Interview with Hannu and Scandinavian Metal Webzine

[Hannu]

Today I posted a review of the new album to Noumena. This album
impressed me so much that I just had to contact them. I find Noumena to
be the band of the year so far.
In this interview I had a chat with bass player Hannu Savolainen.

Hello Hannu, how are you doing? I'm really glad you contated me Hannu
and told me about Noumena cause you guys just kick serious ass! Will you
start by giving the readers of Scandinavian metal a background
infomation on Noumena and please also try to explain your playing style.

Well, I'm doing just fine and I'm eagerly waiting for comments on our
new album. Noumena was formed in 1998, in a small Finnish town called
Ähtäri. A lot has happened during Noumena's history, but I think the
release of our debut album Pride/Fall (2002) was somewhat a triumph for
us. After a few demos, lots of difficulties, several happy moments and
loads of beer it really felt like an achievement. Now, we have played
our melodic metal for seven years with no changes in the line-up and
here we are.

About our playing style. To keep it short: we have really solid rhythm
base, crushing riffs, catchy melodies and growling vocals. Then some
clean male and female vocals to spice up the soup. That's about it, I think.

You will release your second album 'Absence' on April 13th, 2005 through
Spikefarm Records. Are you guys satisfied with the outcome? Do you think
you have created "the perfect" album?

We are very happy with the outcome indeed. I think everyone of us has
listened Absence at least a hundred times, and it still sounds great! I
wouldn't dare to speak about a "perfect" album. If Absence was our
"perfect" album, we should stop playing, right? We succeeded well with
this one, but I think we still have quality melodies and songs coming.
Anyway, I hope our new album will be a significant milestone in our career.

I must admit I haven't heard your debut album "Pride/Fall" from 2002.
How would you compare Absence to your debut?

First of all, Absence is an entity. The most songs were written during
some 8-9 months and rehearsed tightly before our studio session.
Pride/Fall is "a compilation" of material recorded in 1999 and 2001.
That's why it's little uneven. I think there are great songs on our
debut and some of them we certainly play live. But we consider that on
Absence we have found ourselves, which can be noticed on the sounds, on
the songs and on the atmosphere all together

After giving Absence a proper listen I can't seem to stop enjoying the
incredibly good melodies. I actually start to think of classic In Flames
era, you know around 1997/1998 when In Flames released The Jester Race
and Whoracle. Is it safe to say that old In Flames have infuclened you
guys quite a lot? Also, what's the most important metal bands that have
inspired Noumena?

Yeah, melodies are definitely a kind of Noumena trademark. I can't stop
enjoying them either. When we founded Noumena, In Flames was one of our
- at least my - favourite bands (especially Subterraean, The Jester Race
and Whoracle), but we never wanted to follow their tracks. During the
years In Flames has been one influencial band among the others. There
are so many bands we have listened to, and I think that one of Noumena's
strengths has been the variety of influences. And we all five don't
listen to same bands. But to name some, Iron Maiden, Edge of Sanity,
Amorphis and My Dying Bride have given us good vibes.

I also fell in love the female vocals on this album. Judging from your
website she isn't a fulltime member of Noumena. Can you give us some
facts about her? Also, are the growls and clean male vocals done by the
same guy?

Hanna Leinonen is a session member in studio and on gigs. Hanna spent
her youth in Ähtäri, like we Noumena guys. She has sung in choirs and so
on. Back in 1998 we asked Hanna to sing a little bit on our first demo.
Since then she has always helped us if we have needed female vocals.
Hanna is really pro, and her voice fits nicely to our music

Our vocalist Antti Haapanen is responsible for growlthings. Guitarist
Ville Lamminaho did some backing growls and other things on Absence.
Clean male vocals are done by guest vocalist Tuomas Tuominen. He sings
in an enjoyable Finnish metal band Fall of the Leafe. When we rehearsed
for Absence, Ville had plans to include clean male vocals in some songs.
He had listened to FotL's latest album and proposed that we could ask
Mr. Tuominen to visit our album. Tuomas was (suprisingly) eager to
co-operate with us. We had really great time, and you can hear that he
was the right geezer to sing on Absence.

Aight, about songwriting. Who is the main songwriter in Noumena and how
is the songwriting process? In the same run I would appreciate if you
could give me some info on the lyrics. Any special topics the band bleed
for and how important is lyrics in general for Noumena?

Guitarists Ville Lamminaho and Tuukka Tuomela are the main songwriters
in Noumena. On Absence there are six songs by Ville and four by Tuukka.
I myself compose really seldom, but there are a couple of Noumena songs
written by me. Usually the two guitar heroes write songs at home, they
pre-arrange them and send them to others for comments. Then, we rehearse
a song together, we rearrange it if needed and maybe adjust the
structure. Everyone has relatively free hands to decide how to play his
own parts. The green fruit of a song is pushed through Noumena "filter"
or "grinder" and the result is what it is...

Ville and I are the main lyric writers. Antti and Tuukka also have
contributed some texts for Noumena. Lyrics are an important part of our
songs, although we don't have any particular mission or goal to achieve
with them. We don't write any "dragons and swords" -stuff. We tell
stories where world around us and fictional elements unite.
Impressionistic glimpses of moods, fates and incidents.

Any immediate touring plans?

We are planning to play some gigs in Finland after the album is released
and the audience has become familiar with it. We are eager to tour
outside Finland as well, though I'm afraid that our foreign fans will
have to wait for a while to see Noumena live.

Will you make any music videos this time around?

No plans about music video this far.

Do you feel the metal scene in Scandinavia today is very much alive? I
especially think the Finnish metal scene is just getting better and
better. What is your view on this matter?

I try to stay updated with all the remarkable Scandinavian metal bands
and good bands from other genres too. That's not an easy task, as there
are so many interesting groups rising their heads from the underground
nowadays. I agree with you, Finnish metal scene has evolved greatly
during the last ten years. Internet and computers have made it easier
and cheaper to record music and spread it out to the audience. Bands and
musicians are quite talented and so are engineers and producers. But the
thing I'm really waiting for, is something ground-breaking and fresh.
For instance, I'm not so enthusiastic about this death thrash -boom,
though there are some nice bands playing that kind of metal, too.

How do you look upon the Internet and music, free mp3s, filesharing etc?

Internet is really a goldmine for someone who needs information about
bands, who wants to find something new and interesting and likes to hear
some samples. Nowadays consumers don't have to buy albums without
knowing what they are about to get. I think there's nothing wrong with
listening Noumena's Absence and then decide whether to buy it or not.
People can walk in record store and listen to music, I think that's
quite similar thing. On the other hand, I can see why record companies
and artists are concerned about the filesharing. They can't sell as much
CDs as earlier and the whole music scene or industry suffers from that.
But I'm not sure if it is because people listen to illegal mp3's, or
because they won't buy an album they don't like. From my point of view,
pirate CDs are much worse problem than filesharing in Internet. I have
many friends, who find new bands with the help of filesharing and then
they buy lots of CDs. Unfortunately everybody isn't like that...

Forgive my ignorance, but what does 'Noumena' mean?

Noumena is latin, a philosophical term, it's plural of noumenon. Noumena
means "things in themselves". Noumena is an unknowable, undescribable
reality that, in some way, lies "behind" observed phenomena. Got that?

Ok, the time has come for my standard question. Can you make a list of
what you think are the 5 best Scandinavian metal releases ever?

Damn you, this is an awful task. There are so many great Scandinavian
metal albums. I want to give an opportunity here to other band members
as well. So this is the list of albums Noumena members think that are
great, have influenced us and are so called "evergreens".

Borknagar: Epic (Antti)
Edge Of Sanity: Purgatory Afterglow (Hannu)
Tiamat: Wildhoney (Ville)
Amorphis: Tales from the Thousand Lakes (Tuukka)
Dimmu Borgir: Enthrone Darkness Triumphant (Ilkka)

Thanks for answering these questions. I'm sure I'm not will be the only
who got into Noumea after checking Abscene out. Do you have any final
words to the readers of Scandinavian Metal webzine?

Do yourselves a big favour and get familiar with Absence. It's
definitely Finnish metal music at its best. Thank You!
_________________
Hopefully there's a bit of Jazz Odyssey in everything we play -Derek Smalls, Spinal Tap

[Wombaticus]

Hmm, I'm still trying to find a good sentence to use the word noumena in...
Nothing comes to mind yet.
Thanks for posting this, it answered some of the questions I was going to ask!

[Blacklion]

Interesting interview. Though, few typos, but the hell, who cares...
_________________
Rässiä.