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Freshly
signed to Lion Music in early 2009, Finnish melodic progressive
metallers Status inor released their debut album 'Dialog' on 11th
September 2009. We catch up with Vocalist Markku Kuikka to find
out more about the band and their music .
MM
- Firstly let me congratulate the band on a great debut release in
‘Dialog’.
Markku – Thanks.
MM - How did the band come into being?
Markku – Status Minor started with
Sami jamming with a few friends in 2003, making some recordings and
slowly starting to gather more people to the group. Jukka already joined
the group in 2003 and I did the same in 2005. Eero and Rolf became
members in 2007 and shortly after the plans for making a debut album
began to take shape.
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MM
- How long have you been working on this album from the initial
idea through to the finished product?
Markku – We started to plan
the debut in autumn 2007 after releasing the ‘Blinded’
single and the music video. The first real sessions were cool
and we were like why shouldn’t we start doing more of this
work. We had tried a lot of songs live already and there were
quite a few of them. During spring 2008 Sami composed a few more
songs for the album: ‘Stand and Think’, ‘Something More’
and ‘Fade Away’ if I remember right. The recording started
in summer 2008 with the drums, continuing during the autumn with
guitars and the bass. Vocals and synths were recorded in
December – January and around that time we also asked Nino
Laurenne to mix the album. That was also when we were working on
the contract with Lion Music.
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MM
- As debuts go, ‘Dialog’ is a monstrous release. What has been the
reaction from the media surrounding the release?
Markku – Wow, well thanks.
‘Dialog’ is an intense record and it’s been made with good feeling
and without too much pressure from the outside. In Finland we’ve been
pretty much unnoticed until now, although our demo and promo material
got some attention in some other European countries and the States. The
same trend seems to continue – we’ve been getting lots of positive
feedback from other parts of Scandinavia, Europe, USA and even Japan.
Hopefully Finland will soon follow, although we did get one fantastic
review from Imperiumi in Finland. It seems that the media like our music
and see the album more as an entity than as a collection of songs. I
feel pleased about that.
MM - How did the band come to sign to Lion Music and what did they offer
that you felt the other labels perhaps didn’t?
Markku – I sent songs to Lasse of
Lion Music and talked with him about Status Minor’s music and a
possible deal with them. Lion Music seems to be a credible label within
the genre and we got a positive feeling about them from Elias Viljanen
who was signed with them back then. The contract is most likely a pretty
normal one; we got similar kinds of “offers” from some other
companies too, but they didn’t seem to be too serious about them. We
got two really serious offers – one from Lion Music and another one
from a company in the USA – and out of those Lion’s offer was
better.
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MM
- The album has a definite darker edge than most of the Prog
Metal albums around at the moment, was this the intention from
the beginning, to stand out from the crowd?
Markku – Is it really so?
Well, I don’t think it really was any kind of choice. The
songs came to life effortlessly and when we were choosing the
songs for the album, we actually chose some of the lighter ones.
We wanted to make an album that displays a wide variety of our
material. The material that we made for the second album during
the summer, however, is much darker and heavier. Maybe we get to
answer this question again next year… Anyway, in my opinion
there are a lot of bands with darker moods in their music. Pick
Adagio as an example.
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MM
- How important to the band is touring on the live circuit and getting
your music heard by a larger audience? Will there be a promotional tour
to support this new album?
Markku – Playing for an audience is
really important and if it were possible, we would love do a lot more of
that. It seems that, at least in Finland, many clubs are rather
reluctant to book a gig for you when you tell them that you play
progressive metal, but well, the debut has been out for less than a week
now. Hopefully that’s going to change soon. It would also be really
great to do a support tour around Europe with a bigger name in the
genre.
MM - Have the band been approached to appear at any of the Metal
festivals next year yet?
Markku –
No, we haven’t. And hopefully this will also change when the record
has been out for more than five days which is the case now. It’s a bit
too early to tell anything yet, everything is still so fresh.
MM - Have you thought about the second album yet or is it too soon?
Markku –
I was talking with Sami during the Dialog mixing sessions in March 2009
that now there’s a lot of time to make new songs. We made all the
material for the second album during the April – July period so the
planning is well underway. The production will start in March 2010 and
I’m really happy with the material already. So no, it’s not too soon
at all. We’re really efficient in this sense and it’s fun to have
the second album’s material already pretty much in shape before we
even start the concerts following the release of the previous album.
MM - The album has some great tracks
on it ‘Machine’, ‘Dialog’ and ‘Masquerade’ being just a few
of my favourites, but are the band particularly proud of any song(s) in
particular, if so which one(s) and why?
Markku – Wow, it’s nice to notice
that people like different songs. For me it was important to make the
full album. To me ‘Dialog’ is a tight package but of course there
are a few favourites in which the creation of the mood went particularly
well. ‘Dialog’ is a really strong song in that sense, and so is
‘Fade Away’. ‘Fade Away’ has the kind of feelings in the lyrics
that mean it’s always a really strong sensation for me to perform.
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MM
- Do the band have five-year plan for where you want to be or
are you just taking things as they come?
Markku – We don’t really
have a plan that we’ve made together but my own vision is that
Status Minor will have created a reputation by that time. We are
still making progressive metal with a strong mood. We’ve
released three or four albums and also had concerts outside
Finland. In real life, things go as they’re given. It’s
really cool if the plan becomes reality at least for the most
crucial parts, and we’ve got a strong desire to make it
happen.
MM - What does the rest of 2009
hold for Status Minor?
Markku – Some concerts,
planning the second album and arranging things. And it would
make our lives a lot easier if we could find a good booking
agency to take care of getting us concerts and promoting them.
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MM
- Finally any words you would like to say to your fans or any words of
inspiration you’d like to leave our readers?
Markku – Hello from Status Minor!
Have a great autumn and spend your evenings listening to progressive
metal, for example.
MM - We'd like to thank Markku for
taking the time out to chat with us today and wish him and the band
every success with 'Dialog' and hope to catch them live in action very
soon.
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