Rocking The Finnish Sound [Malaysia]

Much media attention has been focused on The Rasmus ever since In The Shadows raced to the top of local radio station playlists. Despite its non-conventional sound, its catchy and unique tune has wormed its way into everyone’s head and no one can get it out! And it wasn’t long before everyone started asking, “Who is this?”
The Rasmus is made up of a bunch of guys who formed the band in 1994. The then 14-year-olds from Helsinki – Lauri, Pauli, Eero and drummer Janne – decided to start a rock revolution in Finland and hoped to spread their music to the rest of the world. In order to accomplish that, the Finnish lads first had to learn English and work on their songwriting and performing skills.
Their first three albums Peep (1996), Playboys (1997) and Hellofatester (1998) built the band’s reputation in Finland but it was only in 1999 that the boys made a name for themselves throughout Europe with their fourth effort Into. (At that point, original drummer Janne left the band. His place was then filled by Aki.)
Right now, The Rasmus is eager to fulfill their initial ambition of spreading their music to the rest of the world with the release of their fifth album called Dead Letters, which is distributed by Universal Music. Current hit In The Shadows is the first single from the album.
Galaxie recently met up with lead singer Lauri and drummer Aki when the band stopped over in K.L. to promote their album.

Did you expect In The Shadows to become such a big hit?
Lauri: We felt like we did something special in this song. Kind of a weird song in that it has a combination of disco, ballad and at the same time it’s a rock song like a crossover thing. And there is something in this song that really makes you remember it and sticks to your mind.

You mentioned “crossover”. What do you mean by that?
Lauri: It’s from a rock song to kind of almost danceable, which is a unique sound.
Aki: The situation was ideal when we arranged the song. It came by accident when Pauli started to play some guitaring and jam on it and everyone was on stage so it took us all about 30 minutes to complete the song and it was good. We knew we had a special song.

How would you describe the sounds of The Rasmus?
Lauri: Somebody once described it as dramatic rock and we’ve adopted that description. But I think, at the moment, it’s a bit like that and, maybe in the future, (it’ll be) even more cinematic and powerful as well as reflect our roots which is ’80s music.

How popular is rock music in Finland?
Lauri: We have a lot of rock music on the charts back home. If I look at the Top 10, there are about five bands playing rock music but most bands sing in Finnish though.

But you guys go against the norm by singing in English instead of Finnish. Why is that?
Lauri: It just feels natural because we have always been listening to songs in English and the language itself has more rhythm.
Aki: Finnish is not so beautiful a language and it sounds a bit rough. If we were to sing in Finnish, we won’t get outside of Finland. Some Finnish bands try to sing the same songs in English but I think it didn’t work that well.

The title of the album sounds a bit morbid. What is it supposed to represent?
Lauri: Well, the theme of the album is letters and each song is dedicated to some person in our lives. There’s a story behind every song, which is unusual for me because previously, I wrote from my imagination. But this time, I have this theme on my mind and I wanted to dedicate songs to certain people.

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