– Hello, thanks for your time. What’s now going on in the TAROT’s camp?
We just finished our Finnish MMXI tour and we are starting summer festival time right now. We
gonna play festivals here and there in Finland. For example there will be a great moments to play in Sauna Open Air with Queensryche, Accept and Judas Priest as well as we gonna do the Bloodstock in Brits Motörhead as a headliner later this summer.
The Autumn is bit open this far, but we will to the touring as much as it’s possible.

 

– TAROT has been now around for 25 years, which are a lot actually. How could you sum up these 25 years in just a few lines?
How do I put 25 years in the few lines? We’ve done extremely long career, compared to many bands today, lot of ups and downs, mostly downs, he he! Seriously, it’s been fun to start the career almost as teenagers and grow to the middle aged angry guys, playing heavy metal more than half of our life. It’s really something to be proud of.

 

– And what have been both the best and worst moments for the band during these years?
In almost 30 years cereer, there are so many up and downs, it’s impossible to remember all and actually some of the downs have really good reasons to be forgotten. We have had bad record deals as well as bad booking agencies. Even our first guitarist fucked up things badly and had to get kicked out.
One of the highlights to us was getting the first real recording deal back in -85, you cannot forget your first time, he, he! Nothing is the same anymore.

 

– You have recently re-released «Spell of Iron MMXI». How has been its feedback so far?
Some older fans are too puritans to accept the remake, but most of the fans took it like the old hits in the fresh.
From the foreign countries all feedback has been really great this far.

 

– I guess the main meaning of this album is honouring your 25th anniversary but, why did you choose to re-record your debut album? What did or does «Spell of Iron» mean to you?
It was our first album and have special place in our hearts. We did our last studio album GOL just year ago and actually it was only ten months old in the MMXI release day. obviously it was far too early to release the new studio album. But we needed to celebrate TSOI 25th anniversary somehow and re-making it sounded great for us and it had crossed our minds by many years, so now it was time to do it for real.

 

– As I said, tracks have been re-recorded. What changes have you done to them?
We did a lot of changes. Now it’s kinda straight continuum of the last studio album GOL. It shows how we are involved our style in 25 years and now the songs are arranged in the way we are now. We tried to keep in same emotions there, what we did on the original. We updated tempos, tunes and keys. Simplified some parts, added the keyboards in every song and split the lead vocals with Marco and Tommi.
So now it has all we are made of.

 

– I think you have updated the original album’s sound to the today’s soung but, how have you managed that?
Easy as pie, he he! We got knowhow, equipment and skills to do all by ourselves now on. Why to do it sounding like the original? We did re-mastered package of our first six, few years ago and now it was the time to do re-make, sounding like it is continuum of our late albums.

 

– Has the production process had something to do with that? I read production was done by the own band at Janne’s studios. How does this benefit you?
Actually we have done all recordings of our albums at Jannes studio, from To live Forever to Gravity Of Light albums, except The Spell Of Iron, Follow Me Into Madness and For The Glory Of Nothing. Most of the mixings as well, so it was easy to do all at Jannes again.
We haven’t use the producers, only on original TSOI, FMIM and FGON albums, rest we have produced by ourselves and hopefully this is the line to keep.

 

– The cover has bee modified as well, what can you tell us about it? I specially noticed you have changed de Tarot card for a credit card… does this represent something?
It’s inside joke, now we are so filthy rich, we changed the Tarot card to credit card, he he!
Don’t take this seriously, we are not rich really, we just get along.

 

– I read the cover artwork was done by Marco, how positive is this for you as a band?
It was bros idea and he came up with this joke. Our artwork is done by Toxic Angel (Janne Pitkanen) since Suffer Our Pleasures album and we trusted him this as well. Great job indeed.

 

– The band’s line-up has always been quite stable, does this help or somethings can make things harder?
Surely it does, but we’ve been together so long,it’s like marriage, sounds idiotic… ok, we can get everything back on trail easily, if something is wrong.
We trust each other and we know each others abilities, so it’s really easy to go and play with these guys.

 

– If I’m not wrong, this is your first album with Nuclear Blast. How did you come up with them? I guess you may got offer from other different labels…
No no.. you’re wrong by that. Our first NB release was Crows Fly Black and all since, Undead Indeed Live, GOL and TSOI MMXI. We are very satisfied the situation with them and hopefully gonna do the next one by them as well.
When things went bad with Universal, after SOP album, Toni and Ewo from our management, Kingfoo Entertainment, had the connections with NB guys and they wanted us in the company. It was easy decision to us to do.

 

– Having Marco in your line-up, who also plays in NIGHTWISH, is a handicap for the band or the contrary? As I guess he may have a busy schedule but, in the other hand, NIGHTWISH is a worlwide well-known band, so maybe that’s good in terms of «promotion»…
It has done us a lots of good, but on the other hand, many metal fans has give Nightwish a try because of Marco. Nw in Finland is somehow for female audience and boys are looking for more heavier metal. By Marco success we have got fans from Latin America, for example and better following of younger girls, he he!
Pleases my old black heart, he he!

 

– How has changed the Metal scene in Finland during these 25 years? Back then we could find Heavy Metal bands as OZ and now it seems Finland has a strong Metal scene, with different genres and big bands…
Yeah… back in early days there were only us and few more metal bands around, Stone, Zero Nine and OZ, but they went to Sweden, so I can’t say they are Finnish band anymore. Now we have hundreds of metal groups I really can’t say who is who. This have been on since internet came around and digital recording systems, they made possible to spread the word and music to anywhere and it’s easy to record decent demo to spread. Don’t get me wrong, I consider this all great to us or another pros, but there are lots of real shit going around by these tools.

 

– What Finnish bands could you suggest us?
Personally I’m in to Amorphis, Children Of Bodom, Nightwish, hmm too obvious…The Man-Eating Tree and industrial metal band called Turmion Kätilöt.

 

– After all these years into the music world, what’s left for TAROT? Any aims to get?
There are lots of places and countries to play in, where we haven’t been before. We surely want to keep our level as high as it’s been by these years, so there are many goals still to reach.

 

– And finally, what are your near-future plans? Any tour to celebrate these 25 years? Anyway, I guess there may be many tracks off the album in your set…
As I said we do festival gigs on summer and autumn is bit open, but we gonna play as many gigs as its possible.
On Sauna Open and Tuska Open festivals, we’ll play MMXI gigs, so there are all the tracks to play then. About future I can say that Nw is gonna activate during next year and it means we have to slow down for awhile. It’s been busy for us almost two years, so it will be the time to compose the new material for the next Tarot album.

 

– That’s all, thank you once more for your time. If you now want to add some final words; last lines are yours.
Feet in the mud, fists in the sky!

 


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