Why Is Metal So Popular in Finland? (Oranssi Pazuzu Side A) - 345
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This week we dive headfirst into the land of heavy metal, Finland. In what originally started off as an episode on the Oranssi Pazuzu album Mestearin Kynsi, we quickly realised that we had a two parter on our hands. So this week, we're using Oranssi Pazuzu as a lens through which to view the Finnish music scene. In the episode, we take a detour through the history and culture of Finland, exploring why this country has the highest ratio of metal bands per capita. We also touch on notable Finnish acts, quirky cultural elements, and the unique musical environment of Tampere. Expect insight, humour, and a bit of chaos as we unpack what's behind Finland's intense love affair with metal.
00:00 Welcome
01:10 Introducing the Topic: Finnish Metal
02:00 The Finnish Music Scene and Culture
05:43 Patreon and Community Announcements
08:49 Deep Dive into Oranssi Pazuzu
20:36 A Brief History of Finland
26:22 Finnish Traditions and Unique Sports
26:58 Famous Finnish Music and Artists
32:21 The Influence of Metal in Finnish Culture
35:03 Doom Metal and Its Finnish Roots
43:26 The Finnish Music Industry and Government Support
54:22 Tampere's Psychedelic Black Metal Scene
01:00:01 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Transcript
Mark: [00:00:00] Hey, folks, welcome to the Unsung
podcast. Looking right in the barrel in the camera. My name is Mark. I'm joined by
Chris: Chris.
Mark: Hey Chris. And
Chris: Shocker.
Mark: Shocker.
Chris: Twist there.
Mark: Twist there.
Chris: Saw
that coming.
Mark: I know. It's gonna be different soon though, hopefully.
Chris: What does that mean? Is that a threat? Aye. Wait a minute.
Mark: I know where you live.
Chris: So on one hand I realise you probably meant that.
in the sense of, Oh, things are going to get exciting. Other people will be joining, but it could just as easily be interpreted as you're not going to be my problem for much longer.[00:01:00]
Mark: That's a mean thing, isn't it? I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I didn't mean for that to sound mean. No, we may have guests soon, but we don't have them today. So yes, welcome on some podcast. I'm Mark. That's Chris. This week we're going to talk about an artist and, uh, and a country and a country. Um, what would the next week Chris?
Chris: We're going to talk about the country of Finland. Yes. And then Russian doll style. We're going to go from Finland. We're going to crack that open and we're going to talk about the Finnish music scene. And then we're going to crack that open and that's mainly metal. Anyway, we're going to talk about finish metal and particularly doom.
And then we're going to crack that open and we're going to pick and focus in the band. We're Oransi Pazuzu. Nice. Uh, and the album Mestaren Kinsi. Yes.[00:02:00]
Now, before people start freaking out, anyone who knows this band, they are not simply a doom band, but there's a lot of doom in there. And this was an opportunity to focus in a little bit on that country, that scene. Why the fuck, uh, is it the world's highest per capita ratio of metal bands? Yeah, uh, and more.
We're gonna, we're gonna unpack that. Yeah, so it's going to be an exciting week for us. I think it's going to be an exciting week for Scandinavian listeners, uh, appalled at our pronunciation. So yeah, uh, disclaimer, straight out the gate.
Mark: I can't help you with this, like, Finnish is
Chris: far
Mark: too different
Chris: from the other Scandis.
Yeah, yeah, Mark's a sort of provisional Danish speaker, which is no small undertaking, but, uh, I don't know how much use that's going to be in terms of pronouncing Finnish. Have you heard Finnish people, like, speaking? Well, I have, but do you have a point?
Mark: That's just very, it's very different from, like, Danish or Swedish, which are quite similar, and Norse, no, Norwegian, all the ends.
Which is slightly different [00:03:00] again, but they all sound roughly like, they share a lot of common words, like you don't get that with Finnish.
Chris: Yeah, we're not going to unpack the genesis of the Finnish language, but it does look slightly different as well. It does, yeah. Aye. It also sounds like they stole the name of their capital city from somewhere in Southeast Asia.
Helsinki. As a kid I was just like, Helsinki? That doesn't sound like it should be there. But it is, and yet it is. It definitely is, can attest to that. In fact, you know someone that can attest to that?
Mark: Your pal Craig. Yeah, big Craigie B. He'd been in Helsinki with his old band Revulsion. Uh, they were flown out there by the organisers of a music festival they were playing and they had a bloody good time.
Lots of saunas. A lot of face tattoos. A lot of face tattoos,
Chris: yeah. And did they not meet Kimi Raikkonen's dad and fall out with him and get him thrown out a pub? Yeah, something like that.
Mark: Which is quite funny. And actually, I think that it must have been good to get all their stuff, their flights and stuff paid for because it ain't cheap to go there.
It's not even that cheap to stay there either. So, yeah,
Chris: they do pretty [00:04:00] well for themselves. They do. But it makes tourism an expensive undertaking. It does. Uh, but we're actually not going to be talking about Helsinki all that much today. Maybe just in passing. I think we'll do a little bit of an episode outline because this is undoubtedly going to be a two parter.
The first part I think we're going to talk about more generally. We'll talk a lot about Finland itself because there is something, there's something special about the place, even more so than the other Scandinavian countries, partly because of its proximity to a certain notorious country called Russia, um, and their relationship over the years.
We'll also talk about, yeah, just this prevalence of metal within, not just Finnish music, but Finnish culture
Mark: in
Chris: general. It's a really, really big part of their culture, which, you know, it does seem strange when you come from a Western country that's kind of where everyone grows up orientated around pop music.
And you realize that for them, listening to metal is quite often analogous to us growing up on stuff like ABBA.
Mark: Yeah, I mean, to be [00:05:00] fair though, Europop is still a big thing. Yeah. Yeah. In Finland, but yeah, metal is significantly more mainstream than pretty much anywhere else in the world. Like, even the fucking Prime Minister was a big fan, you know?
So Would he, would he go?
Chris: What was it, David Cameron said he was into it again?
Mark: I can't remember.
Chris: Great fate apart for the wrong football team. Twice. Drop some names like clanked some names down. It was probably fucking top loader, wouldn't it? Would have been top loader. Yeah. Gank,
Mark: did they not play the Tory Party Convention last year?
I think they did.
Chris: Oh yeah, and one of them disavowed it. Yeah. One of the original guys was like, no danger. It's the most Tory thing though, the top loader. It's also the most punk thing that top loader have ever done. One of them disavowed the Tory Convention. Oh Christ. Um, so very quickly Mark, any, any
Mark: admin?
Yeah, so hi Paul Gleeson, welcome. Thank you for joining us on our patreon. He joins us at our triple A tier. We have two tiers on our patreon. It's A A K A, the basic tier. The basic tier, yeah. It sounds so much better the other way though. Four quid a [00:06:00] month, five euro, apparently, if you're in Europe, because he seems to be European.
whatever the equivalent is anywhere else in the world. I think, I think in Australia, it's like 40 quid or something like that. I don't know. Um, that was a call back to the episode of the crag recently. Yeah. Yeah. So for that, you get access to episodes a couple of days early. You get access to bonus episodes, which includes this year's Christmas special.
Um, you have special specials. Yes. which we're recording very soon when this comes out. And yeah, you still have time to get some questions in if you're doing this on Friday. First order
Chris: of duty, go on to the AAA group and put a question or two up there for us to answer in the Christmas special. That is your privilege now.
Uh, and that goes for the rest of you as well. Just log on, stick a question in there. It Instagram, the AAA itself, just a general Facebook post. Mark will pick it up. He's always, he's always Googling himself. And our podcast to try and see if anybody's saying anything nice about us. Yeah, people do say
Mark: nice things about us, which is good.
So yeah, Chris also mentioned the AAA Facebook [00:07:00] group there, which you do get access to. We apologize for it being Facebook. We just don't really know where else to go. We could start a Discord server, but I don't know if people would pick up on that. As much as I fucking hate Facebook. There are worse places these days.
There are worse places. One platform which we are no longer on. We are XX. XX. And, yeah, and then, like I said, some of the, we get access to bonus episodes. Some of the bonus episodes have become mainstream episodes. So you do get little previews of news, new features, I guess. But if you fancy giving us a wee bit more money, we've got an extended tier, which is our digital record club, a more expensive
Chris: tier.
It's a better way of describing it. Yeah. Each month we will curate and send you an album, usually via the method of band camp, because you still get the best. royalty rate for the artists that way. Basically, we just troll all these different groups that we hear from, get in touch with, that we've crossed paths with on tour, via recommendations of guests, all kinds of stuff on the AAA group as well.
Um, we, we [00:08:00] buy the albums from the artists themselves. or their label, which is almost always a small independent DIY label, if not even a self release. That way they get a large share of the money of like hundreds and thousands of times more than they would get if you were streaming it. Uh, and we also get a bit of that money to put towards the podcast and you buy yourself a little surprise present every month arrives and you're like, Oh, look at this.
And then you. have a little journey of discovery. And this is stuff that is very unlikely that you're going to hear otherwise, you know, just because it's, it's pretty low profile. I mean, I'm sure there'll be the odd time where you're like, Oh, I've heard of these guys, but yeah, by and large, most of these are new to the people that get them.
And by and large, people are really, really happy to get them.
Mark: Yep. So join us patreon. com forward slash unsung pod, and you can learn a little bit more about our podcast and what we've got to offer over there.
Chris: Absolutely. So To quickly outline what we're going to go through here, two episodes. Uh, the first episode, you know, because our mission is to educate and not just entertain, uh, someone's like the BBC and [00:09:00] inform because their mission is to cover up sex crimes and not just entertain.
Uh, we're going to use this week's show as a lens to learn a wee bit. More about Finland, as we said, and the thickened metal scene therein. Uh, we'll also look at the surprisingly prolific, I think it's Tampere, uh, region, which seems to punch well above its weight. Uh, we'll have a dip through the discography of this band, or Ansi Pazuzu, uh, for other highlights, and then we'll examine, as we would normally do in part two, uh, Mr and Kinsey in more detail.
And I'll try to lay out why I find it to be exceptional, even within what is a strong back catalogue. So yeah, we will do a very, very, very quick intro here. We'll come back to this in more detail in the second part. But the basics are that this is a five piece group formed in 2007. I believe actually split between two Finnish cities that are about 187 kilometers apart.
So you've got Tampere and then Sinaijoki. And I don't know which members come from [00:10:00] which, but that seems to be where the origins are. But they're largely based around this actual one rehearsal facility in Tampere. Uh, so the members are Kordiak, also known as Jarko Salo, the drummer, Icon, also known as Nico Lindonte, I think, Lidonte, on guitar, Evil, there's a name for you, uh, also known as Veal Lepelhati, that's keys, percussion, vocals, Onto, which I have forgotten the meaning of that for the time being.
I think it might be like hollow. I think it means hollow, uh, also known as Tony Tamaki, uh, on bass and vocals. And then y his also known as Juho Van Hannan on vocals and guitar. There is one ex member as well at this point, Mo MOIT, on guitar and yeah, I saw this band very recently. Our colleague and friend David was part, so they're no longer with us.
Yeah. Um, was. Part of a collective that we're putting them on in Glasgow, supporting a band called [00:11:00] Soul Soul Soulphastere Soulphastere. Soulphastere. Honestly, one of the worst bands I've seen in a long time. I mean, I just, yeah, just very briefly, let's start there. So they were headlining and Oranssi Pazuzu were in support.
I mean, maybe it was like a co headline thing, but they were supporting effectively and they were absolutely fantastic. I've never seen them before. I'm a really big fan, as you can probably tell already. And so it was a little bit wary of, you know, how good are they going to be live? Cause there's a lot of production on these records and holy shit, they are good life.
Oh my goodness. Fucking brilliant. One of the best things I've seen in a long time. And then I already knew because I hadn't, I bought the ticket with absolutely no regard for the other bands that were playing. First band were fine. Uh, this main band, I looked them up and could not fucking believe what I was seeing.[00:12:00]
I mean, so as a booker, We get a lot of dad bands, blokey bands, like four guys that work at an insurance company together, manning the phones, and they've put together a wee blues rock thing because, I dunno, they listened to Caius back when they were cool. And then they decide to start a band and they need a gimmick.
So they turn up in like funny hats and maybe one of them wears a hawaiian shirt. I always remember the basis of my own band and one of our earliest gigs, he felt like, oh, we need to, we need to really cause a splash. And so he turned up in a grass hawaiian scuff and we were like, The fuck are you doing?
Like, that's such a gimmick. That's a vibe. Aye, and it's that kind of like, pub rock. And unfortunately, they just sing like that. It's just this really dull, bluesy post metal, and the singer's voice is chronic. They have this kind of ballady numbered name of it. Escapes me [00:13:00] right now, it's got like Fania or something like that, and it's
Music: embarrassingly bad.
Embarrassingly bad.
Chris: Anyway, Oranssi Pazuzu were supporting that. It was some kind of like Scandinavian Icelandic tour thing, tour package. It didn't work as a package of bands for me, but Oranssi Pazuzu were fucking tremendous. Really, really, really good. So hurrah for that. Um, their name? Oransi, Pazuzu. Oransi is actually Finnish for orange, colour orange.
Pazuzu, for anyone that's watched The Exorcist, or The Exorcist 2 more accurately, you'll probably be familiar with that. Pazuzu is an ancient Mesopotamian king of the wind demons, or the personification of the southwest wind itself. Fun fact, which hadn't actually occurred to me until we were doing this, Pazuzu's not orange.
of biblical [00:14:00] origins, ancient Mesopotamian. It's not in the Bible or any of the kind of Luciferian sort of associations. Uh, that's getting Catholic priests to battle with them using crosses. It's a little bit
Mark: incongruous.
Chris: I actually don't know if the book addresses that. If anyone that listens to the show has read the book, let us know that does the book muse and the irony of getting crucifixes to try and ward off a non Christian day.
I don't know. Christianity is fairly, um, incongruous anyway. Tell him you doesn't all make sense. Careful now. Um, also the first Exorcist movie doesn't actually name Pazuzu], it was Exorcist 2 that added that detail. But yeah, Oranssi Pazuzu. Sound wise, I mean, talking about Luciferian deities, I mean, a lot of bands try to sound evil.
That's a thing in metal. A lot of bands try to sound just raw god. And in my opinion, I'd say Pazuzu are one of the most successful,[00:15:00]
not just in terms of that horrible clawing throaty vocal that they have, but also goblin vocal. Sounds like a goblin. Goblin. Witchy goblin thing. Yeah. But also in the way that they musically unsettle. In fact, debatably more so in that way. Yeah. Cause metal's a pantomime, isn't it? I mean, really? It is, it's, it's No, hang on, people take this shit seriously.
Mark: I know, but there is a fair bit of kayfabe involved. I think there's got to be, right? Like, there's nobody Even the guys with battle jackets for days, they're not, they're not pure. It's similar to the
Chris: Undertaker shtick.
Mark: Yeah. You know what I mean? I hope so, I mean, we hope so. We hope
Chris: so. Yeah, well, I mean, some of When it ceases to be that is when it gets pretty fucked up, actually.
As we, we, we documented in the black metal episode.
Mark: Yeah, you can take it too seriously and too far. Like, for example, I think a band like Cannibal Corpse, I think they're [00:16:00] supposed to be taking a little bit jokeyly because of how, like, ridiculous they are. This
Chris: singer's a lovely guy who buys his daughter teddies on tour.
Mark: Yeah, but there's people that take that death metal and that gore and horror like really seriously and you're kind of robbing the fun out of it by doing that. You know,
Chris: I mean, I do think that Oranssi Pazuzu are one of those bands that when you're listening to it, they do sometimes prompt that. moment where you're asking, are we still having fun?
Are we having
Mark: fun? Yeah, that's a reference to party down. If anybody, if anybody gets that one of the best shows,
Chris: I think they manage to make things like genuinely a bit disconcerting.
Mark: I think that's a lot of that to do with the liberal use of electronics.
Chris: Yeah.
Mark: that helps and there's a heavy psychedelic vibe to this band which a lot of metal bands just don't go for.
Well
Chris: yeah, so the way I'd written it was that part of it's from the way they both incorporate and reject metal tropes. They use nasty sounds that we recognize, you know, the vocals, the guitars, the bass, that kind of [00:17:00] thing, some of the drum patterns, but then they incorporate a lot of others that we often don't and it leaves us as listeners, I think, a wee bit disorientated and out of our comfort zone.
even if you're a metal fan, they're quite challenging.
In short, to me, they're one of the only bands that write songs that you could probably genuinely class as hellish at points.
Mark: Yeah, they definitely lean on a lot of the bad trip vibe of 70s psychedelia, you know, that strange intersection between feeling like a Pink Floyd song, but also underpinned with lots of, you know, Disorienting kind of dark vibes, you know,
Chris: they've also increasingly as a production has improved or I mean improved to the point of just being stunning at points.
Yes, they've acquired that thing that bands like an [00:18:00] alnith rack have, which is just sheer sonic overload.
You just are actually, especially if you're listening to it quite loud, it can be quite overwhelming. And when you combine that with the actual structure of the music and the complexity and as you say, the badge trip. That is a big, big part of this. I mean, warning here, Ranzi Pazuzu do drugs. They do psychedelics.
Definitely. It's a big part of a number of interviews. They don't exactly go about telling everybody to do psychedelics, but it's clearly, it's no secret that it's a part of their process. Um, they describe their own aesthetic as being a, to conjure sounds from the dark corners of space and mind. And there is quite a lot of musing on the horrors of the Of the vast emptiness of space in a Nancy pursues as well, which I think is a [00:19:00] really interesting topic for basically any art form, whether it's film or writing or anything, but in music, especially long protracted stuff like this.
Yeah. I mean, the horrors of infinite space that that phrase has been used many, many times and it's, it's very true. Vice Magazine has called Oranssi Pazuzu, quote, one of the most interesting bands in metal right now, black metal or otherwise. Thomas Eurek, writing for AllMusic, describes a sound that draws from black metal to psych, from kraut rock to prog, from 1970s hard rock to post industrial noise, and from ambient music and folk.
All of that. All of it. And that is the thing, this is a band that clearly has a broad listening palette as well as writing. I think AllMusic have got another quote that says something like since releasing their 2007 debut, they have never made the same record twice. Each album stands apart as exploratory rather than simply declarative, evolutionary rather than anchored in the mire of genre.
[00:20:00] And all in all, that does leave me a little bit perplexed as to why I saw this incredible live band. and what was really not a particularly busy QMU a couple of Saturdays back, supporting just an objectively inferior group. And it also has me asking questions like, you know, why, for example, has Pitchfork only reviewed one album by this band?
I don't get that either, but we'll dive into that and we'll dive into their influences and we'll dive into their sound in a bit more depth in the second episode. For now, I think to get a little bit of context here, um, we should go to school. Okay, let's go. Let's go. Okay. Finland. Finland. Let's talk about Finland.
So I think a whistle stop but history will help us set the scene on a culture and especially a country already famously cold and desolate. Even coming from a cold and sometimes quite desolate country, Finland sets the bar a bit higher. I think if I was to try and analyse my own preconceptions of Finland, it's probably a wee bit like [00:21:00] the drunken younger brother of the other Scandinavian nations.
Norway and Sweden have a slight sort of upmarket aloofness, which is not to say that Finland doesn't. It's an expensive place to go, but it has a kind of sloppiness about it. And it's famous for its boozing. I knew one band from Finland actually, while we're talking about the desolate nature of it, right?
They were like, they were like a rockabilly band. They used to come over here and play shows dressed in like leopard prints and stuff. And when the guitarist wasn't touring with a rockabilly band, he worked in an asylum for the criminally insane, the Finnish Arkham.
Mark: That's wild.
Chris: Oh man, the stories. He was like, you'd work night shifts and he's like, just the screaming.
Just the constant screaming down these stone corridors and I mean, uh, really? And then he goes and I said to him, I was like, how the fuck did you end up playing rockabilly? He's like, because if that's your job, you don't want to get a metal band. He's like, you badly, badly need some [00:22:00] relief from that. But even then that, that place that he worked is, I think there's two asylums of that nature in the whole of Finland and he worked in the more northerly one and he was like, it's so bleak, it's so fucking bleak that you really badly need relief from it.
So I mean that clearly that encounter did nothing to dispel some of the preconceptions I held about the place. But what is Finland? First off, if you're from Finland, Finland is Suomi, it's not Finland. So it turns out that humans were already hanging around Suomi, or Finland, from the end of the last Ice Age.
An Ice Age, by the way, which I think it's only partially woken up from. So that's about 9000 BC. And some time after that it became kind of dominated by Sweden, especially around the coasts, because Vikings and stuff, uh, eventually Russia. You know, good old Russia. Right there on the border. Yep. This area that was taken over in the early 1800s because it was bigger and, well, because it was Russia and it just does that as we've seen in recent history.
So the [00:23:00] area spent some time as the Grand Duchy of Finland within and expanded Russia. When the Russian Revolution happened in 1917, Finland took that opportunity to declare independence. But in 1918 there was a civil war and ultimately the Red Finns, who were loyal to Russia, got the boot. So Finland became Finland properly, or Suomi properly.
But the Russians weren't having that. They bided II kicked off, they invaded Finland because they have a massive border with it, as I'm sure you know. Finland recently joined NATO and it doubled NATO's border. Um, uh, So when Russia invaded, that prompted Finland to choose between a rock and a hard place, and Russia is indeed a very hard place, uh, and so basically Finland sided with the Nazis to fight off the Russians.
This was called the Winter War, mainly because it started in November, but also because to outsiders, Finland and the north of Russia basically exist in a perpetual winter. Anyway, Hitler or Stalin? They weren't faced with a great choice and whilst they were definitely not model citizens during World War [00:24:00] II and in with a bad crowd in their defence, the Finns did refuse to hand over, uh, the Jewish population to Germany despite repeated attempts by the likes of Heinrich Himmler to convince them.
So they were clearly conflicted somewhat about it. It's a very complex story, so please grant me that that is a, that is the back of a napkin sketch. So Finland has a fairly foreboding history of struggle, like, like many countries, She had an enormous border with the main adversary, who's about 50 times their size, certainly didn't help them sleep at night.
Add to the fact that the country's extreme geography like for many weeks, every winter, the sun hardly rises in Finland, especially towards the north. And for many weeks in summer, it doesn't set prompting a kind of. Frenzy of blackout blinds and loads of insomnia in the place. Um, the coast of Finland looks out onto freezing seas whose, you know, just the names of these seas are synonymous with shivering the Baltic.
Um, it is huge icy mountains. It's got frozen forests, thousands and thousands of [00:25:00] lakes and lots and lots of snow and ice. In fact, the coldest temperature recorded in Finland was 51. 5 degrees below zero. Um, also. Santa lives there. Yeah, it does. Lapland. Yeah. Santa does not live at the North Pole, folks. He lives in Lapland in Finland.
Your pub quiz points are welcome. So it seems natural that dark music should be the country's favorite. I suppose Finland, as we said, does have the highest ratio of metal bands per capita in the world. Yet Finland and Finnish culture is actually pretty upbeat. And kind of great in many ways. I mean, the UN has voted I think a number of times, but certainly very recently the happiest country on earth.
And it almost always makes the top five of that same poll every year. Finland was the first country in Europe to give all women the vote. That was 1907, the full decade before us. And it remains one of the most gender equal societies on the planet. Some more facts before we go into the music side of things, uh, when they're not drinking huge quantities of booze to [00:26:00] get them through the winter, Finns also consume huge quantities of coffee.
Apparently it's 12 kilograms per person each annually, on average.
Mark: That's cool.
Chris: Um, in Finland, when someone earns a PhD, they're given a top hat and a sword.
Mark: Sweet.
Chris: Um, Helsinki still has a Burger King restaurant with a sauna in it. That's amazing. In Finland, they have National Sleepyhead Day, where the last person in a family to wake up is thrown into a lake or the sea by the rest of the family.
Oh, I love it. I love it. And whilst the Finns obviously play football, soccer badly, other popular sports include the Wife Carrying Championship, where the winners get the wife's weight. And they also play a thing called Swamp Football. Swamp Football? What is Swamp Football? You'll have to look it up, man, honestly.
That's what YouTube's for. If it's for anything, it's for looking up Swamp Football. But that's all completely true. Now, in terms of Finnish [00:27:00] music, what are some names that we might recognise more generally? Well, here's a belter. For starters, Sandstorm. By Darude. Darude. Mm hmm. Yep.
Likely named after those famous Finnish sandstorms. Um, Oldies might also remember Before You Leave by an act called Pepe Deluxe, which was like a kind of mid 90s dance hit.
Well, we need to mention that Jean, I don't know how they pronounced it, Jean or John. I'm just gonna say John Sibelius. It's [00:28:00] Finland's
most famous composer. Yeah, yeah, bit of a legend. His work was seen especially like around about Early 1900s is, is guarding Finnish culture against Russification. He had been born into the Grand Duchy, but he'd obviously watched the Grand Duchy declare and fight for independence. Uh, he's got a famous piece called Finlandia, which is a striking example of his own political bent.
Musically as well, he clearly influenced that oppressive, symphonic approach of a lot of the Finnish metal acts as well.[00:29:00]
Yeah, I mean you talked about Europop and stuff, what is big in Finland rarely makes it over here with the exception and Alexa, you know, Darude. Um, Karya, I think is how you pronounce it.
It was a Eurovision runner up. And there's kind of a big deal over there in the charts. Uh, Kuma with a track called Tulip Halo.[00:30:00]
Was their most streamed on Spotify last year, I believe. Uh, a guy called Hector had a huge hit in 2023 with a track called, uh, Lumeteke Enkelin Taisin. Hey Tyson,
um, for the rest of us some more successful modern exports. Mark. Him.
Music: Him.
Chris: Nightwish. Nightwish, another one. Eh, Lordi. Lordi. Eh, Lordi who,
Mark: Hard Rock Hallelujah, did that win the Eurovision? Another one, I think it I don't know if it [00:31:00] won, I think it did win actually, I think it did win the Eurovision.
The Rasmus. The Rasmus. The Shadows, yeah. I've been watching, I've been waiting in the shadow of my doubt. I've been sleeping for tomorrow. Uh, the band Hanoi Rock. I
Music: know he rocks, yeah. Um,
Chris: Uh, Stratavarius, 80's power metal band. They're pretty cool.[00:32:00]
You've got Apocalyptica. Apocalyptica, yeah. Yeah. You've got Amorphous. quite a big export as well. The thing is, right, you start off, try to name a couple of pop acts and as you can see, any list of finished music quickly cavitates towards metal because it's kind of second nature for them just in their culture here in heavy metal from a young age is just really, really normalized in a way that it's not, it's not exactly like scarce here, but it's just nowhere near as typical.
One way to illustrate that is via heavy. Soros. Have aau, do you know, have aau? No.[00:33:00]
If you're a toddler in Finland, there's a good chance you are watching a dinosaur puppet metal band instead of tele. Mm-hmm . Uh, this thing started in 2009 and it got really big. There's a track, now, it translates as Night of the Dinosaurs, but let me try and say this here. Humaliskayin Yo, that was the second biggest seller of 2010 over there, that, that record.
Under fucking hell. Eh, Kadonen Lui Carmen Arvoitis. went to number one in 2012.
When they wrote their 100th song, When Heavy Saw Us, which, it's a band, but it's a kid's show. If you crossed Teletubbies, Dinosaurs and California Dreams or something like that, you know, that kind of thing Saved [00:34:00] by the Bell, something like that. Their 100th song includes appearances from members of Megadeth, Nightwish and Children of Bodom.
Mark: You love to see it.
Chris: So yeah, like Finns, including their kids, are fed on metal from the word go. As with most music, that kind of means as well that their tastes mature as they get older. Mainstream and symphonic metal might sell big, but Finns also love extreme genres. doom and blackmail in particular, both of which are anti possessive, contain no small amount.
Now, I kind of touched on it earlier on. Unsung's already got a really extensive black metal show, that not only goes into a few specific acts, but looks at the controversies around black metal, the various incarnations of black metal, including national socialist black metal and including Um, what's it called?
Left Aligned. Red Anarchist Black Metal. Red Anarchist Black Metal. So go back. I mean, I think that's one of our best shows actually still to this day. It's a lot of fun. Early episodes. Early episodes. We put a lot of work into that one. So I'm not going to go [00:35:00] on too much about black metal here because it's all out there and I'd be repeating myself.
So we're going to talk a bit about doom and the genre of doom. There's a lot of that in Finland, a lot of doom metal and there's a lot of doom within the metal that they produce. See you before you move on. Yeah. Forgot
Mark: to mention Children of Odin.
They were massive. Yeah, huge. Until Alexei literally drank himself to
Chris: death. Did
Mark: he? Literally drank himself to
Chris: death, yeah. Oh, well. I don't think he's the only Finn to have done that, unfortunately. I know. Yeah. Doom! As the genre dates back to the 70s, most people credit its inception to Black Sabbath's early stuff.
In the early 70s, a couple of other bands also joined that party, including Pentagram, Jethro Tull and Blue Cheer.[00:36:00]
Who in particular, I think are one of the main progenitors of the slightly groovier genre, stoner metal, sometimes a little bit indistinguishable. Things kicked up a notch in the early 80s when bands like Scandinavian outfit Candlemas all carved out a distinct set of criteria for the genre.
As always happens in metal, dozens of subdivisions have sprouted forth. It seems obvious but the dark melodic vibes of the 80s goth explosion made for a natural fit and that created gothic doom. Death metal's gruffer aspects combined into death doom. A number of acts took it to more extreme places, incorporating loads of dense organ, even slower tempos and that led [00:37:00] to the wonderfully evocative funeral doom, which owes a lot to early albums by Cathedral and Paradise Lost.
and is a sound for which Finland is also particularly renowned. Uh, Scandinavian movements like black metal of the early 1990's spawned black doom. For an example of that you can see the Finnish pioneers DeLorean
Uh, as well as blackened death doom, like dragged into sunlight.[00:38:00]
And who could forget DSBM. depressive suicidal black metal that was on our black metal show as epitomized by the likes of that controversial act leviathan cancelled though i believe are they i think they did they got themselves in a spot of bother at them at its extremes doom crosses often seamlessly into drone uh which is sometimes Totally devoid of percussion and almost always hellishly loud in concert, so you can see the likes of Earth, Boris and Sun.
Closer to that end of the spectrum, overarching themes tend to be ones of negativity, shall we say. [00:39:00] Misanthropy, pessimism, you start to bump into the leading lights of the Finnish doom scene. Um, the story of Finished Doom seems to begin with a band called Spiritus Mortis in 1987. I am a name on your funeral wreath.
Spiritus
Mark: Mortis. They
Chris: were actually technically called Rigor Mortis but then an American band of the same name forced them to change it. They define themselves as True Doom. We have lots of elements of Vitus showing up in the sound, another band released in their first demo in 1990 where fellow countrymen Unholy, now Unholy were also originally called Holy Hell, I don't know why they were forced to change their name.
They initially came at things from a bit of a black metal angle but then slowed it down. And 1990 was also the year that Thurgathon formed in this little town called Karina in the south of the country. Thurgathon only [00:40:00] ever released one demo and one album and they lasted as a band for just over three years.
Wow. But short life notwithstanding they're credited as being pioneers of funeral doom with a hugely revered record called Stream from the Heavens
which set the template for that subgenre. That sound would be built upon by another pioneering funeral doom group, Skepticism, whose 95 album Stormcrow Fleet is, for some people, uh, the defining moment of the entire style
and makes really inventive use [00:41:00] of things like mallets instead of drumsticks and loads of lush key sounds to create a really, really dense gloomy atmosphere in it. Back in the more true doom category, 95 saw a new band called Reverend Bizarre beginning to make a mark.
Despite that not scary at all name, they are still considered by many as the overall kings of the finished doom scene. Their sound incorporates some of the more typically old school elements that defined Pentagram.
Alongside them in the [00:42:00] category of essential true finished doom, which is not a category I have to spend much time with in everyday life but uh, if you do go there you can find Minotauri,
a hailing from another small town in the heart of Finland with loads of lakes and probably not a lot to do otherwise. The band put out a number of really highly regarded records for more than a decade I think. In fact to be honest it seems a lot more intuitive now that this combination of loads of these small towns with very little going on combined with that really Intense shall we say Scandinavian landscape because this was a theme in the black metal episode as well It's like why does this country that's so dark and grim and full of these high jagged peaks And really oppressive dark forests create this music that is so well suited to that [00:43:00] And I think there is a psychological impact from those geographical surroundings, you know The Unforgiven Weather as well, that weird eternal night, eternal day routine that they go through constantly.
It's brought together a lot of metal groups. And Finland is also a fairly affluent country and that kind of suburbia was bound to churn out a fair share of disaffected teens, you know, the kind that, you know. Their parents would try and buy their affections with a guitar.
Mark: There's a couple of things I want to add to that as well, which I don't know if you've got them, so you can stop me if you want, but the Kalevala epic, Kalevala, which is an epic poem about the creation of the earth.
It's something they're taught quite early on, and that can allies quite well with the melancholic tradition that they have across quite a lot of their folklore. They've also got the Tusca Open Air Festival, which is one of the biggest metal festivals in the world. And I don't know, the cultural sector is really well funded.
You know, there's a lot of grants out there for musicians. In fact, they actually have specific grants which are, which are kind of [00:44:00] built so that they can sort of expand out of Finland in a commercial way. So taking a lot of commercial pressures off and giving them money so they can go and explore other markets, I guess.
Um, and that's very different for it is like in pretty much every other country, you know? Well, I wouldn't say every country,
Chris: but certainly it is. definitely not what it's like here. Not at all. We've fought that fight for a long time with regards to the funding, the arts funding in Scotland, trying to point out that if they fund art as an export, if they help subsidise some of the costs, then it's to the benefit of the country because your country becomes known for that rather than just put money into stuff that stays inside the country itself and never acts as a kind of ambassador.
So you do, yeah, a lot of these Finnish bands, especially the metal bands, have benefited from that little bit of support that enabled them to hit the road. And also just the fact that they come from a wealthy country, so going down to Italy to them. Although in saying that, The fees must be pathetic because [00:45:00] I do know from bands that have gone the other way, they go up to Finland, go up to Sweden, they go up to Norway and the fees are amazing.
Yeah, because to them, it's like, well, it's just a normal fee to us. You're like, what?
Mark: Yeah, create when when revulsion played there, they headlined that festival or they're one of the headliners and their fee was really, really good for that. Um, it helped really make a dent in their album. But
Chris: yeah, well, think about it.
That actually must also be part of the reason they would. probably want subsidy because they're like, yeah, we're going to play a show in hall and they're going to give us 50 quid. Yeah. And that's a good
Mark: night in hallway. Um, it's the really, it's the Finnish ministry for education and culture, which provides enough confounding for the arts and that includes grants for all music projects.
Obviously the classical stuff, you know, inspired by Sibelius is also a really good example of, of how a proper fund that can create an app atmosphere, which can help artists to thrive without having to. Always worry about pulling together cash and that might be something that becomes even more apparent as time goes on because it's, it's really expensive just to be a small non like a, I [00:46:00] say nonprofit, not in the sense of charity, but a band that doesn't even consider making money.
That's just like playing small venues. You know, it's harder than ever before. And because of that, if you've got a government which actually funds like the creative arts and people can spend more time actually mastering the instruments and becoming better players. because of that. And that's quite vital.
Another thing, which is probably worth a couple of things that are worth mentioning is like compared to the UK. So the UK for music, music is a big export for the UK, right? Contribute 0. 3 percent of the GDP. It
Chris: used to be it's, it's a dropped dramatically. I mean, post COVID it's something like 70 percent less touring bands below
Mark: a certain threshold and the UK has got like 90 odd million people.
Compared to Finland, which has got their, their, their economy is much smaller, but music accounts for 0. 5 percent of their GDP, you know, so it's much bigger than it is in the UK, which is a much, much bigger country than Finland is. And also I think it's probably really important to mention as well that it becomes quite interesting when you start to think about things like how if you ingrain something so deeply in the cultural fabric like metal seems to have become, it can [00:47:00] allow things like more extreme genres to become more accepted in wider culture.
Chris: Yeah, I mean, you know, in the same way as people that come from India are more used to spicy food. You just get inured to it, don't you? You're just like, as a kid, you're like, okay, yeah, you're, you're cereal spicy wee man. And then you just build from there. And so, yeah, they're just, their horizons are, are broader.
I don't want to go
Mark: down too much down this chat as well, but I think it's worth mentioning too. Do you know what the well being economy is? You ever heard the phrase? Yeah. So Finland is one of the most advanced countries are moving towards a well being economy and essentially a well being economy is something which doesn't just prioritize GDP as a measure of how successful or how country is.
So you can have a country with really high GDP, but the population are really poor because of massive wealth, massive wealth gaps, right? The well being economy seeks to measure things like, uh, the amount of people that are actually working in jobs and how much they're actually contributing, how much, how sustainable our country is, you know, how good the wealth, the healthcare and [00:48:00] all that is, you know what I mean?
And Finland are quite far down that path compared to a lot of other developed countries.
Chris: I've actually, I know we've got a couple of listeners who work in that sector, are working related to that as well. Um, but I work so yeah, I'm not surprised as well. You know, Scandinavian countries are fairly well known for that large social welfare system and progressive values.
Mark: Yeah, totally. I mean, there's a lot more I could say in that. I just didn't want it. I didn't want to just spit it out in its own episode. But yeah, because of that, it means that people are actually not looked down upon for taking time to focus on quote unquote you know, because it's part of well being.
Yeah.
Chris: Yeah. Okay, well, just to top off some of those musical tourism, another band that you might know, Barathrum.
They've got a lot of black metal [00:49:00] flavours. They're perhaps most notable though for their enormous list of members and ex members. Loads of people have passed through Barathrum. Oh my goodness, the hilarious names of some of these ex members. Step forward, take a bow, Avenger. Blood Beast, Necronom, Deathstrike, Beast Dominator, Beast
Mark: Dominator, Destructor, Destructor is that for three k's isn't it?
Chris: Just to tell you. And uh, Oh, I mean, honestly, P. E. L. C. E. P. O. O. P. It's kind of cute. Oddly. Um, so yeah, I mean, all of these are just a sample. We can't possibly do the entire storied scene and country just not yet. No, yeah, but Finland really does love its metal. And in particular, stuff to an extent that few other countries do.
Um, so for those of you listening who are considering further research beyond this small selection, you might like to look at the works of [00:50:00] Swallow the Sun, Barren Earth, Fall of the Idols, Shape of Despair, Ever Circling Wolves.
And, uh, one that I can assume, I can't, honestly, I can only assume it's some kind of Dave Gahan misery cover band called Depressed Mode.
Depressed Mode. Uh, also, there's bound to be somebody, somebody, somewhere shouting at me for getting one very important band. The Wandering Midget.[00:51:00]
It's a metal band called The Wandering Midget. Nice. That's
Mark: Finland for you. Can I add something else in? Yeah. To this musical cultural piece? So, some people who are into video games probably know Remedy Interactive, Remedy Studios. They originally were the creators of Max Payne, which you've probably heard of, Chris, as a video game.
Even I have heard of that, and the wonderful movie that was made of it. Yeah, so the guy that plays, the guy that has Max Payne's face, that was the creator of the game and studio director, Sam Lake. They're Finnish, based in Helsinki. They've since created what's called the Remedy Interactive Universe, and they released a game called Control.
It's actually a really great game. I won't get too bogged down in it, but essentially this person, this woman, Jessie Faden, she ends up going into, like, this place called Oldest House, which is a shadowy government facility run by the Federal Bureau of Control in America, and it gets [00:52:00] taken over by this, evil entity, and it's all very Americanized and stuff like that, but a lot of the things that happen in it is very X Files esque, so it's really, it's got a really deep lore, but a lot of it's based on Norse mythology.
There's characters in it who are Finnish, and there's a lot of Finnish stuff that's in it in general. Finnish mythology, which is pretty cool too. And that spun out into a game, well, kind of retroactively fit a game Alan Wake into it, and the sequel, Alan Wake 2, came out last year. Fucking brilliant game.
and music is a huge part of that game. There's an in universe band called the Old Gods of Asgard who are a Finnish band.
And there's one level in Alan Wake 2 where you're literally in an alternate universe and you're like running through a music video worth getting chased by bad guys and it's [00:53:00] fucking brilliant and it's this power metal band that are playing the whole time. You need to drop in some samples of it. You can actually watch the band themselves.
With the accompanying troupe of dancers doing it at a Games Awards last year, and it's fucking amazing, it's just so good.
Music: It's so much fun,
Mark: um, and the reason that I bring it up is because there's a level in the game control, you're in like a room which is constantly shifting and you need to kinda, like, jump about the place.
And it's got a soundtrack by the old gods of Agard. One song called Surrender Control and the world moves in time with the music. It's just amazing. It's so, so good. So look both of those things up on YouTube because they are both excellent and it's very Finnish and in Alan Wake 2 there's actually a coffee company.
Written by two Finns, and they're like main characters in the game. They've [00:54:00] somehow moved to America, and this little town they're in's got a lot of Finnish heritage, it's a bit weird, but they really have deep, deep pride in their country, and they managed to kind of make these two things run together.
It's really, really good fun.
Chris: Yeah, well, with all that context established, uh, I think we can start to focus on the subject a wee bit more closely. We'll go into that second level of the Russian doll. It's a shame to say Russian doll given it's Finland that we're talking about. But as mentioned earlier on, Oransi Pazuzu mainly hails from Tampere.
That city itself I think also deserves a little bit of extra attention. So the Tampere scene, now I'm saying Tampere, I'm, I'm, I'm sorry. If I've got that wrong, I'm sorry. I think that's right. Temporary.
That scene is responsible for a subgenre of psychedelic black metal with a range of influences so vast. That sort of music wouldn't really even have been conceivable until very recently. If you factor in all the electronica and stuff like that that's involved, um, Oranssi Pazuzu is also part of the [00:55:00] Wastement Collective, which comes from there.
What is Wastement? Extensively, it's a group of bands and musicians coming from the Nicala district in Tampere and gathered around one set of rehearsal facilities. So you can imagine probably an equivalent in Glasgow or your hometown, like one Particular popular practice room or popular rehearsal studio space.
Uh, in 2016 Music Finland was writing about the number of Native Finn acts at Redburn, and they said that Finland is represented in Redburn by some 200 festival GOs and a handful of band yearly. But April, 2016 sees the Finnish takeover as Dark Budda Rising Mr. Peter Hayden Abyssian, Oranssi Pazuzu and Atomic Hill occupy the road burn stages.
The festival has presented several local musical movements before, but five different bands from a basement located in a 3, 000 inhabitant neighbourhood, Nicala, must be a record of some kind. So there was just this like moment in 2016, [00:56:00] especially involving Roadburn, where they were like, geez, what's going on in this one spot?
Where are all these bands coming from? One of the bands mentioned their Dark Bud. The Rising is a Doom project, loads of doses of psychedelia.
They released their fifth album, it's called Inver in 2015 or Inver. Um, that was via ot. Mm-hmm. So neurosis is, yeah. Yeah. Label. Uh, that was Steve, Steve Tel. Yep. Uh, back then, music Finland noted that they had the highest profile of that Clutcher Bands from Macala, but. They had actually released their first albums by themselves.
They did no PR whatsoever and didn't even have a Facebook page until much later on into the band. This was just their approach. Vesa Ayomo of Dark Buda Rising explains, We started to record improvised sessions in our rehearsal space more than a [00:57:00] decade ago. It has room for all of our instruments, which enables different members of different bands to jam together and create something new.
Moving away from the margin and making musical compromises feels repulsive to us. I can't imagine that being an option. We don't feel the need to satisfy anybody but ourselves. I think the appreciation for these Finnish bands comes from a combination of distinctiveness, absoluteness, and a certain modesty.
So atomic killer or atomic. Kyla, I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it, features musicians from both Darkwood Arising and Oranssi Pazuzu and was born from those kind of sessions and them jamming together. Onto, Tony from Oranssi Pazuzu added to that, The problem with many movements is that people try to sound like the father figures of them instead of letting the music grow freely.
Our band is about diving headfirst into the unknown darkness. The sound you make is black smoke and we hope the listeners will lose themselves in it. Individual bands are a fly's fart in the cosmic scale. We keep doing our thing and see if listeners are still interested. A fly's [00:58:00] fart. Fly's fart. Actual quote.
So in 2017, something unique happened because Juho, who's the vocalist in Oranssi Pazuzu, was in his rehearsal room and basically took a call from Walter Hoeymakers, who's the founder of Roadburn and the festival in the Netherlands. I think it's pronounced Hoeymakers. Anyway, instead of booking Oranssi Pazuzu for yet another year, he took the unusual step of commissioning something totally original, inspired by that wastement.
sort of Lord that was starting to do that do the rounds. Apparently, I suppose you had already been mulling over some sort of extended lineup performance, but what actually resulted became known as the waste of space orchestra and that band united with dark Buddha rising, basically members of each all can emerging and they wrote and performed a totally unique 70 minute set.
Which then went on to form an original album called Synthiosis. I'm the eye of the beholder Uh, it was [00:59:00] ten musicians.
The whole thing was based around the concept of three parts, or three characters. Uh, the shaman, the seeker and the possessor. A lot of psychedelics involved I'm guessing. And it kind of underlined the innovation and unorthodox but very fertile nature of that scene around Nicala. I mean, I have heard the similar things in the past.
I mean, pretty much most big movements have that cross pollination between the bands. But certainly, I mean, as I said, they said like 3, 000 people in this neighborhood and it's very, very much punching above its weight.
Mark: Yeah, a cultural nexus for sure.
Chris: Yeah. So, I mean, That's kind of a whistle stop tour of the background of Finland and also a tamper that the city that our ancestors who mainly hailed from, um, and something unusual, something like quite novel that seems to be happening within that relatively small [01:00:00] musical community.
And in the next episode, we will go into our ancestors themselves in a lot more detail. And then we'll crack open that last layer of the Finnish doll. Finnish doll. And we'll look at the, the album specifically. But Mark, any, any more thoughts before we adjourn?
Mark: No, it's been, uh, it's been good getting to know Finland.
I really would go there.
Chris: Yeah.
Mark: Um, I think it'd be cool. Uh, I think it would be very cool. Lots of saunas. Saunas? Go to the sauna. That's how they say it Arnhem Lake too.
Chris: I mean, like, I remember Craig, in his little voice memo, saying just how lovely the people were.
Mark: And
Chris: he said that people were absolutely smashing.
Mark: Yeah.
Chris: Oh, he just, he did, he did draw attention to the mad number of face tattoos.
Mark: Oh yeah, I mean, that's the thing, if a wild subculture like metal is accepted, then other things like that are going to be much more accepted as well.
Chris: They're a hardy bunch. I mean, is it the case that everybody in Finland is technically on Yeah,
Mark: technically on the army, aye?
Chris: [01:01:00] Yeah,
Mark: like kind of National service is a big thing, like it is in places like, uh, many other countries like Denmark and all that and Greece and stuff, Israel. But yeah, so they're all basically reservists. If they were mobilized, they would have a mass, one of the biggest armies in the world. Millions and millions of people.
Chris: There you go, Vlad.
Mark: Yeah. Food for thought. Yeah. Don't try it.
Chris: Uh, yeah. Okay. We'll, we'll pause there when I get myself a hot drink. Yes. And we'll come back next week. Uh, final thoughts for the time being. If you joined us recently, go on to our Triple A group, go on to our socials, submit a question. Submit a question for the Christmas episode.
First of all, because if you're a subscriber then you'll be the ones hearing it. If you're not a subscriber, the Christmas episodes are consistently a total laugh. We get steaming. Dave comes back and joins us. We get voice notes from different people. We get questions from all over the shop, including people in bands and people not in bands and yeah, people with serious issues.
And the question doesn't even have to be music [01:02:00] related. Yeah, you got a bit of license there. If you want to get cheeky, get cheeky. Fucking come at me.
Mark: Yeah,
Chris: do it. Fucking do it.
Mark: Um, but yes, you may even get to see it if you really want to. Indeed. Don't make it happen. Okay. One more thing. Final thing. Give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Really helps podcasts grow. Uh, if you love this show, we would love to hear that you love this show. If you hate this show, then just send us an email. BunsenPod. net. Thanks. Bye. Bye.
Bye. Bye.