Eighth chapter:
Infinity made into sound
(2007)
On January 10th, the awaited album was finally released in Europe; Americans had to wait until April 26th. The cover artwork was made by Travis Smith, famous for his designs for Opeth, among others, and it shows an arid, rocky, burnt landscape, with a raven standing in a branch in the center of the image. The promo pictures were taken in Kaivopuisto park en Helsinki, and show the five members dressed in street clothes and simply standing, the predominant color being grey, or simply black and
white. V: Hävitetty entered the Finnish charts directly in the 16th position, as had already happened with Kivenkantaja, being also the highest position reached by a new album that week. In the German charts, it appeared in the 40th position. Marko was astonished: “What has to be done then to have it done uncommercial? Let's see, we don't have: 3 or 4 mins hit songs; music video; radio play; myspace; pretty boys or girls in the band”. What they did have was an album with only two half-an-hour long songs, full of depth and progression and very slow parts and sounds of nature and hearsh vocals and some blasting here and there. More or less, the sound continues the style of Verisäkeet, dark and atmospheric. Perhaps a little less aggressive. At the beginning and end of each song there’s a wind-like sound; that’s not an effect, it’s actual wind – a photo exists which shows Henri under a snowfall, recording with two antenna-looking devices. The
back cover of the album doesn’t show the songtitles, just the total playing time, I guess it was done in order to avoid the eventual buyer to think it’s a single or something like that. In that moment, Moonsorrow was already a well known band within the pagan scene, which partially explains the success in sales; but, despite that success, the album consisting of two hyper-long songs made many fans who preferred lighter stuff run in the opposite direction; many of them had started to lose hope after the radical change in Verisäkeet. In all the interviews that followed the release, they were asked about the reason of doing such long songs, and the answer was always the same: “In fact, it wasn’t exactly a decision. When we started writing material for the new album, we intended to make more songs,
Recording snowflakes some six or seven, and easier to play live. But we soon realized the first song was becoming something totally epic! Then there was no turning back. We didn’t want to cut the song, so we did our best to maintain the intensity through the whole album. The arrangement of these long songs has been a very interesting project, and we’re extremely satisfied with the record. This time, the album was completely produced by Henri, so the sound is a bit different to Verisäkeet, but it still keeps the characteristic touch Moonsorrow’s known for.” “The song is ready when it's ready. It often happens that we have 10 minutes of material and the songs still seems to be needing something. The songs just kept stretching and stretching, and in the end we realised we are having these two massive tracks. And because they both have their musical structure very carefully thought, they definitely couldn't work as shorter tracks.” “When we finished the first song, we realised it was very very long. And then we said: let’s make another one!” “It's like a book, if you haven't reached the conclusion on page 20, you can't stop reading yet”.
Recording snowflakes
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