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Black metal ? No. Sado
metal ? Possibly. Nuclear metal? Yes!armed with a
new line-up, album and
moniker, Impaled Nazarene are back with a
(thermonuclear) bang with
"Latex Cult". Satpal Kalsi hears Mikka Luttinen
outline the band's plan of
campaign against goats and listens to the
finnish frontman salivate
over some juicy slabs of s&m.
Finland's gods of Nuclear
Matal lMPALED NAZARENE have got a lot of
lost ground to recover in
their continuing onslaught of barbarous violence
across Europe. Atter laying
down the law with their blazing 'Ugra Kanma'
CD, which their label
Osmose Productions refenred to as 'The Masterpiece of
Violence: lndustrial Cyber
Punk Sado Metal', the band were forced into a
hasty retreat with the
disastrous (by their own admission) 'Suomi Finland
Perkele' dodo.
Regrouped (including taking
on ex-BELIAL bassist Lehtosaari. who
replaced SENTENCED's Taneli
Jarva) and pumped up ready for the final push,
lead terrorist Mikka
Luttinen let me in on their plan of action, and why
the new CD 'Latex Cult' had
to be twice the force everyone was expecting.
Renaissance
The response to the
first CD, 'Tol Cormpt Norz Norz Norz' was good, but
what was to follow
was nothing less than a nightmare for the band.
"'Suomi
Finland Perkele': that LP I hate myself personally too," Mikka began
in a laid back,
deep tone. "Because it is shit. lt doesn't sound like what
lMPALED NAZARENE is
supposed to sound. After the 'Ugra Karma' CD, I moved
to Belgium and my
brother did all the sounds for 'Suomi..'. And since he
wasn't really into
Metal anymote, he was more interested in shit like BJORK
or something, he
started to write a completely different kind of style. lt
was kind of weird
for me. 1 didn't know what to think of the material,
especially after it
was recorded and we started to get the reviews. The
fans come to tell
us if**'this shit'. After my brother was kicked out, or
he left-whatever
way you want to see it-it was clear we had to go back to
our roots, to
continue where 'Urga Karma' left off."
The band were
firing on all cylinders, but they had to stoke the cooling
embers of the fans'
interest. That's where the label came up with the term
Nuclear Metal.
"We needed a
new moniker for it, and I was just thinking Nuclear Metal sums
up everything-it's
just explosive, f**ing hard, and extreme shit that we
do."
Sado Metal to
Nuclear Metal, the violence is still there. That's lMPALED
NAZARENE's raison
d'etre. Getting back into the studio was easy
enough. it's just
getting the right atmosphere, that something special with
an edge.
"We know what
the hell we want to do. We used Ahti Kortelainen who is the
owner of the Tico
Tico Studio, and who we have used since our demo days
here. lt's pretty
clear that Tico Tico is the only place where
IMPALED will record
because we know what we want and we know we'll get what
we want. lf we went
outside to a different producer, l'm sure we will be in
deep shit, because
we won't accept anyone who will start telling us 'no,
no, no, you have to
do it this way', or'let's have another take'. We don't
give a shit about
that. I like CDs that have the rough edge on it."
'Latex Cult' is
designer raw. The band always notice mistakes on their
recordings after
it's out, but that's okay. The CD's biggest plus point is
in its immediacy:
it grabs you, knocks you about, then discards you in a
heap. I like that
in any record. lt's all to do with pain, pain that is
administred for
pleasure.
Oh bondage! Up
yours!
"The first
song that we did for the new CD, 'Goat War', which is the
fastest song on the CD, was written just after a
mini-CD recording
session. We came
back from the studio and got a new drummer, and after that
it was iff** that,
let's show the people that we can still pull it off. We
were thinking our
days were over when people heard 'Suomi..'. I think'Latex
Cult' is absolutely
the most extreme IMPALED CD. When I started the Iyrics,
we needed to get
rid of the bullshit firom the past."
The title 'Latex
Cult' is clearly everything to do with bondage and sexual
violence. Just read
the song titles: 'Punishment is Absolute', '1 Eat Pussy
For Breakfast',
'66.6 S of Foreplay'. I guess it can be offensive on one
level, but it can
also be a harsh indictment of the latent nature in all
human society-the
side few will admit to. "Actually,
all the band are
pretty much into
it. Personally, I collect this underground video series
called 'Pain'. It's
a German extreme S&M series, not like sex S&M.
It's just pain for
pain's sake. It's the sickest shit I have ever seen in a
movie, they're
f***ing torturing and burning with candles and stuff like
this. It's real
violence. Here in Belgium, like two months ago, the police
raided some video
stores to see what kind of sex movies they are renting,
and after that,
certain video stores started to sell off the more extreme
stuff, so they
couldn't be prosecuted. So it was very lucky for me to go
out to certain
video stores just to see what the hell they're selling. The
idea for the song
'Punishment Is Absolute' came from just seeing the 'Pain'
videos, the sound
bite on it came from some stupid horror
movie and it
sounded brilliant.
Every man has inside this kind of perverse... you have
two sides of the
brain or whatever and everybody has this darker side-some
people become
serial killers, some become rapists, and then there's us who
can do it by our
own music."
It's no surprise to
learn such videos have also influenced the IMPALED
videos.
"In some ways,
yes. 'When All Golden Turned To Shit' basically has the band
playing, but
there's some extreme footage, and 'Kammageddon Waniors'is a
little story but I
don't know what the hell is going to be on it, because
there has been
filmed some extra footage without us on it. I don't know
what to expect. It
should be pretty extreme, but not that extreme so we
can't get airplay,
because that would be pretty stupid to do a video that
you cannot get into
any TV station which will be exactly the case with
DIABOLOS RlSING's
video. That's done by David Palser, who we now use. I
have full
confidence in him. Already we are going to have problems with the
English and the
German censorship."
As if penis bashing
and censorship weren't problems enough, commie-bashing
and censiorship was
the icing on the cake. Especially when they described
the Russian
invaders of Finland in 1940 as 'Red Scum' on 'Suomi..'
"That was
completely misunderstood bv some people. lt was just black tongue
in cheek humour,
and we put it in blah blah blah. Honestly,
I don't like
Communists because I'm from Finland and I have seen
it. There were certain
family members who were total Communists and were
hailig the Soviet Union
as some kind of f***king God nation or whatever. And
when it fell down,
they saw how wrong they were. Then of course our Cds
were taken out of
France's biggest record stores after the local Youth
Communist Party
complained that we are anti-communists. I had to send
a fax explaining
everything."
Not that that helped much. After confusion over the
catalogue numbers, it's
now 'Ugra Karma' that's missing from the shelves! If
there is a hint of
nationalism in there, Mikka reassured me that he has
never been a
nationalist.
"Finland is just like any other country, there's
always good point and
negative points in every country. I have been very
lucky in that I have
travelled quite a lot. I've seen a lot of
cultures"
Punked than thou
Finland does have some cool Punk bands, though - cool
enough for the band
to release a CD EP,"Motörpenis", featuring
covers of TERVEET KADET and FAFF
BEY songs among others.
"Everybody
seems to tell us we sound like a Punk band, so I guess we just
have to accept that
as a fact. It's our drummer and myself who love TERVEET
KADET very much. So
when we started to think about what the hell we are
going to do for
that EP, it was clear that we were going to do a cover of
them. FAFF BEY is
one of the older bands from our home town, and they call
their music
chainsaw Rock. And the FAFF BEY guitar player plays for TERVEET
KADET, so there is
a connection. 'S&M Party' is a great track, it's
absolutely
brilliant. On the last tour, we were playing it live, so we were
thinking why the
hell don't we put it on the CD as well?"
Though not one to
listen to Punk, and not rating GREEN DAY or OFFSPRING at
all, Mikka found
recently that there are still some great records to check
out.
"The CD from
DRILLER KILLER, the Swedish band, is absolutely f***king
brilliant. When I
was writing my song for the CD I took that as a reference
point. This is
extreme stuff and I wanted to do it in this style without
ripping it off, to
keep it in the impaled context. It turned out that way,
it's kinda Punkish,
but it's nothing to do with Punk ideology."
With possible gigs
in Mexico and Australia later in the year, following a
massive package
tour with a whole load of brutally evil bands, IMPALED
NAZARENE should be
well on their way to decimating most of Europe with what
can only be
described a scorched earth policy. With a little help from the
sinister 'Latec
Cult', of course.