Barren Earth Interview with Oppu Laine: And Everything Cascades
Progressive death metal supergroup Barren Earth are set to begin a short tour of their native Finland tomorrow, May 12, in support of their debut full-length, Curse of the Red River (review here), which follows the Our Twilight EP (review here), from the title track of which the above headline comes.
But, to hear bassist Olli-Pekka “Oppu” Laine tell it, that’s kind of how the band came together as well. Disparate players involved in separate bands, each trickling in the direction of what would become Barren Earth. As the central organizing force, Laine — formerly of Amorphis and Finnish stoner rockers Mannhai — had the task of bringing everyone together — and with members of acts as far-reaching as Kreator and Moonsorrow, it couldn’t have been easy.
The complete lineup of Barren Earth includes Laine, vocalist Mikko Kotamäki of Swallow the Sun, lead guitarist Sami Yli-Sirniö of Kreator, guitarist Janne Perttilä of thrashers Rytmihäiriö (also live Moonsorrow), keyboardist Kasper Mårtenson who was also in Amorphis and Mannhai, and drummer Marko Tarvonen of Moonsorrow. If you didn’t follow all of that, here’s what it boils down to: a lot of talented players and a lot of crowded schedules.
Nonetheless, in the short three-year time Barren Earth has been together, the level of output has displayed a cohesiveness that goes well beyond having players on the same page. Not only is the band tight, they’re productive, and as Laine explains in the following interview, it’s a common influence ranging from ’90s death metal to ’70s prog that unites them and makes them able to compose material as diverse as that on Curse of the Red River.
Whether or not you’re in Finland and can catch them in the next couple days — they’ll be playing Turku, Kuopio, Jyväskylä and Oulu — please enjoy the Q&A to be found, as always, after the jump.
How does a band like this happen? How did everything come together?
It was quite a long process, which started even before there was the decision to form a band. I had talked to these guys separately during the years that it would be nice to do something together, and we even had a band with Kasper and Marko, the keyboard player and drummer, which played pretty much the same kind of music, but arranged in more of a progressive rock style. We even made a demo tape with three or four songs, and it was totally instrumental stuff. But because we didn’t find a suitable vocalist, we split up. Because of that project, I knew myself, Marko and Kasper would have perfect chemistry. So when I started to write metal songs, progressive metal stuff, I already knew I would have the right players ready. When I quit playing in Mannhai, my previous band, because I got bored with stoner rock (laughs), surprisingly, I already knew who I would call. With Janne I played a few years ago in The Camel Gang, basically a tribute band. That’s how I met Janne in the first place, and noticed he was quite a player. With Sami, I had a chat with him in a bar. We were real drunk or something, or high, and we were discussing about music and realized we have a lot of similar musical tastes, so that’s when we agreed to form a band someday. When we lacked a lead guitar player two years ago, I recalled the conversation with Sami, so I thought that it would be a great chance to play with him. This is how it all happened. I’ve known these guys for years, and we all have been talking about forming a band together some day. It was quite a process, but it was really quick. It was about three years ago I started to call people up, and it was half a year and I was already there. Mikko was the last guy who we called after we made the demo, and we said we needed a vocalist for the band, and he needed to growl and do clean vocals as well. Marko remembered Mikko because they toured together, Swallow the Sun and Moonsorrow, so he was the perfect match for the band. Icing to the cake.
He has that kind of versatility that can go wherever the music is going.
Yeah, he’s really good. He does the perfect growling vocals that we wanted, and his clean vocals are also fit with Sami’s higher range together. They almost sound like one vocalist. They somehow blend together perfectly. That’s another bonus.
You mentioned Mannhai and being bored with stoner rock, but was there something that made you want to go in the progressive, heavier, death metal direction?
It was fun to play stoner rock after playing metal for 10 years, because I grew up with listening to AC/DC, it was fantastic to learn how to play rock music. That’s the reason it was so fun to be in Mannhai. I enjoyed being in it, the gigs were great and I enjoyed the albums as well, but after all, it was a really limiting musical genre. It was really, really hard to try to stretch the sound, and make it original. I thought when we formed Mannhai, I wasn’t the active part of putting the band together. I wanted to get away from Amorphis, and it was an alternative for that moment, so I just kind of drifted to play the rock music. We did four albums and after those, I didn’t really like them. It’s hard to explain, but I didn’t see any way to experiment with music with stoner rock. It’s limiting kind of music. I just made a decision around 2006 that now I’m starting to write songs that I like to write, without any limitations, because with Mannhai I had to stick with stoner rock, but with Barren Earth, I can do anything. I can play acoustic stuff, do death metal, whatever. That was the main reason why I wanted to switch musical direction.
Did you write most of the songs for the Barren Earth album?
From the beginning, I wanted that everybody should write music. I guess I was the one who was the one who was the most well-prepared for this band. I had loads of songs and I still have loads of songs on my computer, but I think in the future everyone will come up with songs, like everybody did for this album as well, but I just happened to have most of the songs this time. Next time it might be someone else, I don’t know. In that way, it’s not my project or whatever. We are all in this band seriously. Everyone wants to write music for Barren Earth.
The reason I ask is, listening to the album, you can hear a lot of different influences, and I was wondering if that was you trying to bring in a range of sounds, or just the input of the other players.
Well, both arguments fit quite well. I did want to bring as variable a sound as possible to Barren Earth, and I wanted to do acoustic stuff, clean vocals, death metal, and the whole scale. But the other reason is of course that there are so many composers in the band, so that widens the range even more. Every one of us happens to be open-minded when it comes to music, so there are many composers and every one of us is ready to experiment with music. That makes our music naturally quite progressive.
About the track “The Leer.” I’m a big Amorphis fan, Tuonela is one of my favorite albums ever, but I wanted to bring up that song, because I thought it had kind of an Elegy vibe to it. Are you aware of that kind of thing as you’re writing, or is it just what comes out?
Again, it’s both, and as I said earlier, I just wanted to let it all come out naturally after Mannhai. My influences are the same as which they were during the Amorphis years. About “The Leer,” there are influences from Finnish progressive rock, which we all listened to much in the ‘90s. Bands like Kingston Wall and stuff like that. That particular song, “The Leer” even might sound Iron Maiden-ish, a fast song. The actual influence comes from one Finnish composer [who] is still doing instrumental music, and he did a theme album in the late ‘70s called Landscapes from Finland. “The Leer” was written after listening to that album once again, so they’re all influences from Finnish prog rock and from Autopsy, but those bands are still the same which we used to listen in the early ‘90s, the Amorphis guys, so that’s the reason for the similarity in sound.
Both the album and the EP have very ‘90s, classic Peaceville album art. The EP cover looked like Paradise Lost. Even the logo is in that style. Have you had any say in that? Do you think of Barren Earth in line with those bands?
With the logo and the covers, we wanted to underline that we are a death metal band. We are not emo or whatever. We are not a love metal band. We wanted to honor the roots, and that is our taste as well. When we picked up the cover for the EP, there were six options and everyone agreed this should be the one, not the least because it looked like a Paradise Lost cover (laughs). We all dig Paradise Lost in a big way. Also with the album cover, it is very old school, and even in a little bit of a corny way, but that’s how we wanted to make it, to show this is what we are and this is what we want to do. The logo was a little bit the same as well. We had two options and the other one was even more death metal, with all the mushroom stuff, so this was a compromise between our progressive rock and death metal. So yeah, it was intentional to have an old school outfit for the band.
You’ve gotten a lot of sound comparisons to Opeth. How do you feel about that?
I’m happy with comparisons to Opeth (laughs). I don’t have any issue with that, it’s totally fine for me. That was one of those bands which made me want to play death metal again. It got me into some kind of nostalgic when I heard Still Life on the radio, when it was released. I’d lost it somehow, I couldn’t compose in that way or even play death metal anymore, but hearing that album made me realize that, well, these guys can make it, why can’t I do it again? They are kind of responsible for Barren Earth’s birth.
You mentioned before a backlog of songs on your computer. Are you always writing?
Yeah. I am writing all the time. It gets lazier from time to time and it’s hard to get the inspiration, but I have a bank of riffs on my computer and whenever I don’t get the inspiration, I listen to those riffs and try to put and force them together somehow. When I don’t write riffs or compose, I arrange music, so there’s something to do all the time. If I’m not doing those things, I’ll write lyrics or something. So it’s going all the time.
You’re doing this year’s Summer Breeze festival. Any other touring plans?
Yeah. We are doing a short Finnish tour in May and we plan to tour Europe during this Fall, but the release time of the album is sort of kinky. It’s really hard to sell any festival gigs if you don’t have an album out, and when it comes out, it might be too late to sell any gigs to festivals, but if it doesn’t happen this summer, it will happen the next one, and hopefully we can make it to the States as well.
Tags: Barren Earth, Finland, Peaceville
