 Imagine, if you will a band that sit boldly atop a genre named after their debut album, a metal band that includes a violin and an accordion, and a band that have won acclaim over the last 12 months that have seen them rise proudly through the ranks of the metal world.
The pioneers of Battle Metal, Turisas are becoming a force to be reckoned with, and with the release of the bands latest album 'The Varangian Way' earlier this year, and their riotous cover of Boney M's 'Rasputin' under their belt, they headed for the Hard Rock Hell festival, where Komodo Rock's Mike Elliott sat down with frontman Warlord Nygård to find out more.
Mike Elliott: You just came off tour with Iced Earth and Annihilator. How was that?
Warlord Nygård: It was really good. I mean the bands were really nice
and the whole touring party, 3 bands and quite a lot of crew and
everybody got on really well. A good family trip in a way! The venues
were rather big, it was a nice tour to be on, but we only played a 30
minute set, so it was shortened down, so there was no time for anything
extra.
ME: Just a taster of Turisas?
WN: Yeah.
ME: You had a new album out in May called The Varangian Way.
WN: Yep, The Varangian Way.
ME: How's it done for you?
WN: I think it's moved pretty nicely. Obviously we released our debut
album in 2004. When it came out it didn't explode all at once, it took
like three years in between to start building up the band. So now it
was nice to give out an album and see it in magazines and see it happen
right away, rather than three years after release. I think it's done
pretty well, and we just released a special edition as a digipak with a
DVD which has live footage from Download and a lot of festivals we did
this year.
ME: So you played Download then. Was it a good experience for you?
WN: It was a huge experience, not least because of the all the media
circus around it. We were dragged around for the whole day. We played
at 11, and there was a lot of stuff happening.
ME: Which stage were you on?
WN: We opened up the main stage on Saturday, so there was a lot of people there.
ME: And now your here at Hard Rock Hell. How did it go?
WN: I think it was good. We had a really good atmosphere on stage, for
a month playing shows of thirty minutes, and now having an hour of time
to be able to fool around and relax, and I think that atmosphere
transferred over to the audience quite nicely.
ME: Was it weird playing the extended set having played the thirty minute set for so long?
WN: No it wasn't really weird, but it was different. Not having to rush it so much.
ME: Are there any bands that you personally wanted to check out?
WN: I would like to go see Twisted Sister. I don't own their CD's or
anything, I'm not like a fan, but just for it being Twisted Sister.
ME: Your style of music has been described as Battle Metal. Was that something you came up with?
WN: I think the initial spark came from us naming our 2004 debut album
'Battle Metal' and then the British Press picked up on that, and
pouring more fuel into the flames, and hyping it up as a genre. It was
nothing we planned to do, it just kinda happened.
ME: The music itself has a lot of Finnish Folk influence in it. Was
that something you consciously developed in your music, or did it
develop over time?
WN: The band is pretty old, it was formed 10 years ago, I think at that
time all the kinda folk loreistic was even more important to the band,
and it stepped down with the second album. There's more symphonic stuff
going on there, but still with flavours of ethnic things, but we tried
to find new ways of doing that. It's so easy to get stuck in doing folk
melodies up and down and putting heavy guitars on there. We tried to
find new angles to do it, we used Slavonic and Balkan influences on the
new album, odd time singles and rhythms and scales, to try and do it
in a more creative way.
ME: And you've also done a cover of Rasputin. Where did the idea for that come from?
WN: It's quite often that I have an idea of doing something, have an
idea and save it for later and maybe get back to it at some point. I
had just heard a cover band playing Abba and 70's disco songs, they
played Rasputin, and that was in 2001 or something. Then it just hit me
that this would work really well in a more modern speeded up metal way.
But that was kinda it, and it wasn't until a year ago that we started
playing it live and shows, and it was a huge favourite. So we were more
or less forced to record it when we were doing the album.
ME: So were you surprised that people took to it that much?
WN: Yeah, we try to modify the live set, try different things out, and
it became that succesful as a live record it was quite strange to see a
load of metal heads go crazy over a disco song.
ME: I guess it's quite weird as well because it's not the kind of song
you'd associate the song with the younger fans even knowing what the
song is. Have you ever had anyone turn around thinking it's a song you
written?
WN: I think it's quite well known that it's a cover track, but I think
you might be completely right that a lot of kids that don't know where
it came from. We made an album with a strong historical concept, so
that's kind of a really a different step to take, covering a disco
track. There's a chance that people don't really know how to take us,
it's something done with the band, we can still be serious in what we
do on album or whatever deepest historical stuff, but we can still be
lighthearted and have a fool around and have a good laugh.
ME: Thanks for talking to me!
You can check out photos from Turisas' set at Hard Rock Hell here.
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