Metal Express Radio recently caught up with Antti Hakulinen and Timo Niemisto from Lion Music’s up-and-coming band Anthriel. Here they talk about putting together their debut album The Pathway, their music, and the future.
Metal Express Radio:
First, congratulations on your new album The Pathway. This past year or so has been huge for you guys. First the additions of new vocalist Simo Silvan, signing a record deal with Lion Music, and of course the release of your debut album. Can you describe how those events all came together?
Antti:
Thank you. Yes, the start so far has been really great for us. It all came together in pretty normal fashion. We got hold of Simo Silvan a year and a half ago, I think. I knew Simo because we shared the same day job years ago. He played me some demo tapes where he sang. We were forced to let our earlier singer go due to personal matters, and it took some time to figure what path we’d take. I happened to recall Simo and played Timo his old demos. Timo loved his clean vocals and I was excited about his more raspy singing. We booked Simo an audition, and I think Timo had him immediately sing our songs (not easy to sing them), and rest is pretty much history. We have one of the most versatile singers out there. To shorten a really long story a little bit, we basically sent Lion Music our tapes and they made us a good offer that we couldn’t turn down. We never sent our tapes to any big labels, since we have seen so many bad examples happening to our friends that caused good bands to pretty much die. We want to be in control of everything else except distribution and various marketing issues.
MER:
Simo’s vocal range is very dynamic; can you tell fans how his addition has helped you evolve as a band?
Antti:
Simo’s range and vocal use is something awesome. We’ve had guys in the past that could sing really high, but they couldn’t sing middle or low range vocals or get the kind of growl to their sound if needed. Simo can use all those techniques, not to mention he articulates really well. Naturally, this has enabled us not to worry about what key our songs go from, what kind of time signature the songs have, or whether they’re meant to have soft or heavy singing in them.
Timo:
Simo is also quite musical. He has played bass and guitar in the past and he is fully capable of composing music, riffs, and melodies. Most important of all, like Antti said, in odd time signatures you don’t have to tell him to “count slowly to three before before you start to sing.” It really helps the rest of the band when you don’t have to worry about the vocalist’s sense of rhythm. We have demoed a lot of material for the next album, and there is definitely going to be material from Simo and Clasu (Klaus) as well. I am very pleased with the fact that now everyone in the band is musical enough to bring and work out the ideas of their own for the band, even outside of their own instrument. For example, the acoustic guitar pattern in the intro of the “Chains Of The Past” came from Jari, our drummer.
MER:
Can you tell readers a little bit about how the songs came together for The Pathway, and the story behind the lyrics?
Timo:
Like most of the debut albums, The Pathway has some material that is arranged over and over again through the years and worked with different line-up variations. Also, some parts were fully improvised in the studio during the recording process. We got so much material that we had to drop some songs to keep the length of the album reasonable. Still, there is a lot of digging in the album and it serves as a perfect picture of our versatile music with it’s many layers. Thematically, The Pathway is the story of a man who finds himself growing against his former principles and philosophy of life. He decides to leave his past behind and begin a journey to find his own personal promised land of balance and harmony of mind. The path gets rough and leads the man to the edge of insanity, but the sparkle of light keeps him going on. There are pretty clear highlights in the music and lyrics, but we don’t want to chew it up too much on behalf of a listener’s perspective, or tell what kind of emotion an audience should get out of each song. I prefer to let the audience be an artist who paints the fantasy world around our music and dives into it.
MER:
Can you describe your style of Progressive Metal for the readers who haven’t had the opportunity to listen to The Pathway yet?
Antti:
It’s not easy to explain. If you look for some strong style, then I’d say Anthriel would be Neoclassical Progressive Metal. I think The Pathway is easily listenable and it’s something one can adapt to easily as a casual listener, and more “educated” musicians should be also able to find pretty interesting things from it too. We’ve never been “let’s chop away and do a superfast and long solo” type of band, and making songs fitting to radio is really a challenge for us. We want to be creative and make music we believe in instead of being boring and easy to play show offs.
MER:
Do you think it’s risky making such a complex and elaborate album as your debut?
Antti:
We don’t think like that because The Pathway was something we came up with pretty naturally because it’s such a heavily improvised album, though the listener probably will never notice that. We did so much on the spot when recording, that later on it was always the hardest part to know how we had played some parts because it was something we were thinking at that moment.
MER:
You guys are all very young and the music itself is very fresh. Do you envision yourselves as the next generation of Progressive Metal?
Antti:
It’s really nice to hear you feel our music is very fresh. We as persons are next generation for sure. It’s pretty easy to explain also… most of us were born sometime in the 80’s, so we’ve had most of our influences from newer bands. Naturally, this all has had an impact on our music. I don’t think any band does our kind of music exactly, or at least not the way we do it, so one could say that hopefully we give the world of Neoclassical Progressive Music something different and fresh to the table.
MER:
Is there a tour in the works for support of the new album?
Antti:
Not a worldwide tour, no. Finland only for now. That’s definitely something we’ll work out in near future. We are going to tour Europe; and some festival appearances outside Finland are expected in 2011. We’ll go anywhere we are booked and wanted. Basically, if the venue and event is good in our opinion, we come with only travel expenses covered. That pretty much sums up how much we’re willing to get out there so our fans can get to see us live.
MER:
Of course, Metal Express Radio have been big supporters of Anthriel. Have you been getting a lot of positive feedback from other critics and fans?
Antti:
Reviews so far have been really good … I didn’t think The Pathway would get as good of reviews as it has this far. I find it interesting to notice how some reviewers are professionals and others are really far from it, and shouldn’t receive any music to review in the first place. The MER review is a great example of a professionally done, good and thoughtful review where we as a band can learn something and we can tell that the reviewer has actually gotten into the music he is writing about. When it comes to the fans, I hope they like what they hear. The album has been out now and we hope people will check us out and purchase a copy of our CD and come to the shows. It’s too early to know what fans might say or how well the general public takes our album. I suspect you won’t be seeing us on MTV anytime soon and mainstream radio is really hard to achieve also *laughs*.
MER:
What else can fans expect from Anthiel in the future?
Antti: A new record has been set for release in 2011, and I personally can’t wait to start working on the material we have. It’s going to be … well something you’ve never heard before … different but still 100% Anthriel.
MER:
Any final words for your new fans out there?
Antti:
Thank you, all of you! We appreciate you all a lot.
MER:
Thanks so much for taking the time to enlighten our readers about Anthriel and The Pathway. Best of luck to you, and MER hope you have many years of continued success!
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