Author: Rok Klemše
Location: Vojenska pevnost Josefov, Jaromer, the Czech Republic
Interview date: August 12, 2011
Finnish outfit Kypck are the definition of doom metal. And good doom metal at that! Slow, rolling riffs, ominous vocals and depressing themes are their bread and butter, yet something unique sets them apart from the crowd. Kypck deliver their lyrics exclusively in Russian, and the band’s whole visual identity and subject matter is likewise built on 19th-century Russian iconography. Kypck – which is how the band’s name is properly spelled, not Kursk, which is merely a “translation” into the Western alphabet – started their career in 1032, when the name of the city of Kursk was first mentioned in written sources. Joking aside, the band got going in 2007, put out their debut Cherno the following year, and its successor Nizhe last year. They played the latter at last year’s Brutal Assault festival too, and after their set we sat down with vocalist Erki and guitarist Sami to talk about the band’s background, the Russian theme, jerking off to a picture of Stalin, playing a Kalashnikov, and vodka. Yes, the only thing missing was Russian vodka. And the Red Army Choir.
RockLine: You were supposed to play Brutal Assault last year, but you pulled out at the last minute. What actually happened?
Erki: Well… circumstances. Shit, a whole lot of shit (laughs). We wanted to play here last year, because everyone was saying good things about this festival, and now that we’re finally here we can see the rumors were true. The organization is excellent, the bands are great, we’re happy to be here.
RockLine: On stage you said it’s nothing unusual for a German band to sing in English, so it shouldn’t be unusual for a Finnish band to sing in Russian…
Erki: Well, it’s still unusual.
RockLine: How did you even end up singing in Russian? I know you studied Russian and worked in Russia.
Erki: For myself, I can say I’ve been into Russia since I was 15, 16, and into music too, and I was always looking for a way to combine the two. The funny thing is that the idea actually came from Sami, so he can tell you more about it.
Sami: I don’t understand Russian myself, let alone speak it. What matters to me is what I hear, and Russian strikes me as a gorgeous language once it’s carried into music. I think it turned out great and it makes us a unique band, nobody else is doing this.
RockLine: Except Russian bands (laughs).
Sami: Yeah (laughs).
Erki: The guys heard I sing in other bands and speak Russian, and they invited me in. I’ve said this many times and I’ll say it again – if a band like this started up in Finland and I wasn’t singing in it, I’d hang myself (laughs). Kypck is exactly what I was looking for, what I wanted to do. I was really lucky they found me.
RockLine: Like you said, Russian is a beautiful language that works surprisingly well in doom metal waters. Slovenian is a Slavic language too and it can be pretty harsh, so it’s hard to write really good lyrics. Do you run into similar problems?
Erki: I don’t know any Slovenian music, so I can’t judge, but I have to say I don’t totally believe you (laughs). You probably have bands that sing in Slovenian and write good lyrics.
Sami: I bet it’s even harder to write and sing in Finnish, and yet some people pull it off.
Erki: I think everybody feels that way about their own language, and it was the same with Finnish metal in the nineties. People had some pretty heated debates about whether you can even play metal and sing in Finnish.
Sami: Today there are tons of bands singing in Finnish.
Erki: To answer your question, I’ve never had a problem with the musical quality of Russian, quite the opposite. If I’m not writing a song myself, I get a pretty much finished track from the other guys and draw my lyrical ideas from it. It’s a very organic process. There are loads of good bands in Russia and I can say I’m a huge fan of Russian rock. It’s not as hard as it might sound. I think we have a good concept that keeps the ideas fresh, including in terms of the instruments we play. Writing lyrics is easy.
RockLine: Were you ever afraid of negative reactions, considering Finland has a pretty colorful history with Russia?
Erki: No, we were never afraid, but there were plenty of negative reactions. We knew what to expect. I started learning Russian 12 years ago, and even back then people were asking me why the hell I was learning Russian. Both my grandfathers fought in World War II, first against the Russians and then against the Germans, but their attitude toward ideological stuff was pretty nonchalant. They knew they had to fight and that the soldiers on the other side did too. Growing up, nobody ever hit me with ideological nonsense. Maybe I was lucky.
Sami: There are still tons of people in Finland who act like hicks about this topic.
Erki: About a week ago, when I had my solo gig in Finland, I was wearing this wristband (green with a red five-pointed star, editor’s note) and during the break some older guy with a gold chain started bugging me about why I was wearing it (laughs). What do you say to that? Why do you exist? (laughs). The war ended seventy years ago, it’s time to get over it and use it for art. Of course we expected that, and I’d say we were ready for it, too.
RockLine: Maybe the reaction is like that because, listening to your music, mainly thanks to the atmosphere and the emotional vocal performance, you get the feeling you’re singing about the glory days of the Soviet Union.
Erki: Now that I think about it, it really is a double-edged sword. We’re actually singing about the shit that went down in Russia. I deeply respect Russian culture, it inspires me, but I’m also aware of all the filth that went on after their victory in World War II. We want to be honest that we sing about depressing themes, but we want to do it the right way. We don’t want Russians to think we’re mocking them, that’s not what we’re about. We definitely draw our themes from a dark period and we know we have to treat it with respect. I don’t know if I’ve actually answered your very good question (laughs).
RockLine: But in your own way you are reinterpreting Russian history?
Erki: Yeah, definitely. But if there’s any ideology behind this band, it’s me (laughs). It’s not about any political lies.
RockLine: So you’re the scapegoat?
Erki: Yeah, you can blame me.
Sami: It’s all his fault (laughs).
Erki: That’s right, I’m a fascist conspiracy. It’s definitely my interpretation, since I’m the one writing the lyrics.
Sami: We also play around a lot with Soviet visual elements, logos, …
Erki: Because it’s about the whole concept, the visual together with the sonic.
Sami: But it’s not about any political statements, we just took certain elements and try to make art out of them. Not everybody sees it that way, but that’s how we see it.
Erki: But let’s be honest, I just think it’s cool (laughs).
RockLine: Exactly, it’s not every day you see a guy playing a Kalashnikov (laughs).
Erki: That’s a real Kalashnikov. The guitar wasn’t built from scratch, it’s a Kalashnikov converted into a guitar. On our website you can check out the process of how they took the rifle apart and turned it into a guitar.
Sami: I sweated buckets at the airport (laughs). We have a special statement from the guitar’s maker saying it’s an instrument and you can’t shoot anyone with it.
RockLine: No doubt classic Russian poets and writers like Lermontov and Dostoevsky are also a strong inspiration for your music.
Erki: Definitely, his influences show up on both the first and the second record, he’s my favorite Russian poet… What was the question again (laughs)?
RockLine: I wonder if you’ll double down on these themes or maybe even do a concept album. After all, Russian history is really rich and you won’t run out of topics.
Erki: We’ll probably dig even deeper into Russian history, but I doubt we’ll write a concept record. I think it’s good to have creative freedom, in the sense that you can write about whatever pulls you in at a given moment. On Nizhe, for example, there are quite a few songs that are extremely personal, even though they’re dressed up in 19th-century Russian themes. We’ve got tons of material we can touch on, you’re not wrong about that, but I don’t want to decide in advance what I’ll be writing about in the future.
RockLine: You’ll probably touch on tsarist Russia too, considering it’s one of the longest periods in Russian history?
Erki: Very possibly. Right now I’m extremely interested in Russian cosmonauts and all their accidents that nobody talks about. I found recordings from Russian space centers and their conversations with cosmonauts in space. One of them is a recording of a conversation with a female cosmonaut who was returning to Earth, but burned alive during the descent because of a malfunction on the craft. The whole time, like a diligent cosmonaut, she kept reporting what was happening; everything’s starting to burn, it’s hot, it hurts… Maybe I’ll draw on that for the next record, but nothing’s been decided yet.
RockLine: So what does the Kypck songwriting process look like?
Erki: Usually I get the music first, and if I’m writing a song myself, I usually make sure the vocal lines in the chorus fit the music underneath.
RockLine: How would you compare Nizhe with Cherno? I hope I’m not wrong, but on the new record I hear some parts that come close to the sludge metal of bands like Crowbar and Down.
Erki: Personally, I love Down…
Sami: I personally don’t hear those influences, maybe I’m too close to the music to see it. But we definitely had more time for the new record. With Cherno we actually experimented a lot, this time we knew exactly what we wanted.
Erki: When we started writing Cherno, none of us knew what was going to happen. We just had a good idea… we thought we had a good idea, and it really was an experiment. For Nizhe we sat down and talked about the future, and we had a much clearer vision of how the new record should sound. We wanted it to sound heavy, depressing, … Nizhe (lower, editor’s note) (laughs). Because of that we didn’t have commercial success, but we got what we were after.
RockLine: For the single Alleya Stalina you shot a great video that carries several thematic messages…
Erki: The whole explanation is actually at the very end of the video.
Sami: The video is based on the works of a Finnish artist, a painter, a truly sick guy who made fun of religion and homosexuality. He played with everything that provokes people.
Erki: He was hated all his life, and he died alone in his cabin of pneumonia or hypothermia, because nobody ever visited him.
Sami: And he was a drunk. Which is always good for an artist (laughs). In my opinion he’s an excellent artist and the video is based on his imagery.
Erki: The idea actually came from the video’s director, Stalingrad, who pitched us his vision of a video based on Kalervo Palsa’s paintings, and we thought the idea was great. Some people have already asked us why we shot such a terrible video, but I don’t agree. And even if this video was a mistake, I think it’s better to make a mistake and stay true to yourself and your vision.
Sami: In Russia quite a few people were genuinely furious about the scene where the actor jerks off in front of a picture of Stalin (laughs).
Erki: Maybe people in Russia don’t even jerk off (laughs).
RockLine: What does the future hold for Kypck? Do you have any new material ready yet?
Sami: We have a few basic riffs and some ideas, but they’re still at a very early stage. The writing and recording process is going to be really long, but I think we could head into the studio at the end of next year.
Erki: We’ll stay within our concept, but we’ll also try to be innovative. The new material sounds like Kypck, but at the same time different.
Sami: The funny thing is that we never rehearse. Absolutely never.
Erki: The last time we played together was a month ago at another festival, and today is the first time we’re playing together again.
RockLine: One last question – which is better, Finnish or Russian vodka?
Erki: Ugh… Russian, no doubt.
Sami: Green Label vodka. The best in the world.
Erki: With Finnish vodka, they all taste like the same crappy thing (laughs).
Sami: And when you drink Russian vodka, the next morning you remember absolutely nothing (laughs).
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