Chapter 3.2

Chapter 3.1 - Index - Chapter 4.1

The concert they played in the pub Nosturi on December 7th 2001 was recorded in video, at least the song "Sankarihauta", and that footage, with its non-suitable-for-epileptic-people flashes plus the studio song added on top of it, would become the first official videoclip of the band. Mitja took care of the edition process, which took him a few months because his edit-unit had been broken, but it was ready in the beginning of March, and it was aired for the first time on April 15th in Moon TV (a channel that's now only available online, but was a regular cable channel back then, visible in some bigger Finnish cities) together with an interview featuring Marko and Ville. It was the first ever Moonsorrow appearance on TV. You can check it out at the Moonsorrow interviews compilation. On May 5th, the "Sankarihauta" video was posted to the internet.

In summer of that year, Henri decided that he couldn’t or didn’t want to play live with the frequency they were reaching and presumably th

Janne Perttilä in Moonsorrow

ey would reach in the future. In that moment Janne Perttilä came in as a session musician, substituting Henri in many concerts since then; as seen previously, he had participated in both albums doing choirs, but his participation in the band hadn’t gone further. Nowadays, Janne has did many more concerts with Moonsorrow than Henri. However, Henri still plays at some concerts from time to time, specially in Finland, and of course he still writes and records. He has a substitute in Finntroll, too.

On November 18th they entered TicoTico one more time, with the purpose of recording the follow-up to V&K, which would be called Kivenkantaja (Stonebearer in English – in French, Obélix *ba-dum-tssss*). This time they had a bunch of guests.

Hittavainen

I mean more than usual. Besides Janne and the Thyrane guys, they had four more guests: two come from Sweden: their webmaster Stefan Lejon and his brother Robert; and other two from Finland: Hittavainen, violinist of Korpiklaani, and a woman called Petra Lindberg. Janne did choirs in all the songs; the Lejon brothers only in “Kivenkantaja” and in another song they recorded but didn’t want to say which one it was, only that it was a cover and would be included in a future compilation or something. Indeed, it appeared in a later release, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Concerning the other two guests, Hittavainen played his violin in three songs, and Petra Lindberg, old friend of Henri’s, gave his voice to the melodic “Matkan lopussa”.

In the studio diary, Henri said they would probably never play any of the songs of this album live, because each song has about 70-80 audio tracks, obviously a very difficult thing to do live, and he refuses completely to use CDs with pre-recorded stuff.

Extreme sports
at the hotel

He made a comparison with Emperor’s Emperial live ceremony, which despite being a live album, contains many parts added in studio, and he didn’t want to end up doing that. Luckily, in the end they decided to take lots of samples in Eurén’s keyboard; and, even though it’s impossible to make the songs sound exactly the same as in studio, they managed to get a decent sound. Nowadays they often play songs from this album, actually “Kivenkantaja” appears very frequently in their set lists, and “Raunioilla”, “Unohduksen lapsi” and “Jumalten kaupunki” are also played quite often.

Finally, on December 6th, coinciding with the Finnish Day of Independence, they finished the work in the studio and flew back to Helsinki.

Kivenkantaja

Chapter 3.1 - Index - Chapter 4.1

Chapter 3.1

Chapter 2.3 - Index - Chapter 3.2

Third chapter:
Old problems and new sounds
(2002)

Of course, they got a lot of criticism from the ultra-purist-hiper-underground-true-metal-defenders when they signed with a bigger label, which had also bigger and more commercial bands such as Nightwish or Children Of Bodom. About this, Marko said: “The truth is we´re not so big band (whatever) that people seem to think of us. It´s that when we signed the deal with Spikefarm we started to get very negative response. All this rockstar bullshit. Fuck. Do they want us to stay on Plasmatica forever? Do they want us to stay underground forever?

Greatest promo pics ever

Do they want to bring us down? I really don´t understand what is their problems nor I do care. Are we big-headed rockstars when we sell about some 5000 records, play 10 minutes long epic metal songs singing in Finnish? I think we´re very much underground still and that´s fine for us. Anyone of us never thought this to be a big thing. We´re just happy we can do albums we like and if there´s someone outthere who gets enjoyment of what we´re doing, that is a thing that matters to us very much. ”.

We are already in 2002. And the distribution of Suden uni is still in the first pressing, which by this time was totally sold out (remember they were 1000 copies). Plasmatica didn’t re-release it. In this situation, they thought of doing a quiz in the official website, which started on February 28th and consisted of several questions; among those who answered correctly, some copies of the album were raffled. I think they were seven copies in total. Some months later, in the beginning of September, they uploaded all the songs in mp3 format to mp3s.com and offered them in free download. Finally the album was re-pressed in the end of that month, exactly the same recording and slightly different booklet (this time it had the the songs fully translated and different pictures), and left only two tracks for download. This is the speech that Henri dedicated to the owner of Plasmatica: “That Peruvian bastard no-business-talent-whatsoever Carlos from Plasmatica Records (spit on him) took an extra pressing of the "Suden Uni"-album without telling us anything, to flee away for paying the royalties. (What a dishonourable subhuman.)

Aaaaaaah!

We found this out, and mailed the fucking retard to send our payment immediately, or we will come and visit him with some baseball bats. He kept promising and promising, "yes, I send you money" for over a month and finally, when nothing (surprisingly) happened, we put the "Suden Uni" to the internet for free download, because we thought that people want to hear and buy the album but because of Carlos they can't, so let's put it into a free download and simultaneously show Carlos that "if we don't get our money, you won't get any profits either". We're mostly likely getting rid of him soon anyway, as he has violated so many parts of the deal that we can pretty surely sue his poor ass and have the legal rights to the album all by ourselves. Besides, this unloyal cunt owes us 2000 euros, so there really are millions of reasons why this unprofessional dick should be beaten into a pulp and get his money.”

On March 21st 2002 they surprised their fans when they uploaded the first demo, Metsä, in mp3 format and offered it for free download.

New Metsä artwork

It wasn’t the original edition, but a fixed one: in April of the previous year, Baron had remastered the material; a couple of months later they had added some extra details of voices and keyboards, and also a bass, which the original demo lacked. And a mouth harp. Besides, Ville made some artwork, which was uploaded together with the mp3 files for downloaders to print. Currently those files don’t exist any more in the official sites, but they’re easy to get from p2p networks and such. And it doesn’t seem like they will be made available again; five years later, Ville said: “Nah, they are demos. Since we have already gone such a long way, let them serve as rarities for the die-hard fans who actually bought them when they were still available. There is a way to get all the material through the internet anyway if someone really wants to hear them.”

Hvrgelmir + Elivagar (Pakanavedet), remaster 2002

Chapter 2.3 - Index - Chapter 3.2

(2008)

Ville Seponpoika Sorvali

He was born in Helsinki on April 13th 1980 and is the other founding member of Moonsorrow, together with his cousin Henri. His function in the band is playing bass, singing and writing the lyrics for all the songs. According to himself, he got into heavy metal with Iron Maiden’s album Seventh son of a seventh son, and his main vocal influence has been Thomas Väänänen (known for having been in Thyrfing). Besides Moonsorrow, Ville participates or has participated in other bands such as Woods Of Belial, May Withers, Amoral and, most recently, Vere and Section 8. He has also appeared as a guest lyricist for Thyrane and Black Sun Aeon.

He studied Mathematics in the university of Helsinki with the intention of following the steps of his father and grandfather and becoming a teacher, but he never finished school and his professional future turned out differently; as he tells: “I don't have a full-time job, haven't had for years. There are several part-time jobs, most of them connected with music in a way or another (publicist, journalist, promoter, producer, roadie/stagehand, general wanker)... ie. collecting peanuts from here and there, wherever I can get some.” From 2001 until 2005 he was the chief editor of the metal magazine Inferno, and today his writing skills are hired by another magazine, Soundi. He also collaborates in the up-and-coming business called Metalheim, which also happens to be the booking agency of Moonsorrow in Finland.

Nosturi
17·12·2001

Raah Raah Blääh
April 2005

Nosturi
31.XII.2008

Amoral - Solvent
(bass & lyrics by Ville)