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There must be no metalhead on this planet who doesn't know the name Amorphis. This band is one of the responsible for the evolution of the darker side of metal music and doesn't need any special introduction. Amorphis formed back in 1990 out of the ashes of Violent Solution and released their debut cult album, The Karelian Isthmus, in 1992. The groundbreaking sophomore album, Tales From The Thousand Lakes, followed in 1994, and the rest is history. Earlier this year, the Finns released their fourteenth album named Halo via Atomic Fire Records. Another masterpiece made by Amorphis, still, like it's their tradition, it's unmistakable Amorphis, but with a twist. The band has done its best to carve its own niche in heartfelt yet aggressive, melancholic and soothing tunes. On Halo, the Finns underline their trailblazing status as one of the most original, culturally relevant, and rewarding acts ever to emerge from the land of the thousand lakes. I talked with Amorphis' bassist Olli-Pekka Laine about many things regarding Amorphis and his personal life. Olli-Pekka is one of the founding members who left the band in 2000 and re-joined in 2017. He recorded with Amorphis six studio albums. Take your time and discover more about Amorphis and friendly co-speaker Olli-Pekka Laine by reading this in-depth interview.
Interview with: Olli-Pekka Laine
Conducted by: Tomaz
Edited by: Jerneja and Tomaz
Tomaz: Hello Olli-Pekka, and thank you for taking the time for the interview. It was set for the Summer Breeze Festival but was cancelled some hours before...
Olli-Pekka: I don't know why, but maybe there were some technical issues due to the bad weather. We also came a little late. Anyhow here we are.
Tomaz: Maybe it's even better this way - after enjoying your show at the festival. How did you experience it?
Olli-Pekka: Oh, it was really nice... I recall last time at the Summer Breeze Festival. We had some issues with the weather, as well, with thundering and raining ice. This year the situation was practically the same; it was raining a hell of a lot, but fortunately, people were patient enough to stay in the area and check out the show. It was great, the audience was very good, and it was a pleasure to play there again. I've played there also with Barren Earth twice or three times, and it was always a pleasure.
Tomaz: You played at quite a lot of festivals this summer...
Olli-Pekka: Yeah, we had nearly every weekend booked - probably just a couple of weekends off, which is nice. I think it's been some pressure doing festival shows after the covid situation. The summer has been really good - we've played a lot in Finland, which was, for us, pretty smooth since we didn't have to travel much. We've had some gigs in Germany, Spain, Bulgaria and Czech, but we've mostly played at festivals in Finland. Maybe we'll be abroad more next year.
Tomaz: Mentioning the pandemic, how does it feel to be back on stage after quite some time?
Olli-Pekka: Of course, it's great to be back on stage, but we were fortunate to have some gigs in Finland during the pandemic, also. Here, in Finland, it was a relatively open situation, so we got to do some festival gigs and live club shows. Besides, right before the pandemic, we had the Queen Of Time tour, so we were supposed to have some break after that. At that point, Covid-19 hit full blast, so we started to write for a new album, which was a very fruitful period for us. We were pretty lucky with this covid situation, but still, it was really good to be able to play so many festivals shows this year. Now I'm looking forward to the tour with Eluveitie in November and December. Of course, we were also able to do the North American tour, I think it was in April and May. Basically, after the album release, we were able to hit the road immediately.
Tomaz: Halo is another quite different Amorphis album; how was it working on it?
Olli-Pekka: It was a little bit trickier this time because none of us was able to travel. Our producer Jens Bogren lives in Sweden, and he wasn't able to come to Finland to produce the album, therefore we had to make it virtually with him. We played it together in the studio and then we started to make the over track and overdubbing, we recorded and then Jens listened to it. He sent us his thoughts via e-mail or whats-up if there was something to fix. It was a little bit different this time because the producer wasn't there with us while we were playing and recording. This might have affected the album. We also had different producers in Helsinki. There was a bass producer and guitar producer, sound engineer or whatever you want to call them. It naturally gave us some more freedom to play whatever we like. It was kind of liberating in that sense but of course, it was great to work with Jens in Fascination Street Studios when we were doing the Queen Of Time album. On that album, it took me maybe two days to play the bass because it was really a hectic schedule. I stayed there for three days and that's it, but now I had an opportunity to spend more time in the studio. I guess that the same was with guitars and vocals. In general, we had more time to do the overdub and the arrangements, and yeah, you might hear it in the result.
Tomaz: And what about the songwriting process in general? I guess it was a bit different than on the previous two albums...
Olli-Pekka: I think it was basically the same. We made demos, uploaded them into Dropbox, and Jens picked up the songs just like the previous time. That's how it works. The majority of the songs were written by Santeri and Esa. Tomi made one great ballad for this album as well. The process wasn't much different than on Queen Of Time. The songs are different, and more guitar-oriented, and keyboards are a bit more in the background. There are more growling vocals in Halo, while Queen Of Time has more clean songs. In my opinion, it's healthier to change the production a little bit with every release to keep it interesting.
Tomaz: What about the front cover artwork? You guys use quite untypical art for metal music.
Olli-Pekka: Oh yeah, as far as I know, Valnoir did the last three album covers. We sent him the lyrics and some guidness, and he got an idea from there. Pekka Kainulainen, our lyricist, also had some ideas for the album cover. There was an idea to have life and death presented. We also sent Valnoir some ornaments for inspiration, and that was it. He came up with this yin-yang kind of symbol which we immediately liked. We had some minor suggestions to fix some things, but, in general, it was pretty smooth. As I remember, it was almost the same with Queen Of Time. It's a little bit different than in the old days. Back then, the label sent us the cover art, and we had to use it. We were forced to love it in a way. Now we have much more control over these things.
Tomaz: I saw Amorphis playing live at least five or six times, and I noticed that you almost always play the same old songs, like, for example, "House Of Sleep", "Black Winter Day", "Into Hiding", "Silver Bride", "My Kantele",...
Olli-Pekka: Yeah, though sometimes we leave them out. For example, we've been playing "The Castaway" and "Sign From The North Side" plus several other songs in the beginning, but when it comes to our vocalist, Tomi Joutsen, it was kind of hard to leave out the hit-single songs - if you know what I mean. It's that people demand those songs, and I fully understand it. It's much easier with the older stuff to change the songs, but especially for the festival sets, we have to stick with the best-known songs and save the surprises for the club shows. After the festival season, we always try to speculate on a new setlist. Every now and then, we try to change at least the songs from the 90s era of Amorphis.
Tomaz: When live show - do you prefer to play new songs over the old material?
Olli-Pekka: Well, it's a natural thing to do when we promote a new album. On the Queen Of Time tour, we played five or six songs from that album, and now we are playing four from Halo. From every album, some songs stick to the set, and some get skipped on the next tour. So, when we are promoting a new album, we are playing a set, which is mostly based on the new material. I guess the same goes for every band, especially for older ones. You always have this dilemma because you can't please everybody in the audience. You have to make compromises.
Tomaz: You did some very interesting and well-done video clips for some songs. Do you enjoy working on this stuff, or do you see it only as a necessary evil? How important is it nowadays to do a video for a band like Amorphis?
Olli-Pekka: That's a good question. Probably it's not that much important as it was back in the days, during the 90s or 80s. Bands are doing many of those lyric videos, which are probably a good way to present a new song. It's hard to say how important it is to do a video nowadays.
Tomaz: Yeah, there are no more shows like it was MTV's Headbanger Ball. A band whose video showed up there got popular in an instant...
Olli-Pekka: Exactly! I don't know; I guess it's a standard of the music business to come up with videos. That's probably the reason why almost everybody is still doing videos with every release. Do I enjoy doing videos? It depends. If it's done doing the wintertime in the woods, it's not that fun, but if it's in the studio and it just takes half an hour to shoot it, it's not a big deal for me. I enjoy a lot more playing live shows - definitely more than being in the studio or shooting videos.
Tomaz: I love that the bands are still doing videos, especially if it's a good quality one with some significance and story... On your previous album, Queen Of Time, there was the song "The Bee". It was an instant hit, and I wonder if you knew already when working on it that it is to be so huge?
Olli-Pekka: Well, I don't know if we thought about it while it was in the making, but when I heard the first demo of it, I was pretty sure that the song will make it to the album, it's a great song, and we had to include it. It's such a strong song with many different elements. It has kind of an oriental-metal riff, there's a melodic chorus, and there is a pre-chorus or post-chorus. We also included that semi-psychedelic middle part which takes the song in a totally different direction and brings it back with a chorus. It's an interesting song, and that's the one that will stick on the live setlist for a long time, I guess. It's also really fun to play it. It's somehow hard to come up with an interesting metal song nowadays; it's much easier to do a generic or a standard melodic metal song in the old-school style. "The Bee" is a different one - it has a lot of variations, and the audience seems to enjoy it very much. It's really good having these kinds of songs.
Tomaz: Amorphis is now 32 years old, and I wonder if you - when releasing the first demos/album - ever dreamed that such a big thing would come out of it?
Olli-Pekka: Actually, not. That might be the secret of our long activity; we didn't want to do anything forced. We never wanted to make a hit album or whatever. We took many risks, Tales From The Thousand Lakes was like that and something our record label didn't expect us to do. The producer Tomas Skogsberg was almost horrified about the material because, in his opinion, it was too much obscure. We've always done what we enjoyed the most. We are not audience pleasers or music business pleasers. Hmm, in a way, this is a kinky question... but yeah, we never thought that we would become something huge. I thought the band's lifespan would be around four years or something like that. We didn't plan that long future for the band. Maybe Esa had more ambitious plans for the band. When we started, we just wanted to play metal music, release some demos, and get to play in some rock or metal clubs in Helsinki.
Tomaz: And look what has happened... With the last album aside, which album is, in your opinion, the most important one in the Amorphis career?
Olli-Pekka: I think that must be Tales From The Thousand Lakes, which is also our best-selling album. That is our breakthrough album. With it, we started to tour - we had our first tour around Europe and the USA. Our production started to get bigger; we got a bigger budget for the next record. The record label Relapse Records started to count on us and put money into the band. Then, of course, Eclipse - when Tomi Joutsen got into the band - and which was another important breaking point for Amorphis. It was a kind of a new start; also the music changed into more melodic metal, and before that, it was a bit more experimental. So, I guess Tales From The Thousand Lakes and Eclipse are our two most important albums.
Tomaz: You are also playing in the band Barren Earth, and the last album you released was A Complex Of Cages in 2018. Are you working on something new?
Olli-Pekka: Well, we are not precisely working on new Barren Earth material, but each of us is working on material on their own. I don't know if this will end up on the next Barren Earth album or somewhere else. It's hard to tell. Many people ask about Barren Earth, but it's hard for me to say anything exact because we are all very busy with other things, and we don't know anything about the demand for Barren Earth in the music business. It's hard to see our place at this moment. The only thing I know is, that many fans ask for it, so there must be some interest. There must be a reason for another album. It must be the right time, and stars must align in the right position. It would be interesting to do another album for sure. Let's see, probably one day it will happen.
Tomaz: One cliche question... Who was the main inspiration for you when you decided to stick with music?
Olli-Pekka: As a really young guy, I was listening to Elvis Presley, but the first artist that touched me was Finnish artist Pave Maijanen, who passed away last year. He also inspired me to play the bass guitar. I also played the organ at the time - just because he played the organ as well. Yeah, I can say that he's my major inspiration. When I heard bands like AC/DC and Kiss, it was the first time I wanted to be in the band, to start playing rock music. Then, when thrash metal came, Metallica and Slayer, it became a little bit easier for kids to start playing music because you didn't need to know all the guitar chords to play metal music, or rock music or whatever. That was basically my road to start playing metal music.
Tomaz: Do you follow the news in metal or rock music - do you listen to new releases, check out new bands and such things?
Olli-Pekka: Not that much, actually. It's a shame, but I simply don't have enough time to do it. Whenever we have a tour or additional gigs or festival gigs, it's not the first thing I want to do to have a blast of metal music, haha. Nevertheless, I try to follow the scene a little, like for example, I try to read some reviews of new albums, and if there's an interesting review, I might check it out. I'm kind of picky when it comes to music, so for me, it's hard to find some cool music to listen to. But there are a lot of great bands out there right now, and we live in rich times when it comes to music. I even tried some modern metal, but there are a lot of bands which are playing old-school death metal and rock music. It's not a big deal to find interesting music nowadays.
Tomaz: Before we finish the interview, tell me what you think about all the horrible things that are going on in the world right now.
Olli-Pekka: It's certainly not looking very good at this point. It's horrible as it is with all the wars currently going on in the world and in Europe as well. We should also be very concerned about global warming - personally, I am at least, and that's my main concern. I have a son, and my sister has little kids. It's horrifying to think about what will happen in 10 or 20 years, mainly because we can't stop the current trends. Even if we stop polluting immediately, the downward trend of climate will continue anyway. It's really concerning, and it's a hard question because people are not able to solve this problem by themselves. Our leaders need to solve this. There must be made laws and rules in order to change the trend.
Tomaz: Regarding the war between Russia and Ukraine... you are coming from a country which is a neighbour of Russia. Putin threatened to attack your county, so is there a feeling of frustration present, perhaps, a concern because of this?
Olli-Pekka: Personally, I'm not that much worried about it. Of course, it's not pleasant when not being on good terms with a neighbour. It has nothing to do with the Russian people but with their crazy leaders and their ambitions. I'm trying not to put a lot of energy into thoughts like if Russia is a threat to Finland, but I don't think that it is at this point. I'm just feeling sorry for Ukraine and its people, as well as the Russian people; it's a horrible situation. But I think Finnish people are not afraid of Russia at this point.
Tomaz: What are now the plans for Amorphis? Already something new in the making?
Olli-Pekka: We are making plans for more touring next year. For the Halo album, we will have a couple of tours. When we finish the tour with Eluveitie, we will plan a new one which shall start early in 2023, and I hope we will also visit countries such as Slovenia and Croatia. We are all working on new material separately; it's an ongoing process of making songs. We are writing music all the time, and I know we are already booked for some festivals next year. I guess that we will be constantly touring for the next three years. We have a lot of plans, but I can't reveal them all.
Tomaz: Thank you for your time and comprehensive answers. It was a very, very long interview, much more than, probably, we both expected. Is there anything you would like to say at the end of it to your fans and our readers?
Olli-Pekka: Yes, listen to our new album Halo - give it a chance because it might be a little harder to get into if compared to the previous one, but it's also a rewarding album. It takes more time to chew. Come to our shows when we come to your area. I look forward to playing live for all of you. Take care. Peace, love and understanding. Thank you for the interview Tomaz; it was a pleasure talking with you.
Amorphis links: Official website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Spotify, Atomic Fire Records
Amorphis line-up: Tomi Joutsen (vocals), Esa Holopainen (guitars), Tomi Koivusaari (guitars), Olli-Pekka Laine (bass), Santeri Kallio (keyboards), Jan Rechberger (drums)
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