A P O C A L Y P T I C A

TALES OF ALBUMS AND PEN SNIFFING.

16th April 2009, one hour after the concert in Warsaw, the following interview took place:

Paavo: I'm not responsible for anything I will say.

Terrë: How many beers have you had, Paavo?

Paavo: This is the third one.

Terrë: Third one? You're ok?

Eicca: Paavo gets drunk easily. He gets dizzy after a non alcoholic drink.

(All Laugh)

Mikko: That means he can drink a lot.

Paavo: Yes, surprisingly. Years and years.

(All Laugh)

Terrë: Every time, you come out after a gig and you’re all smiley, I'll remember in future that you've only had two beers.

Eicca: The show has it's effect, today... pretty hot gig.

Terrë: You should have tried it down where we were.

Tone: It was just as rough down there as it was up above on your side of things.

Terrë: Yes I was saying to Paavo, we were just squashed. I spent the whole gig like this (imitates a squirrel).

Eicca: Sweaty hot girls! With their sweaty armpits.

Terrë: I'm sure you would have loved it.

Tone: I've never known so many girls rubbing up against my backside in my life.

Terrë: Actually it was fairly cool, we weren't hot, but it was just.. squashed.

Eicca: On stage it was hot - hot as hell.

Tone: They [the fans] ran in and I was rugby tackled by this girl, right into my back.

Eicca: Really? I heard running. They get crazy. Once we had so much fun when playing with Metallica here in Warsaw. We were watching when they open the doors and it was an outside venue for 50,000 people, like a big bowl. And they opened the doors and we were laughing our asses off because people were like... you know the cows when they're released the first time after winter into the spring fields. The cows they get mad, they're kicking the air. The kids there - it was insane - like they were running into the first row and jumping. It was so much fun. But that's the thing. You should have such emotions there. You've got to have the high moments in you're life. That makes you have the feeling for living.

Tone: Well there's nothing better than going to see you guys perform, as far as I'm concerned, every single time.

Eicca: Did you like the show tonight?

Tone: It was Brilliant.

Terrë: Antero didn't crack a single smile. What's wrong with the miserable bastard?

Eicca: He's a professional about that.

Terrë: He usually smiles at least once.

Eicca: You know sometimes he's such a bastard.

Terrë: When you said about are you enjoying yourself Antero and he just went... (pulls a serious face).

(All laugh)

Eicca: Well sometimes it's his problem. He has hard times.

Terrë: Will you miss him?

Eicca: Yeah.

Paavo: I don't!

(More laughing)

Tone: I got you on record saying that, Paavo.

Paavo: Yeahh! I don't miss him.

Eicca: I make a bet. If Apo goes on for 5 more years, Antero will be in the line up someday.

Tone: You know what? I agree with you on that.

Terrë: I reckon he'll come back. I don't think he can stay away. He enjoys it really- secretly.

Eicca: He might be away one or two years off, and then he'll get one phone call and he runs.

Terrë: What happens if one of you is taken ill, will he fill in, in emergencies?

Eicca: The great thing so far has been that who ever is off the show we can kind of replace with three cellos, but when we are only three, then we'll get into trouble and we'll need to cancel. Of course in some emergency situation if Antero would be available we would call him and ask him if he could get here.

Terrë: And he'll take great pleasure in saying... "And what are you going to give me for it?"

Eicca: Have a think about it. He left the band in not too good a mood. Everybody agreed that's good that he left at the time. He was off for two years when Max broke his hand, and next show I called Antero, and he was changing winter tyres on his car to summer tyres, in his Cargos or something, somewhere...

Tone: Folks, get that image into your head just for one second...

Eicca: And he was like... Mmmmmm... Mmmmmmm... me: ‘Is it possible that you can fly tomorrow?’ And Antero was like.. 'I'll have to think about it'. And I called him one or two hours later and he said ‘My passport is in a different city, I need to drive there. I need to drive home, but ok I'll come’. He was there on show day.

Terrë: He learned the entire set. Very fast.

Eicca: Yeah! It was crazy. In that time there wasn't a great mood in the band. It was a great open show, and all of a sudden there was a great mood, excitement and everything which was gone. It's so much fun to play with him. Think about it, since then, he's been with us all the time- it's amazing, I think.

Terrë: It's going to be really strange seeing you with three after being so used to seeing four.

Eicca: It's different but it can be really good as well. It gives us a different space.

Terrë: Will you experimenting with your sound next time around?

Eicca: The thing that we need to do, is to go through everybody's sound changes, how everybody’s sound will change a lot. Of course, that will limit the roles of who's playing what, so everybody gets the perfect sound, the big sound really - what everybody's playing, and not too much switching around. I don't see that as a big problem. There are some songs we need to rearrange, like "Nothing Else Matters". At the moment it works only for four cellos so we need to go through song by song, maybe change the set list, which would be refreshing. Obviously I'm sure that the singer element is going to stay - for the summer festivals, for example, because it's something we really like. We really like having a singer on stage and we can play those songs that wouldn't work at all....

Paavo: The singer comes and then... goes. It divides the set list in a way. And it makes a difference.

Eicca: There are so many songs we would miss without a singer. So there are a lot of opportunities. Of course there will be downsides. With four cellos there's more time to move and do things you don't need to play all the time, but with three it's going to be more like everybody needs to play all the time, but we don't see that as a problem.

Terrë: You wouldn't think about getting another cellist?

Eicca: No. Absolutely not at this stage.

Terrë: It would spoil the band dynamic?

Eicca: Yeah. We don't want to educate somebody.

Paavo: Only if it's a really... really.. good looking and cute girl...

(All laugh).

Eicca: Yeah sure!

Paavo: Really, really good cello player.

Eicca: No. But to be honest, no plans - absolutely no plans - so don't send any tapes, please.

Terrë: Have you been having people sending you any tapes?

Paavo: You can send the photographs anyhow.

Terrë: Especially if you're female.

Paavo: haha

Eicca: We have some people that want to join the band, we know that, but you know. We've been going for so long now, it'll be hard to get someone in. The most important thing is to get the band unit solid. We have enough work doing that all the time, so we don't want to have somebody who doesn't know anything about the laws of the band - touring, personal life, record companies, agencies. All the time, every f**king day, we need to think about how we find a common aim and feel for all the things that people are pushing to us all the time. Getting somebody into that s**t is really out of the question.
Antero has been cool, because he's been so happy to be out of all that s**t, and he knows his place and his role, and he's doing that great ,so he's been a perfect match; but that's because he's been in the band since '95. So he knows. We don't want to put any energy on rookies. We have enough challenges on getting singers and trying out different things with different people; but everybody who we've tried and who've we worked with needs to be very experienced on the scene.
Tipe was a great choice, we know him from the past, doing stuff with the Leningrad Cowboys. He's experienced on stage - he's been performing his whole life. It's a different thing to get that kind of performer, or take a classical cellist, and we try to teach him what to do. Because it's a completely different thing that we do.
(part 2 in next post)

(part 2)

Paavo: Tipe was working with us when we were doing the Cult album. We did a lot of sessions for the songs with the lyrics...

E:...not singing, but with the words. Because he's originally American by his roots, he was checking the grammar.

Paavo: He was never used on the album.

Eicca: It was actually for ‘Hope’ you know. But it became too serious and became too... it didn't feel right, so we left it out.

Terrë: Was Hope written for Videoc?

Eicca: Have you seen the movie?

Terrë: I've seen a bit of it. It's surreal as hell!

Eicca: It wasn't really for that - it was more like we did an instrumental version and then we did a vocal version, and we got an opportunity, as I have a French Publisher, and he found an opportunity to place the song in the movie.

Paavo: It's not in the movie. It’s when the titles run at the end.

Tone: And "I Don't Care" was used at the end of an episode of Smallville in the States.

Eicca: I heard.

Tone: And the Number One.

Terrë: It's a good start, millions of people watch Smallville.

Eicca: It's a very good start, but of course, it brings a lot of pressure for the next album. Because this album in America has been building up, we can't release an instrumental album that would f**k us up completely. So we've made some decisions that we go with these people and this direction. It's also not just for one album. The decision you make affects the future a lot because it's always long term work.

Paavo: I hope the dollar will get stronger soon.

Tone: Ever thought of doing a Cello Hero, like Guitar Hero but with cellos?

Eicca: That would be brilliant!

(Paavo leaves to do his own thing)
Terrë: There was a lot of crowd surfing tonight.

Eicca: It was a pretty wild audience.

Tone: I was surprised they were coming back and doing it again!

Eicca: We made a change. They started to put a cross on the hands and when people come up the second time they get thrown out. It's annoying the crowd surfing. I know it's fun to do, but it's unfair for the others in the front row. We don't want to see people injured in our shows.
The worst was in Lithuania years and years ago, there was a local biker club as security if there was a person they'd hit him first then bring him out. Actually we were there with Motorhead. We beat the s**t out of them because we had 4-5,000 people in the sports hall, and after five songs Motorhead had maybe two and a half.

(All Laugh)

Terrë: Any ideas for the next album? Will it be a double album?

Eicca: There’s been an idea in the air of doing a double album. One would be more classical - not classical covers, but like I did for Black Ice.
The idea that there would be a completely different side like a double CD. The second CD wouldn't have to be very long, but that would be a more classical flavour, and some other stuff, as everybody is writing stuff all the time.

Terrë: Well, you are after all classical musicians aren’t you? That's where your roots are.

Eicca: When you have one type of album, most of the songs are very heavy. You can't just do a total left turn suddenly and seven minutes of something which would lose the listener completely, so it would be better to have two sides of Apocalyptica.

(At this point Eicca picked up a pen)

Terrë: I hope that's not my Sharpie that you've nicked.

(All Laugh)

Eicca: I'm very good at that! HAHAHAH!

Terrë: I know.

(What then follows is a conversation comparing smells of pens to the point where we agree the title of the interview should be Tales of Albums and Pen Sniffing.)

Eicca: When I was a kid most junkies just sniffed paint remover. Sniffing their brains out.

Terrë: The other legal thing was poppers. Amyl Nitrate. Have you tried that?

Eicca: I never tried that, but I remember when I was studying classical music some of the classical composers were trying it, I remember that. But we never did anything like that. We like beer too much.

Terrë: Don't you ever get fed up of doing the same routine? You go to the new town, soundcheck, hang around, do a bit of shopping, go on stage, have a few beers after. Don't you ever wish you could run down the road naked with a dandelion up your ass - just something different.

Eicca: I like to do different things, but routine is good. It's like kids with a sandbox where they play, the routine is our sandbox. Of course we do crazy things, but nobody knows about those things.

Terrë: Come on, come on - tell us some crazy things.

Eicca: People walking totally naked in Hamburg for one mile hiding from the police.

Terrë: Who did that?

Eicca: A lot of us. Hahah. I wasn't there, (yeah right, Eicca) but sometimes running naked around the bus somewhere. Waking up naked in the hotel corridor. Couldn't sleep, but going to the toilet taking a wrong turn then taking a little nap. HaHa!

Terrë: Has anything funny happened this tour?

Eicca: There are some funny things, but I don't want to tell!

Terrë: Aw, Come on!

Eicca: No. hahah!

Terrë: Everybody likes to hear the funny stories.

Eicca: I don't like to tell them though. HAHAHAHAHA! People already know too much about us. We can't tell everything.

Tone: But people want to know more.

Eicca: They're never satisfied. The more you give the more they want!

Tone: You make a lot of young girls very happy.

Eicca: Yeah. HAHA.

Terrë: Once a year on the forum we have squeenie day, where everybody has to type in caps and type OMG

Eicca: Ah! Squeenies. They are sweet!

Terrë: Some girl comes up to you and she wants to talk to you, but she's too afraid- how does that make you feel?

Eicca: A little bit embarrassed. It depends if it's young kids - that's sweet, but if it's an adult it's kind of embarrassing.

Terrë: You'd prefer them to come up and speak to you?

Eicca: Yes. It's so funny in Turkey, for example, people were ****ing freaked out and they're shaking like this (does impression of terrified girl) and we're saying 'come down with the CD and we'll sign it'.

Tone: What was it like in the States, with the signing?

Eicca: It was pretty ok and pretty cool. Sometimes some freaks, but you know, there are freaks everywhere. It depends on the mood you know? Sometimes it's kind of a question of power. Some moments when you're weak, you go on the stage and whatever you say or do is fun, and you stay there and enjoy it, but that doesn't happen too often. Sometimes, when you have a good time, it's a continuity. You just go out to the fans and its 'wahhh' (waves arms, smiling). It's fun and it's very harmless. It's ok, it feels normal, not like you are powerful. It's not like that you feel the need.

(part 3 in next post)

Tone: You're very grounded people, really.

Terrë: You haven't let it go to you heads yet. I don't think you ever will..

Eicca: I think we are very rooted. If your life is very realistic... of course the danger is always that the more you tour, the more you live in this unreal world; because touring is an unreal world - you need to take care of everything really. It's kind of easy in that sense. It's a hard life. You get your schedule, sound-check is at that time, you do the show, eat food, and there is always someone telling you what to do next. In the long run that makes you brainless, I think. I hate it because when I perform it's so practical but I think all the time, the kids are at school, doing their homework and everything, but [routine] is the best thing to do, because a lot of people are touring - young kids - twenty years old or something - they are on the stage and there’s all the people around them. The bigger you are and the more successful you are and there's more people on the record label and everywhere, who are really working their asses off; but you can be on the stage and you don't need to care about anything. You can use people how you like, so you need a routine.
For me, for example, two years touring - it's been hard work at home - to get back to the routine, to get a hold of everything. It's very basic stuff, no big after show party, not like the bands that have after show parties. They ask two managers to give all the pretty girls backstage passes and then they have a party and get wasted and the next day same thing, every day, same thing. So we don't have that at all. It's more like we do the show, and after that take a shower, sit down. That's cool to try and stay in the reality of life.

Terrë: I've known a lot of bands in my time and you're the only band I've ever known that haven't gone out and partied, and it's refreshing.

Eicca: Yeah, but it depends on how you want to run your life. It's all about that. If you want to base your life on reality it's like this. And if you to base your life on stardom it's different. But I'm sure our way is long lasting. And these people... I sometimes... we've been touring 12 years now, and I watch these guys, and I feel sorry for them. They are getting really high on the rider, and they go full blast, and they never did anything else but play rock and roll music, but when the ****ing band's over, these guys are over. Their lives are over. So we have time on our side!

Terrë: You're all in your thirties and grounded.

Eicca: But we could have done it differently. 12 years ago, I was 21 when we started.

Terrë: It started slowly didn't it?

Eicca: Yeah, it was pretty slow, so we've been always grounded. And from the start we'll try to take care that people don't start to fly. When the sneaker is not anymore on the ground (slaps hand).

Tone: Reality check time.

Eicca: Yeah! So we've always taken care of others that's very important. If we have a party and we're drinking, somebody gets too wasted, we take care that everyone gets home safely you know. That's why we're a boring band, one of the most boring bands...(All laughs)

And with that our time was up. Many thanks to Eicca, Paavo, Mikko and Perttu for taking the time to talk to us. Thanks to Antero and Tipe for letting us interrupt their meal, and thanks to Bjorn who's a star.
(and also thanks to Tone for typing this out)