from "Worlds Сollide" Delux DVD - 2007
Eicca: Actually, that we have met a lot of people during this years at festivals, different great artists and with the new record company we had the opportunity to meet great song writers and singers and producers and work together with them. Lot's of new ideas we had from people who are originally working on more pop music, it's a different way of thinking about creating a song, how to arrange the song and how to produce it, so, getting all this great sides from different place and combine them into Apocalyptica world. I think that's the result why Apocalyptica new album sounds much more international than Finnish album, but maybe the previous album was more full of Finnish mentality, but this is more kind of European and Global you know.
Since the last album we were touring in almost something like 40-45 countries we played after last release. And of course meeting this different people from different cultures and getting a bigger and fresh view about world, and living in different places in this world is also you know, like opening your mind. Spending half of the year travelling, every year, since 10 years or 11 years also bring a lot of influences.
But musically, maybe the bigger thing we have changed we have learned is that we need to define what we want to say with a certain song and what it the most important thing in every song and try to find the best way to bring them in, we tended to, in the past, we tended to bring a lot of more elements and maybe make it more symphonic in a way and this time we tried to simplify and make it more. If you have a diamond, you can have a roll diamond and you can fix it a little bit to be cool and so, so we tried to fix the coolest diamond we can ever create.
Yeah, the song writing thing has changed a lot from the times of "Cult" album for example. It was more like living through more classical influence. Nowadays it's rock music what we feel we do and of course it comes from this feeling like when we play concerts. We are a rock band which plays rock music in a concert. And with that experience you get the strong feeling about what works and what works the best and what are other coolest things to happen and what's the main thing in every song that catch people and catch yourself, and trying to develop that step by step to the next level. So I think the song writing is getting better and better with every album.
I think that's the major area where we can develop this thing in the future as well, just get the song better and better and better, because there are always new things to learn, new colours to add and maybe we will be more sensitive on not accepting songs very easily, but always turning every stone what we found of every particle of the song, because we had like 30 songs and somehow it started to come together certain songs and certain elements that everybody felt common and for us it's always big adventure to find the area where the whole Apocalyptica is basically together and where the different tastes of music have the area where they meet is Apocalyptica and it's hard process every time.
Perttu: With this album we definitely worked as well much more as a band, because on previous albums we had to bring to the studio almost done compositions, and now we had this whole material in the rehearsal room which we played and jammed for many months and that's the way how those diamonds got their finances.
Eicca: Let's say in the past we always kept in every songs a lot of working levels, of what we did this time, in every, every, starting from the bottom, level we tried to fine tune the song and when everything was fine in the rehearsal room, we went to the studio and in the studio we again fine tune everything, and maybe, in the studio we changed some riffs change the strong structure to what was just you know, felt good.
That was a big issue and from there we learned really how to do it and maybe in the future we can bring it more into song writing itself, like when you start to write and song and think, ok I write a song, let's see what happens, I write a song, and then I listen to it, and I should be critical to every little detail in there and re think it and it happens that only the best things they survive, and other things, you drop this shit out between the cool things and then you find other cool things, and that's how all the buildingness is build up, and we have turned into rock writers.
Perttu: Actually this time, drums are like equal instrument comparing to the cellos, and maybe earlier years we added drums to the cellos.
Eicca: Yeah, cellos made the main start and then the drums were just bring...
Perttu: Now the drums were the radically ideas, and upon that we created everything that fits in there with the cellos, and the main goal with the producer Jacob Hellner was to find how the drums and cellos can communicate between them.
Eicca: yeah, we made the thing together. I was just wondering, how it is possible that for 2 albums we recorded cellos first and then we recorded the drums? Because with this album experience, it sounds impossible, I don't know how we did it but this time was really like the drums they bring the solid base ground, then we build up the rest, even the songs are not based only on the drums, but when we start to work on the song, yeah, the mainly based drums there... the drums together build up the frame, and then the riffs they have to fit into every hit of the base drum, and it needs to be together in every, every hit.
That was really challenging to do, because the drums are not edited, and every bar can be different slightly, and you have to play slightly different every part, and the riffs, and it's really detailed work but very, very interesting, I think you can here it in the result, it's really really all together. But also Mikko is a great guy because he comes from different background than we come, and he is like a session drummer, normally, he is playing gigs, if we don't have something with Apocalyptica, he is playing all over Finland with other bands, doing whatever, he was playing Rolling Stones last weekend, as a cover band at a Finnish festival, he is doing lots of this stuff, he's musical view comes more from that direction, old rock music, and he is kicking our asses to get into pedals and amps and everything, he is like "hmm, you guys, you play electric instruments, you have to play electricity", he is a powerful folk in our band, it's a really cool situation. He brings things than just 3 of us we couldn't find, also other way around because our view of drumming is strange sometimes for him, and he gets new ideas from there, and there is also a song from Mikko on the album, and it's also a great song, and it's big influence.
Transcription by Nataliya
© www.apocello.ru, 2007