An Interview with Niilo Sevänen of Insomnium

Insomnium have been slowly been building both an impressive back catalogue and a committed fanbase. They arrive in Manchester on the back of a mighty fine new album and sold out shows. Our Johann spoke to Niilo Sevänen about tours, happy Fins and why they don’t play Winters Gate.

”Usually European extreme Metal bands are content playing one UK show in London, however you are criss-crossing the country. How are you finding an elongated stay here in the U.K. and was it a conscious choice to play a full tour?”

Well, there was a couple of previous tours we had done in Europe then we came to the UK but crossing the Channel is always a pain in the arse and last year there was Brexit looming when we were booking this tour. The initial Brexit date was somewhere around Autumn so we were not sure what would happen. “Can we come here?” So we left the UK out of the European tour and then we thought “Let’s plan 10 dates in Ireland and U.K.”. We have been here before, so let’s give it a good go and see what happens when we play these smaller cities, not just London and so far, it is looking really good. In Norwich, we have been there once before and it was really good. It was packed, there was about 300 people so it was a really god show, the same with Birmingham, I think the sales tonight are even better, and Dublin and Glasgow are sold out already, so it really paid off to play other cities than London.

”You’ve brought along Conjurer with you who are a young English act doing really interesting things with Black Metal. How did this come about?”
 
It was our choice, especially our guitarist. Ville Friman lives in York in England and he knows a lot of these young bands, but us in Finland, we don’t always hear about all of them. So, we basically just asked Conjurer to join us. They are a young band with a young growing fanbase and thought it would be a nice fit with Insomnium. So far it looks like it was a good choice as it is bringing in people who can enjoy both bands.

”You’ve always used your music to explore history, philosophy and cultural identity. Does it annoy you when Metal is stereotyped as being dumb and shallow?”

The whole stereotyping is so stupid so it doesn’t really annoy me. In some circles, I am sure they are still people who think like that but in Finland, we have moved so much forward that you don’t have to explain that Metal music is not violent or crazy, that we are not drug addicts or satanists or whatever it was like 20 years ago. About 10 years ago, Metal became mainstream in Finland for a while, it was the time when Lordi won the Eurovision contest and everybody was suddenly into Heavy Metal. We were a bit irritated because everybody was into Metal as a fashionable thing and it only lasted a short while and now we are back into this almost underground mode. But overall, I think Metal is very much respected music form. For us, as Finnish, it is embraced as a national thing. It is one of our greatest export and when our president went to visit Barack Obama in the U.S.A. and Barack gave his speech mentioning our Heavy Metal bands, it is something that people in our country can be proud of.

”As of March 2019, Finland was ranked the happiest country in the world twice in a row and yet your biggest newspaper in Finland had this competition where people could vote for the saddest Finnish song ever which I believe got your interest. How do you explain this contrast?”

That’s a really interesting question, the Finnish do love melancholic sad music and yet we are considered the happiest people. I don’t know how to explain it. Why do we tend to like that kind of music? It is a sort of outlet where you can go through negative feelings, where you don’t have to do anything stupid like taking your own life or feeling too depressed. Music has a healing power, I firmly believe this. But it really comes from the mother’s milk that Finnish people are really into the melancholic music and that is what we wanted to explore with the new album by using some of those old stories, those sad sad songs and tales that we have.

“Winters’s Gate” was a hugely ambitious undertaking*, was there a conscious decision to return to more tradition song structures with “Heart Like a Grave”?

We all agreed that we would do a more normal album this time by just starting making songs and this is what came out this time. Of course, we may try something like “Winter’s Gate” in the future with one long track but who knows. Some may say that it was risky business attempting to do something like “Winter’s Gate” but it paid off really well. People
loved it, it brought us new fans but it fell natural for us to come back to this album format.
 
”Looking at Setlist.fm (spoilers) you don’t seem to be doing any material from “Winters Gate” on this tour. Is this a choice to only perform it in full? Or are you just bored with it after its album cycle?”

Yes, we want to play the whole thing as one piece of music. It was only split in sections because of Spotify. It is one song, so we will play the whole thing or not at all. Maybe for a 10 Year anniversary or something like that, we might play the “Winter’s Gate” but probably not before that.

”It is also (Heart Like a Grave) your first record with Jani (Liimatainen), what additional did his impressive pedigree and experience bring to both the writing and recording process.”
 
Well, there is one more guy in the band to make music. He is a very talented guy in songwriting. He played a big part on this album by writing three songs and also was involved in all the arrangements on other songs. It is now an ideal situation where we have 4 guys composing music where we can pick the best ideas and get the best songs on the album. And of course, in the live situation, it also gives us flexibility. With 3 guitarists, as long as 2 of them are available then we can play, like the previous weekend in Finland we played without Markus Vanhala on stage and it worked pretty well, so we can tour as much as we want.


”Eight records do you still get excited when you release a record into the world?”

Yes! That is the thing that keeps us going. Making new music is the number one thing for us all and is what drive us every day.
 
”How do you manage band activity around Ville Friman’s day job?”

We work a lot with emails and sending demos of ideas to each others. That is how we have been working for many years now because Ville has been living 10 years in England. Everybody does demos on their own and then we share them between us, then everybody comments. That is how we work so that when we first time meet together in Finland at rehearsals, everybody already knows how to play the songs, we don’t have to spend time learning the parts, so we can just concentrate on arranging the songs. In a way, it is quite efficient to work like that. We have already carved out the bad ideas so we don’t have to go through that process again. With this album, we had two rehearsal weekends in Finland in a cabin in the woods with sauna, just by ourselves.

”The sauna helped a lot?”

It helped a lot, a morning and an evening sauna.

”And then jump in a frozen lake?”

I can safely say that none of us like to jump in a frozen lake. My father loves it but I have always said “No!”.

”Finally, what are your future plans for 2020?”

A tour of the U.S.A. will take a big part of the spring with a 5 weeks tour, then we have 5 or 6 Scandinavian shows and then there will be the summer festival shows. I think we have something like 15 festivals already booked and that is how far I can tell now. We do know that the autumn will also be busy but it is under wrap. We can tour as much as we want, the question is how much do we want to tour.

”That is a good situation to be in?”

It is indeed

”Well, thank you for your time!”