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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