I recently caught up with Olli here in Cleveland as he and Turisas came through with Firewind. This was both my first interview with the band and with a heavy metal violinist, a cool experience to be sure. Stand Up and Fight was one of my favorite releases of 2011, offering up an impressive dose of symphonic elements combined with big choirs and a wide range of vocals from clean to death. I was therefore eager to hear about the new album that's in the works, and Olli gave me as much information as he could. He's an unassuming and pleasant guy, and I want to thank him for the interesting conversation.
Here are some highlights of the interview:
On the new album:
So we spend most of the end of 2012 in studio. We kind of painted ourselves in the corner with the album. The tour dates were set, and we knew that we had a strict deadline, which we almost met. It's kind of 99% done. We even did some recordings during the 70000 Tons of Metal cruise in the cabin. We set up a small studio there. And some things are still missing, but part of it has already been mixed. I'm confident it's going to be ready soon.
What to expect in terms of sound: I think we took the Broadway musical soundtrack type of approach pretty far with the last one, and that was very over the top produced in some sense. Actually, we decided to take a bit rawer approach on this, so a bit more stripped down production, with a bit more speed, not so polished arrangements. We decided to keep the orchestrations, but do it with a bit smaller ensemble, more chamber orchestration. It's a bit of a step to another direction, but you can still definitely hear the Turisas sound there.
Subject matter: On the second and third Turisas albums, it was very concept tied about the Varangian Guard, the actual historical events of Norsemen serving as mercenaries in the Byzantine Emperor's army. Now we decided to give ourselves a bit of freedom from that, and it's a bit more universal themes. Not exactly like about waving swords all the time. With those themes you can paint yourself into a corner, and fans are expecting everything is about bloodshed and gore and epic heroic tales. I think there's actually more you can tell with music.
Side gigs: I do occasional studio sessions with different bands every now and then. Some personal writing stuff, and if I have the chance to do live gigs with anything, dancing music or smooth jazz or whatever, I like to do that. It keeps you fresh.
Here are some highlights of the interview:
On the new album:
So we spend most of the end of 2012 in studio. We kind of painted ourselves in the corner with the album. The tour dates were set, and we knew that we had a strict deadline, which we almost met. It's kind of 99% done. We even did some recordings during the 70000 Tons of Metal cruise in the cabin. We set up a small studio there. And some things are still missing, but part of it has already been mixed. I'm confident it's going to be ready soon.
What to expect in terms of sound: I think we took the Broadway musical soundtrack type of approach pretty far with the last one, and that was very over the top produced in some sense. Actually, we decided to take a bit rawer approach on this, so a bit more stripped down production, with a bit more speed, not so polished arrangements. We decided to keep the orchestrations, but do it with a bit smaller ensemble, more chamber orchestration. It's a bit of a step to another direction, but you can still definitely hear the Turisas sound there.
Subject matter: On the second and third Turisas albums, it was very concept tied about the Varangian Guard, the actual historical events of Norsemen serving as mercenaries in the Byzantine Emperor's army. Now we decided to give ourselves a bit of freedom from that, and it's a bit more universal themes. Not exactly like about waving swords all the time. With those themes you can paint yourself into a corner, and fans are expecting everything is about bloodshed and gore and epic heroic tales. I think there's actually more you can tell with music.
Side gigs: I do occasional studio sessions with different bands every now and then. Some personal writing stuff, and if I have the chance to do live gigs with anything, dancing music or smooth jazz or whatever, I like to do that. It keeps you fresh.
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