Turmion Kätilöt: It’s An Omen
When the weather’s miserable and the mind’s a maze, music can be our greatest saviour. Sometimes we just need to stick on our headphones and disappear into the noise. Sure, it’s easier said than done, but if any band have a remedy for the poison, it’s Finland’s long-serving answer to RAMMSTEIN: TURMION KÄTILÖT.
“Omen X is for you to get your loving back if you don’t have it, and if you have it, you can hopefully appreciate it more after this because it’s all about love,” exclaims founder and vocalist MC Raaka Pee from Frankfurt’s iconic Festhalle, halfway through their arena-conquering tour with NIGHTWISH. “It might sound like war, but it’s all about love, the good and bad – so it’s for people to feel more like a turbocharged mean machine!”
Walk a mile in TURMION KÄTILÖT’s shoes across Omen X’s neon dancefloor and you’ll find it’s hard to have no hope. It’s a nightlife wonderland where it’s inhabitants are injected with the industrial blood of RAMMSTEIN, dosed up in THE PRODIGY’s electropunk, and styled in the symphonic sheen of tourmates NIGHTWISH and BEAST IN BLACK. It’s undoubtedly the disco metal you’ve come to expect from them, but a whole new blend made for post-pandemic dancing. After 20 years and 10 albums, just how important is it to keep fanning the parties flames in new directions?
“What is the point in making the same album again and again and again? I really like THE PRODIGY, they’re my favourite band of all time, and they have really nice development with the band, it’s really different nowadays. If someone likes the first PRODIGY album, I’ll be god damn sure they don’t like the last one, but they need to go further and further to make new music, not the same music.”
“When I start making music, it’s for my own need: I want to do this kind of music now. I don’t think about it anymore, like what should I do next, it’s always been what do I want to do next. And when I like it, if I like it, then it will work for our fans also because I know what I like and our fans like the same stuff.”
It’s an approach that’s seen the band sail through two decades of disco metal dominance. Whilst MC Raaka Pee kicks the machine into gear, bassist Master Bates, co-vocalist Shag-U, drummer DQ, guitarist Bobby Undertaker, and keyboardist Run-Q roll up their sleeves and muck in, too.
Having released an album every two years for two decades, Omen X was no different in bringing the band together. “When I started this band, it was like we were going in the same boat, and we are rolling together in the middle of the lake,” he explains like a storyteller. “And then I punch a hole through the boat and we all start shovelling the water out like maniacs and we are all in the same deep shit. That’s been my plan since I started the band and it seems to be working really well.”
With their very own boat that rocked sailing the seven seas of sounds, they open up the deck to all lyrically, with more than four of the band taking turns to write – as well as MC Raaka Pee’s wife! Whilst there’s plenty of bangers to party to during Omen X’s 40-minute voyage, those of you who can speak Finnish will find a lot to think about, too.
“My wife is also writing lyrics with us, and she goes deep into the traumas and stuff like that, as she’s had her share of the world and the bad stuff. But sometimes we need to not go so deep, so we just impress the things that we see in the world. If you look out the window and just look at what people are doing, that’s a good way to express the music we are doing, because mostly we are singing about you and the people we see.”
Of course, what goes up must go down, and every silver lining had a cloud before it. Omen X doesn’t just deal in dosing you up with love and happiness, it serves to challenge your thoughts and educate your mind. Take Kuolettavia Vammoja for example – it sounds like a summer anthem for the ‘happy hardcore’ ravers but dig a little deeper and it gets a shade darker.
“There are some really mean things that people have done to the children, but we’re not putting it in accurate words, you have to think it for yourself. It’s like a summer song but with black metal-sounding ‘world is in deep shit’ lyrics.”
Like his beloved PRODIGY, MC Raaka Pee knows not all of their fans will find themselves in their lyrics on Omen X. But as a glass half-full kind of guy, he’s taking this all in his stride. “Not all of our fans are going to like it, but that is good because it means we get more people who like this kind of stuff, and they’ll check out our older stuff but either way, it’s really important to me because in our family’s mind, it goes really deep, and the video goes even more deeper.”
It might not be what the world wants to hear, but when TURMION KÄTILÖT write about what they see, it was impossible for them not to be fuelled by the turmoil and tragedy of the last two years. Between global pandemics and outbreaks of war, the events since 2020’s Global Warning have given MC Raaka Pee the fuel for their fire.
“I can see that it really made some differences and added mental problems, because you had to wonder why some people can work and do the same thing but others can’t. You had to think about politics, and I don’t fucking like the politics, and I was forced to think about the politics, so that was bullshit for me.”
But when the universe deals you a bad hand, it’s best to take matters into your own hands. Omen X takes the frustration and fury felt by TURMION KÄTILÖT and dials it up to 10 – it’s the rallying cry the album runs on, and it’s what the band are building their future with, too. “I think you’re gonna hear the bullshit, the people’s bullshit at the next album, so we will raise it to the throne and celebrate those motherfuckers!”
Omen X is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.
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