Over the years, the world of heavy metal music has had many types of sub genres that every so often come to the forefront of our attention. From the ever popular metalcore to the more niche pirate metal, the boundaries for genre are always going to be endless. One particular type of metal genre that has always remained interesting and fun is that of Viking metal. Over the years, acts like TURISAS, BROTHERS OF METAL and, of course, AMON AMARTH have always displayed entertaining performances and albums. However, Finnish folk metallers ENSIFERUM are a band on the eve of their 30th anniversary together and their latest and incredibly fun album, Winter Storm shows they’re ready to take on the world once more. Recently we were lucky to have a chat with bass player Sami Hinkka to discuss the new album and what lies ahead for ENSIFERUM after so long together as a band.
From the get go, listening to Winter Storm hits you like a freight train and once it gets going, there is very little you can do to be able to stop it. Throughout the album, the scale of epicness is dialled up to eleven with what feels like a multitude of vocalists. It really adds to the enjoyment of the record as it keeps it sounding fresh and unique. Throughout, Petri Lindroos and Pekka Montin share harsh and clean vocal duties. Sami goes on to explain how the band employed the use of a choir to give this album its enormous feel and epic scope. “We have the choir but we also wanted to have some vocals that kind of feel like they’re in the lead amongst the rest of the singers, my voice is quite fucking loud in the choirs which felt weird at first but by the end, it worked in my opinion but when you added the octaves, it added the giant ball of sound.” Sami further refers to it as a “double edged sword which adds to the diversity to ENSIFERUM with it going alongside both metal and folk instruments”. It’s a factor that contributes to music listeners being able to identify the band out when hearing them in the wild.
By employing all these styles that work for the band, Sami informs us that it has helped the band stick to their guns when it comes to recording music and not just always bending down to the whims of fans. Back in the day, ENSIFERUM were able to build their fanbase by making fun and niche drinking songs that wouldn’t be amiss from Viking Halls, but the band wanted to look further than that. Sami tells us one day that a friend once told him “you guys could be so much bigger if you give people what they want”, while admitting that his friend has a point, it further inspired the band to keep changing their style, triumphantly telling us that “we know what we want and we know what we like. We like to break barriers!”
The composing and recording process for Winter Storm took place over the course of four years from 2020. “We have a policy that every idea needs to be tried, no matter how crazy. Whilst we’ve not had hip hop, we’ve had reggae ideas, but the point is it will be tried, it takes a lot of time because we twist and turn.”
Once the ideas evolved and melodies were added, Winter Storm started to take shape. After being hampered by the COVID pandemic which put a stop to touring for the band and many others, the notion of not having much inspiration after that brought in confusion amongst the band before they started to get going once more. Sami reveals, “as the lyric writer, this was the hardest album I’ve ever done. It took ages. We had raw demos but we couldn’t progress until we had vocal demos!” After writing dozens of lyrics and passages, nothing felt right for Sami as he humorously describes what he was writing simply as “shit”.
Resorting to old books of his that would help find that spark and themes to focus on, Sami had a moment of inspiration. “The book that I have been writing myself.” Upon this realisation, Winter Storm finally had a foundation that they could build upon. With ENSIFERUM working as a full democracy (or at least a majority), the rest of the band trusted Sami in using this book as the basis for the upcoming album. When the idea came, the process to Sami “wasn’t easy, but the whole thing got easier. Especially when certain parts of songs would fit this particular part of the book or this character, once this happened it all started to work really well that worked really well with raw ideas we had for songs. The recording then went very well and here we are!” Whilst Sami doesn’t give much about the book away, he does tease that it is “100% fantasy that is a saga that will go through generations”, it’s an exciting extension of ENSIFERUM that lies ahead.
Moving on, discussion turns to ENSIFERUM reaching their 30th year as a band, a huge achievement that many bands can only dream of reaching. When asking Sami what it is like to be facing an anniversary such as this, he endearingly grins before jokingly saying he feels “old”, he hasn’t let it get him down though. “I can see I’m not eighteen anymore but I don’t feel that old, nor do I feel delusional. I feel very privileged, from getting my first bass at eleven, I never thought I’d make a career of being a touring musician. I feel humble that we’re still doing this.”
Even though thirty years is a long time together as a band, the future is still bright for ENSIFERUM. In the new year, they’ll be joining the line up of Pagan Fest, it will also be the first chance to see songs from Winter Bone live too! As the chat comes to a close, Sami leaves us some final breadcrumbs to follow by teasing us and revealing that there are “new melodies and a bunch of riffs and maybe two songs that are nearly ready, album number ten is definitely under construction, let’s hope the world stays sane so people can hear them!”
Winter Storm is out now via Metal Blade Records.
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