With their fourth album "Vertigo", the quintet from Kuopio, Finland, is currently causing a sensation: a wonderful mix of 70s rock, occult elements and, yes, pop. We talked to band founder, songwriter and guitarist Thomas Corpse about his hometown, its music scene and his great passion for catchy melodies, which, however, he always likes to cover with a layer of darkness.
eclipsed: The band is from the Finnish city of Kuopio, after all. Can you tell us something about the music scene there?
Thomas Corpse: We have a very lively scene here, there are a lot of bands, and at least before the Pandemic we had enough opportunities to perform, so that different scenes had solidified in the last years. There's a lot of metal, I like that a lot, but there's also a very lively and big indie scene, although I can't tell you much about that because I don't have much contact with that kind of music. In fact, we had a fantastic club here called Henry's Pub that was there for about 50 years and had about 300 shows a year, so almost every day there was a concert! It was where all the different scenes of the town went to meet and mingle. Unfortunately it had to close for good during the pandemic, a shame. But there are other clubs, I really like Ottopoika, where the die-hard metal scene meets.
eclipsed: Are you all from Kuopio?
Corpse: Yes, at least a big part of us comes directly from here. Thomas Fiend, our ex-guitarist, with whom I founded the band, I met back in the 1990s at Club Valhalla, also a place where Mercyful Fate was played all day long (laughs). Our bass player also comes from this original scene. The others are a bit younger. Jess, our singer, joined us later, she was the girlfriend of our drummer who brought her to rehearsals one day and said she was great. We played a Danzig song together and she sang it absolutely divine. Then I knew: We had to hire her as a front woman!
eclipsed: And it appeared prominently in the band name right away!
Corpse: That's due to my preference for those classic 60s band names, you know, where the frontman is named first and then the band, which then has a special name. "Ancient Ones", by the way, stems from my fondness for the American writer H. P. Lovecraft, who is always about these ancient beings who want to gain power over humans.
