Evilsons

So how did the Evilsons get started and who does what?
Tom: Well we have known each other for a long, long time and we actually started jamming together quite a few years ago. Then we took a brake and started playing as Evilsons in the year 2001. We never in advance thought out what kind of music we wanted to play.we listened to a lot of punk, ska and reggae and I guess our music is just a mixture of the styles of music we like. Patu plays the bas, Mikke the guitar, I (Tom) beats the drums and Fredi sings. The songs are composed mostly by Mikke, and the lyrics written by Fredi.
Your first EP was on a Canadian label – AMP Records, how did you hook up with them and how did that EP do for you. You’re now on Full House – how did you hook up with them and whats it like being on a predominantly hardcore label?!
Fredi: It was a pure coincidence that we hooked up with AMP. The labels was looking for bands to put on a compilation and we sent them a couple of demo songs. They contacted us after listening to the songs and told us that they wanted to put out our record. I think they just skipped the compilation and put out our EP instead.so there are probably a lot of pissed off bands who hate us because the comp never saw daylight. But hey.BLAME CANADA!
The decision to do an EP was quite easy to make as we at the time only had a hand full of ok-sounding songs..and I don’t knowI guess that is still the situation (laughs).
However the EP did a lot of good for us. Two printings were sold out here in Finland and we got to play a hell of a lot of shows. We got a nice active fan-base and a deal with a great booking agency. Also one of the songs totally surprisingly became a small hit here in Finland. The guys from Full House were very supportive from the very start and helped us out a lot so it was quite easy to make the decision when they asked us if we were interested in making a full length album for them. We have been playing at a lot of hardcore gigs and the hardcore scene here in Finland has taken well care of us and the deal with Full House was just another indication of that so we felt honored and happily accepted their offer. We got offers from other labels too, but today we are very satisfied with the choice we made.

Where was your first show and how did it go…what’s been your best show…and your worst? Any funny/scary/weird tour stories?!
Tom: I can’t really remember the FIRST show we ever did together cause that is a LONG time ago. But I guess it was shitty as hell and in font of 10 friends or so
Also it is very hard to pick out one show in particular that has been the best show. The crowds have been amazing at so many shows and that crowd is in the end what makes the show a GREAT show. So we have all the great people, who have been dancing and partying at our shows, to thank for the amazing shows we have played. There is nothing like playing in front of a crowd that is enjoying what you do. Of course when you play shows every week there will be some shows that are not that good, but today I have to say that is has been a long time since I last had bad feelings after a gig.

Fredi: I guess our first show with Evilsons was at a big Hardcore happening in Helsinki at a place called VR-Makasiinit. Other bands playing that night were Down My Throat, Endstand and a lot of other great bands. We were opening the show and at least I was very nervous. The show went ok though. There was actually nothing special with it.
One of the weirder stories is when we were playing in Prague (the Czech Republic). After the show we drove to our hotel where also a Danish band, who was playing at the same show with us, slept. The singer of this band had a funny habit of taking his dick out of his pants and slapping it against the tour-vans. It made a fanny noise and we all had some good laughs. That night in Prague someone broke in to the Danes’ van and stole some of their equipment. The next morning the police were called to the scene and they started dusting the van for fingerprints. They also dusted the van on the outside and found some funny looking prints that clearly were not fingerprints..

When we played in Belgium Patu (our bas player) had just gotten salmonella in Amsterdam. Patu played the show in Belgium with great honor but was very ill when we started to drive to the place where we would sleep. Ironically this place was local chicken farm with thousands of small chickens. The smell of chicken shit was just unbelievable. So at this farm Patu with his salmonella and the rest of us had to stay it was quite intense!

I guess there is a lot happening when you play a lot of shows and as our band is a group of heavy drinkers it tends to happen the weirdest things wherever we go. But it is a lot of fun and that is why we enjoy doing this so much. Then when the stories turn scary it’s not that fun any more..we plaid in Denmark once and while driving in Copenhagen we drove into a dead end street. We had to stop and wanted to back up, but the car behind us wouldn’t let us. Instead a HUGE guy stepped out of the car and started to hit our car with his fists while screaming and spitting. He was going completely mad. At the end of the road all his huge body-builder buddies were just waiting for us to step out of the carI guess the just wanted to kick some Finnish ass. Well, we locked the car and waited for the guy to stop, just smiling at him trough the window. I can tell you that we looked like toothpicks compared to these guys.

What’s it like being a ska punk band in Finland? Is there a punk/hardcore/ska scene there or is it more metal….
Fredi: There are a lot of bands here that play metal in Finland and these bands are the ones that record labels try to sell abroad as well so that is why foreigners usually think of Finland as a metal country. However there is a hardcore and punk scene here that is doing very well at the time. It is also nice to notice that the promoters that organize gigs are more and more starting to mix the lineup. There can be ska bands, punk bands and hardcore bands playing the same night and that is really cool. I guess that is what unity is all about. Supporting instead of judging each other. In the end punk, ska and hardcore is, at least here in Finland, marginal music and to keep the scene alive and growing you have to pull the rope in the same direction.
I feel that coming from somewhere like Finland – which isn’t exactly a recognized hot spot of punk rock as far as most eyes go – allows the band to grow at its own pace and not bow to any form of trend or market. The thing is, if you are from a place like Finland and you want your stuff to be heard, you’d better be good, try to come up with something original and most importantly work really hard! I think this is the reason why there is A LOT of good bands right now in Finland. Flippin’ Beans, Wasted, Down My Throat, Anal Thunder, The Heartburns just to mention a few. So I am sure you will hear a lot more from the Finnish scene!

Tom: Ska music is still quite unknown here in Finland, but also the ska-scene is growing all the time. It has been nice to notice that the shows we play always fill up with partly new faces every time. It is just great if we can make ska-music a little more known here in Finland. I think you don’t have to be a rudeboy, a rasta or a punk to enjoy ska music and that is a positive thing. At our shows you can find everything from punks with mow haws to regular collage students and it is nice that our music hasn’t been strictly categorized.

What do you do away from the band – college, work, etc.?
Fredi&Tom: Well Patu is a police officer in a small town called Petas. It is a nice, quiet town not far from Helsinki. It kind of reminds you of this town in the TV-series ‘Northern Exposure’. It is a quiet town and there is not much for him to do so that is why he has a lot of time of for the band. He has so far never made an arrest and he actually told us that the day he has to do an arrest he would retire. So what he does is manly normal things like escorting polar bears out of town if they accidentally have tumbled in, or helping a penguin family cross the street so it won’t get run over by the huge timber-trucks that drive trough Finland.
Tom is a gardener taking care of all kinds of plants, everything from roses to..Tom’s nickname is actually ‘The Professor’ cause he has a huge knowledge in the weirdest things. You might think of him as a scary, cartoon like professor who will snap at any time and go wildly berserk. That is our gardener Tom in a nutshell for you.
Mikke is a painter. He is working like hell painting everything that comes in his way. He also has this strange hobby that is never talked about within the band because the rest of us just don’t know what to say about it. Mikke is really into ski-jumping.you know.super long skis, a huge jump and stuff..The rest of us in the band just found out about this hobby of Mikke’s last winter. It truly is weird. He gets into this super-tight blue ski-jumper’s suite, puts on a helmet that is way to small especially cause Mikke has rastas and as the icing on the cake he pulls down a pair of goggles with a strap that is so tight that it looks like the goggles actually will sinking into Mikkes’ face. While standing with his skis on his shoulders and proudly waiting for his turn to jump he just looks like something that has been put into a way too small package and will explode if you touch it. However we hope that he one day will come to his sensesand perform a show in this outfit.
Fredi is a teacher. that is enough said. I mean you are a grown up and you still want to hang out at a junior-level school!?! It is cool however cause all he does is teaches about ska/reggaea/punk music so the kids will probably grow up with important wisdom in their pocket. So Evilsons is doing a big thing here for the scene which is bringing up kids with the right rebellious attitude. School of rockhave you seen that movie? Well if you want to know what Fredi does for a living you should see it.
Then the strangest thing is that there has been a guy called Veikko turning up at practice and at our shows. No one knows anything about him, we don’t talk to him and hi does not talk to us, but the first time he turned up he had a nice organ under his arm and it has to be said that he can play that instrument like a good so maybe one day we will talk to him and ask him to join the band.


Name 3 things you can’t live without?!
Tom: Good food, music and sun
Fredi: My Family, music and chips

Name 3 things the world would be better without?
Tom: selfishness and guns
Fredi: narrow-mindedness, wars and hunger

What’s your 3 favorite albums?
Tom: My favorite band is The Slackers and the best albums would have to be the three newest Slackers-albums.
Fredi: In random orderThe Slackers – The Question, Bob Marley – Natural Mystic, The Suicide Machines РDestruction by Definition

What are some of the best things (and the worst if you wish to share that information with the readers!!) about the band mates?
Fredi: The best thing is that we are all really good friends. We get along well when we are on the road and that is important when you spend so much time close together. I guess all of us have bad sides too, but another good side of the bands mates is that everyone can put up with the bad sides of the other.
We don’t get into big fights or anything. Of course we are pissed of at each other at times but we usually talk things trough and move on. Being in a band is kind of like being in a relationship.

Are any of you in other bands, do zines, distros, labels?
Tom: Not that I know of ;).some of us organizes gigs here in Finland, but otherwise we manly just focus on the band. It would be nice to do more, but as sad as it is, time is limited and when you play a lot, practice, work, and take care of your relationship with the lady of the house there is not much time left overand you have to sleep also. I guess in Finland there’s a lot of people who are interested in the music scene, records sell pretty well but the core of active people who actually make most of the things happen is pretty small. There are however at the time a lot of new people who are getting into all of thiskind of a new generation.and that is a good sign and it tells you that Punk/HC/Ska music is growing and getting more popular also up here in the north.

If you could collaborate with any artist, living or dead, who would it be with and why?
Fredi: This is a hard question. There are a lot of people and bands that we admire, respect and look up to. We have already gotten to work with a lot of great guys from great bands and it feels special every time you play a gig together with other bands, get to know them and their work and change thoughts and ideas. That is the kind of collaboration that is honest and real and we feel that we are in a lucky situation cause we get to play a lot of shows and trough that meet loads of talented groups and individuals that are devoted to this thing.
Anyways, if I would get to pick one single artist who our band would get to collaborate with it would be Bob Marley. Just by looking at how well know he and his work is you can tell that he has done something very special. In a unique way he could combine a lot of things in his music. He wanted to make a statement, he wanted to make a living out of his music and he wanted to help people, and in all of this he succeeded. They way he makes music is just so unbelievable. The melodies that he wrote are just mind-blowing. You cold pick out any melody out of any song, verse or chorus, and make that one melody into an own hit-song. Also the way he performs live. he is completely inside his music and still he sings and plays without missing one note. Reggae music has naturally had a big impact on our ska music and Bob Marley has been on our car-speakers thousands of times while driving to a show or to practice.
If I could pick out a BAND that we could collaborate with it would be Operation Ivy. Operation Ivy is one of the first ska-punk bands that I really got into and all of us in Evilsons has listened to them a lot and they have had a big influence on our music. Great songs, great energy, great attitude..just simply a fantastic band and if they were ever to make a comeback I would definitely go out of my way to see them live.

What music did you grow up on? Most embarrassing record you own?!
Tom: In the beginning I grew up listening to the radio and everything that was aired, but pretty fast I started concentrating on different musical genres and I learned how to find interesting artists. I guess I have a whole pile of embarrassing records but I try to convince my self of the fact that those records are painting a good picture of their own time.
Fredi: I must say that the most embarrassing record I own is from a band called Modern Talking, and this is a Modern Talking record from the early 90’s, not the new dance-mix-Modern-Talking. I don’t know how the hell it has ended up in my record collection. At times I wake up with this terrible nightmare that I actually have bought it, but keep my sanity I tell my self that it is I gift from someone who wanted to pull a joke o meor then someone has slipped it into my record collection just to get me wondering. It is funny cause I have been trying to sell that record at flea-markets and stuff, but no one ever even touches the recordit just lies there on the table like if there was a spell over itall the other stuff gets sold and then I walk home with a bit of money and that damned Modern Talking CD in my pocket.

What are your views on the whole Iraq situation?
Tom: I will have to go with a short and right to the point answer on this one. The whole thing went straight in the wrong direction and the preliminary reasons for going into Iraq were not that convincing.

Fredi: When I think of all this the first thing that comes to mind and what makes me mad is the way America brainwashes, and manipulates others and how they function as the worlds police. The reasons for going into Iraq can also in my opinion be highly questioned. You can be nothing but sad for everything that has been lost because of the militant minds that seem to have control over everything and everyone.
Actually I’ve been thinking that is America a country governed by the will of the military now? The military has always supported aggressive foreign policy out of its nature, respected the leadership structure and has been insulated from economic issues. So what if the military is “More Republican, Conservative than Public”? It is in the end meant to be an instrument in the hands of the civil society, not a tool for political support. People in the military are bound by law not to criticize or question the country’s leadership. So they will do what everno questions asked. Now that is a scary thing.
I think if the reason for going into Iraq would have been only to stop the treat of terror and mass destruction it would have been something that could have been accepted, but I think it was pretty obvious at an early stage that this was not the case.

Whats coming up for Evilsons?
Fredi: Right now we are working with a lot of great people and we will start negotiating license-deals abroad for our album ‘Petas City Rockers’. We are glad that people has been into the record! Also we hope that we can continue playing shows in front of crowds as great as the once we have been playing in font lately. I guess that is what is up for us.

Tom: At the time it is impossible to predict. I hope the future of Evilsons will be filled with a lot of great shows and people.

The last words are yours…
Well this must be one of the longest interviews we have written in a long time, so this will have to do. We would like to thank the people at hardcore-times.com for the interview and thank everyone who managed to read this one trough. Rock on!

www.evilsons.cjb.net
www.fullhouserecords.com

Thanks to Fredi, Tom , Evilsons for the interview and Fullhouse for setting it up.