(translated by Jariq)
1. Fire
Fire begins like a flame flickers in the wind. Then we see what happens if you leave the flame flicker without anyone guarding it. The fire will spread everything, burning everything. Luckily it leaves behind the ash richened soil, so that you can start over again. The song has from the start a fresh sound and feeling to it. It was kind of obvious that the album starts with Fire.

2. Sorry Go 'Round
A funny song. Not like a joke kind of funny, but good stuff. It has been made with quite a rough hand. I'm really looking forward to playing this song in a gig. The name of the song refers to a merry go' round found in amusement parks. it symbolically and ironically refers to our planet and to its' doings. What comes to the message, things aren't always what they seem.

3. Carnival Of Rust
Carnival Of Rust is basically a love song. It's slightly bitter though. In the middle of all the grotesqueness that the "I" in the song seems to take part, is found that one person for who all the evil can be endured. The title song for the album and the first single. A video is getting ready for this song.

4. Locking Up the Sun
Meaning that it becomes completely dark. I bump into this same theme very often. There's a trivial problem. Almost insignificant. A fingernali broke. Someone hasn't eaten for six hours and or people get frustrated even when they don't know what's wrong, and so on. Quite quickly the trivial problem becomes enormous and causes more problems. Of course the fault and the guilty must be found. Ridicioulusly often the fault and the guilty are found in someone else. When the problem has been defined, shouldn't someone solve it? Someone else than me. Someone has to be guilty..




(translated by Tiia)

6. King of Fools

I think everyone of us can sometimes recognise themselves in the title of this song, at least when you're speaking out your own opinions. The song was made in some of the recording sessions we had with Ollie. His new idea at that time was simply such a great one the song just "happened to us". I instantly knew what to sing and how, and what kind of chorus it would have.

We just had to rush out to get our old tape recorder and get the idea saved. (Some random facts about the old recorder here )
Luckily, these days, I've got mp3 players and such for these things. I try to keep all the new stuff in one place, tho, so it can be found easily when needed.

Unfortunately I'm sometimes a bit sloppy with the electronic devices and a new song can easily be deleted accidentally. Last week I just lost a f'cking great song, that was supposed to be one of the songs for the 3rd album. I still have the lyrics in a notebook, and I think I can remember the melody do as I've been singing it out loud a lot lately.. maybe the song can still be saved.

7. Roses

Roses has a totally new Poets-feeling to it, altho as a song, it's quite simple. ON of those "three chord miracles". This song I've been listening to even after leaving the studio for the day. The lyrics have more story-like narration to them and the music flows and winds like a stream.

8. Desire

This one's about the dangers of seduction , and the fact that no-one can really live without it. I mean, without some sort of passion. An easy-going unplugged song. We actually made a big "orchestra version" of this too, but in the end, just wanted to keep it simple.

9. All the Way / 4U

Well, a man needs to soften up a bit every now and then. It's one of those rainy day songs, but I think it was originally written on Midsummer day last year, as the sun was shining. A beautiful song.

10. Delicious

This song has something to it, that makes your throat tickle and makes you wanna sing. The song is about those two things, that not only fascinate people, but also sometimes slap them in the face. The dark and the mysterious things: "life & love".

11. Maybe Tomorrow is a Better Day

I wrote this back in the 80's. It didn't get out of the drawer until I tried it with one of Ollie's guitar riffs and notice, that the melody and the lyrics fit like {insert a bit of a rude finnish saying here}. And the song wouldn't be what it is without Captain's effort. The song was originally published on the internet as a gift to our fans on Xmas 2004, but since people have been asking about it constantly, we just had to publish it "officially" now.

12. Dawn

The sentimental Dawn begins as of nowhere and rises up like smoke, and grows bigger as it gets higher. The song is about the relation between the past and the future. The message of the song can be heard in the sentence: "Do not mourn what is gone / greet the dawn". The song originated back when me and Ollie had to do some soundchecking for a tv show. Since that it has grown a lot. The lyrics were made a long time after that, and they have some really personal meanings to me.

Oh, and the scans can be found here - with some new photos! (Hope this is ok with you Spiraali )

4. Locking Up the Sun
Meaning that it becomes completely dark. I bump into this same theme very often. There's a trivial problem. Almost insignificant. A fingernali broke. Someone hasn't eaten for six hours and or people get frustrated even when they don't know what's wrong, and so on. Quite quickly the trivial problem becomes enormous and causes more problems. Of course the fault and the guilty must be found. Ridicioulusly often the fault and the guilty are found in someone else. When the problem has been defined, shouldn't someone solve it? Someone else than me. Someone has to be guilty..

Now I'll have to wait for Finland to wake up for translations. :\

Poets of the Fall – Full speed in the middle of the road

Their first album was released last January and is still in the top40 album chart. Even when the huge success of the debut album doesn’t show any kind of fading, the band is releasing their new album already in the beginning of April. Like the first album, the new one, called Carnival of Rust, is filled with melodic rock songs which are like made for radio play.
– We were just so enthusiastic about making new music, explains Marko Saaresto when it comes to the rapid releasing of the new album.


Signs of Life, the first album of Poets of the Fall, a band from Helsinki, has sold almost 30 000 pieces. But to whom? Noone seems to know. Are the buyers of the album those listeners of Radio City that don’t like heavy? Or the rock lovers who fell in love with the energetic on-stage performances during some of the 70 gigs last year? Or perhaps those, who voted the singer Mark to be "Mr. Pop" in the last years voting of Stara.fi?

Whatever the truth, the thing that triggered off the popularity of the band was the song Late Goodbye, which the scriptwriter of the producing company Remedy, Sami Järvi, chose as the song of the credits of Max Payne 2. The ones addicted to computer games probably aren’t the main target group for them, but cause of the game, the band got loads of publicity.

Late Goodbye, released in fall 2004 was played a lot on radios and people seemed to like the song. – At that point we had loads of discussions with big record companies but they had already much stuff going on and they couldn’t sign us. So marketing was pretty much handled by the song playing on radio and me and Ollie running around doing as much interviews as we could. Finally someone told us that we are a band about which a huge fuss is made already before the album is out. We got the word out. Still it was really unbelievable that the album went to number one in the charts. I still don’t quite get it, Mark wonders.

As we are writing this, Signs of Life has spent 47 weeks in the Finnish Top40 chart. From other albums on the list only the album of PMMP has been there longer. Both bands also got some awards in the yearly Emma-gala where people in the Finnish music business pat each other on the back.

Already four popular singles have been released from Signs of Life and the band could have milked the album even more if they would have wanted to. Instead, Ollie, Mark and Captain have recorded the second album which will be out already on early April. Musicwise, the Poets are driving pretty close to the white line but the speed is high.

In Carnival of Rust you will find the Poets of the Fall who have gotten rid of their teething problems. Music rocking in the spirit of REM, Pearl Jam and Live, for example, is sentimental and manly, all in one package, but made much more sure-handedly than in the first album.

The cracking title song will be released as the first single from the new album. If you have wondered why the 35-year old Mark has been running around with a cap on his head all the time, it has nothing to do with losing hair, he just lost his eyebrows when shooting the new video.

- Our old songs are playing so well on the radio that we are a bit nervous if they will start to play the new single. Stay is on air a lot at the moment and it’s advertised a lot as "new music from Poets of the Fall". But it’s from our first album, which has been out since over a year. So we are a bit anxious if they are going to find this new album.

- It might have been wise to wait with the album till fall but there is nothing to be done anymore now that the gigs and all have been sold and so on. We really didn’t think that the first album would stay so popular this long. And now that the second album is ready, you can’t sit on it, you’ve got to get it out to the stores as soon as possible.

- We just had this great urge to start making new music and so we did. We didn’t think in October that the songs from the first album could still be playing.

Enjoy if you can

8. Desire

This one's about the dangers of seduction , and the fact that no-one can really live without it. I mean, without some sort of passion. An easy-going unplugged song. We actually made a big "orchestra version" of this too, but in the end, just wanted to keep it simple.

ÜBERST!!!

The pages can be found here - with some nice photos!

Page1
Page2
Page3
Page4
Page5
Mark's comments on the songs part 1
Mark's comments on the songs part 2

What has Mark done to his face! Where's all the rugged man hair!?!

No orchesta version? O well.

I would love to see that as a single's b-side. Not likely, but one can always hope. =P

Actually, Mark says "massive orchestration", which in practice means "big", not necessary an "orchestral version" per se. Just pointing this out in case they will actually release it some day.

whats up with gravity?