The band's name was inspired by the manga/anime Berserk. Does this name refer to the main character Guts whose manifestation of his inner darkness is the Beast of Darkness?
Yes. When we tried to figure out a good band name (which is an almost impossible mission nowadays) Anton once came up with this great idea. He is a huge fan of Berserk and he wanted to tell it in the name of the band too. But with the word “Beast” it also refers to Anton’s previous band where he wrote all the songs before he quit. Later, but still in the very beginning, we were hesitating to skip this name to not to have any connections with his past but we kept it finally. And I think it was a good decision :).
The band consists of members with different nationalities. How did you meet each other?
Everybody met the others on a different way so I can tell you my way only.
I met Anton first when we supported Powerwolf on their European tour in 2013. He was there with Battle Beast and I was there with Wisdom. We spoke the same language from the very beginning already and talked through the whole tour. And then, after quitting Battle Beast in 2015 he joined Wisdom.
With Yannis and Kasperi I met at the first official band meeting in Helsinki in the fall of 2015. We all set in a bar and talked. We checked each other on internet after Anton revealed his band member plans but never talked before this meeting.
Atte replaced Sami, the original drummer during the fall of 2017. We all met him first at the rehearsal place when we prepared for the WASP tour.
What response did you get after the recently ended tour with Nightwish?
Whenever there are 10 thousands of people every night it’s easy to get many good responses. :) If you are not horribly bad on the stage there will be definitely some people who liked your show and praise you. Those who didn’t like your show, rarely start to spread their thoughts. They might tell their opinion to their friends but after that they forget about you. I think we couldn’t be that bad because many times we had more than an hour long meet and greets with fans after the concerts. :) But anyway, our headline tour will give us the real answers for this question very soon. If there’s many people on every shows that means we did something well! And 5 venues are sold out already… :)
You could play in huge arenas. What was stronger: the positive energy due to the possibility or the shocking feeling seeing the big crowd?
The strongest it was to believe it’s true! :D I can tell you the whole tour was so great, easy and relaxed we didn’t want it to come to an end. We all have been on several tours earlier with Beast In Black and with our previous bands as well but this one with Nightwish was on another level. I think the big stages and the crazy amount of people just spinned us up and made us more enthusiastic!
As for Anton, he seems to be a huge anime/manga fan. Does everyone in the band share this enthusiasm?
Not on his level because he is a real hardcore fan, but we are also getting more and more involved in this anime/manga world. You can’t really avoid it when the half of the songs what you play every day is about it! :)
The lyrics for your debut album Berserker were also inspired by Berserk. Can we call this record as a concept album?
Definitely not! There are 5-6 songs on the debut album which are inspired by Berserk and all the rest is about different life situations, stories or thoughts. When you make a concept album, you write all the songs about the chosen theme and usually you try to make a storyline or chronological order in the tracks too. Berserker is not like that as well as the upcoming one!
Which bands/artists had the most influences on you musically?
Funny, because a couple of weeks ago in an interview which we did together for a Finnish magazine; the journalist asked the same question from us. After giving some answers to him we realized everybody has so many different influences it’s impossible to tell it even individually. But I can name some main influences of the band: Judas Priest, WASP, Accept, Manowar etc.
Thinking of your previous band Wisdom, too. It seems, you "seek" bands that tell stories (tales) and build their songs around a concept.
Since I founded Wisdom and partly Beast In Black too, I didn’t have to seek for them. :) But you’re right; I love conceptions, especially when it’s more than just an album. I like when it goes through the band’s lifetime. In Wisdom we had our mascot, Wiseman, and we built the conception around him; with lyrics especially, but you could follow his story album-by-album until the band’s breakup 2 years ago. In Beast In Black we have this lion figure and 5-6 songs about Berserk on every albums.
Your next album From Hell With Love will be released in February. A new music video for the song Sweet True Lies can be watched on YouTube. It seems, its world is different from the „concept” of your first album. Does the new album have any story?
The conception is similar to our debut album; 5 songs tell some stories from the anime and the rest is about something else. Among the 13 tracks we have 2 covers; “Killed By Death” from Motörhead and “No Easy Way Out” from Robert Tepper. So “Sweet True Lies” can easily fit in our world as well as “Crazy, Mad, Insane” on Berserker album for instance!
What do you expect from this year?
Break-out, definitely! If you’d ask the Finnish guys they’d give you some mid-enthusiastic answers but I’m always more optimistic and luckily I was right so far! I believe our new album and our first headliner tour will take us to another level. The ticket pre-sales and the success of our new singles let me shout these words out loud. :)
Thank you for your time!
Beast In Black:
Anton Kabanen - lead guitar, backing vocals
Yannis Papadopoulos - lead vocals
Kasperi Heikkinen - rhythm guitar
Mate Molnar - bass
Atte Palokangas - drums
http://www.beastinblack.com/
https://www.facebook.com/beastinblackofficial
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