{"id":29226,"date":"2015-03-29T00:00:52","date_gmt":"2015-03-29T00:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=29226"},"modified":"2015-05-11T01:35:31","modified_gmt":"2015-05-11T01:35:31","slug":"feature-lordi-03-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/feature-lordi-03-15\/","title":{"rendered":"LORDI – The United Rocking Dead (March 2015) | Features \/ Interviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

LORDI – The United Rocking Dead<\/strong><\/span>
\nAnthony Morgan<\/span>
\nMarch 2015<\/span><\/p>\n

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Lordi (l-r): Mana, Amen, Mr. Lordi, Hella and Ox<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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\nFinnish hard rock outfit Lordi embarked upon a European trek from February 2015. Christened Tour Force One, the dates were plotted in support of October 2014 studio full-length Scare Force One<\/em> \u2013 the group\u2019s seventh, in all. Under that umbrella, a ten-date UK jaunt was scheduled to begin on March 24th, 2015 at the Lemon Grove in Exeter, England, and draw to a conclusion on April 6th at Brighton, England\u2019s Concorde 2. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe UK audiences are usually really great,\u201d observes Mr. Lordi, vocalist and co-founder of the assortment. \u201cThe problem of course here is usually all of the laws and restrictions and rules and regulations that none of the other countries have. That always brings us in all sorts of trouble, and problems, and dilemmas, and paradoxes. We aren\u2019t allowed to use this and that, and the schedules of the venues are really difficult for us in a way. Then there\u2019s putting on the make-up for three hours, and having to eat before that, and soundcheck, and all of that stuff. We\u2019re not a normal rock band in that sense, because we need way more time and space to prepare for the show. In many cases that doesn\u2019t really go well with all of the laws and regulations and curfews, but the crowds are usually really damn good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Should a given UK venue wish to stage a performance of live music between 11pm and 8am, a license is required. \u201cIn most places, you stop playing after 11pm, so it feels like a different world,\u201d the mainman laments. \u201cAfter being on tour for a few months, when your daily routine and your daily cycle is that you wake up at three or four in the afternoon but then you come to the UK and you have to wake up five hours earlier or something, it\u2019s kind of hard (laughs).\u201d<\/p>\n

Much graft is involved in the creation of Lordi\u2019s elaborate horror-themed costumes. \u201cIt starts with the idea, and then I do some sketches of that,\u201d Mr. Lordi divulges. \u201cThen I take a big clump of clay, and I sculpt whatever costume is about to be made. I take plastic moulds of that, and then I mould latex into that. I have some latex pieces and I paint them, and I patch them to the fabrics, or clothing, or whatever that is underneath. Then there\u2019s the paint job. For the whole band, to actually make the costumes it takes six to eight weeks, and I mean long days \u2013 like 12-18 hour days. That\u2019s what it takes, but on tour, it\u2019s around three hours. It takes two-and-a-half hours for me, for the face alone, before every show. The other guys are a little bit faster with getting ready for the show. They\u2019re a bit faster than that, but I think normal is about an hour and a half to get ready for a show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lordi sport the same attire during live commitments. \u201cThe characters and the way they look for every album, they look exactly the same in the photoshoots and the videos,\u201d the composer clarifies. \u201cThen onstage, it\u2019s exactly the same of course. That\u2019s the thing. That\u2019s Lordi. We don\u2019t have any toned down versions of the costumes. That is a lot of what it is; what you see in the pictures, that\u2019s what you\u2019re gonna see in live shows too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Devising a live setlist is \u201chard,\u201d Mr. Lordi chuckles. \u201cIt\u2019s certainly getting harder, but I guess that goes for any band that has more albums. It\u2019s getting more and more difficult. For example, on this tour, we had a setlist that we decided before the tour obviously. We rehearsed the songs, and then eventually when you actually play those songs live in front of an audience, you see that some of the songs just don\u2019t work live as well as they might work in the rehearsal space. You look at the reaction of the audience, and you look at the feel of the band while you\u2019re actually doing it live. For example, this time we have cut two or three songs from the setlist that we did at the beginning of February, at the beginning of the tour. Now we have cut those songs, because they just didn\u2019t work for one reason or another. <\/p>\n

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Mr. Lordi<\/em><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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Pic: Andrada Mihailescu<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s getting more and more difficult every time, because you have to play certain songs, and then you wanna play certain songs, and then there are fans who wanna hear certain songs. The thing is though, you really cannot play much longer than 90 minutes, but at the beginning of the tour we played for like two hours. Now it\u2019s closer to 90 minutes, but it\u2019s getting harder and harder. I don\u2019t envy bands like Kiss, or AC\/DC, or whoever, who have a gazillion albums in their catalogue and have to choose what they\u2019re gonna play plus the new songs from the new album \u2013 whatever is current at the time. It\u2019s difficult, it\u2019s hard. There\u2019s less and less room for new songs from the new album every time of course.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several of Scare Force One<\/em>\u2019s tracks feature among the setlist, although certain compositions have since been jettisoned. \u201cOriginally we started with five songs from the new album, but now we\u2019re down to four I think,\u201d the frontman informs. \u201cI could be wrong, but I think we have four songs from the new album in the setlist. \u2018Monster Is My Name\u2019 was dropped. We only played that twice \u2013 that didn\u2019t really work for some reason. We played \u2018Sir, Mr. Presideath, Sir\u2019 for quite a long time, and then we had to drop it. I don\u2019t even remember what was the actual reason for that, but we dropped it. Those were the two songs that we dropped from the set during the tour from the new album. We also dropped a song called \u2018Horrifiction\u2019 from the previous album (March 2013\u2019s To Beast Or Not To Beast<\/em>). We only played that a couple of times; although it\u2019s a great song and it works great on the album and it was okay even at rehearsals, live it doesn\u2019t really work. <\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, there is the question that they might be in the wrong place in the setlist. A song might work better at the beginning of the set and another song could work better at the end of the set, but once we\u2019ve got the setlist done at rehearsals, we have the show numbers and everything attached to all that, so we cannot really change the order of the songs any more while on tour. We either add them or we cut them out, but we cannot really change the order of the songs any more. Well, we could, but it would be a big hassle for the light guys and the sound guys. That would be a big, big hassle if we ever tried to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The aforementioned light technicians and sound technicians are arguably given more to sink their teeth into than when working on behalf of the average musical ensemble, a theatrical element existing within Lordi\u2019s live presentation. \u201cWe try to offer something for the eyes, too,\u201d Mr. Lordi acknowledges. \u201cIf you go to a concert of a band, I don\u2019t think that in any language you say \u2018I\u2019m going to listen to a band.\u2019 You say \u2018I\u2019m going to see a band. I\u2019m going to watch a show.\u2019 It means that there\u2019s something for the eyes too, and that\u2019s the reason that we\u2019re trying to create something that the other bands don\u2019t have. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to create something on the original side too, and that of course is a bit of a problem sometimes. Like I said, about how it really gets us scratching our heads, especially here in the UK with all of the regulations. It\u2019s sometimes like \u2018Aaargghh.\u2019 It really drives me mad, but yeah, there are quite a lot of show elements happening onstage, even though there are things that you cannot do in certain venues and certain cities and certain countries. Yeah though, we try to entertain. That\u2019s our job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lead Scare Force One<\/em> single \u2018Nailed By The Hammer Of Frankenstein\u2019 is among the compositions to remain a part of the live setlist from studio album seven. \u201c\u2018Nailed By The Hammer Of Frankenstein\u2019 is actually the opening song of the set,\u201d the singer discloses. \u201cThen we\u2019re playing \u2018Scare Force One\u2019, the title song of the album. We\u2019re playing \u2018Hell Sent In The Clowns\u2019, and \u2018How To Slice A Whore\u2019. Those are the songs that we\u2019re playing, and they\u2019re being received pretty good. Of course, it depends on the night. \u2018Nailed By The Hammer Of Frankenstein\u2019 is an opening song, so obviously, you can play whatever song as an opening song, and then the people like it (laughs). <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Hell Sent In The Clowns\u2019 is a bit of a show number \u2013 it wouldn\u2019t be that familiar to many of the people in the audience. We actually have clowns onstage who are squirting blood and confetti at the people in the audience, so that creates a little bit of a reaction from the audience (laughs). \u2018How To Slice A Whore\u2019 is probably one of the hardest songs we\u2019ve ever done, and \u2018Scare Force One\u2019 is the first song for the encore. So yeah, they are actually in really good places in the set right now, and all four seem to work really well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Lordi (l-r): Mana, Hella, Mr. Lordi, Amen and Ox<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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Where to place a given track among a live setlist order is an important decision. \u201cYou just have to gamble,\u201d Mr. Lordi reasons. \u201cThat\u2019s the shitty part of it, because you cannot really test. There are the tuning issues, and that\u2019s where you start because we use two different tunings. That means Amen has to change his guitar between the songs, so it means that we have to have a long intro tape for a song, or it needs to have a speech from me, or something else, or that it needs to have a drum solo or something, so we\u2019re able to change the guitar. That is where we actually start. We start from the artistic point of view obviously, so we try to put all of the songs that uses the B tuning in a row and play them in a row. Then the normal E tuned songs, we try to play in a row. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s where it starts, but other than that, it\u2019s just about thinking about trying to somehow place the songs you think that are more familiar to most of the people in the audience. That obviously means the single cuts, the video songs, you\u2019re spreading them around. You end with a song they know, and you don\u2019t wait too long at the beginning of the set to play the first song that most likely more people would know, and stuff like that. On this tour, we play \u2018Hard Rock Hallelujah\u2019 as the third song (from March 2010\u2019s The Arockalypse<\/em>, which won Lordi the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest), which is just a little bit of a statement there that that song isn\u2019t that important to the band than it might be for many people (laughs).\u201d<\/p>\n

Lordi have no immediate plans, although further touring and recording is on the longterm horizon. \u201cThere\u2019s hopefully nothing coming for a month after the tour, so we can have a little bit of a vacation here,\u201d the lyricist laughs. \u201cThere\u2019s summer festivals, and then there are plans for the fall. There are talks about a Russian tour, a South American tour, and a Japan tour at some point. I have lots of plans and ideas for the next album. This train is not gonna stop any time soon (laughs).\u201d<\/p>\n

Scare Force One<\/em> was released in Finland on October 31st, 2014 via Sony Music. The album underwent issue on the same date in the rest of Europe and subsequently on November 3rd in North America, all through AFM Records. Scare Force One<\/em>\u2019s Japanese issue occurred on November 26th via Metal Frontier.<\/p>\n

Interview published in March 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LORDI – The United Rocking Dead Anthony Morgan March 2015 Lordi (l-r): Mana, Amen, Mr. Lordi, Hella and Ox Finnish hard rock outfit Lordi embarked upon a European trek from February 2015. Christened Tour Force One, the dates were plotted in support of October 2014 studio full-length Scare Force One \u2013 the group\u2019s seventh, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,558],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-lordi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29226"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31753,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29226\/revisions\/31753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}