Intervista Ensiferum (Sami Hinkka)

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On the occasion of the gig in Manchester, the second one of the UK tour, we had a nice chat with the bassist of Ensiferum, Sami Hinkka.

Interview by DAVIDE SCIAKY

Hi Sami and welcome to TrueMetal: it’s been exactly a year since the release of One Man Army, how did you found the reception for the album?

Actually pretty good; I don’t think we have ever had such a good feedback.
When you release an album it takes at least one or two tours for the people to get into the new material but this time, this time from the first show after the release, people already sang along so it feels pretty good.
That’s all that matters; the reviews…of course, it’s nice but the live feedback is the most important thing.

One Man Army is the first album you released with Metal Blade Records, how different was it to work with them compared to Spinefarm?

Of course it’s a little bit different, their main office is in the States while Spinefarm’s office is in Helsinki so we just had to take a bus to get there, but many things weren’t…don’t get me wrong, we still are in a good relationship with Spinefarm, but because they’re now part of Universal I think that many things are easier with Metal Blade.
But Spinefarm just released a compilation for Ensiferum so we’re still working with them, in a way; it’s also very nice to work with Metal Blade because every day you get emails from different people “hey, I had this idea, we should do this and this” and it feels that they have the same passion for the album as us.

On the song “Two of Spades” there’s as guest Frederik, which is arguably the king of Finnish disco, how easy was for you to get him involved with this song?

Actually he’s a kind of family friend of Markus.
This was just another of this crazy ideas; I cannot remember the exact rehearsal when the disco part came out, I can imagine it was just me and Janne grooving and looking at each other “this sounds really good, we have to do this”.
I remember I wrote the lyrics for that part I had a really raw rehearsal on demo; we were doing some shows in Finland and we were sitting in the bus, 6 in the morning, and I go “hey hey hey, I got some ideas, listen to this!”, I play it on my iPhone and everybody was laughing and they were just “this is hilarious, let’s do it”.

And we thought “maybe we should ask someone to do it” and Frederik was the craziest idea [laughs].
We really like to have guests, somebody might think that it’s not cool but we like it, you know, if you have an idea and someone might do that part better than you why not ask?

In the song “Heathen Horde” there’s a verse which is not in Finnish, where does it come from? Did you write it yourselves or does it come from some epic poem?

It’s actually ancient Norse, it’s from the Edda saga, the whole song is one of the few songs actually inspired by Viking tales.
We are really good friends with the guys from Týr, I know Heri he’s really into languages so I sent him a message “dude, since you speak so many languages do you actually speak ancient Norse?” “Yeah, I can speak with a guy from the university to help you with the pronunciation” “okay, we have a job for you”.

And he have a great sense of drama, I sent him a raw demo and he instantly got it and [sent us back a recording where he] sounds like a warlord calling for his troops; let’s see what we’ll get for the next album because in Unsung Heroes we had German, so maybe in the next album we’ll have some other language.

Still speaking about the lyrics: you often dealt with the Kalevala, have you ever thought to write a concept album about it?

In a way yes, but on the other hand Amorphis did it so many times, they started with Tales from the Thousand Lakes where all the lyrics were from Kalevala, and then they had Eclipse and Silent Waters…I think it’s pretty much the same with the guest on the albums, if someone has already done something really well it would be stupid for us to do a concept about it.
Don’t get me wrong, I use a lot of those reference, I like to read it; if I had more time to read I’d read more national epics from different countries, in the original language would be the best but,  you know…[laughs]

I doubt that we’ll ever do a concept album, especially about Kalevala, anyway it’s just a little fragment of our inspiration, we don’t want to have just one or two topics, we like to explore.
I really hope the other guys will also write lyrics but…they are lazy [laughs]

Do you write all the lyrics?

Yes

And the others?

I don’t know, maybe they don’t care? [laughs]
I’ve asked them…

Netta has been touring a lot with you, are you gonna make her a full time member or is Emmi coming back?

For now Netta is a live member, of course she’s a dear friend and if things escalate…Emmi has some family issues and, yeah, Netta is really helping us.

She’s doing an excellent job and she never complains, you know, it’s the same for Emmi, she never complains either.
I think we guys complain much more, we are the princesses nowadays [laughs]

What are your plans for the rest of the year and are you already planning a new album?

We are already working on the new songs; we have been working on them since One Man’s Army came out.
After the UK tour we’ll go home, no, actually we’re going to Sweden to do a couple of shows…summer festivals, we have some plans, nothing confirmed yet.
For the rest of the year we have lots of plans but, sorry, I can’t tell you [laughs]. There are things happening at the end of the year.
The plan is to hit the studio early next year, let’s see, we are doing a lot of tours this year and there’s not much time to sit in a rehearsal room and write, and of course you don’t want to go in the studio if everything is not ready.

You got us used to an old wise man in your albums’ covers, in One Man’s Army instead there’s a young, ferocious warrior, while the old man is in the background almost like a ghost of the past; is this some kind of indication of your future style both in music and/or in lyrics?

We just wanted to try something different, but now it’s like mandatory to have the “Ensiferum dude” and the title of the album fed the idea for the whole album.
It was really nice, it was the first time ever that we really got involved with the album cover.
Of course with the previous albums we sent the ideas, Kristian Wåhlin he’s an excellent painter, all the covers are actually big paintings, and maybe he replied “okay” and that’s it, we didn’t hear from him for a few months and then, bam, here’s the picture.
With Gyula [Havancsák] who did One Man Army’s it was so cool, we exchanged emails almost every day and he sent us raw sketches; it’s really nice to be involved.

Let’s see where we go from here: in One Man Army we cut the amount of tracks a lot, if you compare it with From Afar, I always use that album because with it we went over the top, it was thousand tracks in the worst cases, you can’t hear anything with that many tracks, it’s stupid if you ask me.

We wanted to have a more organic sound, obviously, no triggers or anything, and, for me, we’ve always been a live band so we sat with our producer and we said “we want it to sound like a raw, tight, live album” and he understood perfectly and we even used some analogic equipment.
He made me play bass for 3 days straight, he really kicked our asses; I think the fastest album I’ve ever played it was 3 hours, this time it was fucking 3 days for songs that I knew, I composed them! [laughs].

So it’s certainly new sound-wise, hopefully even music-wise, so we thought “okay, maybe we could try something different also for the cover”.

You know, there’s a really thin line when you make changes, if you make too drastic changes people will go “hey, what the fuck is this?!” but if you go more slowly people forgive you more easily [laughs].

So maybe next album will be just disco.

Do you ever prank your fellow bandmates or crew on tour and if so what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?

There are some things that are better left unsaid [laughs]
We are really nice to each other but, especially if you have a day off or a driving day…

Well, we have a rule that your own bunk is like your haven, it cannot be touched, but if you pass out downstairs…and there’s a marker…
One time we were in North America and we had a driving day, we were going to do a border crossing to Canada and, you know, sometimes they can be really strict on borders; some member of the band passed out and some people thought that it was a good idea to paint him, even if the border crossing was going to be in like two hours.
There were all the clichés of, you know, genitals and a moustache from the forties…
We  got to the border and “hey man, wake up!”; luckily this person went to the toilet as he woke up before going to the officer with the passport.

But we were nice, it wasn’t a permanent marker.
Those things have to be done with a permanent marker [laughs]

The only live show you ever released was 2006’s «10th Anniversary Live» DVD. Now in 2016 it’s your 20th anniversary, have you thought about releasing a new live DVD or CD anytime in the future?

Yes, we thought about it for years and there were plans already made with Spinefarm and we even shot some material; we had some really good ideas for the DVD, not just a show, but a lot of bonus material because Markus has hundreds of hours of material, even the very first show Ensiferum ever played.
But the hard reality came and they said that nobody buys DVD anymore and that it wasn’t worth it, so we put it on hold for a few years.
But now we met the Metal Blade’s guys while we were touring, last year, and we talked about this and they said “Of course we’re gonna do a DVD”, but I guess we’ll have to do at least another album with Metal Blade.
Things are pretty much sorted out with Spinefarm also, because of course it’s about these copyright things.
So I hope after the next album we can film a really good show, use all the old material we have, and make a really interesting package for the fans; unfortunately we can’t make it for the 20th anniversary…maybe for the 25th

Last year you played 5 acoustic shows, something you have never done before, are you satisfied with this experience? Would you do it again?

We had a lot of fun and, let’s see, if we get that working it would be nice to do it abroad also, especially in Germany and UK where we toured a lot.

Have you ever thought about making an acoustic album?

Yeah, we have talked about it, it would be really nice to do something like that because, well, we like the folkish stuff and folk instrument a lot, but a full album…I guess it would be an EP probably but, yeah, I’m actually sure we’re gonna do something, but now we’ll do the new album, then the DVD, then the acoustic thing.
It’s a lot of ideas, we just have to find the time to compose and record everything, and of course the label wouldn’t want two releases in a short time so…

If you could time travel back to when you were recording you albums, is there anything you would change, both in song writing or in the recording process?

No, I guess what’s done is done and you just have to learn from it and make the next one better.
Well, there’s actually a bass lick in Stone Cold Metal, it sucks that it’s low, nobody can hear it, but as I said with that album we went over the top with the number of tracks.
So no, no regrets.

As you mentioned Stone Cold Metal, there’s a part of the song that sounds a lot like something from Ennio Morricone…

Yesss, yes, there’s even…I don’t want to say we stole, but we tribute with a few notes straight from one of his songs.
Yeah, we like his stuff a lot and since Iron also this western heroic thing has been part of our ideology, which is really cool, I really like that we can write heroic stuff no matter what, I mean, not just about Viking even though many people call us a “Viking band”.

I understand it’s easier because we are from Scandinavia and it’s easier to put us in that genre, but there’s much more…

Ensiferum official website: http://www.ensiferum.com/

Ensiferum Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Ensiferum/

Sammi Hinka Official Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Sami-Hinkka-Ensiferum-169732333045205/