Interview With BATTLE BEAST ‘S Noora Louhimo: “I can’t comment because that can affect the band”

Interview by Mohsen “Stargazer” Fayazi

Finnish metallers, BATTLE BEAST, are set to release their 4th studio album, “Bringer Of Pain”, on February 17th through Nuclear Blast Records. I recently had an interview with Noora Louhimo, to speak about their forthcoming album, tour and more news from the band. Several excerpts of this interview can be read below:

To start the chat, I asked Noora how she is feeling about this album:

“Very relieved because we got it done in time and it turned out pretty good, so we are very happy. We hope that everybody is gonna like it, or most of the people are gonna like it, so that we can continue doing this as a job.”

The music style of the band in “Bringer Of Pain” seems to be changed, it sounds more like a pop/rock/metal album than a heavy/power metal one. So I asked her if it was because of the change in the line up, she stated:

“I don’t know about that, but in Battle Beast it has always been that we have various kinds of songs and when Anton was aboard, he did ‘Touch In The Night’ and that wasn’t such a heavy metal song.

In Battle Beast, the thing is to do different kinds of music and not to get stuck in some certain kind of heavy metal style.”

I was interested to know about her personal influences as a vocalist as indeed it is her voice and style of singing that makes this album sounds more like metal music;

“I have a lot of different influences – my first idol was Whitney Houston. For example, Janis Joplin was the reason I found the rasp in my voice and Bruce Dickinson is the reason I wanna do best as a performer on stage. And Ronnie James Dio, his way of interpreting songs is a very good example for me.”

We continued to talk about this album and I asked Noora who is really the bringer of pain?

“Bringer Of Pain is actually a character in the song. I actually created a new fantasy world called Glow It was the easiest song that was born, that is the best situation for songwriting. The character is a female kind of warlord and heiress of the kingdom of the …. and her story will definitely continue on the next album.”

Today, almost everybody is talking about Donald Trump, his comments, decisions …etc. So before finishing this interview I asked Noora‘s opinion about him, her answer as you can read below made me think and become worried, if these new policies of the U.S.A government are going to affect the work of artists around the world who think different;

“Well actually, what I’ve decided, I can’t comment because that can affect the band in a negative way, so I can’t comment about politics or whatever. I’m a very open person and I hope that people are treated equally, no matter the gender or the religion or your skin colour and that is my point of view.”

As the final question, I asked Noora if she has ever felt any discrimination during her career as a female vocalist,

“No, I’ve always been taken very well and people have been very respectful and people have liked that I’m a female singer in a heavy metal band.”

You can listen to the whole of this interview on the audio player below: