Long shadows [Germany]

Hamburg in the middle of summer. At over 30°C the title of the new record of The Rasmus, “Hide From The Sun”, fits like the fist on the eye. In accordance to this, Lauri has made himself comfortable in his hotel room with half-closed curtains. Despite face pullover (probably beard?) in a later stage and the apparently obvious part of Finnish basic clothing, the woolen beanie on his head, he doesn’t start sweating even though he’s fighting with a slight fever. But well, that’s why he’s an old rat in this business.

Exactly this is the point one can easily oversee in The Rasmus because they only stepped into the spotlight here with “Dead Letters” and the smash hit “In The Shadows” despite already having eleven years of band experience together. And since then there’s no way out. Not even for the band themselves, which toured for nearly three years with mentioned creations and worked on a worthy following record simultaneously. And “Hide From The Sun” really meets the expectations. The Rasmus latch right into the mix of melancholy and melodic rock which already catapulted “Dead Letters” into the Charts. This time there is an even more distinct portion of 80′s atmosphere within that suits the Finns quite well though. Considering Lauri’s musical sozialisation thought that is no wonder:. “The 80′s influenced me the most. It was the time when I discovered my first idols, Bands like Mötley Crüe or Guns N’Roses. It’s audible in our music.”
For instance in the usually over-lifesized refrains. And even though Lauri’s first records were AC/DC’s record “The Razor’s Edge” and Europe’s “Final Countdown” he always has a far more inconvenient source of inspiration than that: Finnish Schlager. “The traditional Finnish music, our Schlager, is always very dramatic and has a really desperate feeling to it. I heard these songs a lot as a child, and I still like some.” But enough of the sins of the youth, at the moment Lauri is listening to System of a down quite a lot. For a good reason. “They have managed to combine beauty and brutal hardness, I like that kind of surprise. It sounds nice, but at the same time it’s hard and raw.”
The new The Rasmus album is following a complementary kind of antipode-concept but of course in much softer lines. “The major title of the album certainly is ‘the beauty and the beast’. It turns up again and again. Before we even wrote a note we talked about what we wanted to do, also about combining as many opposite elements as possible. I told our guitarist to think of a riff that sounds like a bad monster. Then I make a melody to it that sounds like a fairy-tale person or a butterfly. That’s how we meet somewhere in the middle. This kind of working was a challenge for us too, before that our songs were created by jamming mostly.”
The mentioned method also works in lyrical means, especially in those passages where The Rasmus act very nicely in the musical part. “When the melody is very sweet, the poison is mostly hidden in the lyrics. ‘Lucifer’s Angel’ tells about the people in the middle ages that actually just wanted to help others and got classified as witches and freaks. They were simply burned back then, awful. I searched for the connection to today and found that people are still afraid of people with visions and new ideas. Thus it also has a political aspect because it’s about this rebel stuff. People are still being eliminated just to ensure that everything goes its oldfashioned way like before.”
This lyric analysis has already given an interesting insight in Lauri’ inner life, but behind this it’s even more sad that the song “Dancer in the dark” hasn’t made it onto the finished CD. Inspired by the film by Lars von Trier and starring Björk it has a nearly therapeutical meaning for Lauri, who calls himself shy and has only learned to communicate by the means of music. “I found myself in this film. It’s all about this woman that gets blind and tries to hide it and continue her life. I was able to identify myself very much with that, but of course it’s better to let some things out before they get too strong and break you. But that was the way I felt too.”
Is that how the pressure of success sounds or are we talking about the burn-out syndrome? “Being on tour for so long has made me sensitive for certain things. All the emotions, that at some point just blurt out all of a sudden. Somehow it has all made me vulnerable. My emotions are often stuck behind this armour, I have too many thoughts in my head and that is really quite suffocating sometimes.”
Good that all that is said now.
On the way Lauri has found a compatriot soul in Ville Valo while working together on the lyrics for their duet “Bittersweet” with Apocalyptica.
“The thing with Ville was funny, because we wrote the text together and at first didn’t have a clue how to do it with both our enormous egos. So we had to meet 15 times and drink a million beers until we managed to finish this song. But it was very funny because most of the time we were talking about completely different things and exchanging experiences. It was so good for me to be able to talk to somebody who’s had the same experiences as me.”
Even though success apparently never comes without it’s backsides, The Rasmus certainly don’t have to hide for theirs. They’ve earned it fully and thoroughly.

Share this article:

Tweet

Current&next releases

Latest news

© 2005-2005 The Rasmus Hellofasite | the Italian portal about The Rasmus | All rights reserved
This website is published under a Creative Commons Licence. It's strictly forbidden any unauthorized
reproduction partial or total of the layout and/or the contents.