Apoclyptica, a band who first rose to the worlds attention through their “Plays Metallica” album nearly three decades ago. Their unique take on Metallica’s greatest hits created a sensation globally and ultimately led them to a close relationship with Metallica. Now in 2024 Apocalyptica return with “Plays Metallica Vol.2”. The mix of classics and tracks from the most recent albums sees the band push the boundaries as to how we hear Metallica.
Main man Eicca Toppinen sat down with me as we talk the album, the interpretations and what they look for in a Metallica song. We also talk our favourite Metallica album and why its special to us. It’s a great look inside Apocalyptica, their love of what they do and how James Hetfield, Robert Trujillo and Cliff Burton feature on the album along with Slayer’s Dave Lombardo.
Andrew : Hello Eicca, How are you? Welcome to The Rockpit and Australia.
Eicca : I’m good. Good morning.
Andrew : Good evening from us Eicca. Welcome to the Rockpit here in Australia and congratulations on “Plays Metallica Vol. 2”, which came out a few weeks ago, man. What an incredible piece of work you’ve put out there.
Eicca : Oh, I’m happy to hear you enjoyed it.
Andrew : I loved it. Absolutely loved it. To think the first instalment of “Plays Metallica” which was really the first introduction to the band was 28 years ago and you’re back with volume two. For you what is the biggest difference between the two plays, Metallica Records?
Eicca : I think it’s probably easier to talk what is similar and I think the similar is the passion to metal music what we have, but it’s like when we did the first album, we were just a bunch of classical cellists who loved metal and we did it. We did the first album because we were asked to do it. We even never thought to ourselves that we could make an album out of playing those songs let alone that somebody would like to listen this on a record. We went into the studio knowing absolutely nothing about studio work and started to figure out. On the first album the approach to the Metallica songs was that we played them as they are and play them with the instruments we can play. But of course, 28 years later and there’s been eight albums in between these two albums. Albums of original music and a lot of exploring, learnings and playing tons and tons of shows, I think we have created our own identity for Apocalyptic as a band and we have our own sound. Now it is about how we approach these Metallica songs and what kind of new perspective we can bring into those songs. It was kind of like reinventing the wheel with the second album, there is so much we have grown from. Volume 2 feels for us equally as great as the first album, but it’s not kind of a copy of the first one, but it’s something that represents Apocalyptica in 2024.
Andrew : There are some absolutely amazing versions of the Metallica catalogue in there and I love how it pretty much spans the bands entire career. How hard was it to actually go in and pick the songs to do? Because on the first one the obvious choices were there. This one you dive a little deeper into the catalogue; what was the thought process behind it?
Eicca : It was actually quite challenging. We kind of started to do this album because there were so many Metallica songs we wanted to play, but this time we set the bar pretty high on our versions. I think we went through probably 20 songs. We listened to the whole catalogue, all the new and old albums tons of times. It started with figuring which songs were places to start sparking the idea of how we can do it. Because this time we really wanted to feel that every version on this album is bringing some kind of new perspective or new approach to Metallica’s music. That was only sense to make this album that we are able to highlight Metallica’s music with a little bit of a new perspective; and that turned out to be pretty challenging. There were a lot of great songs that we think, oh, this is great song, let’s do it; and then we were working on the song and we were at times thinking that this version is not turning out great. It was not about the greatness of the original song, it was all about this apocalyptical version. We kind of dig in deep into every song, tried to find identify the soul and the aspects that what is making this song. In this song, what are the key characteristics? When you take James out and you actually take the Metallica performance out, that how Metallica sounds, a lot of Metallica’s magic is also in that. Sometimes we felt that okay about what we were finding, other times there weren’t enough elements or things to create a great instrumental version to the level we knew the songs deserved. We were super critical with that, that we kind of had to feel that our version is our own its a Apocalyptica song in the end. We would pull the songs into pieces, then digest the key elements and then bring out the key elements for us and if it didn’t really feel like this is amazing it was out.
It was an interesting process, but that was kind of for us, it was the way to make this exciting because I think why it took such a long time is because we’ve been always talking that okay, one day we will make “Plays Metallica Vol.2”: another Metallica album. We didn’t want this to feel like a step backwards, it had to be a step forward on Apocalyptica’s path and really had to have the feeling that this makes sense to do a Metallica album. We wanted the versions to be different from the originals but to be different just in the means of being different; that’s bullshit, that’s meaningless, try to be different if you know what I mean. The difference to the original has to come from a different origin other than just from the means of being different. We went through a lot of stuff.
Andrew : What was the hardest track to adapt to cello?
Eicca : From the ones that ended up on the album? There were a lot of difficult tracks that comes from the instrument itself. Like ‘Blackened’ was challenging, ‘Ride The Lighting’ was really challenging. I think with ‘St. Anger’, the arrangement had me wondering a lot the time how to do it because you get the feeling that it’s going to work, but you don’t know exactly how to crack the code. Some songs took longer to figure out what’s the key approach to the song and the arrangement, what’s in there? Then some things happen pretty easily, like ‘To Live Is To Die’. I think that was the last addition, the arrangement to that one probably happened a little bit easier because there had been so many months of work on finding the way how to approach things and giving ourselves the freedom to be free from the original in a certain way and not to be a slave to that. Okay, because Metallica plays it like this do we have to? It was kind of giving us the freedom to go take distance to the original and bring a new perspective.
Andrew : It’s interesting with the songs that you’ve just mentioned ‘The Four Horsemen’, ‘Ride The Lightning’, ‘To Live Is To Die’ and as well as ‘St. Anger’ itself, ‘St. Anger’ is probably the highlight of the album for me. I absolutely love what you guys have done with that. It’s just such a cool take on the song. It’s a whole new dimension to it. Again, I’m on the fence about the “St. Anger’ record. I love the songs yet I hate the production and what you guys have brought to it is something really fresh. Was that something intentional that you wanted to do to go and I mean there’s still elements of the production within your version, so it is very honest in that regard. Was that something that you intentionally approached it with?
Eicca : I had this feeling that I think that album is underappreciated because it has a lot of greatness in it. Maybe I got that because I happened to see Metallica many times when the album was released. I got to know songs like ‘Frantic’ and ‘St. Anger’ through the live versions where there is not that album production sound. Where it’s just Metallica playing the song and I understand the challenge because the sound production of original album is not very welcoming if I could put it that way. Last summer we were already in the middle of the production of the album and I was like, I know there is something, I know ‘St. Anger’ will work. I was listening to the “St. Anger” album a lot and I got used to the sound and then after I got really used to the sound. Initially it was like, oh this is so uncomfortable. When I started to feel comfortable with the sound, it opened me up to a totally new layer and it actually is amazing record. It has so much energy, so much anger, it’s so furious, the whole record, which makes it really beautiful and that’s why I was really like, I know this ‘St Anger’, I know I just don’t know the version yet, but I know this song is going to be great because it’s a great song so it will turn out. Then I found elements that kind of changed things, the drums; i wanted to do the drums halftime because the riff is cool and I think it made it more groovy and more powerful with a little bit more Pantera style, kind of having halftime feel made it heavier and it’s the heaviest song now. When we played in the live show a few weeks ago the new production really makes it shine. I think ‘St. Anger’ is the heaviest track on the that list.
Andrew : I can’t wait to hear it live. You talk about ‘To Live Is To Die’, which is probably the biggest contrast on the record. It is just such a hauntingly beautiful arrangement. It was something that I just couldn’t stop listening to and going back to and it’s given me a whole new love for that song, congratulations on that.
Eicca : Thank you, thank you.
Andrew : The one track that I did find that was really cool was ‘Blackened’ as well, just that little bit of voicing that you have in there. Who came up with the idea for that little bit of voicing that goes through the track?
Eicca : I dunno, I think it probably was our producer Joe Baressi, he had these weird things. He had just gotten this throat microphone from the Second World War. The flight pilots, they had these microphones here on their throat outside and that was the way how they communicated or something like that. We were just testing and fooling around with them, trying all kinds of crazy things to see how they work when you play and you sing along. A lot of the aliveness in this album is with thanks to the producer Joe Baressi. That’s why we chose him to produce the album because Joe is this kind of old school guy who is all about capturing the performance and the sound in the recording situation. It’s not done with modern production, we didn’t approach it in the way that we just play this stuff and then okay, we can do this or that in the edit.
Everything is put in place then done afterwards and we chose the old school method where things are created in the actual moment and then we just record those. With this album, we wanted to keep it non polished. For example, ‘Blackened’ you mentioned we wanted to get Dave Lombardo to do the drums to just make it even more fun because his drumming is always so fascinating and we even played with the click track just to keep things together as we were tracking things. Being on the same grid that’s what gives a recording it’s aliveness. It gives a different feeling; it creates the feeling that this is played live. It’s played live because it’s played for real, but it’s played a little bit different at times. In modern production it’s too hygienic how to I pronounce it in English? Clinical. Yeah, it’s too clinical and that’s not what metal and rock and roll is about metal and rock and roll is about sweat and the smell of shit. You need to feel the kind of hard work there.
Andrew : So true. With volume two, you’ve got James Hetfield and Robert Trujillo involved. Robert on a couple of tracks and James obviously for ‘One’. How did that come about? The band were well and truly aware of what you guys had done with Volume one; they know that you guys are huge fans and do amazing interpretations of their music. Who initiated all of that?
Eicca : It was me in the end and it being we’ve known Metallica since ‘96. We opened for them two nights in November ‘96. We’ve been doing a couple of things along the way, we played with them for their 30th anniversary. I personally played ceremony music when Lars got married and stuff like that. When we started this album project, there was no plan to involve Metallica at all. All of those ideas started to pop up when we were working on the versions. I think the first thing was ‘The Four Horsemen’, that was the very first song I did the arrangement for. When I was working on it, I was like, there’s this great bass line under the solo and it didn’t feel right to transfer it to cello because we would have needed to do a lot of tricks to get the cello in the right register. I thought it should be played by bass and if it’s played by bass, that bass solo element was still there, it would make it something special. Then I thought, okay, it would be creative if Rob would play it. I reached out on Rob, he was super excited. Then I had other ideas on how to involve Metallica that came from the music. For example, one of my band mates, he had this vision to make this very cinematic, huge cinematic story where the lyrics would be spoken and told the story. We were talking about some actors that could be an actor like Liam Neeson or Jack Nicholson or somebody like that. Of course we thought the ultimate would be to have James Hetfield do it, but ah, it’s not going to happen. I was like, let me figure out a way to introduce this idea to James and see what he says.
I found a way and James was like, oh wow, that’s exciting. That’s a very interesting approach and he wanted to be on board. Last spring, I sent a message when we had these ideas ‘Call of Ktulu’ to have the Cliff Burton original track. I was working on ‘Call of Ktulu’ because I love the song, it’s one of my favourite Metallica songs and I realized some years ago that a lot of the songs magic actually comes from the bass track. We came the idea that wow, if we could get that original bass track, that would be amazing. All of these crazy ideas we floating around, they all came from the music. Then I sent a message to Lars, I was like, we are working on this album, ”Plays Metallica Volume 2” and we have had a couple of ideas that are popping up so I would like to have a chat with you. I spoke with Lars and he was like, Hey I love that you always think out of the box. These ideas are so cool and unexpected; let’s see what we can do about the Cliff Burton track. He was like, wow, that’s a cool idea, but even I don’t know how to make it work.
I need to agree, James needs to agree, Cliff Burton’s family needs to agree, and then whoever owns the actual recording, whatever label that is has to agree. From there things moved forward at a smooth pace and everything worked out. In the front I would say that it was not like we went to Metallica asking we want something of you guys. It was more like we have these ideas we think are great, what do you guys think? They agreed and that’s why they are so strongly involved. Lars even said to me because we wanted Lars to do something on it as well, and it would’ve been great to have Lars to do something on the album, but Lars said to me, I’ve been thinking about it. It would be great to play on your record. But now you have Rob, James and Cliff, if I come there as well, it’ll be too much about Metallica. The focus should be on Apocalyptica, not on Metallica. That’s why I have to say that I don’t think I should play on the record.
Andrew : The one question I do have for you, just to wrap it all up, do you have a favourite era/year of Metallica?
Eicca : Favourite year of Metallica?
I think my favourite year of Metallica is 2024 because I just saw them a few weekends ago. I saw two shows, the last time was the same, when I saw them and when you see Metallica live now, you can see the magic of Metallica; that joy they have these days when they play on stage, it’s so beautiful that the guys, they have this magic and I think they didn’t have in past years, there was something that was not really there for a while. Sometimes the shows weren’t the greatest, but now they are really fantastic. I have always liked that Metallica have been brave to do what they feel is right for them and haven’t been afraid of change and rejection. Metallica is probably one of the most hated bands as well as it’s one of the most loved bands in the world and that’s because they have been true to themselves doing what is true to them.
That’s something that I appreciate the most in an artistic career. We are kind of servants to the audience; that is definitely one way to see our profession. That’s how I see things when I go to play a show. I’m there to serve the audience as much as I’m there to serve inside myself and my band mates. But that’s one part of this, but you can’t become a slave of serving the audience with the cost of your own passion to what you do. That unfortunately seems to happen to artists when they get trapped in figuring out how to keep their fame, how to keep their popularity. It becomes more important than that, you need to create something that you as an artist is passionate about. If you don’t, as seen many times through the history of music some old bands become pretty lame in the way that they keep repeating, they get stuck in the past decades fearing change. I find it more exciting and interesting to see people with long careers and keeping the fire inside them alive. I know how hard it is, it can be very hard and in Metallica’s case as well, they have gone through a lot of shit and hard times to get there where they are now. So that’s why I would say that what Metallica is at the moment is my favourite time for them.
If we talk about albums, I think my favourite album is “Ride The Lightning” and it’s very hard to know why something is your favourite. It might be connected to which phase of your own personal life. For example when I heard the album and I got stuck on listening it on loop, but there’s something on that, there’s something in the sound of that album. The songs are great, but how it sounds has something musical to me. It’s kind of going into some space special mind space. We have actually, we have recorded a lot of songs from that album. We have done ‘Fight Fire with Fire’, we’ve done ‘Ride The Lightning’, we’ve done ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’, we’ve done now ‘Call Of Ktulu’, we haven’t recorded ‘Escape’, but that was the very first song we played ever. We have played almost whole album and we have recorded most of it, there are a lot of great songs on it and there is a great atmosphere on the record. It’s hard to put those better albums in the order of what is greatest and what is not so great because they’re different and they work differently in different moods.
I want to add that I really wanted to have something from the recent albums on the record as well. What I found out was not a lack of great songs. There are a lot of great songs on the recent albums, but Metallica’s song writing has changed a little bit into a direction where the songs are more simplistic in their structure. On the early records you can have a song that you have six or seven fantastic riffs in one song and the new material is more straightforward. When we took James’ performance and the lyrics out and then Metallica performance out, it’s like we didn’t feel that we have enough elements to make those songs really great without starting to add a lot of things. We then felt that, okay, this is not the right direction to go, to start to recompose on a top of couple of riffs because melodically there aren’t as many melodic lines on the newer stuff.
I also think we run out of time with the production window when we started to do that, because we started with the obvious ones that these are the songs we really want to play. It took time to get those right and then in the end we were still trying to figure others out, the last additions for this album were ‘St. Anger’ and ‘To Live Is To Die’. You never know if in another six months of working on them where it would have led with the newer material. Maybe that’s something that we will see sometime in the future.
Andrew : It certainly is an incredible record and such a good listen and such done. So respectfully and tastefully.
Eicca : Oh, I’m so grateful to hear that. I’m so happy to hear that.
Andrew : It’s funny you mentioned “Ride The Lightning”. I mean that’s my go-to Metallica album. It always has been, it always will be I think.
Eicca : Why do you think it’s that for you?
Andrew : “Ride The Lightning” was the album I really discovered them on, I had heard bits and pieces I thought “Kill ‘Em All” was perhaps a little bit too raw, still cool as hell but didn’t impact me like “Ride The Lightning” did. I tend to agree with you as far as the way that that album was produced and recorded. I think they’d started to really find themselves with Cliff and his writing and what he added to the band at that level. They were a punk thrashy band that had developed into something that was their own.
Eicca : That was such a good point. I think it’s in between the “Kill ‘Em All” for me also. It’s a little bit too straight forward and raw and then it’s kind of in the midst of some evolution of metal because that’s very well said actually. You worded that out great.
Andrew : And then if I have to back it up, I back it up with “Master of Puppets”, which I mean in all honesty, I get into lots of conversations over that one as to why that’s not on top of my list. I think again, it comes down to the production and the way that they’d structured and written those songs. “Master of Puppets” I think allowed them to be a little more production based and a lot more time was spent on that side of things. There’s that energy and rawness from “Ride the Lightning” that just gets me every time. Without “Ride The Lightning” there couldn’t have been a “Master Of Puppets”.
Eicca : Yeah, it’s probably exactly that. There’s not too much thinking. There is already enough learning from after the first album and playing so much live. There wasn’t too much thinking about how it should be. I think it still has this, let’s just do it feeling about it.
Andrew : Are there any plans for Apocalyptica to head to our part of the world?
Eicca : I really, really, really hope that that will happen soon. It’s easier for us always to do this part of world because we are here to start with. We do some pretty big European tours of around 50 shows and then we have just announced South America, no, North America for the spring. Then I think summer is festival season here next year, hopefully next fall, winter or your summer we want to come to Australia, that’s the goal. I just spoke with our manager yesterday and said that’s what we should aim to do and we should start to check for opportunities. I would say I’m 99.99% sure that we will hit Australia with the Plays Metallica tour.
I don’t see how it’s possible not to do it. We are planning to play a lot of shows with this and want to go to all territories. It’s more about finding the right way to do it then the possibilities because as you know, to move our assets and gear all the way there, it costs some money. We need to figure out what is the best way? It’s going to be the festival route or is it going to be our own shows? We are definitely looking forward to that. I love to play in Australia. I think I’ve been to Australia three or four times and every time it’s been a blast. I love the mix of old and new in Australia, especially the older cities and their architecture. Australia has always had cool people and cool crowds, you guys are so relaxed. You have this really good mixture of European and North American vibes, the best of both actually, so we are really looking forward to returning to Australia.
Andrew : Perfect. We’ve only touched on the new album, the whole Apocalyptica back catalogue and career is phenomenal. Thank you again and I look forward to what’s ahead beyond this. Thank you for changing my world and my perspective on music from that very first “Plays Metallica”.
Eicca : Oh, thank you so much. It’s our pleasure. That’s why we still exist because with every album we’ve been focusing on doing something that excites us the most. That’s why it’s impossible to even think about what’s going to be the next album because it’ll take anyway, two, three years to get there. I can’t tell that what will excite us the most in one year from now. I think that’s the way to go and keep the spark alive and live in those moments.
Andrew : Thank you so much for your time, my friend and I’d love to catch up with you again at some other stage, please pass on my congratulations to the rest of the guys as well. Thank you.
Eicca : Oh, thank you. This was a pleasure, Andrew. Thank you very much.
Andrew : I’d love to catch up with you again at some other stage
Eicca : Yeah, for sure. Take care, have a great day. Bye.
