Today Amoral releases their fifth album, Beneath, in the U.S. It’s a power rock valentine. This is the one songwriter and guitarist Ben Varon spoke with us about last month. He’s pretty proud of it. And why not - this album shows their sound being honed down to a science, which any songwriter who takes care to put together meticulously thought-out and structured compositions would be proud of.

The album opener is the title track, which starts out with this epic orchestral intro, like the opening credits of a nature documentary, before crashing down into full-out metal guitars. Then when Ari Koivunen’s vocals come in, the song begins to unravel this imagery that feels something like sitting at the bottom of a cold, dark sewer tunnel. Or something like that. The point being that the lyrical imagery is strong, backed by pounding metal precision.

This track is one of the two on the album (with the second being the closing track “Of Silent Stares and Fire Lost”) that are actually quite classical, with structures very much like mini-suites. They explore several emotions throughout, and become metaphors in themselves with their own ups and downs of key changes, varying tempos, volumes, and heaviness. This element also doubles as being both intricate and totally relatable. The execution is structured and exact, but the content is emotional – relationships, regrets, disillusionment – emotions that everyone has at times but don’t always know how to interpret or express them. It’s almost even more impressive that Varon & Co. can find the time to have these rollercoaster relationships and life experiences, as well as be proficient enough to be able to create and play these intricate power rock  songs about them.

The album as a whole is a good balance between the full-throttle metal with super charged melody, and more minimal acoustic parts interspersed. There are even a few songs that still feature growling vocals, such as “(Won’t Go) Home,” where the music becomes the melodic counterpoint, but the majority of Koivunen’s parts focus on his voice as being the most melodic component in a raging storm of guitars. “Same Difference,” for example, has a chorus that is easy to sing along to, but dives into bonafide stadium rock with soaring guitar solos. “Wasteland” is an acoustic standout, showing another side of the band’s musicianship with more interesting key changes and production. The album actually ends on a bonus track, “Sleeping With Strangers,” which has some blues harp thrown in for the faintest hint of the blues before hitting their power chord stride with power attitude and delivery. The cut that ended up getting the video treatment first is "Silhouette," which is maybe one of the most straightforward songs, but may further explain that dark and dank imagery...

Beneath is out now on The End Records, and Amoral will be rocking out their heavy mini-suites in the flesh at SXSW.

Amoral is a metal band from Helsinki, Finland, who classify their sound as being "Classic Rock For The 21st Century." Since the band’s beginning in the late '90s, their sound has evolved from death metal to more power rock by adding Finnish Idol winner Ari Koivunen on vocals, as well as the evolution of founding member Ben Varon’s songwriting. While they’re one of the most foremost bands in Finland, with strong fan bases across Europe and Japan, they have yet to play a show in the U.S. This year, that changes with Amoral being part of the SXSW 2012 lineup. I recently sat down with Varon to learn more about the band’s past and future sound, as well as the adventures in between.

Kelly Knapp: This year is Amoral’s first trip to the states, playing SXSW. What are you most looking forward to?

Ben Varon: When we were kids, most of the bands we enjoyed were from America. Bigger bands, like Pantera and stuff like that. And any European band wants to try it over here in the States at some point, so to finally do it is very cool. We’re going to try it out and then hopefully get to tour here later this year.

KK: Your fifth album, Beneath, is coming out February 14. Is this your best album yet?

BV: Well, of course. You get to hear this from everybody who’s ever released anything, but it should be the case. If you put something out it should be better than the thing you did the last time, or else it’s not worth your time or anybody else’s time. I’ll try to save you from the ‘it’s the best thing,’ or ‘it’s the heaviest and most complex thing,’ or whatever - but I’m really proud of it, still. It’s already been out since October in Europe, but it still sounds good to me, so I’m pretty happy with it.

KK: Is there a big difference on this one from what you’ve been doing?

BV: The first three albums are pretty different. We used to have the singer who just growled – no clean vocals at all. We had Ari (Koivunen) sing with us on the last album, so these are much more alike, even though this is an improvement on every level. We had only four months when he joined the band before we went in the studio, so I was like a kid in a candy store while writing the songs – like, oh my god, I have a great singer, I can do whatever I want. So, everything was vocal melodies, Even some songs which, in hindsight, I would prefer to do with growling vocals now, which we also have on this new one. But it’s definitely continuing from where we left off.

KK: Is this the sound you’ve always been working towards, or was it more of a natural development?

BV: It just kind of happened. That’s a hard question, when people ask if this is what I’ve always wanted to do. In a way, but of course what I’ve always wanted to do you can also hear on the previous albums. Like, when we were 20 years old, we wanted to play the kind of technical death metal that you hear on the first album. But, it’s a very natural progression, like in my youth I saw all the '80s cock rock and stuff like that, so I always liked the more melodic stuff as well. To finally be able to do that kind of music is really cool. The whole group - me and the drummer especially - another founding member – we get tired of just screaming vocals, album after album. It gets kind of stale. I don’t know how bands can do it after 20 albums and not get bored, but more power to them. I just need a change.

KK: Since your sound has changed so much, what did you guys learn about yourselves as a band through that process?

BV: Just that we’re really not afraid of changes and trying whatever we feel like. You hear that from all the bands – we do whatever we want, we’re not limited to any genre, but then they make 20 albums in the same genre. It’s like, seriously, why do you say that? Just say that you’re a power metal band, and that’s it. People always talk about how you’re supposed to be true, and supposed to be real with the music. Well, it doesn’t get much more real or more true than when you’re willing to sacrifice everything. We really had a nice fan base going on in Europe and Japan with the death metal market. It was a big risk, and we lost a lot of fans with that, but we just felt that we had to do it, instead of going to do the same thing. Or, we could have done it the long route – or the safer route – where we got the new singer but still made an album that was pretty much the same as the last one, just to make people feel familiar with the new guy, and then slowly but surely introduced some new elements to the music. I don’t know, maybe that would have been smarter to do. Now, we just got it all out of the way. People were like, why didn’t you change the name of the band and start over? But we’re proud of the old stuff; we want to play the old stuff as well. And it’s still the same core members, I’m still writing the songs, so I don’t see us being a new band.

KK: What’s your relationship like with your guitar? How do you keep it fresh and interesting for yourself?

BV: I’ve learned to take some breaks from it every now and then, which I never used to do. I was forcing myself to practice, practice, practice, all the time. It feels really good to – like going on a trip like this for a week and not having a guitar. Then it feels so good to go back home and grab it again. That’s one way of keeping it fresh. The other way is just playing different kinds of music. Not just playing your own songs and practicing new stuff, but whatever you find interesting; like a piece of classical music. Classical guitar -  just take the acoustic and try to learn that. Just having fun with it, I guess, and not taking it too seriously. But I think it’s been a good relationship. I’m still at it. I started when I was 11, I think. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been really serious about for most of my life.

KK: Your longest relationship to date?

BV: Yeah, by far (laughs). Yeah, you could say that.

KK: What about your live shows – what do you think sets you apart from other bands?

BV: Again, I could go on with all the clichéd stuff you hear from everybody about the energetic live shows, and just giving it 120%, and we don’t care if there’s one person in the audience or a million, we’ll still play the same. I need to come up with some new sound bites. But really, we base it all on the song – you need to have a strong song, and good choruses at the bottom so people have something to grab onto, but then of course we value the live situation. We try to make it as much of a show as possible.

KK: What are you thinking about when you’re on stage?

BV: What am I thinking about? I don’t know. I think you’re just in the moment, just enjoying it and having fun with your five friends and with the audience. If there are people enjoying it, then you get a huge kick. Especially going to new places, new concerts on tour when we’re supporting a bigger band, and there’s 400 of their fans who have no idea who you are, and you go on with the first song and they’re just staring at you. Then by the second song there’s some head nodding going on, then by the seventh song you see some fist pumping and people really appreciating it, and the applause gets louder. That feels really good to win people over. Yeah, just the energy – it’s hard to explain.

KK: I always like asking this question, because of all the different answers. Some people say that they’re thinking about what they’re going to eat later, or they’re more concentrating on playing all the right notes…

BV: It used to be, like 10 years ago when we were still learning our instruments – it’s still like this with me. I’m always writing parts for myself to play which are a bit too hard for me. Like, I can just barely make it on the album, and then I’m like, oh my god I have to play this live.

KK: So you really challenge yourself.

BV: Yeah, but I’ve been getting better at it; but 10 years ago it was so bad. Like, I had to warm up for a long while, and still I was just panicking before certain parts and just dreading the moment of the solo, which is way too fast for me. I’m glad those days are pretty much over. When I think about the next solo coming up, I can pull it off.

KK: So eventually your songs will be impossible for fans to try to tab and learn.

BV: I’m sure it’s pretty easy for many people – I’m not the flashiest guitar player, and I know it. I’m not the fastest or most technical, but I always try to push myself on the album. That’s the only way I keep learning, because I’m pretty lazy otherwise.

KK: So if you keep pushing yourself every album, 10 albums down the line you’ll be untouchable.

BV: Yeah, I think I’m gonna be pretty good by the tenth album.

KK: What are your goals? Do you imagine yourself playing a giant stadium?

BV: Ah definitely, yeah. Always, that’s the dream, the goal. I don’t know how much that is a reality anymore. There don’t seem to be any new, mega-size bands coming out anymore, is there? It used to be that there’s a few big bands; now there’s a million small bands. Even the big bands today don’t really make it to the Metallica status anymore. We don’t have new stadium bands, I think. You get the old guys, doing it – they’re still big, but what comes after Metallica retires? Iron Maiden dies off? I don’t mind the clubs. As long as we can make a living at it, and have some sort of following in different parts of the world; that would be great. And of course, try to keep pushing it to bigger venues. But to answer the question, of course. We want to be the next Bon Jovi.

KK: Any memorable stories from the tours you have done?

BV: Lets see, what would be the worst? We have a bunch. We’ve always had fun company to play with, like the bands we’ve toured with.  There have been some crazy people – we were boring in comparison. We toured with somebody who toured six weeks in Europe without a passport, and his pants full of drugs going from country to country. We were like, how can you pull it off? There are checkpoints everywhere and he just hides in the bathroom of the bus or something, and just wishes for the best. But for us, there’s all kinds of random tour shenanigans. Like, we forgot our sound engineer. On our very first tour, we were opening for Finntroll, a Finnish band, and we were on the boat to Switzerland. We get stopped in customs because one of the guys has some weed on him, of one of the bands – not naming any names – and one of the guys has brought a weapon, a ninja star from Budapest. So they’re pulled into the police station because of that, and we’re running way late for the show. We’re standing there for three hours at the border, and when they finally let us go we drive like crazy to the venue. An hour after driving we find out that the sound engineer girl is still at the border; she went to the bathroom. So that was pretty dumb. And I don’t know why, but the first tour we kept on hurting ourselves incidentally. I cut my finger almost to the bone with a razor blade five minutes before the show I was playing. I was looking for my brush, I think, trying to set myself up for the show, looking through my bag, and the razor blade was upwards and it just hit. I was like, well, I have to play in five minutes…I don’t know how I’m going to pull that off. The drum tech is like, ‘well, we gotta fix this,’ and took some super glue and glued my finger. I just went to the sound engineer and was like, please make sure my volume is low today, because I’m going to be playing like crap. This cannot sound good with one less finger.

KK: Could you still feel it?

BV: Uh, yeah I felt the pain. It hurt like a motherfucker. It was terrible. And I’m just thinking, you know what, we have like three weeks left of the tour. Luckily, it got better every day, but that was a scary moment, when you don’t have a finger in the middle of a tour. Then a week later our drummer falls – all the way sober, so it’s not the alcohol – from the second floor of the bus. Just drops down the stairs and opens his leg to the bone. He went to the emergency room, but without canceling one show. He was a trooper. He was like, ‘well, gotta go play.’

KK: Ha, that’s rock and roll.

BV: Yeah, I don’t know why that tour was just accident after accident. It was weird. And that was the first time we’d ever played outside of Finland, I think. Five weeks straight with a bunch of alcoholics from Finntroll. We were 21 years old, just newbies, looking around like, wow this is pretty intense. We had all these accidents, but it made us who we are, I think. It was a great way to start touring.

KK: What about your dream bill – what bands do you really want to tour with?

BV: Pretty much the bigger the better, like a huge band that pulls big crowds, but whose music is somewhat similar to us so people might enjoy it. I’ve been really enjoying watching Avenged Sevenfold get as big as they are. I’ve really liked their music for a bunch of albums now, and now they’re huge also in Europe, playing arenas and stuff like that. I think they’ve done it pretty much on their own terms. Like, they have complex, long songs, but also really poppy choruses. I think an Avenged Sevenfold tour, at the moment, sounds really good. Their fans might appreciate our kind of music as well. They’re doing huge here as well – it would mean big crowds every night. And of course, there’s Metallica, but I think their crowds are pretty tough.

KK: Anything else you really hope to accomplish in 2012?

BV: Just to see that this album gets noticed in different parts of the world. It’s out already in Europe, and Japan as well. Maybe, just to get to the next level over here in the States - we’ve never really done anything here. The previous albums have been out here as well, but we’ve never done much press here or played here. Hopefully this album gets the attention it deserves.

 

Amoral’s latest album will be out February 14^th on The End Records, and their debut show in the U.S. will be at SXSW on Thursday, March 15^th. Check out more of their music on YouTube, and their Facebook.