Amorphis Interview

Thursday June 25, 2009

For nearly two decades Amorphis has been one of the most popular and successful Finnish metal bands. From their groundbreaking 1994 album Tales From The Thousand Lakes to their current release Skyforger, Amorphis’ sound has evolved over the years. This is current vocalist Tomi Joutsen’s third album with the band. We spoke about Skyforger, their use of the Finnish national epic as a lyrical inspiration, their tour plans, his beginnings as a drummer and the return of his other band Sinisthra after a hiatus.

Chad Bowar: Is Skyforger musically similar to your last CD Silent Waters?
Tomi Joutsen: I think so. We continued with the same people we had on the last album. We composed the music first, then the lyrics. We didn’t want to do a totally different style. We wanted to continue with the style we found a couple years ago.

You used the Finnish national epic Kalevala for your lyrics again this album. Do you anticipate using it again in the future?
I guess we have to do something completely different in the near future, but this time it worked well again. The same guy who wrote the lyrics for the last album did the lyrics for this one, too. He took one story from the book and wrote his own version of the story. We are really satisfied with the results. I don’t want to write lyrics, because I’m not good at it. It’s good that we have a guy that can do it.