The Finnish legends are back with what is one of the most hotly anticipated releases this year. Entitled ‘Manifest’ this new album features everything that is great about this band, hitting you even harder with their trademark Thrash/Death/Grindcore/Black Metal, which sounds bigger, better and more hate-fuelled than anything they have released thus far in their 17 year careers. With more than a few surprises up their sleeves and more controversy than you can shake a shitty stick at, long standing vocalist Mika Luttinen is clearly pleased about the direction the band have taken on this release, which considering the circumstances endured over the last couple of years, says something about just how dedicated they are.
Your last few releases have seen a change in your sound, culminating in your new album ‘Manifest’, which sounds quite different from the frantic, Grindcore-inspired albums of the past. More rooted in traditional metal/speed and thrash, was it your intention to create a more straight-forward metal-sounding, fist in the arsehole album this time around?
Hmmm…no, because the thing is we never plan anything ahead so whatever happens just happens. We never have any kind of master plan or anything. There are five different composers of this band and everyone has their own different influences so that’s kind of makes it this fucking mess that we create (laughs). It’s the fact that everybody just makes the music and then we always meet at rehearsals and everybody brings something to the table and then decide if we will keep it, but if like three out of five think that it is complete shit then we don’t use it (laughs).
So it’s a bit of a hit and miss thing then?
Yeah, it’s like sometimes somebody gets annoyed saying ‘why don’t you like my songs’ but we have been working like this since ‘Latex Cult’ or something, so everybody knows how it goes and in a way its quite easy I think.
Are you a band that rehearses a lot, do you spend a lot of time in the practise room?
No…well…it depends. If we have an album coming out then we are practising a lot or if we have some kind of gig or tours coming up, but when we don’t have anything coming up it can be like 6 weeks or 7 weeks then suddenly it’s like shit, but we have scheduling so we just say ok, lets go in next Sunday. Also, we have our own private forum where we keep up with all the rehearsal times but you get messages like ‘I have a hangover, I’m not coming’ and then somebody else saying ‘I have a hangover too, I’m not coming’ (laughs). This happens a lot!
Whereas most bands of your ilk opt for grittier, dirtier sounding albums, IN have for years opted for very clean, powerful productions, which is something that particularly stands out from ‘Manifest’. Do you feel that you got the sound that highlights best the songs on this album?
On this album the production is so superb, especially for me because it’s a very analogue-sounding album. The problem with the previous album, I mean I liked the production when it was done but then like one year later I was listening to it and I was like how the fuck is this so compressed and sounds so damn digital. So, when we started planning the pre-production we said to our producer we want it much more analogue-sounding, like the eighties album’s but make it sound modern. So, we said lets rig the drums without any triggers or bullshit like this, let’s go for a production that sounds like the band playing live. I think it’s true that we always have, well maybe not the first album, but we have a clear and clean production and that mostly comes from me because I’m a sucker for a good production. I really like these massive productions, like some of the Manowar albums for example, so I have always been wanting to get a good sound on our albums because I think it’s kinda stupid that you go to the studio and try to do the worst sound album ever.
I must say that your voice in particularly brutal form on this album…plenty of help from JD and cigars then?
I was actually pretty sober on this one (laughs).
Was that a first?
No. On ‘Suomi Finland Perkele’ I didn’t drink any alcohol either ‘cause the thing was I was so fucking broke when we were in the studio and I was like ok fuck this shit, I’m not going to waste my last money to get some alcohol, I would just drink some water and some red bull and that’s it. Some people have been saying that I sound much better than previously, but it’s hard for me to say anything concrete about it. I know that I was rehearsing like hell before I went into the studio, so maybe that’s the thing that makes it sound different. I am really proud of a track like ‘Original Pig Rig’ because on the chorus there are these Grindcore vocals that I have never done before, so it was something where I thought I would try something new that was still in my range because I am not a good vocalist, I know that for a fact! I would hate to sing something with clean vocals ‘cause I would go out of tune immediately, so I stick to the formula that I did first then tried to spice it up a bit with this death growling or Grindcore shit, but I am very limited in what I can do so I try my best but I am not trying something that would make it sound like complete horrible shit!
Over the years you have had many problems with censorship issues regarding your covers, lyrics etc, resulting in you being banned from playing in Germany, France, Italy, Austria and Poland back in 2005/06. How much does this affect the inner workings of Impaled Nazarene, it must be so frustrating to have a load of fuckwits condemning your music when they know absolutely nothing about it.
Well, sometimes it’s good that they are like this because it gives you this spark, it fuels the hate. The last European tour and they actually managed to ban us and you start losing money, then it gets to a point where it’s not funny anymore because it’s affecting your whole life. The last European tour as well, was a complete fucking disaster for us, so when we finally came back after two months we were in so much debt that it took like eighteen months to pay back everything that we owed. We had quit our jobs and everything to be able to do that huge tour, it was really bad for us. Hardly surprisingly the album deals with lots of that shit that went down during that tour, the aftermath, because the four of us were thinking that ok the struggle is now over but then we were planning Poland and we had never played there before, and some fucking days before we were banned. We were basically ready to go to the airport and that was the last straw for us. I was like fuck this shit, we were so close to giving up. Then, the last two albums went under the review committee of the German censorship and ‘Latex Cult’ was ok but ‘Nihil’ then was banned in January 2007, so there seems to be fucking bad luck following us (laughs). Some people say that when they read our biography on our website, they think it’s amazing how much shit we have gone through, it’s like a never ending stream of shit that follows this band!
But as you say, it fuels the hatred!
Absolutely, because with this album it was really easy to write the lyrics this time, it was just like remember what happened last year and it just comes out like, fuuuuuck!
New member (guitarist) Tomi UG Ullgren who has replaced Tuomio has been a session member since 2000…what has he brought to the table in terms of song writing or did he have this input before officially joining as a full time member?
It was really easy to do this line up change. Even though Tuomio played and wrote some of the songs on ‘Manifest’, with his personal life and everything it just got to the point where he couldn’t continue with us anymore. When he phoned me and said ‘I’m out’ I called Ullgren immediately and said do you want to be a full time member and he said yes and that was it. It took like five seconds!
It probably saved a lot of time auditioning people and going through hundreds of people just to find out they have nothing in common with the people and workings of Impaled Nazarene.
Yeah, definitely. And we didn’t have to teach him any of the songs ‘cause he has been playing with us so long. When we were writing ‘Manifest’ he phoned me and said I have some songs that sound like Impaled Nazarene and do we want to use them but I told him that we already have so many songs now but maybe next time, and now he is suddenly a full time band member. For now at least we haven’t been checking out anything new that might be on the next album, but I am sure that he will write songs for the next album. We always do the same thing when we have a line up change and say that you can do your own shit on these songs but don’t change them too much. I think it’s important that people can still to figure out what the fuck’s going on, especially with the older songs. Every lead guitarist we have had plays differently and I think it’s a good thing because it keeps it exciting for people, like ok, it doesn’t sound necessarily sound exactly like it was recorded but they can still make out what song it is
You also stated that this is your most varied release since ‘Suomi Finland Perkele’, featuring more variations in tempo and riffing style – although it’s still undoubtedly Impaled Nazarene to the core. I mean a song like ‘Dead Return’; it’s something quite different for you guys.
Absolutely, I fucking love that song. Our bass player wrote that song and he sent me an email saying ‘is this already too much for Impaled Nazarene?’. I was listening and it was clear from the first second of listening to that song that this will be the closing song. I phoned him and said that this track is fucking genius, it kind of reminds of old Paradise Lost, something a bit different for us.
Aside from Germany of course, do you plan to do any sort of tour in support of this new album?
No, because the fact is that we had so much bad luck had last year and we don’t even know where we can play! It’s fucking irritating. The head of Osmose phoned me up the other day and said ‘what are your touring plans?’ and I said ‘we have fucking nothing’, and he said ‘what’?! But what can we do? We cannot take the risk again of losing shit loads of money. What we are trying to do now is book weekend gigs here and there all around Europe so we’ll see what happens.
Just how important is playing live for IN? Do you enjoy the touring side of being in a band?
It’s the best fucking thing in the whole world! And that’s why it’s so irritating with that tour because we couldn’t play live. We were sat in the fucking gas stations in Germany for like three days in a row and then had one show in Prague and then we came back to Germany to find out we couldn’t play there either. But playing live is the best thing about being in a band. You get to see the world and eat food you have never even heard of, and all the alcohol and stuff comes with it for free (laughs)!
Like I said before, IN has morphed back and forth from different styles of music from the almost rocking vibes of ‘Suomi Finland Perkele’ to the more abrasive and much more aggressive crust/punk tones of ‘Rapture’. Through all these changes, however, you have always managed to have that distinct Impaled Nazarene sound and I wondered just what is it that connects you from your first album to where you are now. With all the line up changes, it must be hard to stay on track.
I don’t really know. If you listen to the first album and listen to ‘Manifest’ I don’t think there is really that much difference.
Slightly rawer perhaps!
Yeah, but I think the fact is that we have been really lucky when there has been line up changes. We have always been able to find people who are able to adapt to the song writing style of the band, I mean some people who have been fans of the band end up joining us, so that’s been a good thing. For example, our current bass player who has been with us for seven years now hadn’t even heard a fucking Impaled Nazarene song in his life and then he wrote for his first song ‘Armageddon Death Squad’ and I was like, ‘what the fuck’ (laughs).
Now that is some debut!
It sometimes it amazes me when I stop and think about it, but in a way I like the way that every album is a bit different to each other ‘cause people don’t know what to expect from us. I mean, can you name any other band that has like a song like ‘Death Returns’ and then a song like ‘Lets Fucking Die!’, then we have 20 second Grindcore tracks and I think that the scale of our songs is very far stretched. We have everything basically; the only thing we are missing is acoustic ballads!
You definitely don’t want to go down that route.
No, I don’t think so (laughs)!
Even though you guys started off as I suppose what you could call as a Black Metal band with the corpsepaint, inverted crosses and stuff, it always makes me laugh that even today some people still class you as a Black Metal band! For me at least, your sound is quite obviously very different from say Gorgoroth or Deathspell Omega.
It doesn’t really piss me off, I just wonder why they do. Maybe some people just look at the logo and think ok they are Black Metal. I think the whole Black Metal thing of who is true and who is not and all that crap is one of the reasons why we stepped out of all that shit, I mean it’s just stupid. People were saying what would you call what you play but what the fuck can you say? It’s a mixture of every fucking thing from some Grindcore, some Death Metal, to Thrash Metal to Black Metal and that’s our trademark.
A little bit about the future then, I read somewhere that either after this album or the next you will be releasing a live DVD. Can you give us any details of that now or is it too early to say? Is it going to be a DVD of just one show or a compilation of shows spanning your 17 years as a band?
A lot of people are asking this but how things are at the moment I don’t really don’t want to do another fucking studio DVD, but maybe after the next album. We prefer to do studio albums but on the other hand we released the live CD and I fucking love it. We did it cleverly because we have been around long enough to have a good back catalogue, because I cannot understand bands that do two albums and then do a live CD or DVD.
Or a best of album.
(laughs) Exactly, they are just ripping people off. When we do a live DVD I want it to be something special and definitely have a different track list then the live CD. We just want to do something interesting not just for us but for our fans. Who the fuck would want to try and do a DVD after two years that would have the 90% of the same track listing as the albums?
I think that because you guys have been going for seventeen years now and have had a lot of albums in that time, it would be good to let your fans if they haven’t seen you live before, to witness all the classics.
It’s like planning a live set now is a fucking nightmare because there are certain songs that you know people want to hear but then sometimes we are like ‘we have played this forever’, and we’re like why? (laughs) It will come though.
