesn't work in anything that demands the actual production being a crucial part of the outcome- say, hip hop beats or a trailer music piece- but for more traditional, melody-and rhythm-based music it works wonders.

STEP SIX – Phase 2: What the hell is "phase 2"?

Come December, things were looking rather good. I had done a couple of more full songs, worked two older ones into a state where I finally found them finished and had quite a many potential ideas to evaluate. I also had talked way more than usual with Katla about the song lyrics and sending him some raw demos and we kept feeding each others' inpiration. I really liked the lyrics he had written and the themes around them (although a small part of me still hoped -like in every album- I'd get more of those pig-riding trolls sharpening their axes :D ) and we talked a lot about the images and settings those awoke in our minds.
Then came Christmas and I needed to lay my brain (and my family) a bit rest from this all. We agreed with Tundra that come the holidays, we'll catch up with the ideas and work together on them to finish the album.

In the very beginning of January 2020, we sat down one friday and made a full new song with my quick setup based on our mutual ideas. Having been giving my brain a couple of weeks rest, that particular session cranked that poor organ straight to eleven and I felt like exploding on creativity. You know those video game characters who go completely berserk at 30% of their health left? Yeah, that was me. 

When Tundra left my house, I was basically jumping in my chair from excitement and decided that today will be the day the second phase begins. I mean, right after I had spent some time with my family, had dinner and stuff. And picked up some milk because we used it all on Tundra's coffee. Damn that guy just loves his coffee.

But what the hell is a “second phase” anyway? I'm pretty sure I've gone through this earlier, but going through this little blog I couldn't find anything related to the matter- so here's a small recap.

- I always make two (or sometimes three if the "proto" one is a complete draft) separate demos of every song in every album I do.

- The first demo, referred universally as “paskademo”, a.k.a “shitdemo” is the one which has the compositional idea. It has the basic structure, drum arrangements and the basic arrangement of the song. Bum notes, fucked-up drumfills and rarely any vocals included. If we were to compare it to e.g. art, this would be the equivalent of a pencil sketch spiced with a couple of colors. It's fast and efficient, and I don't waste time on polishing anything at all.

- The final demo is very close to the album version. This is where I spend a considerable amount of time polishing every single instrument arrangement, bass line, vocal phrasing and everything else. I decide the “colour” and density of the arrangement (not actually so far away from orchestration), add rhythmic hooks and pay extra attention to each guitarist's “common style” and playing skills when splitting their parts. Besides that, I mix it as close to the sound I want the album to be to make sure my instrumentation will work in the context as well. These are also the versions I will send to the people who are not involved in the actual songwriting process to give them a 100% finalized version of my idea. If they don’t get that from the demo, the blame is on me.

As mentioned earlier, I hadn't started the fullblown pre-production on any of the post- August songs yet. Mostly because I wanted a clear vision about most of the material until I’d start to mold a finished and cohesive album out of them….and also, because compared to creative composing, it was the more analytic part which took a lot of time. I also wanted to make sure that we had enough material before I start doing the final versions in order to avoid the scenario where we’d have four awesome and polished demos and nothing else because I spent all my time on thinking how the kick drum should be sounding in a pre-production demo. (Yes, I get fixated easily on things. Just ask my wife.) While the creative process is done with the right side of the brain, the logical part is pretty much left (see what I did there?) for the other side. In other words, the composing should come from the heart and the intuition while the final arrangement and instrumentation should be done with a more analytic and even theoretic approach. Compose with heart, execute with logic!
 
Should the bass go up in the next riff, I need a line that naturally leads there. And if I'm going from a denser part into a more sparse part, I need to make sure the contrast between the two isn't too large unless specifically meant to be so. Add an extra bar here, do a half-note break here, and these guitars need to play a different inversion of the chord in this riff because otherwise it will suck the life out of the vocal part. I try to pay a great deal of attention to both the flow of the whole song and the density of each part in the terms of instrumentation. And just to make things even more difficult- making everything too fluid, and you soon end up with a song almost too solid without any surprises and things that keep the listener interested.

The empty production template.

Due to having done a fully mixed version of that first song I did, the most natural approach was to continue with the exact same palette. Operating with a setup like this and having the whole demo being not only 95% mixed already but also including the mastering processing chain (which is very rare for me usually) speeded up the process extremely.

My plan was to use as much sampled stuff I could due to the endless iteration of the instrumentation and the fact that it's way faster to replace a couple of notes with a mouse than e.g. rig the bass up or start miking an acoustic guitar for two notes. First I laid down the drums for the whole track, followed by the first version of the guitars. Usually at the time of keyboards, I was already in the process of changing some of the guitar arrangements and switching all processing on to really find out how the instrumentation will behave in a fully mixed and mastered enviroment.

STEP SEVEN – Tools of the Trade.

With this album production, I had two things in my mind. First of all, I wanted to make this a bit less guitar-driven than our latest offerings and put the keyboards and melodies more into the spotlight. Secondly, I wanted those keyboards to be more “keyboards” instead of top-notch orchestral stuff. That would mean that I abused the fuck out of my sampled Korg synth and some official Korg VST's as well combined with stuff from e.g. Roland. I didn't want them to sound “too real” and wanted to use the digital synths from the 80's and 90's I grew up listening (and using) to.

For the drums, I decided to go with a custom- built kit in Superior Drummer 3 which was then then routed into separate mixer channels and mixed like a real drum kit. I even used some Trigger 2 for the snare and kick channels in order to bring the sound more closer to what I wanted, hah! The guitars – being the only live instrument in the template if not counting the vocals- were driven through Bias Amp Professional 2 with a Tube Screamer emulation in the front. As I didn't care much of the guitar lead tone as long as it “ok enough”, I just stuck Guitar Rig 5 to the channel and blasted away!

The bass track was even more simpler. In the last album I gave the bass a snappingly good “Rom 5:12” (or Korn, if you prefer! *snicker*) - treatment but my vision of the album production was a bit different this time. I wanted the bass just to provide a solid low end with a lot of distortion and compression to keep it constantly rumbling. Don't tell anyone but I used Kontakt Factory Library for that. Slap Cubase's stock bass amp (!) for that, crank up the distortion and it's a solid Finntroll bass sound prototype for this album!

As mentioned, most of the keyboards were either my personally sampled Korg sounds or VST versions of their older stuff. I also used a lot of Omnisphere 2 for other synth sounds and sometimes dug up some weird EMU samples and whatnot. The folky stuff I was a bit more elitist with due to the fact that many of them were actually planned to be replaced by real instruments, so in order to actually test them out in the proper environment, I needed to match them as closely as possible to the real deal- the only exception being the nyckelharpa (which will be doubled with a real violin, though) which will be used “as is”. That's from Tarilonte's ERA II and it's the best fucking sampled nyckelharpa I've ever heard. For the other folky stuff, I used Native Instrument's Session Acoustics, Ilya Efimov's Accordion, Project Sam's and Impact Soundworks' various ethnic flutes and Orange Tree's Mandolin. One special mentiong goes actually to this fucking old Hurdy Gurdy VST from Soundbytes which is the only one I've encountered having a proper control of the chanters. That's actually ending up to the album as well, I'm pretty sure.

“But Trollhorn, where's the symphonic awesomeness of “Nifelvind”? I want my 12- player French Horns on FFF, timpanis and full orchestral strings everywhere!”

Yeah…..well, albeit for timpani, I decided that I leave those for the thousand hollenborgirs and whatever cradleofangrens. These songs -being rather furious with a lot going on full speed- didn't really need that sort of bombastic approach to clutter them even more. And then again, I think I've developed a bit "attitude" towards the whole “symphonic black metal” genre where all the bands sound like each other blasting those FFF horns of top of syncopated chugga-chugga riffs. While Progenies of Great Apocalypse sounds still cool in it's all quasi-evilness, I've heard that song already and nobody needs to make it again every year.

(But in case you want even something orchestral, I can probably comfort you with the fact that there will be an intro which will probably please you...just hope you like World of Warcraft! :D )

Codename "Trollstorm", the arrangement window.

Codename "Trollstorm", the mix window.

STEP EIGHT – Finalizing, rehearsing and fighting.

The plan, just a month later.

At this point it was the turn of February and my little spreadsheet was looking way better than I was afraid. As a flipside, I couldn't fall sleep anymore due to my brain now being completely overtuned 24/7 and had to get some pills from the doctor which supposedly helped me to do so. (No, not “sleeping pills”. Those are bad, mmmkay.) I've been suffering from severe sleeping problems since child and every time I'm working on an album or am in the studio the problems shoot through the roof, so this was expected. Luckily I'm not doing albums constantly anymore!

While I was still working on those final demos, I had started providing those specifically tailored rehearsal files from the earlier ones already in January in order to make sure people have time to practice their parts. I've opened up the process a bit more here, but this time I used over 50% of completely clean guitar signal to make absolutely fucking sure a deaf monkey on Ritalin could hear what the guitar is supposed to be playing.

Mörkö was blasting the living crap out of his drum kit at the rehearsal place, and being a professional he is, provided me a constant flow of Mp3's where he was playing the fully-miked kit to his DAW on top of the drumless demos to discuss about the style and overall feel of his drumming. It took a couple of sessions for finding the good balance between his own more technical touch and the certain "simplicity" Finntroll needs. Tundra was practicing his parts at home and I was constantly bombarding Vreth about small arrangement details and some minor alterations to lyrics. I still hadn't hear anything from the guitar players at all, so even though I had prepared to play all the guitars myself, I still provided them those rehearsal takes in case they might be interested to participate.

As all good comes to an end, about a week ago I finalized the last song for the album and after some iteration, fiddling with tempos and trying out different things with Mörkö we called it finished. But there wasn't still time to celebrate as I still had a ton to do, starting from the intro to providing music sheets for the guest players and being in constant contact with the studio about all practical things. And of course going through every track for the zillionth time, planning the order and make any last-minute changes for things that may have slipped me earlier. And – as an inevitable part of the process- finally quarreling with certain bandmembers about “why the fuck there is an album coming consisting mostly of my songs”. Lucky for me, and you readers out there, most of the members thought that the songs are actually good.

And as promised, here's your first chance to take a small glimpse to each of them (in random order) to hear what's the fuss all about. As these are demos only, don't take anything you hear for granted- especially the vocals, as they are all screeched in by yours truly. So no, Vreth hasn't suddenly gone sour. :D And I personally think the guitars could be a tad bit lower in the mix to give even more room for the keyboards. Oh, and as a sidenote, I might have another one coming a bit later with a bit longer (and different) snippets if the band agrees. We'll see! [EDIT: Sorry, that never happened! So don't bother to search for it later. :( ] I'd humbly ask that you won't spread it around too much as we're not putting it officially anywhere... and to be honest, I don't know how well our record label takes it (even though these songs are my personal property). Consider it for "true fans" only in a way that it's more my personal "thank you" for you peeps keeping up with us for all this hiatus and reading my babbling here and in Twitter. ;)

The files won't be available forever, so make sure you check it out before 29.2. which is the day we will finally enter the studio to actually record these. I hope you like what you hear in this short teaser, because we've tried out best to make up the last seven years of absence with providing you guys something we believe we and you both will like.

I'd love to babble more but you're probably already listening that demo and writing a furious comment underneath why the song clips are so short and "did I actually find that one thing funny in 2020", so I will keep it short. Besides, I still have that ton to do. :D

(Like, writing that long blog text about the upcoming album intro. ^^)

Signing out for now,

Trollhorn

PS: I try my best to update things from the studio as well! Make sure to check out my Twitter @trollhornmusic for the quickest way to know about any updates. Meanwhile, I think I've deserved some Lego Harry Potter with my kids. I just love that game- and especially the music (which you probably knew at this point)!

PPS: To point it out also here (and not only in Twitter), I'm fully aware that these texts may also give an impression of me being a pompous fuck who works in his high castle while writing long texts about "how hard everything is and woe is me". However, I have no personal quarrels with anyone in the band as far as I know- but the truth is that some people were kind of understandably a bit annoyed at the end due to the fact that I had done so much new stuff alone which didn't include the older material we had made together.

While I understand the viewpoint on that for some it may seem that I basically just "rode in with my high horse, destroyed everything in the process and did everything by myself and ignoring everyone's contribution", the fact is that we all were given the chance to make that music. And we had fucking over six years to do it. As much as I would had loved to include even more musical creations of other people, nobody- including me- didn't know what to do with the older material! So I concentrated making new music instead (and sending raw ideas to people until the point they were probably completely tired of those already) and thus was fully tied with those new songs. I told everyone that we can record every freaking song everyone has made as long as they are actual, fully-made songs which can be recorded! But in the end, the songs that were made for the album as we speak were the only ones being in that condition.

For what it comes to democracy, I have never got to decide alone what comes to the album and what doesn't. In fact, not a single song in this album I have made either alone or with Tundra wasn't approved by everyone who wanted to hear it and everyone of those has contributed to them at least in either just approving them or suggesting/confirming/and even plainly denying things concerning the riffs, structure and even the demo production. I'm still to make that song some day which I think is so good that it doesn't need anyone's opinion. :P

The Art of War Pt. I

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

After a long discussion with Vreth in August 2019, we came to a conclusion that if we're not going to book the studio soon we might as well just call it quits. We did Blodsvept three years after Nifelvind and back then I was worried about us "slowly sliding into the category of the band who has made something in the past"- a bit like black metal Saxon, if you prefer. Nobody wants to be that black metal Saxon.

(Yes, we're not exactly black metal because the most important aspect is missing, but you probably got the point.) 

 

 

STEP ONE – Defining the outcome. 

We all wanted to make a new album. I knew that while some people wouldn't mind playing "10 years of Trollhammaren", then 15 and then finally a 20-year-two-months-three-weeks anniversary tours, many of us were on the verge of rather quitting than making that sort of a living joke of ourselves we were about to approach... if not being there already. The black metal Saxon was strong in this one. New music must you make, old Padawan.

For me, it was just that I didn't know anymore how the fuck we should sound like due to serious musical disagreements within the band. I didn't even like most of the music I had made myself thus far and felt most of it sounded like an epitome of a bland compromise and lacked all energy. However, there was one semiready song which I liked but thought everyone else would hate- so I never even bothered to even finish it.
But as I felt there was nothing to lose, I mumbled something about hell and high waters and finished and prepared a full demo of That Only One Song (tm). Presenting it to Vreth first, we then polished it a bit and he then sent it to the guys and told that if they like it, we'd love to start planning recording that song and many others. 

It took about a week to get the song greenlit from half of the band which was enough, after which I was given a mandate to start negotiating us studio time from my friend Nino at Sonic Pump Studios. After getting the studio arranged, it was already early September, we had a studio in less than six months, one song, half of the band and a vision how a couple of us thought the album should sound like. 




STEP TWO - How to get there. 




Counting in the fact that everybody should actually get their individual parts in advance for rehearsing them and we would also need to practice the songs together (I was still assuming that the people who weren’t really talking much were still planning to play in this album), I could already feel the schedule shrinking faster than my balls in that chilly breeze of time. Nevertheless, I felt simultaneously extremely focused, confident and prepared, because I had a plan. Kind of. 

I realized that most of those ideas I had half-heartedly done in order to "sound like Finntroll in 2020" sounded like lazy, middle-aged men trying to play heavy rock coated with synths and ethnic instruments, which was the complete fucking antithesis to everything I actually wanted to do. No wonder I couldn't get anything out of those! So I spent the whole September going through all of them again for the umpteenth time while simultaneously writing new ideas down, but this time I listened the old ones with a different mindset, mercilessly dumping all the boring stuff away. I was so fed up of the terms "groove" and "midtempo" I could scream. I wanted to be fast and energetic, simpler and more deadly. Who knows- maybe just a cry of help of a metalhead over 40 refusing to grow old and lazy - but in short, in the terms of attitude and (d)anger I wanted more Eliytres and less Skövlarens Död. 

My plan was dark and impenetrable. Or, if you prefer- so cunning “you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel”. In order to make this album to sound like how I wanted it to sound, I would need to make a lot of music that fulfilled that criteria and would be approved by most of the band. Makes sense, huh? But as time was running short, I needed to roll up my sleeves and start working towards it.

The first iteration of the album was a plain text file. It had "A", "B" and "C"- list of ideas. The A- list was reserved for fully done songs and it looked rather sad and empty with that one and lonely entry. The B- list was reserved for "to do", and consisted of three older songs that had potential but needed to be reworked from scratch if we were to use them. And finally, the C-list sported four "wild cards", a.k.a stuff that had a bit of something interesting hidden either within a musical pile of badness or something that was completely unfinished. To this date, that C-list remains untouched.

In order to be efficient, I wanted to approach the songwriting process in a bit more old school way. I tried to keep my hands off from the computer thus preventing getting lost in trying out endless possibilities instead of actually THINKING through and writing those ideas down first. As my old tablet broke broke down conveniently, a tremendous help for actual writing was to actually buy a new one with a stylus pen. Now I could take notes even at the middle of the night in my own bed if I got an idea- and since my brain being constantly overtuned due to neurological "features" of mine, that happened a lot. 




STEP THREE - Weighing the risks. 




Come October, I had talked a lot about the musical direction with Vreth. I was excited, had a ton of new individual ideas and two completely new full songs which I quickly demoed one day after work and sent to him for first iteration. Those two new songs represented faster and a bit blacker material than some other members originally wanted to do, so I was a bit nervous when sending them out. And to be honest, that nervousness was mostly because there was also a plan B, which was way more dark in case plan A wasn’t impenetrable. 
Plan B would just be...yep, you guessed it- no album. Weren't those songs accepted by the band even with possible iteration(s), I'd cancel the studio as there wouldn't be anything to record and just fucking wash my hands of the whole show for good. But why such a drama queen, mr. Trollhorn?

To be honest, it's not about my ego but more practical reasons. I've been doing albums for the last 20+ years and composed music for clients for the last 15 years as my primary profession. I'm perfectly fine with criticism, iteration and even plain rejection, as that's also a part of the process. But this wasn't a music order for a client: this was the music I personally wanted to do for my own band. But if the rest of the band hated the stuff, how the hell could I even think to ask people to play something they don't like? “Hey guise here is a bunch of bad music pls play and much enjoy hurr durr”? So, obviously making music that nobody wants wasn't really an option. And besides, if they didn't like the stuff they might be right as well! What if the music just actually was bad? After all, the one that got criticized the most last time (that's Två Ormar for you) in the last album didn't turn out to be as good as I thought it would become. RIP my creative decisions, it was nice to know you!

Secondly, there was the fact the material I had done was our only finished material. It wasn't like the band was breathing new songs. If my new music was not liked, there simply wouldn't be time to start over from a scratch or start finishing those twenty new skövlarensdöds in my hard drive. Not to mention that I had absolutely zero motivation on going back to the old ideas and prepare a “groovy midtempo album with progressive influences” or whatever that lazy crap would be called. I knew that if my new material would get “greenlit” we could easily do this album….but any major drawbacks would cause the time to run out shorter than an aging metalhead's breath on stage while performing those new songs in making.
  



STEP FOUR – Making it all possible.

Lucky for me, my idea for the album and the new songs were accepted and I could now breathe a bit more freely, knowing that the album is going to happen. Yay for good songs! Or non-communicative bandmates, whichever weighs more in this divine scale of absurdity.

Call it arrogant or whatever you wish, I had decided earlier that if we want this album to be done, I wouldn't be sending the first raw ideas for collective feedback anymore because there would be too much room left for interpretation and misunderstanding. That decision was made even easier during the process, as some of the members weren't interested on listening to anything or even talking to me, hah! And to be honest, I wasn't really interested to beg them to listen to the music either, as long as I had other members doing it and helping me out to not to fall into typical traps and manners of mine. Having been in this band for rather long time, I knew exactly the type of people I needed to work with the first iterations in this situation and all of them were available.

First of all, I needed someone who has a long history in the band, understands the bigger picture, can speak musical terms and has an ear for musical arrangements. Then, I needed a pair of fresher and even more objective ears with the ability to to specifically think of single song structures and the flow. And next from the list of people, I needed that someone who has the craziest, out-of-the-box ideas which I never think of myself. 

But most of all, I needed time.

Because it was October already, time was of the essence. 
In Ye Ancient Times- that being from the late 90´s to mid 2000´s for you younger readers- I used to do albums with my different bands in a frenzied pace. It was always the same pattern: technically 5-7 months of autistic, boneheaded composing and pre-production followed by a 2-4 weeks of studio time... boom, album out. Go touring, get inspired by other things, rinse and repeat with another band. Hell, at best, I put albums out twice a year! Then I started working full-time and it began to take 1-2 years for any new album. During the time I also started to concentrate even more on details on each album and my music and arrangements got more complex. Then kids happened. More demanding career happened. More demanding kids happened. Generally, life happened. It just wasn't possible to devote my life for making metal albums with such a pace anymore.

I told my wife that if I'm going to do this album in the Ye Olde Boneheaded Way, I'd need her to help me out with it. Luckily, as a fan of Finntroll, she also wants the goddamn album done! That meant that while she'd spend a considerable amount of time with the household, I'd spend that time at my studio room after work and in the weekends trying out things, changing arrangements, and screaming my lungs out for demoing the vocals while noticing my kids are standing behing me giggling as I finish a take. 

WILL THE BAND SUCCEED ON MAKING THE ALBUM? DOES THIS MARK THE END OF FINNTROLL? WILL TROLLHORN LOSE HIS MIND WORKING ON FUTILE BLOG TEXTS INSTEAD OF ACTUALLY WRITING MORE MUSIC?

Stay tuned for the next episode: "The Art of War, pt. II" where I will be talking more of the actual composing and pre-production process! This text become so long (hopefully not boring, though!) that for everyone's sake of sanity it will be split in two parts. Will there be drama? It's Finntroll, there's always drama. But let's hope it has a happy ending!

Coming Soon To A Church Near You!

If you're reading this, you've also might seen this certain bad photoshop of the Finntroll logo in a Sonic Pump Studio computer monitor which I posted on Twitter earlier. 

The intention was that you added one plus one and realized that it's a hint that Finntroll would be recording a new album in the same studio we've recorded our previous three albums. Retrospectively, I think I could had been a bit less mysterious, because many people seemed to think it was about that "wallpaper" of the computer screen.

However, I still felt a bit disappointed because I couldn't tell anyone straight away that we've finally booked that studio and people didn't seem to get the hint. We were discussing that there will be an official statement (thus me not announcing anything with a bang), but in the true Finntroll fashion nothing happened. Hell, in the True Finntroll Fashion (™) half of the band didn't even comment anything to the booking of the studio!

So, as no-one else seemingly wants to shout it out, here's your official statement: I've booked a studio for us next March. Don't ask me when the album will be out- that's Century Media's business to figure out. But I guess they are as eager to release it as you are to hear it.

When booking studio time, it's a vicious circle. First you need to have some material to be confident that you can actually book that studio. But with this band if there's no schedule, there will be lazy, uninspiring, compromised shitty cavalcade of riffs and melodies so boring you could write a new song about their exceptional blandess. Which would still be a boring and uninspired song. And when you realize most of the new material (a.k.a that one song which is somehow considered as a full song and a bunch of half-made ones) sucks, you don't even want to book that studio. Back to square one.

So for Finntroll, pressure is good. Pressure is inspiring. Nattfödd, for example, was written in a frenzied haze because we had finally booked that studio and lacked about 80% of the material. Ur Jordens Djup on the other hand, was done without looming deadlines. Conventionality breeds laziness. Laziness breeds polished and safe choices. Safe choices breeds boring albums. Get my point? Not that I don't like Ur Jordens Djup by the way, I just feel it's too boring and lacks all the fun.


For some weird reason I went through our earlier studio days from the blog from the beginning of the composing to the end of the recordings, and that didn't exactly encourage me to carry on with this album recording. In fact, I thought about leaving the band for a split second in order to avoid that happening again. But reading it retrospectively, I now found many mistakes which could had been completely avoided if I had taken a bit different approach and attitude on things. That being said, it may mark the return of a certain era of Finntroll where things were a bit less about inclusivity and more about getting things done. Or it may mark the end of Finntroll as we know it. :D

Whatever happens, prepare for a Trollstorm coming soon to a church near you!

Many Whelps! Handle it!

The good thing about video game bosses is that you can usually kill them again and again.

Just take a little break, log off and suddenly everything is back like it was never smashed down in the first place. The bad thing about your possible blog readers is that they probably thought this video game boss here was long gone, didn't respawn, and was probably bugged anyway. At the end they forgot me to my lair to write incomplete texts for years, plotting revenge....until one day a party of unfortunate brave souls wandered inside, noticing that I had suddenly respawn!



That's right, folks- I'm here to pester you again after a couple of years of my absence from this site. The past two years have been extremely busy balancing together my family, work, freelancing and band activities and thus this little blog has been on hiatus since then. Nevertheless, I'm back with a blast with a lenghty recap on the past, present and the future, so grab a mug of blood and start reading if you care!
The text also contains a lot of music links and other self- pompous bullshit, which some of you may find interesting.

Ok, so what happened after your last blog post...which was in March 2016? Two years ago?

As Moonsorrow's "Jumalten Aika" was finally wrapped in January 2016, I didn´t even want to touch a guitar for a year after that intensive mental marathon. I was completely drained musically and felt composing only to be a burden more than anything else. Nevertheless, at this point of my life and professional career as a musician I am aware that these phases come and go so I wasn't really worried about that. I just needed to channel my creativity into something else!

Instead of composing music, I finally built myself that studio room I always had dreamed of. I started small in March, and got things running soon enough. As everyone with experience on these things know, though, it's a neverending process but at least I had now properly equipped room to work at! Most...well, all of the year went in practicing mixing and mastering and as said, no new music was composed outside work premises. I did one (1) bad riff for Finntroll and spent way too much money and approximately 500 (no, I'm not kidding) hours in my studio room practicing the dark arts of mixing while still having that day job and spending time with my family. Needless to say, there really wasn't any time nor energy for any kind of writing. And to be honest, the whole 2016 was so chaotic I can't even remember much of it.

March 2016: This is where I started from.

May 2016: New speakers, old hardware and a sofa!

October 2016: New desk and some new hardware.

August 2017: The current situation, Space Station 2.0!

Come 2017, I tried to concentrate more on music production instead of mixing and especially on orchestration and sample libraries.
In other words, when in 2016 I blew all my money and spare (lol) time to the studio room and mixing, in 2017 I spent all the resources I could on samples. Then again, it was really worth every single penny, as the production quality of my music went up by a zillion. All that gave me small inspirational outbbursts for composing music again- just too bad most of it wasn't metal, and certainly not Finntroll. And most of it wasn't that good either. But you need to start from somewhere after a longer break!

(It's completely different thing to compose for "demand" than compose "for fun" or your own bands, so while I was still doing quite much at work and even had some serious fun, I struggled to get anything decent made at home for quite a long time.)

Using this neglected, sad and lonely hardware
is sometimes just more fun than the usual, boring plugins.

During the whole year there were some unfortunate health problems within our family which were momentarily very heavy to go through, but at the end things are now a bit more under control. It took me a lot of energy and resources to cope with those, and many times my family needed me much more than my bandmates, colleagues or fans of our bands. Despite of that, I also took way too much work on my desk, ending up mixing two EP's, five full- lenght albums and mastered 9 others (I'm still not sure how I managed to squeeze the time for that). And naturally, tried to get the ball rolling with Finntroll whenever I had the chance.

Overall, 2017 was pretty much the toughest year in my life thus far, and most of the time I was only so exhausted I could just survive until the next day. But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, so here we are in 2018.... alive and kicking, and if possible, even more fierce and definitely full of energy again!

I can already promise that 2018 will be busy as hell, with some new tricks on my sleeve. And most of that is related to music- especially creating it.



[FINNTROLL]

I know a lot of people have been dying to hear about the new Finntroll- album, so I kind of feel owing at least even a some sort of an explanation at. And I guess the same people are happy to hear that we are currently working rather heavily on that album!

Sometimes, there are minions watching over the music sessions.

While I am busy making music, Routa is busy taking selfies!

When I started to write this text, we had been sitting down with Tundra (and sometimes Routa joining us) almost weekly since late December 2017 and were actually progressing with the new material again. We had many a ton of ideas and some half- made songs and thought seriously about finally entering the studio this year. (However, if that doesn't happen, please don't sue me. Or if you do, please get into the line!) We had been having quite some discussions about the musical styles, as I've been drawn more into faster and melodic stuff while other people have been more into riff- based midtempo material, which has many times left both parties unsatisfied with the compromises we've made.

Within the last weeks, though, we have been finding a lot of common ground instead of musical disagreements, and we've already finished a couple of new songs as we speak. I don't know what magic has happened, but we've definitely been on fire with Tundra lately, and I can't personally wait until the next composing sessions scheduled for the next week. My head is spinning with ideas and Tundra's contribution has been excellent and his ideas very refreshing whenever my own ideas may have been lacking some "twist".


[MOONSORROW]

(Photo: Kristiina Kiiski)

Everybody is still very happy about "Jumalten Aika" and we are all excited about the future of the band. We are also awaiting for the right time to start composing our next album when the time comes. Most likely when the Finntroll- album is done, we'll start working with the Moonsorrow one, if not earlier, as there is definitely a drive for that direction within us. The guys are also doing another European tour with Primordial in April, so make sure to check them out if you can!

Concerning the "Home of the Wind"- documentary: It's 100% shot and has been in post- production for a while now. At the time writing this, the project is still in the editing table and is indeed a bit late- unfortunately, the reasons for that are not for me to discuss in public. But I'm pretty sure that there will be something official concerning that rather soon anyway.

On left:
Ville got married in December and as a Finnish tradition, the bride was robbed and he needed to do some tasks in order to get her released. So he played a bass solo for us.


[OTHER METAL THINGS]

International scene- drenched,
Fenno- scandian viking greetings!

I never particularly left the metal scene, but suddenly I have been more involved in it than I've been in ten years- especially in the underground. And to be honest, I like it there. Guess the Pandora's box was opened again with my small mixing service , and I have suddenly been in contact with many old and new bands and people like it was fucking 2004 again. It's heart- warming to see that the flame is still burning like it was only getting more hungry year by year!

Besides mixing and mastering already multiple albums and demos, I arranged and played keyboards in two albums (Perdition Winds and Alghazanth), did some sporadic guestwork on some others and even promised to play live with Satanic Warmaster at Steelfest later this year. Which leaves me into a peculiar situation, as Moonsorrow is also playing there. And I've said many times "Hell freezing over before I see my own band playing live without being on the stage myself".

That being said, I seem to get one busy, metal- filled weekend in May.



[OTHER OTHER MUSIC THINGS AND COMPOSING]

Jakke and yours truly participating in a metal music- meets
game music- discussion after too many beers at Tuska 2017.

In January I wanted to really kick myself ongoing again, and decided that I start composing music more in order to get better and more fresh ideas out. For writers, there is this old advice to "write as much as you can, no matter the quality, just keep on writing and eventually you come up with better ideas". So, I thought that it should also work with music. Almost three months later, I can tell it really does work wonders. Plus, as a bonus, I am piling up a huge box of ideas which can be used later in different contexts! Some good, some bad, but we all know how it goes, haha!

I also took part to international Game Audio Awards in March, ending up being second among all the participants in the music category. The winner was my highly appreciated acquaintance and a Finnish game music veteran composer Jonne Valtonen, who I have been following since the early 90's when he was active in the computer music demo scene. I am not a competitive person by nature, so I don't participate much on these sort of things, but when losing to the best it doesn't feel like losing at all.

The best parts of working at Rovio? You can hire your
bandmates recording metal at Sonic Pump studios!

One of my biggest pet peeves has always been the constant shifting from "I'm a metal musician and a producer"- mode into "I'm a professional game and media music composer"- mode and back which has many times torn my brain like crazy.  But during the last year I've also happily combined those two a lot either at work, like this little Iron Maiden- thing at Rovio or giving some productional assistance for a new Finnish comedy movie about a metal band and composing something small and trollish for Tuska Festival's 20th anniversary song outside work.  We even participated in a composer round- table discussion with my friend Jakke Viitala from Crimfall (and Rovio) on combining metal music with game audio at Tuska and did a couple of lectures on the same topic at university as well!

The more I've been combining these two things together the more I have also started to realize that they shouldn't necessarily be treated differently all the time. There is absolutely no reason why I couldn't use my studies of modality on Finntroll and put some Finntroll into my game mus....wait, that's been done. Like, to death. As a sidenote- interestingly, last third of this song has seemingly been cut off from the game :(

But the point is that even if I subconsciously try to keep my metal more "unprofessional" on purpose in order to give room to chaos, it's unavoidable for me to bring some order into it as well. And as much as I want to pretend to be a plausible professional and serious composer, there is no way I can keep my darkness of Moonsorrow and wackiness of Finntroll out of it. It's just the way it goes, so it seems futile to make an issue out of it and hinder myself on purpose. And to be honest, usually the best music I compose on demand has a tint or two of my mental metal background in it anyway.

I've noticed that the more I have followed lately the "compose anything, compose often"- guideline on my more cinematic- styled music, the better results I have come up with. With Finntroll, I feel it would be a useful way to sit down and compose different ideas down on the fly, instead of just waiting for the right inspirational moment to strike. It will strike when I get the right idea down first, but waiting for the right idea to appear from emptiness before I can even start evolving and continuing it is really the same that a writer would write the next chapter of his new book when it suddenly strikes him while cooking pancakes. "What a great idea", said no writer ever. And to be honest, roughly 75% of the ideas I get first don't end up into the albums anyway. It's the inspiration and drive I get when continuing from those first ideas which usually transforms into a new and better song.

[THINGS]

Maybe I needed the last two years to concentrate on sharpening my skills. Maybe I was needed more elsewhere than in the world of metal music. Or maybe I was just lazy. Then again, reading this text retrospectively backwards, it seems that I have been actually doing way more things during these two years that I could even vaguely remember at first. So I guess I haven't been lazy after all!

For all those who expected a new Finntroll- album to be already out: I'm truly sorry I failed to match your expectations. Sincerely. Please keep in mind that I am a fan of many bands as well and I know how it is like. Heck, I'm still awaiting the new Bal- Sagoth album to be released! So please don't think for a split second I haven't spent countless of moments stressing myself out from the situation that "something needs to be done". And I know Tundra having the exact same thoughts as well. It's been five years since Blodsvept and I can fully understand your frustration. However, this will be fixed as long as it's up to me.

When everything else fails, cast curses.

The thing is also that no- one of us all isn't getting younger. When being close to 40 years old with three kids and something you could call a "professional career", it's impossible always to concentrate on music on your spare time with the same devotion and piety it was possible when I was 20 years old. Back then, it was the only thing I had in mind! Well, that and video games. When things like a broken car, acute health issues of a kid involving a hospital....or something as mundane as a fucking extra trip to supermarket come up, I can't just turn my back on those even if I wanted to. And while making music is as important as breathing to me, I also want to spend some time with my family- and especially with the love of my life as well when we're not too busy cleaning the house, washing clothes or cooking food which no- one suddenly likes because it has onions in it.

But hey, that's life. And during that, sometimes metal albums get accidentally done, too. Right after I've finished this blog text, checked out my work tasks, picked up the kids, driving them to their hobbies, accidentally disappearing into my audio room just before we are supposed to start preparing dinner, yelling that "I'm just finished, sorry!" and rushing to the table to answer questions about "why dad can always come later to the table but we all need to be here the instant mom yells that dinner is up?".

You know, the usual. Many kids....handle it!

Frankenstein´s Mixing Facilities speaking, how may I help you?

EDIT:I AM ONLINE WITH THE MIXING SERVICE!

I´ve always loved mixing. To shape the sound into more suitable for my vision of the whole package, to practice making something too good first in order to destroy it later and to help the music finally coming alive in the best possible way. For any composer and producer, knowing how to mix is a great addition to your toolbox- and as a producer it´s almost near vital knowledge. 


For me, it´s my absolute favourite part of the whole process to pull the lever in that storm and see my creation finally arise. Just like in any creative form of mastery, you can never be “finished” with your studies and practices. There´s always things to learn, new techniques to try out and the endless set of rules to break.

WAIT, I THOUGHT YOU WERE JUST A MUSICIAN?

Not really. I got myself a 4- track cassette recorder in spring 1994 after a couple of years of begging. My stepfather used to be a sound engineer and he taught me the basics of recording- and the rest was me fiddling around with one cheap microphone from the 70´s and various instruments, mostly at my parent´s garage. Fast- forwarding into the year 2000, I had got myself a computer with audio software and recorded now usually everything in my own flat. Which was very inconvenient and lacked all possibilities to make noise louder than an acoustic guitar. So I went crawling back to my parents after some years, asking if they would still have some room left in a corner of that garage.

In 2004 I had saved some money from band- activities to build a modest home studio there. Sometimes I brought friends to record their demos in the weekends as I could now record even drums (which I had bought from Marko of Moonsorrow and I still have!) and vocals.

I didn´t have great gear at all, but it was still better than rehearsal recordings for most people. Because of small underground circles, the word spreaded fast about me being enthusiastic on these things and during 2004-2008 I ended up recording and mixing couple of dozen of different projects, pre- production demos and even some albums (for the albums we actually used a proper, now sadly defunct studio my friend owned and rented). Usually they didn´t sound that good as I was still learning, but at least nobody complained, haha! When I got myself a job as a composer/ music producer at Digital Chocolate, these projects started gradually dropping due to my lack of time. And ironically, I also got a lot better afterwards. 

I finally emptied the garage in 2008 and moved all my gear to the Dchoc office to continue using them at work. When I started working at Rovio in 2013 they provided me most of the equipment so I carried all my stuff to our new home and built myself a studio room there, spending now most of my time trying to shoo my kids away instead of actually working.

Recording drums for Impaled Nazarene pre- production, 2006.
Yep, that Impaled Nazarene. At my parents´garage. :D

Draugnim´s "Sworn to Waves"- demo recordings, 2007.
Notice the overheated PC cooling system (TM)!

GAME MUSIC VS. METAL: THE POCKET-SIZED DIFFERENCE

On game music mixing, I usually need to be very smooth. No disturbing elements unless especially needed, a pleasant EQ treatment everywhere and rarely any tomwaits- esque percussion mixes either. Everything needs to sit tight, shut up and be nice. As modern game music is usually a combination of orchestral instruments and synthetic, sampled or real instruments we´re mostly obliged to play with the set rules for good reasons. While in metal music it´s completely possible to crank the bass guitar too loud from “normal” and bury the drums under a reverb sized of a mountain, typical game music mixing is unfortunately much more strict and set in stone because it´s one the genres which usually suffers from more experimental mixing. Generally, you want to fit the music in a game into it´s own pre- defined pocket which is there to enhance the gaming experience. If you step out of that pocket too much, you´ll just ruin the experience. Sometimes it´s needed though- usually not.

(Please also note that I´m talking ONLY about mixing. Composing, arranging and producing are completely different from this stage and they indeed leave a lot of room to experiment.) 

Metal, on the other hand, is supposed to be ruining everything. Or at least your neighbours´ and parents´ day. It´s dangerous and unpleasant. Powerful, disturbing, yet somehow clear and constructed from elements which combined make a package full of classical music´s best qualities turned on 11. You can´t fit metal into that pre- defined pocket or it kicks and bites itself out from it. Metal is freedom, anarchy and spitting on conventionality. One does not simply mix metal into that pocket.
While I welcome many of the possibilities the modern production tools bring, I tend to mix my metal in a more chaotic way. You know, the way it was supposed to sound like until studio Fredman and their friends killed it, making people think that this is how the genre should sound like. A metal mix doesn´t mean it´s supposed to be a lifeless tube of bass frequencies and distortion spreaded artificially three meters out from your loudspeakers with drums like a sewing machine. Of course I can align and quantize drums, tune all vocals and use triggers on everything percussive. Strip away all the non- conforming frequencies and finish the whole thing by making sure no transient in any track will ever exceed certain limit to make everything tighter than yours truly wearing a pair of speedos. And it wouldn´t probably sound as “good” as Fredman anyway. But I feel that a big part of the actual metal sound comes from the imperfection and those things should be used absolutely only when needed. Unless your drummer sucks so bad I have to use only triggers. Then I´ll just blame you instead.

When I mix metal, I prefer personality over perfection, war over conventionality and too loudly mixed delays on vocal tracks. Or maybe I´m just becoming old, grumpy black metal guy who thinks everything not done by Pytten is overproduced shit. Then again, everything not done by Pytten probably is.

TOTO, I´VE A FEELING WE´RE NOT IN THE 1990´S ANYMORE...

If I haven´t pointed it enough in these rantings of mine earlier, immersion is what really makes me tick. When I mix game music, I make sure the sound is serving the situation the best possible way with reverbs, EQ´s and everything you can imagine. And when I mix a Moonsorrow album, I really want the soundscapes to match the setting we´re trying to create as much as possible. With every musical style, it´s always important to give the mix what the music needs, but I dare to claim that game music and metal might be the two genres which really benefit (and need) that extra level of immersion. Feel free to prove me wrong, though!
Sometimes, the immersion can be achieved by creating something which gives you an impression of that music really being playing somewhere. In game and film music, it´s called “source music”, which means that it´s supposed to actually be heard by the protagonist, to make it really feel you´re there. For that, the carefully mixed (usually more contemporary) music gets another round of editing, making it sound more like it´s coming, say, from the nearby night club you´re approaching.
Or sometimes, it can be something completely different. Switching to metal again- Remember that H&M- spoof we did a year ago? That Lany- song for sure isn´t done in a rehearsal room somewhere in France, but at my work using Cubase during one boring afternoon. Like all those songs in that little campaign, everything was created immersion first in mind.

It shouldn´t be a surprise on that matter that I also love mimicking production styles and sounds. Sometimes I take a reference and try to get as near to it as possible, starting from (emulated) gear used into the tiniest things happening in whatever side- chain compressors. Remember that H&M- thing again? Yeah. That. Or this. I love to copy and mimic stuff for fun and challenge.
Besides, they just don´t do mixes like that anymore. There´s something in that imperfection and overall clumsiness trying to be as good as possible which makes me love it. That, or it´s just the Pytten- syndrome again.

(And to be honest, my perversion for mimicking might actually a very big reason I am now doing music for my living, because I got my first real job in the industry in 2003 when I happened to make a spoof from a right band at the right time, heard by the right person- but that´s another story I won´t bore you with today, hah!)

...WHICH IS WHY IT´S TIME TO KNOCK THEM BOOTS TOGETHER AGAIN.

During 2008- 2015 I have mostly concentrated on mixing game music, but sometimes when I have been asked and had time, I´ve gladly taken some mixing (and sometimes mastering) gigs from my friends´ bands just to have some fun. While I love my “professional” job as a composer and producer, there are always things I am not able to do in that area due to the fact that most game companies don´t use extreme metal on their game soundtracks. To keep my mind sharp, brain balanced and to satisfy my inner bad-behaving-necrosatanic-bulletbelt child, I need to work with metal music as well every now and then to preserve that natural balance.

After returning from mixing “Jumalten Aika” in late 2015 I felt like meeting an old friend I hadn´t seen for a long time and a couple of weeks later I found myself updating my audio computer and it´s software with a bit more in mind than just regular game music production I first intended. When everything was set up, I found myself going through my old mixes, looking for things to use for continuing practicing from where I had left off years earlier in that garage.
Working over two months almost every night with different projects to mix (luckily I have quite many musician friends who were willing to share their raw tracks for private remixing) I spent over 100 hours updating my skills, comparing my mixes to released albums, trying out different plugins to find what I need...and starting from scratch again if I felt it´s not sounding good until it sounded.
I tried different production styles for the same songs, and worked from metalcore to deathgrind and black metal to find out their nowadays typical sound processing tricks and repeated them until I felt ready to break those unwritten rules, only to mix them again with my own. And finally, I felt like I have the confidence to continue to the next step.

In March 2016 when I´m writing this, I´ve finally come to a decision to somehow revive my old semi- serious hobby of mixing and producing metal music. While I won´t be doing any recording for now, I will open a small- scale mixing and mastering service for bands soon for fun and keeping my skills in order. I won´t be planning doing any albums or bigger projects due to the commitment it demands, but bands needing for a proper treatment for their demos and even EP´s are more than welcome to get in touch with me in the future.

The next thing on my list before that is to replace that wobbly computer stand with a proper studio desk with room for some hardware racks, mount my new pair of huge- ass studio monitors up and then it´s time to make some use of them. I will make this more official when I´ve finished the renevation of the studio room, but you heard it here first!