Carnival of Soul

Apocalyptica are easily one of the most unorthodox, yet iconic metal groups of the twenty-first century. Hailing from Helsinki, Finland, the quartet have long been popularized for their classically inspired metal crossover, with each of the four members wielding a cello and classically trained ear. From their 1996 debut, Plays Metallica by Four Cellos, Apocalyptica quickly made it clear they’re not only remarkable musicians, but that the cello is no stretch of a rock instrument. While the covers album put many things into perspective, it showcased Apocalyptica’s attentiveness for good and genuine melodies, which later became more transparent on their original composed work.

Now Eight albums into their career, Apocalyptica have traversed nearly every corner of the earth, garnering fans from not just metal, but a variety aggressive and melody friendly genres. After relentless touring, particularly from their 2016-2019 Plays Metallica 20th anniversary tour, the band have announced Cell-0 as their ninth studio album, set to release January 10th, 2020. Unlike their more recent releases, Cell-0 is an embrace of their instrumental roots, as it’s solely comprised of instrumental compositions without any guest vocal features. Rather than include specific guest tracks, the band has focused on a fully conceptualized record, keeping guest tracks as future single releases, separate from the complete album. Speaking on behalf of the album, Apocalyptica’s own Eicca Toppinen talks all things Cell-0 and the conceptual ideas behind the album and it’s upcoming release.

Cell-0 being your first record in 4 years, what’s it like releasing this record coming off the Plays Metallica anniversary?

It feels super exciting, it doesn’t feel so long for us from the previous record because the Apocalyptica Plays Metallica tour was so intense and so long. It was thirty two months and two hundred thirty shows, and we’ve been busy the whole the time. It feels really exciting, and we have no pressure with this album at all. We just decided to make an album that we wanted to do, and we aren’t expecting or thinking of how much it will sell. We wanted to make the album for ourselves and our hardcore fans, and it was very interesting to do a different type of an album too. You can’t expect what people will feel about it, as you have no reverence for that, so it’s better to not expect too much at all. However, when you put it all in and do everything with full power and full intensity, I’ve learned that you there’s a chance other people will find it as exciting.

What is the meaning behind the title of this record? How did you come to establish the environmental themes?

We brought the music not thinking so much what we want to tell with it. Of course, the music and what we write reflects our thoughts, our feelings, and our emotions of what we feel around us, but these kinds of things seem to be very urgent and accurate topics for all of us. It just seemed to be the common topic for this album, and when we were listening to the songs and listening to the matter of what we had, we felt those emotions by ourselves. With instrumental music for example, when you want to get a title a song, you don’t want to underline what the music is clearly about. With instrumental music we want to give guidance to the listener, and we want to give a platform for them to think by themselves, and not to tell them what to think. So we made this conceptual album, as we’re worried about the facts and what’s going on in this world. Humans have lost the understanding and respect for the fact that we come from this system, and we are not the system. Cell-0 for us is like an origin of everything in the universe, and in official terms it doesn’t exist, but that’s something we generated, it’s kind of the origin of everything. We shouldn’t be so ignorant for our surroundings and behave like a cancer cell, which is what we actually are at the moment; we are destroying other cells, other species, and other forms of life on the planet from our behavior.

What was the thought behind not including guest vocals or a primary vocalist for this record?

We didn’t want to compromise on any of the instrumental stuff just because we wanted to fit one or two vocal tracks here or there. The sound is so different with vocals and the approach to songwriting is a bit different when you make vocal tracks. It’s especially different when you have this traditional form of vocal songs with a verse chorus kind of structure. We didn’t want to mix those things, and in the past when we had all these singers on an album it was so difficult. Sometimes we lost the singer rights because of the timing. We would plan two years before the release of a single off the album, and then suddenly something happens and we can’t release the single. The work is wasted in a way, and you lose the tools you’re working with. Now when we do songs with vocals we can independently choose with the featured singer when a good time to release is. We’re not colliding with singers on releases, that’s the plan. I think we’re going to maybe release four singles next year after the album.

Do you think traditional rock instrumentation, vocals, guitars, bass vocals, etc. are starting to lose their flavor or sense of originality?

You know rock has always been innovative from its start. It’s very much about creating something new and fresh, and something different. Suddenly it’s become very formative and there are so many rules, “this is rock music or metal music, and this how it should be,” and actually in any genre, when there becomes too many rules it starts to loses the power to renew itself and be exciting. I think that’s why at the moment of most exciting things, it seems to be happening in the electronic music world. There’s a reason for that, rock music is too cemented on the tradition and it’s not free enough to be able to develop. There’s always a need for live instruments played by a human, the computer can’t replace that kind of connection between performer and audience. The Computer can create different dimensions and different kinds of connections, but human touch is something we need. But I don’t know where this world is leading to, does anyone care about the human touch anymore [laughs]? I think there’s always room for that, and that’s why I think for this kind of album, it’s not going to be played on the radio or be the commercial target bomb. In the modern world it’s also great that this kind of music can reach possible fans from all over the world, and with no limitations because of the Internet. I think the world is changing, and I don’t want to belong in that group who’s just complaining that the world is changing. It’s always been changing and it’s better to accept it and try to figure your place in that change.

As a band member of Apocalyptica but also as a film composer, are there any modern film soundtracks that you’ve felt reflect a similar intensity of Apocalyptica or metal music?

That’s a difficult question, I hear that kind of music very rarely in the movies, but like Tarantino movies for example, they always have great music, but it’s mainly songs or existing songs used in very cool ways. Most of the movie scores are this Hollywood style, and it’s a bit too sweet for me. It’s great in its own style but it doesn’t really resonate with me in that way. I think the movie Interstellar [scored by Hans Zimmer] was very different than all other of Zimmer’s music, and that was pretty cool. It had this exciting music but it wasn’t obvious, and it was something that wasn’t really heard before. But it’s hard to tell because for me people tend to do things a bit too sweet, and there’s a little bit too much ‘Disney’ involved [laughs]. I just made the score for the movie called Aquarela, and it premiered in America back in August. The movie has a lot of nominations from a lot of different movie awards, and the score itself has a lot of nominations as well. It was just in the Critic’s Choice Documentary Awards, and it’s also among the Cinema Eye nominations. It’s very hardcore, it’s not like what I expected for a nature documentary. When there’s a storm in the sea it’s just pure metal, and I can imagine for some people in the movies that’s a bit harsh. But at the same time the director said “it’s brutal, the sea is brutal, it comes and kills you if you’re not careful.” And Apocalyptica live is not only metal, for me metal is not a music style, it’s an attitude and a level of intensity. That kind of intensity can happen in many styles of music, and on our new album there are a lot of songs that aren’t exactly metal, but they have this ‘metal’ intensity or attitude.