Finnish Invasion [Canada]

At high school, the guys from the finnish band THE RASMUS seemed weird because they played music instead of playing hockey like all the other teenagers in their country. Today, they are celebrities in Finland and they are getting popular here too.
The first steps of The Rasmus were back in 1994. Since then, the finnish quartet released five albums, including Dead Letters, the first to be available in North America. In past May, the guys came over in Montreal to meet the medias and perform on of their first gigs on north american lands. What was not their surprise to discover that a large audience attended the rendez-vous and that, in top of that, it knew by heart the lyrics of their song!
During our interview, which took place the day after the show, Lauri Ylönen (singer), Pauli Rantasalmi (guitarist), Eero Heinonen (bassist) and Aki Hakala (drummer) were even more surprised to see at which speed Dead Letters made its way into peoples’s hearts. «We were really not expecting such a greeting,» confirms Eero, sitting on the floor of the hotel suite where the interview took place. Decidedly, the guys are not boasting at all. For stars, they’re on the ontrary quite shy and reserved. Pauli explains that, since the breaking success of their first record, Peep, in 1996, they’ve had much time to get back down to Earth. «Today, what matters most in our eyes is music. When we decided to release Dead Letters in North America, many persons asked if we were frightened by that idea. And well, no, competition doesn’t scare us. If it doesn’t work here, there’ll always be the music. And we got lots of fans in Europe. So if the North Americans don’t want us, we won’t die of it,» assures Eero.
In fact, for the guys, success is not what matters the most in life. «What is important is to take pleasure in doing music and have the chance to perform gigs all over the world,» states Pauli. His friends agree with his with a nod then Eero asks a very pertinent question: «If we’re not happy right now, when will we be? It’s like if someone decided not to be happy until he got the car of his dreams. When he’d reach his goal, he’d still not be happy because he would then want something else! It’s one of the biggest problems in our society: peoples are never satisfied with what they’ve got,» believes the bassist.
That’s why the guys prefer to live day by day and enjoy at maximum the new adventure that begins. That doesn’t mean they don’t have dreams. «We’d like to break through in Asia. If not, in the near future, we will participate in many european festival this summer. During those big events, the atmosphere is always fabulous. And we also take the opportunity to invite some friends. It’s great to spend some time with them,» says Lauri. Eero’s wish is quite simple: «I hope that our next album will be as good as Dead Letters.» We wish it too.

Some facts
Why did the band members choose the name The Rasmus? Because it sounded nice, simply. It also seems that it is a very popular masculine name in Sweden.
The guys recorded five albums until now : Peep, Playboys, Hell of a tester, Into and, of course, Dead Letters.
We qualify «dead» a letter that the mail’s employee must throw away because they could find neither the person it was sent to nor who it was sent by.

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