Intervista Ensiferum (Sami Hinkka)

Puoi leggere l’intervista in italiano nella prima pagina

Hi Sami, how are you doing?

I’m doing super!
Tour just started and, well, everybody is still full of energy, nobody got sick yet, so everything is perfect!

It’s been a few months now since the release of “Two Paths”, now that you are a bit more distant from the album, and after seeing the fans’ and critics’ reaction, how do you feel about it?

I’m really proud of the album and, well, it’s always when you make a…especially when you’re an old band, like Ensiferum, you cannot please everyone, you know there are hardcore fans saying “The first demo was the best”, but you always gain a lot of new fans and I think there’s something that unites Ensiferum fans, they seem to understand our craziness when we compose, an open-mindness.
Many bands have just their thing that they do, and they are doing it really well, don’t get me wrong, but it wouldn’t work for Ensiferum never changing ourselves musically and I guess that for some people that’s too much [laughs].
But anyway, the feedback has been really good and the album charted really well, and the best feedback is still when people sing along the new songs, and that’s actually why there have been a couple of months between the release and the tour, so that people had the time to listen to the songs, learn the lyrics and make up their mind if they really like it or not.

I guess the title refers to when in life you have to choose between two paths, am I right? Does it refer to something in particular?

You can understand it in many ways, for me it’s that in every moment we make decisions, we do or not do stuff and that’s a path that is gonna have consequences depending on what we choose.
Something might seem like a really insignificant thing but, in the end, it might be something really big.
I guess that has something to do with getting older and being able to see the situation in your life like, 20 years ago I took that decision, I did that, I went there, talked with this person and that led to this and this, so that was the idea, at least for me [laughs].

I was looking at the gigs you played last year, and you never had very long breaks, when did you work on the album, and how long did it take?

It’s impossible to answer to that because we don’t’ have like a composing period when we start from scratch, we always had a lot of ideas that were never finished, then we make an album and we still have a lot of raw ideas left.
Of course as time passes by, like on tour, you might come up with some ideas, it’s really hard to compose a complete song but you can come up with lot of ideas, then you got rehearsal with a bunch of new ideas.
So I would say…of course it started when “One Man Army” was released, there were some songs that we knew, “Ok, this is gonna be a good song but it’s not ready, so it’s not gonna be on the album”.
“I Will Not Kneel”, the very first idea of that song is almost 10 years old, 8 years old at least, but it was just two melodies, I showed it to Marcus and he was like, “Yeah, that’s a good thing”, so we kept it with the raw songs that we have, but we never got it ready until this album, and I’m really happy.

Do you still have ideas stored, waiting for you to finish them into complete songs?

Yes, yes, actually one of the most killer songs, I really wanted it on this album but we didn’t finish it, we are really tough to ourselves, we already have a few parts for that song but we were like, “Nah, not good enough”, so we kept the pieces that are really good and we said, “Okay, this is going on the next album”.
So, yeah, there are a lot of ideas already, but not a single complete song at the moment.
That’s a beauty, you might feel really desperate sometimes as a composer, “Fuck, we don’t have any ideas, nothing is happening”, and then you might have just the one session when everything blooms and clicks perfectly, so that’s why I’m not worried at all, but anyway “Two Paths” just came out and I think we’ll start focusing on new songs after the summer…yeah, the circle of life [laughs].

Ensiferum has always evolved a bit, even though there is a strong identity that makes you recognise who’s playing immediately; from you point of view what makes “Two Paths” different from “One Man Army”?

I’d say “One Man Army” was more aggressive, even though “Two Paths” has a kind of “back to the roots” feeling, but “One Man Army” was definitely more aggressive.
Maybe “Two Paths” has more of the, so to say, the “thin red line” in it, ‘cause we like to fool around when we compose, if something sounds good we keep it, we don’t calculate stuff, “We can’t publish this stuff under Ensiferum’s name, that would be commercial suicide” and all that, that’s not how we work, if something feels good we put it out and we let our fans be the judges [laughs].

If I’m not mistaken you went old school with this new album and recorded it on tape rather than digitally, how so?

That kinda started already in the “One Man Army” session, Anssi Kippo, who recorded and produced that one, he’s really into analogic and vinyl stuff, so already in the “One Man Army” session we did some comparisons of how it sounded on tape and digital; I think I was the most sceptical one in the band, I knew it was probably gonna sound much warmer, but I didn’t think it was going to be such a great difference.
It was really ear-opening to hear the same song playing and just pushing a button being able to change the source, digital or vinyl, and I was like, “Wow, that’s a massive difference”, especially of the singing.
That was something that we thought, “Hey, we want this kind of warmth and dynamic in our music”, so we did all the drums, bass and rhythm guitar…’cause then we run out of tracks [laughs] there were 24 tracks only, so that was recorded on tape, then transferred on computer and everything else was recorded there.
When Anssi mixed the album used both the tape and the stuff recorded on the computer, they were synced, so the stuff that was on tape never left the tape when it was mixed, that’s why there’s really a good sound on this album.
Yeah, Anssi is now even more into that stuff, I think now he’s gonna buy another of these machines so that it will be possible to have 48 tracks, that should be enough for us, so let’s see with the next one.

“For Those About to Fight for Metal” has some of the cheesiest lyrics…

Definitely, yeah [laughs].

…it seems like it came out of a Manowar album; what was your inspiration for that song’s lyrics?

We had the song…no, actually I just had the melodies in my head, I was sitting in the rehearsal room alone after some rehearsals, I was reading news, I had the guitar in my hand, and I saw the news that AC/DC’s singer had that hearing problem and I was like, “Fuck, the band is done”, because of course at that point there was no news that Axl Rose would step in, and I thought we had to make some kind of tribute because that’s one the bands that I grew up with.
So I thought, “Hey, I’ve got this melody, what if I play it in an AC/DC style?” and then, “Oh, for fuck sake, this is fantastic!”; we started working on the song and then a few weeks later, same kind of situation, I’m in the rehearsal room with a guitar, everybody else has left already, I’m reading the news and I see that Manowar announced a farewell tour, and I’m like, “Fuck, really?!”.
Manowar were so important when the guys were starting Ensiferum so I thought we had to tribute them as well in some kind of way, then I said, “Hey, can we combine these things?” and that’s how the song came to be.
It’s a shame that it has to be a tribute, but it’s really a “Metal community” song [laughs].

You’ve had almost always a song in Finnish in your albums, but in the new one they are two,‘Ajattomasta unesta’ and ‘Unettomaan aikaan’. Is this something we should expect more in the future?

I don’t know, it’s really hard to say because Ensiferum have used Finnish for quite a long time as part of the lyrics, but just when it fits.
Of course when it’s your native language you can write much more, there’s a totally different vibe in it, and that’s why I’m always concerned when I’m writing in English that I end up repeating myself way too much and I cannot just capture the idea and finding metaphors and so on; that’s why I always ask my British friend, “Is it okay to say this and that and that?”, he’s always proof-reading my stuff…thank you Andy! [Laughs]
We’re always gonna have lyrics in English, that’s not gonna change, but I think it’s cool to add some other languages too, we’ve had Old Norse on “One Man Army”, so let’s see what we’ll come up with in the next album [laughs].

Talking about the artwork, you’ve always had this old warrior, in “One Man Army” it became younger, now it turned into a statue. What happened to him?

Actually in “One Man Army” he’s in the sky, he’s blessing the young warrior [laughs].
He’s our Eddie, we are big Iron Maiden fans [laughs], when we are filthy rich billionaires we’re gonna have a robot of him on stage [laughs].

Does he have a name?

No, he’s just a caricature of an old, wise man, a warrior…no name for him.

The last time we talked Netta was a live member, we discussed about the possibility of her joining officially the band, and since then she joined and left Ensiferum…

Nooo! [Laughs]

…what happened with her?

No big drama there, it’s just…you know, of course she had a lot of touring experience and she toured with us for a couple of years.
It’s really just, this is hard work, even though it’s a lot of fun it’s hard and I can’t judge her for that, it’s hard touring with a bunch of hippies [laughs], old farts.
It was nothing dramatic that happened, it was just…we’ve been doing this for a long time, Marcus has been doing it for more than 20 years, it’s his baby, I’ve been here since 2004, so it’s only that we made a lot of sacrifices for this band and it’s one of the most important things; that’s also what we assume for all the members, that everybody is willing to put 100% in it and, you know, life’s things change, situations change and this is not a religious cult, you don’t have to stay here, sometimes is just better to say, “Hey, c’est la vie”.
We are still good friends, we are with all the ex-members, that’s why I’m also happy that we never had violent breakups with any band member but, yeah, at the moment we are keyboard-less.
Let’s see what the future brings, there are some ideas but…

About that, are you looking for someone?

Not actively at the moment, now we are focusing on this tour and festival, let’s see…
We’ve been talking about getting someone who’s a really, really good singer, someone who could sing like Marco Hietala (Nightwish), so that we could feel good about having more clean parts.
This is something that we’ve been talking about for many, many years, but we never wanted to have a “big band”, to have 10 people on stage.

It would be a keyboard player, not an accordion player?

Well Netta was playing a digital accordion, so it was the same as a keyboard, it just had a different user interface, so it was pretty much the same.
All the same sounds that Emmi had, so…we don’t care [laughs], but let’s see, that’s really in the future and at the moment we aren’t really actively looking for anyone.

Two years ago, I asked you about the possibility of you doing an acoustic album, and you told me you thought about it and maybe you would do an acoustic EP. Is anything new happened with that?

We talked with the label and, well, actually we just kinda gave them a head-up, “Look, we’re gonna do that” [laughs].

How did they take it?

Okay, they really trust us, they’re crazy [laughs].
Let’s see when we go in the rehearsal room after the summer what happens, of course if you come up with a lot of acoustic ideas then it’s good to continue working with them, but if you end up with a lot of Metal ideas…
Let’s see, but that’s definitely something that we’re gonna do, it’s so much fun.

Nowadays many bands offer VIP tickets and paid meet and greet, you went the opposite direction in this tour and are doing meet and greet for free before your shows. Why did you decide to do it?

The thing is that, I understand bands doing it, nobody is twisting anyone’s arm to go there, but in some way…it’s just me as a human being, I feel it as a rip-off if somebody just wants to talk with me, shake my hand and ask my autographs and I ask for money, just not my cup of tea.
On tour is kinda weird, you have a lot of free time, but it’s also kinda hectic around the show and thought, “Hey, that’s something that we’d also do for us”, instead of just reading emails and warming up, going there and meet people, also to…not rip-off, if somebody wants to come and say “Hello” please come.
Like I said, I understand…nah, actually I don’t [laughs].
The thing is that I understand you need to make money, but for me, from how I see it it’s just so the wrong way to do it, really.
That’s just…aaah [laughs].
I wouldn’t do it for anyone, Iron Maiden, you know, they are my biggest idols but we are all just human beings, and the thing is also that you can like somebody’s art, not just music, actor, director, a painter, whatever, but he might be a total asshole in his personal life!
In a way it might be good never to meet [laughs], it would break the illusion.
I remember Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers) once said in an interview that he never wants to meet the L.A. Lakers players because he’s a big fan and it would spoil the illusion of them being semi-gods, I don’t know, he probably has so much money he could buy the team now [laughs].

I’m curious about the Finnish scene, there are so many great bands, it seems like every other guy is a musician. You are from Helsinki and so are Moonsorrow, Finntroll, and many others, are you friends, do you hang out together?

Yeah, we are definitely friends, especially in the Folk Metal scene, it’s a really small circle.
The thing is that many musicians play in many bands, so it’s a small circle where we are all good friends [laughs].
We hung around in the same bars and so on.

Great, that was my last question, I’ll leave you this final space if you have a message for your fans.

In case you still haven’t heard, check out “Two Paths” and have a fantastic Spring and an excellent festival season!

Davide Sciaky