Swallow The Sun
There Is Always Hope

19.12.2019

The title of this interview would have until recently sounded very weird from the mouths of Finland’s Swallow the Sun, whose back catalogue is frequented with doom death pieces filled with anguish and despair right up to the brim. And then it got even worse, with cancer taking the life of Aleah Stanbridge, partner and inspiration of the band’s leading songwriter and guitaris Juha Raivio, as if to confirm the utter darkness of human existence that Swallow The Sun so convincingly express. Nevertheless, this year the Finns released “When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light” that impressed me very much with the beauty of music and depth of lyrics – and with turning out not as torturous, as one would expect given the circumstances. That is why I jumped at the opportunity to talk to Mikko Kotamaki (vocals) and Juho Raiha (guitar) at the Tuska Open Air festival, taking up the very last available slot in the band’s tight interview schedule. We did not have much of the time left, but we still managed to discuss the new album, as well as the previous album, and prog rock roots of the band.

Let’s firstly talk about your latest album, “When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light”. I enjoyed it a lot, it’s my favorite Swallow The Sun album, and I think it’s one of the best releases this year. Can you briefly introduce it to our readers please?

Mikko: It’s my favorite album by us as well, I’m really happy how it turned out. It was a really nice album to do after all the work with the triple album (“Songs From The North I, II & III”, 2015), it was pretty easy to make compared to that. (laughs) Of course, we have a new line-up…

Juho: I was just about to say that it’s the first album that I am on, so it’s a special one for me as well. Even though the story behind it is quite tragic, it kind of came together really easily. It’s full of emotion for the whole band, I’d say. I think it turned out just the way we wanted it to turn out, but it was effortless to make.

As far as I know, Juha wrote not only all the music, but also most of the lyrics for the new album, and as you have just said, it is dedicated to a real personal tragedy of his. How do you feel when you go through this very personal experience of your bandmate while singing these words?

Mikko: Well, I always try not to think about it too much. Of course, as a band we’ve been together for a long time, and we’ve been friends for many years. It’s kind of like… I don’t think about it at all, I know Juha very well, he’s my good friend, so it’s very easy to relate to that. But you cannot think about it too much, otherwise it would probably be impossible to sing those songs.

At the same time, in my opinion, this new album is way lighter and not so hopeless as your previous records. Instead of the loss of hope, which many expected this album to portray, it carries some hope instead. Can you kind of comment on that?

Mikko: I remember the first time I heard these songs. I immediately got that feeling that there’s a little positive side in these songs as well. I have no idea how he was able to write the album that way, but yeah… We are not 18 anymore, we are much older nowadays than when we started the band, so I think the overall sound and songs are more mature.

Juho: I think Juha has an exceptional talent of pouring his feelings into the music. Whatever he is feeling, the music reflects that perfectly. The first time I heard the songs, I felt a little lighter, because it felt like there is hope after all. If you go through a tragedy of that sort, there still is something positive after it. Most of these songs have this quality that is between light and dark. There is still a glimmer of hope through the music, so I personally got a really positive feeling when I first heard the songs. I think it’s Juha’s ability to pour his feelings into the music, and I appreciate this greatly.

For me the album also feels like it’s influenced by some art rock stuff from the 70s, which is something Swallow The Sun never had before.

Mikko: I think those influences have always been there. Juha is a big fan of 70s progressive rock music, and our background has always been somewhere there. Maybe we were just more capable to do it this way for the first time. Yeah, it’s a little lighter album than the previous ones… Maybe we finally learned how to play! (everybody laughs)

Overall the keyboards on this album became more important as compared to the previous ones. As far as I know you have a new keyboard player (Jaani Peuhu) who is also doing some singing parts. How do you divide the vocal duties now?

Mikko: Well, he has a way higher voice than me, so it comes out really easily – I do the lower parts, and he does most of the higher backing vocals. Our voices pretty much work like that together. There’s a lot of new things in the keyboards as well. He has a very different style than Aleksi (Munter) used to have. This time we also used real violins and strings as well, so there are like two violins and two cellos on every song.

And Jaani was a producer of some of your previous records, so he’s into the material as well…

Mikko: Yeah.

Juho: Jaani has been doing lots and lots of different music styles and genres, he has a really varied background in music. He’s a really good musician, he knows his stuff, and his specialty is in producing stuff, how to paint it like a picture, so he was a perfect complement to all the guitar stuff, it really blended together.

I was just about to ask you about the recording process, especially about guitars.

Juho: We gathered with Juha, just us two, and we spent a week and a half or two weeks in one space from dawn till dusk, we just fully immersed ourselves in guitar recordings. We were living and breathing that recording for that whole time. It was really intense. One nice thing about the recordings was that we basically tried every single part, we thought which one of ours’ playing is more appropriate to this or that part. We both tried to play all the parts and we matched what style is the best, because we have such a different background in music. It was really nice to try out different things, and the guitar player who sounded the best for that particular part always played that part. When we started recording the guitars, we didn’t know what would come out on the other end, we just went with the flow. It was a totally different way of working to what I’m used to, but it was really nice, I enjoyed it.

Did you do any preproduction?

Juho: Yeah, some, but not too much. Juha had all the ideas laid out, he had the songs ready, he knew what he wanted, and we kind of used that as a blueprint for everything. But we weren’t too afraid to change stuff up if we came up with better ideas or better sounds or anything. It was a really nice process, even though it was laborious. We basically did nothing else but recorded guitars and ate through that period, so it was really intense.

Are you both satisfied with the feedback to the album and reception that the new stuff gets?

Mikko: Yeah, absolutely. It’s been almost overwhelming. It’s definitely our most successful album so far, we can’t be happier.

And what are your favorite songs on the album?

Mikko: I like “Here On The Black Earth”.

Juho: It’s a really difficult question. (laughs) It keeps changing. “Upon The Water” is probably one of the best ones.

I also like “Stone Wings”.

Juho: This one’s among my favorites as well. At the moment, at least, but it keeps changing.

Your previous album – why was it divided into three parts? Did you have all the songs ready for the album, and then you divided them into three parts, or did you write every part separately?

Mikko: That album is the one where you can realize that we have our background in the 70s progressive music, when albums were huge. Actually we had the idea for many years that at some point we wanna do an album like that. And then the record label was crazy enough to release it. Yeah, it’s pretty stupid to release an album like that, but the record label said, “If you guys really wanna do that, you can do it, and we’re gonna release that”. That was a fucking rough album to record and everything, never fucking ever we’re gonna do it again. But in the end it’s like… It’s in three parts, and they’re really different, but all the elements we always had in our music are still there – they are just divided into three parts. I think every one of these parts sounds like us.

As far as I remember, you played Russia last time when you were promoting this triple album.

Mikko: That’s right, we played St. Petersburg and Moscow.

How were those shows? Do you remember anything interesting?

Mikko: Oh, that was a little bit rough because it was about a week after Juha’s girlfriend had died, and Juha couldn’t play those songs, so we got a replacement guitar player for those. It was a little bit rough, I remember.

Do you have any plans to come to Russia again?

Mikko: Yeah, absolutely, it would be nice, but let’s see if there’s any promoters who are interested to put us there.

Juho, have you been to Russia?

Juho: I’ve been to Russia a few times, but not with Swallow The Sun, with my previous bands. It’s always fun to come back, so I’m looking forward to it!

To wrap it up, could you say something inspiring for your audience in Russia and for the readers of our webzine?

Juho: There’s always hope.

Swallow The Sun on the Internet: http://www.swallowthesun.net/

Special thanks to Hetta Hyttinen for arranging this interview

Interview by Pavel Vlasov
Photos by Margarita Stefankova
June 28, 2019
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