We recently had the opportunity to talk to Tomi Koivusaari, AMORPHIS’s guitarist since its formation. After a couple of minutes of technical issues with the recorder, he told us some very juicy about the band’s present and about past times too, their change in musical direction and in vocalist, etcetera. Here’s the result.

- HoM: Sorry, problems just appear in the last moment… Well, first of all congratulations for you last album. How’s the selling going and how’s the response from media and fans?

Thanks! Well, response has been mostly good for what I’ve seen, fans seem to like it, but lately in festival gigs and so, the setlist has been mainly old stuff, so now, when we start touring, it will be the first time we can test this new stuff on live, but so far it seems that people like it.

- HoM: I heard that the limited edition had a failure in some tracks, that’s too bad! What was your first reaction to this?

Well, we were totally like… pfffffffff… depressed when we heard like one or two days before releasing that there was this kind of problem, we couldn’t believe it at first…

- HoM: But… you knew it before the release?

No, no, but it was already shipped to markets and shops. We knew it two days before it was released in Finland, it was on Wednesday, and on Friday it was released in the rest of countries I think, and we knew this on Tuesday or something. We wanted to take it away from the shops, we didn’t want to… like… things like this shouldn’t happen, it’s not normal that the rest of editions are OK and the digipack has this problem, they’re supposed to be the same mastering all of them… After that, I spent about one week without sleeping well, I was so fucked up about this.

- HoM: And do you plan to make another special edition with this problem fixed?

There is some fixed version, I’ve seen in Finland corrected versions already, but I don’t know, maybe it’s up to distributors or something.

[n- Later we knew that the corrected version comes with an identifying sticker.]

- HoM: The lyrics are all about Kalevala in this album. What’s the meaning of the title, "Skyforger"?

It’s a one man story again, like "Silent Waters" and "Eclipse". This time it’s this blacksmith, Ilmarinen, in Kalevala he created the sky, he forged it, so that’s where the name comes from. He’s the skyforger.

- HoM: About the cover, with that tree, what does it mean?

Well, we started to think about the cover, it’s very difficult to imagine a cover where there is only sky, and there’s nothing…

- HoM: All blue! Hahaha!

Hahaha maybe some birds or something… But reading the story, there’s this old oak which is holding the sky while it is being forged, and when the sky is ready the oak is cut down. That’s where the cover came from.

- HoM: The cover is very similar to Faso Latido’s "Static lullaby". Did you have any problems because of this similarity? Some may think this is a copy or something…

Yeah, we saw in Blabbermouth this whole thing, but we didn’t know about that band before, but I think a tree as a symbol is used very often, of course there’s similarities because there’s a tree, and some brown, and the sky is blue…

- HoM: I guess it’s like using a grim reaper or that usual stuff…

I think that the tree is the most used symbol, there’s all these organisations and things like that. We didn’t think about this too much; the guy who did the artwork was more concerned about that, he wanted to change it but we liked it.

- HoM: Who was he, by the way?

Travis Smith.

- HoM: Now tell me, how was the recording process and where did it take place?

It was the same place where we recorded the two previous albums, in Helsinki, Sonic Pump. It was pretty much the same guys working with us. It was very relaxing for me and the rest of members in the band having the same producer and all that. When it’s near of your home, you can go home after work. Some albums were done in Stockholm and it was like partying and spending two weeks away from home. The thing is to concentrate in the actual recording.

- HoM: Well, some artists prefer recording far from their homes, so that they get away from their everyday lives…

Yeah, that’s a good point, we thought about that as well, but this time we wanted to stay in Helsinki because we used Marko Hietala from Nightwish again, we would have to record some parts here and some parts in other place, so we decided to stay in Helsinki because of this point.

- HoM: Were you afraid of not being able to surpass the quality of “Eclipse” and “Silent Waters”?

I think these three albums form a trilogy, as we started to think once the recording was ready, because they are like from the same world, so to say, and in the next album we’re probably going to do something different, maybe totally or maybe a bit, but different, maybe. We don’t want to stop at this point and do too many similar albums; these three albums have been very satisfying because we finally found the style we were looking for; but I think it’s good to change once in a while anyway, to do something fresh.

- HoM: You mentioned this is like a trilogy, was it premeditated before “Silent Waters” and “Eclipse”, you said like, okay, we’re going to do three albums about the same topic, or it just happened?

It just happened, we started thinking of this as a trilogy just after “Skyforger” was ready, so it wasn’t meant to be a trilogy, but there are so many similarities, the albums were all made in a very short period, in the same studio and things like that, and of course the same line-up, it’s the first time in our career that we have the same line-up in three consecutive albums. Also they are all based in the same kind of subject.

- HoM: Tomi Joutsen joined the band just before “Eclipse”, right?

Yes, that’s true.

- HoM: Your sound changed in that moment. Is he part of the reason why you’ve changed your sound?

Well, when we were recording “Far From The Sun” we started to think that this is not what we wanted to do. Pasi lost his motivation and this affected all of us. So when Pasi left, first he had talked to us and we started to look for a new singer. We talked about what we had done and what periods we liked most, and when Tomi joined we immediately went out touring and played mainly old stuff again, mostly because Tomi wanted, because he used to be an AMORPHIS fan when he was younger and he wanted to play stuff from “The Karelian Iisthmus”, “Tales From The Thousand Lakes” and things like that. It was in that tour that we realized that it was much more fun playing that kind of songs and that our inspiration had been away. It just happened that when we were doing this tour we started composing new songs, and that’s how new things came.

- HoM: He’s more like a metalcore singer, right?

Yeah, but I think he can sing in so many ways.

- HoM: When you released “Am Universum” and “Far From The Sun” many fans thought that you had lost your way. What can you tell me about these albums and your later return to the metal path?

We stand behind every album we have done, I like “Am Universum” still, but I have to confess that I was listening to those albums one year ago, and I didn’t know what we were thinking about when we did them. I like them, but it’s not the stuff we like to play live. Now we feel we have found our energy back, we feel what we are, so it should be fun again to play and to do gigs and new songs. It was fun in the past too, of course, but in a different way.

- HoM: When you released “Eclipse”, weren’t you a bit afraid of the response of the fans?

No!, actually we weren’t afraid of anything, because when we started to look for a new vocalist we felt we would never find a right one to replace Pasi, we were even thinking in doing some instrumental album or something, so the main idea was that we wanted to continue, no matter what it was going to be, if we liked it. Some of us have been in this band for twenty years, we can’t imagine to live without this band, so… I think that after we had some albums and fans seemed to like them, we didn’t think anymore that somebody would miss Pasi. Since “Eclipse” wasn’t like death metal or something, some started to say that we wanted to sell and bla bla bla, but there is the same elements in what we have done all these years anyway.

- HoM: After “Eclipse”, you recorded and released “Silent waters” very soon. How come this was so fast?

We were very excited about this new line-up, so it just happened. We were in our rehearsing place after some tour, we started to think we should write some songs and soon we realized that we had something like fifteen songs, everybody had done a few songs. We booked the studio when we had a one or two-month break. The same happened with “Skyforger”. We didn’t try to write songs faster, it just happened, and we didn’t want to take any breaks, because recording is fun. Anyway, I think fans woudn’t like 4-year breaks wating for another record. It’s good, if it’s natural it’s always good; otherwise we would have like 40 songs after two years and it isn’t easy to decide what songs make it to the album.

- HoM: What songs do you like most in “Skyforger”?

My first favourite was “Majestic Beast”, I think it has some good elements, it’s brutal in a way and has a nice melody. I also like “Sky Is Mine” because it’s fast… anyway, I think there’s nothing I would change.

- HoM: In the title track, around the middle, we can hear a wind instrument. You already did this in “Tuonela” with that saxophone. How did you come up with the idea of using this kind of instruments?

It was kind of accidental, because we already had some flute-ish parts played by Santeri with keyboards, and actually it was my neighbour who is playing those clarinets and saxophones and flutes in the album, hehe. I was in my studio and he just came and played something, and then the other guys listened to that sound and liked it. I like very much saxophone and flute, I think they have a very nice atmosphere, but we didn’t want it to be a big part as we did in “Am Universum” specially, and in “Tuonela”. In “Tuonela” it was better, because in “Am Universum” it was more like a solo instrument, and maybe that’s too much.

- HoM: The tribal parts at the end are very similar to “Shaman”. Are these songs related in any aspect?

What?... Well… let me think about it… yeah, it might be… but no, they aren’t related, it’s accidental… we used this folkish style, and it’s the same guys behind doing it, hahaha, so I guess there can be some similarity.

- HoM: Maybe it depends on who’s listening.

Yeah.

- HoM: You are quite a difficult band to label, you are not melodic death metal, you are not exactly progressive metal… What would you call your music, how would you describe it?

I have no idea. I think it’s… I don’t like too much categorizing anyway, because I think it’s limiting in a way the band; but of course people want to have some kind of expression of what kind of music it is but… I think it is… melodic… I have no idea what to call it. Hahaha. Some kind of… progressive… melodic… metal, something like that.

- HoM: Some media still consider you as an extreme metal band…

Oh yeah. I guess that when you have done something, it’s not so ordinary that bands are changing too much, so it’s easy to give it the same label all the time. I did so much different stuff, I don’t care too much.

- HoM: What would you say are your main influences?

When we were young and started this, we were 15 or 14, first was Kiss, then was Metallica, then Morbid Angel and Carcass; but I think that when we made our first album, there was a lot of Pink Floyd and rock of the 70s, 70s progressive music. Nowadays I would say metal like Slayer, they’re very important in a way, and Pink Floyd has always been a very important band to us. We are anyway always listening to very different music styles, like Muse or Porcupine Tree nowadays, or whatever, even… Madonna, hahaha! No, not Madonna, let’s say Abba. But every music that is good and honest in a way is good.

- HoM: Many bands of the 90's like Dark Tranquillity or In Flames are now big metal bands. How is your relationship with those bands?

We’ve met some of them in festivals and things like that, and maybe drank some beers together, but I don’t know those guys that well. I think most of them started at the same time as we did, so I have respect for those bands, but I haven’t actually heard too much of these bands.

- HoM: I suppose that you know the end of Sentenced, and the musical change of sound of Children Of Bodom, what is your opinion about these?

Ah, we started with Sentenced at the same time and we were very good friends, we still are; they live up in the North of Finland, so we don’t see them too often, but we had quite huge drinking parties with them, because they don’t speak anything if they are not drunk, hahaha, but in a time we used to share the rehearsal place with them, and we did a South-American tour with them, we are also very good friends with them. I haven’t heard many Children Of Bodom’s albums, but in live they’re very good, they’re very good players.

- HoM: Now a strange question, where do you think Amorphis will be in 15 years? Do you think that your music will become heavier, or more melodic?

Hard to say, I would like to think that I have no idea because we have a very open mind to do whatever, but I think that the heavy element will stay ‘til the end. But there also might be some experimental albums, maybe, acoustic album or something, but only one. I don’t know, we haven’t planned anything like that, but… We’ll see, hopefully, as long as we think it’s fun and it’s still fresh to us we will continue; if we realize that we are trying to do some… thinking over and over again then it’s time to quit. We’ll see.

- HoM: You’re touring now, right?

Yeah, we’re starting the tour on Wednesday [october 7th], in Germany.

- HoM: Will you be coming to Spain?

No, I don’t think so, I saw a list some months ago and Spain was there, but not any more. Too bad… We were in this Lorca festival last time I think. Maybe next time.

- HoM: Ok, thank you very much for your time! If you want to say anything to your Spanish fans, now is the moment.

Oh, thanks for support, I know we have some fans there and we will come to Spain hopefully very soon. We like Spain as a country very much, so we’ll see. Anyway, thanks for this interview!