AMORAL TRIVIA
Trivia
Amoral first played in Japan in 2006. The Marquee / Avalon biography places the visit in the year after Decrowning, their second album, appeared in October 2005 — two years on from their debut record. Ward Records' own notes describe how they were received here: Japanese metal fans backed them from early on, and the band were widely seen as the ones expected to follow Children Of Bodom.
The Japanese edition of Show Your Colors appeared on 22 July 2009 through Marquee / Avalon as MICP-10852 at ¥2,700 including tax — and it was billed under a name of its own. The label's page presents the record as "Ari Koivunen with Amoral," putting the new singer's name in front of the band's. Given how well known he was in Finland the logic is clear enough, but no other territory's release did it. The Japanese edition also added one bonus track: the Misfits cover Dig Up Her Bones, which had been the B-side of the advance single.
One of the Japanese bonus tracks on In Sequence is a cover of The Offspring's All I Want, and it was never part of the plan. Ben Varon told BARKS that drummer Juhana Karlsson works so fast that the drum sessions finished about half a day ahead of schedule, leaving them the best part of a day in a studio they had already paid for. Casting about for something to record, they realised they had all loved that song for years — one of the greatest punk songs ever written, in his words. They had played it live once some years before, so they listened to it online once, decided they still remembered it, and recorded it on the spot.
Amoral began in 1997 in Helsinki. According to the biography kept by their Japanese label, Marquee / Avalon, the band formed around Ben Varon on guitar and Juhana Karlsson on drums, who had been schoolmates, with Silver Ots joining on guitar later; for a while the three of them simply worked through cover songs. Things turned serious in 2000, which is when they started writing original material — and when they began calling themselves Amoral. For the first three years or so of their existence, in other words, the band did not yet carry that name.
Niko Kalliojärvi, the singer who defined Amoral's early years, started out as a stand-in. The Marquee / Avalon biography records that the band's vocalist at the time was Matti Pitkänen and that they made their first demo, Desolation, with Silver Ots doubling on bass. They were booking their first shows when Matti, who was doing military service, turned out to be unavailable for the debut gig. Niko was brought in at short notice through Silver, played well enough that they kept him, and stayed. Ville Sorvali of Moonsorrow, who had been helping out on bass for live work, also became a full member around the same time.
There was a reason Ari Koivunen joining Amoral made such noise in Finland. According to the Marquee / Avalon biography, he had won the Finnish talent show Idols in 2007, and his debut album Fuel For The Fire entered the Finnish album chart at No.1 that year and stayed there for twelve consecutive weeks — a first for a domestic artist, the previous holder of a twelve-week run on that chart being Bon Jovi's Cross Road. His second album, Becoming, went to No.1 in 2008 as well. It was that singer who was being announced as the frontman of a death/thrash metal band.
On 25 November 2008 Amoral announced Ari Koivunen as their new singer. In the statement the band put out, they said that applications had poured in from singers all over the world once word of Niko Kalliojärvi's departure got round, and that what they were after was someone who could handle the growling on the old songs and also had a strong melodic voice. Ari came through as the strongest candidate of all of them, and the band admitted they had not expected to end up with a vocalist of that calibre. The surprise, given the melodic singing he was known for, was that he could growl with the best of them.
In 2011 Amoral started calling their music "classic rock of the 21st Century." As Blabbermouth put it, this came from being bored with the limiting genre definitions offered to describe their sound. Their tongues were firmly in their cheeks, but the argument held: if Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Queen and Black Sabbath could all set off down completely different paths under the banner of classic rock, there was no reason Amoral should settle for anything narrower.
The sixth album, Fallen Leaves & Dead Sparrows, is a concept record. Ben Varon said the decision came to him partway through writing: his lyrical ideas were already running into one another, and the songs themselves were starting to paint a larger picture. At its simplest the album is about the one big mistake that cannot be undone. People like the idea of second chances, he said, but sometimes that is not on offer; there are points of no return, decisions you can never take back. The lyrics can be read as the tale of a drug addict, or a relationship gone badly wrong, or a longing for days past, or a fear of getting old — the last two, he laughed, being the ones closest to home for him.
Ben Varon explained to BARKS how Niko Kalliojärvi came back. Niko had left eight years earlier, but relations had stayed good throughout; he had gone in order to concentrate on playing guitar and studying it at school, and he had jumped up at Amoral shows in Helsinki several times since. Then came Tuska Open Air Festival 2014, where Varon felt the old vibe return. With one of the world's best growlers and one of the world's best clean singers in the same band — plus an extra guitarist — they could attempt genuinely crazy parts. Varon put it to the rest of the band first, and once everyone agreed he went to Niko. Ward Records dates the announcement of the return to March 2015.
The story behind In Sequence, the band's last album, started with something real. Ben Varon told BARKS that it came from a friend of his father's who worked at a facility for people with alcohol dependency or mental illness. Every day he heard pleasant guitar playing coming from one of the rooms — and then the playing stopped, because the patient had taken his own life. He had never met him; he was a young guitar player. Varon could not get the story out of his head for about two years, and eventually reasoned that if he had spent that long thinking about someone whose name and face he did not know, that person belonged at the centre of the next album. What had driven him to it? Did his parents know where he was? One of the songs is written from the father's point of view.
Amoral's last show took place on 5 January 2017 at Tavastia in Helsinki. Ben Varon explained the decision behind it: while writing, recording and mixing In Sequence he had no idea the band would disband. It was settled only after the album was finished, when it became clear that touring properly would be almost impossible given everyone's schedules. Ari Koivunen would be tied up with theatre work for most of the year, and Juhana Karlsson had made it plain that multiple long tours were going to be a problem for him. Varon did not want Amoral to become a band with a different set of stand-ins on every tour — a band should be a band, he said, and an audience wants to see the line-up it hears on the record. Spending a year writing, recording and pouring energy into an album and then not touring it hard made no sense to him. That is how the thought crept in that Amoral had run its course.
The Japanese edition of Wound Creations appeared on 24 March 2005 through Marquee / Avalon as MICP-10501, priced ¥2,476 plus tax. Their listing describes it as an enhanced CD: put it in a computer and you get the video clip for Other Flesh — the song that shares its title with the demo that won the band their record deal.
The Japanese edition of Beneath came out on 19 October 2011 as MICP-11012 at ¥2,571 plus tax. Marquee / Avalon's listing marks it explicitly as a Japan-first release and adds one bonus track, Staying Human. Two digital singles appeared in Japan the same year: Same Difference on 17 May and Silhouette on 19 September, the latter paired with an acoustic version.
The Japanese edition of In Sequence appeared on 29 January 2016 through Ward Records as GQCS-90092, priced ¥2,750 including tax. The rest of the world got it on 5 February, so Japan was about a week ahead. The Japanese release came with translated lyrics and a Japanese commentary booklet, plus bonus tracks. It turned out to be Amoral's last album — and by then their Japanese releases had moved from Marquee / Avalon to Ward Records.
The rights to the debut album, Wound Creations, changed hands almost as soon as it appeared. The Marquee / Avalon biography records that the second demo, Other Flesh, led to a deal with the English label Rage Of Achilles Records, which put the album out in 2004 — and then went bankrupt. The rights moved to Spikefarm Records, a sub-label of Finland's biggest, Spinefarm, which re-released it. Good press for that reissue pushed the band's live work outside Finland and carried them straight into writing a second album. Ville Sorvali left after the recording and Erkki Silvennoinen took over on bass.
After Reptile Ride, Amoral lost both a bassist and a singer in quick succession. The Marquee / Avalon biography records that Erkki Silvennoinen left first and that Pekka Johansson replaced him in May 2008; that July, Niko Kalliojärvi went too. Blabbermouth gives his reason as wanting to focus on other projects and records his last appearance with the band as 23 August 2008, at the Thrashia Läpi Yön festival in Tammela, Finland. What followed was the change the band themselves would call drastic.
There is a second account of who approached whom. In the notes Ward Records supplied with the Japanese edition, Ari Koivunen heard that Niko Kalliojärvi had left, had long been a fan of the band, and put himself forward — and Amoral, who were already after a wider range of vocal and melodic styles, took him up on it. That does not contradict the band's own statement that he was the strongest of the applicants, but it goes one step further in saying that the move came from his side. The same notes record that the news of an idol-show singer joining a death/thrash metal band also drew its share of hostile reactions.
The new line-up toured steadily, and then in the autumn of 2009 Silver Ots — a guitarist from the band's earliest days — announced he was leaving. The Marquee / Avalon biography records that Amoral finished the remaining dates with Valtteri Hirvonen guesting, and that at the start of 2011, just before recording the next album, they named Masi Hukari as the replacement. Beneath is the record that line-up made.
Reptile Ride, the third album, entered the Finnish album chart at No.5 in 2007. Blabbermouth records that it was produced, recorded and mixed by Janne Saksa at Sound Supreme Studios in Hämeenlinna, Finland, and that the cover art was by Aki Siltala — who would go on to do the sleeves for Fallen Leaves & Dead Sparrows and In Sequence as well.
In June 2007 Amoral put out an internet-only release through Spikefarm Records called Leave Your Dead Behind. Blabbermouth notes that its bonus track was a cover of The Naked Sun by the Swedish pop singer Pandora. That May the band's first two albums — Wound Creations from 2004 and Decrowning from 2005 — had gone out to digital distributors. Downloads were still a long way from routine, and the band were working the back catalogue and an online-only release at the same time.
Announcing the new singer, Amoral got their defence in first. Before any old-school fans condemned them to hell, the statement said, no — they were not going power metal. The trademark riffs were still there, so was the quirkiness, so was the everybody-can-get-lost attitude. And they argued that Reptile Ride had already made plain how keen they were to push the music in a more melodic direction, so going all the way with the vocals was the natural next step. By the time the statement went out the material for the fourth album was more or less written, with recording set to run from the following month through January and release expected before the summer.
Amoral's official live debut with Ari Koivunen came on 6 February 2009 at the Frostbite festival in Lahti, Finland. Five days later, on 11 February, the first single of the new line-up, Year Of The Suckerpunch, went on sale at home. It was a period in which the band's death metal following and an audience that knew their singer from television were turning up in the same room.
Year Of The Suckerpunch, the first single with Ari Koivunen, entered the Finnish national chart at No.19. Blabbermouth credits the song to guitarist Ben Varon, and notes that the single was backed with a cover of the Misfits' Dig Up Her Bones. At that point the album was still untitled: recorded at Sound Supreme Studios in Hämeenlinna and being mixed for a May release.
Show Your Colors, the first album with Ari Koivunen, reached No.19 on the Finnish album chart — the same position, as it happened, that the advance single had taken. It came out in Finland on 6 May 2009 and in the United States on 9 June through Spinefarm Records via Fontana distribution. It was recorded, as the record before it had been, at Sound Supreme Studios in Hämeenlinna.
Between 7 October and 7 November 2009, Amoral supported Amorphis on a European tour, with Before The Dawn also on the bill — three Finnish bands travelling together. Barely half a year after taking on a new singer, it was their first run at showing the new line-up to substantial audiences outside Finland.
Beneath was recorded at Sound Supreme Studios in Hämeenlinna and produced jointly by Janne Saksa and Ben Varon. Varon described the record as three steps forward and one step back: there are nods to the band's past all over it in the form of long songs, intricate riffs and growled vocals, but the focus stays where Show Your Colors had put it — on strong melodies, big choruses and riffs that stick.
Beneath is also Masi Hukari's first recording with the band. Blabbermouth notes that although he joined late in the writing process, he immediately wrote two songs with Ben Varon and both made the album — and that from this record on, Amoral had two lead guitar players. Varon said it would have been a crime to leave Masi as "just" the rhythm guitarist, that trading leads was something the band could do for the first time in its history, and that many of the album's guitar highlights are Masi's.
Having finished Beneath, Amoral ended a months-long break from playing live with a single show: 3 June 2011 at On The Rocks in Helsinki. Blabbermouth gives the two purposes behind it — breaking in the new guitarist, and trying several brand new songs out on stage for the first time.
Beneath brought both acclaim and reach. Blabbermouth records that it drew rave reviews and a strong response from fans, and that the tour behind it took the band from Europe to Japan, with debut shows in the USA and China. Inside a decade of their first album, a Finnish band had played four continents. The experience set the course of the next record: the songs they most enjoyed playing on that tour, Ben Varon said, were the longer, proggier ones in the vein of Beneath's title track — the ones where the band felt at its best.
Fallen Leaves & Dead Sparrows was the band's first release for the English label Graphite Records, after their time with Spinefarm; Blabbermouth gives the release date as 31 March 2014. Ben Varon produced it and wrote the lyrics, but the music was a collaboration with Masi Hukari — who had joined in 2010, just before Beneath was recorded, and whom Varon was glad to have alongside him from the very start of the writing this time.
Alongside the announcement of Fallen Leaves & Dead Sparrows, Amoral started a monthly newsletter called Amoral Times. The notice Blabbermouth carried describes it as written personally by the band: updates, tour news, pictures, videos, random ramblings — whatever the members thought an Amoral enthusiast might want. You signed up by emailing an address at amoralweb.com. It is a record of a moment when a band delivering its own words once a month was still something done by hand.
Ben Varon described the approach to the seventh album, In Sequence, as an Yngwie Malmsteen state of mind: more is more. Writing began once Niko Kalliojärvi was back and the band had become a six-headed thing with two vocalists and three guitar players, and Varon called it one of the most inspiring writing processes he had been through. More guitar parts, more keyboards, more moving back and forth between clean and growled vocals. He put the record down as the logical follow-up to Fallen Leaves & Dead Sparrows, with Niko's return bringing some of the old-school Amoral feel to the new material and the real-life concept making it a touch heavier.
In Sequence was the first Amoral album to bring in a batch of guest musicians. Blabbermouth names percussionist Teho Majamäki, Indica singer Jonsu and Acyl's singer and mastermind Amine Benotmane among them. What they added, according to Ben Varon, was percussion, female vocals, analogue synths and ouds — the Arabic lute — and he credited them with taking the songs to the next level.
Rude Awakening, the track that opens In Sequence, was introduced by the returning Niko Kalliojärvi himself, now vocalist and guitarist. He described it as one song with a great deal to listen to: an opener that is epic and yet brisk, carried on multi-layered guitar parts and tight rhythmic playing, and the first time both of the band's vocalists can be heard on the same track.
Ari Koivunen's singing changed across his four Amoral albums. Ben Varon told BARKS that he loves the lower end of Ari's range, and that on the first of them, Show Your Colors — and probably on Beneath too — Ari sang rather high, with the songs written to suit that. By In Sequence they were tuning seven-string guitars down to B, and a ghostly lower voice turns up all over the record. It suits the music, Varon said.
Looking back after the decision, Ben Varon found that the last album had arranged itself into a perfect final record without anyone planning it. He pointed to what it was about — synchronicity — and to the pieces that had fallen into place: Niko Kalliojärvi coming back into the band, Silver Ots being asked to play on it too, and the closing song being called From The Beginning. That track is the longest and biggest thing they ever did, swelling towards the end through solos, choir and orchestra until there is literally nowhere left to go. It all seems like coming full circle, he wrote; it is almost as if he had known subconsciously. And he added one more thing: seven is the perfect number of albums for a discography, a far more pleasing figure than six or eight.
Aki Siltala, who did Amoral's covers over many years, is also one of the best-known tattoo artists in Finland. Blabbermouth mentions the second job in its pieces on both In Sequence and Fallen Leaves & Dead Sparrows, and records that he had done the sleeves for Decrowning and Reptile Ride as well. The band's music travelled a long way from early technical death metal to progressive heavy metal; the hand responsible for how it looked did not change.
That Amoral's albums all sound so different from one another was the point. Ben Varon told BARKS that having new possibilities matters to any band, and that every time he makes a record he wants to try something new, something different — and that with one more talented player in the room they could now do far more of it. Nobody knows what happens next. They keep challenging themselves, he added, so as not to get bored: it is selfish, but they make these albums for themselves, and are glad when other people happen to enjoy them too.