Review Fix Exclusive: Soulwound’s Janne Huusari Talks Goals for 2021, New Album And More

Review Fix chats with Soulwound’s Janne Huusari, who discusses the origin of the band, their signature sound, new album “The Suffering” and goals for the future.

Review Fix: How did you guys get together?

Janne Huusari: The band is the direct result of me and my brother Niko (guitar) learning to play and jamming with some friends back in the 90s. The band solidified in 2005 when we settled on the name and released our first demo in 2006, after which we began playing live shows. We’re currently on our third full-length album, and our younger brother Mikko (guitar) has also been in the band for the past two albums.

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Huusari: The music is written by my brothers and I, and how the process works for us is that we each put together rough demos of song ideas we’ve come up with, and then we present those demos to each other and refine them together. We all add our own flavors to the mix and allow each other to change things around without being too protective of our own ideas, and that enables us to enrich each other’s songs and make sure we all get to have creative input to keep things fun for all.

Review Fix: What do you think makes this bad special?

Huusari: Integrity. We create music with the sole purpose and goal of coming up with something we personally like and find cool, as opposed to what we think might be popular with other people. Instead of pandering to casual listeners, we trust that like-minded metalheads will understand what we’re trying to do and can relate to it.

Review Fix: How would you describe your style?

Huusari: Based on thrash metal, yet seasoned with death metal and plenty of other influences as well. It’s kind of a weird mixture, as we’re not pure thrash nor pure death metal, but we also don’t sound like typical death thrash, either. I suppose one separating factor is that we only tune down to D, which is pretty high by today’s standards, what with even pop rock bands often tuning down lower than us. That higher tuning gives our music a sort of tension that disappears if we go any lower, which we’ve tried but didn’t like.

Review Fix: What are your goals for this album?

Huusari: We think it’s our best work yet and reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, and now the goal is just to have it heard by as many people as possible. We know the music is good and that there are people out there who share our taste.

Review Fix: What’s the standout song? Is there a story behind it?

Huusari: I’m being perfectly honest when I say that I can’t really name any one song, as they all have their own strengths and identities. That being said, one of my personal favorites is the track Enter the Hivemind, just because it’s arguably the weirdest and most experimental song on the album in terms of both the music and the lyrics. I like weird shit. Getting back to the question, I think the first track Waste of Life is a really good opener that puts the intensity of the music on full display right from the start.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Huusari: That depends largely on the coronavirus situation and how it develops. The hope is to get to play more shows and do a European tour in September 2021, but obviously nothing is certain at this point. We’ll probably start gradually putting together songs for our next album, as we already have plenty of rough ideas and demos to work with.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13819 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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