FotoGRAFEK

Sonata Arctica is a band of brothers working together

Frontman Tony Kakko shares his thoughts on music, touring and life

Graz, 5^th February 2010

Sonata Arctica’s story begins in the small Finnish town of Kemi over 10 years ago, where four young lads recorded their first demo. Since then, they have released six full-length studio albums, starting off in power metal sphere inspired by Stratovarious and the like, and gradually finding their very own style. They have worked hard to earn international recognition by touring the world. The tour to support the release of their sixth studio album will take 2 years and see a lot of the world. On their mission to present the new album to the audiences, Sonata Arctica stop in Austria, where we get the opportunity to interview the band’s frontman Tony Kakko.

It’s seven in the evening at the snow-covered Seifenfabrik in Graz, and behind the tinted windows of the black tourbus, Tony Kakko, the charismatic mastermind and vocalist of Sonata Arctica, speaks about the recent album, The Days of Grays, assesses the success of the world tour so far and reveals the downsides of touring. He explains, among other things, why touring in the States is more comfortable than in Europe, and why we will most likely not see any pyro at their gigs for at least a while. We also get snippets of some goodies like a new project in the making, and the upcoming DVD. The conversation is spiced by our interviewee’s wit.

Sonata Photographica: How are you feeling today?

Tony Kakko: A little bit tired. We’ve been touring for some time now. We’ve got back from the Australian and Asian tour a couple of days back, and now we’re here.

Sonata Photographica: How are you satisfied with the new album, The Days of Grays?

Tony Kakko: Very much, of course there’s always something that you would change afterwards, some arrangement or whatever. And here I came up with a better idea, but it was too late, because at some point you need to decide that, okay this is now ready, because otherwise I would keep composing one and the same song until forever, you know. But yeah, I’m really happy with it.

Sonata Photographica: What about the response it got from the public?

Tony Kakko: I think the reactions have been really positive, both from people and media, you know, the reviews I think we’ve got from the major magazines, they have been better than ever.

Sonata Photographica: You also got 15.000 CDs sold pretty soon, in a day or so?

Tony Kakko: Yeah, the first day, in Finland…

Sonata Photographica: How was the working process with The Days of Grays, from the idea to the album, how long did it take, how you were going about it?

Tony Kakko: Well the Reckoning Night tour ended in the beginning of December [pause] 2007? 8? Jesus Christ it’s so… [laughs] I actually took a bit more than a month off before I started working, I had a few ideas, but that was about it. And then I think it was the beginning of February, late January, when I started really writing songs, and we already started rehearsing in March, late March. All the songs weren’t all that ready yet, but still we were rehearsing the ones that were ready to be rehearsed. And I kept writing up until the point where Tommy was so late that he was running of the time to record the drums, which was in the end of April. He started recording the drum-tracks already in April. And I think I gave Tommy the last song, which was As if the World Wasn’t Ending — I knew that’s a real easy song, that he can get the grasp of that song even without rehearsing it — so I gave him that song on the last day of drum recordings, and he was kinda worried about it and he didn’t think he’d pull it off but he just played it once and that was it. It’s an easy song, there’s nothing to it really… Then at that point, early May, I had a lot of work too with the lyrics. It was a little less than half a year the whole thing.

Sonata Photographica: How do you work, the lyrics first or the music first?

Tony Kakko: Music comes first. The ideal thing, the way I would actually like to do it is to come up with both at the same time, you know, it would make writing lyrics so much easier, if you had the music, and the composing as well. Because they have to fit together, in a way it’s really important that the words you sing, the lyrics, and the melody, they go together, somehow they complement each other. But we’re not living in an ideal world, so this is not the case how I do it. This is how it should be done and how I’d like to do it, but I usually come up with the music and then write the lyrics afterwards, what the song reminds me of, or brings in mind, of feelings… I think I had maybe one song or something like that, the other way around, that I first had lyrics, and then the music, but … I think it’s hard.

Sonata Photographica: Is there anything that you dropped out of this album, that you said you’d maybe use some other time?

Tony Kakko: Yeah, I have a few songs, I think two, three or so… If I’m not really happy with a song, if I think that this song could be so much better, I just chop it off in little pieces and use them later on different songs…

Sonata Photographica: So that’s probably going to come up on the next album or something…

Tony Kakko: Yeah, maybe one song can actually become like three songs or something like that… The ideas, I just chop them off. They will all always find their place eventually, somewhere.

Sonata Photographica: So you normally use the ideas sometime in the future, if something really feels good?

Tony Kakko: It’s not even necessarily the next album, maybe later. I think that on this album there are some ideas from five years past.

Sonata Photographica: What does it feel like, when you work on a studio album for some time, and then when the album is out in the open for the people to listen, what comes then?

Tony Kakko: Well, I’m usually thinking about the next album, or writing the next songs or the shows…

Sonata Photographica: … already?

Tony Kakko: Yeah… Well the first thing that comes into to my mind and that we talk about, is who guesses right, that how many days would it take for that album to get online, internet… Pirates…

That’s the thing that’s been happening for many, many years… It’s shit. [laughs]

Sonata Photographica: It must be really frustrating, because actually you can find pretty much everything on the internet before it’s released.

Tony Kakko: Yeah, even months…

Sonata Photographica: It happened with Nightwish, I think, with Dark Passion Play, too.

Tony Kakko: Yeah, we had the same thing. It wasn’t so bad this time, but I think Unia, the previous album, it was almost two months. It just takes, you know, the album getting in the wrong hands, people, the media, who don’t care… You just give the album to a friend, and if that friend doesn’t feel the need to, kind of, protect that thing anymore, and just gives it to a friend, and then someone eventually will put it online. Not necessarily the persons who are writing reviews, but their friends, because they don’t take care of that promotional copy that they get.

Sonata Photographica: On The Days of Grays, you also introduced the female vocals for the first time, how come, why did this happen?

Tony Kakko: Well, a few years back we were touring with Epica, and there came this idea that I would sing something on their album, and that we would kinda trade services, that Simone would then sing on our album. So that’s how the whole idea got started. I sang on their album first, and then I started writing songs. And I got to know this Johanna Kurkela, who is pretty famous in Finland, a well-known singer, appreciated as well, and I figured that she would be like fresh new sound. She sounds more innocent in a way, than Simone does. Simone’s been doing a lot of stuff around, and I thought it would actually be nice to do some local people from Finland, to introduce her to the world. You know what that kind of thing can bring.

Sonata Photographica: Yeah, she probably got known better now, I mean her name was brought to more people with the album.

Tony Kakko: Yeah, but of course in Finland I don’t know how many people actually know that Johanna is singing on our album. She’s known for her own work in Finland.

Sonata Photographica: But not in metal music?

Tony Kakko: No, that’s like really soft pop thing… youtube her name and then you will see…

Sonata Photographica: I will, I will.

Sonata Photographica: And also, with Unia, you took a totally new turn in comparison to the past albums, and you even continued with this one, and you introduced more orchestral sounds, and even issued an orchestral CD to go along. How did this happen, how did you decide to move away from this power metal that you had before, and do something completely different?

Tony Kakko: Yeah, we’ve been drifting away from the power metal thing. I wouldn’t call us even power metal, to be precise, it’s like melodic rock or whatever. It’s so many things happening, now like the current thing that we’re doing, it’s not really metal anymore, to its own. It’s got elements of so many different things that I think rock music is a vague enough term for everything, you’re gonna move everything in it… I just felt the need… Unia was kind of the starting thing for this orchestral thing, because I did all the orchestrations myself on that album. And I’ve been working with Northern Kings, and we had this Mikko P. Mustonen, who did all the orchestrations, and I thought hey, this would actually be really cool to have you on our album, to do some work there, and he was like totally excited about it and yeah, that’s how the whole thing got started. And it’s just really fun how these songs just change quite a bit actually after his work.

Sonata Photographica: It does add a new dimension to everything actually.

Tony Kakko: Yeah. So, of course on each album I wanna introduce something new and different and keep the whole thing interesting for the band and fans, same, and I think this did the trick, definitely. Totally did. Some people said it’s kinda Nightwish-ish, but we’re … like at least well … Deathaura [chuckles]. Well that, it could be kind of thought of as a Nightwish-ish song, but I don’t care, it’s fun. That song, it needed to be arranged in a grand way, it would have been kind of terrible to have that long song and with lot of twists and turns and it would just be punk rock [imitates rough guitar sounds] and it wouldn’t work at all.

Sonata Photographica: The song The Last Amazing Grays, it deals with death and with ageing and everything, and it’s sort of pessimistic, like, you’re the last amazing grays, how come, where did this spring from?

Tony Kakko: I don’t see the future generations all that good, there are good people there, but it’s like, you know, raising their children to be … there are no values or anything. So it’s a changing world, I don’t know how many decades and centuries it stayed the same; I think the change is always there, it’s constant. And always the old think, the current youth, they are totally rotten and they have no values. This has been the case back in 1600′s I’m sure. But I think this world is changing so much, like these days, like this technology and everything involved in it, I think it’s kind of worrying, I don’t know. It’s just as an inspiration, it’s not necessarily as a statement per se, it’s just … a song.

Sonata Photographica: Yeah well actually come to think of it, I guess people also spend less time together with internet and everything …

Tony Kakko: Yeah, it’s even in a family, like with your mom and dad, you don’t necessarily go see them, just – trrrrr [imitates typing], mom, bring me some milk. [laughs]

Sonata Photographica: Yeah, from the living room to your room or something.

Tony Kakko: Yeah, that happens.

Sonata Photographica: Now to some other thing I was thinking about, you did quite a few covers, from Iron Maiden and Helloween to Metallica, and then you did Bette Midler’s Wind Beneath my Wings [Tony smiles], you changed it a lot, you gave a totally new twist to it, but how did you choose this song?

Tony Kakko: I saw this movie, I don’t know when it was made, that had this Bette Midler soundtrack to it, and I fell in love with this song. I thought it really, really beautiful in every possible way, the melodies and the lyrics they are so touching. And when we had to choose a cover, I can’t even remember how many years ago that was, and I thought hey this would be nice to do and something different and it definitely deserved a different kind of life as well. Although the original is cool, but like introducing this kind of song, great song to a different audience and maybe these people would notice that there’s great music outside this metal scene as well. It’s just a matter of kinda arranging it in a certain way. And I think it worked, as a lot of people were totally surprised, like what the fuck, this is Bette Midler? This is great, how can it be?

Sonata Photographica: Any new covers we can expect maybe?

Tony Kakko: Yea, there’s one … but I‘m gonna keep it as a surprise for everybody, because I haven’t actually told that to anybody. I haven’t told, someone has, maybe, I don’t know… There’s one cover.

Sonata Photographica: A question for you as author. I am a great fan of Queen and in many vocal arrangements, I hear some sort of a Queen-ish sound…

Tony Kakko: Yeah, well that’s no surprise, because I’m a huge Queen fan myself really, that’s the first band that hit me big time back in 86 I think, I heard them on TV and I was blown. I don’t listen to them that often anymore, but I’m going back every now and then to listen to the earlier stuff. I didn’t like the early stuff, the first albums at first at all, I liked the 80s stuff, that was really cool, and early 90s.

Sonata Photographica: Kind of magic.

Tony Kakko: Yeah, that, exactly, it was the hit songs. But nowadays that I’m evolved musically, kinda, I like these progressive, really intelligent songs that they have, in their early times, I think they’re fantastic. Yeah, it’s fantastic. I am a big fan, and it definitely has a huge impact on the way I write songs and how I sing. I enjoy singing in layers, you know, the harmonies, I use them a lot. I’ve tried to arrange things a bit better… On Unia there was… Unia had little problematic things on it, because I didn’t have a lead melody at all on some songs, so it was kinda hard to do them live. [laughs] I had to choose one line to sing, and the guys were like, okaaay, what if this other line there is the lead melody, and I was, what? I don’t know, maybe it is. But it’s like a choir part, that works, it’s supposed to work as a harmony thing and that makes it difficult to sing live.

Sonata Photographica: Your albums always have some really nice artwork on the covers, that I read were made by ToxicAngel. How do you do them, who makes the concept, who gets the ideas, because they’re really intricate and detailed. How do you arrange that?

Tony Kakko: We’re working with ToxicAngel, yeah, and his wife Ravenheart, they’re this couple, married couple in Finland, I love those people, they’re fantastic, great friends. And I usually come up with the idea, what I have in mind. Like this time, I wanted to have a picture in a picture, you have a head of a wolf, there you can see it under the headline, in the outlines you can see, you can find it there, but it looks like something totally different. I saw this, I can’t remember what movie DVD cover it was actually, that I came to decide, and I said hey, this would be really cool. I think it was called Shrooms actually, and they had the moon on the cover there and two mushrooms growing, and it looked like a skull, the whole cover. And I thought that’s a cool skull, it’s like mushroom skull. That came with the idea.

Sonata Photographica: One other thing I saw was on Reckoning Night, you had this one image for the cover that had this fire behind the ship and another one with a hand behind the ship. Was there something to that story, why you had two of those?

Tony Kakko: That’s just different ideas we had, and it somehow got published. [laughs]

Sonata Photographica: So generally speaking, do you think the album artwork is important for the whole thing, for the whole album?

Tony Kakko: Of course. I pay a lot of attention to it, and I give ToxicAngel a lot of freedom to do, because I know he’s a big fan of little details, as am I myself. So actually I don’t tell him too precisely what I want to have there. Some things of course, if I want to have aliens I say go put some aliens in there, but he puts little things so I can also enjoy myself later like, ah-hah! I noticed something fun here, what the heck is this? Yeah well, I will explain it to you… It’s just fantastic. And of course it gives a lot to the fans who are buying the albums, you know, although the idea of a white album, with nothing on the cover, or black, is kinda cool … sometimes. But if you want to give something to the fans, one more reason to buy the actual album and have it in your hand, a nicely planned, art, artsy covers, they mean a lot, personally… [in a stubborn voice] I want the album cover that big. [outlines big square with his hands and laughs]

Sonata Photographica: One another, just completely random question. I was listening to the song Black Sheep, and I, it hit me there’s a howling miller in there, is that related to Arto Paasilinna’s novel, or not?

Tony Kakko: I took it from a movie, Howling Miller, I don’t know, from the 50s or something like that. Yeah, I think it’s in his works as well. And it’s older, the movie itself is really old, it’s black and white.

Sonata Photographica: Now to the tour, how did it go so far, are you satisfied with the number of people, the audiences showing up and everything?

Tony Kakko: Well of course in some places it would be nice to have more people, like here, in … G … How do you pronounce Graz … the name of this place?

Sonata Photographica [pronounces]: Graz.

Tony Kakko [repeats and laughs, then pronounces the name in some funny ways]: Okee-doke. This is the first time we’re playing here, that I can recall. [chuckles]

Sonata Photographica: Yeah, but you played near, in Slovenia actually, in 2008, in Maribor, also, which is kinda near, it less than 1 hour of driving from here.

Tony Kakko: Oh, yeah. Anyway, the presales weren’t the best, so we could have more people here, so we’re hoping for a lot of walk-ins. But generally speaking for the whole tour, it’s been going okay, we can still do this thing, and in some places where we have played more, it’s getting better and better.

Sonata Photographica: In Italy you’re huge.

Tony Kakko: Yeah, Italy‘s fun.

Sonata Photographica: There, it was quite a crowd waiting outside already at half past four.

Tony Kakko: Yeah, and I think in France some places are really good, and Belgium, Holland, and Sweden is okay, Norway, especially Oslo, that was really good. It’s getting okay everywhere. North America, we’re getting good crowds, compared to the album sales, and people who show up to see the show, it’s really, really huge.

Sonata Photographica: You do tour a lot there, in North America.

Tony Kakko: Yeah, you have to be there. If you wanna make it, you gotta just be there.

Sonata Photographica: It’s a big market too.

Tony Kakko: Yeah, and it’s a matter of being at the right place at the right time. And then if the right person happens to be there, you need to be there as well, and the only way to be there is to be there. [laughs] It’s hard work, but I really enjoy it, it’s so fun touring there. Their culture makes this touring thing really easy, they have this Walmart and such, and it’s nice to go shopping in the middle of the night, and you get your necessities, whereas in here in Europe, yeah, there’s nothing, really, compared to that. And if you need something, like, let’s say, shampoo… When you wake up early in the morning and need to go, fuck! where’s a shampoo place, store? And if there’s nothing close-by, it’s a pain in the ass to start looking for it. But often times in the States when the show is over and the bus leaves, we first stop in Walmart, which is maybe an hour away, whatever, and we go shopping, before sleep…

Sonata Photographica: So it is a bit different.

Tony Kakko: It’s different, it’s nice, it’s really confy and everything’s kinda … and … [chuckles] I haven’t actually liked touring Europe in a while, but that’s just because of the timing. We’ve been touring Europe lately around November, December. And the weather is just – suck!! It’s the worst time. It’s terrible! We should tour earlier, or then later, in April, that’d be cool. We’ve been touring in April, in Europe, and it’s nice, you have sun, and warmth…

Sonata Photographica: But you’re coming on summer festivals, too, you’re coming to Slovenia‘s Metalcamp, I read, also, so you’re gonna have some sunbathing maybe there, and swimming.

Tony Kakko: Yeah, I hope we have time.

Sonata Photographica: Regarding time, I was always wondering how the guys can be two years on a tour, with families, with everything they have back home?

Tony Kakko: No, we go back pretty often, the tours usually last something between three and six weeks, so after a tour you get a break. Hopefully more than a week. [smiles] And then while I was writing this album for example, we spent home almost half a year, we didn’t have anything, so it kind of makes things easier. And now after this tour, this sort of five-show tour that we have here, we have two days at home, and then we go to Russia.

Sonata Photographica: But still you have to have a wife with a big heart.

Tony Kakko: Yeah, of course it takes a lot, we appreciate that thing, it’s not for everybody. Not all the people can take that. It’s work, but it’s a different kind of work. And I don’t think anybody would hope their fiancé or husband or whatever to be in this kind of profession, in a way, if you are staying home the whole time, and the other part, the one you love, is not there most of the time, it’s really hard. And it’s not easy for us either, you know, we miss them. And luckily there are such things as Skype. It makes this world so much smaller.

Sonata Photographica: You spend a lot of time there…

Tony Kakko: Yeah, you can talk and go through things. It’s nice. Especially for those who have kids, it’s much easier. But now the children also know about this Skype thing, and you have to be there all the time. [chuckles] I don’t have any kids, but three of the guys, they have, so I know about this thing... And it’s at times hard, you know, you have the kids crying how much they miss you and all that. I’m so lucky I have a dog, because I call her name and she’s going hey hey! what the fuck’s happening behind the computer?! [laughs]

Sonata Photographica: Is that where this fascination with wolves comes from…?

Tony Kakko: Well kinda, I don’t know. I’ve always been … I find wolves really fascinating creatures, all the mythology and everything that is connected to them.

Sonata Photographica: My passion too, as a photographer.

Tony Kakko: Really? Cool. I like the camera by the way. I wish to have one of those. I have a 50D.

Sonata Photographica: 50D? It’s great for touring around…

Sonata Photographica: Do you like taking pictures?

Tony Kakko: Yeah, I do that a lot. Not on this tour, I didn’t bring my camera with me, but on any other tour I always do… This one was so short and I didn’t have any room, and I figured ah, it’s only a few days, just leave it home this time. Usually I‘m always carrying my camera back with me.

Sonata Photographica: Do you bring along the entire set that you had back in Milan?

Tony Kakko: Yeah, we have a truck following the bus. But these are the shows that we had to replace, because we had to cancel … because I was… That was a pain in the ass. So the only way to make this whole thing even possible was to make the whole thing a little bit smaller, and today the stage, we couldn’t even fit any of the production on there.

Sonata Photographica: As Sonata Arctica is getting bigger from year to year, you are already huge in many countries, but still the stage is small, the lights are few, there is no pyro, it is only a big voice and the band behind. Are you thinking in the future…?

Tony Kakko: Well, we should sell more albums, so everybody could make better living with this thing. If we started putting back all the money we make with this touring, then the dudes would have to get a day job to pay for the rents and everything, and it would make the whole band impossible to manage, so… First we got to get some kind of increase in income, before we can spend it on that kind of stuff. Of course not all the stuff, it doesn’t necessarily mean all that much money, it’s just creativity. It’s what we have there. Like these backdrops and sidedrops, they’re not expensive to create at all, but if you want to have all those pyros and a lot of moving lights, that’s expensive. And it’s like, puff, oh there goes 1000 bucks again, puff … wheeey! … [laughs] We’ve done that sometimes and it’s nice, but if you keep having this calculator [imitates crackling of accountant's calculator] in your head and calculate … and there goes money again… [laughs]

Sonata Photographica: Are you planning something big in Finland at the end of the tour like Nightwish?

Tony Kakko: We didn’t have these kind of big ending shows like Nightwish had, no, we’re not that big, I think, so all the shows we do in Finland, they’re pretty much the same, as big as they get. Although there’s one difference, in Kemi, our hometown, where we played a show recently, I think half a year ago, that was big, a whole production, it was Sonata Arctica Open Air, our own festival, with only two bands in it, but still, the production was big.

Sonata Photographica: Will that become a tradition?

Tony Kakko: I don’t think you can … kind of, biennial at best, you can’t do it every year. For now anyway, if the band grows big enough, then yeah. It would be nice to have even more bands there, maybe a two-day thing or whatever, but… It would also contribute a lot to our fine town of Kemi. It would bring a lot of people there. When we had the show, all the hotels and the motels have been sold out, and all the restaurants were full of people. There were so many people, there were 4000 people in Kemi around the time and it was a big thing.

Sonata Photographica: Well it is somehow, it seems that lately Finland has become some kind of a centre for metal music, one of the big ones. Why do you think that is, that there are so many bands that come from Finland, especially in this metal area?

Tony Kakko: Well if milk suddenly becomes, like, the biggest thing to drink and there are some people who are making really excellent milk, there are bound to be even more people making milk, and you know, having cows and shit. [laughs] At this occasion there are some metal bands that have made it fairly large in Finland and it’s really fascinating for young kids to start a band who’s playing a similar kind of music and …

Sonata Photographica: And a lot of people play instruments in Finland?

Tony Kakko: Well most of the people know how to play a little bit something, I don’t know. [smiles] I don’t play anything too good, I play keyboards somewhat okay and a little bit guitar…

Sonata Photographica: On keyboards you’re good…

Tony Kakko: Yeah, compared to who? I don’t know … [smiles]

Sonata Photographica: Are you ever tempted to go and play something on stage, just for the kicks?

Tony Kakko: Sometimes too, sometimes I do, I play a little something. But I don’t wanna mix up Henkka’s things. [smiles] It’s actually fun, sometimes go and play something a little and then just aaaah, whatever, and start the next song.

Sonata Photographica: Your set-list has been pretty fixed lately, with all the songs and everything, how come you don’t change, swap around, as you have such a huge base to choose from right now?

Tony Kakko: You can think the whole thing in two different ways. First you can change the songs and appreciate those people who come and see many, many shows, or you can take the thinking that everybody deserves the same quality show, and we’ve been sticking to that for now. For me it would be okay to change, but the guys, they seem to be enjoying the fixed set, it’s safe…

Sonata Photographica: How did you choose the songs for this, favourites from everyone or…?

Tony Kakko: Well it’s both, from our favourites, the ones we wanna play and that are fun to do and then of course there are some songs that we would rather just, puff, put away somewhere, but the fans love them so much. And they’re a good part of the show and they work really well, but we are tired with them. Like FullMoon for example, I could live without FullMoon for a year easy, no problem, but it’s like crowd-pleaser, and it’s fun to make people sing and all that.

Sonata Photographica: Which one is your favourite then, your favourite song on the set-list, to perform?

Tony Kakko: I guess As if the World Wasn’t Ending, and The Last Amazing Grays. And Juliet, that’s a lot of fun, I like Juliet.

Sonata Photographica: The end of the Stalker series?

Tony Kakko: Kinda. For now at least, I don’t know. You can always write more songs. I think we have kind of an ending to the whole thing at the moment … but you can put stuff in the beginning.

Sonata Photographica: There are so many discussions I read on the internet about which songs actually belong to this Stalker series. Some people say everything from Shy [Tony chuckles] to Under Your Tree, that those could belong into that. So which are actually …

Tony Kakko: Well Under Your Tree is not, it’s about burying your dog, or pet, or whatever, you know, something that you love. Or child, you know, although [ponders] under … a … tree … somewhere in a forest, it’s kind of … creepy … kind of … maybe ashes… You can‘t do that in Finland unfortunately. I don’t think it’s okay. In a way I understand it, nice thing if you’re fishing somewhere and suddenly whoosh! you get some ashes in your face or whatever… [laughs] Grandma!!! [laughter]

Sonata Photographica: That’s actually a good reason why not to do that!
Tony Kakko [while still chuckling]: Yeah, probably.

Sonata Photographica: Do you plan to include any other songs from the last album, The Days of Grays, into the set-list?
Tony Kakko: Yeah, we have a break in March, and we will rehearse Deathaura at least, and Dead Skin. Those two for sure.

Sonata Photographica: And when are you coming to Europe then again?
Tony Kakko: That’s a little bit open still, you know… We have the festival season of course in summer and then, it’s a little bit open… The tour will go on at least one more year from now, so I think like in 2011 in summer, that might be a good point to start working on the next album again. But you never know what happens, you know. If suddenly you’re ready to stop the whole thing now and start working on the album, and then Metallica or whatever’s asking you hey, would you like to be the opener band for this seven-band tour?, you go heey, of course it would be nice. Or Iron Maiden or something. That’d be cool. But you can’t plan such a thing, it just happens, and if it happens, you have to be...

Sonata Photographica: So you’re already writing new material too, if you get inspired?
Tony Kakko: Yeah, I’ve actually written a few things already. My own stuff, actually, not for Sonata, but kind of a little different, harder stuff. Like, I would actually call that metal already, I don’t know. It’s just the beginning of the thing, and you never know what kind of form it will find in the end. I was actually talking with Mikko Mustonen, our arranger guy, something like two days ago, a cool dude, it would be nice to do something together, I think I might just include him in. Something really, really metallic, with orchestrations…

Sonata Photographica: I’m looking forward to that. Now for the outro, you chose the theme from Band of Brothers, how come, how did you come to the idea to use that?

Tony Kakko: I’m a big fan of that TV series, it’s fantastic. That’s how it came to be. We like to think we’re like a band of brothers, that we’re brothers working together, and I don’t wanna ever take that song away from us as the outro, it will stay there, the perfect take a bow song.

Sonata Photographica: One last thing. I know that it’s way too early to speak of a new album and everything, but I read that you are planning to release a DVD sometime near?

Tony Kakko: Yeah, that might take a year. Actually we are shooting the DVD, the plan changed a little bit and it’ll be, I think, in autumn sometime.

Sonata Photographica: Anything you can disclose on what will be on this DVD?

Tony Kakko: It’s a live show. And if we get the time and find all the material to put together in a decent form, it will be some kind of historic part to it as well, as we’ve shot our earliest shows, already like 96, and it would be nice to add songs here and there.

Sonata Photographica: Nothing like Reckoning Night from Japan?

Tony Kakko: No, no, that was shit, that, uuugh, fuck, uuugh, nooo, no … [laughs] We had some really good stuff happening, but… Yeah, I regret I let that whole thing go. Either I just didn’t care enough, and that was actually Jani who put that whole thing together and I just went whatever, I don’t give a fuck… But people pay a lot of attention for that kind of stuff.

Sonata Photographica: It’s the only thing with quality video, but…

Tony Kakko: Yeah, crap. Personally I enjoy the backstage material, and what’s going on around the tour, not the show. If I buy the DVD, I actually need to first know if there’s something else to it.

Sonata Photographica: Just one last quick question, because in Milan I was a bit disappointed, but you were sick, that was okay. The thing is that, say Bruce Springsten, who is, like, an old fart now, he’s on stage for 2 and a half hours or even 3, but your concert is just 1h40, something like that. Any explanations why it’s so short?

Tony Kakko: Well first of all, some of the guys didn’t want to do any longer shows, there are many reasons for that. We played in some places like 1h50 or two hours, back in the day, and you can see the people get tired, there’s no energy in the audience anymore. And if you have any support acts, then people get drained and I think it’s better to let people a little bit hungry for more and let them go out with energy, not get like [imitates yawning]. Even if you have a really, really good show and the band you love, if the show is like, 2,5 hours, it’s like [imitates a sigh] my feet are hurting and I’m getting tired and my ears are tired, and…

Sonata Photographica: Thank you so much for your time, it was a great pleasure talking to you. We wish you a great show.

Tony Kakko: You’re welcome. Have fun.

When you enjoy something, the time just flies by. The conversation with Tony Kakko was such a pleasure we completely lost track of time. We would like to thank him again for his kindness and his time.

Interview prepared, conducted and written by Tanja Orešnik for Sonata Photographica

Photo credits: Sonata Photographica