Interviews

Interview With Olli-Pekka Laine, AMORPHIS: “We’re open minded when it comes to new things”

Posted by aliblackdiamond on May 17, 2018
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Interview By Alison Booth

Finnish progressive metal giants AMORPHIS are seasoned veterans of the metal music scene, rapidly heading towards their 30 year anniversary. The band’s highly anticipated follow-up to 2015’s “Under The Red Cloud”, their 13th studio album “Queen Of Time”, produced by Jens Bogren will be released on 18th May via Nuclear Blast Records.

Metal Shock Finland Senior Manager Alison Booth caught up with bass player Olli-Pekka Laine, AKA Oppu, to discuss the epic new album and all things AMORPHIS. Look out for a special Blackdiamond’s Metal Mayhem radio show next week on http://www.totalrock.com starring Oppu and of course new AMORPHIS music! Some excerpts from the chat can be read below, with the full interview on the audio player:

On how the band feel about the forthcoming album release, Oppu stated:

“Well, it’s really exciting, it’s like being in a candy store or something! We’re even more excited than back in the day somehow. It’s like, wonderful – two videos out and one is coming next Friday from another song. And we have already played a couple of songs live in Norway and we will add a few more songs to our live set.”

Discussing “Queen Of Time” and the new areas explored this time around:

“Jens did a great job – he’s an amazing producer and he has great ideas. You can see from him that he kind of hears things in his head, in some weird way.

When it comes to the choirs and strings, that’s something Amorphis has used from Day One – even when we did our first demo, we had a human voice synthesizer on the album on a couple of songs. So in a way it’s not a new thing for us, the new things is that it’s done with a real choir and a real orchestra. We are known for wanting to explore things in our music and this is something totally new for us and yeah, we’re kind of open minded when it comes to new things and this is our way to do it this time.”

Regarding lyricist Pekka Kainulainen and the lyrical content of the songs, Oppu revealed his thoughts:

“I think that I even haven’t met Pekka, though I am his friend on Facebook and Instagram. I think he’s doing a great job, the guys have been working with him with previous albums as well and he is kind of writing the lyrics in the timeless way, that the Kalevala was written back in the days – the book which we have been using in the nineties. It’s kind of a good thing because our music is timeless as well, so the lyrics fit our music really well.

Personally, I kind of like the idea not to explain the lyrics too much, or coming up with certain themes too much because I tend to enjoy to find my own personal interpretations in the lyrics, so it would kind of boost the music. Everyone reads the lyrics in their own way and finds their own meanings.”

Talking about his favourite “Queen Of Time” tracks, Oppu explained:

“Yeah well Daughter Of Hate is great and The Bee, that has grown as one of my favourites and Grain Of Sand, which has a kind of Slayer vibe on it. They were one of the bands which inspired Amorphis in the first place, so it’s nice to have that kind of influence there as well. So maybe those three songs are my favourite and it’s really hard to pick up the top one – it could vary from one day to another.”

Oppu enthused about being back in the band:

“Well it’s great! It’s sort of familiar to be in the band but feel it’s kind of a new band, because it’s much more professional and we have a great background organisation. We have our own stage crew and the playing is much better and also the mood in the band is, I wouldn’t like to use the word ‘mature’, (laughs) but I think I will. We have all matured in a way and the guys are just great.

Everyone has developed in playing very much and for example I have discovered new kinds of music. I’m listening to a lot of jazz nowadays and I’ve played in a stoner rock band, so I play a lot more these days than I used to do. On a personal level, we were good friends, almost brothers, back in the day already and that remains. We had that spiritual connection throughout the years anyway. It kind of felt for me that I’m part of Amorphis even though I wasn’t in the band, so it was kind of a natural thing to enter again.”

On touring and the recent show in Norway:

“Yeah I’m sure we will tour like hell for the couple of next years, so it’s almost 100% certain we will come to the UK as well. We have our first European tour booked for next January.

Well, surprisingly good you know – I saw a few people singing the songs by the heart. It was kind of surprising because I wouldn’t learn any band’s lyrics before the show! But it’s great to see there are hardcore fans who are excited in Amorphis and yeah, they were received really well. We will have our first show in Finland on the 8th of June and we are playing plenty of the new stuff and also some classics.”

Discussing what’s coming up in the future for AMORPHIS, Oppu stated:

“Only gigs coming up, nothing that should be mentioned. There are some surprises which I actually cannot reveal. I’m not saying that they will happen in one year, but maybe next year there will be something special I think.

But for now we will go to tour and we will have our new stage set up. The first tour will be in North America with Dark Tranquillity and Moonspell which will be interesting to experience. We have several visitors on the album, I hope that at least some of them could join us on stage at some stage during the tour. It’s gonna take time because of the conflicting schedules, so let’s see!“

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Interview with Chen Balbus, ORPHANED LAND: “We’re already writing the new album”

Posted by aliblackdiamond on April 25, 2018
Posted in: Interviews. Tagged: , , , . 1 Comment

Interview By Alison Booth

Oriental metal trailblazers ORPHANED LAND released their critically acclaimed new album, “Unsung Prophets & Dead Messiahs” at the end of January and have been supporting it with an intensive touring schedule since February. The band have already performed for fans in Europe, Russia and Japan and are set to tour the USA with Faroese metallers TYR in May.

Metal Shock Finland Senior Manager Alison Booth caught up with guitarist Chen Balbus before they departed for the Russian leg of the “Unsung Prophets & Dead Messiahs” tour. The album and touring was discussed as well as an update on Chen‘s rock ‘n’ roll band THE SECRET SAINTS. Check out some excerpts below, with the full chat on the audio player:

Discussing how the album has been received, Chen stated:

“So far I’m quite proud with the reception of the audience – they loved it when we just released the first single and the second single and the third single. I did not expect that – I thought that people kinda won’t accept it ‘cos they liked the previous members and they were not trusting me and the other guys to bring something that is authentic Orphaned Land. And we pretty much succeeded to do our job and we brought if not the best Orphaned Land album.

So, people love it. People sing it in shows already, I’m proud.”

On the subject of ORPHANED LAND breaking boundaries of racial and religious divide, Chen explained:

“Yeah, pretty much every time we go in concerts we’re asking ‘alright, we’re Orphaned Land from Israel, are there any Muslims, Arabic people in the crowd? Lift your flags, tell us where you’re from’. You just see like, people coming from countries that are pretty much our neighbour countries like Lebanon, Syria, Egypt. All of those countries are like an hour drive from where I live and I can never actually visit there, but I see those guys in other countries. 

So it’s something that our politicians and all those ambassadors could never achieve with all that money they got there and all those fancy talks at the UN and we just did it with goddamn heavy metal! ”

On what’s coming up for the band after the summer, Chen revealed:

“We’re gonna plan the next leg of the European tour, maybe do some new locations, pretty much working on it right now. We’re already actually writing the new album as we speak. We don’t wanna let people wait five years again, so we better start. There are a couple of tracks here and there, like snippets, but we’ll get to there eventually – first we gotta rock the world!”

Due to adverse weather conditions today, ORPHANED LAND‘s official album release show at the Shuni Fortress in Israel has now been rescheduled to 13th June. Check out more information on the band’s official Facebook page.

Blackdiamond’s Metal Mayhem radio show aired an ORPHANED LAND special this week with the interview and lots of music – if you missed out it will soon be available to listen to again at this location.

Tokyo 2018

Official Website

 

Interview With SNOWY SHAW: “I like the diversity and variation…I need new adventures”

Posted by aliblackdiamond on April 20, 2018
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Interview By Alison Booth

Legendary multi-instrumentalist and vocalist SNOWY SHAW (well known for his work with KING DIAMOND, DIMMU BORGIR, THERION, NOTRE DAME, DREAM EVIL and more) is preparing to release his first solo album “White Is The New Black”, due for release on 23rd of May in Europe and Japan, and digitally worldwide. The album is all written, performed and produced by Snowy Shaw for Wunderwurld Music & Films.

Snowy will be hosting a release party for the forthcoming album, which is set to be live streamed to the world on Saturday 21st April. I recently had a long chat with Snowy about the album, release party, tour news, glam rock and more! Check out some excerpts below and the full interview can be heard on the audio player:

Snowy revealed the following details about his live stream release party:

“It will reach out to a lot of people, because people feel it’s nice to interact with the artist and get to know them more personally. A lot of bands in the past might throw a release party at a local rock club and invite a couple of hundred friends and that’s fine. But I decided to do it a little bit more personal, so I am actually inviting the whole wide world potentially, to my own home.

I will be interacting with people during the whole evening and we’ll play live, there will be Q and A’s, we’ll be selling the albums, I’ll be signing stuff and we’ll be partying! There’s gonna be a lot of friends that I’ve invited to my house, famous faces from the area of Gothenburg – which has tons of bands like In Flames, Mikkey Dee, Hardcore Superstar. We have a professional film team here, so it’s gonna be like Big Brother – those overview cameras placed in various rooms in my big house. So it’s gonna be in the basement, in the studio, in the drum room. I’m going to introduce you to our dogs – it’s definitely something you don’t want to miss.”

Discussing his solo work, Snowy explained:

“Life itself has a tendency of putting a lot of obstacles in the way, things take time. For me, I mean I’ve been with so many bands over the years, ranging from everything from black metal with Dimmu Borgir to Triple X which is like glam rock, more seventies style and everything in between – you know like progressive doom metal and doom and so on. It’s not a coincidence that I’ve been in all those bands, it’s because I like the diversity and variation and if I do something for too long I tend to get sort of fed up with that and need to move on to something else, new adventures and challenges and so on. I’ve also been in a creative mode in many of those bands and been writing the bulk of the material and so on.

So now when I decided to go sort of under my own flag with my namesake so called band, I couldn’t really make up my mind exactly what I wanted to do. I tend to be so intense that I sort of overdose on it or something (laughs). The ideal situation for me would be to have say, four different bands with different musical direction and lyrical concept and sound and all that. But then I remembered how difficult it is to pull that thing together with four or five people these days, so I ditched that idea for the moment.

Then I figured what stops me from doing it all under my own name and different projects and allowing myself that complete artistic freedom to do that. I wrote independently and went into those different little worlds and that’s basically what this album is all about. Let’s say they are samples, let’s say it’s twelve songs in total and it’s two songs from six different albums with different directions. So this is like samples from albums that are gonna be released every year from now on. It’s the ‘Essential Snowy Shaw’ or ‘Greatest Hits’ in reverse.”

Snowy‘s “White Is The New Black” album release party will be available to see on his official YouTube channel at this location from 21.00 – 00.00 midnight CET on Saturday 21st April. You can also join the Facebook event here.

Official website

Official Facebook

Interview With MARK TORNILLO: “We’re a different band at this point”

Posted by aliblackdiamond on February 16, 2018
Posted in: Interviews. Tagged: , , . 8 Comments

Interview By Alison Booth

Metal giants ACCEPT have been pounding the ear drums of metalheads around Europe on “The Rise Of Chaos” tour since early January. Metal Shock Finland’s Alison Booth had a chat with vocalist Mark Tornillo when ACCEPT were in Paris, for her Blackdiamond’s Metal Mayhem radio show, (which can be heard here) just before the band’s explosive and packed out show in London. Many topics were covered including the fans, Mark‘s love of vinyl and his thoughts on joining such an iconic metal band – you can read a few excerpts below and listen to the full interview on the audio player:

On playing the UK Mark stated:

“I wish we were dong more shows. At the end of the day, it’s not really up to us – it’s up to the promoters and powers that be and we’ll have to see what happens. But at least we’ve got one.”

When asked if there could be a more widespread UK tour, Mark answered:

“I hope so, I wouldn’t doubt it. I mean things really seem to be progressing, so we’re gonna be doing a lot of festivals this summer too. Hopefully we’ll be there for one of those, well you never know.”

Talking about ACCEPT fans:

“Makes me feel great, it makes me feel great that they accepted me into the Accept family, no pun intended! It’s been wow man, going on ten years for me now which is just insane. We just had an incredible run through Spain, three shows in Spain and they were just ridiculous – off the hook, you can’t even imagine! The fans are what make it happen definitely.”

Mark Tornillo
London 2018
Photo By John Lambton

One of the newest songs ‘Analog Man’, from “The Rise Of Chaos” is about Mark, so of course I asked him about it:

“I’m just one of those people who has issues with computers and all of that nonsense. I’m not totally crippled but just not computer savvy, put it that way. I get what I have to get done and that’s about it. But in the end it just annoys me, you know when things don’t work and things I can’t figure out. And I just get annoyed and I also look at them and I go look, see me – analog, analog man! You can have your digital work, analog man!’ And they just wrote the damn song!”

Moving on to vinyl, Mark expressed:

“I had a lot of vinyl at one time. I still have some of it, but over the years from moving, you know, living with different people and stuff, I guess a lot of it just went different places, but I still have a lot of my favourite records. AC/DC – I have the entire box set, I think the latest one in that was The Razors Edge maybe. I got them all on vinyl, I’m an AC/DC nut.”

Discussing when he joined ACCEPT, Mark revealed:

“It was frightening. When we first announced what was going to happen, there was really not many people on board with it. Online there was a lot of naysayers, a lot of badmouthing, it was very disheartening. We all sat down and said, ‘look, we have to make an amazing record or else we’re gonna die here’ and that’s what we did. We spent a lot of time writing Blood Of The Nations and a lot of time recording it and I think in retrospect, it paid off. If that album wasn’t what it was, we wouldn’t be here.”

On people who still don’t ‘accept’ today’s ACCEPT:

“Everybody is entitled to their opinion – I’m a purist too with certain things, I get it. But I think we’ve moved on, we’re a different band at this point. We still pay tribute to the old Accept by playing the old songs, I mean we have the two people that wrote most of the songs, we have to. That’s always gonna be part of Accept’s history, we can’t change it. All we can change is the future.

I wish them all well, I wish Udo well and his band you know. No hard feelings on my part, that’s for sure.”

Discussing the future for ACCEPT, Mark said:

“That’s a good question – it’s still up in the air what’s gonna happen the rest of the year after the festivals. We may continue touring all year, I really don’t know. After that, it remains to be seen, maybe do another record, I don’t know. We’re too old to take five years off (laughs). At some point we’re gonna have to call it quits or just go right back to the studio. It is what it is, or just continue touring.

We do as much as we can, but you can’t oversaturate either. You just have to pray for new markets too and thank God for South America – that’s become a great market for us, actually we’re gonna go back in May. Australia seems to be picking up for us, we just have to be consistent. It’s just like the old days, you have to tour consistently and hit those places and keep pounding ’em, that’s how you pick up fans.”

Check out the picture gallery from the London show on 8th February. All photos by John Lambton.

 

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For the rest of the tour dates, visit the official ACCEPT website at this location.

Interview With Peter Baltes: “Finland is a true, true metal country.”

Posted by Stargazer on February 12, 2018
Posted in: Interviews. Tagged: , , . 1 Comment
Interview by Mohsen “Stargazer” Fayazi

He is an amazing bass player who has always dedicated his skills and talent for the benefit of the band. There is no doubt about his role in making the legendary ACCEPT successful. Peter Baltes was born on 4 April 1958 in Solingen, Germany. He started his music career when he was young and although he claims that he is not Billy Sheehan he was voted as the number one bass player in Burrn Magazine reader’s poll of 1985.

ACCEPT are heading towards the end of ‘The Rise of Chaos’ European tour and very soon they are going to bring their music to the land of metal, Finland. Peter shares his thoughts on playing there:
“Number one is the dedication of the fans, I mean Finland is a true, true metal country. It has true metal fans and it shows every time we play, we can feel this is like something special, this is something beyond you know. It’s just, you can feel it on stage and when you talk to the fans and people.
And everybody seems to know metal – even people in the hotel, people on the street. Metal is like a high standard in Finland, which is great.”
Whenever they were active, ACCEPT have always been on a high. Great quality of music and production on their albums, along with energetic and perfect performances on stage have always been true facts about them. But what makes ACCEPT work so well?
“I think there’s a couple of factors. One of them is the songwriting part, Wolf and I have been writing these songs for so many years and we have our little quirky ways how we do it, but what comes out in the end is somehow what defines Accept, from the songwriting part.
Also, our dedication to our craft and our work ethic – we really do strive for excellence. When we play on stage we want things perfect. And at the same time trying to achieve the human aspect – that we have fun and play, that it’s not so organised. So that’s difficult for us to do, but for some reason we’re doing this very very well.”
Not many bass players dare to play a solo on stage, but Peter Baltes has done, which has always received positive feed back from the crowd.
“Well we used to do a few bass solos a couple of tours back. It’s not really about the spotlight, it’s a variety for the fans. If you’re in the audience and you see a show, in the old days there used to be a guitar solo and a drum solo. A bass solo was a little unique, but it was something cool we could offer. We decided now it would be much cooler to have some sort of battle going on instead of play a bass solo – have a little guitar bass battle with Wolf going on, which I win every night (laughs), I’m just kidding.
I’m no Billy Sheehan, I’m not very technical. But most things I play come right outta my stomach, my gut and I’m always concerned about the rhythm of things. I see the faces of the people when I play and that’s pretty cool. Most of all, it’s just I prefer playing within the band.”
Those fans who followed the band from the beginning know that Peter also did some lead vocals on tracks such as ‘Primitive’ and ‘The King” and a few more. But would it be possible that he do it again in the future?
“Probably could in the future, but never had the opportunity at this point because Mark has such a great range and has a really nice clean voice. Which back in the day was the reason I started singing a couple of ballads because we wrote some and you know, I guess almost the band pointed at me and said ‘you try it’ because they knew I was singing a little bit, ’cause back then it made sense, it was kinda cool.
We have Mark now and he’s such an excellent singer, but who knows in the future? Maybe we do something together, I’m not opposed to it, no.”
You can listen to the whole of this interview on the Audio Player below and if you would like to win a pair of tickets for the ACCEPT shows in Finland, Peter said a secret code, fill the form with that code and you’ll have a chance to be one of our lucky winners.

 

 

Interview With BRIAN DOWNEY: “Thin Lizzy was an incredible time in my life, maybe the best time ever”

Posted by aliblackdiamond on February 9, 2018
Posted in: Interviews. Tagged: , , . 2 Comments

Interview By Alison Booth

Where to start with a THIN LIZZY legend! Drummer Brian Downey was a founding member of the legendary Irish rockers along with Phil Lynott, an integral part of that classic Lizzy sound with band throughout their career of twelve studio albums. Brian is now back with his new band – BRIAN DOWNEY’S ALIVE AND DANGEROUS.

Ahead of the band’s performance this weekend (Saturday 10th February) in London at Nell’s Jazz & Blues, I had a very interesting conversation with Brian about the band, their forthcoming show and the future, as well as other fascinating aspects of Brian‘s career, including THIN LIZZY and working with Phil Lynott, Gary Moore and Chris Tsangarides. Check out a few written excerpts and the full audio below:

Discussing the formation of BRIAN DOWNEY’S ALIVE AND DANGEROUS, Brian explained:

“The band was actually called The Low Riders at that time. I was actually invited down by Brian Grace our guitar player, he was playing that night. So I arrived down, I didn’t even intend to play, but they asked me to play when I got there and I got up and jammed for maybe about half an hour with the guys. And it was really an incredible experience because they knew the songs really well. It was really enjoyable to play onstage with the guys.

We got chatting about things and I didn’t really intend to ask them there and then to come on board, but over a few days I realised these were the guys I’d been looking for.”

Regarding the show in London, Brian stated:

“We also played there back in November. It really was two great nights because both nights were packed – a great atmosphere, lots of real Lizzy fans there, real Lizzy supporters as Phil Lynott used to say. So we’re really looking forward to going back there on the tenth (February).

The band is called Brian Downey’s Alive And Dangerous, we took the name obviously from Live And Dangerous, the live album, that’s forty years release this year. So we’re going to do most of the tracks off Live And Dangerous and there’s one or two other ones in there, little surprises for the fans. But generally it’s based on the Live And Dangerous album.”

Brian reflected on his THIN LIZZY days:

“It was an incredible time in my life, maybe the best time ever. When we started off, it was kinda hard, it took us a while to get a foothold in the music industry. We went to England and based ourselves in West Hampstead and luckily enough, Decca Records weren’t too far away. It was great to get signed up by Decca in the early seventies, it was a big label then.

It was a struggle for a few years and then suddenly we had a hit record on our hands with Whisky In The Jar. Decca were given the songs – one was Whisky In The Jar and the other was Black Boys On The Corner, which Phil had written as the A side. But when it went to Dick Rowe in Decca Records, he had a listen and decided to flip them around. We had a few issues about it and there was talk in the band, ‘why’s he doing this, he’s going to ruin our career!’ but that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, he made the right decision and the song went into the charts. We got the Top of the Pops slot and that really put the band on the map and we never looked back since.”

For more information on BRIAN DOWNEY’S ALIVE AND DANGEROUS, follow the official Facebook page here and check the official website at this location. There will also be a special Blackdiamond’s Metal Mayhem radio show coming up on http://www.totalrock.com – stay tuned!