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With Take Another Life the Finnish band Kill The Romance just started into the metal world with their first full-length album. Most won't know them, so let Mika tell a bit about Kill The Romance!
First please tell us a bit about the beginning of Kill The Romance!
Kill The Romance was founded in the beginning of 2004. We have same line-up as our previous band. We made our first EP in same year. Second EP called Logical Killing Project came 2005 and after third EP Cyanide in 2006 we signed a contract with spanish label Locomotive Records.
Why did you pick this name? What does it mean for you?
Name just came from one acoustic song our vocalist had. There's not so much behind this name, it's just a phrase when somebody does or says something stupid when there's girls around. We thought it would be a cool name.
Take Another Life is your debut. Are these all new songs? Or did you used some old tunes?
Yeah, all in all there are only 3 brand new songs. We re-recorded all the Cyanide songs and a couple of songs from our old EPs. We haven't sold those demos and EPs much so basically all those songs are new ones for almost everybody. We didn't want to waste those because those are killer tunes.
You are signed to Locomotive Music, a label which isn't really known for bands who play melodic death or modern thrash. Do you feel comfortable at this label? And are you satisfied so far with their work?
Everything has worked fine so far. So there's not much to complain about. Locomotive's offer was best option for us in that moment and they offered us world-wide release immediately so it was definitely a relationship worth trying for. We don't know much about their advertising and stuff like that, but hopefully somebody knows that we have released an album.
Please tell us a bit about the inspiration for your songs! For example what is Ghost White Coma about?
Ghost White Coma is one of the songs we wrote together with Ville. It's about living life as happily as you can, but even in most greatest happiness you need something sad and evil that you can express yourself. It's weird thing, you don‘t want anything bad to happen, but in some point you need that.
Who had the idea for the cover artwork? Was it done for the album? Or have you picked an existing piece?
We told our graphic artist the idea behind the album name and he came with this cover. It reflects it very well. It's about burning yourself by working or doing something you cannot stand and when you're done, somebody else is going to replace you in this society.
I heard you play a few shows in April... I think, two shows in Germany and Switzerland... How come? And how was the response?
Yeah, it was a blast. We just called to our friend in Switzerland and he arranged those gigs for us. It was basically a nice holiday with a couple of gigs. We played those shows with Medusa's Child from Switzerland and Demonic Symphony from Germany. Switzerland wasn't so good, but Germany was great.
Of course we have to remember that nobody know us yet. So if we compare the response for that, it was a good journey for us. Hopefully in next year we have a possibility to do full tour in Europe. Let's keep our fingers crossed.
I guess it was your first time here, so... Did you have a little time to take a look around?
Yeah it was our first time with this band. But few of us including me have toured those places before. We love Germany, it's a really great country. This was so short visit and we have to travel almost all the time so this time we didn't explored so much. But hey, beer was cheap so everything was good. Hehe.
Are their any plans to tour? Or for some festivals? I mean outside your home country...
At the moment no, we're flying with our management to Germany within a couple of months to speak about our future. And as I said earlier hopefully after that we have possibilities to tour a lot outside of Finland.
You just announced a new bass player. What happened? Enlighten us!
Raimo has been with us basically from the beginning... Our previous band has same line-up. But now when he's married with Brazilian girl, he has to be away quite a lot, so it didn't work anymore. We don't want to use replacements all the time, so it was better for him and us that he quits. And now we have Toni Broman with us, a really great guy. Somebody may even know him, because he played in Before The Dawn back in the days. He‘s a monster on stage! You gotta see him.
It seems that Finland has a huge metal scene and that every day new bands see the light of day. It seems that there are many metal fans. But many bands mean a lot of competition. Good or bad? What do you think?
Yeah, new bands are coming all the time. It's not that the bands weren't good few years ago, but within a couple of years suddenly there's bands coming from everywhere.
We just spoke with Ville about one metal music magazine which used to have about 4-5 pages album reviews and nowadays half of the magazine is full of those. Competition is definitely higher than some years ago. It's really hard to get some recognizing nowadays but on the other hand it drives bands to be better and better all the time.
Is it tough to get gigs?
Yes, it is, there's so much bands... you know. But we just signed booking agency and management deals a couple of months ago, so hopefully in future we have a lot of touring coming. Before we had to book all the gigs by ourselves so it's really hard to get good gigs. Especially outside of Finland it's very difficult. But let see what happens. We would like to tour all the time, it would be a dream come true to play a full tour in Europe, USA and all over the world. But as I said, now we just have to wait what's going to happen.
What bands have you played with? And which bands would you like to play with?
Damn, we have played with so many. I guess the biggest bands we have played together which you probably know are The Haunted, Sentenced, Obituary, Moonspell, Freedom Call, Dissection, Primordial.
If we someday have a possibility to play on same stage as Metallica, I'm ready to die. That would be a dream come true!
What band / musician make you start playing your instrument? Which bands influenced you in the beginning? And what bands do you listen to these days?
Four of us it's Metallica, and for one of us it's Kiss. Very surprising.. hehe. When we started to play 11 years ago we played songs from Metallica, Sepultura, Megadeth, Korn, Children Of Bodom, Sentenced and stuff like that. Or at least we tried to play, heh. Nowadays we still listen a lot of those bands. Of course a lot of Swedish metal like In Flames, Soilwork, At The Gates. Our vocalist Ville is CD freak. He buys brutal death metal and black metal all the time, I don't even know those bands. My favorite at the moment is Lamb Of God.
Last, but not least... What's on your schedule for the rest of 2007?
We just started to write new material for the next record. Hopefully all the songs are written before summer ends... We have a tour coming in fall here in Finland and after that we hit the studio.
Thanks for your time!
Seems that we will hear a lot more from Mika and the guys... And see them on stage. See you then!
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