Tiia wrote:
An interview!
In German.. any volunteers to translate the most important parts at least?
Finally it is done. But beware: this is looong.
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[If Marko or Olli are reading this, they will surely say 'we never said that', but translating something to english that has probably been translated from english to german before always ends up strange. So sorry for any mistakes. -Marvin]
Poets of the Fall interviewed by inn-joy
Finland makes a name more frequently by it's intense music. Here's a new one:
"Poets of the Fall"
Their first album "Signs of Life" was and still is only available as import. With their second one they finally want to conquer Germany as well.
"Carnival of Rust" - Release Date 20.04.2007
Although not quite on schedule, we were able to talk to Marko the singer and Olli the guitarist - about the beginnings, the plans, the music and the inspiration for the poets.
inn-joy: "Poets of the Fall" - What is the meaning behind this name?
Marko: To sum it up, it means "Grace under Pressure". On the one hand there is this poetic, constructive side, i.e. you create, visualize or interpret something and make a poem out of it. Basically it means that we all go our own way and will eventually vanish, but we can all try to organize it as lovely as possible. That's what "Grace under Pressure" is about. "Poets of the Fall" - when you are falling anyways, you might as well make a poem out of it.
inn-joy: We thought "Fall" was referring to the season - autumn...
Marko: It does! It also refers to autumn, because this is our favorite season, as especially in Finland - and surely you got that here as well - the trees turn red and yellow and this is just so amazing and inspiring that it's a great time for writing songs. It entails a certain yearning, because spring and summer are over, winter is imminent and now it's fall and everything fades, all your emotions are rising in you and it's just a good time to make music.
inn-joy: What is it with the moth?
Marko: It has a similar meaning! It also represents the fall. It only has one night to live and somebody catches it, pins it down. Basically, you can say the moth means something like "Seize the day!"
However, in different cultures the moth has different meanings, but telling more about that would go beyond the scope here...
inn-joy: And the lolli? What's that about?
Marko: (laughs) That was one of our crazy ideas. Back then we were designing the cover for our first album that was only released in finland so far and had this plane-seat with the open ashtray. It would have been boring to put a cigarette in it. It was plain fun and lets you see from a different angle what could be there instead of just a cigarette in an ashtray.
Olli: I also believe that this says something about our consciousness - that we aren't that old. Somehow we are still childish. The lolli represents us more than a cigarette would..
Marko: Oh yes! It does! And I would never advertise cigarettes and I think it wouldn't be like us to put cigarette smoke on the cover.
Actually, the lolli didn't belong to the "Carnival of Rust"-Album either, but when I thought about the idea of carnival, I remembered the typical pictures from carnivals. There's the red and white colors and the spirals everywhere. Additionally there was the rust-aspect that is a contradiction like "Poets of the Fall" - "Carnival of Rust". So there is always an image of something positive and something negative.
inn-joy: Are you designing the covers yourselves?
Marko: Basically yes.
inn-joy: The whole band together?
Marko: Generally I do that! Usually I put the ideas down on paper and write something about it. Then I submit it to friends who do this professionally and know me well enough to know how I think, because if I try to do this on the computer by myself, I hardly succeed to create what I imagine. And I owe these friends a lot, because I want to see my ideas come true and with their help it is possible.
inn-joy: Working together brings us to the next question: "Poets of the Fall" is a three-man band, but on stage you are six. Are they always the same musicians? And what is behind all this?
Marko: They are always the same. There's Jake for second guitar, Jani playing Bass and Jari drumming. The six of us feel like a family, a band, but when it's about promotion or basic stuff, then it's just the three of us.
inn-joy: The others don't want to do this or aren't they allowed to?
Marko: (laughs) We don't let them, because we're assholes!
No, seriously - we have all been in bigger bands before and if everybody has the same right to say something in a decision, it gets chaotic, just like in the old saying "Too many cooks spoil the broth!" and nobody wants to eat that! There were three of us in the beginning and we decided to keep it that way. We are often asked about it, but that probably is because as a band we often have guest musicians, but if I would perform as solo-artist "marko" with a live band, nobody would care twoo oots about it.
Olli: This works quite good for us, because that way everyone has his function in the developing process of our music
Marko: Yes, we wanted to find people we'd like to work with and give them a chance in the band. So far, everything is going well...
Who knows, maybe one day this will change, so that there will be six people on the fourth or fifth album-cover. But right now they already are on our tour photos and on our Website.
inn-joy: Let's go back to yur beginnings. Did it all start with the computer game "Max Payne 2" and "Late Goodbye" - the song you contributed to it?
Marko: 2003 was the year when Olli and me were sitting in the car and thinking about what we wanted to do with our lives. We wanted to give the 'Make a band'-idea another chance before we become doctors or lawyers or something like that. So we were sitting in the car with a piece of paper on our laps and were making a plan, a real 'business-plan'. (laughs)
We didn't have any clue about this, we just had these ideas and visions and wrote them down and from that day we started making music together. We met Captain when we were doing "Late Goodbye" and asked him if he wanted to join the band and so we were three.
inn-joy: So the story of the "Poets" began with "Late Goodbye"? The band didn't exist before?
Marko: Yes, "Late Goodbye" was the beginning. Before that, the band only existed on our business-plan. (laughs)
Olli and me have been writing songs for two years before that, but we weren't the "Poets of the Fall" until the three of us met, wrote the song "Late Goodbye" and thought of a name for our band. We had written down hundreds of names, until one day I wrote "Poets of the Fall" and Olli just said "This is it!".
inn-joy: Why did you go this way, via a computer game and the internet?
Marko: Well, the point was that none of us had money, so we weren't able to promote our band in any way and this was a crazy plan, because I knew the creators of "Max Payne 2" from my childhood, Sam Lake (storywriter, ed. note) and some others. We're good friends and were hanging out together a lot and that's how it happened - you probably heard the story - Sam and me were driving home one evening and we were spinning this idea that it would surely be cool to make a song for his computer game. Three weeks later - I had already forgotten all of this again - Sam had been asking the company and asked me if I couldn't write a few songs and we could talk to the guys once more. I wrote three songs out of which Olli and I chose two I presented to Sam and "Late Goodbye" was the one they chose. The song was first sent to Remedy ("Remedy Entertainment" finnish computer game designers, ed. note) and afterwards to the Publishers in New York who were thrilled by the song and wanted to put it on the radio, but we preferred having it in "Max Payne 2". That really was a great start and a clever marketing stratey for a band that had nothing to show yet.
inn-joy: Right, that wasn't the typical course, something different for a change.
Marko: No, that wasn't typical at all, it has never been done before. I've heard Avril Lavigne has had a similar history, but besides that it was a quite unique marketing stategy.
inn-joy: Have you written "Late Goodbye" together with Sam Lake?
Marko: Sam gave me a poem or rather a mess of words he had scribbled on a note. I read it and instantly had some ideas and a melody that started playing in my head when I read some lines like "we keep driving into the night" and so I built the song from Sam's words and phrases and added some more, until it became "Late Goodbye". It was a very quick creative process, because it didn't take me 10 minutes to finish the songtext and another 15 minutes later I had the melody for it which I played to Olli on the guitar the next day.
inn-joy: So you always write the text for your songs first and then the melody or does this happen the other way around as well?
Marko: That depends on where the idea is from. Sometimes it's some kind of musical idea that gives you a melody to which you write the text. Then some chunks of text come to your mind and you try to remember what you were feeling when you wrote the melody and you try to put that into words.
some other time you have a complete text and we try to find a melody for it together like we did with "Maybe tomorrow is a better day"; that was a song where the words came first and we then tried to find a melody that fits.
inn-joy: So you are the band's songwriter?
Marko: Olli and me write most of the songs together.
inn-joy: And Captain is in charge of technicak stuff?
Marko: That's right. He takes on arranging and producing the songs. Usually Olli and me have the ideas for our songs and write some sort of acoustic version together - songtext plus guitar melody - which we then take too captain, so to speak his living room is our sound studio, arrange the song, record it and mix it. In most cases we meet some more times to enhance and improve the song until it is in a final form that satifies us.
inn-joy: The three of you have different musical backgrounds and histories. Marko, you were and are a Rock singer, Olli, you are a Jazz guitarist and Captain is from the Industrial-Trance scene. Does this become important in influencing your music as "Poets of the Fall"?
Marko: Of course! It's teamwork. How many times did I have a text and tell the guys "Hey, I'd like to sing it like this. Olli, what would you play to that?" And Olli plays a melody in his manner on the guitar and captain usually adds some of his ideas that make the songs more interesting or just make them sound differently.
Olli: Yes, that really is an ineresting way of working, because he simply has - because of his background - a different view of the things, the music, our songs. So he often has completely crazy ideas for the songs which fit right in in most cases.
inn-joy: Olli, is it hard for you or Captain to change Marko's ideas? Is he hard to convince?
Olli: No, not at all. It usually is very easy to...
Marko: ...talk me into something? (laughs)
Olli: (laughs) Yes, exactly! No, seriously, since he's very open-minded it's very easy to talk to him and work on ideas with him, change them. That helps a lot in the process of writing songs.
Marko: (laughs and whispers) He's just saying that...
Olli: (laughs) no, it has always been easy for the two of us to work together creatively.
inn-joy: So you always decide everything democratic so that the result - your music - always conforms to all your ideas?
Marko: Basically, yes. But now and then there's also situations where we don't completely agree - then I have the final say. Sometimes this is necessary or some things would never get done.
Olli: Oh yes, that's right.
inn-joy: Which bands or singers would you call your idols?
Marko: For me that would be bands like "U2", "Metallica", "Def Leppard", "Pearl Jam", Alice in Chains"
Olli: I used to listen to basically the same bands, "Pearl Jam", "Rage against the Machine" and much of the Grunge stuff that was rising back then, like "Nirvana". I guess in the 90s we all listened to the same CDs. But I have listened to a lot of Jazz as well.
Marko: Oh, I also was a great "Prince"-fan
Olli: Well, while we're at it, I have listened to a lot of "George Michael", "Madonna" and this pop stuff. Captain on the other hand had his classic CDs...
Marko: Yes, he can probably sing any opera spontaneously. (laughs)
Olli: Besides that he also has a lot of Progressive-Rock especially from the 70s and 80s, like "Pink Floyd" and - he keeps talking about that - ELO (Electric Light Orchestra, british Rockband of the 1970s and 1980s who combined their music with classic string arrangements, ed. note)
inn-joy: Is that also the kind of music you're listening to at the moment?
Marko: Yes, we basically still listen to bands like those.
Olli: I also listen to a lot of gutar music.
Marko: Partly, I've stopped listening to music with someone singing, except that person does it very good, I often listen to soundtracks, like those made by Hans Zimmer. He made the "Black Hwk Down" theme, great composer. And I also like Vangelis, this solemn, spheric music you can always discover newly.
inn-joy: What inspires you to write your music and especially the lyrics?
Marko: Life. All our lives and experiences. The lives of our friedns, of our family, of our bus driver (laughs) - whatever happens that draws our attention, touches us.
inn-joy: Do you also write finnish texts?
Marko: If somebody wants it, maybe in cooperation with another finnish artist, yes. But for "Poets of the Fall" this won't happen, it never entered the equation.
Olli: Writing english songtexts feels natural for us, because we have always been listening to english music.
inn-joy: Ever since 2004, you have been piled with awards for your music. Why are you taking off internationally only now?
Marko: Well, that's mostly because we have our own, independent record label, so we don't have a contract with one of the bigger labels. That means that things don't go so fast, because on the one hand we don't have that much money to invest in our marketing. Of course it would be easier to promote us on TV or put posters in the streets and record shops as soon as we release an album. On the other hand it takes longer to build commercial relations far enough that you can for example perform at festivals like Rock am Ring [big german rock festival. -Marvin]. You have to know who to talk to or you don't get a chance to play. When you're with a bigger label, they do that for you and you play in front of some thousand people as a newcomer and that's how it all begins. But we'll have to make one step at a time. First it was Finland, now we will go for Sweden, Denmark and especially Germany.
inn-joy: How do you look out at your - hopefully soon-to-come - success, when you are known and recognized more and more? Are you looking forward to it or are you seeing it more skeptical? Are you afraid of it?
Marko: I'm looking forward to it. I think this is something you have to deal with when you have a public job like this and want to be famous. I would not want to be on every front page, especially not the tabloids. But I think dealing with publicity is a part of our job as "pop(ular) musicians".
inn-joy: Is the support tour for "Sunrise Avenue" some sort of test for an upcoming own tour?
Marko: Basically it is. But we have been getting requests from fans to play in Germany for a long time. And since Germany is a big and highly populated country, a support tour is a good idea because there is a great audience that - even if they aren't there because of us - still hears us, so things can go their way. Otherwise we would be playing for 10, 20 people in some small clubs which would be very expensive. It still is, but it's worth it. And it's more fun to accepted by such a wide crowd.
inn-joy: So you prefer playing in front of a larger crowd over playing for a smaller group of people?
Marko: We have already played before crowds of some 10000 people, for example at festivals, and we have been to clubs with less than 100, but it doesn't matter for how many people you play, as long as there is one person who wants to be there and listen, it is enough to motivate you to give your best. And with huge masses like the 40-50000 people last year at the biggest finnish festival it's the same. It simply is an award and a gratification by itself when there's so many people who accept you and your music and applaud.
Olli: But it also is a very emotional experience to perform in front of a smaller groupp of people, when you can almost see every single face. You can see the emotions move, from you to the audience and back, because it's very intimate, very united, that's just great.
inn-joy: Let's tlak about your albums. Your second one, "Carnival of Rust" will be released here first. Why is it that way aroound and will the first one be released later?
Marko: Well, we released both of our albums "Signs of Life" and "Carnival of Rust" one after another very fast although we were advised against it. Our first album was in the Top Ten for a year and still was there when we released the second one - so we had two albums at the same time in the Top Ten. Then of course we started promoting the second one and now we're just continuing this here. The first album will be released here as well. That's called "Soft Release". We won't be promoting it, but it will be available here as well.
Olli: This way we can release and promote our third album, if we are fortunate enough to be able to release another one, in all countries at the same time, that would be great. Had we released "Signs of Life" first, we would be one album behind schedule, that would not have been good timing.
Marko: Actually, it isn't that uncommon to handle it like that when a band first has national success. Sunrise Avenue started from Germany and had a great success, we started in Finland, so Germany is our second step which is very good, because it could hav been that we have success only with our fourth or fifth album and couldn't come to Germany until then.
inn-joy: You have written more than 100 songs already. Does that mean we can expect the third Poets-album soon?
Marko: We already started working on a new album, but it will only be released somewhen in 2008.
inn-joy: First in Finland?
Marko: Hopefully everywhere at the same time.
inn-joy: We have heard that your vidoe to "Carnival of Rust" is the best finnish music video of all time. Is that right?
Marko: (laughs) Yes, that's right.
inn-joy: Oh, then congratulations.
Marko: Thank you! (laughs) This is somehow strange...
inn-joy: And the video was your idea?
Marko: Yes, it was an idea we had together with the director. We were sitting together, drinking coffee and talking about the song and I told him what it is about, how I saw some things, how I did some things... He had some ideas, I had some ideas , he had even more ideas and made a script out of that, then we added some things and finally we had the "real" script.
He has already done three of our videos - "Lift", "Carnival of Rust" and now "Locking up the Sun". All in all working with him is quite procreative.
inn-joy: The "Carnival of Rust" video seems a bit gloomy...
Marko: Yes, I think dark fantasies are cool...
inn-joy: ...but it causes strong feelings and emotions.
Marko: Exactly. It just pushes the right buttons on many people. It obviously does, because after all they voted it the best finnish music video of all time. This is such a privilege...
In the next video I'd like to do something with black-and-white sketches.
inn-joy: Your music is often called "Alternative Rock". What genre would you yourself fit your music in?
Marko: Maybe "Melodic Rock" or something like that. Some people call it "Alternative Rock", "NuMetal" or "Neo-Grunge", others call it "Pop-Rock". We'd call it an intense emotional music that catches you and doesn't let you go anymore.
inn-joy: Maybe from an artist's point of view it is better to not be too fixed...
Marko: Well, for marketing purposes it's better if you can be related to one genre. But as artists we don't want that, because this would restrict our musical possibilities.
"Poets of the Fall" are simply "Poets of the Fall".
[...]
Interview: Thea Brenner, Marc-André Müller
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well, let's hope someone will translate it 
Thanks in advance for translating this article 
, unbelievable 