INTERVIEW: KEIJO NIINIMAA RECALLS ROTTEN SOUND'S RECORDING NIGHTMARE AND THE EARLY DAYS OF FINNISH GRINDCORE

'Cursed' may be a fairly generic title, but it's at least an apt one for the new disc from Finnish blastmasters Rotten Sound.

“I haven't been listening to it too much any more,” explains vocalist Keijo Niinimaa shortly after they handed in the finished disc to the label. “I gave it a couple of plays when we got it done. It was more unusual because we mixed it twice, for some reasons.”

Mixed by Entombed's Nico Elgstrand to bring that rumbling, rock-fall guitar sound to the fore, he was largely left to his own devices at the desk while Rotten Sound found themselves distracted by a series of live engagements– the end result being an album that the band weren't entirely happy with.

“We tried to do it over the internet, with emails and files sent back and forth,” he continues, “and of course Nic was much more into it than we were. So basically we started on the wrong foot, we didn't start it the right way – getting the whole band in the studio and sitting down with the producer and discuss this thing, and mix the rest of the songs from that. Nico was doing a good thing, there were no real complaints – it was just different.”

One would imagine trying to explain things to someone from a band you grew up worshipping to be quite difficult, apparently not:

“It wasn't really difficult, things were really straight forward in communication. Some of the things were also our fault, so we were really, really open. I was trying to tell Nico what the other guys were saying, what I got from the others. The way we communicate is so straight forward, we were more wondering how we got here and trying to explain to him without really knowing the right terminology, because none of us are really sound engineers. Add to that English isn't our mother tongue, so with that to write what we do like and we don't like, have this and that more... I actually ended up flying to Sweden. So I spent a couple of days with Nico where we finalised the first mix, there we were discussing the production and thought it would have been so nice to do it differently. Even then we felt that the four of us had our moment in the studio and we were really tired, we weren't that satisfied with the mix but we didn't dare say it at that point because we had already delayed the schedule.”

Aside from Nico's instantly recognisable Entombed crunch that makes the new album a real blow to the eardrums, 'Cursed' also features the volcanic rumble of a certain LG Petrov.

“I met him a couple of times before, we played some shows together with Rotten Sound and it was easy to get in touch with him through Nico,” recalls Keijo, “I didn't have his number, but I said to Nico one day in the studio, 'Could you call LG and ask him to do some vocals for the album?'. He'd been speaking about it but we weren't really sure if he could do it, or had the time for it, but we ended up spending a night in Stockholm, which was pretty cool!”

Infamous for their Nasum worship in the early days, and tipping the hat so blatantly to Swedish death metal royalty Entombed on this new disc, it's easy to pick up a certain level of Scandinavian pride on 'Cursed', especially as it's their first full-length for Relapse.

“I haven't thought about it that way,” he says after a pauce, rejecting any claims that they're 'representing' their corner of the globe. “We have released things in the US. 'Murderworks' was on Necropolis, but on Spinefarm we weren't really that well marketed in the US. They were great at putting us out there but it was still a smaller label than Relapse. I don't know if we're that much Scandinavian in our own minds, we're doing our own thing on our own ground. I guess we're picking up a lot of Scandinavian influences, but there's a lot of British grind and crust.”

Culturally and physically isolated (in many readings of 'Scandinavia', Finland isn't included – the core three being the tightknit linguistic family of Sweden, Denmark and Norway), Rotten Sound have always had to work that little bit harder to get noticed and to get out there.

“We're a bit of on our own,” he admits, “especially within the metal scene. But there's always been a pretty underground punk scene in Finland, I think it shows the geographical location that they don't really get that much outside of Finland, they're surrounded by sea and have to go over by Sweden so Europe is pretty far away. You have to fly just to play a show there, for instance. Touring is tough in the beginning and grindcore bands are not the most organised people. There's been a lot of Finnish hardcore, crust and punk since the '80s, I think we are more related to that scene, politically and in our mindset, than the metal scene, though we have a lot of metal influences in our sound with the grindcore too.

“I think I was a metalhead, but I'd been turning into some kind of hybrid of both. The first bands I really liked were mostly Finnish new wave bands and those were more punk than the British new wave, but then I got Iron Maiden, after that, Metallica, Slayer, Death, Napalm Death... Extreme Noise Terror made a good impression to all of us. Me and Mika [Alto, guitar] were playing at that time in the same band, basically Extreme Noise Terror and Napalm Death were the reason we formed this band. It was a quite natural change from softer stuff like Metallica and Slayer.

“I was really listening to more metal than punk, even when I listen to punk it was more... metally punk, more metal production like the Swedish bands. Disfear, Wolfbrigade, or Wolfpack, and bands like that. Skitsystem as well, but it was their last album I liked more than the punk, so even there I'm picking up more of a metal vibe. Our guitarist Mika used to be a really hardcore punk but he is also turning to this sort of production worshipping thing, when he is playing with his gear and thinking about how it sounds with his guitar, you'll notice that he is putting a lot of effort into making sure... well, it's his own sound, but it's kind of recognisable even in grind. I can recognise, for instance, Mika and then Brian from Trap Them, they have similar influences but it's different, it's their own sound.”

Having toured with Trap Them previously, they'll be doing so again in the UK in April – as one of the much hyped bands able to bring a crusty, skull-rattlingly raw sound to people who'd otherwise be listening to, oh, some shit nobody really cares about, what does the increased interest in this asthetic mean for Rotten Sound and where has it come from?

“I would imagine that they've realised there's more to music than just playing really technical stuff,” Keijo muses. “I don't think people who listen to Nile or Dying Fetus are turning to hardcore bands, but people who listen to In Flames are realising that there's more to it than this. I'm not saying heavier, but different. Extreme is too weak a word, but people are looking for a wide range – if you take an Opeth record, they have everything in there and I can listen to Opeth even when it's not my favourite. I can listen to Nomeansno, but then I'm more interested in playing one genre. Grind is really intense and concise, people who have seen us live for the first time have said that we're so honest in what we do – and that's what I like in grindcore bands, and we try and tour with bands like this.”

Returning to Keijo's own musical journey, Rotten Sound emerged in 1993 from from the same Finnish death metal scene that produced the feverishly devoured and retrospectively hyped likes of Demilich and Demigod, taking the right hand path into more punk-orientated territory.

“We used to have another band called Vomiturition, that was death metal, we started with the first Finnish wave of death metal bands. That was pre-Rotten Sound, so we used to play with bands like Sentenced and Amorphis, Xysma and Disgrace. Xysma and Disgrace were a grindcore band – I don't know how internationally recognised they were at the time. They were really popular at one point and then they turned into rock 'n' roll bands and everything sounded rock 'n' roll then, and that was the time we formed Rotten Sound because Vomiturition was going that way too and we felt, 'Lets try out this death 'n' roll thing and see how it works'. When we started to play we played mostly with crust bands in Finland, bands like Selfish and Amen and Forca Macabra, and we were playing punk shows mostly.

“At some point we started to do more metal stuff and that was the point we started to play with more metal bands. Nowadays... I don't know, in Finland there isn't much of a grindcore scene as such, there is a few bands, but usually all of the promoters are mixing up the line-up a little bit.”

As far as mixed line-ups go, they don't get more diverse, yet aesthetically unified, than the Czech Republic's Obscene Extreme, the home of all things nasty and filthy.

“Yeah, very much,” he enthuses of his excitement for getting back. “It's our fourth time. We get a good response there and in the Czech Republic in general, they've always liked us and they really know their grind. The scene seems bigger than normal and Obscene Extreme has really helped in that because Curby has done such a good job in making it the house festival. There's a warm feeling at the festival, you'll notice that it's very peaceful considering there's lots of people totally intoxicated and having fun. It's crazy, I've been sitting there at the amphitheatre that they usually have and there's band after band with ten minute change overs, and you can sit there for hours watching grindcore bands play after each other – some say it gets boring, but it doesn't! I can take an overdose of grind at Obscene Extreme!”