1994 truly boasted some of the most adventurous albums in extreme metal history, amongst them being Emperor’s Into the Nightside Eclipse, Merciless’ Unbound, Enslaved’s Frost, and Amorphis’ Tales from the Thousand Lakes. Tales forged a unique place within the extreme metal pantheon, fusing Amorphis’ then signature brand of murky death metal with flourishes of prog, doom, and folk, singlehandedly pushing the boundaries of what “death metal” could be. 30 years on and Tales remains as impactful as ever. We sat down with founding bassist Olli-Pekka Laine to discuss the album’s enduring legacy, celebrating it live at the legendary Tavastia club, and the band’s intense love affair with progressive rock.
Greetings Olli and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Olli-Pekka Laine: It’s a pleasure to be here. It is a great day in Finland. I’m just doing some interviews and killing time in my work room.
I’d like to start by congratulating you on the 30th anniversary of Tales from the Thousand Lakes, as well as the release of this brand new live album, Live at Tavastia. What events led up to this particular show and what was it like for you to be playing this iconic album on this iconic stage?
OPL: Well, we were aiming to tour with the Tales from the Thousand Lakes album in order to celebrate our 30th anniversary back in 2020 *laughs*, but there was bad luck. The COVID pandemic kicked in and we had to cancel the tour with Entombed A.D. and Nervosa. Therefore, we had the album rehearsed. We decided to go to the empty Tavastia club and record Tales from the Thousand Lakes and our most recent album back then, Queen of Time, for future use. We didn’t know yet how we would use those, but back then we were celebrating our 30th anniversary as a band. Now, we can celebrate the album itself with this release!
As a young metalhead, prior to forming Amorphis, did you catch any shows at Tavastia? Which ones stand out to you the most?
OPL: I saw lots of shows there. Probably the most legendary were the Kingston Wall shows I saw there, probably 10 of them. They were really great long shows. I don’t know if you know the band. They were a progressive jam rock band from Finland. Esa (Holopainen) is actually playing guitar with them this summer to do festivals. Those were really memorable shows. We played there with Amorphis in 1992 the first time as young kids. We were really nervous playing those early shows there because it’s a kind of legendary place.
I also saw Alice in Chains there on the Dirt album with Layne Staley. That was pretty rad *laughs*. It was a really good show. They played really loud! That’s something I can remember. I saw Kula Shaker from the UK, Corduroy from the UK, and Monster Magnet, of course. We supported Monster Magnet actually at Tavastia, so lots of legendary shows have taken place there.
Amorphis is a band I’ve always viewed as very forward thinking and progressive. Taking that into consideration, was there any hesitation upon revisiting Tales or doing a “nostalgia set”?
OPL: Well, we are looking forward all the time into the present with the music, but still, we kind of have to respect our roots and appreciate what we have done in the early days, especially with Tales from the Thousand Lakes because it’s such a milestone album for the fans and also our breakthrough album. It was the first album that started to sell really well around the globe. Usually, when we are on tour, we are supporting the latest album, which is currently Halo. But still, we put in there several songs from different eras of Amorphis. Of course, we are playing songs from the ’90s as well. Because we’ve been around for 35 years now and there’s usually 15 songs in a set, it’s kind of hard to come up with a set with enough new songs and also one or two songs from every other album from our history.
When listening to Tales now, is there anything that you notice or stands out that perhaps didn’t upon its initial release?
OPL: That’s a good question. I haven’t listened to the album that much, but because I know something about music technology, I could probably hear how (producer) Tomas Skogsberg had done certain positions when it comes to, for example, effects like choruses and reverbs and echoes in the vocals and drums. I don’t know. I would need to revisit the album in order to hear what he has done there, but it was a different kind of ballgame back then because we recorded it to tape. We had a 16 track tape recorder. The drums were just there. *laughs* We didn’t bring our own gear there. We just had guitars which had old strings on them and we were probably tuning the guitars by ear back then. You can hear that, I bet *laughs*.
Also, there was kind of a happy coincidence because Kasper Mårtenson, the keyboard player, was with us for the first time and he is not a metal musician. He’s a prog rock and blues guy. He found an old Moog keyboard from the corner of the studio. Two of us asked, “Can we use that?” He (Skogsberg) said, “Alright.” He probably wondered why because it was kind of an old technology back then. It was not in fashion at all. That instrument played a crucial part in Tales from the Thousand Lakes. For example, “Black Winter Day”. It’s not based on that, but it would be a totally different song if the Moog was out of it. Lots of bands started to use Moog later on, like H.I.M. for example. They’ve got a main lead keyboard instrument on their albums. That’s all I can tell *laughs*.
I want to go back in time a little over 30 years ago, when work first started coming together on Tales. What did the band set out to achieve with this album to set it apart from The Karelian Isthmus?
OPL: We didn’t necessarily want to do anything. We just did what we did and it was a totally natural evolution for us. Since we were a really small band back then, we didn’t have any pressure from the label or the audience or whatever. We just wanted to do as original music as possible because back then, all the band were different. Even true, they were death metal. Let’s say bands like Morbid Angel or Carcass and Entombed or Paradise Lost: They were all considered to be death metal bands, but still they were totally different from each other. That’s something that we wanted to do as well. We wanted to be original and find our own sound. Therefore, we didn’t want to think about what kind of music we need to be.
We wanted to try influences from the bands we were actually listening to which were Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, and Kingston Wall especially. Hawkwind, probably *laughs*, and also some really obscure stuff like Janis Joplin, for example. It was that kind of time and we didn’t try to do anything special. We just did what we did. There weren’t any kind of commercial expectations towards us, so that’s probably the reason why we were able to come up with such an original album. We didn’t need to stay in any one box or specific genre. We just could do whatever we liked, and therefore, we did this kind of crossover record.
Yo co-wrote many of the songs on Tales, amongst them being such classics as “Into Hiding”, “The Castaway”, and “Drowned Maid”. How would you describe your songwriting process at that time?
OPL: We were just learning how to write music generally. By then, we had done just death metal music, a little bit something else. With Nuxvomica, my previous band, we did some psychedelic stuff and some experimentations in the studio. Even true, we weren’t really great players, but at least we tried. Still, we had mainly played metal music by then. Of course, the metal music we had played was melodic as well. I started in a band called Metal Disease, which played Metallica and Iron Maiden covers. Those songs were already pretty progressive, if you think of it that way. They were really complex: Complex arrangements and lots of melodies, especially in Iron Maiden’s music.
With Tales from the Thousand Lakes, we kind of embraced this over-melodic point of view. We wrote the melodies and then we started to build everything else around those. That was kind of a gamechanger in our music writing as well. With The Karelian Isthmus, there were melodies already, but they were really simple ones. It was death metal stuff, horror movie influences, but now we started to take influences from progressive rock bands and really try to come up with as good melodies as possible, if you could say so. That was our approach and that was a gamechanger for our composing in general.
Aside from Tales in its entirety, this album also features a cover of “Vulgar Necrolatry” by Abhorrence, guitarist Tomi Koivusaari’s first band. Amorphis initially covered it as a standalone single in 1991. Did the band ever cover any other Abhorrence songs in their early days? Furthermore, what memories stand out to you when looking back on the early Finnish death metal scene today?
OPL: We were friends with basically all the death metal bands from Finland back then. We were playing with Xysma, for example, and Funebre. I’m not sure if you know the band. I cannot even spell it *laughs*. Fune..ber? What the fuck *laughs*. And Disgrace from Turku as well. They were kind of a Carcass death metal band, but also with some Xysma influences. Demigod was one, and of course, Sentenced a little bit later on. We were touring in the same places and shared many concerts with them. We are still friends with those guys.
There was also kind of healthy competition between the Finnish bands, like which could be most original music-wise *laughs*. That’s probably the reason why we tried to push the boundaries of death metal in every possible way. We hadn’t covered any other Abhorrence songs, I think, but there was a bunch of songs which were abandoned after Tomi Koivusaari joined the band permanently. It was a little bit on the lighter side. It was kind of thrash/death metal, a little bit lighter and faster, which totally changed after Tomi came in, maybe a couple months after the band was formed. There is a bunch of *laughs* unreleased Amorphis songs, which I don’t know if I even care to listen to myself *laughs*.
At the top of the interview, you mentioned how Amorphis was set to perform Tales in its entirety on a special American tour. Is there any chance us American fans will ever see that show toured here in the future?
OPL: There’s a possibility, of course. I don’t know *laughs*. I think the 35th anniversary is creeping near, so why not? Of course, those anniversaries come and go. There will be probably a good reason for a tour of that album someday. I think it would be a good idea because the tour which we were supposed to do with Entombed A.D., I think it sold pretty well already. Unfortunately, it had to be cancelled. If we were planning these kinds of things four years ago, why not in the future as well?
Speaking of the future, what does the rest of 2024 have in store for Amorphis?
OPL: We are ending up the festival period currently. We are playing a few shows in Europe, in Finland, Italy, and I can’t remember even. Still, we are playing a few festival shows. Then, we are heading to North America on I think the 15th of September. We will play five weeks there. After that, we are planning to enter the studio at some point. There will be a short pre-production period right after the tour, and then we are going to the studio. The album should be ready somewhere around February of 2025, and the new touring cycle shall start somewhere later in the year.
We will have a little bit of a pause after the recordings, but still, there’s lots of touring to do. The American tour, and also, we want to do a few club shows in Finland just for fun, in order to end the tour with style. I’m kind of happy that it’s gonna be over. It’s been really fun and time has flied with this tour. It’s insane to think the COVID pandemic has even been there. The last time we toured North America, it was still there, and *laughs* it was a poor situation. Now, I don’t even remember that. Yeah, that’s our plans for the rest of the year. Let’s see how it goes from there.
The new Amorphis live album, Tales from the Thousand Lakes – Live at Tavastia, is available now on Reigning Phoenix Music. For more information on Amorphis, visit www.amorphis.net.