Metal Shock Finland (World Assault )

Finnish CORPSET‘s debut album “Ruins” sees the day on 27th of April, via Violent Journey Records. ”Ruins” is a ruthless ten-piece of contemporary Finnish death metal. With combining old school sounds to more modern approach and joining hook-filled melodies with pure aggression, Ruins is sure to put Finnish metal-scene on its knees. Corpset, holding some familiar names from different well-known Finnish acts in their lineup, has managed to create a breathtaking example of twisted Finnish death metal and is a welcome breeze of fresh air to today’s stiff metal soundscapes.

Couple of days ago I had a long chat with Corpset’s vocalist, Antti Murtonen, and here’s what he told me…

Hi Antti, I’m Tarja from Metal Shock, welcome! How’re you doing?

Hi! At the moment a bit tired, a lot of things going on right now. But I’m glad that we’re having the album out and things are moving on.

Back in 1998 the band was formed by the name of Chakra, but 10 years later, when you jumped into it, the name was changed to Corpset. Tell us about those moments and how the actual lineup was found?

I got into Corpset, when the lineup with Jari, Jami and Timo was already established. They were having some hard time to find a suitable singer. They had already recorded demo-versions for about ten songs and were very frustrated for not having a singer. They had already been playing together for about two years and trying out different vocalists and didn’t seem to find a proper one. For me it was quite a big step, since I hadn’t been a vocalist for too long time and jumping into a very skilled metal band waiting for a guy to put some vocals for a record was quite a hair-riser.

About the actual lineup… that’s a bit longer story. Jari had moved to Tampere after the break-up of original Chakra lineup. I think he was a bit frustrated how the things were going, not knowing any band from Tampere and not having a place to rehearse. He was already trying to get rid of his gear, when he met Jami and things just clicked. They started to rehearse together in their living rooms and were playing and creating music by themselves for over a year, before they hooked up with Timo and got themselves a drummer. From there on things started to move on…

Antti, what about you, I mean, when you got into metal? and what are your first band experiences?

I remember getting into metal real young. My older brother and his friends were blasting some records of Kiss, Ozzy, Maiden, Metallica etc. I remember me just studying the covers and how they seemed something very scary and huge and all the things that would affect a young boys mind… 😀 Then a bit older some rougher bands, like Sepultura and Slayer came along and also they sounded so hard. I used to listen to Sepultura’s Arise before going to school to get me to right mood…hahaha. At some age I found punk and hardcore, and it affected me greatly with it’s aggression, energy and “in your face” -mentality. Also the punk/hc-culture with diy-mentality and ”anyone can play”-thinking had a great impact on me.

Corpset plays death metal, but would you like to tell us more about your sound and your personalized style that makes it stand out from the others?

Corpset can be categorized as death metal, but I think that’s not all of it. We also have some influences from thrash- and speed metal and also a bit of hardcore -approach and yet else. This might sound like a total mix-up of styles, but at least I think that we have managed to keep our own sound and haven’t ended up sounding like a mishmash of different genres. A lot of bands nowadays seem just to worship a distinct sound from the past, like old scandinavian death metal or eighties thrash and making an own, a bit updated version of it, but we have always tried to keep our own thing and not copy any bands or styles. And still keeping the pack tight, so that we don’t end up sounding like just a mix-up of things.

What bands influence you the most?

As a band we have a great deal of influences and all the members in our band seem to have their own favorites. But I think that we all appreciate most the bands that have their own unique sound and do things on their own way, without thinking how they should sound  to get people’s attention.

Your debut album “Ruins” will be released on April 27. You recorded it on various places, from professional studios to a horse ranch in Finnish countryside. What can we expect about this album?

I think we have managed to create an album that has own sound and lots of “in-your-face” energy. In my opinion, we’ve succeeded in merging melodic aspect with pure brutality very nicely. We tried to kick the shit of ourselves in the studio and I think you can hear it in the music. There’s a lot of stuff happening in the songs, so I think there’s much to find for listeners.

Where you have taken the topics to this album? And tell us more about your songwriting process…

Lyrical topics come from everyday life, we have no intent to create any horror stories or anything mystical. Mostly it concerns about negative feelings and battling with own demons. All people feel shitty every now and then, some people more often, and this is our way to express it. I can’t say much about how the songs are written music-wise. Our guitarists make all the riffs and songs and bring it to rehearsals, where we put the final touch to the songs as a band. Nowadays we use a lot more time as a band building up the songs and thinking about the concept and the flow of the songs.

Btw, the eighth track of Ruins is entitled “Behind the Sauna”… so, what’s in there behind it? 🙂

Haha, we just discussed about this in an other interview. It’s a Finnish expression that everyone knows in here, but has no meaning in other languages. In the old days, it was a place to ”take care” of people, out of everyone’s sight.

ahahah, even if I’m finnish, I did’t know that 😀
Well, does Ruins have a message that you want your fans and audience will catch up?

No real message here. Maybe it’s an expression that also someone else in this world is feeling shitty and has managed to create something positive out of it. At least if someone would feel this way about it, I would personally feel very glad.

What about the tour, to support “Ruins”, in Finland and in other European countries?

Haha, we really don’t have any real tour to support the album and are not yet trying to get abroad. If someone really wants to hook us on a gig outside of Finland, we would be grateful for the chance, but at the moment we would be happy to just get some shows around here. There are million great bands now in finland, so it’s quite hard to get your name out for any promoters and gig organizers.

Recently you signed to Violent Journey Records… what does this contract mean to you?

It’s great that someone has trust in our music and thinks that it should be taken out to listeners, to me it means a lot. Having a label behind us means that we have a channel to get our music out there. It helps in booking shows and getting people to hear about us. There’s no way that our music would reach as many people without the support of Violent Journey. I mean, it’s possible to do everything by yourself or with your own label, but it’s a fucking hard work, and it’s great that there’s someone else to do it with us.

Do you think you’ve already found your style, or do you see in the future it could still development or maybe take another course?

Well, in Corpset’s music there’s a lot of room to experiment different things, since we don’t have such tight borders musically. I think we’ve found our sound, but that doesn’t mean that music will always sound the same. I think we’ll always sound heavy and twisted, but there’s lot of shit happening all the time in our music, so who knows what will we sound like in a couple of years. I think that we will maybe broaden our music even further. Brutal will be more brutal, but at the same time there might be more experimental and technical shit.

Everybody keeps telling me (here in Italy) that Finland is the promised land of metal… but how do you see the Finnish metal scenes?

It’s true, we seem to have a billion of great bands here. Of course there are the names that everyone knows, that are making it big, but I think the best bands come from the underground. I don’t know how much scenes there are, since I’m a bit drop-out on this kind of things. It seems to me, that most of the bands are happy to do their own thing somewhere and not too much socialize… in a the finnish way 😀 But anyway, great bands are everywhere, and since I’ve been putting up some shows here in Tampere, I have managed to get to know them. But most of the bands don’t make a big noise of themselves, so not too many people know about them unless they actively search for new bands.

What are your future plans, after the release?

We’ve been writing music all the time and we already have most of the songs written for the next release. Rehearsing them and putting some demoversions on the tape is the next step and naturally we try to get as many gigs as we can. ”Business” as usual.

What act or event, so far, has been the most memorable one? and why?

Well, we’re quite young as a band, so much of the things have been memorable as they have come along for the first time. I think biggest thing so far has been the deal and getting the record out.

Ok, now the last question… what are your greetings to our readers?

Stay heavy and support the underground.

Thanks Antti, for this interview! See you on the road!

Thank you very much. Hope we’ll get there some day 🙂

Interview by Tarja Virmakari

“Moment of Clarity” –musicvideo