Rockezine.com interview with Thunderstone on Jun 07, 2002

with Nino Laurenne on Jun 07, 2002

On June 24th Thunderstone will release their impressive self-titled debut album, but while Nuclear Blast promotes this band as power metal, their music is certainly a lot more heavy metal oriented than most other bands in the scene. Reason enough to have a talk with founder Nino Laurenne and find out more about this excellent Finnish newcomer.
		Your debut album, ”Thunderstone”, will be released next month, are you satisfied with the end result? Definitely! We worked in our own studio for two long months to record it. So yeah, the final result is definitely satisfying.
		Nuclear Blast has labeled your music as power metal but how would you describe the music on the album? I would describe the music as melodic power heavy metal. Most people say we play power metal but I don’t think that’s true. There’s so much more influences from the eighties and especially the vocals differ from power metal bands. Our singer Pasi Rantanen sounds more like eighties heavy metal and doesn’t sing as high as possible all the time like most of the other singers in the scene do.
		I, myself hate the term power metal, to me it has a very negative ring to it; like a term made up to sell albums.
		I would rather call your music melodic heavy metal than power metal. What is your opinion about the term power metal and the scene in general? Heh. Well that’s a nice thing to say, like I said before, so far everyone seems to call us power metal and I myself don’t really agree with that either. I don’t really follow the scene anyway, last time I bought an album, was five years ago and it was Dio’s “Holy Diver”. Apart from our music being more heavy metal than the other bands in the scene our lyrics are also totally different. We don’t sing about dragons and heroes.
Nuclear Blast is just great!		What single will be released from the album? There is already a single released in Finland! Last Friday actually! It is the second song “Virus”.
		Good! So not one of those more power metal songs like “Let The Demons Free” or “Like Father, Like Son”! Too bad however that the best song on the album “Will to Power” is eight minutes long and thus not really single material! Yah! That’s my own personal favorite song too, but yes indeed too long to be released as a single.
		I read somewhere that Thunderstone started as your project. At what point did you decide to make it a band? Early 2000 I started recording some songs because I wanted to do something else than I had been doing before. I played in a band called Antidote, which played speed and thrash metal and I felt like writing some old heavy metal songs. When I asked my friends to play the songs with me, we quickly decided the music was too good to stay a project and we formed Thunderstone.
		Many good melodic heavy metal bands have come from Finland lately like Stratovarius, Sonata Arctica and Children of Bodom, how do you compare those bands to Thunderstone? Apart from our three fast songs (“Let The Demons Free”, “Me, My Enemy” and “Like Father, Like Son”) I can’t really say we sound like those bands at all. Of course since almost all bands in Finland use the same sound man and same studios (Finnvox) our music tends to have the same sound but I personally think our music sounds more like eighties heavy metal than the other Finnish bands like Stratovarius or Sonata Arctica.
		Being signed by one of the biggest labels in the business, Nuclear Blast, before even releasing one single album is quite an achievement and certainly an indication of your potential. What does Nuclear Blast do for you in terms of promotion? Nuclear Blast is just great, they printed 50.000 postcards with a competition on the back to win a trip to Helsinki and meet us (laughter). I think that that’s just great! Besides they have made a huge amount of posters and the promotion in general seems to be ok. Only problem we have is Finland, somehow things don’t seem to be going so good here, but somehow it always goes like this in Finland; Finnish bands first become popular somewhere else and then in Finland.
		To top it all, I noticed you were added to the Wacken Open Air lineup, not the smallest of festivals and a good performance in front of a German crowd certainly will skyrocket Thunderstone.
The best newcomer? Thunderstone of course! Haha! No, that was a joke, just kidding...		I noticed you haven’t played much live yet, are you ready for a big show like that? We have had two gigs so far and two festivals are planned in Finland, Nummirock and Nurmirock. One of the gigs we had was a small gig in Nosturi (small club in Helsinki) and it went great. We got a lot of confidence from that gig and I am certain that Wacken will just go ok. Ok, we will be afraid but the biggest difference between Nosturi and Wacken is just a bigger stage. If the monitors are set up good, we will play ok. The monitor setup is really all I’m worrying about.
		But like I said a good show in Germany will almost certainly mean a breakthrough. Those guys will love your music. That type of music is very popular in Germany! Really? I guess it will be the place to prove ourselves then!
		What do you think about the metal scene in Finland and what is the best newcomer you have heard? The scene in Finland is quite good. I know from my work in my studios, almost every day, I spend eight hours recording albums, that there’s many good bands bubbling under, waiting to be discovered. Actually two weeks from now Stratovarius is coming to our studio to record the vocals and bass for their upcoming album!
		The best newcomer? Thunderstone of course! Haha! No, that was a joke, just kidding. I don’t really know who would be the best newcomer, since I don’t really follow the scene, too difficult to answer!
		From all your biographies on the Thunderstone homepage I have noticed that all of you dig old school heavy metal bands like Deep Purple and Whitesnake. How do those bands still influence your music? Well, I can’t really say. Pantera for instance is one of the bands that impresses me most, maybe you can’t really hear it in our music apart from one guitar riff in “Will to Power”. Our singer on the other hand is totally mad about David Coverdale and Whitesnake. I guess that everyone adds a little bit to the mix.
		I for instance definitely hear influences from Queensrÿche and Dream Theater in your music! (laughter) Haa! It is better to be compared to Dream Theater than Sonata Arctica and Queensrÿche’s Operation: Mindcrime is in my opinion the best album ever made!
		Queensrÿche, that brings me to my next question! (laughter again) I already KNOW what you are going to ask!
		I noticed one of your songs is called ”Eyes of a Stranger” does this in any way refer to Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime or is it just a coincidence? No coincidence, but it was just a working title when we were writing the song. Once the song was done we had become too familiar with it and we couldn’t really come up with something else and we thought what the hell the title is good, it doesn’t matter that someone else already has used it. Iron Maiden also has a song called “Virus”!
Internet is really great, especially for a beginning band.		Since I have the promo version of the album, I don’t know much about the lyrics. All I can say is that they are not the usual fantasy oriented lyrics. Can you tell me a bit more about the lyrics and who has written them? I write all the lyrics myself and our songs are more about the real world and every day life, like relationships or a computer virus for instance. I would say it’s more about real life heroes.
		Will your lyrics be available on your homepage in the future and what do you think of Internet in general? Maybe. I haven’t really thought about it yet. Internet is really great though, especially for a beginning band. We had three songs on mp3.com and “Me, My Enemy” was on place 12 of most downloaded power metal (ironic laughter) songs. After that we started getting lots of emails and offers from record labels from Italy and Spain and finally even Nuclear Blast! On the other hand though, I can understand Lars Ulrich’s attitude towards the Internet and illegal mp3’s, after all, they are losing shitloads of money!
		Finally, would you like to say something to conclude this interview? Well, I guess I have already said everything. This is always the most difficult question. All I can say is: “Let Your Demons Free!” Listen to the lyrics and you know what I mean by that! Thank you!
		(Frank van de Voorde)