No words needed, everybody knows them. A simple interview being done in 1999, and at least read something about the infamous "IMPALED NAZARENE is going to play in Malaysia" rumours circulating in the local scene back then. One more thing, IMPALED NAZARENE is a 'household' name in the local scene, most will definitely agree with me on this, heh. Sir Mika Luttinen the spokeperson here.
Please tell us your situation there in Belgium. How’s life?
Everything is normal and boring. Can’t wait to get on the road again.
Probably you’ve just finished your touring with IMPALED NAZARENE. What’s your overall assumption of those shows? Which one is the best?
Actually we have not. “Rapture” world tour ends this August (’99). We have still one big Finnish rock festival to do and in July/August we will be touring Australia and New Zealand. This world tour has taken us everywhere, to Japan, Mexico, USA, Canada, Ireland, all kind of places where we haven’t been before. For me, the best was Japan, no fucking doubt. Our shows in Tokyo were just mad. We also played in Russia and that was fantastic place as well.
Do talk something about the “Rapture” album… When will the next one out?
Well, I think it’s a good CD, perhaps there are a couple of not so strong tracks but overall I’m satisfied with it. We will be entering Astia Studio in Finland, in late August to record our 6th CD (Nihil-ed.). We are going to put it out January 2000. This year (1999) we will release a split picture 7” ep with DRILLER KILLER. This will be put out by Solardisk label, which in fact is run by our bass player Jani. It will be out either October or November, depends when DRILLER KILLER will do their side of the split.
What about the difference between it and the one before, “Latex Cult”?
“Rapture” is way more Metal record, not only production wise but also the tracks themselves. “Latex Cult” is very punky sounding plus has a couple crust style tracks. “latex Cult” was made under a big pressure etc. and I guess it shows in the end result. But I still think it kicks ass.
It might suggest that IMPALED NAZARENE has found the best suiting musical pattern…
We know basically what suits us and what doesn’t. More over we all do our songs and we all listen to different kind of music so it makes them a bit different. We just want to keep things brutal as fuck.
I see that there’s not much room left for the band to add something new in the music… or?
And there you are 100% wrong. We have added a lead guitar player to our line-up so things will change for sure. He is Alexi Laiho and comes from CHILDREN OF BODOM. You can expect killer leads, lots of double bass drumming and more black Metal than before. There’s gonna be at least a slower tracks as well.
Nuclear Metal. That’s what you call it.
I just needed some monicker and that’s it. We are like nuclear power; deadly.
Your music has a real ‘punk-like’ feel in it…
We were told since the very beginning that we have punk sound in our music which at that time we didn’t understand, as none of us listened to punk. Nowadays we listen to some but I still see us as a Metal band. We are hybrid of death, black, thrash Metal and crust. IMPALED NAZARENE has certainly comes out better of age. We could say that the band has shed (some of) its black Metal identity away.
Do you ever consider IMPALED NAZARENE as a black Metal band during those years?
Perhaps musically we differ quite a lot when compared to other black Metal bands but lyrically we are still total blasphemy. I don’t really care about this all, all this category stuff is just useless.
Do you mind the band is still associated with the black Metal scene of today?
Whatever.
Let’s go back to your back-catalogue. “Suomi Finland Perkele” is certainly one that possesses the most differences between all of them. I heard that you don’t like it that much though…
This thing has been blown out of proportion. “Suomi Finland Perkele” is my least favourite record but I don’t sit at home and think that it sucks. There’s some killer shit on it. I don’t like my vocals on it plus a couple of the songs are just pure lame.
“Ugra Karma" is the album that I think, the best. I would like to know your words about it.
It’s a great CD, what the fuck can I say. I am not very good at reviewing our back catalogue.
There’s some trouble with the cover artwork, I guess…
We got sued by Hare-Krishnas for ‘illegally’ using artwork from one of their books. The whole thing never went to court though but unfortunately that is all I can say about this as our lawyer told us to shut the fuck up. So, we had to put out a new version and to make it more interesting, we added “Satanic Masowhore” 7” ep as bonus plus included the lyrics. The cover is done by one French artist and it is just fucking magnificent!!!
Your lyrics have always been very direct.
This is the way I see it; brutal music needs brutal lyrics. I hate organized religions and I hate most people so my lyrics are reflection of that. On “Rapture”, there’s some stuff related to experiments with drugs and stuff. It’s not very clear message, it’s like double meanings if you look close enough.
Since that IMPALED NAZARENE endorses destruction and annihilation of the human race, do you have interest in politics, world conflicts?
I have absolutely no interest in politics because politics are just fucking lie. None of us belongs to any political or religious organizations because that’s for the weak minded losers. I don’t give a shit about conflicts as long as they are not involving me, my friends or my country.
There’s rumours being widely spread that IMPALED NAZARENE is going to play here in Malaysia some time ago. But it seems like it’s never going to happen. What actually is going on concerning this?
Well… we were supposed to tour Australia/New Zealand/Malaysia in December 1998. We were gonna play 21.12 there but in the end, MODERN INVASION, who at that time were ‘setting’ this whole thing up, cancelled it without any proper reason and they don’t even bother to tell us. You can imagine that we are seriously pissed off about all this as this was the second time they did this to us. Now, we are doing Australia/New Zealand but with a different touring agency. Intense touring is really great and we have to remember that MODERN INVASION is after all just a distribution label, not a real touring agency. We would love to play in Malaysia but I don’t know the promoter there. We will make it one day, you’ll see. If the promoter sees this, get in touch with us or OSMOSE and we’ll set the shit up.
You don’t change your logo(yet!) I presume. Will you do so, just like most of the bands when they’ve somewhat grow big or something like that… most of them looks ‘safer’ than the original…
We haven’t changed our logo and we will NOT because I happen to find our logo one of the best logos around. Whatever other bands (or their record labels, as it is usually them) choose to do, we do not give a shit.
Do you still have any projects? RAISM is dead, as far as I know. Is there any kind of involvements in LEGENDA?
I have no projects, IMPALED NAZARENE is my only band. Our bass player and drummer play in PLAN E and Alexi is of course in CHILDREN OF BODOM and he also plays in SINERGY. Jarno has some projects but I really don’t know too much about them. LEGENDA is a band that has one of our ex-members on it but it has nothing to do with us, not musically or lyrically.
Living in Belgium now, does it mean that you’ve nothing more to do with the Finnish Metal scene?
I get promos from time to time so I kinda know what’s going on. Finnish bands I truly like are STRATOVARIUS, ROTTEN SOUND, TERVEET KADET and CHILDREN OF BODOM.
Any plans to release a live album? I remember a live bootleg CD of IMPALED NAZARENE… what do you think about bootlegs then?
We were thinking about it as in next year we are together 10 years, but it seems everybody are doing them (including other OSMOSE acts) so I guess we won’t be doing anything yet. Most live albums suck anyway. There’s couple of IMPALED NAZARENE bootlegs and they are pretty horrible. I do collect bootlegs of SLAYER and VENOM so I cannot really condemn them. Sometimes they are just way too expensive compared to the sound quality they have so I always listen to them first before buying just blindly. It really was a big shame that we couldn’t play in Malaysia, I want to visit your country very much!
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