Metal Shock Finland (World Assault )

AVENIE is a Melodic Death metal band from Tampere, Finland. After doing some line-up changes, they are now working on their second album and we’re eager to hear how it’s going! We got a chance to interview Avenie’s guitarist Matti Auerkallio.

1.First things first. Tell us about your summer?

Well, as far as Avenie is concerned, we’ve been pretty calm on the surface. Underneath, we spent some time getting the new guys into shape so we wouldn’t completely embarrace ourselves in the Sauna Open Air afterparty gig we did. We also immediately dug into the new material, I see no point in learning all the old songs after changes like these within the band.

2.You have had some line-up changes this year. Please, tell us little bit about them?

Yes, well… Marko (the singer on “Sombre Embrace”)  was kind of a… Let’s say temporary member, I always knew he wasn’t going to stay, Avenie is not his “niche”, but he was the most capable I could think of at the time. Marko is a phenomenal vocalist and one of my dearest friends. When the time came to let Marko go, we discussed the options and found that the new frontman was already in the band. I knew Juha was a better singer than a bass player. After we switched Juha over to vocals, we needed a bassist. We found one within the hour, Hiski’s conservatory mate Markus, who also is a multi-instrumentalist and a great singer, perfect man for the job. Extremely musical and a good dude.

3.  Where did the idea come from to move Juha from bass to vocals and how did it feel?

Myself and Felipe were watching his other band’s (Mockshot) gig, which he fronts and it was pretty obvious after that. The man has the voice, pitch and charisma, he IS a lead singer. I can’t speak for everybody, but I personally have to admit I was a bit scared at first. At the Sauna-gig he proved all my concerns completely unnecessary. Not only did he do a great job, I think he took Avenie to a new level completely, especially in terms of live shows.

4. According to your website, there are no original members in the band anymore. What kept you going?

Yeah, I’ve been in the band the longest, 5 or 6 years I think… I came in as a singer then and by that time the band had been around for 4-5 years, during which time a lot of the personnel had already changed. I honestly can’t tell what kept us going. My best guess is just the need to have an outlet like this. When the band was suddenly diminshed to just Felipe and myself, it was obvious we needed to record the album regardless, those songs needed to be published and there wasn’t any other choice than for me to play everything except the keys and have Marko sing it. Avenie is becoming a real band again with 6 contributing members instead of just the Matti Auerkallio & Friends-show. If someday that well goes dry, then we’ll stop, but so far there are no signs of running out of new ideas.

5. You’re working your next album currently? When should it be ready for us to listen?

We are deep into the writing process. I sat down with Hiski and Felipe some time ago and we molded 5 new songs then from a bunch of rough material I had. By now there are a few more and I’ve written lyrics to almost all of them. We’ve been discussing setting dates for recording near the end of the year, so I guess first tasters should be around next spring if nothing drastic happens.

6. Is it different from the previous album? How would you describe it?

Yes. One main difference is, the next album will be furious, it won’t be mournful like “Sombre Embrace”, but driven and full of anxiety. Were not holding back anymore, we’re unleashing our skills and raising the middle finger to caution. One of the new songs went by the working title “Sadistique” and in this case nomen est omen. That one has a tempo of 240bpm and yes, there will be 16th notes. We have the most brutal drummer in Avenie history in the current line-up and we’re gonna make him work.

7.Who is in charge of making your songs or is it more team work for you?

For the longest time it was just me, about 95% of writing “Sombre Embrace” fell upon my shoulders. Now I’m lucky enough to have Hiski and Felipe write with me. I guess most of the ideas still come from me, but their input is crucial to the direction we are floating towards. After the music is about ready, I start shuffling with lyrical ideas. They way I work with that is, rough ideas of lyrics, themes or little lines appear to me and I write them down. Then I’ll listen to the songs while going through those rough ideas and one song just aches for a certain idea or theme. Then it’s just a matter of sitting down and writing it out. I usually have some rough vocal arrangement as I write the lyrics, but I try not to guide Juha too much, he makes better vocal arrangements than I do, so I try to utilize that as much as possible only stepping in when I feel necessary, which is not often.

8. Who do you see as your inspiration? Idols you look up to?

I have to answer this personally but I’ll try to guide this to a relevant direction. I went to school and was hit by peer pressure in the early 90’s, so I listened to 90’s techno for some years. Before that I mostly listened to my folk’s old Michael Jackson LP, which had the song “Beat It” on it, which features Eddie Van Halen’s guitar solo. I used to listen to that song and lift the needle back to the beginning of the solo a lot, I mean, if I found that particular vinyl now, it would propably jump right over that solo from being too worn out. But when I brought it to school with me, I was laughed at. So I conformed and listened to what everybody else listened to. But then, I found my older sister’s Metallica cd’s, they had released the “Black Album” a few years earlier and there was no going back, I sold all my previous cd’s and bought more Metallica. After that came Sepultura, Death, Pantera, then Dream Theater, Symphony X, then Meshuggah, Opeth, Planet X, Soilwork, Scarve, Emperor, Satyricon, Dark Funeral, Deep Purple, Whitesnake, Iron Maiden, Primus, Hardcore Superstar, Cannibal Corpse… I was suddenly drowning into amazing music. These days, It’s all of that with just more and more new stuff, everything from prog to pop, rock to classical, gypsy jazz to black metal, electronic music to djent. It’s endless. Certain people I look up to would be Dimebag, Virgil Donati, David Coverdale, Derek Sherinian, Tony Levin, Glenn Hughes, Paganini, Chick Corea, Stochelo Rosenberg, Victor Wooten, Bela Bartok… I think I didn’t do very well with that whole “relevant direction”-thing.

9. You have a donation box in your website. Where did you get this brilliant idea? And have you had many donations so far?

I don’t know exactly, we’ve probably seen somebody else do it and thought it was a good idea. We’ve had a few donations, not a lot, but we are extremely thankful and honored for every cent.

10. And finally, how’s your autumn/winter looking?

Writing and rehearsing, then studio. I guess I’ll be recording and mixing again so it’ll be busy for me. We’ll try to get a few gigs in as well. We’d love to play a lot more and I hope someday we get the chance to reach more people.

Thank you so much for the interview! Can’t wait to hear more from you guys!

Kiitos!
-Matti / Avenie

Interview by Nelli Perkkiö

For more information, please visit: http://www.avenie.net

Avenie – Funeral For A Dream