Interviews

MR: Hey thanks for doing this today Tony, as a hardcore Sonata fan this is pretty cool.

Tony: Ah no problem. I’m happy

MR: Ok here we go… Well you guys have a new album coming out in the not too distant future, Winterhearts Guild, tell me about it.

Tony: It’s another step forward for us, definitely up from Ecliptica which was very much influenced by Stratovarius, they are a big influence on us, or well used to be at least when we first started. Silence was the first step to our own style and now with Winterhearts Guild I can honestly say that we are standing on our own feet and doing our own thing. It is also perhaps our darkest and most rough album to date and we are very happy with it.

MR: What is the meaning behind the title to the single Victoria’s Secret?

Tony: (laughs) Well, the name is just really raunchy, we get a lot of questions about it but it’s only a name. The song itself is about people being intimate, everyone wants to but some people are maybe better off being more controlled. The lady in the song that I’m telling the story to, she breaks through and gets lost and has no direction in her life, that’s basically the main idea.

MR: I’m pretty sure you’ve heard about Timo Tolkki and his comments on internet downloading recently, I was wondering what’s your view on the subject?

Tony: I think it’s a kind of two-sided sword. You can gain new fans with it who would download our music who’s never heard if us and like it enough to buy the albums. That’s the good part of it, gaining fans, and we have done that but the quality of the songs you can download is way too good and they aren’t serving as samples and they are whole songs you can just download for free. That is for many people tempting, instead of buying the albums to just download every song the band has released which hurts the bands security to release more albums in the future. The sound quality of the songs should not be that good but at the moment there isn’t really anything you can do about that.

MR: Just to alleviate your fears, I got into Sonata from mp3’s. They were Mary Lou and Unopened and pretty much cried like a girl then ordered Ecliptica. (this was Dec 99) T: Exactly. That’s the good thing but then again there is still piracy. B: Back to your new album, how many songs from Winterhearts Guild will be in the live setlist?

Tony: My best guess would be about seven songs because we have three albums now and we would be playing the whole night. We’ll probably do about ninety minutes and have several songs from each album. I know there are some songs we are not going to play like Gravenimage, the rest we pretty much can do.

MR: What made you guys decide to leave out Unopened on Songs of Silence? I’m just curious because that seems to be one of the fans favorite songs.

Tony: Well it’s because we are really fed up with that song (laughs). We didn’t really play it at all on the Silence tout except for a few locations. Now we are actually thinking about reviving that song and putting it on the set list again. It’s been such a long time since we played it, we might rearrange it a little bit. But really, we just got sick of it.

MR: Have you guys got your tour plans in order yet? Any plans to come to US soil… ever?

Tony: Actually, I shouldn’t even be saying this, but at the moment we are talking about coming to a special place in the US in May. It’s nothing completely sure I only heard about it yesterday. There is a chance we will come and we really want to. We’d be a warm up band we can’t headline were not big enough unless we played some gas stations (laughs) but you that that wouldn’t be worth it. But there is a plan. Generally touring will start the month after the album is released, March 17 in Europe and in the beginning of April we’ll go to Japan and then Finland for a few shows then head over to France. But that is also not finalized for 100% sure, just the plan. In Europe its too late to start touring in late spring really because of the festivals and we’re afraid people won’t come to the shows because they’d see the same band at the festivals.

MR: What influences you when you write songs and what influenced you for Winterhearts Guild?

Tony: The biggest place I get inspired from is I watch a lot of movies, that is one thing for me and also what is happening in the world like the World Trade Center. In Finland we had one bombing, it wasn’t a terrorist act just one sick puppy who exploded a bomb in a shopping mall and many people died there. I always thought Finland was one place where people could be safe and no one would do anything really stupid there but now that illusion has been broken. This led to one song, Abandoned, Pleased, Brainwashed, Exploited, that people are children acting lost, there’s no direction or anything like that in their lives and they’re brainwashed into doing things they normally wouldn’t. Human relationships are usually an easy topic for me I don’t know why I’m definitely not writing about my life otherwise I’d be a pretty unfortunate person (laughs). I have a good imagination and watch a lot of movies too.

MR: Your relationship songs seem striking and forceful in terms of emotion and imagery, are there songs like this on Winterhearts Guild?

Tony: There are a few like that, I think the most powerful ones are on the Silence album. This one I haven’t really thought of it as that way. There are some relationships songs, they’re like love stories, that’s an easy topic when you’re writing a love ballad those two things go together.

MR: Alright, here’s a question for all our readers out there who are aspiring vocalists. How long have you been singing and what caused you to pick up the mic and start singing for a living?

Tony: : For a living? It was 1999 where it became something more than a hobby. The band started in 96 and that’s when I began singing. That was what six, seven years ago I was twenty two I think. I’ve been fortunate that a hobby has become my profession but in a way its sad because I don’t have a hobby anymore I have to find something else to do in my free time. It’s kinda taken the fun out of singing a little bit, you have to think so hard about what you are doing and take care of your voice which was not necessary when I was a hobby singer. I could scream my lungs out and not be able to talk for a few days but now I can’t really do that. Some kind of professional attitude has together maybe. I still haven’t taken any singing lessons which is stupid, I should, but I haven’t found time and also our small hometown I don’t know anybody good to teach me.

MR: Really? You’ve never had lessons?

Tony: No. Never, ever.

MR: Wow. That makes me feel GREAT considering I’m taking singing lessons and still suck.

Tony: (laughs)

MR: Ha Ha, ok. With Mikko leaving the band how did you get your keys done for Winterhearts Guild?

Tony: Well when Mikko left the band he would have liked to play on the album but not tour, so I said “No you can’t” You have to tour when you play on an album because you’re getting royalties and all that shit and if you’re not touring it is really wrong. So Mikko I asked him not to play on the album and instead I asked Jens Johannson to play a few solos and I played the rest of the keys myself, it’s better that way. We didn’t find Henrich our new keyboardist soon enough to be able to play on the album but he will play on the next one I hope we can get started on that soon.

MR: What’s it like having new blood in the band with Henrich? Does it kick start your creative juices?

Tony: Henrich has been so welcome in the band. It’s something like a glue that binds us together again and makes us feel like brothers and a real band which was a feeling that was lost for a long time. Mikko never really grew into the band. None of us was really a good friend of his, we saw him when we were touring and that was it. He was so different from the rest of us and Henrich, he’s, well an excellent guy with a great sense of humor and he also drinks some beer!!!(laughs) So that helps on that side of touring as well. We are just so happy to have him and also he hasn’t toured all that much with his other bands. There’s a lot of experiences we can give him with this band. I feel like a father having a son and taking him to a new place and having him getting excited and I’m excited about it very much as well to see how much he’ll enjoy touring and great experiences in front of audiences.

MR: How are you guys enjoying your success? You came out of nowhere in 1999 with Ecliptica and kicked complete ass, how are you enjoying your recognition?

Tony: Well it feels really weird. I don’t consider us being that big of a band at all. We live in so small a town that nobody gives a shit. (laughs) Here we get so alone and no one pays attention. If we lived in Helsinki where people know us and things are happening there we might get more attention and it might have more effect on us. Living in such a small town our fans keep our feet on the ground and we really don’t feel like stars. It is really special to go and play in Japan where our fans there love us and we are really big there but then again it’s really healthy to go back to Finland to Kemi little town of 20-30 000 people where you’re the regular Tony you have always been.

MR: What are your thoughts on the metal scene in the US as opposed to Europe?

Tony: The US… Well, I’m not that familiar with it because mainly I hear that it is a lot of this nu-metal thing, mixing with rapping but you do have Symphony X and Dream Theater, both good bands coming from there but I consider them more progressive. I haven’t heard any bands that are similar to us coming from the US I don’t really follow the scene too much there. Sorry.

MR: No man that’s cool, but you guys do have a lot of fans here in the US trust me.

Tony: Yea in our guest book and a lot of emails on our website there’s a lot of requests to come play the US but again we need to sell enough albums there to be able to headline. Like I said earlier though there us a door opening for us at the moment and lets pray it does.

MR: Is Winterhearts Guild going be released in the US?

Tony: Yea I heard it is will be through Century Media, May 6th I think.

MR: Any bonus tracks for the US version?

Tony: No just the normal ten tracks. For Japan we have one bonus track but they always get one, it has to be there.

MR: Is it as ass kicking as Respect the Wilderness was?

Tony: Yea I think it is. It’s just as good as any other song on the album. We don’t release any shit songs for bonuses.

MR: Here’s a question about an old song. What did you write Mary-Lou about and will it ever be played live again?

Tony: We’ll play it live again I’m sure. We’ve been playing an acoustic version of it lately instead of the original version which we haven’t played a lot. When I wrote it in 96-97 it basically tells the story of a young lady, a little girl, who gets in a lot of trouble with boys and getting pregnant and lost. That is one of my favorite Sonata songs ever and actually I am positive we’ll play it live again. It’s really hard to play it onstage though because people want to hear the fast music and when we play slow stuff, ballads, they start walking away you know? (laughs)

MR: I’m glad you’ll play it live because I thought because it was a b-side to Unopened you might think your fans aren’t that familiar with it.

Tony: Originally the song was meant to be an acoustic slow version but we raped it for Ecliptica because we needed more fast songs so we changed it up a little bit.

MR: Is there any chance the old Tricky Means / Beans demos will ever be released to the public? I know Peacemaker was one of those and redone right?

Tony: Yea, actually there’s many songs from those demos that we’ve redone like Tallulah. On Ecliptica there’s a few songs from our demos, Letter to Dana was from our first demo, Sing in Silence, that was heavily reworked for the Silence album. I don’t really think we will ever release those demos again (laughs) if you find one consider yourself a lucky person. It’s weird more people haven’t found them.

MR: What was the style found on them I heard that they were more poppy than the songs you make today. I’m assuming you have evolved a lot as a band since then

Tony: (laughs) Yea, we’ve evolved… a lot! I was not so good a singer back then and our standards for songs have gotten so much higher as well.

MR: What caused you to go back in the studio and re-record San Sebastian for Silence?

Tony: We weren’t satisfied with the version found on Successor that was done without a click track which we use now. The drumming maybe harder to do with the click-click-click but when you lay the other tracks it’s easier when the drummer has laid down a steady beat and not going faster or slower which was a little problem we had on Successor. I think we may have lost a little of the magic the original had but it was an idea we got from our label Spinefarm that we should do it again for the album.

MR: Just a couple more questions here, what does Sonata have planned for the future?

Tony: At the moment this is the last album we have a contract for so we’re doing a lot of negotiating very strongly. All the doors are open now. For touring I hope we get through soon so I can begin writing for the next album and get Henrich on there. He has some financial problems and he’s not getting any royalties off the albums so its like he’s not really “at work” right now.

MR: I just remembered something. I heard that you are planning on releasing a concept album based on the storyline of The End of This Chapter. Is that still gonna happen?

Tony: Right now that is on hold we don’t have any time to go in the studio, I don’t know what I was thinking. I have several songs for it done already, I have no idea though if we will have enough time to realize this concept album soon though, or EP. Actually yea it’ll be an album because I have so many songs ready but they are mostly ballads. Maybe on upcoming records we’ll just use some here and there because we can’t have too many slow songs on one album.

MR: What about releasing it as a solo album?

Tony: Yea, I’m thinking of that also.

MR: Hell, I’d buy it.

Tony: (laughs) Thank you. Then it’s worth making!

MR: Before we close, what have you got to say to our ever-faithful Metal Reviews readers?

Tony: I really hope you give Winterhearts Guild a chance and join the Guild. I hope to tour the US and everywhere like Canada and Australia with this album but the US is somewhere you have to play eventually, it would feel really good to come play there, we get so many mails and positive feelings about the US. The dream is alive. Keep it alive.

MR: Thank Tony for the interview I hope you enjoyed it

Tony: No problem.

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