originally written by Juho Mikkonen
As we all know, the line between gimmickry and unorthodox novelty is one of the finest there is within the domain of underground metal. Moreover, there are no set parameters to separate the attention whoring harlequins from those that sport their robes and wear cuckoo clocks as headpieces with serious intentions. The only way to find out whether a band has ventured off the beaten path out of sincerity to their art or to help to create a fad is to experience their music and, then, know more or less intuitively (or, if you’re feeling lazy, you can just refer to the post-modern Pravda that is Internet forums).
In case of Finland’s Horse Latitudes it would be easy, almost tempting, to judge the book by its cover. From the available background information you can gather that the group plays slow-ass doom metal by way of long-ass songs that are supported by two bass guitars, no actual guitars and a drummer who sings and sometimes doesn’t wear any kind of upper body garment in the gigs. Also, the band’s name can be traced back to a song from Strange Days which should give the imaginary devil’s advocates material for reductio ad retro.
However, upon further inspection, it should become obvious to anyone that Horse Latitudes are as far from any gimmick one can assemble from the aforementioned building blocks as they can get. Their sound has no trace of any lame anachronistic frivolities. Their music is occasionally heavy as balls (are ugly), yet they don’t strive for colossal weight through an uninteresting wall of low-register fuzz. Instead, they deliver riffs, beats and moods that are interwoven into focused compositions. And, once you get to talk to the members of band, you’ll notice that they seem to be fairly reluctant to make a fuss about their peculiar lineup.
On the other hand, the outfit doesn’t try to pretend that their chosen style and instrumental foundation would be the end result of some haphazard eventualities of historical circumstance. Actually, Heidi (bass) reveals that she and Vellu (the other bass) had the idea of forming a band that would play droney, Hellhammer influenced primitive metal with two bass guitars. Later, they found Harri to beat the crap out of the skins and wail in lament (“We were joking that the drummer shouldn’t be too good,” Vellu laughs), and the cast has been steady ever since. Still – even though the members of the band have been on the proverbial driver’s seat for the whole time – the drummer / vocalist hints that the combination of playing music where you can’t hide behind the curtain of jaw-dropping riffage and the absence of the usual suspect of composing the music for has its uncontrollable implications as far as songwriting is concerned.
Harri: “For me, they (the songs) always come from somewhere and many times it’s a moment where you don’t have an instrument available. It can start with a rhythm, usually when I’m walking, or it can be a small piece of melody that just pops out of somewhere. Then I desperately try to just get that idea into some kind of shape in my mind, so that it’s possible to start further developing it at a later stage. If the situation is that you don’t have enough time to complete the thought process…you know, when you’re for example walking to the grocery store, then you have to find a way to record it on whatever device you have available. But, eventually, everybody almost always comes to the rehearsal space with fairly complete songs.”
Heidi: “Then we just think as a group how we can work on these songs to make them even more complete.”
Harri: “Yeah, and often this work, especially with the latest album, is about trimming, removing the inessential parts and force out the variations and all the other things that are inherent in the compositions.”
Heidi: “Our approach is to first include pretty much everything that comes into mind, bring everything together and then think what is essential to reach what we want from the song.”
Harri: “And we’re a pretty critical bunch. We all have our own tastes, and sometimes for me at least the experience is that maybe this and this idea should be rather used for a solo project or no project. So, our own sound stems from channeling everything through each of the three filters.“
Vellu: “Always when we work on these songs, we need to think if it fits to this context. We have other bands, as well, so if an idea doesn’t feel right for this band we can always maybe try it in another setting.”
Naturally, the trio collectively opposes the idea that their chosen path would somehow limit their song writing – even when taking into consideration that the drummer should be able to pull off the vocals live.
Heidi: “I’ve never felt like that. Because we have two bass guitars, people many times ask if this is horribly restricting. Then I’m left wondering why it should be like that, because Vellu, for example, plays a five string bass. In practice, we can do pretty much the same things as we could do with guitar. When I play bass and think about stuff that would be cool for our songs, my starting point is the idea that I have in my head and then I try to figure out the way it should be played. I never think that now that I have only the bass I can’t play certain things. I try to play what I want to play. I started by playing guitar, but it doesn’t feel like I lost something when I switched to bass. It’s different yet not restricting in any way.”
Harri: “We also make relatively riff-centered music, and I’ve experienced this alleged restriction as more of something that gives us freedom…a sort of refining element. We compose with bass guitars, so it means that you can’t bury anything under pointless shredding unless you’re Jaco Pastorious. We need to focus on the primary elements which spark all the other things off. In this regard, the bass stands apart from the guitar only in a positive sense, because it doesn’t offer the possibility to take the easy road. It’s also pretty unforgiving, because we don’t employ any foggy delay-fuzz-flanger murmur. Instead, it’s just distorted bass guitars, the harmonies of which are the foundation of the whole thing. I try to keep the drumming so that it wouldn’t steal the attention but rather supports the two basses.”
No doubt, Horse Latitudes have been able to establish a very distinguished musical identity for themselves. They don’t really bear a resemblance to any other extreme doom band, nor do they spark familiar associations of the few other underground metal bands that operate with roaring low end as the chief ingredient. The outfit seems to find it amusing that, irrespective of this fact, they’ve been compared to pretty much everything under the bright morning star, from Ride for Revenge to Amebix and Aluk Todolo to Winter, and they confess that reading and hearing about bands that people have stacked them up against has steered them towards some good music they probably would’ve missed otherwise. When it comes to the question of influences, though, the three songsmiths give us the usual “everything” as an answer, although Heidi is quick to inform that their songs are not conceived through excessive shroom intake as some people have theorized.
Harri: “I’ve always thought, and perhaps increasingly so, of music as a whole. So, in a way, all the influences form this comprehensive entirety. Everything has its impact, but it’s hard for me to pinpoint individual influences. All the music that I like contributes to what I do in one way or another. I look at them (influences) as doors that I can open, and it’s like that every time when I find a new band or style of music. When you hear a new way of doing things, a new door opens for you to a new world of which you weren’t able to even dream of before. All these doors and worlds that open in front of you influence so that your repertoire widens. This two-bass-and-drums minimalism, on the other hand, is indeed the only restricting thing that we have. In the vocals department, we’ve never agreed that it should be only either clean singing or growling. We never stop to question if this is doom or if this is death metal or something like that. If everything is coherent and the music sounds natural, then that’s enough. And hopefully all of this is where our uniqueness comes from. The only limits that we have are the range of instruments that we use and our skills to use them.”
It would be convenient to draw connections between the concept behind the band’s moniker and the sounds they set in motion with thunderous force and sluggish tempos. For the songsmiths themselves, however, “horse latitudes” signifies more than just a musical pastiche celebrating phlegmatic winds (or a mere Jim Morrison reference).
Harri: “Even though I’ve learned the term from being a fan of The Doors, we use it as a metaphor that we’ve kind further developed starting from the song “Horse Latitudes” on our first demo. It also implicitly contains the other extreme, meaning that when the storm finally arrives people will become those horses that get thrown into the water. So, it’s an apocalyptic metaphor for us, the disappearing hubris of humanity when times become tough enough. Some people have, indeed, found these mental images of barrenness and slowness that they associate with the style of music, but personally I see the name referring to the end of times somehow.”
Vellu: “Let’s also make it clear that if it had been only about paying homage to The Doors, it wouldn’t have made the cut.”
Considering the subject matter, it’s understandable that the band’s lyrics are pretty much the polar opposite of descriptive and rather wallow in the deep pool of esotericism and mysticism, leaving the listener with the nagging irritation of almost understanding what they might or might not be about. While the lyricists deny that they would be intentionally aiming for cryptic beyond comprehension, they also appear to believe that it’s good to leave enough room for imagination.
Harri: “Symbolism is essential (in the lyrics) as it is in our album art. The worth of symbols is that they open passages to such things that are hard to express verbally, materialize or point out. Maybe they are there on some kind of sub-conscious level or some primitive layer, and that’s the dimension where they unveil themselves. They evoke images that you can’t be sure of if they’re exact, and many times they have this sort of conceptual or emotional thing that even yourself (as a lyricist) can’t reach without these symbolical means, whether it was about an image, text or, at its most abstract, music. So, our texts sort of paint the same landscape with the other elements. They are part of the same stream of mental images. The cryptic component is part of it because it’s characteristic for symbolism…as is ambiguousness. That’s the way I see it.”
With that statement in mind, it’s no wonder that all the Horse Latitudes releases come off almost like theme albums with seamless interplay of notes, words and images but also the peaks and valleys that are constitutional for a good story, no matter how unfathomable it would be for the receiver. Surprisingly even this is somewhat unpremeditated.
Harri: “They just turn out to be like that. They are all sort pictures of their own periods. All the music is created in certain time and space and in certain physical and psychological conditions, so they all sort of reflect that. With this last one (Black Soil), we started producing it as an EP. “Black Soil” was originally a name for one instrumental song which was supposed to end up on the previous album (Awakening), but none of those riffs have survived until this day. But a certain vision survived, and from that vision evolved a big part of the music for the new record. It was a kind of a fountainhead. In that sense, this latest piece is very clearly a thematic whole in a way that we approach the motif from three different angles.”
Vellu: “Yeah, in the beginning we only had the name, even before we had anything decided in terms of the music.”
Harri: “But still we had a view of where it should go, because that strong vision was there. It’s a theme that could’ve been a good fit even for the previous album as an interlude, but also one that, at the end of day, required a more comprehensive treatment.”
What, then, did this treatment involve with regards to fleshing out the material and then recording it?
Heidi: “Well, this time around we spent much more time for the whole studio thing. The recordings were done in two separate parts plus the mastering.”
Harri: “And when earlier it was so that we stormed into the studio once the songs were in some kind of shape and pretty much because the studio was booked, which of course doesn’t mean that we went there wtih unfinished songs. But the songs were, like I said, pictures of their own times. Whereas with Black Soil, we knew beforehand where we were going and took our time. We had had three releases in 2012, so we decided that we’re in no hurry. Basically, we could’ve worked on this for four years if we had felt like it. So, this was the most relaxed process we’ve had, although eventually everything was materialized pretty quickly. Many of the musical elements have been around for quite some time and we’ve worked on them in the band rehearsals or in our heads. Black Soil contains riffs that were, for example, written for acoustic guitar in 2010. So, there are elements that have kind of lived a life of their own and found their proper context on Black Soil. But that applies to all our releases to some extent. They all contain both fresh material and stuff that originates from the initial stages of the band. That mirrors the continuity we have. We never have to start with a clean slate, so everything adds up to a larger body of work. But yeah, personally Black Soil was a fruitful and painless process. Technical glitches are always there and it’s pretty useless to begin to single them out, because I don’t know how many people would care to read about them.”
An interesting anecdote regarding the recording of Black Soil is that the band recorded the church organs in a real church in Joutseno, Harri’s old hometown. An unusual move from both sides, yet surprisingly the band didn’t have to gain the admission through perjury.
Harri: “We needed the church organ sound, and even though we have a synthesizer, we couldn’t really get a proper church organ sound with that, so we just decided to ask. They were keen to know if it’s about Satan worshipping. On the other hand, we could tell them uprightly that this is not music for worshipping Satan, so there was no problem. It was a form of art, of course, to express that so that the people wouldn’t understand it wrongly…or too correctly.”
Heidi: “They just let us in, told us to play and then leave.”
Vellu: “We were in a bit of hurry. We had an hour to set up our equipment, try to learn how the hell you’re actually supposed the play the organ and then record.”
Harri: “Also, of the two microphones we had, the other one was completely useless. So, stereo miking turned into mono miking.”
While Horse Latitudes have been loyal to their core sound for the whole of their short-yet-productive career, they’ve also found enough elbow room within that framework to not produce the same piece of work all over again with subsequent releases. For the listener this leeway manifests itself at least in the way that their albums seem to be the surrounded by different auras. Whilst Awakening was intently oppressive and ominous, Black Soil paints with broader strokes, making the record almost soothing and relaxing when compared to its predecessor. According to the band members themselves, even these departures from previous works are not planned, and Heidi insists that they rather come as part of the constant development of the band which is one of the few things they admit consciously aiming for. How, then, have Horse Latitudes evolved from the first demo recording until Black Soil?
Heidi: “At least we know how to play (laughs).”
Vellu: “Because we have such an unconventional line-up, it’s a bit hard to point out certain things. Because we don’t have any points of reference, we can’t say that we’re looking for this and this, and so we’ve been rather searching for our own sound. At least the dynamics of the trio has developed considerably.”
Heidi: “That’s the most obvious thing. We are beginning to sound like us. We’ve managed to develop something that is ours, a way to do things that fits for us.”
Harri: “Yeah, it’s been natural selection at work. Elements that feel like missteps or wrong ways to do this have been eliminated. On the other hand there are new mutations, and it’s left to be seen which of these mutations will survive. For example, upon the completion of an album, we’ve never been able to predict what it will be like the next time and we’ve always felt a bit empty once everything has been completed and released. So, when the new music starts again coming from somewhere from the bottom layer of your mind or wherever it comes from, it’s always surprising.”
The band, however, specifies that they never think they could be so empty with ideas that their course would alter drastically.
Heidi: “I’m so attached to these certain musical preferences that I don’t believe that I would, at least with this project, venture into some extremely progressive style of music.”
Harri: “And like I just said, after every recording I’ve had that empty feeling. The bucket is empty, but the sound of water drops starting to fill it up again begins to echo almost instantly after that very moment. Let’s see how long this roof will keep leaking, so to speak.”
In fact, Horse Latitudes already have a bunch of unreleased songs from the Black Soil sessions in their pockets and a few new split releases on the horizon, yet they refuse to bring their to-be partners of crime out into open at this point. A more immediate future plans include the band’s first proper stint abroad, when they land their squadron to the misty islands of UK and Ireland for a handful of gigs. Obviously, the band is very excited to get to shake off the Finnish dust from their feet, and not least because they simply enjoy a good live gig.
Harri: “At best, live performance is a culmination of certain aspects of the music. The volume offers dimensions that you can’t reach through home listening without bothering your neighbors too much or without proper equipment. Sound wise, it can be the best presentation of the music and also in terms of the vibe. After all, we are a band that rehearses together constantly, so the joy…well, if you can talk about joy in this kind of music…and energy of playing as a group, the music and the people in the same space…at best, it’s the highest level which you can reach in any music. You don’t create new compositions in that situation, but you can open new sides of the old songs both to yourself and to other people. Recorded output always mirrors the time when it was recorded, so the organic nature of music reveals itself in the live setting.”
Heidi: “It’s extremely exciting to do the tour now. We have a few contacts there, people and bands that we know and will play with. So, I’m anticipating it with positive excitement. It’s our first longer tour abroad.”
Harri: “There are all kinds of stories that can happen on these runs, but now we have one local band who will tour with us for the whole time, so it has already made the organizing easier so that we’ve been able to plan for the trip carefully. We can expect it not to be like some punk tour where there will be questions like ‘oh, so you didn’t bring your drum set with you’. Anyway, we’d be glad to play more abroad if and when the opportunity arises.”
When we’re about to close our hour-long discussion I can’t help but think that − with all the quality output, focused approach to song writing and the upcoming, meticulously organized tour − it would be almost too easy to challenge the band’s assertion of spontaneity functioning as their modus operandi. However, without even me bringing it up, Harri disproves the allegation when I probe the band for any final words, questions or comments:
“Yeah, one thing: which ‘zine is this interview for?”
Photos by Marco Manzi (http://marcomanzi.fi/) and Jouni Parkku
