Mörkö (9/2000)

Mörkö is the name of this new Finnish Black Metal band. Their demo "Mörön Maa" contained good nordic Black Metal and made me quite interested in the band... so here's an interview with them..

Greetings! How are things going with Mörkö?
Greetings! We are working already on the material for future releases. Things are going better than we imagined...

Mörkö is quite new and unknown for most of us, so could you tell us a bit about your band. Could you give a description of your music to those who haven't heard it.
-Mörkö performs traditional nordic black metal, with lots of influences from early Norwegian bm-albums. Lyrics are in Finnish and deal with misanthropy and Northern atmosphere.

Does the name of the band symbolize anything and what made you interested in this kind of music?
-TALVENMÄKI. The word Mörkö itself is a very powerful word and we wanted to have finnish band name,.. it describes our music very well, i must say,... the name and the filosofy behind it is very old, older than the band itself.
NURMINEN:I can't say any specific reason why we chose bm. It just comes naturally.

Have you received much feedback from people who have heard your demo already, and what has it been like?
-NURMINEN:yes...many have been complaining low sound quality, especially the drum sound (and playing)is very usually brought up. Many have liked our lyrics, which has been a positive surprise for us. The feedback has mostly been positive.

What do you think of your demo yourselves?
-TALVENMÄKI: Well, we know that there's a lot to do better next time. Sound, playing, songs themselves...We are still rather satisfied with it.
NURMINEN: It's our first demo but managed to capture the feeling we wanted to express on the first place. That's the thing we are very satisfied with.

"Mörön Maa" was released on CD. Why did you choose this format and not tape?
-NURMINEN: Cd has a lot better sound quality and it lasts longer. I think that this demo might sound pretty horrible on a tape which has been rolled over a few times...hmm, many have said it sounds horrible enough like this, though...

Have you done any gigs already, or if not, do you have plans for such?
-NURMINEN: Our line-up is quite limited. We would need about three sessionplayers...but we'll see that again in the future...
TALVENMÄKI: It's hard to find players who totally understand the idea behind Mörkö (and have a long hair :) )

Do you have any other bands you play in?
-Nyqvist plays keyboards in Jumalhämärä, Talvenmäki plays drums in a progressive metal band Strym(with guitarist and bassist of Jumalhämärä).

What bands could you say have inspired you or had infuence on your music? What kind of music do you normally listen to?
-Northern greats: Immortal, Darkthrone, old Mayhem, Satyricon, Emperor and Ancient's first ones... We listen to all kind of metal from Judas Priest via new Ulver to Darkthrone and Venom...

What does your music and your lyrics mean to you? Are there some specific feelings or thoughts you want to bring out or some ideology you represent?
-TALVENMÄKI: the lyrics are about our discontent with other human beings,...i think i mentioned the word "misanthopy" earlier,... i think bm is very good way to express negative feelings,..lots of hate and aggression,...the lyrics of "mörön maa" are quite old,so there are some things i would say differently nowadays,..new stuff will be less atmospheric,forest and winter will not be the main thing anymore,..they're going in more extreme direction.

Your opinions on Religion, Politics, the modern society...
-NURMINEN: We are not interested in religions. They often limit peoples way of thinking. Mörkö has no religious or political message. We just ignore them and make our own way.

You don't use pseudonymes and on the pictures on your demo you haven't got corpse paint or other fantasy stuff on, like most bands. Why?
-NURMINEN: I think the answer is already there: 'like most bands'.
TALVENMÄKI: Corpsepaints were cool when they had meaning and everybody wasn't (ab)using them...pseudonymes are also things which were fine back in '93...
NURMINEN: ...nowadays they are merely a joke.

Today you can often hear "Black" Metal bands demanding 'safe future fore white children' etc. and bands are changing from Satanic to National Socialistic. What are your opinions about this? Can bands who don't preach satanism or misanthrophy be called Black Metal anymore?
-TALVENMÄKI: I think it's not our business to say whether they are 'true bm' or not.
NURMINEN: they do what they like, i'm not very interested about it...

Some old black metal legends are saying that Black Metal should develope and you often hear weird mixes between Black Metal and techno, folk, industrial etc. Your music is not very experimantal at all. Is Black Metal a tradition to you or do you think you could one day develope your music?
-NURMINEN: I think it's a good thing that metal developes all the time. I don't think that Mayhem, for example, could have done another 'Mysteriis' so why to even try. It's still important that there are bands like Darkthrone who you can 'trust til the end'.
TALVENMÄKI: I think I dare to say that Mörkö doesn't exist on that purpose. Of course, our music has to develope in some way, but I don't think you'll never hear a tecno or industrial song from us. We will stay what we are.

What do you think of the Finnish Black Metal scene and what do you think about other countries?
-NURMINEN:Finnish bm scene has few great bands, but scene is better in, for example, in Norway. the best finnish bm band is Enochian Crescent because they really bring something new to bm.

Have you done your military service already or will you do it later or did you decide to do the civil service? What was the reason for your decision?
-NURMINEN: we'll all do military service during the next one to three years. We think it's our obligation as citizens of Finland, that we will be able to protect our Fatherland if it's necessary some day.

Any future plans? Have you started working on new material already?
-NURMINEN: yes, we are already working on new material like I already said in the beginning. It will be maybe a bit more diverse. We'll release a demo cassette this fall, and there will be a proper demo CD out early next year. The demo cassette comes to a rather small distribution. It will contain material which will be never heard elsewhere...

Anything else you want to add?
-not actually. We hope you enjoy our demo. Stay metal!!

For more info on Mörkö, check out their Homepage.

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