Rotten Sound pour l'album "Cycles"

Quoi de mieux pour célébrer Noel et attaquer 2008 qu'un album de Grind de l'une des références du genre? Asseyez vous en famille autour de la dinde, branchez le sonotone de Mamie au maximum, et mettez "Cycles" sur la chaine hifi du salon: le Père Noel revient du froid Finlandais, et il est pas content!

Hi Rotten Sound! How's the grinding life ‘s doing?

Everything's really cool. New album is receiving very good responses, we just launched new website, European tour is almost booked and last but not least, we've started to rehearse again to slay on stages during next year.


Almost 15 years of Grinding... how do you keep this high level of energy and this rage?

We just like the music we do plus we're always looking into ways to improve our music and musicianship. We also like what we're doing – otherwise we would not do it. And that's the main driving force behind Rotten Sound: to create music that we'd rate as our favourite band…


Apart from “To Separate The Flesh From The Bones”, you're the only Finnish Grind Metal band i know. Why do Finnish people all seems to be playing heavy and / or goth metal? Please prove me wrong!

There's quite many other ones: Deathbound, Deathchain, Bufo, Inferia, cause for effect, Total Devastation plus most likely many other who I just don't know of. Extreme music is just pretty underground in general and does not get that much recognition as more radio-friendly Finnish goth-metal bands.


What's the meaning behind the “Cycles” title? And its artwork?

“Cycles” is coming from the lyrics in general: all the songs are going around the stupidity of mankind which ends-up into decaying of civilization. Currently the capitalist way of getting more profit all the time will eventually lead into huge problems, which in worst case end this current cycle. And if we screw-up really badly, the ones that are surviving do not remember the history anymore and they'll just start another cycle of stupidity. Look at Mayas, BC Roman Empire and many other historical examples how the civilizations have started and ended. And like the picture implies, it all goes down into the basic human nature. The artwork represents how mankind is decomposing through its own stupidity, very closely related to the lyrics.


“Prai$€ The £ord”, “Corponation”, “Caste System”, “Alternews”, “Sold Out”.. it seems like Rotten Sound has a real message to deliver against consumer society (and many others contempary subjets), could you present it to our readers?

I guess you already said it pretty well in the question: profit-driven corporations/countries, over-consumption, inhumanity, exploitation, unfair conditions for people who are born to be poor etcetc… are all separate messages, but when all of them are put together and spread all these things to the new huge capitalist counties (China, Russia, India), “Cycles” is claiming that this leads into a bigger global disaster. But then, it's just my own observation and I know that our listeners are smart enough to challenge what they see and read (well, that's “Alternews” and build-up their own conclusions. And challenge even my, a bit extreme (just to serve the extremity in our expression) points of views.


Sami Latva your drummer is still insanely fast. How does he keep with this high-level of speed after all these years?

Sami's a hard working, humble drummer, who is practising really much and is also having many different bands to play in. And it's not just speed, it's also brute force and groove at the same time.


What do you do for a living apart from the band?

I'm a SW engineer and Mika's working in a company which makes school photos. Sami and Toni are currently unemployed, but they also do some work occasionally to get by better in this pretty expensive (but still quite decent) country.


What is the best (an the worst) memory you have from your musician's life?

Best memories are going with our tours and festival appearances. Worst ones? None! This is a life-style for me and I like everything that comes with it. Or well, sometimes I'm doing too many e-mail-based interviews and that's getting on my nerves after 20 of them… Just kiddin', this is also pretty fun to spill my brain on the keyboard for everyone who may be interested.


Do you know the French metal scene? What do you think of it?

I know Scarve and Gronibard, but then again, I'm not really following any scene that much nowadays. Even the Finnish scene is something I don't know that much about anymore…


The same question goes for the metal scene as a whole. How do you think it will evolve in the few years, and how would you like it to evolve?

I have no real comments to this one as Scene is pretty irrelevant term for me. I just wish that bands are releasing good albums, which interest me enough to listen to them. And that bands are brave enough to cross the genre-borders because the best bands have usually been really good at that.


What are you listening to these days? Any good metal / non metal albums to recommand?

Rock/Metal: Converge, Disfear, Death Breath. I'm also waiting forward to get my hands on the latest/upcoming albums of our tour-mates to come: The Ocean, Victims and Trap Them. Non-metal: the latest Chemical Brothers is pretty damn great album…


If you could change something in this fucked up world, really anything you want, what would you choose?

That's a hard one… I would not like to change everything in the western society because there's hasn't been good options for it yet. Maybe I'd just like to make people less greedy by nature to avoid all kinds of problems around us. It would be tempting to attack also religions, because they're sometimes causing a lot of harm (specially when they collide to each other), but that usually is also somehow related to the basic “greed”-DNA we get when we're born. So, making people more humble and less selfish would be the best thing to wish for.


This interview is made for a French webzine (http://www.thrashocore.com). Any good / bad comments to make about this (be careful :p) ?

Looks very professional. Unfortunately I can't understand French & therefore it's impossible to “rate” the content that much. But my 1st impression was really positive, which is not true with all the webzies. Great work in there!


Last words are yours!

Take a listen to “Cycles”-album at www.rottensound.com with its preview-player. And be sure to see us on our March European tour with The Ocean (GER), Victims (SWE) and Trap Them (USA).