A: Hi Janne! I understood you guys have a confirmed tour in the US, tell us about it.

J: Yea, it'll be with two other bands, Fear Factory and Lamb Of God, and maybe a fourth band, we expect to reach a wider audience then we usually do.

A: How did you land a spot with these two bands?

J: Actually it's Lamb Of God that wanted us!

A: Tell us about the new single, Lost & Strungout.

J: The single is out in Finland, and will contain 2 songs, for the rest of the world we'll release an EP, which will contain 2 additional ones; it'll be out in about three weeks.

A: Why did you choose to cover the two songs, Alice cooper's bed of nails, and Andrew W.K's she is beautiful?

J: We always liked to cover songs that are unordinary, something that people won't expect us to do, so we decided on these two songs.

A: But She Is Beautiful is somewhat of s simplistic track, it doesn’t seem to fit with your usual style.

J: That is quite right, we actually recorded the track twice, because it did sound it a bit too simplistic, on the second version we kind of gave it a COB touch, more keyboards, more melody lines, on the Alice Cooper track we also did it quite differently then the original, it’s a hard rock song at first, like the original, and then we put the COB spin on it, doing it very fast and energetic.

A: what is the new material like?

J: The title track is typical COB, fast and melodic, the other track, Knucklebuster, is very unusual for us; it's much slower and heavier, much more aggressive then our usual stuff,
It actually reminded me a lot of Slayer, Alexi just wrote it like that, there's the typical fast solo, but the chorus is much slower and heavier than always.

A: you've had a change in guitarist not so long ago, what's the situation there now?

J: Yea, it's been quite some time since Alexander left, and we're still playing with Roope.

A: That's the guy that used to play with Stone, and also with Sinergy?

J: Yea, he's a great guitarist, and he's been doing shows with us for about a year now, There's no official decision about him being a member, but it seems rather clear now, he's a really good guitarist, with a lot of experience.

A: A few questions regarding your other projects, you've recently played with ex-stradovarius's vocalist, Kotipelto's album, how did you two get acquainted?

J: I met him quite some time ago, and I played on his first album as well, as a result, he also sang on my solo project, Warmen, we did a lot of shows lately, but since I'm going to the US now with COB, he'll probably use someone else for his shows.
It’s a lot of fun working with him, his music is very different from what I do in COB, it's slower, and the keyboards are not as frantic and complicated as the ones on COB, In COB Alexi writes all the melodies, and he writes really complex stuff, so with Kotipelto it's much easier.

A: What about your plans regarding the Warman project?

J: Warmen is more of a project, there's no doubt that COB is the main thing for me, but we started in doing a third album, but it went into hibernation because of the festival season, the album is very much like the second album, the first one I wasn’t too happy with, I'm not usre on who will take part in the finished product, but Timo will certainly sing on it.
The reason I do the project is to record the stuff that I write myself, in COB it's all written by Alexi, so the songs I write I just put on the Warmen albums.

A: You did quite a lot of projects for some quite young, when did you start out, and how do you manage to do them all?

J: I've just been very busy, I started out in a music school since I was 11, and then wanted to be into jazz music, as I got older I got into metal, and by the time I was 17 I left the school, and was then asked by COB to record with them,
I started out with basic metal bands, but really got into metal bands that had good keyboards, like Stradovarious.
Right now I'm also thinking about doing a jazz album, with some friends of mine, but first thing is COB, and then the Warmen album.


A: Is it true that you have a nick name called Shakma? What does that mean?

J: Well, Shakma is a film about this baboon; I once got drunk with the guys and started doing some stupid shit, so they started calling me that…

A: Tell us about the beyond abilities studio.

J: It's a studio I built, in which we recorded the new Kotipelto album, I didn’t officially open it yet, its just a studio that I wanted to have, during my time in COB I got interested in sound, and learned a lot, do I bought more and more stuff, until I had to open a studio.

A: The band has gained considerable success world wide, in what countries do you feel the band's growing success and in what ways do you feel that affects the band?

J: our success came very gradually, it wasn’t that fast, so we all just got used to it, we haven’t changed as people, or as a band, but its much easier to music now, we've reached a stage where we don’t need to have day jobs, as we did when we started out, the biggest country for us is Japan, they treat us as if were Marilyn Manson or something, almost every time we're there they take us to this restaurant, where you pick your food, and then you fry it yourself, its very expensive, something like 200 Euro a meal.

A: So you probably go bankrupt every time your there!

J: No, they pay for us!

A: I read there was a breakthrough in the Bodom murder case, upon which the band's name is based, are there any updates?

J: it's strange, since the break there's been nothing else published, what happened is there where two boys and two girls there, and only one of the boys made it out alive, and now they arrested him for the murder, using DNA and new technologies they found new evidence that he was the killer, but I didn’t read any updates on that…

A: Well, thanks for talking to us Janne, and good luck!


Alon Miasnikov

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