Insomnium bring headline show to Birmingham - interview and pictures

Ahead of the show, we sat down with lead vocalist and bassist Niilo Sevänen to chat live shows, their unique sound and influences...

When did you arrive in the UK?

We Flew in from Helsinski, Finland this morning and straight to Birmingham, but bit sleepy now but will get back to the touring routine.

You’ve announced a good number of tour dates for the next few months. Are you looking forward to them?

We played some shows in Finland last week on Friday and Saturday, then 10 dates in the UK. Then we're off to the United States and Canada for five weeks beginning in mid-March.

What is the best way to describe your music?

Well, it's very simple to say melodic death metal but we always like to add that there is more to it, as we do our own thing, which we think other bands don’t.

This helps us create our own sound including some doom metal, black metal and prog rock.

Our melodies are very Finnish and people describe us as such, we describe it as 'Finnish melancholy'.

How did you arrive at your unique sound?

I hope we have a unique sound, many people say they can recognise Insomnium from the melody and that’s a good thing.

However, we don’t want to do the same thing over and over again but you should maintain that core thing why people like you in the first place and not loose that.

People know its an Insomnium album but intrigued to find out if there is something else there.

When it comes to writing the lyrics, what would you say inspires the you as you have written the lyrics to all but one track on the new album?

Many of the ideas come from traditional Finnish Folk tales and stories handed down from generation to generation.

The song And Bells They Toll from the new album is an adaptation of a song that was chosen as the saddest song in Finland ever.

There was a popular song writer in Finland in the 50s and 60s who did a version of the song, which is where people there will know it from but the tale is even older, so we took and wrote the Insomnium version of it.

There are a couple of poems that inspired songs, such as The Offering and Pale Morning Star, from the new album.

Others are a collection of certain themes which combine a couple of tracks. The first track, Wail of the North, is about how summers are short, winter will come soon and everything will die – a very Finnish thing.

Can you tell me about the writing and recording process for this album?

We record demos and send them to each other by email as Ville (Friman – Guitar) lives and works in York.

We had two rehearsal camps at a summer cottage, although it was winter. We were there in the dark, in the snow and in the forest.

It’s a good method, as we go there by ourselves, we bring our instruments and spend three or four days there. We play the songs ,eat, drink and repeat, repeat. It’s a good method to bring the best out of the ideas.

How has the set list changed to accommodate the new songs?

We will play five or six new songs in the new set and really enjoy playing Pale Morning Star as it works on the album and as a live track, which is unusual.

What are some of your main highlights coming up in 2020?

We will have a busy summer with about 15 festivals, right across Europe.

We are growing our audience album by album and the live shows are helping with building the momentum

By Andy Shaw