Interview with Lauri [UK]

Finnish Goth Rockers The Rasmus are back. And this time it’s personal.
From a high school band in Helsinki knocking out Motley Crue and Metallica covers to a stadium conquering bonafide rock band loved as much as hated. The Rasmus have experienced both edges of fame’s fickle sword. From the dizzying heights of breakthrough record “Dead Letters” to the accusations of HIM pop copyism and the humiliation of being bottled from the stage at last years Carling Weekend, they’ve been through the mill. It wouldn’t have been at all shocking to learn that Lauri Ylonen (vocals), Pauli Rantasalmi (guitar), Eero Heinonen (bass) and Aki Hakala (drums) had turned their backs on music due to the reception they got from some quarters. What’s more surprising is that they’ve learnt from it, and are now focused entirely on snapping preconceived ideas with “Hide From The Sun”…

BC: You recently said that after touring Japan you went straight in to the studio to record – what was it about Japan that struck you?
Lauri: “I think I find that there’s some connection between Japanese and Swedish people. They are somehow like two sided personalities: one minute they are very polite and they never say but then they can be very demanding and controlling. And I think Swedish people can be a lot like that – kind of conservative in a way.”

BC: Lyrically, how was the writing process different for “Hide From The Sun” when compared to “Dead Letters”?
Lauri: “For the Lyrics, we wrote all the songs for this album when we were on tour. We had a half-year tour which was our last albums tour. I have this notebook where I write some words, like, somebody says something at a bar or whatever, or I’m suddenly reading this book and I pick up a line or on the plane and be like “oh, I like that” and I’ll write it down to give me inspiration.”

BC: The themes for “Hide From The Sun” seem to be about escaping and vanishing. Where does that come from?
Lauri: “Well I think that the album title especially describes the feeling from us all after we had come back from the last tour. We hide or escape from the sun because we’d play a show at night and then have a party ‘til the morning, then we would sleep the whole day and wake up for the soundcheck and our whole rhythm was upside down. So that was kind of the idea for the album. We’re just a bunch of vampires really!”

BC: You mention birds and flying too, though.
Lauri: “I think birds are very individual creatures. They don’t hunt together, they have their own lives and I fee like I can relate to that.”

BC: Your nickname of “Lintu”, which means “Bird” in English – is that the whole idea behind the feathers in the hair or is it just a fashion statement?
Lauri: “That came a long time ago when the guys were thinking of the cheesiest and most horrible and stupidest nickname for me and they came up with stuff in Finnish that meant “free as a bird” and stuff like that and it was just a joke, but of course it stuck as “Lintu”, which means bird and as for the feathers I just like birds really. They have so much freedom and they do what they like and that’s kinda’ how I see myself”

BC: There’s increased experimentation with added instruments on “Hide From The Sun”. Were you trying to create a Rasmus-specific sound?
Lauri: “things sounds different live to in the studio. I like recording in the studio because you get to try out different things and different sounds. There was this one band Apocalyptica who were a metal band that played cellos. They have four guys who play and it’s a great experience to have metal with cellos and we used them in a couple of the tracks off the new album.”

BC: Wasn’t it through Apocalyptica that you met Ville (Valo, HIM frontman and frequent comparison)?
Lauri: “well we were both singing on the Apocalyptica album and then Ville came up with the idea that we should do the duet thing so I said why not? It was really interesting to start working with the lyrics because we both had never met before and written with someone else in a duet before so we had to meet up, think deep down…and drink a lot of beer. We met maybe fifteen times to write just ten lines down, but it was good, you know?”

BC: There’s something very different sounding about the new album which doesn’t seem to be to do with the added strings and piano. Can you pinpoint that?
Lauri: “I think mostly the basic sound is the same: melodic bas guitar and guitar and drums… it’s like the trio with an added singer typical band format, but this time I wanted to sharpen up the edges a little bit. Going into the melodic parts it’s sounded more beautiful with laid back melodies combined with heavier, riffier backgrounds. We had a bigger gap between those two and some of the ideas for the songs have changed, like we pictured and imagined and played with a lot of ideas for the songs and we imagined it almost like a children’s story for a few of the songs. Like there was this one fairy creature and another creature and the story of how they met became these kind of pictures in our heads and what we were imagining, created soundscapes from that sort of angle.”

BC: despite your massive fan base and your success worldwide, you had a very bad reaction at the Carling Weekend festival last year. How did you feel after that? Did it have a big impact on the band?
Lauri: “yes of course. It left a big scar for me personally, being a big reading fan and playing at Reading was going to be the highlight of my summer. It kind of slapped us all, especially me, in the face. It took me like a week to recover. But I think somehow there was something positive to come out of it. It somehow put us back on the ground and was a bit of a wake-up call. I started thinking about a lot of things and I think I became a little more sensitive, less detached by the fame and it made me more fragile in a way. Maybe it’s all these little things that made me more considerate to others’ opinions of us…”

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