IMPALED NAZARENE

Livers Of Steel

The Finns from IMPALED NAZARENE have never been interested in political correctness. It’s a typical kind of band in which they don’t bother to say what they think. In the past this painful sincerity caused the band lots of problems making them the object of gratuitous attacks. The accusations of propagating the Nazism were in their case ridiculous, whereas some organizations found IMPALED NAZARENE’s activity dangerous and called upon fighting their ideals. Things reached their apogee last year when it was close for the band to split-up, as they were discouraged with the constant fights and pressure. Once again, however, they’ve shown determination and their middle finger pointed at establishment will drive the defenders of morality mad for long. What’s interesting, just at the beginning of our talk Mika Luttinen asked about the situation in Poland and how the authorities perceive VADER and BEHEMOTH. It brought about a long debate on matters not necessarily connected with music but luckily we’ve managed to discuss in a few words the newest album of IMPALED NAZARENE “Manifest” which already ought to be on sale. Fragments of our talk below.

- Taking into account the problems that you recently regularly tackle I’m afraid to ask how are you…
Yeah, there’s much going on (laugh). The recent album was out at the end of March last year and since then everything that could go wrong, went wrong. The major reason for our troubles is the campaign of anti-Fascist organization Antifa which managed to call off 11 gigs in Germany during the tour promoting our recent album. We had 13 gigs booked out of which only 2 took place. We also had problems in Vienna because of them and in Switzerland we had to change the venue of our concert. It’s damn stupid; we could play only in francophone regions as in a German one Antifa made a mess around us. Apart from this lots of other shit came into light. When we started the tour our concert agency was close to bankruptcy and of course we didn’t have the foggiest idea about it. Due to it we had to end up the tour on England. Later, down to their bankruptcy we were stuck in Holland and as a result we were forced to send our backline back to Finland by UPS. It was to be the best tour in our history whereas it turned out to be a one big shitty mess. We got into huge financial troubles and we had to work to pay off the debts for the recent several months. Man, it was one huge destruction!

- I’ve heard you had a car accident during the tour?
I just wanted to mention this. For a week we had a dickhead driver having no clue about driving. Due to his incompetence we crashed on one of the bridges in Prague. There was lots of other shit, like in the Netherlands a snot broke in to our bus and stole 2 notebooks and camcorder. In England somebody stole us a guitar. I won’t go on as when I recall this all I see red. It wasn’t the end of bad news, in August we ought to play in Poland on one of the festivals and you know the end to the story. The gig was called off a day before when we already were prepared to set out, actually we were just going out to the airport. When we got the message we were close to disband. You can’t even imagine how pissed off we were! We thought that we’d never manage to play anywhere anymore. We were fed up! However, we felt better during the concerts that we played in Autumn in Finland, it was something the band really needed. We also played in Greece where the reaction of people was fucking amazing and just then we thought we’d be fucking idiots if we dissolved the band. In fact it would be a total victory of people who constantly try to disturb us. Over my dead body! We decided to book a recording studio for the next year and start working on the next album which was what we actually did. In the meantime we were left by our guitarist Tuomo Louhio who couldn’t continue with IMPALED NAZARENE due to some personal problems. Soon we found a new one and here we are!

- The newest album will soon come out but you don’t have in plans such „spectacular” tour over Europe?
No way. As I’ve said, owing to all what was happening last year we got into serious financial troubles and we aren’t going to risk that much again. For sure we’ll play particular concerts, for instance we have 2 gigs booked in Germany. One of them will take place on 100% as it’s a private club and its owner doesn’t give a shit about the pressure of local authorities. However, I’m really doubtful about the second one, as it’ll take place in Bavaria in southern Germany which is famous for its Catholic fundamentalism. I know that the guy is fighting for us but he hasn’t managed to do anything so far. A few weeks ago, just in Bavaria, there was a festival on which were to perform British groups - BENEDICTION and ONSLAUGHT. Local authorities classified them as neo-Nazi and forbade them to take part in it. Can you imagine? Neo-Nazi BENEDICTION and ONSLAUGHT? It’s a total paranoia, you need to have shit instead of brain to come out with something like this. Generally speaking, the situation in Germany is fucked up and when I give interviews for German magazines I always strongly stress it. I won’t even mention the fact that both Poland and Germany is the part of EU where the respect for liberty of conscience, belief and opinion is one of the inviolable principles, the foundation of this all. But as you can see, every fucking country can wipe its ass up with it. And so what is the whole mess about Union for? Damn, let’s somebody explain it to me at last!

- Ok, let’s go back to “Manifest” as the time goes by. It’s probably the most diversified album in IMPALED NAZARENE’s career. Will you agree?
Yes, „Manifest” is a set of all the elements known from previous releases and several new things that we added. For instance „Dead Return” is something which this band has never made before. It’s very dark, almost doom cut. I’m really satisfied with this album, definitely more than with the previous one - „Pro Patria Finlandia” – which was intended to be very fast and brutal release. During that time I thought it was good but today it lacks tracks like „Motorpenis”, playing in MOTORHEAD style on speed. The newest album has such numbers, of course there are also brutal tracks and a few slow and gloomy ones. This diversity makes the album better to listen to and everyone should find here something for himself. This album is simply more dynamic and interesting. New tracks were created in very productive for us period and that’s the reason for “Manifest” to be that long. We’ve never happened to record such lengthy albums before but this time it had its sense.

- There are church organ in „Funeral For A Despicable Pigs” and in „Mushroom Truth” trumpets can be heard... Hard stuff for this band.
(laugh) „Funeral...” was written by our ex-guitarist Tuomio. When we finished working on it he mentioned that he was going to add something at the end. Of course he didn’t tell us what he was up to and we heard this idea for the first time in the studio. But we really liked it! If it comes to trumpets it was our drummer’s proposal. He didn’t warn us as well and I must admit that when I first heard it I was in a slight shock (laugh). The idea remained cause IMPALED NAZARENE isn’t afraid of anything and we’ve never done anything like this before. It’s nothing big, a little thing which added spice to this album.

- You’ve mentioned that IMPALED NAZARENE fears nothing. Do you think you’d be able to record a completely different album kept in a completely different style if you’d ever feel like doing this?
In the future we’ll surely make some experiments in a similar direction but any drastic changes are absolutely ruled out. IMPALED NAZARENE is an extreme band, I can’t imagine a situation in which we play soft and ear-friendly shit. As long as we bear our name, such things are out of question. Besides, I wouldn’t be competent with my voice for doing other things. I can only scream, if you’d hear how I sing you’d puke in a second (laugh). My voice is only fitted for extreme stuff and even slower tracks, liked mentioned before „Dead Return” and „Funeral For A Despicable Pigs”, caused me a lot of trouble. At first I had no idea how to sing it but we started to mull over and it went off quite good. So experiments - yes but the change of style is ruled out. In fact, we promised to our fans that this band will always be the dirtiest piece of shit they ever heard.

- The title of the album sounds lofty and makes me ask about the manifest it carries.
The title doesn’t have a special meaning here. We’ve just decided on an idea because of which nobody would like to put us in prison (laugh). As for texts, here I couldn’t restrain myself from describing the whole shit we’d been through in recent times. I had to let myself go so that not to get insane. And so the newest album is mainly based on the events of recent months. Such tracks as „You Don't Rock Hard”, „Funeral For Despicable Pigs”, „Goat Justice”, „When Violence Commands The Day” or „Suicide Song” are more or less connected with all what happened in 2006. “Mushroom Truth” hides a different, let’s say…true story but I don’t feel like talking about it too much (laugh). The idea for “Planet Nazarene” derives from the funny situation when our bass player dropped in with a news that they’ve just discovered a new planet. ‘Planet Nazarene’ – we shouted together and started laughing. We were spinning dreams about the place in the Universe in which we would be masters. I doubt if anyone would like to live there (laugh).