SONATA ARCTICA’s latest album Clear Cold Beyond has been out for over a month and understandably it’s receiving praise from fans and critics alike. Before the release date, Rock Out Stand Out’s Lotty Whittingham spoke to bassist Pasi Kauppinen about the album, in particular going back to their roots plus many other things.
The main drawing point for this album is that you have gone back to your classic roots; for those who haven’t read news about this, can you explain more about the decision to go back to your roots?
People have we have gone back to our roots and in the album you can hear the old Sonata Arctica roots that has been there all the time. There’s been faster songs, slow songs, mellow songs, progressive songs and big orchestral songs, there have always been those elements on the albums we have released. After we released Talviyö, we realised it was softer. We then went on tour but then the pandemic stopped the tour so we only had two legs to perform it live.
After that, we spoke about those acoustic albums so it was time to hit the studio for those. When the pandemic was over, we went on to perform those acoustic shows. There was the softer album Talviyö that we toured with and those acoustic albums. After that when Tony [Kakko] started writing for Clear Cold Beyond, it became faster and heavier. So it was combination of those things that made us go back to our roots.
As I have said, there have always been the elements on all the albums. On albums such The Ninth Hour and Pariah’s Child, the sound is more organic and Talviyö is the same only softer. Now we went back to Mikko Karmila who mixed all our previous albums since the beginning. We were having conversations with Mikko before we started to mix this album and because the music is faster, more power metal, we wanted him to be involved with the album. We also said we wanted his sound but not a twenty year old sound [laughs]
I was going to say there were some modern influences in there too.
We didn’t want an old sounding album. We wanted his input but we also wanted some modern sounds in there.
Did the decision to go back to your old roots influence the album cover?
With our cover art, Tony knew an artist and wanted to contact him to give him an idea. We wanted to have nature on the cover art and the colour scales from the Silence album. I only saw the final result and it looked really cool.
I made a note of some of the track names, the first one being California. It’s mesh of retro and modern; I am curious what the influences were behind that track.
Tony has said there are more positive lyrics on all the songs. How he explained it was this; last year between recording sessions, we were on our Latin America tour and during breaks he was writing lyrics. He was mainly doing this whilst sitting on a sunny balcony, drinking coffee and enjoying the Latin American environment.
Dark Empath also got my attention. It says in the press notes that it’s the sequel to Don’t Say A Word where I can hear the similarities.
That’s a whole saga that has been with us since Silence. I think there is Talviyö has one part of the saga and there is on Ninth Hour. When he started to write it on this album, I think it was one of the first song ideas he was working on.
There was also Shah Mat. My first thoughts were that’s quite different to what Sonata have done before.
It’s a big song. There’s elements from the more progressive elements we do.
With Clear Cold Beyond, was 8th March the intended release date? I only ask as lots of bands postponed their album releases during the COVID pandemic.
We were releasing Talviyö just before the pandemic. We then had one tour in Canada, USA, Europe and then a couple of shows in Finland; then everything stopped. As we had just released an album at the time, we didn’t go to the studio to write a new album because we went to release the acoustic albums. We wanted to get that done as we had been working on that for years. When the world opened, we toured with the acoustic albums and then we recorded this album. There was a reason it happened that way.
You also did you live stream acoustic shows during the pandemic.
We did two shows yes. When people started to talk about the streamed shows, I actually watched a couple of heavy metal stream shows; I felt they were not giving what they should to the audience. There is not that common engagement between the audience and us performing. I’m not sure; they didn’t give what we wanted to give our audience. When we were in the studio to record the acoustic albums and we had done acoustic tours before.
Our management started to talk about us doing the streaming shows that everyone else was doing at the time and that we should do it as well. Luckily we were already in recording mode with the acoustic albums and we were recording here in my hometown; I knew of a place that was one kilometre from my house, it was by the sea where we did that live stream show. Of course it was during summer time when the sun doesn’t go down at all here. So we did two shows; one in the day and one at night time here. Some of the comments were quite hilarious; when we were performing at two o’ clock in the morning our time and the sun was above sea level, people thought it was a recording from earlier because the sun wasn’t going down.
It was a great way to do the show, it wasn’t like a gig; we were just sitting there playing our songs.
From a bassist perspective, what was the most challenging track to write a bass riff for or record a bass riff for?
The recording period was quite intense and like I said before, we did drums with Tommy [Portimo] at first and then we did our tour of Latin America. When we came back, I started to record the bass lines for the album. I started to track my bass tracks and we had already booked the mixing sessions with Mikko. I was the hub between the rest of the band and Mikko, I needed to do everything to prepare the sessions for mixing and then I was recording my bass tracks.
On some songs, there are really specific bass tracks that I always prepare by rehearsing just like he has and then I played the song, which I started to figure out how to perform to Tony’s bass track like how I would do it. I get in my head then I start to play the song. There wasn’t really any hard parts [laughs] There are the fast songs, for example the opening track First In Line it was really fast. It was sixteenth note bass playing from start to the end.
One of the main messages at Rock Out Stand Out is to keep the conversation about mental health going. What’s awareness like in Finland?
I’m not sure to be honest, I haven’t talked about mental health personally.
What do you like to do relax and unwind?
I’m the type of person where my brain is always thinking of something that I am working on; whether it’s recording a new song or thinking about how I am going to play a certain song. Sometimes it can be stressful that I can’t switch my brain off from the working mode. I usually watch some movies or TV series to help switch my brain off. Going out into nature also helps me too, I live about thirty metres away from the woods. There’s a hiking track next to my house.
I know what you mean about not being able to switch your brain off. It’s like having different internet tabs all open at the same time.
Yes I agree, my family always say to me that I need to stop thinking about work things. They can often see when my brain is thinking something [laughs]
As someone who has been in the music industry for a while, is there any significant changes you have noticed?
I’ve been with Sonata Arctica for eleven years now and I haven’t noticed any big changes during these eleven. The other guys might have a different answer to that as they have been in the band for longer than I have.
A couple of fan questions; one is have you got plans for a UK tour or UK festival appearance?
We have some tour dates planned for the fall. I think the last proper UK tour we had alongside a European tour was 2017. Actually we would definitely do a UK tour if cities or venues would book us but it’s not up to us. We will come to where venues book us.
Another one wanted to know if you had a favourite place to record in Finland?
Favourite place to write music is in my own home. Home is the best place. [laughs]
Do you have a message for Sonata Arctica fans and our readers?
Hope you enjoy the album and check the videos out. Go to your local promoters and tell them Sonata Arctica would like to perform in your city. When we are on tour, we can’t wait to meet you.
Thank you so much Pasi for speaking with Rock Out Stand Out and best of luck with the album.
