| Past Issues:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27
BACK
MY
SHAMEFUL
Doom as a State of Mind
By Yury Arkadin
With doom metal—or "funeral doom," if you will—coming
back to life recently due in part to labels like Firebox and Nocturnal
Music, the time seems right for contacting one of these bands for
an inside perspective. My Shameful has released a new album, Of
All the Wrong Things, this year. It’s the band’s second
release, and the first with Sami Rautio handling all instrumentation
and songwriting on his own, as unfortunately plans for a real drummer
have again not worked out for him.
Sami explains: "I do find the new one totally different from
the MCD, in a positive way. Yeah, we were supposed to have a real
drummer on this one... It all comes down to me moving from Finland
to Germany. The distance really makes things difficult, you know.
I just hope that on the next album it can be more a real band. I
still see Harri [Jussila, ex-guitarist/vocalist] as an essential
part of the band, and also on this album he contributed in a way,
commenting on the demo versions of the songs and so on."
Of All the Wrong Things is a crushing release, heavy as a rhinoceros,
but at the same time it sounds digital, flat—very different
from To All I Hated.
"The sound difference is mainly due to a totally different
setup. The earlier stuff was done with a ProTools rig, a real guitar
combo and so on... Now the setup was a bit more compact, and, yeah,
it sounds more digital (which I bloody well hate about it). I just
hope that for the next one I can (again) renew some essential parts
of my studio, enabling me to get a more fat sound for the album.
Also, the next one is hopefully gonna be mastered at a real mastering
studio. I mean, yeah, it is all down to how you do it, but with
certain equipment it is damn hard to get certain sounds... On the
recording side of things, you can see a real curve going up from
the first demos to the new album, and the progress will never stop.
And the quest for perfect sounds goes on."
With the switch to Finland’s Firebox Records, not only has
My Shameful’s sound changed, but other aesthetics have changed
as well.
"I found the artwork on To All I Hated way too light and cheerful.
The MCD cover was done by some guy from Italy, and this time I wanted
to do it myself to really have the covers fit the music. This time
I wanted to have something totally opposite, to have a feel of desolateness
in the covers. I think the cover photo is actually an afternoon
sky in Fränkische Schweiz, in east Bavaria. And as you can
probably notice there aren’t so much man-made things in the
pics; only the angel statue, I think."
One of the most conspicuous and unique elements of this band is
the lyrics. The lyrics, the words, at least on Of All the Wrong
Things, are almost all consistently self-deprecating, humbling,
almost like affirmations of some sort of deadly accusation, petitions
from the person being addressed to "redeem" or accept
these errors, "wrongs," et cetera. Tell me, Sami...have
you killed or raped someone? Why all this shame?
He laughs, "Nope, I haven’t done anything that bad. The
lyrics just represent my general regrets in life. And also, the
name represents that the lyrics normally deal with stuff I am really
ashamed of. I mean, it’s not so easy to admit that, yeah, I
do have a big fucking problem with my life. And also, I wanted the
lyrics to be more on a personal level, no dragons or world domination
here. They are simply about the fears and regrets we all have to
face some day. But, at the end of the day, the lyrics, the music—it’s
a perfect kind of therapy for me. Without being able to express
all this shit through music, I guess I would have been six feet
under for a long time."
Like most doom bands, the tempo of My Shameful is generally slow,
careful and steady, with moments of passionate anger alternating
with a more sombre, introvert gloominess, like stepping out from
day, to night, and then to day again. Could it possibly be a reflection
of the tempo of your own existence?
"It just represents how a person in that state of mind is,"
he responds, "going from anger to sulkiness in matter of seconds.
On the other hand, accusing gods for one’s own failures; [the]
next moment accepting your destiny and falling into a deep mourning...
But, no, I can pour all that shit into my music so I’m not
one those never-smile guys in real life."
As to why doom metal and not something else, Sami says, "From
[a] creative point of view, doom metal is just something that flows
out of me, it represents me. Of course, I have played all kinds
of music in my time, from punk (a looong time ago), to death metal
and black metal."
Will there ever be a time, you think, when metal will no longer
have an effect on you?
"I don’t honestly see how I could stop listening to metal,
ever," he answers. "It’s in the blood."
|
