Bizarre. Unique. Unpredictable. After the release of “Halla”, NOMICON is in its silence once again. This interview was instigated after the release of their “Promo ‘98”.
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The bizarre nature of NOMICON’s musical progression always fascinates me, a way too unthinkable band, and beyond comparison. Hard to swallow by the masses, and they’re proud of it. I really hope that at least a number of you, the readers; will be able to identify the twisted musical genius of NOMICON!
The bizarre nature of NOMICON’s musical progression always fascinates me, a way too unthinkable band, and beyond comparison. Hard to swallow by the masses, and they’re proud of it. I really hope that at least a number of you, the readers; will be able to identify the twisted musical genius of NOMICON!
It’s been quite a while since I last heard of NOMICON. And man, the musical direction changed much! Now tell me, how did this drastic leaps occurring?
Many things have had an affect on that. Of course there’s that big change in line-up: there’s only me left of the band that started in 1991! After that NOMICON has been more or less stable… I mean, there has been some changes in line-up after our last album “Yellow” again and of course, the people who play in the band have effect on the style of music. The current NOMICON couldn’t be the NOMICON between 1991-1993 even if I wanted to!... And NOMICON from those days couldn’t be the band as it stands today. However, as I still compose 100% of the music of my band, maybe the biggest reason for those leaps is the fact that my personal musical taste isn’t as it was 9 years ago!
Do all of NOMICON’s releases been derived in such manner? Look at “The Me” for example, it’s ultra technical, no doubt…
I guess they all have been very different from each other and I hope they will be like that in the future, too! I’ve to believe in the resources of my creativity. I want the style of NOMICON be everchanging.
And what did you up to with the ’96 promo, which entirely being just computer music with no guitars at all. And of course it differs from the “Yellow” album after that.
“Yellow” differs from “Promo ‘96” of course, because there are guitars on the album, which are not present in the tape, which I nowadays think should never have been released. But I think there was some kind of demand for “Promo ‘96” also, because it was released when I was still looking for new members of NOMICON. Many people said my band doesn’t exist anymore. That’s the reason I put out the tape: to prove they’re wrong in saying NOMICON is dead.
The “Promo ‘98” CD prove to be another unthinkable leap again. So what would you call the musical direction of this one?
I think it’s the most ‘blackmetallish’ of NOMICON-releases so far! Even if it might be so, I believe NOMICON can never be totally black Metal. Only the thing that Agathon plays drums in the band nowadays is enough to deny that. Agathon isn’t something I’d call a black-Metal drummer as he has different style of playing. Even if he’s fast, he’s at his best in slower and heavier parts. Some people have said that “Promo ‘98” CD is great horror movie Metal, but I don’t follow that description, because I like to call Agathon’s band GLOOMY GRIM to play that kind of music.
But NOMICON still retain its uniqueness…
Yes, I want it to be so even if that meant NOMICON will never become ‘big’. If my brains continue working, I can trust my creativity to develop in such a manner that no following NOMICON-releases will sound the same to each other.
Can we call it some sort of original trademarks for the band?
Yes, the style of NOMICON is that it doesn’t have a particular style.
I do find some similarities between NOMICON and your other band SOULGRIND (“Kalma” is an excellent release, by the way). Is it intentional?
I don’t find so many similarities between NOMICON and SOULGRIND. Maybe the only similarity is that SOULGRIND also makes original music, though it’s original in a different way than NOMICON! Maybe you found those similarities, because after all, I’m on vocals for both bands???
The songs on “Promo ‘98” got that very dramatic pace changes and such. Still got that ‘out of norm’ technicality?
I agree even if some older fans of NOMICON have said it has been a bit of disappointment to them. Maybe for them, the music in “Promo ‘98” is too easy to understand and accept. Don’t worry, next album will include ‘out of norm’ technicalities as did the promo CD (even if it did like that in a lesser extent than ever before)! I want NOMICON always to be technical, complicated and really: ‘out of norm’.
Many things have had an affect on that. Of course there’s that big change in line-up: there’s only me left of the band that started in 1991! After that NOMICON has been more or less stable… I mean, there has been some changes in line-up after our last album “Yellow” again and of course, the people who play in the band have effect on the style of music. The current NOMICON couldn’t be the NOMICON between 1991-1993 even if I wanted to!... And NOMICON from those days couldn’t be the band as it stands today. However, as I still compose 100% of the music of my band, maybe the biggest reason for those leaps is the fact that my personal musical taste isn’t as it was 9 years ago!
Do all of NOMICON’s releases been derived in such manner? Look at “The Me” for example, it’s ultra technical, no doubt…
I guess they all have been very different from each other and I hope they will be like that in the future, too! I’ve to believe in the resources of my creativity. I want the style of NOMICON be everchanging.
And what did you up to with the ’96 promo, which entirely being just computer music with no guitars at all. And of course it differs from the “Yellow” album after that.
“Yellow” differs from “Promo ‘96” of course, because there are guitars on the album, which are not present in the tape, which I nowadays think should never have been released. But I think there was some kind of demand for “Promo ‘96” also, because it was released when I was still looking for new members of NOMICON. Many people said my band doesn’t exist anymore. That’s the reason I put out the tape: to prove they’re wrong in saying NOMICON is dead.
The “Promo ‘98” CD prove to be another unthinkable leap again. So what would you call the musical direction of this one?
I think it’s the most ‘blackmetallish’ of NOMICON-releases so far! Even if it might be so, I believe NOMICON can never be totally black Metal. Only the thing that Agathon plays drums in the band nowadays is enough to deny that. Agathon isn’t something I’d call a black-Metal drummer as he has different style of playing. Even if he’s fast, he’s at his best in slower and heavier parts. Some people have said that “Promo ‘98” CD is great horror movie Metal, but I don’t follow that description, because I like to call Agathon’s band GLOOMY GRIM to play that kind of music.
But NOMICON still retain its uniqueness…
Yes, I want it to be so even if that meant NOMICON will never become ‘big’. If my brains continue working, I can trust my creativity to develop in such a manner that no following NOMICON-releases will sound the same to each other.
Can we call it some sort of original trademarks for the band?
Yes, the style of NOMICON is that it doesn’t have a particular style.
I do find some similarities between NOMICON and your other band SOULGRIND (“Kalma” is an excellent release, by the way). Is it intentional?
I don’t find so many similarities between NOMICON and SOULGRIND. Maybe the only similarity is that SOULGRIND also makes original music, though it’s original in a different way than NOMICON! Maybe you found those similarities, because after all, I’m on vocals for both bands???
The songs on “Promo ‘98” got that very dramatic pace changes and such. Still got that ‘out of norm’ technicality?
I agree even if some older fans of NOMICON have said it has been a bit of disappointment to them. Maybe for them, the music in “Promo ‘98” is too easy to understand and accept. Don’t worry, next album will include ‘out of norm’ technicalities as did the promo CD (even if it did like that in a lesser extent than ever before)! I want NOMICON always to be technical, complicated and really: ‘out of norm’.
What are you trying to make clear upon with the music in “Promo ‘98”?The reason of that promo was firstly to give labels a clue of my current style. In the beginning it wasn’t my intention to concentrate on selling that CD… but people wanted to buy it, so what could I do??? After all, most of the copies were sold and not given for free to labels and such. Maybe that’s the reason that I’m still unsure about the label, who’s going to release NOMICON’s next album, haha!!! I didn’t contact as many labels as I planned.
NOMICON started out as a band with stable line-up, but that is something we didn’t see after a certain period of its existence. What could have resulted that?
We had a serious trouble in getting our debut album “The Me” to be released at all! In the first place, it was recorded to be released through one English label, but that didn’t keep a single one of its promises. That’s why Mark G[r]ay and his pseudo-label TOMBSTONE RECORDS will always remain a status of cunt in my life! Anyway, during those days other members started to lose faith in NOMICON, I didn’t, because it’s my band so here I am, still fighting with all this shit… but it’s fun as hell!!! What could satisfy you more than overcoming difficulties? That’s the fruit of life. Since then, the members of ‘previous’ NOMICON have moved to different locations, so thinking of all these afterwards, it wouldn’t even be possible for the band to work with its original line-up.
Does it mainly because NOMICON is actually you, that nobody could ever fucked things up in it?
Hah, if I don’t fuck things up in NOMICON, I guess nobody else will! Anyone doesn’t have enough energy or even interest.
It must be hard for you to handle things in the band, very hard…
In situations like this it’s hard. You know, all the members including me would like to know the schedule for the next album for example. But the label I thought that would release it, hasn’t sent me the deal they promised to send something like 4 months ago! As you can understand, it’s difficult to make reservations for studio, if I don’t have a contract promising the label will pay for it… and in the beginning of our negotiations they wanted us to go to studio as fast as possible. After all, it seems there might be some other person(s) able to fuck things up in NOMICON except me, so I will correct my answer to the question before: If I don’t fuck things up in NOMICON, the label(s) will! Other things like taking full responsibility of composing and writing lyrics isn’t hard at all.
With the release of “Promo ‘98”, does it subsequently tells that the band is free from any contracts with labels again? Nothing more to be released through SHIVER RECORDS?
As I said, “Promo ‘98” was mainly released for labelhunting, but since people wanted to buy it and I was too greedy to say ‘no’ to money, most of the copies were sold… But you’re right it was released to tell you that NOMICON is free to sign with any other label since I quit SHIVER. I hope some other label will pay more attention to my band than they did. They didn’t promote “Yellow” properly, so something like 25% of the pressing has been sold by me! I guess they wouldn’t be able/interested in giving a proper studio-budget either, not to talk about budget for shirts, tours or other things like that I’d like to do.
I like the promo CD cover. It potrays you with a ‘samurai’ sword, and a Japanese (is it?) woman (bitch?) in front of you…
If you were here now and called that woman a bitch, I’d hit you straight in the face and I would do it hard and many times! Only thing that you got right is that she’s Japanese. She’s my wife and actually those photos are from our wedding picture-sessions. Half of them were taken as those conservative wedding pictures and half with me wearing mask, having sword, axes, and shit like that. I just had an image of that kind of thing in my mind, so I wanted to make it real. It turned out fine, not least from the reason that I had very much fun in seeing those surprised faces of the people working in the photo-studio!
I guess I should stop harassing you with my questions, and these would be enough, at least; to give us a clue about what we could expect from the band soon… Thanks a lot for your time, Mr. Tommi Launnonen!
I don’t know if it will happen soon, but we’re still mainly concentrating to the recording of our next album. After that we’ll do some shows in Finland if not anywhere else. I’m a bit frustrated that I’ve to cancel some shows already, because all those shitty delays from the label! Feel free to write. All letters answered will get a distribution list of my AQUARIUS PRODUCTIONS with over 200 items.
Tommi Launnonen, Anianpellontie 13 A 15, 00700 Helsinki FINLAND
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