Lordi
The Monster's Speech

13.09.2016

In the industry we’re in, sometimes it takes decades to get something done. We originally intended to do an interview with Finnish metal monsters Lordi back in spring 2006, in the run up to the release of their third studio album, “The Arockalypse”. However, we were just a few weeks late – that year’s Eurovision turned the whole music world upside down, and the band all of a sudden went completely out of our reach. Nevertheless, good things come to those who wait, and here we are 10 years later, dialing a Finnish phone number and anticipating a conversation with one of the most popular characters in the world of metal. It’s noteworthy that the band’s namesake frontman does not use Skype for interviews – for the sake of keeping his true face secret, or so it seems. But probably it’s better this way – when he’s not wearing a mask, Mr. Lordi comes out as a very nice and outspoken person with a great sense of humor, who does not seem tired a bit of explaining his views and concepts even after a long day of interviews. To us personally, this conversation was as entertaining as watching a Lordi show or listening to their upcoming album, “Monstereophonic”, which was the main subject of our interview. Hope it works the same way to at least some of that extent to you, too.

The new album is a semi-concept album, with half of the songs linked together by a single concept. How did you come up with it, and why did you limit the concept to only half of the album?

With Lordi, we have a lot of ideas that are lying on the shelf and waiting for their turn. And this time we decided to realize one of these ideas. The reason why it’s only half the album is that doing a concept album may be very tricky, it may easily flop if the fans don’t like it. Therefore we decided that we will trying with a half of the album first, and we will make the rest of the album with more traditional Lordi songs. As you know, the concept part is also different musically wise, it’s a bit more modern, so we decided not to overstretch it here.

Will this concept part be performed live?

This is the question I get asked the whole day today. No it will not, because these songs require two guitars, and we only have Amen in the band. They can be played with just one guitar, we tried it at rehearsals, but they do not sound as good as they can in this format. Maybe next year if we do a big tour in North America, we might consider bringing along a second guitarist, and then we might do it. Unfortunately Russia is not on the list of our tour dates at the moment, but there is a chance that we might come at the end of the year.

Is the story that you tell on the album close-ended? Or do you consider continuing it on some future releases?

Eh, that’s a good question, I haven’t really thought about it. The story itself is final, it does have an ending. But we might continue it, I just have to think about it more. One thing we did wrong with the promotion of this album is that we didn’t send out the lyrics to the reporters together with the music in advance of the release. On this very album lyrics are very important, and if English is not your native language, it will be difficult for you to understand them from listening. It’s something neither the label nor ourselves thought about, and now I get a lot of questions about the lyrics. Yeah, the story has an ending, and it’s quite clear, but anyway there may be a way to go on with it.

You have released a very revealing video for “Hug You Hardcore”. Why did you decide on such a graphic concept for it? Aren’t you concerned that it may be banned on YouTube?

(laughs) To tell you the truth, I could care less if it’s banned on YouTube. I am a fan of classic splatter movies, things like “Saw”, I want to see the blade penetrating the flesh. And “Hug You Hardcore” is a song about anal sex, this is plain and clear. So, this time I called the video director and told him, “Forget about any restrictions that the record company may have. Just make it the most graphic you can”. However, when it was ready, he showed it to be and said, “This is as far as I can go. I cannot do anything more extreme than that”. So it’s much softer than the video that I wish it would be, but it’s not saying that I don’t like the video – I do like the video, and judging by the response (laughs), even this soft version is doing the trick. One thing that I am shocked about is not about the video but about the response that we have gotten from some fans. It’s like, “Really?! You are fans, and you don’t know me?! You don’t know my band, you don’t know what we’re about?!” The people who are not our fans are OK with it, and our fans are like (imitates whining), “Oh, I’m so disappointed with Lordi doing this. We want the friendly monsters back!” Here’s the wake-up call: we’ve never been friendly monsters. Yeah, we’re friendly human beings, but as characters, we’re not friendly. I mean, haven’t you read my lyrics on the past 8 albums? It’s all about gore, ripping people open and boiling kittens and shit. Haven’t you seen the comic book?! And then comes the biggest shock to me: it was not about the blood and the gore in the video, it was about the anal dildo! (everybody laughs) To me, that this the only part in the video – in addition to driving the car and eating the apple – that is normal. I’m like, “Hey, I hate to break this to you, but this stuff happens, that is just sex!” OK, that is a rape in the video, but that is supposed to be horror, and it seems to me that for the most people that were disgusted by the video, it was not that it’s rape, it was that somebody is fucking a dude in the ass. How the fuck is this shocking? Are you living in the 1950s? That is stuff that is really happening. The stuff with the chainsaw or eating people sometimes happens, too, but that is a crime. Fucking somebody in the ass is about making love, it’s not a crime. That was really a shocking part for me. I was like, “Really?! Is this the part you are shocked about?! What the hell?! Do they know our band at all?” It was like, “Hello, nice to meet you, fans, I’m Lordi!” (everybody laughs)

For us the most surprising part was that it’s still on YouTube, because we’ve seen much more timid videos taken down. Remember the Rammstein video for “Pussy”, it was banned from most of the sites…

Yeah, but then again, that was clever for Rammstein, because everybody wanted to see the video, and they went to porn sites to see the video. That was a win-win situation for lots of people. I can honestly say that this was not my intent, I don’t want it to be pulled out of YouTube, but then again, I don’t see anything wrong with the video, I don’t see anything that may make people go (imitates a terrified voice), “Ohh, it’s so extreme!” Yeah, it’s a horror video, it’s a little bit different than our normal Lordi videos, because there’s nothing supernatural happening there. It’s the first Lordi video with no monsters doing something; these are real people. It is just another subgenre of horror, this is like the movies like “Saw” or “Hostel”, those kind of movies. It’s just a different approach. And the bottom line is: if you don’t like it, you don’t have to watch it. It’s just one motherfucking music video, who the fuck cares?

Going back to the actual album - you worked on it with Nino Laurenne. How did you like this experience? And why did you stop working with American producer Michael Wagener, who produced two of your earlier records?

Well, we did two albums with Michael, he’s a great fucking dude! He’s a-w-e-s-o-m-e! But then again, he lives in the motherfucking United States of America! Even though it’s so fucking cool to be in Nashville for three months, hang around there and do all the stuff, the problem is that we’re not young anymore, we have other life, too, and sometimes you miss your local Finnish supermarket, your Finnish TV and shit. That’s why after making two albums with Michael we wanted to do the next one at home.

This album was actually supposed to be produced by Mikko Karmila, who did “Scare Force One” (2014). We had the studio booked, we had Mikko booked, and then my father died only a few weeks before the studio work was about to start. With me being an only child, and my mother being 80 years old, there were only two of us taking care of funeral arrangements and shit, and we had to postpone the studio. Then there was Christmas, then there was New Year, and we lost the booking of the studio, and the booking of Mikko, the producer. The next time Mikko was available was August, actually we would be in the studio right now if we would have waited. I lost nine weeks because of my dad’s passing and all the stuff that came after that, all the bureaucracy and that shit. So I called Nino and I said, “Dude, you gotta help us out. We have a tour planned for next fall, we have a release date planned, we have everything fucking planned, but now we have lost the studio and we have lost the fucking producer. Can you help us?” He and his band Thunderstone were just coming out with a new album and also a lot of gigs. But thank God, he managed to pull some strings and we got him to produce the album for us. All is well that ends well.

You design new costumes for bandmembers for each album. We’ve always wondered what happens to the older costumes?

The older costumes we save. Right now in Helsinki we have this extra-Lordinary exhibition with all old costumes put on mannequins, my paintings for album artworks, old stage sets, it’s all been there on display since June. Unfortunately the exhibition will end by the end of this month, it will only be there for a few weeks more. But we save everything, this stuff is basically in a warehouse. I hope that next summer we will be able to do another exhibition somewhere else to put it out.

You personally do so much for Lordi – you write music and lyrics, you sing, you design cover artworks and you design costumes. What is the part that you enjoy the most, and what is the most difficult part?

Oh, this is easy. I love writing new stuff, I love doing new costumes, I love when I’m creating something new – I love that part. That’s my favorite part, whether it’s making costumes, painting cover artworks, doing demos or recordings. The most difficult part for me is touring. It’s not to say that I don’t like touring, but for a person like me who likes creating something new all the time – as you might know, I write music all the time, I don’t have any breaks, I write too much – being on tour means that every night you’re supposed to re-do something you have already done. For example, we’re going on tour in a month from now, and the new songs on the new album are really new to you guys, but for us they’re old already. We have been listening to those songs for a year. I sometimes say that the whole idea of touring and performing music live can be compared to having a painter who has painted “Mona Lisa” going to the stage and there is an empty canvas and people are clapping and going like, “Let’s see how he’s gonna paint… Oh my god, it’s Mona Lisa again! Woow! Let’s see what comes next… Oh, it’s a new painting, I’ve never seen that before…” You are supposed to do it every time exactly the same, it’s like redoing the stuff you have already done. That for me mentally is the most difficult part. If you’re not creating anything new you’re just re-doing something you have already done many times.

Our next question is related to live shows, and it also harks back to Eurovision. It’s probably something from a long time ago, but we have wanted to ask this question for years. You might remember that during the public voting Russia gave Lordi 12 points, and it was very obvious that there was a huge interest in the band. We were expecting the band to come to Moscow very soon and play an arena. But apart from that Red Square performance of a few songs with playback nothing happened, and you only came to play a real show after a few years. Does it mean that the band was not approached by Russian promoters after Eurovision, or were there just scheduling problems or anything like that?

I don't remember much about it anymore. It is always the shitty thing that the fans, of course, would want us to play anywhere possible, but it’s never up to the band. It’s about the promoters, it’s about the booking agencies, it’s about money, it’s about schedules, it’s about all that. Any band would always wanna go out and play anywhere, the bigger venue the better, but it’s never up to the artist where you play. Ok, maybe U2 and Madonna can decide where they play, but when it comes to bands on a more normal level, you don’t do the decisions yourself, you are going where you are asked to come. You cannot just decide, “OK, we’re gonna play Russia now”. No, you are waiting for Russians to ask you to come, that’s how it is. And the same thing is with every city and every venue – you are invited to play. That’s the first half, and I gotta comment on the fucking Red Square thing. That was the single most awful moment in the history of the band. Do you know the story?

Yes, we read the statement that the band made shortly after that.

I don’t remember that statement. The thing was that we came to Moscow, and we had all our gear with us. (laughs) And then all of a sudden, about two hours before the show we are told that we have two options, either we play acoustic, or… (everybody laughs)

Wow, Lordi in acoustic?!

We were like, “No, we play live!” But they said, “No-no, not here. It’s either acoustic or playback”. We had never ever played acoustics, so we were like, “What the hell?! We have all our gear, we are here to play live!” “No-no-no, you have to go for playback then”. I said, “OK, why not?” The next thing is our crew is putting up a playback machine there, and they said, “No, we are not using that. We have a CD player here”. Our crew was like, “Are you fucking serious? You cannot use a fucking CD player!” And they said, “No, this is how we do it”. It was just a normal CD player on the stage, I was like, “Are you fucking kidding me?” And then everybody knows what happened – the CD got jumpy. I thought, “OK, I will now make this a victory”. The concert was also part of the G8 summit, it was against music piracy, and my mind was razor sharp, I thought that when it stops, I would say, “You know now that using pirated CDs ends up like this!” But guess what – I tried to speak through the microphone, and it was a fake microphone! It only had a light on, but it didn’t work, it wasn’t a real microphone. And when we walked off the stage, which was the most embarrassing moment in this band’s career, there was Claus Meine from Scorpions smiling wide as a motherfucking son, going like, “So you guys decided to do playback in Russia?” (everybody laughs) Then Scorpions went on stage and did acoustics.

Oh, a crazy story. Hope it never happens again.

It never will. Of course, on TV they always want you to do playback, they hate it on TV if you wanna play live, because a guitar string may break, something may fall, the drummer may drop his drumstick, everything might happen. That’s why they want you to use playback. But we will never ever again be in a situation when somebody is putting on a goddamn CD!

In the age of Instagram and cell phone cameras, is it difficult to keep the band members’ identity secret? Do you have to restrict yourself anyhow in order not to get caught by a camera eye?

It depends on a situation, but usually no. I’m an old fucker, I live in the 90s mentally. I hate the Internet, I don’t even know what the fuck Instagram or Twitter is, I’m not on Facebook, and I’ve never been there. I read my emails only if somebody calls me and tells me, “You have an email, you’d better read it”. I don’t see a problem with it. Yeah, sometimes at venues when you have a soundcheck you see somebody with a motherfucking camera phone taking photos, but then our crew will go and say, “Hey, delete those pictures”. Usually it’s just a mistake, somebody didn’t think about it, and it’s not so much of a problem. Of course, sometimes somewhere you have to be alert, let me put it that way. But personally, I don’t give a fuck.

Lordi on the Internet: http://www.lordi.fi

Special thanks to Irina Ivanova (AFM Records) for arranging this interview

Roman Patrashov, Natalie “Snakeheart” Patrashova
August 31, 2016
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