Intervista Children of Bodom (Henkka Seppälä)
Puoi leggere l’intervista in italiano nella prima pagina
Hi and welcome to TrueMetal Henkka.
Thanks!
We’re here for your 20th anniversary, how does it feel? Where you expecting to be still here 20 later when you first started, and to get where you are now?
Of course no, I didn’t expect much back in the day.
Everything has been going very naturally and very slowly, so it seems very natural to be here now, but when you think about it, 20 years…it feels good!
In those 20 years you published 9 studio album, a couple of live albums, changed many members and played countless gigs, what would you pick as the highlights of your career?
Highlights…[laughs] well, surely signing with the label for our first record 20 years ago, then there are a lot of highlights when you are able to play the same shows with your idols like the tour with did with Slayer back in the day, 10 years, playing with Megadeth, of course these are highlights and many other things.
But so many things, so many good shows, so many good festivals so it’s impossible to say.
Do you remember a particular moment when you thought “I made it, I’m an actual musician and I can live off my music”?
No, at some point you just realise…you don’t really have to get a job [laughs].
No, no, it was all very slowly, very natural like I said.
Starting in the late ‘90s you lived the whole transition in the music industry from the physical supports to the digital formats: what are your thought on streaming, piracy and digital music in general?
I think it’s just the way of doing things nowadays, people are in the internet, people wanna have the music from the internet, they want the streaming, I mean, at least most of them so I think it’s something you cannot avoid and you should deal with it.
I think we should just protect and support the ways that are legal, legal ways of using the internet things, to get paid for the musicians of course.
I think we’re still in the transition phase where the labels still don’t know how to react to the internet things like Spotify, YouTube…there are lot of things that still need to be done so that the artists can be protected as they were when it was all CDs and vinyl.
But, yeah, I see the future very bright and I think vinyl sales are going higher than ever at the moment, while CDs are going down, it’s pretty cool to have the vinyl and then the digital.
We’ll see how it goes in the future, but I’m sure the vinyl thing is gonna go well.
So you’re not pessimistic about piracy?
No…of course piracy is not cool, but as soon as the record labels will really adapt to the changes that are now happening the piracy will go down as well.
In terms of musical style “Something Wild” is surely quite different from “I Worship Chaos”, did your influences changed overtime? What kind of bands do you listen to these days, are they different than the ones you were listening to when you started?
Maybe yeah…but I’ve always been the kind of guy who likes the current stuff, so I’ve never been the guy who listens to old, you know, Black Sabbath’s songs or Iron Maiden’s, so I guess that also back in the day I was listening to current Black Metal mostly, some Death Metal, and nowadays I still listen to current Metal, current Black Metal, so in a way it hasn’t changed, of course the bands have changed in 20 years like many of the bands I listened to back in the day are not alive anymore.
But I guess that, in a way, it’s pretty much still the same thing, same genre.
Can you name some of the bands you listen to these days?
I don’t know, there some young bands like Gojira, Swallow the Sun, Soilwork, Katatonia, not so young but still current.
You were known to have a pretty wild lifestyle at the beginning of your career, you slowed down you pace eventually, is there any particular event that made you slow down?
It’s just that you realise that in order to be able to play so many shows as Bodom you have to…I guess it’s like, when you get older you start to realise how your body works and how your mind works and you start to, you know, cope with that and then you realise that if you do something too much you can’t perform as you would like to and then at some point you might find a balance [laughs].
Is there anything you would do differently in your life or career?
I think that everything that happened with the band has been very fortunate and…good things so I wouldn’t change anything we’ve done with the band and…I think I’ve done pretty right choices with my life too [laughs] I’m pretty happy where I am now.
Considering how long you’ve been around, your signature instruments, your high position in festival, good album sales people could have an idea of your lifestyle that might not necessarily correspond to the truth; what are, in your opinion, the biggest misconceptions about you? Like you go around in Ferraris…?
Yeah, yeah [laughs] probably that is, material things…after all we’re still musicians in a Death Metal band, you can’t get millionaire with it [laughs].
I think that’s it, especially in Europe, the name of the band is very known, people know it, but we’re still a bunch of musicians, not struggling, but…we’re not making a lot of money [laughs] that’s the biggest misconception that people have, that we are rich, that’s not the case.
You’ve always been super regular and released an album every two years, should we expect a new one this year?
I think more like two and a half years but, yeah, after this tour we’ll start writing and hopefully be done with the album by the end of the year.
You don’t write while you’re on tour?
Not really, no.
Talking about releases, “Tokyo Warhearts” came out just 2 years after your debut, “Choas Ridden Years” in 2006, have you been thinking about recording a new live album?
Not necessarily a live album, buy maybe a DVD would be nice again at some point, we just have to set a deal with the label on how to make it right financially because it’s hard to release DVDs nowadays, but I hope that in the near future we could make that happen.
There haven’t been talk with the label yet?
Not yet, but we’ll bring it up maybe for the next album’s tour, that might be a good place to do it.
You said you’ll play only songs from the first four albums, the first two in particular: are you playing a fixed setlist on the tour or did you prepared many more different songs and you change setlist every night?
So far it has been fixed, but something might change.
Many bands these days choose to play albums in their entirety, you could do it with “Something Wild” in this tour, why did you chose instead to play an “old school” mixed setlist?
I think some of the guys didn’t want to [laughs] so we ended up with this compromise and I think it works fine.
After Roope Latvala left the band you played for a while with Antti Wirman but then picked Daniel Freyberg as your new guitarist; what didn’t work out with Antti and how did you find Daniel?
Well, Antti was a temporary guy from the beginning…
There wasn’t the idea to maybe stick with him?
No, no no it was very clear from the beginning, he’s Janne [Wirman, the band’s keyboard player]’s brother and…we didn’t want, we just decided that he’d help us with the shows we had already lined up and after the shows we’d look for someone to become the permanent member.
He was really good, he did his job perfectly and we’re really grateful that he could do it but, yeah, the deal was from the beginning that he wasn’t gonna be in the band permanently, there were no talks about it afterward, it was just like “that’s what it is”.
We knew Daniel from the Helsinki’s metal scene, we know he’s a good player and a good guy, so we asked him and he said yes [laughs]
Where do you see Children of Bodom by the time of the 30th anniversary?
Hopefully here again [laughs].
Not in a bigger venue?
It doesn’t have to be, as long as there’s enough people and we’re enjoying it, that would be my dream.
Thank you for your time Henkka!
Thank you!
Davide Sciaky