Interview By Alison Booth
Finnish melancholic metal masters, AMORPHIS have just today (Friday 4th September) released their 12th album “Under The Red Cloud,” via Nuclear Blast Records. The album is produced, mixed and mastered by the world renowned Jens Bogren at his Fascination Street Studios in Sweden.
Seasoned veterans of the metal music scene, AMORPHIS at the end of last year celebrated the 20th anniversary of their classic album “Tales From The Thousand Lakes” by performing some special shows of the entire album.
Keyboard player Santeri Kallio displays the depths of his multitude of skills on “Under The Red Cloud”, also playing the Hammond organ, piano and even a church organ. I caught up with Santeri just a couple of days ago to discuss the album and he was very excited about its release. You can read a couple of excerpts from our chat and listen to the full interview on the audio player below.
Discussing the forthcoming release of “Under The Red Cloud”, Santeri expressed:
“We’re extremely excited to finally hear some feedback from the true fans and audience! So far we’ve only seen some reviews from magazines and comments from journalists. After the album is released I think it’s the most exciting part and it would be nice to get the final CD in my hands!”
Santeri also revealed his thoughts on working with producer Jens Bogren:
“After our self produced ten years from ‘Far From The Sun’ to ‘The Beginning Of Times’, where we basically recorded some stuff to tape, if I compare that to Jens’ style, he was really strict. But on the other hand, I recorded my keyboards by myself and just went to Sweden to redo a couple of solos, for me it was pretty much the same. But I was there when we started to record the drums and it was pretty heavy stuff for Jan. We started at eight o’clock in the morning and we stopped maybe ten or eleven o’clock in the evening. All that time he was playing the drums and always Jens was shouting ‘give me more energy!’
Jens was really precise about the tuning and the timings and that we really get the best takes on the drums and all the instruments. He was just the right person to produce this album.”
