Interview with Mathias "Warlord" Nygård of Turisas

Turisas was the Finnish God of War - back in the days. Today Turisas is a band playing battle metal, to put it in categories, simply to say. Sounds logical looking back to the roots of their name and so is their stage outfit with corpse paint in black and red and dresses with outlet but real furs, old fashioned and seems to be self sewn leather pants or coats and swords, of course. To keep themselves more special they have a violin - and an accordion player in their line up.
Turisas have been touring around the world for about one year now; uncountable gigs have been played the last thirteen month. In February 2009 they stopped by in Hamburg's Grünspan and we met Mathias "Warlord" Nygård for some smalltalk and a couple of questions.

finnbands: In another interview a band told us, that the hardest thing about being in a band is creating an album and bringing the album out.
Do you think this is true and what is for you the hardest thing of being in a band?
Mathias: Of course it's true in a way when you are on tour that it's getting mechanical. You don't have to think about what we are doing because we are doing the same thing just every night. Of course it is in a way the hardest thing to write a new record and put new songs and the music... In the same time it is what we love to do. So it's a challange where you want to put yourselves onto all the time. And I think in that way you don't think about what is the hardest part.
I think the downsides are more being on tour for a long long time and not being home anyway. This is one of the things as well. But this is one part of this livestyle.

finnbands: You have been touring almost all the year.
Mathias: Yeah.
finnbands: Onehundretsomething shows.
Mathias: I think we did like 130 shows last year.
finnbands: How do you stand it?
Mathias: It's alright *smiles*. This is what we want to do. So of course we could just play like four weeks in a year but it wouldn't go anywhere. We want to work with the band, we want to get on tour and play live. Some hundrets feels a bit tough but most of the time it is funny.
Alone this tour has been already long, it started last September. And it's still the same tour with Dragonforce. We did the British Isles and then we went to America. Then we went home for the change of the year and we started this tour again. But now we just have about a week to go and then we are done. So this is our life!

finnbands: And afterwards you will stop touring for a while?
Mathias: Well, we will have one more tour in Europe, which is mostly Eastern Europe, like Poland and the Balkan. There are some couple of days of chilling and we go to the South of Europe as well I think. It's about four weeks of touring with Cradle of Filth and Moonspell. That is gonna be the last tour for now. Then we will have some summer festivals but we decided that we won't play too many shows this summer. We will only play Wacken and a couple of other festivals in August I think.

finnbands: While you are on tour, do you have time to work on new material?
Mathias: There is time in a way. And we tried this in America when we had a long tour which was like eight weeks. We built a small studio in the bus and recorded stuff. But I think it's the whole thing of moving all the time, and having one hour here and one hour there. I cannot get anything really done in that time; when there is not time to focus completely on what you are doing. So that means that we'll keep the rest of the year after these tours off to write new songs.

finnbands: There is this phenomenon of 27-years-old guys in rock'n'roll business dieing and last week the guitarist of Ex-Sentenced, Miika Tenkula, died maybe due to alcohol abuse (they are still trying to find out the reasons).
Do you think it's still a must in music business doing drugs or absuing alcohol nowerdays, or is this more a story from the 80's?
Mathias: I only heard this story about this Sentenced guy yesterday and I don't really know what it was about. I haven't seen the news or anything so I really don't know anything about it.
But yeah of course, in this business there are a lot of people that are sort of carried away with drugs and alcohol and stuff. But on the other hand there are as well a lot of people who know how to deal with it. Of course I think there is more a danger like when you are working in let's say an office. You don't have beer and vodka and so on around you every time and every night. And on a tour like this you do. So it's easier to get into that.
But I don't know about the Sentenced case, so I cannot comment.

finnbands: And how do you keep yourselves busy before you go on stage?
Mathias: Well, before we go on stage we have our costumes and stuff to do. We are starting an hour before we are going on stage to warm up with the vocals and instruments. Then we are getting dressed and this kind of stuff, which has sort of became routine before we go on stage. It's strange to just walk on stage, fit your beer and play. In this hour you get focused on what you are going to do and that's it.

finnbands: Imagine your luggage would be stolen with your stage clothing and your make up, what would happen? Would you play the show?
Mathias: Oh, it depends! *laughs* Sometimes it get's lost in plans and stuff like that. We wouldn't go up there if it feels like compromizing the show we do. You know we wouldn't go up there and play as Turisas where people expect something and we'd go up there in jeans. It's not just playing the songs, so in that case we'd cancell. But before that we'd try to come up with some creative new clothing ideas for the stage.

finnbands: You released your DVD "A Finnish Summer With Turisas" last year. What is the special thing on this DVD?
Mathias: I think the focus on the DVD was different to what you get form a band when you normally buy a live DVD. It is focused on the live show and on the performances. And in this case you make it look as nice and sound as good as possible.
But in our case it was more like that we played a lot of shows in Finland last summer. So we made like a sort of documentary about this whole summer we spent on a lot of festivals. Sometimes the festivals were very nice but usually there is the daylight all the time. So there is no big light show; it's more about the whole atmosphere in the summer in our country. It's devided in... well, of course there is the live clips and the songs played live. And there is this one hour documentary where it follows the band and it also has the not understandable due to too much noise in the room, sorry

finnbands: And what is typical for a Finnish summer?
Mathias: Typical for a Finnish summer? Well, the most obvious thing is that it's really light all the time. The sun doesn't go down and we have a lot of daylight even in the middle of the night. That's the most clear thing.
I guess you know the festivals in Finland. They are pretty much in nature and they are surrounded somewhere in a nice location.
Nature, lightness, sauna and swimming. This is what feels the summer time to ME.

finnbands: You covered Boney M's "Rasputin" and I think it's a really famous song. Do you think you gained more success with covering this song?
Mathias: *thinks about it*
finnbands: Or do you think you got recognation throughout people that never heard of you before?
Mathias: Maybe. But I don't think it was about the idea about something that is easier accessable for people that wouldn't have gotten into our music otherwise. This idea came up when we started with this band to do headline shows and we had only one album. And of course we had to come up with things to make the set longer. So we picked up this cover and started playing it live at first. And the fans were really into this song. We didn't plan to record it but then people were asking about it a lot and we decided to do so. And we did a video as well.
Maybe it has had some sort of impact but I don't believe that. It's a side step for us as our own material is slightly different. But this works live really well and people still love when we play that song. But I don't think it sort of brought us a new audience.

finnbands: For me it seem that pagan / viking / battle metal, how ever you'd like to call it, is more popular and more successful right now as it was just a few years ago. Do you think the same and why do you think it is so popular at the moment?
Mathias: Yeah, definitely! When we started out the band there was no ... Of course there was the bands that combined folclore and some kind of folk elements into metal, like Amorphis in the 90's. This was a big influence for us personally. But there wasn't really a scene as such as it is now. It definitely didn't exist.
And all the bands - for some strange reason are many of them Finnish - started doing similar stuff at the same time. But we weren't originally that in touch. I remember like getting the first demo c-cassette from Moonsorrow and thought, 'oh, there is another band doing this kind of material as well'. And it's funny to see how big it's gone when it was so small a few years ago.
But why it becomes so popular? You know there is something there is a lot of interest in and it has answered to a lot of interesed what people like.
But what I still feel is that many bands share the same fans; but the bands have a really distinguished sound of their own. None of the bands sound exactely the same. Of course there are more and more bands popping up playing very similar stuff as their idols and then it's a bit boring. But I think the most successful bands all have a sort of seperate sound of their own. And the fans can appreciate all the different bands.
But why it is so big as it is now: I don't know. Hard work and on the other hand having something new to bring to the people.

finnbands: We are at Grünspan now but originally this concert was supposed to take place in Knust. Do you know why the location was changed?
Mathias: I don't know, this is properly a bigger venue, isn't it?
finnbands: We thought so, but actually we are not sure.
Mathias: Because we played at Knust in 2005 I think and I think it was smaller than this. So I think they sold a lot of tickets and so they were moving to a bigger venue. It's not the biggest in the world *laughs*

finnbands: Do you have some last words?
Mathias: Hm, not really!
finnbands: Ok! Thank you.
Mathias: Thanks!

For the moment Turisas are done with touring, at least when it comes to their tour with Dragonforce, but in the middle of April they'll hit the road again with Moonsorrow and Cradle of Filth. Seems they are never getting tired! And to those of you that never ever got their asses up so far to catch Turisas live: go there and check them, it's worth it!

<<-- zurück / back