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Welkins Boreal was founded by composer Teemu Kautonen in 2018 in Helsinki, Finland, playing something that can be classified as gothic metal with generous doses of gothic rock. We interviewed Teemu, who has played in many bands, including Darkwoods My Betrothed, Furthest Shore, Nattvindens Gråt and Wizzard.
Hello everybody, how are you? Starting our interview, could you tell us a bit about the band story and your beginnings in music?
It’s a sunny Sunday morning in Helsinki and I’m sitting in my home office with a cup of Brazilian coffee, so things could be worse thanks 😉 I have been playing in bands since I was 11 years old and I was particularly active in the underground scene in the mid to late 1990s in bands such as Darkwoods My Betrothed (DMB), Nattvindens Gråt, Wizzard and Furthest Shore. However, the first two decades of the new millennium I focused on my professional career and starting a family, which took all of my time and energy leaving none for music. Finally, in late 2018 I figured it was time to start again now that work and family finally left some time for other things. I actually considered re-starting Nattvindens Gråt but after some thinking and discussing with friends I decided to start afresh with a new English band name. Hence, Welkins Boreal was born in December 2018.
I have listened to ‘Phantoms Of Yesteryear’ and it recalls me bands like Poisonblack, To/Die/For and Charon. What did artists influence your work?
To be honest, I had a really hard time finding bands to compare our music with when I wrote the PR materials for the debut album. I asked several friends and music journalists and all of them came up with a different set of bands. The most frequent common denominator was Sentenced, which was funny because I had never really listened to them. The songs on ‘Phantoms of Yesteryear’ are old Nattvindens Gråt songs that I had for years wanted to redo properly because the original arrangements and recordings did not do justice to the compositional ideas. Those songs were written around 1995-1996, with a few in 1999-2000 so even chronologically they could not have been influenced by the bands you named – even though I do see the resemblance. I guess those guys and I, since we are about the same age, were influenced by the same bands which then led us to sound somewhat similar. My biggest influences must be 1980s classic metal, say Maiden & King Diamond (and many others), plus my alltime favourite bands Bathory and Candlemass. On top of that some more pop metal type influence from Paradise Lost (I like their ‘softest’ albums the most) and Katatonia. That I guess describes the strange concoction that is Welkins Boreal!
Teemu, you came from a black metal band (Darkwoods my Bethroted is one of my favorite bands) and Welkins Boreal is more gothic-oriented. How did you change your musicality?
Glad you like DMB! The first two albums have a rightful place as classics of their era. The third one I don’t like that much because it’s more typical black metal, whereas I always liked the epic Viking type material more, which is no surprise given that Bathory’s epic albums are among my alltime favourites. We actually made a conscious choice back in 1997 to move the epic stuff to Furthest Shore and for me to step down from DMB. Welkins Boreal’s gothic sound comes from Nattvindens Gråt, which I ran parallel to DMB for many years in the 1990s. I actually see Welkins Boreal as a direct continuation of Nattvindens Gråt but I wanted to get rid of the old Swedish band name that was more a liability than advantage.
In Finland, I think (and please, say it if I am writing anything wrong) there are a lot of metal bands, but I see more power / symphonic metal bands from there. Could you explain how is the metal scene in your country?
To be honest, I don’t follow the scene that much, so I am not the best person to comment on it. I don’t even know most of the active bands these days, probably because I was absent from the scene so long. All I can say is that the scene seems very vibrant and there are tons of bands and also lots of gigs – well, at least in normal times…
How do you classify your musical genre today? For me sounds like a gothic rock version from 1980s bands like Fields of Nephilim and Sisters of Mercy.
A heavy version of gothic rock might indeed describe ‘Phantoms of Yesteryear’ pretty well! The new EP ‘Ashes’ has some heavier and more epic songs – perhaps even reminiscent of Wizzard and Furthest Shore. One fundamental idea behind starting Welkins Boreal was not to forcibly stick to one genre or type of music but create a blank canvas that we can freely paint on in musical terms. So the new material is likely to be quite varied which I hope makes it interesting to the listeners. I know this is an outrageously stupid idea marketing-wise in modern times when it is excessively difficult to differentiate and sticking to a very narrow image would be the best way to do it. But we are very old school and go music first, image second, and being free to work on the music we like is the main thing.
I have been surprised when I read you re-recorded some Nattvindens Gråt songs (I like this band so much). How were these songs? Do they sound darker or heavier?
The debut album of Nattvindens Gråt (NG) is a product of its time and sort of cute in all its naivety (I was 18-19 years old when I wrote that material). However, I find the song material on the second album ‘Chaos Without Theory’ really strong but the execution back in 1996 was very poor even though we recorded it at the famous Tico-Tico Studio. The song material was more challenging than on any of my previous productions and my musical skills weren’t simply up to it at the time to make great arrangements to do justice to the compositions. Also, we only had 5 days to record the whole thing which mean rushing through the recordings like crazy, making compromises all the time when the clock was ticking, etc. Especially the vocals on the album are horrible with few exceptions. The songs were in the wrong key for the singer (little I knew about keys back in the day, I just played where it was easiest on the guitar) and he had very little time to get them on tape, so the recipe for disaster was ready. The end product was so bad that I could not listen to it. That’s why I for years wanted to redo the best songs and give them a production that finally would do justice to the song ideas. On ‘Phantoms of Yesteryear’, I believe the songs are presented as such versions that really show them as they always were intended to be. I don’t think they are darker or heavier than the originals: just light years better!
A very uncomfortable question: how does COVID-19 affect you and your life? Do you think the world will change after this pandemic?
Not that much really. Finland has had one of the lowest infection rates in Europe and apart from a couple of months when schools and restaurants were closed, things have been close to normal. Well, I had to work from home for five months and concerts have all been cancelled which is a bit of a bugger, especially as a I had tickets to see some very exciting bands (Iron Maiden, Helloween, WASP, Candlemass). At least I managed to see Geoff Tate and his band performing ‘Rage for Order’ and ‘Empire’ in their entirety which was a big thing for me, as Geoff is my absolute favourite vocalist.
I don’t think the world will change permanently. There will be a transition period of perhaps two-three years with recovery from the economic downturn and waiting for the vaccine to come to the market and start taking widespread effect. But once that happens, people will forget all about it – and do so surprisingly quickly, is my hunch. And things will go back to the way they were. Hopefully, people will learn the routine of washing their hands more frequently though!
Continuing about the last topic, and lives? What is your opinion about musician who present live concerts in Instagram, Facebook, YouTube? Here in Brazil it is a quite common for mainstream artists.
Musicians have to do what they can to cope with the situation. I have not watched any online live concerts, as I don’t really see much point in them from a fan’s point of view, unless you really want to support your favourite act (but you can also support them in Patreon, for instance, or by buying their merchandise which I have done). From the musicians’ point of view, I fully understand it as a way of making the best out of a bad situation. Professional musicians are largely dependent on concert income (and merchandise sold at concerts) these days when albums fail to generate any notable revenue. As a music fan, I reckon I’ll just wait a bit longer for the corona craziness to pass and then hope to catch my favourite bands live again!
We are a Brazilian webzine about music and, of course, we always ask about Brazilian bands. Do you know some? What do you like?
Embarrassingly enough, I think the only ones I know are Sepultura and Sarcófago. I never was a big fan of the former, but I remember having played ‘The Laws of Scourge’ a lot as a teenager. I know the Brazilian metal scene is very active both with lots of fans and bands. The problem I guess is that I don’t really follow the current scene that much. It’s partly the curse of streaming services: there is such an abundance of new music all the time that it is bloody tedious to navigate it. As a result, you just give up and put on a classic album from the 1980s… It’s a pity really and I should give an effort to find some new bands too. There must be tons of really great new acts out there – but how to find them these days?
Do you live just playing your music or have another job? Here in Brazil is difficult to be a full-time musician, because the equipment are expensive (and the dollar exchange does not help), the people do not support new bands and prefer pay for an expensive gig than support a local artist.
I think the phenomenon you described is global. Some say streaming has democratised music in that everyone can make their music available globally with hardly any cost at all. But I reckon it has exacerbated the so-called star economy phenomenon where a few very big acts – that either had a large following in pre-streaming days or have large marketing budgets – get 99% of all attention and income, leaving the remaining tens of thousands of bands with just scraps. Small and medium-sized bands cannot make any money with music anymore. Back in the 1990s, we could always get a deal with a small label that could sell enough CDs to break even, so studio costs were always covered. Today I have to accept the fact that making music only causes costs but doesn’t generate any revenue at all. So yes, I do have a regular day job that pays all of my bills and also all the costs making music causes. To be a fulltime musician, you need to have a relatively big band and do lots and lots of live shows to make ends meet.
Relatedly, I sometimes ponder what will happen in ten years or so when most of the big bands have retired. How many really big bands are there left in metal/hard rock that did not get big in the 1980s? Ad hoc, only Rammstein and Nightwish come to mind but I am sure there are some others. But my point is that most of the bands that collect 99% of all income and attention right now will not exist in ten years. Are new big bands going to rise? Is metal going to be fully underground again? Are there enough young fans that find metal music again? My current impression is that the main fan base for metal is guys in their 40s and 50s – who grew up with metal music in the 1980s and early 1990s.
What local bands do you recommend? I recently discovered some Finnish post-punk bands and I think we do not know how rich is the scene there.
There are lots of bands in Finland these days but the one I really like and listen to often is Sleep of Monsters, which is the new band of my old mate Ike Vil (ex Babylon Whores). They play dark rock/metal that they label AOR (adult occult rock). I really enjoy their music. Also don’t really know what bands to compare them with!
Thank you for your time and we appreciate so much if you can write some words to our readers. Let’s go!
Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk to Brazilian metal fans! Rock on and do check out Welkins Boreal if you are into catchy straightforward rocking metal!