METAL OBSERVER
By Frodi

Circus Metal
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Here’s to my third article at TMO! With my first two articles being sort of band oriented (those being about SOILWORK and MOONSPELL), this one concentrates on a particular sound that I like to call “Circus Metal” (don’t laugh), a sound originating from the Metal infused country called Finland, supposedly created by CHILDREN OF BODOM. It’s rather short but still an interesting work in my opinion. To make things more fun for you guys, I’ve enlisted the aid of three individuals who have been playing this brand of metal for some years now: Kristian “Kride” Ranta, lead guitarist of NORTHER, Markus Vanhala, guitarist of OMNIUM GATHERUM and finally, ELENIUM’s keyboard wizard Johannes Salo (thanks for participating guys!).

Circus Metal (stop laughing!) is a hybrid playground of different attractions, its level of entertainment is seldom below a non-stop high velocity frequency, like a rollercoaster that has a few surprises for you when you get onboard. For starters you could say the style is speedy, thrashy and powerful guitarwise (ok BODOM had some Black Metal diggings on their first two albums), there’s a lot going on with lead harmonies, guitar god soloing, fast heaviness, small technical details and experimental phases as well. The keyboards strike as the thing being the most circus like quality of them all: neo-classical, atmospheric, fun, or just plain witty show off duelling. The bass instrument is the stranger in this sugar candy flavoured style. Bass players from this style rarely use a standard four string bass because the style is too advanced for that. No doubt that they have frightening skills but they spend more time behind the layered sound wall than actually coming out and play, with NORTHER being the exception as they have a firm and heavy bass sound.

The drumming patterns come the school of Power Metal: double bass drum are used in most of the bands songs but they still have a varied and progressive feel to them the more you listen. It is widely known that blast beats quickly go out of fashion in this style, you might hear them on the first two albums, KALMAH are an exception to that rule with three albums out and still retaining the brutal feel of Black/Death Metal in their songs. Vocally the style is pretty one dimensional, harsh and angry. Mr. Laiho has carved a little niche with his screamy vocals whereas NORTHER’s Petri Lindroos has a more traditional Peter Tägtgren approach.

That’s my version now let’s hear what our guests have to say. Let’s get intimate!

What are the main influences shared between the band members which in the end results in this intricate sound?
Salo: Connective thing is that we feed our selves by eating smoky mushrooms, Buhahahaa! We are all open to every type of music.

Kride: I guess we all like MEGADETH, DIMMU BORGIR, IN FLAMES, SLAYER, COB, etc. I guess these bands have influenced us and they can be heard in our sound.

Vanhala: I think that there are no likely many same main musical influences on every dude on this band as we all listen very different kinds of stuff, so I guess our main influences are our training place called HellHole, walls and its very very angry neighbours… The common band idol is something like MORBID ANGEL or DEATH but those again doesn’t reflect very much on our own music… We are kind of a defector band as we play something described as “Swedish-like” Death Metal and we come from Finland, so naturally a big part of our musical influences are pointed out to come from the Death Metal scene of Sweden… One critic described our stuff this way that when you put together AT THE GATES, DEATH, JUDAS PRIEST and KATATONIA the sum is OMNIUM GATHERUM! I agree with that review…

Is the sound more stripped down in a live situation? How do you recreate it?
Kride: Actually no, we try to play everything live as they are played on the CD. The guitar, bass and drum stuff is easy to handle, but the keyboard side is harder. Luckily Tuomas has got this Korg Triton Workstation so he can play multiple sounds at the same time.

Salo: Songs are made to work also in live situation. We don’t have to recreate it. As you can hear from the CD (Editors note: That one being their debut album “For Giving For Getting”, check the review btw) we don’t use many overlapping melodies with guitars or keyboards. I mean e.g. the passages where there are more than two different guitars or more than one different key is quite rare in our music.

We try to keep it clear in that part and focus to bring up the double guitar/bass/drum importance and melodies, which don’t need a million harmonies to sound good. Only element what sometimes confuses the overall live sound is the damn Synthesizer. Damn me!

Vanhala: I think that our sound is quite much the same in the live as in the record, except that the band sounds far more aggressive in live and the tempos of the songs are much more faster, sometimes maybe too fast, my fingers bleed when I try to masturbate my guitar fretboard during solos, etc. Antti is also always much much more angrier in live than in the studio when he spits his lungs out… And how do we recreate the sound? …of course we just play our stuff, that’s our point to make our Metal boiling. We don’t do the songs on studio and make million overdubbings, the songs are made on the way that they are also easily played live.

Do you guys think the sound has any limitations?
Vanhala: Of course, if you play Metal music and you wanna play Metal music that genre have always some limitations as also every other musical genre if you are going to make it stylistically correct or something… Stylistically correct, what the hell do I mean with that…? Even though today there are operatic vocals or accordion in Metal etc… But even if we try to make country music or something it always end up sounding like O.G. stuff, I guess that’s our destiny, curse and blessing.

Kride: Maybe but I have never thought about this… At least we don’t want be restricted by any sound matters…

Salo: In our case the only limitation is that it sounds good in our ears. If there were any limitations we could probably sell more albums...

What’s your view on the current status of this sound? Are there too many bands playing this style at the moment?
Kride: I think this genre is doing fine. I my opinion there are not too many bands. I for one example look at the Power Metal genre, there are like 20 bands playing almost the same kind of music.

Salo: If you mean melodic approach I think there are always room for a good Melodic Metal! Today when bands get influences from varied styles of Metal they can create interesting music and differ from each other. Like I haven’t heard a single band, which sound similar to ELENIUM…?

In my point of view, it would not be hard to take the prefix: “Death Metal” away from our band, because it has surely blocked off some listeners who might like Ele! There are absolutely Deathish parts, but the fans of SYMPHONY X, DREAM THEATER and NEVERMORE could also find some great vibes from our melodies, riffs and guitar solos! On the contrary our melodies and non-death parts also block off a lot of Death Metal purists. So our music could well be described as a commercial suicide.

Vanhala: Hell yeah, every boy and even girl have their own Melodic Death Metal band nowadays! There are of course many good bands but oversupply is enormous in this genre, as also in every other musical genre nowadays. But if you are going to make your job’n’stuff well you will hopefully be noticed in the end and maybe even earlier. Hopefully O.G. have something new and/or interesting to offer to this overcrowded genre… We are heading all the time more away from that Gothenburg sound which is every time mentioned if you play this kind of stuff as O.G. But to return to this overcrowded genre conversation, anyhow it is better that youngsters have now their own Melo Death Metal band instead that they would be out in the streets kicking some grandma’s, hehe.

A sound, especially a new one in the Metal genre, tends to wear out pretty quickly after a few years, what are your future predictions for this sound?
Salo: All the time the sound gets more massiveness and more producing. Production levels are reaching the red level. Well, not exactly, but the direction is clear. Happily heavy bands have done a long career starting from the garages, so the raw emotion will transmit to the record and keep the music soulful.

Anyway, it’s not a miracle that bands easily have backlash and wanted to go back to the roots of Metal. Fine example is the latest NEVERMORE. After a very big sounding “D.H.I.A.D.W.” that they recorded with Andy Sneap they launch a little stuffy album with “Enemies Of Reality”. The production definitely suits better to those new songs and gave justice to their angry!

Vanhala: No future plans, we’ll see where the sound of O.G. is heading. It’s futile and boring to make long-term schemes about those kind of things. The music just comes into existence in its own twisted way and seldom it will be that kind of stuff what you planned and started to do at first…

Kride: I think this genre is here to stay. Black Metal remained even though it’s a even more underground type genre than this Melo Death or what ever you want to call our genre.

Is there any album of this genre that you consider as a template for a successful Circus Metal formula?
Vanhala: Circus Metal…? You have kinda strange alias to this Finnish Metal genre or is this term of a Melodic Death Metal genre as a whole? If I must list a few Scandinavian Melo Death records, I recommend “Slaughter Of The Soul” by AT THE GATES, “The Jester Race/Subterranean” by IN FLAMES, “The Gallery” by DARK TRANQUILLITY and “Crimson” by EDGE OF SANITY as those records were the main influence for me when I formed this band. Some great Finnish records of this genre are “Amok” by SENTENCED, “Tales From The Thousand Lakes” by AMORPHIS and the first CHILDREN OF BODOM album.

Kride: I don’t know about this, let the listeners decide.

Salo: The bands in the “Melodic Death Metal” scene of Finland are all about the same ages. If I have to mention one band then it will be AMORPHIS (“Karelian Isthmus”, “Tales From The Thousand Lakes”) if you count those albums to Circus Metal formula Actually we didn`t even know we played Circus Metal... Nice term though.

Got that? Good. Well that’s what I had in store this time, feel free to mail me if you want to give some feedback, good or bad. Special thanks to the three cool Finnish dudes for their input.

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