We had the pleasure of chatting to the amazing Finnish metal band Barrel about their recent debut album, the general scene and live plans. Check it all out below!

How would you describe the bands sound?

I rather wouldn’t but would let everyone decide for themselves. I find it increasingly difficult to describe our sound – where to begin, when no genre feels like home. There’s thrash, there’s heavy metal, there’s even a dash of black metal and some cello solos thrown in, so you tell me. Music is an artform and unless you as a musician set out to replicate a certain sound, it escapes verbal definitions. The more it does so, the better, as music speaks its own language.

Let’s put it this way: Barrel is the amalgamation of five sometimes very different musical tastes and interests. Some of us can’t agree on bands, but can work together seamlessly. Some of us love slow proggy buildups, while some of us want to blast out thrashy riffs. We arrange the songs together and our individual areas of interest seem to fit together, mostly without conflict.

Very often listeners seem to find elements of Judas Priest in there, but at least one of us strongly denies the allegation. Some evoke hallowed names such as King Diamond, while others speak of Black Sabbath in whispered tones. None of the aforementioned have had cello solos on their albums though, nor too many sections where the listener is picked up by desert winds or cast into the vastness of space.

What prompted the release of an album now, after a couple of EPs and singles?

The original idea was to release EP’s, since audiences seem to move away from the longer format and towards ever-shortening attention spans. Why concentrate on ten songs for two years, when you can release four on a tighter schedule and people will only listen to two?

Some of us also questioned the whole concept of an “LP”. The format was born out of the limitations of a vinyl disk, but that limitation does not exist anymore. So why do we stick to it? Think what you will of the digital world, but at least it has liberated art from such physical constraints.

Then again, art shouldn’t follow the whims of market forces, and what consumers want should be anathema to an artist. I guess an album was just a natural progression – a move forward – and since the material was there and a concept formed out of the creative maelstrom, why not?

You touched on the story/theme to the album in the presser, what inspired the idea?

Good question, which I had to actually stop and think about.

Ultimately, I can’t really say. When we wrote the songs, there was no concept, so they weren’t composed to fit a narrative or a given mold. The narrative came later and the preludes were composed to move the narrative forward. The theme – the metaphysics of Satan – probably arose from an interest in the dark side of humanity, the left-hand path, or the myriad of other names humanity has given to certain phenomena in ourselves over millennia. In a way, the theme was given to us by those forces and materialized by cryptomnesia, as the opening track suggests.
Talking about the concept almost feels to me as a post hoc explanation or rationalisation, where the concept only announced itself after it was completed and I find myself describing what became of it instead of the intention behind it. Perhaps one of those forces worked in the universe and manifested itself as an album for whatever purpose it has. Then again, perhaps it was just a product of electro-chemical processes in almost entirely mechanical meat puppets.

You also mentioned the Comic-books for the release, how did that idea come about?

We got acquainted with the artist Juha “Wuorlock” Vuorinen at a gig in his hometown. We had an afterparty (complete with sauna & beer, obviously) and stayed the night at his place (cheers again, Juha!). Sometime during the night, he showed us some of his work and the connection was there right away. Also sometime during the same night we agreed on a shirt design, the price of which none of us remembered the morning after.

Visualising our art in collaboration with another artist outside the mainstream has always interested me and music videos feel somewhat cliché, so working with Juha was an obvious path to take. A path we’re extremely glad to have taken.

What is the writing process like for the band?

The usual one, I think. Either Janne or Joonas, our guitarists, come up with a riff, and we jam together at Barrel HQ. That’s pretty much it. The jam sessions take a direction of their own with hardly any planning, so what you hear on the album (and especially the first two EP’s) is quite raw – no producers, no computer files getting polished, just a band playing together. Creativity, channeling whatever is the source of such a force.

Having said that, we actually did some pre-production with this album. We recorded demos and got together to just hang around and listen to them outside the rehearsal space. Some arrangements were made in that session, but it was just that one session. The vocals were also pre-produced in the sense that we recorded them in a separate session, altered some phrasings, developed lyrical themes, arranged backing vocals and such.

Do you have a busy year planned supporting the album through live shows?

Kinda. We’re at a stage where we still book our own shows and all of us still need to work those pesky day-jobs, so there are no huge tours or anything like that in the cards. Yet. We do about one or two shows a month for now. Live shows are the thing most of us do this for, and the world desperately needs more of them (not necessarily ours though), so we’d love to play more. It’s not an easy equation though, since the post-covid TikTok-plagued scene is a high-cost, low-pay environment.

Any hopes/plans to make it out to the UK?

Hopes? We’d love to. Plans? Not at this moment. Any promoters out there, take note.

Do you have a dream tour lineup you’d want to be a part of? Anyone you’d want to support or friends you’d want to bring along with you?

As there would be five very different answers to this, four of us named one band each:
– Mayhem, as the theme of the album would be a good fit and their dark energy would certainly force us to perform on a new level
– Primal Fear, since Ralf Scheepers is our vocalist Valtteri’s vocal coach
– Judas Priest, just because
– Megadeth, especially now that they are calling it a day
We’d also bring some of our friends from the New Wave of Finnish Heavy Metal alliance along, so this one seems to turn into a festival. Go check them out at https://www.instagram.com/newwaveoffinnishheavymetal/.

If you could have written one song, what would it be and why?

It would be the song that changed someone’s life in a truly profound way. It’s yet to be written.