Interview: Maja Trstenjak - Manarchy Infernal Evil & Ivana Sataić - Ivy
Photo: Vedran Levi

Worldwide known Helsinki Vampires, The 69 Eyes, stood for the first time as a part of their solo tour in front of demanding domestic audeince on January 24th in Boogaloo club in Zagreb, after half of year has passed since their latest album "Back In Blood" is released. About the album and some other things related to the band we talked to a guitar player Bazie.

VENIA: Much things were said about „Back In Blood” album and the kind of a musical turn it brought. Would it be fair to assume that the new album deals with an internal rebirth within the band (in a meaning of some kind of musical departure and difference from your earlier releases), or rather a summarized title of all the concepts, (and previous works) individually dealt within each song?
BAZIE: I think, in general what we wanted is to be a concept from all the stuff what we have done before, all the stuff on one album, that was the idea. Matt Hyde, who was the producer, wanted to bring some older sound. Maybe update the sound with roar but this songs what he has chosen for the album combine all the stuff we have done before.

VENIA: Even if your sound and music has somewhat Gothic touches, the fact is that your whole universe is richer and much more diversified than the standard concept of Gothic. When it is about lyrics everything is pretty much clear (vampires, horror movies, etc.) but, please, tell us something about the musical spectrum of your latest release.
BAZIE: In general, it has lots to do with what we have done on Paris Kills, lots to do with Johnny Lee Michaels, he was thinking more like cinematic. He worked a lot on how the songs sound. I think it's not like that we have had the same influences from the beginning, its just how you put it out. It's lot to do with the producer.  Wasting The Dawn was the last album we did it by ourselfes, it wasn't produced by someone. There was a guy who was doing it but he was more recording then guiding the thing. After that we realized;  because everybody has so many different musical ideas, it never goes anywhere. Sometimes they just get worse, we want change with new album, some songs, everybody wanted to change but then our producer says: «No, don't change it, it's good. You play it like it is on the demo, like how I did it first.» Because, you know, we tried to force it or change something . So that is why it has lots to do with it. If we have done this album with somebody else it would sound different, that is for sure. That's why it is more guitars and hard rock stuff because when you play lots of tours sometimes it felt to lame that way, you need changes. Like when you're playing songs from Paris Kills, those are great songs but in a way too similar so on tour is hard to get the same atmosphere anyway. Now we did some acoustic songs, that was different from things we made few years earlier. Different aspect, mellow because we like that stuff too. I would say that musical influences have always been the same, sometimes it is like guitar stuff, sometimes vocal melody comes first. Like on this one, the new one, it was the first time that we were changing vocals and lyrics, we wanted to add more vocal strenght. I don't know if I answered the question but you survived. *everybody laughs*
VENIA: It was really interesting to hear this.
BAZIE: It's maybe stupid but I didn't say any bands or something because we listen to lot of music. You can tell some influences there but everybody in the band, every band member, have different influences. I don't think there is one or two or three or four, and we started to do something and we always wanted to use a procuder, not to change songs completely but to change some things from songs, to make it more interesting.

VENIA: There is one thing I want to ask you for four years already. Whe you write your songs it is obious that you write music and Jyrki lyrics. How do you put those two things together?
BAZIE: It always comes witht the music first. Only songs that has been different was August Moon and Feel Berlin, there he got just the melody. But usually I do demos and I play everything by myself, guitar, bass and some drumms and I give to Jyrki to take what he likes like: «this is ok or this is not good» and then he imidiatelly gets the idea. Usually the first is the title of the song. And that was the thing with Susupiria Snow White because we didn't have any title, that is why it wasn't used before, we were recording it and we came up with the title, but yes, music always first. There are lot of songs, demos, we haven't used and actually recorded them, some songs are repeating „hey we have done this before“ but some ideas are always just old but from them we get a new idea, there is always some new, like this Hunger that was actually different titlted first, that was short 30 second musical piece and then it ended up with: 'Ok, that sonds good and let's work on this more and lets just like record it some day'. Sometimes is better to just put some stuff aside, and record them later.

VENIA:  I've read the most of „Back In Blood“ reviews in Croatian media and most of the colleagues rated it as one of the best albums released in 2009 underlining that The 69 Eyes are again on the right way, after two albums ('Devils' and 'Angels') that were more like compromise with record companies then albums for fans. I'd like to hear from you, were there any albums where you sort of pre-planned either the lyrical or musical criteria, did a compromise with labels or have they all been the result of your own instinct?
BAZIE: Sometimes there has been that there is not enough time, especially nowdays when the record sales goes down and we have less money to do it, that is the only thing, sometimes we have chosen the producers. Lot of people love Paris Kills but I wouldn't be satisfied because that was a little compormise because Johnny Lee Michaels was doing it by himself, he took over it. I wanted to be more like on Blessed Be that was little bit like.... but in that album we had a little, I wouldn't say it wasn't compromise but when  were doing album that was hard time, all our stuff and guitars were stolen. I wouldn't say that the music is that way but, you know, there are some songs when you mix the album you want to have them different sounding but that is why you hire a producer. It's always like if you have ten songs on the album one is not like how you wanna it to be. But what can you do. If everyting is what I would like I don't know if people would like our band that much. I mean, it's only one peoples opinion. In general I would say, we never liked that kind of compromise, only thing that we have left for record company to decide what they want as the single because sometimes with our choice we are wrong. Because you are so close to your music, maybe we are lucky because we have other chance to envolve, not too many restrictions from the record companies, we can do what we want. It's usually just money thing, nowadays especially. Thats why we did a video with Bam, he wants to do it, he wants to help us. And if we have chosen somebody else with that money we can't get that kind of video.

VENIA:  In retrospecitve, how was it like working with Hiilii Hilesmaa, Johnny Lee Michaels and Matt Hyde, the producers considered to have created The 69 Eyes as we know today?
BAZIE: After Wasting The Dawn we wanted to do a studio album that is defined more. With Wasting The Dawn we had a different kind of songs. On the new album we've made with better sound, better production and better everything but we wanted to do more atmospheric same kind of sound more like a little bit conceptual album. First song was Gothic Girl with Johnny Lee Michaels. I wasn't so sure if its gonna work because he hasn't done any rock musc, he is a singer actually and he plays keyboards. That came out really good and Blessed Be turned out to be really good. Then he took over more from Paris Kills, that is why we wanted to have other guy that was more into drums and guitars. Hiilii, he was recording and mixing the album. It's different, I really like Johnny Lee Michaels' style, he is still my good friend, how he aproches the songs with the arrangements. He was more like musical producer, Hiilli was more like technical guy who was mixing and getting a good sound. With Matt Hyde is the both, it's a combination. We had another guys on our mind, I was talking to five other producer then. But in the end you just like the person and what he wants to do. But as I said Johnny Lee Michaels was a singer/keyboard player, Hiilli is a drummer and Matt Hyde is a guitar player, so it was new thing in guitar sound. All producers can do some of the stuff, but that is the main difference with producers. So we did first two Savage Garden and Wrap  Your Troubles in Dreams with the guy who was guitar player and that was our last time we did it like that. It's always different. I would say that being in the studio is not so much different no matter are you in Helsinki or in L.A, studio works the same wherever you go.

VENIA: Speaking of guitars, do you remember back in past, what was the first guitar you have got? When was that? At which point of your life you realized that you wanted to be a guitar player?
BAZIE: Ah ok, that was easy, well it wasn't easy thing but I got my first guitar from my sister, she bought the guitar for me, when I was 13 or something. But then I tried to....it was this, I can't remember the brand anymore, I don't have it anymore but that was like SG, it was a cheap copy, but for a year I had a guitar and I tried to play and it was too hard, but after a year I still had a guitar. But thing what I like about how I started to play, I had couple of other friends who didn't know how to play and it was like funny thing when we started to play as we were kids and decied to play...went to play football and said let's rather play some rock. It was just like a hobby, someting you can do with your friends. But that was amazing and then we did some school parties. I am not originally from Helsinki, I'm coming from small city in Northen Finland and I had couple of bands there. I don't know why I decided to play guitar, I think it was before our first album. You never know how it's gonna be but I have decided I wanna play guitar and I was like 20.

VENIA: And for the end, tell us your message for Venia-Mag readers.
BAZIE: Mesage?
VENIA: He hates that part!
BAZIE: Yeah... *lauging* Well, the message is: Enjoy yourself, enjoy your life, be happy with yourself!

Check also "Back In Blood" song by song by Bazie HERE.

Official homepage: www.69eyes.com
Croatian homepage: www.the69-eyes.com