Thank you very much, Eicca for taking the time to do this interview with me. Where I'm catching you at the moment. I guess you're preparing for the upcoming tour in a few weeks?

Oh yes, yes, definitely excited. I'm at home, just got back from the summer vacations and starting to get in shape. You know, in shape for playing.

I see okay, so with the tour coming in a few weeks, do you actually do some special preparations? I mean, physically, because I know a lot of musicians are changing their diet, or quit drinking, or even start drinking before the tour. Do you have any special preparations when you go on the road? Because, you know, the tours can be really exhausting.

I don't have very much because I tend to keep on this really healthy lifestyle with diet and regular exercise and body moving. But I'm increasing the exercise part a little bit, and starting to take longer walks and little running and stuff, because it's physically tough. Physically tough. Оn the tour, we typically play five or six shows a week, and every show is almost two hours long, and it physically kind of works as an exercise. So it's good to be prepared for that, and of course, then practicing just to get the playing muscles strengthened enough that they won't collapse.

I see, what about the food? Most of the musicians are complaining about the food on the road because, every day, you're in a different place, and it's not like in your mothers house, where the food is always perfect. What do you eat while on the road?

We try to eat healthy, but sometimes you can't control what kind of food is there? It's pretty hard if you are vegetarian or vegan on the road, the options are usually very limited, but we don't have that problem in the band. Аlways eat mindfully. Think about what you eat, there's always something to eat. And ofcourse we have the rider. We have like protein bars and protein drinks for recovery and just as an emergency food and some we have some salad ingredients always for the backstage. So you can, you can always make, make some food if you're hungry. So it's not that bad, basically. But of course, the hard part is the off the show food. If you want to have food after a show, it's very often kebab or pizza or something that you shouldn't eat every day. He-he

You started with some Metallica cover songs like 30 years ago, and now 10 studio albums later, you are returning for a second volume of Metallica cover songs. Why did you decide to go back to Metallica, and actually, why Metallica? Why not Judas or Megadeth, for example?

I don't know… this Metallica stuff is in our blood, in a way, because that's how we started. The whole band started because we loved their music. And I think we've been talking about that for over 20 years. It's been from time to time that we were saying: “Okay, one day we will make another Metallica album”. And now, it kind of felt like the right time. It's hard to know exactly why, but I think one indicator was that 20th anniversary tour we did some six ago. As an experience that was almost more fun that we expected. It was a lot of fun to go back to those great tunes of our teenage times. And I think that left some kind of mark on us that is actually fun. It's fun to do Metallica. Then we released the Cell-0 album, which was very ambitious, full of original instrumental music. And I don't know, probably we just felt that we are ready for that. We know who we are. We know our identity. And it doesn't feel like going backwards to make another Metallica album and feels more like a step forward. Yeah, probably 10 years ago, it would have felt like going back into some kind of safe harbor, because we are unsure about ourselves. When we were thinking about the idea, we realized that this is actually an exciting challenge. How to recreate the whole thing in a way that does not replicate the first album, or the way we did the first album. It is kind of a new challenge how Apocalyptica will be able to bring something new out of Metallica’s music. And of course, there were so many songs that we always wanted to play so..

As you said, you already have your own sound and way of making music. And when you hear something, you definitely know that it is Apocalyptica. But where do you feel much more safer when you are recreating some song adding the Apocalyptica touch or when you're writing your own music from scratch?

I think it's a very different mindset between those two. Because when you write your own music, you just create something with no limitations. You start from an empty page and create from scratch. And I think that, somehow, it's more exciting most of the time. But then sometimes it's also exciting when we're doing covers like this album. We are taking an original song and then going into it and trying to deeply understand what are the elements that make it what it is. And then we kind of digest it, and bring it out with our own point of view. So I think it's hard to compare. But in general, we haven't done so many covers in the last 20 years, because we don't want to do it the easy way. We could do it easily, like, as we did in the beginning. Like we take a song and then we play it with cellos. But we don't want to repeat the old story. So it's more about recreating something that already exists. And actually, it's very challenging. We tried a lot of songs for this album. We were like: “Okay, I love this song, let's do it.” And then starting to work on the arrangement and kind of figuring out the Apocalyptica version of it. And many of the great songs just didn't sound right. So, all the time, we wanted to feel that we were seriously bringing something new to the picture. That we are showing the original composition from a different perspective, and bringing out some certain qualities in the original song that people don't probably even hear in the original version. So, we made it ourselves, very creative, almost as creative as composing something from scratch.

The album is mainly instrumental except one song .. or the Song “ONE”.
Where you collaborate with not just anyone but James and Rob themselves. Tell us how that happened and was it an interesting experience?

We have recorded a version of “One” on the “Inquisition Symphony” album. But the point of doing that again was better. My bandmate, Perttu had this kind of vision that this song is so cinematic and so huge and he wanted to create this really big storytelling version of it and in his original idea, there will be spoken lyrics. So we tell the story of the song, in a more poetic way

It's quite chilling, to be honest.

Yeah. And then we were thinking about some actors that we could ask to do it. And then somebody said that the ultimate would be if James would do it, but it's not going to happen. And I was like, Okay, let me figure out a way to present the idea to James to see what he says. And when James heard about the idea, he really wanted to do it. Rob originally came just to play on four horsemen.And when he heard that James is going to do “Оne”, he wanted to play on that as well. Тhen he took another day and went back to the studio and record the bass for it. It was great that James did the takes. We sent him a version of it that Perttu had made himself. He had made that demo of the spoken lyrics, you know, about timing and the feel. And then James wanted to come to the studio in Pasadena L.A. where we were recording. But then due to some scheduled things, he couldn't make it. So he recorded it by himself, and he sent like, six to eight different takes of it. He said do whatever you feel is the best. And then we kind of put the different texts together.

The result was perfect!

Thank you. The cool thing about that is it actually, when the lyrics are narrated , it brings the story and the tragedy of the whole insanity of war. It brings that out in a different way. And that was the big reason why we wanted to do it this way.

Strangely enough, those types of songs always sound “modern” because, you know, it's always around us.

Unfortunately yes! Unfortunately, it's never going out of date. Yeah.

As i mentioned you are in the industry from the early 90s and have seen a lot of things in this business. How do you think it is going today.. A lot of fans are complaining because of the high ticket and merchandise prices at the same time a lot of artists are blaming streaming platforms and etc for low income ..it's like a vicious circle… Where is the perfect balance?

I think that the COVID made a big impact on the touring industry, mainly because suddenly all the expenditures related to touring got insanely high. For example if a tour bus rental for one month tour is like 50,000 euros - suddenly it's 80,000 euros. And all equipment rental, personnel, all the stuff also. So the band's touring expenses have increased enormously. And then there is a pressure because you can't raise the ticket price at the same balance. So it's getting harder for musicians. People don't want to pay so much money for the tickets as it would be needed for the costs that bands have to pay for a tour. In the end, people always complain, and I think the demand decides. The people decide as consumers what they want to listen to and what they want to put their money on. So I'm not complaining too much. World is changing so fast, and if we complain about the changes, we will be left behind and our life will be very unsatisfying. So I think it just requires more adaptivity from us as individuals. We must learn to adapt in the changing world, because we can't stop it changing. So why waste energy on complaining? I see the concern from musicians and the complaints about Spotify and streaming service payments. There is a lot of work to do there. As long as we see that there are certain entities that benefit insane amounts of money by distributing the music, then a more fair share of that should end up on the creators. And I think that's the kind of battle in the digital world at the moment. Big instances like Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, all these platforms actually are making tons and tons of money on content distribution, etc. So the content creation should be somehow better involved in that and how the creators will be paid. But in the end I think there is no absolute right or wrong in that. It's more about figuring out, which kind of world we want to live in. The internet and the digital revolution has made it so that every individual person is a decision maker, and it comes up to what we decide. What we decide to buy, what we decide to consume. Rather than blaming something out there in the end, it's our responsibility.

2-3 years ago the world was quite different.. There were no concerts, no tours.. Some bands actually even stopped existing. Some musicians even started regular jobs… For some actually neve music was just their hobby. What would you do today if there was no Apocalyptica? Or have you thought about what you will do after Apocalyptica?

I'm already doing many other things at the same time. I have my jewelry brand Vaegar, I do life coaching, then also I write music for movies. I have one movie coming out next year, I'm writing and making the music for it. So if there would be no Apocalyptica, I would do pretty much the same, just without Apocalyptica. The COVID time showed me that in this world we are living in, it's not clever to have all the eggs in one basket. So it's important to educate yourself, learn new things and do different kinds of things. It doesn't need to be on a big scale. So you can do it a little bit on the side, and you can learn about something new for example, marketing or creating something different. I love to do Apocalyptica and that's why I do it, but for me it's not like I have to do it because I couldn't do anything else. But I had to reframe! Before COVID it was all about touring and we were preparing a big tour for us. And then COVID started, and then suddenly there was nothing. And I think that helped me a lot to reframe and think about, how I view safety, or actually it reminded me about the uncertainty of life. That suddenly something can happen and everything can be taken away, and what we have left is what we actually are, and what our skills are, and what our mindset is, and how we adapt.

People often think that just because you play cellos, there are no wild “Rock N Roll” things happening during the tour.. What is the craziest thing that you remember happening with you on tour and you can share it of course?

Оh, there's been lots of crazy things, mostly in the past because you can't go crazy forever. It will be too demanding for your physics and your mental health. But oh yeah, we have had our. Rock and Roll moments.

I heard a story for you forgetting one of the band members at a gas station while you were in Bulgaria. Is that true?

Yeah, it was not even a gas station. It was just in the middle of nowhere between Kavarna and Sofia, in the middle of the night, we had a pee break somewhere there in the middle of nowhere, and then Perttu was accidentally left behind. Nobody realized that he came out and didn't come back. Oh, that was one kind of episode.

But it all worked out well?

Yeah, yeah. Very fortunate.

What are the major challenges when playing cello live? I know that every musician has some issues.. Like not being loud enough or being too loud. For example, I spoke with Lauri from Metsatol who plays bagpipes and flutes..and he said that the hardest thing is to keep those acoustic instruments in tune all the time. How is it with cellos? Except the size maybe

I think it's a little bit the same, with the changing conditions. Because the cello is very sensitive to changes in temperature and the humidity, and most of all, it affects the bow. The bow that we play, the cello, reacts in different temperatures, so that totally changes the touch and how we feel the instrument. I think that's usually the biggest challenge. Sometimes there are challenges with feedback. I think Perttu has a lot of those, because he plays a lot of stuff on the high strings and then the low strings are open, and they start to catch in many venues. If the subwoofers of the PA are positioned somewhere under the stage, then his cello is constantly feedbacking, and he has a lot of struggle with that. The cello is not meant to be played for metal. But we are so stubborn that we are not giving up.(laughs)

So you have more acoustic issues than technical.

Yeah. Sometimes it's technical issues and stuff, but the technical issues are the worst. They are the hardest to cope with. Mentally. They piss you off most of the other stuff. To the other issues, we are more used to it. The struggle is always there.

So let me take you back to the tour that will start in a few weeks from now.. On 28 of november you will visit Bulgaria once again. What should the fans expect from the show? Is it going to be strictly Metallica or will you add some other songs as well?

This is a fully Metallica show. This is like a totally Metallica show. So we play a lot of those songs from the new album, but also old songs and new versions of old songs. And the production is really super cool. We basically did one show in Helsinki when we released the album in June. That was the first run of the new concept. But it's a totally new show. So if people would have seen Apocalyptica in the past. I highly recommend you to come see us now. It's a new show, new vibe, new look. Yeah, everything is pretty different.

Okay, I'm closing with my last question, what is the weirdest story you heard about Apocalyptica, or something that happened during the show.

Hmm, interesting question! I don't remember any very weird or weird experiences, but it's very heartwarming to hear that when people talk about the effect that our music has in their lives. And also, those are very sweet stories when people get married because they have met on Apocalyptica shows. Then they send us messages: “Oh, we love your music, and we got to know each other at this and that concert…” I think that is how music connects people and…

That's why I actually wanted to tell you and was on purpose why I asked this question!

In 2006 when you guys were playing in Bulgaria, I went on a date with a girl to the show. She is my fiancee now, and we live together 18 years later.

Wow, yeah, that's amazing. That shows how music connects people and and on the concerts and festivals people can find like minded people and of course lifetime friendships or even relations. That's good

Ok! I'm not going to take too much of your time, because I'm sure you have other interviews to do, just final words about the fans that are going to be coming to the show to see on 28th of November?

Yeah, we always love coming to Bulgaria. And we are happy to come again there, and we are very proud that we are bringing in a new show. Totally new Apocalyptica show, with great sound, great fun and good mood. I really hope to see all our Bulgarian fans on the show, because it's going to be a night to remember.

Okay Eicca thank you very much for this interview and see you in Sofia,

Thank you very much. Have a great day.

Author: Nikola Petras