PROFANE OMEN (Eng.)
– Hello, thanks for your time. Soon before releasing your new «Destroy!»; what are you guys currently up to?
Hi! At the moment we’re touring in the baltic countries and I’m making this interview in a venue in Riga, Latvia. Things are great and the tour is going smoothly. In the meantime we’re making the promo for our upcoming release “Destroy!”, which we are overwhelmingly excited about.
– First of all, I would like you to start making some history of PROFANE OMEN.
The band was originally formed in 1999 but after several line-up changes the current form has been around more or less since 2005. Last autumn we had a change in the line-up when our bassist Tomppa decided to call it quits. It was more like a mutual decision and we needed to clear the table before going to the studio to record “Destroy!”. At the moment we’re touring with a session bassist, Antti Seroff who also nailed the basslines to the new album. Back in the early days we were doing much more melodic metal than nowadays but with a natural process of developing our style our material became to show a much more aggressive form, all this happened naturally. All our three albums have been the Profane Omen we want it to be; hard hitting, grooving mad metal with a punk attitute.
– And how did you come up with that name for the band?
The name came from our ex-guitarist Janne Tolonen and his idea was that a metal band should have a name that’s mean and sinister. After he left the band in 2001, we were thinking about changing it but we felt that we already had some ground in the metal underground of Finland with that name so we
kept it.
– Getting a bit into this record, I think is really blasting, quite aggressive, heavy and fast. How could you say the album’s title fit with the whole record?
The title of the album wasn’t easy to decide and there were about 20 names in the table at first. But after we heard the mixes and the mastering the name “Destroy!” started sound like the right one. The soundscape of the album is very heavy and hard and it fitted as the title. We spiced it up by dropping an old Soviet Piano from a bridge to the pavement and recorded the sound of it! That was good enough to make it as the intro of the album and we also filmed it for the album teaser and you can watch it from youtube.
– We could say your sound is built upon a mix of different styles as Thrash, Death, Hardcore among other different details but, how
could you describe this effort?
We as a bunch of guys playing music together, come from different musical influences. We like a lot of different kinds of metal but also punk and other good music, no matter the genre. I guess this effects a lot to the song writing process and it makes the songs jumpy and hard to fit in one genre. This is how it has always been and will be. Our musical ambitions go much further than only exploring one genre, we want to go over the borders and this way we’ve been able make music that serves our purposes. In the end, you make the music always to yourself and someone other likes it too, it’s a great bonus!
– And talking about this… what are your main musical influences?
Well, as I said it above, we take a lot of stuff from everywhere. No matter the style, if we feel like some things are worth trying to put in a metal song, we’ll try it. In our upcoming album you will hear influences from death metal, thrash metal, punk, melodic metal, rock ‘n roll etcetcetc… and we’re not afraid to make different songs fit in one album. The musical influnces that
originally guided our path to metal were pretty much the same bands that everyone had in our generation. We got our first matel kicks from bands like Metallica, Slayer, Cannibal Corpse, Mayhem and Faith No More to mention a few. We are kids of the 80’s and 90’s so I guess our musical heritage come from this era.
– I think you have always had a similar style but perfectioning your own formula with each release, and I think this time, «Destroy!», has even more variety; more groove, melody, the mix of styles is now clearer… Was this something you aimed for?
When we started to make the songs for “Destroy!” we had an idea of a really hard and crushing album with varied elements of music we wanted to show. During the recording process the songs always have slightly a different personality but I think we came pretty close to what we first had in mind and we are 110% satisfied to the outcome. Our main base for the music has always been groove and that is the key element for the songs. We’re not against math-metal but we’ve always been more keen on music that comes alive when played live and this is also one the main grounds in our songs. The song has to work live in order it to make it’s way to the album.
– As I said, you are constantly evolving into your own sound; do you think you will ever get to a point where you could shape your highest maturity degree?
Well, we’ve always been keen on bands that develope after every album. Of
course there are bands that have made the same album again and again and they work on their own but in our case it would be too boring to make music that way. I know we can always be better and that is the developement we drive for as a band on every album we make. The goal is always to top the last one. I think we succeeded in this with our new album. I think if we would make the same album again, we’d be lazy and ready to call it quits. At the moment we have no fear in such things.
– What are the main lyricsl ideas behind this CD?
When I started to write the lyrics for this album I was happy not to be restricted on any issue. The process was a lot of fun because I could pick up a subject no matter what and just write about it from my own mind. I was influenced by horror series like Supernatural, movies like Predator, sociological issues like living outside the norm and most of all I guess I was influenced by the driving force we have in this band at the moment. We are very pleased and happy to the situation we have going on in the band with a new label behind us, that can give us the possibility to make our music heard wider in the world. I felt like now we have the first real chance of showing
what we got to a bigger audience and this is also seen in the lyrics. We want to bring this band to the world to see and getting our music out there with a wider spectrum is the first step. We’re planning on going further than this.
– And what could you comment on the artwork?
The artwork is made by Reverend Miguliz von Zaire in co-operation with Kalatozulu and we’ve worked with these guys before also on our earlier releases(except Beaten Into Submission). They have a similar twisted imagination like we do and it has always been pleasure to work with these guys. With the covers in “Destroy!” we wanted to have an old school touch with some attacking zombies destroying everything and beating up everybody. Their sketches fitted pretty much perfect to our idea. I’m sure we can make some great t-shirts with the same thematic!
– After Tomppa left the band, bass in «Destroy!» was played by a session bass player, Anti Seroff. Could you please shed some light on this?
It was last October when we already knew we were making the next album for
Spinefarm Records and we started to have first pre-production meetings. We felt that Tomppa’s head wasn’t fully in the game anymore and we all had a discussion where he decided that it was better for him and the band to step down. We simply couldn’t have a situation where the whole band wasn’t commited fully to make the best album we can. We already had plans how to make the basses if we didn’t find anyone fitting to play them in the studio but lucky enough we found Antti pretty early and he proved his skills in the practise room. It was pretty clear that he would play the bass for “Destroy!”. Now we’re touring with him and we all feel pretty good about playing with him on stage and hanging out with him off stage so we hope we’ve found our guy.
– This is your first album with Spinefarm; how’s everything going with such an important label for Finnish Metal?
When we started to search interested collaborators to release the next one it wasn’t unclear to anyone in this band about which label we’d like to work with when Spinefarm contacted us. Their offer pretty much erased all the other labels’ offers together. We know that at the moment we have a label behind us
with a lot of traditions and knowhow about putting Finnish metal to the map of the world. The most important thing about the label is that it’s Finnish. We don’t have to communicate through emails and it’s not hard to get in contact with ‘em. We just simply walk to office and ask if we need some help on somethings. For us it was very important that we could communicate with the label face to face. It makes a lot of things a whole lot easier. We’re excited, they’re excited so it’s a definite win-win situation.
– The album has been produced by Ville Sorvalli and Mikko Herranen; how was everything? And how did you hook up with them?
We worked with Vill the first time on our first release “Beaten Into Submission”. That album was the first one he has ever produced. After that he’s been with us on all of our releases. During “Beaten…” we were thinking about possible producers who could work with material like it was and Ville’s name came up because we knew him through a friend and we knew that he might be interested in trying producing. We knew he seemed like a person who digs for many different music and metal so we knew he would have some good ideas for our music. Everything turned out really good and since the first recording we’ve wanted to work with him on the future ones as well. This time with “Destroy!” we wanted to shuffle the deck a little bit by making Mikko Herranen as the executive producer and Ville was there more or less as a help to get to know Mikko’s working habits. We gave Ville the title “social producer”, hah! We also worked with Mikko on our last album “Inherit The Void” when he produced the vocals. So Mikko wasn’t a total stranger to us. We felt that we wanted to renew some approach in the studio and Mikko brought the change we needed. We also had a third producer Aksu Hanttu who produced and recorded the vocals for this album.
– Finally, what are your near-future plans? Do you plan touring to support «Destroy!» on stage?
The album will be published on September 28th and we’ll start touring Finland on October with around 20 gigs already booked until the beginning of December. Our plan is to find a good tour for the beginning of the year and go touring the rest of the Europe to promote our album. We’ve always been a live band and our shows are a guarantee run for your money so you can be sure that we’ll try to tour as much as we can.
– That’s all from my side, thanks again for your time. If you want to add some final thoughts before we wrap this interview up; last lines are yours.
Check out our new album and get DESTROYED!!! You can find us from facebook, twitter, www.profaneomen.com and www.myspace.com/profaneomen. And ask your local promoter, we would love to come to destoy your stages as well!
