Utter Trash--Lullacry

Burning Inside

An interview with Sauli Kivilahti and Heavy of Lullacry

By Taliesin Govannon

Since 1998, Finland’s Lullacry have been making top notch melodic metal music with a touch of goth. There sound has won the band legions of fans in Europe, and now the band seems poised to break through with American audiences as well. Recently, Utter Trash writer Taliesin Govannon had the chance to speak with Lullacry guitar player Sauli Kivilahti and bass player Heavy. The band, which also includes vocalist Tanja, guitarist Sami Vauhkonen, and drummer Jukka Outinen was in town opening for another Finnish band, Nightwish.

TG: Have you been noticing more of an American audience for your music since the last album?
Heavy: Absolutely. More emails. You can see it’s become much bigger. The first album maybe we’d get one email once in a while. Now we get lots of email from America. So you can see that America has sort of found us.

TG: You did W.A.S.P.’s “L.O.V.E. Machine” on your new EP, ‘The Fire Within’. How did that come about? Was that just a song that everybody in the band liked?
(Both): Not everybody (laughing).
Heavy: We actually have recorded all the cover songs we’ve played on tour. We’ve been playing it for such a long time. The EP was a little short on time, and we needed one cover song. We could do it, so why waste time? That’s pretty much the biggest reason we did it. At shows, people are really digging it.

TG: I’m a DJ at a club, and when I play your songs they get a good response. When people get a chance to hear your music, they seem to like it. Do you get frustrated that, because you’re on an independent label here in the US, your music isn’t being heard by many of those potential fans?
Heavy: If you start thinking about that, then you’re always like, “we should have done this”, “we should have done that”, or “we should be there”. We’re just happy that somebody wanted to release the album in the US. And now they’re going to try to push a little harder, since there seems to be a market for bands coming out of Finland now, and also bands with female vocalists.

TG: I see you’re working on a new album for release in the winter. How’s that coming along?
Heavy: It’s pretty much finished. We’ve got maybe 8 to 10 finished songs. There’s still lots of work to do, and we have one week after the tour to do that.

TG: Heavy metal used to be sort of a “boys club” kind of thing. Now with bands like Evanescence breaking through, do you think there’s more acceptance for a female fronted band?
Heavy: I don’t know, since we’ve had a female singer since 1998 or 1999. At the time, there was no Evanescence or anything like that. When we had our first singer in the band, we tried out like 12 or 13 guys. When Tanya came along, she opened up her mouth and we said, “screw the guys, she’s better.” So there was no calculated decision to get a female.

TG: How’s she adjusting to the world of heavy metal?
Heavy: I think she’s slowly getting the hang of it.
Sauli Kivilahti: At least a hang over.
Heavy: She’s fun. We don’t have any problems with that. It’s not like we’re always dressed in bandanas and leather trousers and shit like that, like, “We’re fucking heavy metal.” (laughs). It’s not an issue.

TG: When you look at the classic bands through history, they say they always built everything on strong songwriting. The musicianship was just icing on the cake. Is that kind of the approach you take?
Heavy: When I first heard the band, one of the greatest things was that they had something different going on. Nice melody lines with female vocals, and a low end with guitars and basses tuned down to “H” (laughs). So the contrast was very nice. There’s a lot of songs that don’t even have guitar solos. It’s great, we can actually play songs and there aren’t any ego problems about guitar solos and stuff.

TG: I noticed on your website, your other guitar player listed ‘This is Spinal Tap’ as his favorite movie. Do you guys have any “Spinal Tap moments”?
SK: It’s Spinal Tap 24 hours a day. Like on this tour, we have two busses and one of them broke down two times. They had to change the bus already two times in four days.

TG: How do you feel about MP3 file sharing?
Heavy: I don’t know. On one hand it should be free music for all. But on the other hand, if you make something you should get paid for it. Especially when you’re a smaller band and just trying to reach out, it’s a very easy way to get your music across.
SK: Also a lot of people say they download a couple of songs and then they buy the record.
Heavy: It’s difficult to say. It exists, it’s there, I’m just not going to worry about it.
SK: We have a couple videos on our site for free download. We did that for “Don’t Touch the Flame” and “Damn You”. You can download both of them from the website.

TG: Are you going to do any videos for the EP?
SK: I don’t think so. It’s useless for the Finnish market. Nobody shows them, and it’s really expensive.
Heavy: Even it Germany it’s hard to get on television. If MTV doesn’t take it, then nobody’s going to take it.
SK: So it’s why make them? There aren’t any shows in Finland that would play them. There used to be one, but now it’s gone. It’s useless to make any videos in Finland.
Heavy: And the other thing is, before you had videos, when you went to see the band live is was so much more exciting because you hadn’t seen them on television for weeks already. If you wanted to see the band, you had to go see the gig. That’s cool, I think. I had so much respect for Metallica before they started doing videos. They didn’t need it. I’m not putting them down for doing them now. But they had no airplay, no television, no radio, and they sold a million records. That was so cool.

TG: Anything else you want to say?
Heavy: If you don’t have the video, come see the gigs! (laughs)