Hello Blind Stare. First of all, I think a small introduction might come in handy. Who are you and what are your goals?

Hello Roger. Well, Blind Stare is about 6 years old metal band from Turku, Finland. We are all about 20 years old and we have got 6 members in the group; Andy writes most of the melodies rhythms and lyrics. He is also one of the two guitar players. I (Eino) do the growling vocals, the high pitched and the low ones too and of course all the additional madness. Jaska plays the rhythm guitar he is the one responsible for arranging most of the guitar riffs in our songs he also sings 50% of the lead clean vocals 100% of all harmonies to the clean vocals. Timo is our drummer, very good in rhythm arrangements, he also sings 50% of the lead vocals, so there is always 2 guys singing them simultaneously. Zacharias plays the keyboard and Kalle is our bass-player. Our goals are to make a quite long career with lots of albums and of course lots of gigs and some touring too. Hopefully we can come up with all these goals.

Spanish label, Arise Records, just released your debut album "Symphony of Delusions". How has the reactions been so far?

Reactions have been very colourful and interesting too. Scandinavian magazines and webzines seems to really like the album, I mean we got 8-9 points out of 10 in most Scandinavian medias, this is really great! Due to our music is very Scandinavian. I think the best metal has always come from Scandinavian countries. The central Europe, like Germany and France do also like the album although they always find something that could have been done better, but I think most of the albums released in this world has got those features, the score is still 7-8 out of 10 which I think is good also. But then comes countries like Italia and Greece which seem to be quite power metal-countries. "Potential" is what they say. Well I guess the cultural differences has got something to do with it, perhaps they are not yet ready for The Northern Hate!

"Blind Stare" and "Symphony of Delusions". Any special meaning behind the band name and title for first album?

Yes we have quite a strong philosophy and ideology behind our music and lyrics and the way we think. Well lets get through the basics first... The basic way of thinking is that a man is king or a ruler of himself, taking full control of his own mind and way of living. Of course within the limits of our society’s laws and good manners, we don't believe in anarchy. So people who do not live in this way are considered "blind" to the truth, the truth that mankind is nothing more than dust in this vast universe. Most of the people are arrogant. I hate it! We hate people being pulled with strings like in a puppet show of some kind. For instance media and religions are great example of this happening! How can it be that for example in the USA there are schools in some states that do not teach evolution, instead they teach about the "great creation of god"! HOW CAN IT BE?! Come on. Open your eyes for fucks sake. That is just insane arrogance and is no way described as "responsible" education. On the other hand I MUST make clear that even though this is the way we personally think, however, as a band we do not take official stand or SIDES about religion or politics. Even though those are the two major problems on this planet, corruption. So people who can live their own lives without taking influence from authorities are no longer blind. About the cover work. Well the idea is quite simple. The Siren represents these authorities and puppet masters and the blind ones are sailing to their death of some level.

There are many melodic death metal bands from Sweden and Finland, but I think Blind Stare is one of the first bands in this genre to add orchestral elements. I think this spice up your music perfectly. At what point did the band agree on to include orchestral elements?

Well, the orchestral thing has always been a thing that we have wanted to do - even before Nightwish (or couple of other bands) made it popular. Including a symphony orchestra is just a thing that is not so easy to do! It was at some point when our producer Kari Nieminen told that the guy who does the mastering also composes orchestral music digitally and we decided to try out what would it sound like. And man does it sound good? It's almost authentic! Well of course the samples are recorded from real instruments, they are not synthetic. The orchestra brings a lot of majesty to our music that is really required for some feelings that the songs deliver to you. But I think we are using it with very good taste. It's only in 4 songs: An Insane's Diary pt. 2, Words of Truth, The Silent Song and Statues and the Worldends which is the 10th track on the album, but was no included with the promotional copy of the album. If you like SoD then you really should by the full CD because Statues and the Worldends is really good track!

At your site J. Lukala is being listed as the man behind the orchestral elements. He is, however, not a member of the band. Why is that? You are not sure whether to add orchestral elements in the future or not, maybe?

Well, the man who records it and the producer are also not listed as being members of the band are they? We are surely going to add orchestral elements in the future (the plan is to make the second album a little less orchestral but then boost the orchestra to it's full strength in the 3rd album) Joona Lukala is the guy also doing the mastering and he makes a lot of orchestral stuff for theatres in our country. So he is just a professional composer and we order some stuff from him. Basically it goes like this: We have recorded a melody line with MIDI and we send it to him together with a demo of the band playing the same part and he builds the orchestra around it. There really would be no use for him joining the band. On live what would he do? Press the play button from minidisc on couple of songs to get the orchestra playing background...

Stigma: Very true all of this. I should have read the site more properly!



Which bands have inspired you in the past besides Dimmu Borgir?

Well Andy who writes the songs listens to a lots of music. Classical music, movie soundtracks, but of course mainly he listens to melodic metal. Some of the biggest influences he has mentioned are Devin Townsend and Mikael Åkerfeldt from Opeth. Andy started listening metal music with Metallica at the start of our junior high back in -97. I've always listened to hard rock, like Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin those kind of bands have been a great inspiration for me. I think Led Zeppelin was the reason I started to play guitar, although I'm not currently playing guitar in any bands.

My Finnish staff member, "Creeping Death", was a bit disappointed that you drowned out the awesome keyboard melodies which were greatly present on the demos (according to him). What is your take on this? I personally liked the fact that you concentrated more on the orchestral elements though.

Creeping Death... Damn he sounds familiar. What's his real name? I must know the guy... Well anyways I don't think the keyboard melodies have been drowned... Actually the level of most of them has been raised. This is a hard question! I mean we have used to have about 3 different keyboard sounds in each song; strings, piano & lead sound. Now we have 8-17 different sounds in every song and I think it's a lot! We used couple of weeks just for looking for the sounds and I think everything comes out as we planned. So I do not agree with him.

"An Insane's Diary Part II" is a very wicked tune. I'm a bit curious why Part 1 wasn't included on your debut album?

Because part 1 is a very old song and it would have needed too much work to get it done. It was originally recorded on both of our garage "demos". Those were no real demos. We did not release them anywhere. Just an experiment to hear our own music.

How's the song writing process for Blind Stare? Do you have a main songwriter who writes the riffs at home and then present his ideas for you?

Well. Andy writes all of the melodies, chords, basic rhythm lines and basic song construction and then we start to rehearse with that material. He has got a midi keyboard and he programs the drums so we can hear a programmed version of the song so everyone can check it out before actual rehearsal. When we can play the song we start to pre produce it. Making the rhythms tighter, creating harmonies for melodies, doing the guitar riffs into some real riffs instead of just chords... Well sometimes Andy has got riffs also made, but most of the riffs will get added at rehearsals or in pre production. Also then we check out that the vocal lines go in the same rhythm that the music does. But yeah, Andy is the core of our music writing.

How do you look upon the current metal scene in Finland? Personally I love new bands such as Noumena, Stam1na, Blind Stare and Total Devastation.

Ok... Since this is a question that would honestly take the whole day from me to answer I give you this very long quote by our guitarist Andy:

"I think the metal has become more and more popular all the time. There are so much mega popular hybrid bands, that aren't really liked in metal circles, but they are the ones that has introduced the rougher music to masses, and been acting as a gate for some who will search more brutal and extreme music after hearing them. So yeah, lot of people has definitely got into metal music through these bands. What I think, is that it's just positive, because that gives yet unknown metal bands more chances to succeed because of more interest from record companies, and so on. Lot's of people who listens radiopop music just don't realize that metal music has so much more to offer than these bands, and in these metal bands, if they are popular, they are popular because of their hard musical work, not like it is in pop music heaven, having a gorgeous babe who can barely sing shaking her butt in music videos, and that's it. So, I think more and more people will realize this, and will get to listen to metal or other kinds of music than pop music, and the success comes to the bands that really deserve it. " -Anders

But what I think is that there are just a little bit too much people in metal, or they think they are in metal but really listens to these "Mega popular hybrid bands" that Andy talked about... So call me a shithead, but I don't like that so much.

Got any news to share with us? Have you started the work on your second album already?

Yeah! We have three new songs under work. We have some thoughts of how the 2nd album is going to sound like. Definitely more like Insane’s Diary than Thornhearts. Project name for the second album is "The End" not the end of the band though. HAHAH. But more like the end of all sanity that is left in this world. It's going to bee a doomsday album! Very, very dark and very oppressing. I have also started to write some lyrics for this album. It's a shame that I weren't too much lyrically inspired when the songs of this first album were made, but I'm definitely going to write a lot of stuff for the 2nd album.

Would you like to share with the readers your top 5 Scandinavian metal albums of all-time?

Top five any than our own album? HAHA. Well these lists always have the nature to live their own life but at this moment it would look something like this (and this is only my list and I'm really not even sure of the order):

Nightwish - Once
Opeth - Blackwater Park
Burzum - Filosofem
Emperor - Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk
In Flames - Soundtrack to Your Escape

And your top 5 albums?

My top list? Well, at the moment it goes like this (in no order):

Arcturus – The Sham Mirrors
The Kovenant (formerly Covenant) – Nexus Polaris
In Flames – The Jester Race
Dark Tranquillity – The Gallery
Satyricon – Dark Medieval Times

Thanks for doing this interview. The final words are yours if you have any!

Final words are always hard to come up with so just keep yourselves not blind and have a nice summer with lots of beer, metal and women! Thanks: -Eino Tuominen / Blind Stare

[This interview was first published on the now defunct scandinavianmetal.info webzine]