BEYOND WEBZINE
by RNO

Interview with Tuomo (bass)
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You told me that not everyone liked the album equally... What positive and negative points were highlighted
in the first reviews you got?
Well, the response has been really diverse. Some reviewers have found it too experimental and some say there's nothing new compared to the genre. The positive highlight feedback has been about us combining very different influences into Death Metal hybrid successfully. Often this diversity has been heard as lack of personal style. (Those same people often hear our stuff for the first time.) Avi Pitchon from Terrorizer wrote that our music would have sounded experimental 8 years ago. That was the most negative review so far...

Do you think those people are right? I think they're just deaf... ;)
A review is always just one person's opinion so there's no wrong or right there. We make the music we like and that's it. If we'd try to please everyone, our music would be totally fake and shitty and we couldn't enjoy the process. It doesn't matter if we get negative feedback but if the arguments are 'amateurish' or there aren't any that's annoying. "FGFG" is an album that will definitely not open to the listener if you listen to it only once. You must dig deeper.

Well, I didn't have to dig deeper... I liked the album at first audition! Do you think that's because I know you guys since your first releases? Or am I just a superior being? haha ;)
Probably both... I'm glad you liked it.

Tell me a few details about the whole process for the new album... Did you all work on the songs or was there a mastermind among you?
It's always a group effort when we write songs. Someone may have a raw version of an entire song or a beginning and then we start to arrange and rehearse it. Very often the end result differs very much from the first idea. Johannes, Tommi and I write all the music and Johannes is the most active composer. You might even call him a mastermind, I guess. There's no specific method to write a song. A song may also evolve from jamming during rehearsals if someone shows a cool riff. Kasperi has been given total freedom in creating his solos and J makes his own vocal melodies. We arrange everything together and try different things during the process.

So, no one ever feels frustrated I suppose?
No, of course you must always make some compromises if you don't work alone. It may be irritating if you have a very strong vision about something and everyone hears things differently, but we try to be open and no major conflicts have occurred this far. We wouldn't be able to stand behind this thing if we were just one man and his band. I frankly don't quite understand such bands unless the other guys get paid really well. Maybe our egos are too big (heh)… Anyway, I couldn't stay interested in a band I have no influence on. We don't get paid for this so it must be fun; if it weren't any fun, we wouldn't have continued for these 8 years already.

Do you think it's gonna pay off one day?
If we come to talk about money... I sure hope that someday we could make our living out of this, but that would require some luck too. Though I wouldn't play my cards on luck when speaking of us. Besides money this has been really rewarding already. It's a great feeling to get good feedback from your own music, which has your own blood and tears in it. Not to mention playing live; we love to do that. Unfortunately we haven't been able to play live yet after the recordings of the album...

Well, I really hope you guys will succeed in making a living out of it... About playing live; how do you manage to play such complex songs on stage? Are there parts that you need to simplify/modify or do you play exactly the same stuff that is on the CD ?
The secret is being sober... The drinking must be done after the gig. We don't have to do different live arrangements; of course, though there are four guitars in some parts on the album, we only have two guitarists on stage. We try not to add too much stuff on the album so that the songs work in live situations as well. Very often the songs are faster when we play them live but that comes pretty naturally. I think a gig shouldn't sound just like the album cause then it would be pretty boring to watch gigs. There must be attitude on stage and if that leads to a couple of mistakes, who cares. No one wants to see a frightened guitarist staring at his guitar no matter how well he plays.

So what are you and the others looking at when you play live? The crazy headbangers?
How's your average crowd over there?
At our own feet, Hahaa! It's hard to look at anything when caught in a mosh but we may have a look at the audience every once in a while too. We aren't a very well known band here in Finland and we've been a demo band on all our gigs this far. Our crowd has been everything in-between 6 and 300 I guess.

Well, I'm sure your feet look better on stage than at home anyway ;) Now, tell me, how do you feel and behave on stage? I've never been to Finland personally, but people always say that Scandinavians are so reserved... Is that true?
It's hard to say cause I haven't seen too many gigs outside Finland. If the audience rocks it's a great feeling and it gets us really energetic. This happened in Kajaani which is the home city of Kasperi, our guitarist. The audience was great and it got us to play the best gig this far. I think that here in Helsinki the audience is more reserved. People are afraid of making fools of themselves (unless they're drunk, which they often are) so they just stare from the back of the room. As far as we are concerned we are fools anyway so we have nothing to worry about. Playing live should be about energy and having a good time so we don't try to look evil on stage or anything like that, we may even smile ;)

That sounds pretty cool... Now, let's go back to the origin of the band for a short while... Are you all long-time friends? Ever had a fight for "who gets the girlfriend" or similar crap?
Kasperi joined the band in 2001 and we didn't know him beforehand. All we others have known each other for ages. Well, there's been all kinds of happenings especially when we were teenagers. We have even dated the same girls but in the end this band is what truly matters. We have had some arguments that would probably sound like a married couple's fight to a stranger's ear. I must admire Kasperi's social skills 'cause he's got into the band really well. We liked him straight from the beginning because he spoke his opinions and was able to disagree.

I saw Kasperi studies to become a pro musician. Aren't you afraid that one day he might just go away on tour for 6 months with some Pop artist?
Well, Kasperi doesn't like pop music... He has his own band - Merging Flare - though, so maybe they'll become huge and go on a 6 months tour. We don't have too many tours at the moment with Ele either so even that could be arranged. He is an extremely talented musician so anything is possible.

I just took a look at your favorite bands page on the Ele site... It looks pretty homogeneous, apart maybe from Ozric Tentacles... Are there other non-Metal bands that you sometimes listen to?
There are lots of them... At the moment I've been listening a lot of Björk and especially her "Post" album which is amazing. I love her voice and style. Tori Amos is another woman whose work I admire. I could make a long list here but I don't think that would be interesting. I might mention Gotan Project, which is also a great band. I went to their concert last autumn and they were cool. I used to be a fan of Queen as a kid and I still like some of their stuff. They didn't have too many boundaries in their music either.

Do you often download music on the net?
Not at all. Firstly, I don't have a computer at home and somehow I have never been very enthusiastic about mp3s. I rather go to a cozy music shop and listen to new albums there. When I was younger I used to do that every day but nowadays I usually find new artists through my friends' collections.

No computer?... so how do you spend your free time at home ? Do you practice singing all the time?
I stare at the monitor for 8 hours a day at school so there really isn't a great urge to do that at home. Spending time has never been a problem; I can always have sex with myself. And I have a shitty Landola that's never in tune. We've also been room mates with my fellow Eleman Johannes since the spring so I have someone to delight with my tunes over there...

What kind of school are you in ? And why the hell would you have sex with yourself? Aren't there nice young blonde sex-bombs in Finland that are willing to play with your weenie... and your Landola? ;)))
I study multimedia and graphic design and I should graduate next autumn. Yeah, I have a sexy girl too but having sex with yourself is still too underrated...

We didn't talk about the lyrics yet... So go ahead...
The title of the album kind of ties it all up: the selfishness of our kind. If I give you something I want something back - not literally of course. If I make a compliment to you and you smile, even then I get something, otherwise I wouldn't bother. What are we ready to give in order to get what we want? For Giving - for Getting ...and forgotten... After spending a meaningless life on earth that doesn't differ much from an ant's life. I mean, we work for the system and we die. We have fine words like success, fame, future, responsibility etc. to spice it up but they don't change the facts. Such things as the ones you really care for more than often get forgotten, when we fine western people rush forward to make fortunes. We've lost the ability to enjoy this moment cause all we do is reach forward. I could write an endless amount of text about this and I probably couldn't make any sense to you anyway... The same theme kind of unites all the songs, but it's definitely not a concept album. Our lyrics are about reality. That's the most brutal subject I know. This is a brutal world...

So... with such a somber conception of life, what actually saves you from committing suicide? Is it music, is it irony, drugs?... Because obviously there must be something, otherwise we wouldn't be talking ;)
It's a perfect balance between those elements... ;) Music has really had a huge role in keeping me sane and I think everyone in the band more or less agrees. Irony is definitely a keyword in this band too. There's a shitload of irony and jokes about our insignificance when the six of us get together. Besides music, laughing at yourself is a great way of therapy. We come from a very realistic gray suburban area and I know people from there who are dead, in jail or totally wasted by drugs. Many of them were our friends. In a way, I feel this band and the passion for extreme music saved me. Or then it's just luck. Am I getting too dramatic?

Definitely. Tell us a joke to relax the atmosphere.
Sorry. What is this? A talk show? Well ok, if you promise to laugh your head off... If you drop a drummer and a bassist from an airplane, which one hits the ground first?

Probably the bassist because he's always behind on the drummer... Or the contrary.
It depends who you actually hate :) So who is it?
Who cares? Buhahaaa!!!!

OK, that's a good one :) Now, let's return to seriousness... How did you get in touch with Duncan at Rage Of Achilles? Are you going to work with him for another album later on? To put it briefly: happy or not ?
Definitely happy this far. The most important thing for us was to finally make a full length album and we did that. Our mates Omnium Gatherum were already signed on ROA and they seemed pretty happy. I'm not sure if their guitarist Markus even recommended us to Duncan but at least they encouraged us to send our demo there. We have a deal for 2 albums and we'll probably enter the studio next year in order to do another album. (My jokes suck by the way...)

About the production of FG - FG; it's another one that's been mastered at Finnvox. Did you take that decision to make it there or were you like "forced" to do so? I'm asking because sometimes labels want a product to sound "standard" for the masses and the Finnvox definitely has a big name...
It wasn't too conscious I guess. Finnvox lies almost next to Sonic Pump and it's a very professional studio. We mastered our demo there too. It's true they have a big name but to be honest the mastering process doesn't change the sound that much unless it has been mixed badly. It just widens the whole world of all the sounds a bit. We want to stay far away from the Finnvox standards if you know what I mean. We have a very small budget compared to many bands so there really wasn't any chance to experiment with different sounds or studios. I'm pretty sure ROA counts on our decisions and they don't force us to anything.

What's gonna happen in the near future? Do you have plans yet?
We don't have any huge plans, except... We'll start playing some live dates here in Finland in February. Before that we must begin to rehearse and get into live shape. We are really anxious to do that so it won't be a problem. And of course there are lots of new Ele tunes waiting to be created so writing new and better stuff is definitely an important part of our near future plans.

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