INTERVIEW: Jaani Peuhu – Swallow The Sun
The overbearing melancholy of the quintessential “Finnish” sound in metal could not be any more perfectly suited for the blended subgenre of death/doom. One of the country’s longest running powerhouses, SWALLOW THE SUN, embodies that melancholy perfectly. Born from the tragic passing of founding member Juha Raivio‘s late partner, the newest creative offerings from SWALLOW THE SUN promise to deliver that melancholy and emotional depth in a more powerful way than ever. The band have two releases upcoming – an EP, Lumina Aurea, and a new full length, When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light, set to release on December 21st and January 25th respectively (read our review of Lumina Aurea here, and When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light here). In December, prior to the release of Lumina Aurea, we spoke to keyboardist and vocalist Jaani Peuhu to discuss the heartbreaking background to the new releases, the collaboration with Einar Selvik (WARDRUNA) and Marco I (THE FORESHADOWING) for Lumina Aurea and the classic Finnish style of extreme metal.
Hey Jaani, thanks for taking the time to chat today. With the press run for Lumina Aurea and When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light in full swing now, how is everyone in the SWALLOW THE SUN camp?
Jaani: We’re all good, we’re good. It’s been an interesting process to record the albums but now we’re getting ready for touring.
Both the EP and the album deal with an incredibly heartbreaking and personal concept. Did Juha come to the band with a completely finished album, or was there any collaboration in tweaking certain aspects of the songs?
Jaani: Yeah he did the rough demo versions by himself, but we hopped on board in a pretty early stage and started working with vocal arrangements and string arrangements, tunings for the guitars, bass. Everybody was able to put their input in the album, it’s not a dictatorship.
Although you can’t entirely speak on behalf of Juha, how important do you feel creating this record has been for him in the grieving process?
Jaani: It’s all he could do, basically. This is a really important album and EP. I think this is the best possible way to process that kind of loss, to turn that pain into something really beautiful that can actually even help somebody with their own experiences. It was really important, and I think it was the only option. It’s a blessing to be musician sometimes, we have this channel to work through difficulties in life.
How did the collaboration between yourselves and Einar Selvik and Marco I for Lumina Aurea come about?
Jaani: Juha had this vision about kind of what kind of sounds he wanted for the EP, so he contacted these guys and thankfully everything worked out perfectly. When we started working with the song we didn’t have the Latin singing in there but it was in our head already that there would be these elements coming in. That’s often, works if you have a vision then you just have to figure out how to do it and with who. We got the best people for for the job. It was so consuming to work with the song. When you work with one song for hours and hours every day, with this kind of song it starts to eat you alive basically. It’s really difficult.
Lumina Aurea is a really dark, sinister and unique release. Is that dark, neo-folk style something SWALLOW THE SUN will experiment with more on future releases?
Jaani: We’ll see! Anything can happen, that’s the beauty of the process: we’re open to anything. There is no plan about the next album. At least I don’t know about it! But hopefully Juha will start start thinking about the next one at some point. Let’s see. It with will come when the time’s right. I have no idea what kind of album it will be. Hopefully there will be a follow up for SWALLOW THE SUN. But probably it won’t be anything like techno or stuff like that! That’s all I know!
You have a run of shows booked in Finland for February. What tracks from When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light are you particularly excited to debut live?
Jaani: Well, I would love to play the whole album as a whole, to be honest. But I don’t think that will be the case. At the moment we are we are talking about the setlist for the following tours. So let’s see. We all have our favourites. I don’t see any weak weak songs on the album. It’s just good song writing. It’s not about big sounds or technical stuff, it’s about song writing and the feeling. These songs would work with just an acoustic guitar and vocals for sure.
Do you have any other tours in the works for next year? Can we hope to see you in the UK in 2019?
Jaani: Yeah, we have some tours booked already. I think we will start announcing the tours pretty soon. I don’t know about the European dates yet. I do know that weeks, but hopefully the UK will be included. It’s been a good country for SWALLOW THE SUN, so I would be amazed if it wouldn’t be.
We spoke with Markus Vanhala and Jukka Pelkonen of OMNIUM GATHERUM and Tuamos Saukkonen of WOLFHEART earlier this year about the classically “Finnish” style of death metal, that has a very melancholic, doomy sound to it. Do you think there is something in the Finnish psyche that lends itself to that melodic, melancholic style, or is it as simple as shared musical influences?
Jaani: Well, it might have something to do with the Finnish traditional music. The stuff that grannies listen to! It’s really melancholic. We don’t have happy music in Finland, really. So it’s from our mother mother’s milk, that depressive musical landscape. And this is a weird country to live in, it’s so dark for many, many months of the year. So it’s good to have this way to channel the melancholic mood. But yeah, but Finnish traditional music is pretty sad. You shouldn’t take that road [of listening to Finnish traditional music]! You will be doomed! It’s not good for your soul! It’s evil.
Which death/doom bands in the underground, either in Finland or worldwide, are you particularly impressed by?
Jaani: I’ve been working mostly with electronic and goth music and stuff like that for the last few years. I started with metal, but then I found THE CURE and DEPECHE MODE and I followed that path until we were supporting ANATHEMA with my other band, ICONCRASH, a few years ago. That was where I met the SWALLOW THE SUN guys. When I heard their music for the first time, I was like “Fucking hell, this is a great band!” I kind of found that extreme metal through them. We became friends, and then I sang on Don’t Fall Asleep, from the Hope album. That was the beginning of our cooperation.
Nowadays I do listen to metal much more, but not only metal. There was like ten years that I really didn’t listen to metal basically at all. I did work with metal bands like BEFORE THE DAWN and TO DIE FOR and bands like that, but I didn’t I didn’t listen to metal that much. Well, maybe some old albums, like ENTOMBED or NAPALM DEATH or MORBID ANGEL, stuff like that. But I haven’t been following the underground stuff at all.
TRIBULATION, they are interesting, and LEPROUS, they’re really interesting as well. I saw them live last summer when we play in Toska with HALLATAR, I was just blown away. That is a great band. I don’t really listen to music that much, to be honest, because I work as a producer so my day job is to work with music so when I’m done with the day, listening to music is not the first thing I want to do.
Do you have much production work lined up for 2019?
Jaani: Oh yeah! I’ve got a lot of cool projects coming. But we’ll be touring a lot, so we’ll see how much I can do. I’ve tried to be really picky with the projects I’m working with, I just want to work with good bands! At the moment, I’m working with a really interesting UK band called DIAMOND BLACK. We’re recording the debut album at the moment. You should check them out!
What does 2019 have in store for SWALLOW THE SUN?
Jaani: Touring! Touring, we’ll shoot some videos, and do some interviews. It’s just the normal album cycle, nothing that special coming. At least I don’t know about any anything special! Hopefully we’ll see a lot of new countries and meet a lot of nice people.
Thanks again for your time today Jaani. Finally, do you have any parting messages for Distorted Sound Magazine’s readers?
Jaani: I hope everybody will have a great 2019, and we’ll see you on tour!
Lumina Aurea and When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light are both out now via Century Media Records.
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