INTERVIEW: Anton Kabanen – Beast In Black

BEAST IN BLACK have gone from strength to strength since Anton Kabanen started them almost immediately after he left former outfit BATTLE BEAST, including tours with ACCEPT, W.A.S.P and most recently opening for NIGHTWISH across Europe, a tour that included three dates in UK arenas. Distorted Sound were lucky enough to chat with the man himself recently about new album From Hell With Love, why everyone should watch anime series Berserk and the limitations of a record by, er, Britney Spears.

Anton, thank you very much for taking the time to speak to me today. To start off, I’d like to take you back to Wembley Arena on December 8th: you’d only played one UK show before this date, at The O2 Academy in Islington to a few hundred people. How did it feel to go from that to playing to ten times that amount supporting NIGHTWISH?

Anton: Of course it’s a great feeling. When you see that arena full of people of course it’s magical, but nonetheless I always say the same thing: we enjoy every show equally, or at least we try to, and we always want to be as happy as possible. It can be a 500-capacity club and if everyone in there is super-invested, chanting the band’s name and giving all they have, it can feel better than an arena which isn’t as enthusiastic for the band. Thankfully, on the NIGHTWISH tour every audience, both in the UK and Europe, was very receptive to us; I really enjoyed the time with the guys on stage and seeing the faces of the audience light up and smile whilst we played.

Can you also take us back to the moment that you were asked to play with them?

Anton: It was a dream come true. We’ve had many great things happen for the band, starting from the very first show which, coincidentally, was also supporting NIGHTWISH in 2015, and our record deal with Nuclear Blast which was the best label for us at the time, all up until reuniting with NIGHTWISH for this tour as well. I also want to highlight our tour in Japan, which occurred about six months after the release of [debut album] Berserker and was very unexpected; we thought we wouldn’t go there until much later on, but it was another magical moment; we couldn’t quite believe we were playing shows there so soon! It also made sense to finish the tour for the album cycle in the way that we did with NIGHTWISH, because it brought everything full circle.

And somehow, during the time that you were on tour you managed to find the hours to record a second album! With regards to new release From Hell With Love, did you feel it was important to consolidate the sound you’d created on Berserker and to take a stance of ‘don’t fix what isn’t broken’?

Anton: Actually, I didn’t think like that at all – I treat every album with the same amount of importance as the last and at no point think that an album must be better than the last or whatever. Every album we create, I feel, will be completely 100% BEAST IN BLACK material in their own way; every album has its own colour and character and that’s the way it should be. If you look at JUDAS PRIEST, which is my personal favourite band of all time, I can’t imagine them if they didn’t have albums like Turbo, Screaming for Vengeance or Painkiller, they’re all part of that band and all what make them great. People have their own favourite albums, of course, but music-wise they don’t try to repeat themselves and I think that’s a big factor in why they have a lot of fans; it’s always recognisable as JUDAS PRIEST even if the sound changes.

Similarly, I want to create a BEAST IN BLACK sound that make us instantly recognisable and that centres around a simplicity and straight-forwardness in the songs, even if there are many different ‘spices’ on top depending on structure and style. For example, it’s been said that From Hell With Love is far more 80’s-influenced compared to Berserker, which is true because even though Berserker DID have 80’s influences in it, From Hell With Love is far more motivated by that sound than before. However, when we were planning it, we had no thought process of making an album inspired by the 80’s and by extension super cheesy; it just so happened that when we were choosing the songs, we decided on ones that had that particular sound overall. We also don’t think it’s cheesy – at least, I don’t – to use those 80’s influences and I don’t mind if people do use the word either; what matters is whether people like the songs or not and naturally, I hope they do!

But there’s more to this as well – the reason why so many songs from the 80’s are still played today is because they stood the test of time. I grew up listening to a lot of stuff from then and still do to this day, along with stuff from the 90’s. As a songwriter I recognise elements within the songs that made it big and understand why it was these particular aspects that allowed the song in question to sell as well as it did. When I write my own stuff for BEAST IN BLACK, very often those same aspects come out subconsciously and whilst you don’t notice them at the time, once the song is complete and either at the stage of mixing or even released, you realise where they’ve come from. Nothing that BEAST IN BLACK does is new or original, it’s just about combining existing ingredients in our own way which makes it special.

That’s a great insight into how you write and compose! Would you agree that your brand of power metal cannot take itself too seriously either, because if it did then it loses the fun that it brings to the table?

Anton: Well, it might be the case for power metal, but I’ve never seen BEAST IN BLACK as a power metal band; I’ve always said we were a heavy metal band. But how I see heavy metal is as follows: if you take a Britney Spears album, for example, you’ll never hear screaming, powerful vocals, crazy guitar solos, a cool keyboard riff with 80’s flavour or something symphonic. However, in heavy metal, you can go as soft and slow or as fast, aggressive and loud as you want and every combination in between. As such, heavy metal is the most free genre in the world as you can do whatever you want between these extreme ends.

And you can see that a lot in From Hell With Love as well; not only do you have the bounce of lead single Die By the Blade but you also have something like Oceandeep, which is a power ballad. How did that song come about?

Anton: Well, this sounds corny, but I genuinely woke up in the middle of the night from a dream, grabbed an acoustic guitar and just started writing the melody and thinking of the lyrics. It was a very strong dream about somebody who is sadly no longer with us and that I miss a lot and it was born out of that. It very rarely happens that I can write the lyrics and the melody simultaneously; usually it’s the melody first and the words after, but here it happened almost hand in hand. The chorus was refined a bit later from a lyrical point of view and the intro came about from my love of James Horner’s work, a composer whom I have adored since childhood. The beginning to Oceandeep was inspired by the soundtrack to Titanic, which he composed, and I felt it fitted the overall mood of the song when writing it.

Everyone who was involved in the process for Berserker, from the individual who did the album artwork right through to your choice of studio, was exactly the same this time around for From Hell With Love, including yourself handling production duties. How important was that for you?

Anton: Well, I always want to keep the same team if possible – trying to find the right person for the job can be really tricky because whilst they may be a good fit, they might be busy or choose another project to work on instead. That said, we’re happy to have the same set up for this album as the last one, especially Roman [Ismailov, who created the artwork] as I’ve known him for twelve years and he’s a very good friend of mine; he captures the style that we want for BEAST IN BLACK perfectly.

When it comes to studio work, I just think that if you don’t know what you are doing song-wise or know what the song needs, then maybe you need a producer, but I’ve never felt that I didn’t know what each track needed in the studio so it was pretty clear that I could handle producing. Who knows what’ll happen in the future, of course, but I think if we were to change then it would be to add some people in to the picture. For example, I would possibly like someone to mix the album because I would love to focus only on songwriting and I’d also love to have a social life [laughs]!

Yeah, that sounds like it would be helpful!

Anton: Yeah, that was the case with From Hell With Love – the summer was full of festivals shows, nearly every week, and the album was made in the days between those shows. If I found the right partner in crime that I could trust with certain things then I would definitely have more time to do something else and not just be in the studio, but on the other hand I love challenges and improving myself in the things that I still don’t feel that I’m good enough at yet.

Fair enough! A lot of the songs across both albums are inspired by your love of anime. What it is about anime that endears to you so much?

Anton: Well, on the surface I just find the drawing style from the 80s and 90s anime series very appealing, but also the soundtracks have the ability to draw me into whatever is being shown at the time as well. I know that it’s a matter of taste and that a lot of people see it as awkward and primitive because of the simpler technology that was used when they were created, but to me it works perfectly; I can’t really explain it much better than that! However, when it comes to the story element of anime, that’s where I am most interested. I’ve been a big fan of the cyberpunk genre across all forms of media for many years, and there’s a lot of great animes in that area as well that make you think with ethical and moral issues that you deal with.

I also find it interesting because given at how fast technology has evolved in the present day, there may come a point where the two worlds may actually blend. I watched a documentary recently about one of the leading Japanese robot and android developers, and they were explaining that in some areas of Japanese culture, the soul is not something that is just inside a person, it’s something that’s around us everywhere. With this in mind, it would be possible for a robot to also have a soul or at least connected with that same sort of energy that humans do, to the point where we may see humans have full relationships with a high-functioning machine in the same way as they would another member of their species. Things like this have already been dealt with in the 80s animes and even ones from the 70s, so its’ certainly a fascinating subject for me.

As for my favourite anime, that would have to be Berserk – it happens in a fictional medieval time. I was introduced to it in 2006 by a friend of mine and was hooked right from the first episode. I watched the whole series in one go and had to know what happened afterwards because it finished on a huge cliff-hanger! I also began to read the manga and I still do to this day – it’s been going on since 1989 and has continued onwards to this day. It deals with very fascinating characters, especially the lead characters for they are very human and the story has never been afraid to show both the good and bad sides of each character, so when you see those things and relate to the characters in certain ways, you begin to see things through their eyes and that adds a whole dimension to it. But I honestly feel that the best way to get to know it is to find the time to watch the original series of Berserk from 1997 and read the manga; in my opinion, it’s fully worth it.

Which songs on the new album are you proudest of?

Anton: All of them [laughs]! I’m equally proud of all of them, I’ve never been able to choose what my favourite song is on From Hell With Love. It sounds very cliché but that’s the way it is!

Nothing wrong with that! You’re off on tour to promote the new record soon, on a two month trek across Europe. I suppose it’s a stupid question to ask if you’re looking forward to it, because you must be, right?

Anton: Of course, but it’s also interesting for us because it’s only the second album that’s come out and we’re already doing a headline tour, which is something we didn’t expect at all, so we are very busy with the preparations now. Every day now is lots of organising the tour with various contacts, thinking about the setlist, rehearsing the songs, the show and everything else in between, so it takes a lot of work but I can imagine that when it’s finally started we will enjoy it with full hearts. We already know that ticket sales have gone very well and that incites us to give people the 100% BEAST IN BLACK experience.

Of course, after the preparations are done, the gigs will not feel like work at all, there’ll be more fun involved; not to say that they won’t be physical of course, especially for drummers and singers as they’ve probably got the most demanding roles in our band as far as musicianship goes, but it’s going to be an interesting tour. After that, there’s festivals and we have plans for the autumn but naturally we can’t announce those yet either because it’s still hush-hush or it’s under negotiation as I speak, but it’s going to be a very busy year for us and whenever we have free time, I think we’ll be setting our radar towards the third album which also needs to be done sooner rather than later.

Why does it need to be done sooner rather than later?

Anton: Life’s too short. I think that if you have a passion in life for something, don’t waste the days. Just do your best and then you will be more satisfied towards then end of your life when you can look back and realise ‘Hey, you really did as much as you possibly could have’. That’s how it is for me, I never rest, I can’t really take a holiday for two weeks and just go somewhere; I don’t think I’ve ever done it, now that I think about it!

I think that’s a lovely way to finish things off. Anton, thank you once again for talking to me and we’ll see you back over here very soon, I’m sure!

Anton: Thank you as well, speak soon!

From Hell With Love is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.

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