Hello! How are you doing?

I'm fine thank you. The weather is very nice here in Finland as I write this and it's quite exceptional to be this warm and sunny at this time of the year. It's the start of October and usually the climate is horrendous by now. But not this year. Can't really start writing new music until the sun goes away and the rain and snow move in.

First of all I wanted to say that I enjoyed the album and that you guys delivered some good work. There are probably still people that don't know much about you, so could you tell us a bit about the band and its history?

Why thank you! We put a lot of effort into writing and recording of the songs so it's nice to hear that it's not a complete bummer. I don't know if there's much to tell about our history. Reading long winded biographies is often very tedious so I'll just keep it short, ok? The band started out sometime in 2000 and was originally called Nevergreen. We took our time, writing songs and later discarding them to write better ones to discard. There were a lot of line up changes until we found the right people. We released 4 promocd's during the years and then recorded the first album on our own. After it was ready we started shopping it around and changed our name to Sinisthra. The album was released on May 2005 by a Spanish label called Arise.

'Last Of The Stories Of Long Past Glories' is the first album that was released by Arise Records, so how is it to work with them and do you know any of the other bands that are labelled there?

The communication with the label has been very good and there's nothing to grumble about Arise. They have another Finnish band called Blind Stare whom I was in contact with when we were negotiating the deal. Blind Stare had nothing negative to say about Arise either so we went on with the deal. Most of the other bands on Arise seem to fall into the power metal category and therefore aren't very interesting to me.

How were the reactions towards the album so far?

Varied I'd say. Some reviewers haven't liked it at all but I don't mind. It's not the easiest of albums to get into and if you're a reviewer with dozens of albums to listen through in a limited amount of time it's no wonder if ours sounds a bit dull. We've had a fair amount of rave reviews too and usually it's mentioned that at first Sinisthra didn't do much to a reviewer but after repeated spins it started to open up and grow on the listener. The most rewarding thing to us is when people listen to the album and seem to tune into the same wavelenght as us and find out all the things we put there in the first place.

What is your opinion about the fact that it's hard these days for new Finnish bands to get more known and contracted by some label? Did you experienced this as well?

We were probably helped by the fact that our singer had just joined Amorphis. And we had a finished album in our hands. I sent e-mails around telling we had an album ready to be released and would your label be interested. If a label showed interest I sent the album to them and if they were still interested we started negotiating. So we didn't really experience any earth stattering difficulties. And I don't think every new band deserves to get a contract and become better known. There are so many soundalikes around with no personality of their own. Bands should try and find something they can truly call their own before whining about not getting a record deal, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant that something might be. You have to have some kind of an identity. How many death metal or power metal albums sounding exactly the same are released every month? Quite many I'd say. It's not enough to be good musicians and be able to reproduce the sound of the bands you admire. You need to have your own voice. After all this raving I'd like to point out that I'm not in the opinion that Sinisthra was something extremely unique and wonderful. But I'd like to think we have our own voice which sets us slightly apart from the bands who choose the well tread path.

From where did you get the influences for this new album? And do you think it's hard these days to come up with something original?

Yes, it's hard to come up with something original but it's always been hard to come up with something original. It takes time and effort and more time and then of course you need to be able to steal from other bands and get away with it unnoticed… our influences are scattered far and wide and very seldomly include anything even remotely metallic.

People always compare bands with other bands, so have you experienced this as well? If so, with which bands?

Oh yes, we have and it has provided us with an endless amount of amusement.
Not to mention bemusement. If someone claims we really sound like Sentenced, Entwine, Charon, HIM or whatever then all I can say is bollocks. Or perhaps I don't say bollocks. Perhaps I'll rephrase it. If we sound like any of the aforementioned bands it's totally unintentional on our part and very accidental too because we're not even familiar with their music. Bands like Anathema, Katatonia, Porcupine Tree and Koma hit
closer to the mark. Those are some of the bands we have something in common with, if not musically then at least in spirit. But it's only natural to compare new bands to bigger ones and of course it gives people some kind of an idea of what to expect.

Do you guys have personal contact with any other (known) Finnish bands?

Well, we've been around for ages and it's a small country so we know lots of people in different bands, especially in the Helsinki area, but we don't really hang out with other bands. Used to do that a lot when we were younger but not that much anymore. So I see no point in name dropping. Graydance (www.graydance.net) is the only band we have close contact with nowadays.

So what are the plans for Sinisthra in the future? Do you already have ideas for the next album?

We have a few songs written for the next album and at the moment I fancy the idea of turning it into a concept album. All we need now is a concept for it.. it's all in the early stages yet so we don't really have a clear idea of how it will turn out. It will probably be a lot heavier and darker than the first album but we'll see about that after the music is written. Might as well turn out to be a lot softer and smoother than the first
album.

Are there any bands you would like to perform / tour with?

Opening up for Anathema might be an ideal spot for us at the moment. I think Anathema fans would appreciate what we're doing.

Is there anything left that you might wanna share with our readers?

You can check out our music at www.myspace.com/sinisthra. There's 4 songs online off the album and it should give some idea of what were doing. www.sinisthra.com contains more information if you find your curiosity aroused.

Thanks for the interview and good luck with everything!

Thank you very much for taking interest in Sinisthra. Take care.

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Sinisthra Official Website

Arise Records

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