Finnish Folk Metal is finding it’s way everywhere these days and KORPIKLAANI (Wilderness Clan in Finnish) is one of the most interesting of its exponents out there. While many Folk Metal bands started out with the Metal and added touches of ‘Folk’ KORPIKLAANI took the other route and you can hear that in there music. Andrew spoke to Cain to get the lowdown.
Hi. Thanks for the interview opportunity, it’s much appreciated. So you guys are hitting Australia in October for the very first time, what can we expect on this tour?
Cane: You’re welcome! Yes, this is going to be first time for Korpiklaani and also for me in Australia. I’m really looking forward to the shows and meeting fans on your continent. It is great that this finally happens after so many requests from the fans over the years. What you can expect is six outstanding shows where everybody can come to have fun with us.
Have you ever heard of any of the local folk metal in Australia like Claim The Throne?
Cane: No, I haven’t. I must admit that I’m totally out of Australian folk metal scene. Maybe things will be different after this tour. 🙂
Korpiklaani started out as a traditional folk band, how did the process of introducing more heavier elements to the music come about?
Cane: Because we’ve always loved these two music styles, traditional music and heavy metal, it was kind of natural to combine those. Jonne was playing heavy stuff before this acoustic duo and he wanted to go back to electric sound still not forgetting what he had been doing last years. Thats how Shaman/Korpiklaani sound was born. We still consider us as a folk band with distorted guitars more than heavy metal band with folk spices.
Whereas a lot of Finnish metal bands tend to have a lot of darker tones in their music, your music is more on the lighter side, musically and lyrically. Do you feel compelled to write music like that in opposition to a lot of other bands or is it something that just comes naturally to you?
Cane: I think it’s those folk instruments that gives the lighter feeling especially in the faster songs. Still some of our lyrics and riffs are quite dark in my opinion. Maybe not in same way than other bands but in a folky way. We have a good balance between happier and darker tunes. We are definitely not trying to sound dark and doom in every song as some bands do. We like to party and maybe that can be heard in some songs.
How do you compare yourselves to other folk metal bands?
Cane: Every band has their own sound and style and you should not compare them but to say something I think we are more folk than most of bands in genre.
What do you think of the current music scene in Finland at the moment?
Cane: Music scene in Finland is absolutely great nowadays. Especially the metal scene which is well known all over the world. Many bands doing huge tours in Europe and America and lots of smaller bands rising all the time. It is a priviledge to live in this land of good music and be part of that scene.
With the lyrics you tend to switch between both Finnish and English, how difficult is this and which fits better for your music?
Cane: I the beginning Jonne used to write all the lyrics and he preferred English. Now when we have good writers outside the band who write good lyrics in Finnish they have outnumbered the English ones during the years. On our newest album Manala we did the whole album also with English lyrics and released it as a bonus, just to hear the difference in these songs sung in different language. Feedback from that experiment clearly shows that people prefer more Finnish and so do we as a band. It’s not a problem to sing those old English songs live though.
Are there many lyrics used based on Kalevala at all?
Cane: The last album was the first of our albums which is mostly based in Kalevala. First it was supposed be the theme for the whole album but we left that idea and now there is also not Kalevala based songs. Songs are mostly about the underworld of the Finnish mythology. Kalevala-metre has been used in our lyrics before.
The band has had a lot of different members over the years, are there any particular reasons for the constant changes?
Cane: No, just personal reasons as we have announced in the press. If some don’t enjoy doing this anymore or would rather do something else, band is not the one who is stopping. Every member is free to make their own decisions. Unhappy people just don’t fit in the fun band. We still remain close with Juho and Hittavainen.
Your last album “Manala” released last year was released with a bonus CD in the digipak version which had an entire album’s worth of material. What was the reason for releasing it as a bonus CD rather than releasing the album as a double CD?
Cane: We thought that we will release two albums on the same day, the English and the Finnish, and then see which one was more popular in sales, but then we realized we didn’t want to force fans of the band to buy two albums and spend twice as much money. So we ended up doing it this way. As the songs were exactly the same on both discs, only vocals were changed, we wanted to show that the Finnish one was the “original” album.
How does this album compare to your previous releases?
Cane: It’s the best album so far. It represents the band and its sound at the moment very well. I think I’ll leave the comparing to the other people.
Obviously drinking is a big part of your music, so the question is – what is your favorite alcoholic beverage?
Cane: Vodka and beer. Was it too obvious?
If you could be a fly on the wall for the recording of any classic album in history what would it be?
Cane: Black Sabbath – Master of Reality
What is the meaning of life?
Cane: Rock’n Roll!
Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions and we look forward to seeing you all down in Australia!
