Skrymer & Tundra from Finntroll
On the 15th of April, Finntroll played Dublin. If you don’t know Finntroll already, you should. They combine black metal with Finnish polka, called Humppa and sing about Trolls in the Scandinavian mythological sense. Trolls that rise from the forests to crush the encroaching Christian menace. Trolls that follow the old ways, Trolls that were the scourge of the Christanised Vikings.
Through the amazing Louise at Maid of Metal Publicity, we were able to secure an interview with Tundra (bassist) and Skrymer (guitarist), who were fed cigarettes and whiskey in an effort snaffle information from them about life in the band.
—
Screwy: Eh Right thanks. [Ed: no idea what was happening as the tape is garbled]
Screwy: I just got a copy of your new album I have to say it’s good stuff. I have all your other stuff, it’s a fitting continuation. Since Jaktens Tid you’ve had considerable and some might say surprising success.
How’ve you dealt with this and was it surprising for you or did ye feel it was gonna happen once things started the stone rolling.
Tundra: What? Are we speaking about success or sucks or?
(Laughter)
Screwy: I can slow down if ye want?
(Laughter)
Screwy: Yeah. Did you suspect success or did ye…
Tundra: How could we?
Screwy: How’ve you dealt with it? Coz I’ve heard that with Jaktens Tid you went in like 23 to the Finnish charts. Pretty good. You’re 91 in the German chart
Tundra: It’s a too big thing to get into the charts in Finland. There’s always like every week ten metal bands struggling so…
Screwy: And you’re gonna do Japan. So you looking forward to Japan?
Tundra: Yeah We’re paying for it. (Laughs). Yeah. pretty excited.
Screwy: And how did recording a new album go? Was it difficult or did it just kind’a flow?
Skrymer: The recording of the newest album was pretty easy.
Tundra: Yeah, compared to Nattfödd… I dunno, easy going atmospheric. Everything just happened to click.
Screwy: Alright, you’re gonna have to excuse my Swedish.
Tundra: (Laughs)
Screwy: I noticed on “Ur Jordens” that there is no “Visan” and on previous albums you had Bastuvisan and Kyrkovisan — The church song and the sauna song — and why was there none on this album?
Skrymer: Coz on this album the lyrics were really intentionally non-anti-Christian kind of theme coz [our] first singer Katla wrote the lyrics on the album and he was very happy that he managed to write lyrics that were no anti-Christian and no religious themes and of course we managed to fuck it up with this one particular song we made ourselves but…
Skrymer: So it doesn’t really fit in the concept to like burn…
Tundra: Yes it was a strict theme all over.
Screwy: This comes from your Webmaster, he wants to know why there wasn’t a short fast-tempo song — he was wondering…
Tundra: (Laughs) I guess we kinda forgot (Laughs) to compose one
Skrymer: If one would’ve come out the of course we would’ve probably recorded it, but…
Tundra: Just didn’t happen.
Screwy: No worries. That’s a good enough answer for me.
Screwy: So the new album is a DVDROM with two live videos on it. Can the fans expect a full feature live DVD with behind scenes shit of you guys touring or is it just the two live bits on the DVD?
Tundra: It’s coming. It’s coming. When one of our friends is gonna. (coughs) gonna gonna gonna. Gonna record a few shows. It’s more like a documentary of our history and about everything.
Screwy: So Katla will be in there as well?
Tundra: I guess so. Dunno what tapes we’re gonna find.
Skrymer: We kinda thought that yenno, if we would just go and record a live show and then just add some stupid-ass shit from backstage “yeah! we’re drunk and shit” that, I dunno, it’s kind of rip-off.
Tundra: Personally, we’re satisfied about that [those] two songs are supposed to be something super.
Skrymer: Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean.
Screwy: Anyway, while we’re on the subject of videos. I’ve heard you’ve just done a new one. And that’s your second video? You did Trollhammaren and you’ve just done a new one. Is there anything you’d like to tell us about the concept or even the song? Coz even your Webmaster doesn’t know what song it is. So, is there anything you’d like to say?
Skrymer: Song Nedgång. Well (chuckles) I dunno, you need to see it. Complicated.
Screwy: Is it near Trollhammaren?
Tundra: Different atmosphere.
Screwy: No teasers?
Tundra: Just check it out when it’s out.
Screwy: All right.
Skrymer: I guess it’s a bit more serious. Not really, but still..
Tundra: No it’s not.
Screwy: Last year, you co-headlined Wacken, which has to be one of the biggest and most famous festivals. Was that like a dream realized or? What was the experience like? I mean it is Wacken.
Skrymer: I dunno about dreams of yenno playing for millions.
Tundra: Just usually just used to seeing things just happening. It’s nothing ever bland about anything. Yenno it was a fucking big thing of course.
Skrymer: [For] The singer it’s the best — there’s more fucking people in the audience than in his whole fucking home town. It’s kinda awkward to probably play for like forty thousand people all of a sudden.
Tundra: Seventy.
Skrymer: What seventy? (chuckles) If I would’ve known that, I wouldn’t have gone on stage.
Screwy: How did you find Vreth? Coz at least your previous singers had considerable background bands.
Skrymer: He actually went to the same school as our first singer; Katla and he knew that we were looking for a new singer. Yanno, he contacted us
Tundra: Yeah, shitty demos appeared at Spinefarm office and we decided to quit that [searching for singers] immediately and for some awkward reason our first singer found this ugly-sounding guy.
Skrymer: Coz yanno He probably really knew what we were looking in a singer and everything and then he contacted us: I’ve gone to school with this guy and you really have to fucking see him and try it out and I dunno, I guess since day one this is like “yeah this is the singer”
Screwy: And how happy are you with him? I mean it’s just a year past
Skrymer: I dunno, it feels like he’s been in the band for like five six years.
Tundra: First singer actually who cooperates with us in the studio really well. So, not bad.
Screwy: What do you mean the cooperation in the studio?
Tundra: He actually mixed half of his tracks by himself, had ideas and (chuckles) recorded bass some guitars.
Screwy: Does it make it easier for you?
Skrymer: Yeah, coz he joined the band to be the singer of the band, not to be the front man of the band. Like joined to be one of the six of us.
Tundra: To be one of the crew.
Screwy: So basically he’s a proper musician with other musicians?
Tundra: Yeah, definitely.
Screwy: Finntroll started in 1997, Skyforger started 1995, since you guys got started there’s been a big flood of folk metal. What do you think of the other bands? Like what do you think of Skyforger? I think you’ve played the same festival eh somewhere along the lines.
Tundra: Did we?
Skrymer: I have to be really honest, I am not even sure I’ve ever heard them [play]. I dunno, my musical taste is not like folk metal. And we don’t really want to consider us as folk metal — it’s just music.
Screwy: It’s what you’re labeled as in general I’m not much into the labels.
Skrymer: I know fans have a need to label, but we consider ourselves as music.
Screwy: So aside from music, what gets you going? Wine? Women? Cheese? What do you do to get off? I mean aside from drinkin’ — boozin’ and whorin’.
Skrymer: (Silence)… Nothing.
Screwy: Fishing?
Skrymer: Occasionally.
Tundra: Some of us do (chuckles)
Skrymer: There are like a fuckin’ millions of things the different guys do — one wants to go fishing and one…
Tundra: and one loves computer games and goes to see ice hockey if it’s fucking possible. heheh (chuckles)
Screwy: Well you are from Finland — one of the best in the world.
Screwy: What about you? There’s gotta be something you do?
Tundra: I sleep, I eat..
Screwy: Get high?
Tundra: Not really. (chuckles)
Skrymer: Play guitar, listen to music
Tundra: (chuckles) Not really. Trying to get interested in music sometimes — when composing. That’s about it. We’re getting old!
Screwy: Okay. Well this one is for you individually, so I’ll do you first.
Screwy: What ten albums, over the last… whole life…
Tundra: Oh fuck..
Screwy: it can be fucking anything…Jazz…fuckin’ anything.
Tundra: How bout three albums!
Tundra: Carcass — Symphonies of Sickness..
Screwy: You can go to twelve if you need to
Tundra: silence Ten? Fuck that’s way too much.
Tundra: Master of Puppets, Metallica. A Blaze in the Northen Sky, Darkthrone. Eaten back to life, Cannibal Corpse. (chuckles) How many do I have left?
Skrymer: That’s four.
Tundra: I change that to Butchered at Birth, actually… (long silence) It’s way too much… I have to get a beer and think it over! (chuckles)
Skrymer: Black Sabbath — Master of Reality Led Zeppelin — Number two Bolt Thrower — Realm of Chaos Carcass — Necrotism Dismember — Like an arrow flying straight Emtombed — Clandestine.
We had like lots and lots of arguments, coz half is [for] Left Hand Path and half for Clandestine. I’m with the Clandestine.
How many is that? Six?
Clutch, but which one… Blast tyrant.
Seven…
Ramones — Ramones. Sex Pistols — Nevermind the Bollocks Hellacopter — Supershitty to the max
Screwy: That’s your ten.
Tundra: Black Widow — Sacrifice Led Zeppelin — Third.
Screwy: Three more.
Tundra: Three? He made up ten? No way!
Screwy: Pretty quickly.
Tundra: Arrgh! Fuck he’s fast! (chuckles) Dismember — Pieces.
Tundra: Did you pick it?
Skrymer: Yes.
Tundra: Fuck!
Screwy: You can overlap. All this does is it makes people who like your music go out and buy this shit. Curiosity an’all.
Tundra: What am I missing?
Skrymer: Bolt Thrower?
Tundra: Exactly! Warmaster. One more? Fuckin’ hell. Fuckin’ Deicide, yeah, Deicide — Deicide.
Screwy: How bout your bonus two?
Skrymer: Bonus Two? Must be really careful with these two. What am I missing? Satyricon, but which one. Shit. sings some metal lyrics very fast Shadowthrone. Agh brainfart! Blood, wind, fire, ice…Bathory!
Screwy: Katla’s message in the new album talks about the commonness between all mythologies. Is there a likelihood that Finntroll will branch out to other mythologies? Or will you always stay in Finland?
Tundra: Actually one of our tracks, Ormhäxan — Serpentwitch, is — I found out lately — that figurine, that snake-headed woman. That’s not really our stuff — it’s from Greece or something.
Skrymer: Yeah, it was found from Sweden I think. It’s like pre-Viking age, pre-historical. It’s like this rune stone, that no one really knows from time it is, and who the fuck made it. In my opinion it does really fit the whole concept. I think our history — Finnish mythology, goes way further than Vikings. On the new album, the whole idea of the new album goes pre-… like before anyone fuckin’ invented Christianity or like organized religions. Like it’s about Life, Death and Resurrection — straight from the back of the booklet: do you really think Christians invented resurrection.
Screwy: Aye. Now that you have found that common trait, are you going to keep pushing on it?
Tundra: Did we? (Laughs)
Skrymer: We never ever have planned anything.
Screwy: Oh that works.
Skrymer: Maybe on the next album we’ll go into the future and do disco and whatever…probably not, BUT –laughs-
Screwy: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve had to eat?
Skrymer: On tour? Canadian ribs, twenty minutes before the show
Tundra: No! That Canadian beer — NO after taste.
Skyrmer: Yeah, Molson — no after taste. It says on the beer bottle — no after taste. Weird!
Screwy: What about groupies?
Skrymer: We don’t have them.
Tundra: (chuckles) WHAT groupies?
Screwy: How many Trollish women you got there that wanna drag you back to their cave? There’s a woman upstairs demanding I give at least two of you’re her phone number.
Skrymer: I think one of them is the singer? Isn’t it?
Screwy: One is the singer aye.
(Both laugh)
Skrymer: Yeah exactly random two and the singer.
(Both laugh)
Skrymer: I dunno. We don’t really have groupies. Do we?
Tundra: Little boys, yeah! (chuckles)
Skrymer: (Laughs)
Screwy: What’s your booze of choice? What would the band be drinkin’ when they’re getting down with their inner Troll?
Tundra: Vodka and fisherman’s friend, vodka and fisherman’s friend has been the hit for several years.
Skrymer: You know the pastille? You take a bottle of vodka and pour like a half a bag of Fisherman’s friends there and you let it melt — brown water.
Screwy: This is a long one. Amon Amarth — They play Viking metal, according to all the magazines..
Skrymer: Actually, they play Swedish Death Metal.
Screwy: This is just magazine shit… You guys do troll shit and you are singing from the trollish heart: trolls going out into the night, trolls coming out of the fires… Considering the history between vikings and trolls, how’s that going for you — touring with them? Is there any line division between the trolls and the vikings? Are you going to catch them in their sleep in their traveling longboat and kill them?
Skrymer: I think the basic idea is that both music is from like Nordic heritage, mythology and shit. Actually we had a discussion about this. it’s very very hard to explain — of course we hate the Swedish but not really… and they hate us, but not really..
Tundra: The whole band name comes from Swedish saga, one Viking fuck, slays troll.
Skrymer: Christian Viking Fuck!
Tundra: Come to Sweden and that creature slays many, many and many. Takes heads after heads and of course there’s one proud red-haired fuck who slays this creature in the end.
Skrymer: And they name the hairy fuckin’ bad-smelling creature as Finntroll which is basically native Finnish people so we’re just peasants and whatever.
Screwy: What about books? What are you reading at the moment?
Skrymer: Autumn of the Middle Ages — it’s short stories about how people behaved in the Middle ages, like people were much more emotional. Some baron lost his money, and he gave this strong speech to people and they all cried and gave him money and he was like rich again. I dunno.
Tundra: I tried some rubbish science fiction kinda bling blong which I unfortunately forget at home.
Screwy: What about movies?
Skrymer: I think today in the bus some of us were watching Anchorman yesterday it was Monty Python. We don’t usually watch a lot.
Tundra: I’m so glad that no one brought porn (chuckles)
Skrymer: This time…
Screwy: Katla’s message in the new album — going back to that — he puts forward a very positive message, which is a far step away from your first two albums and the EP, which was very much trolls against everything else. Think you’re gonna be pushing a more positive, shamanistic message of the All. Or would it be whole band thing where there still is an element of putting the fist in?
Skrymer: I think we’re still putting the fist in the groin and like ripping guts out. I’m not even sure that this new one’s a very positive album. It’s about different subjects than our previous albums. Still kinda the same idea, but not so anti-religious kinda stuff, but…
Tundra: Straight into the subject. Y’know, it’s Katla job to write lyrics so it’s kinda stupid to say anything
Screwy: I’ve got about two last questions, and then you’re free to go.
Screwy: Considering Finntroll’s past against Christianity — if you had a band of troll assassins and you could just set them out: What five religious leaders would your trolls get rid of; or any Christians?
Skrymer: Every single organised religion that tries to push into people’s heads that “you need this”, coz I dunno, people need to fuckin’ find their own happiness and if someone fuckin’ finds God and is happy with it — Go nuts! But y’know it’s like corporate… I dunno.. all the major religions are much like corporations or something in my point of view. this is just my opinion. All of them. Let’s just start it all over again and see what happens.
I dunno.. in my opinion the biggest shit that ever happened to the planet Earth is major organized religions, that’s why people can’t get along and fuckin’ kill each other. I dunno, we’re still fighting over fuckin’ Jerusalem after two thousand years, and WHY? Coz other people think that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the other ones think he’s one of the prophets — how fuckin’ retarded is that! So all of them must dies. (chuckles).
Tundra: (chuckles) Nothing to add really.
Screwy: You’ve been on tour, you’ve been together now .. coming on a good few years. You got any crazy stories you’d like to share, y’know the sort of ones where you’re in Mexico… something that’d get the fans’ blood up coz that’s really what they wanna hear. You guys going off and being fuckin’ pirates basically round the world
Skrymer: I think so far probably the crazies fucking trip we ever did was the first one we ever did Impaled Nazarene to Russia — consumed like a CONSIDERABLE amount of vodka coz it really doesn’t cost shit there. Y’know going into the Red Square puking and Russian militia didn’t really think it was a nice idea. Anything else?
Tundra: I like that Hungarian… (laughs) you explain, my broken English won’t work any more.
Screwy: Your English is perfect.
Skrymer: Last year the Hungarian… that was probably the most… the fucking craziest…. first of all we got to Betsch [sic] and I think we played a really fucking nice show there. The audience was a lot of big-ass mosh pits, stage diving, crowd surfing. And after the gig coz it was so fuckin’ nice, we found this… what was his name? The tattoo guy. Then we got the best idea ever: sort of like brotherhood tattoos — anchors. So the three of us have the same fucking anchor tattood. It was only 20 euros. I’ve known him since, I don’t even know and I’ve known Routa since we were eight years old — how fucking lucky are we?
We are still together and we play in the same band and we get to go around the world… And then we of course got even more piss-drunk and then I think I attacked some synagogue with some pork meat and plums and it’s not that I have anything particularly against Jewish religion — there’s just this huge fuckin’ house for God and it just existed there in the really really wrong time and wrong place. And after that we went to the hotel which was like 10 meters from the synagogue. And then the drummer and the keyboard player had the best idea: the other one disguised himself as Adolf and the other one had a plastic bag over his head which kinda looked like a white sheet on his head…kinda KKK thing and they hang out at the window…
Still it’s not that we have anything particular against this one religious group — there’s just no fuckin’ respect for any major religion. And of course now we’re gonna get labeled as anti-Semitist group coz people tend to have this nice habit of reading between the lines — not really reading what you are saying but picking up these.
Tundra: And the first show we had in Moscow where there were like 2000 people there who greeted us with the Nazi greeting
Skrymer: The band was spitting on them… like standing on the monitor and spitting (spitting sound)
Tundra: Like — How dare you? How many are you? How many are you? Fuck you all.
Skrymer: Yeah, fuck you all.
Screwy: What’s your favourite moment of Finntroll? Studio or? The moment when you felt like “this is it, this is what it’s about”
Tundra: The first show in St. Petersburg in Russia — we had to go on stage, and it was this Spinal Tap moment, it took us like 20 minutes to discover the stage or something. Crowd yelling like oh shit! Someone really likes our stuff. You get a bit scared at the moment.
Skrymer: The moment when you realize: What? People actually really like this stuff we’ve recorded and are playing
(About this time an Amon Amarth member appears and begins to vomit loud enough to drown out the Finntroll lads. Apparently this led to their encore cutting short.)
Skrymer: I really hope that my favourite moment hasn’t come yet. I guess to be honest, starting this Finnish tour, coz we’re doing a Finnish tour, a English-Irish tour and then European tour and then all of a sudden realize that it took ten years and now we finally have a band that we’re gonna hold up till the bitter end. That’s brilliant. And you know people seem to realize this thing.
Screwy: Last question. Have you any advice for a band’s that’s coming up to metal and young guys like you guys were in 1997 … what would you say if you had One thing to say to anyone that’s just getting together?
Tundra: Quit playing, have a nice career.
Skrymer: Do your own shit the way you wanna do it, and never fucking listen to anyone else… y’know. Make music. No matter what genre or whatever
Tundra: Be honest to yourselves.
Screwy: I lied. Last question. How’d you find Dublin? Did you like Dublin? How did you find the gig? I mean I gotta admit we don’t have the best crowd
Skrymer: First impression: They hate us. Oh really! They fuckin’ hate us. And then you realize oh they really don’t hate us and it turned really really nicely. So far I’m really enjoying it. And finally we got to get here, which is really fucking nice. And I’ve personally never been to Ireland before.
Tundra: I wanna see ’em drunk next time — Let the Guinness flow and fuckin’ JUMP! (chuckles)
— Typed almost verbatim from the recording.
Originally published at 04/10/2007
