If the world were like an Ensiferum album, the planet would be a far better, if far less productive place. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, cavernous mead halls with perfect acoustics would play host to raucous, spirit-lifting minstrels playing for the well-lubricated audience drinking continually if only to fend off a hangover that, remarkably, never seems to come. Buxom wenches and steel-jawed folk heroes would swing their steins to the pulse-pounding mix of folk melodies and metallic speed incorporated into Ensiferum's special blend of heroic Finnish folk metal, with kilts flying, heads windmilling and horns thrown all around. Yes, if Valhalla is a pub, then Ensiferum would be the house band. And though the band testifies that in their home country they are not well received, playing just one, albeit sold-out, gig per year in Helsinki, the Finnish five-piece has been welcomed with open arms and full mugs all around the world. Recognition at home has come in 2010 as well, with the band being nominated for an EMMA, the Finnish equivalent of a Grammy, for best metal album alongside such well-established acts as Sonata Arctica and Amorphis. And with an ever-evolving sound that seems to grow in scope with each successive album, and their latest offering, 2009's From Afar, even incorporating epic orchestrations that, while not real, are strong enough to have fooled even the most discriminating ears, Ensiferum is yet another band from Finland whose career is definitely on the upswing. Front man and guitarist Petri Lindroos and slightly hung over bassist Sami Hinkka took time to talk to Fight magazine before Ensiferum conquered Taipei in mid-January.

Fight: Your music is described as heroic folk metal. Describe the feeling you get from playing this style of music live.

Sami Hinkka: I feel very energetic. In a live situation it’s interactive; the more wild the crowd goes the more energy you get from them. It’s a feedback thing.

F: Your latest album, From Afar, how does that differ from the previous releases?

SH: Well obviously it’s the best one. Pretty unique answer, right? We’ve done over 200 gigs with this lineup, almost with this lineup; the only change was the keyboard player. I think that’s something you can really hear from the album. We also tried a lot of new things. My opinion is that From Afar is like, we had some good things on the previous album, Victory Songs, but on this album we made them better. So next album I think we have to find another angle. It’s a very massive album so I don’t think we can get any bigger.

F: Two of the songs on From Afar are over ten minutes long. Did this cause you any concern from a commercial standpoint?

PL: No, if we are checking out the length of the songs on the previous albums I think the shortest song is five minutes. The average song length is between five and seven minutes, so you can forget the radio play. The songs that are under four are so fast that no radio would even play it.

SH: We tried to do a radio edit from one of the new songs, ‘Smoking Ruins.’       

PL: Radios did not accept it.

SH: Even though it was less than five minutes. That kind of ruins the song if you take instrumental pieces away which you have really put effort into.

PL: But no, we don’t worry about the length of the songs. They come as they come.

F: Sami, you’ve taken over as the main lyricist of the band. What led to that happening?

SH: I don’t know, it just happened.

PL: He was so fast. He was like ‘Yeah, I have already lyrics for this song. Oh yeah, and I did something for this one too, and this one too.’ So everything was done and we were like, ‘OK, cool.’

SH: We wrote together in studio so I’m not like dictator. It just happened this time.

F: Is Markus still the main songwriter in the band?

SH: Yes, he’s the ultimate filter. Everyone can bring ideas, but he’s the founder of the band, the soul of the music. And usually even if we bring some ideas, he thinks about it and he usually modifies it a little bit; not dramatically but details.

PL: Everything goes through him.

SH: And that’s very good, because he knows what Ensiferum should sound like. But don’t get us wrong, he’s not an asshole.

PL: Victory Songs and the new album is done totally in a democratic way. He makes the music, but we have the final touches.

SH: Sometimes it really even annoys me when he’s trying to be over-democratic. Sometimes he should be more asshole and say ‘OK, this is the way it’s going to be,’ but he’s too kind.

F: Petri, in an interview you spoke of a surprise element being present on From Afar; something you had never done before. What was it?

PL: That was the orchestration on the album. We didn’t want to reveal it before the album was coming out. That was the new thing that we tried and we recorded the whole album and then we got the orchestrations for the songs. We actually didn’t know what to expect at that point.

SH: I totally fell out of the chair the first time I heard because we wrote some ideas for orchestrations for this guy who did those, but he was so pro at what he does, even Tuomas Holopainen from Nightwish thought we had a real orchestra. It really sounds like a real orchestra.

F: From Afar landed on the Billboard chart. What was your reaction to this?

PL: It’s always nice when it goes to the charts. It actually tells that people are still buying albums and even somebody knows us. It usually goes to the charts for a week or two and then it’s off. But it’s good, we do notice it.

F: You’ve toured in North America many times. Were you surprised at how well the North American audience took to your distinct style?

SH: In 2007 we did six shows in eastern Canada, that was the first very big surprise. No releases, no license deal in North America at that point, no gigs played. And we got to Montreal and we expected maybe 50, maybe100 people come to see this exotic Finnish band and we had a sold out venue, 800 people. And we did six shows then; four of those were sold out so there was definitely something going on.

F: Sami, you’ve said that when you’re writing you try to imagine that you’re a 15 or 16-year-old kid who has just started his first band and try to write with that same passion and hunger. How do you maintain that feeling with each new album?

SH: I think the main thing is just to focus on the music, not to think about how long the song is or this or that.

PL: Just follow your heart.

SH: I think we have managed to do that very well, not to think about the business bullshit side which easily corrupts the writing process because we had many questions asked—‘Why don’t you do more hit songs like in previous albums? Why don’t you write another ‘One More Magic Potion’?’ We did that already. It’s time to move forward. No point writing the same album.

F: You described From Afar as the gloomiest album lyrically that you’ve ever done. What made this happen?

SH: I turned 30 a few years ago so maybe that was something, realizing your own mortality. Your grandparents start to die and your own parents are pretty old and friends have died.

F: Another thing that you’ve talked about before is your love of spaghetti westerns and bringing elements of those soundtracks into your music. What brought about this seemingly odd combination of styles?

PL: It’s actually been done already on the Iron album. On ‘Iron’ in the middle there’s the clean part that is the Clint Eastwood moment.

SH: And there’s even a gun shot in the end. And when the Iron album was released Markus told us he got some email from Japan saying ‘There weren’t any guns at the Viking era! That’s stupid!’ Dude, it’s only music.

PL: Try not to be that categorized into one spot. It’s heroic fantasy metal, what we do. We play heavy metal with a melody, I think.

F: Chthonic has mentioned that Ensiferum has been their favorite band to tour with. What’s it like touring with them?

PL: It was cool. It was a very nice.

SH: It was a very unique tour. I've never had that kind of feeling on a tour bus, and nobody else has. They are, I don't know, it's just chemistry. They are so nice people in the tour bus.

PL: I remember CJ kicked my ass in Tekken every night.

SH: It's impossible to describe.

PL: But it was really great doing a European tour with them. I hope we can do something more.

SH: Yeah I was actually talking yesterday with Doris. Because we're on the same label, we should try to arrange something.

F: What are your hopes for the future of Ensiferum?

SH: At the moment we're all full-time musicians. We were forced and we were lucky enough to quit the day jobs, so hopefully that will last. And it's always nice to visit new countries, and hopefully we can do that also in the future. We have a lot of countries we haven't conquered yet. And the most important is that we can keep on writing music from the heart, not to write music for radio stations.  

PL: They don't play it anyway. We do music for the masses.

By Joe Henley