A machine means force to something that cannot or shall not be attained by human force. A machine means great power and strength. A machine in its nostalgic sense is something giant created by men to overwhelm men…In its current sense the machine called Mekanism was also sent to overwhelm – your two ears and all five senses! We invited Finland’s hottest newcomer to a lil’ chitchat.

Please introduce yourselves – who is Mekanism, where are you from, what brought you together and how is life as a band in your hometown?

Ace: First, thank you for the incredibly complimentary review! It completely melted our cold Heavy Metal hearts.. As for who we are, we are a five-piece Metal band formed in Spring 2010, based in Tampere, Finland. The guitarists J-V and Calu are brothers, so they definitely have a chemistry going. They have a technical Death Metal band called Damaging Fallout – check it out, it’s great stuff! Our singer Criss is cousin to J-V and Calu, and he is friends with bassist The Scot since god knows when. The two have done a lot of gigging together. I myself was involved in a kind of Indie Pop Prog project with The Scot a few years back, Metal cred circling down the drain as we speak, and he contacted me about Mekanism around August 2010, so I was the last to join this crew.

You seem to have appeared out of nowhere. How do you see the latest happenings on your musical path and in how far did it change you / the band?

Ace: We work hard at getting Mekanism off the ground, so that might explain the "appearing out of nowhere". The most important recent event was the release of "Cicatrized", of course. It was a really good in-your-face way to tell the world “this is who we are and what we can do.” The response has been great so far. We’re all really confident about where this is going.

How would you describe your sound?

Ace: At the core we're obviously a Metal band, but we lace the Metal with some balls-out rocking feel and Pop sensibilities. There is some technicality to the riffs, but we never let it come at the expense of the songs. Groovy and melodic I’d say would be the main two words to describe us, because we do love groove and melody a lot. And Satan, too of course, but that’s not too evident in the sound yet.

What would you answer sceptics that might describe you as "nothing more but an American Metal copy"?

Ace: We are not out to reinvent the wheel. We just make it more badass.

Tell us something about Mekanism’s song writing process.

Ace: Generally someone brings in either a basic structure for a song or a set of new riffs, and then everyone sort of starts to contribute either musically or with ideas regarding structure, style, etc. We have new stuff written by basically every member, but on the "Cicatrized" EP the songs are mostly the brainchildren of J-V and The Scot. The way those tracks turned out was definitely a team effort to a large degree too, though: for example, the opener “Cursed to Avenge” was originally pushing 5 minutes, with a bombastic synth intro and everything. Generally we try not to let the songs sprawl too much, and I think we succeeded well in making the EP songs tight yet rich in detail.

What are your influences in music, what bands are you digging?

Ace: My biggest drumming influences would be Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree) and Steve Judd (Karnivool). I've been spinning Karnivool's 2009 album "Sound Awake" non-stop.

Calu: For screaming vocals, it's definitely Randy Blythe (Lamb of God) and Mikael Åkerfeldt (Opeth). On guitar John Petrucci and Dream Theater have been an influence for a long time. The two bands mentioned above are also in my top ten.

Criss: I started on cello at age 5 and played it for 8 years, so I guess I have some classical influences as well. When I first discovered Metal, I listened to All That Remains, Disturbed, Killswitch Engage, Slipknot, Children Of Bodom, etc. My biggest influence for clean vocals is Freddy Mercury.

J-V: I've played Metal and Hard Rock almost since I took up guitar. John Petrucci, Alexi Laiho, Jeff Loomis, Steve Vai and especially Dimebag Darrell made me almost shit my pants with their shredding. Later on I found Blues and even jazzier stuff and really loved it. Nowadays my passion is Djent, which is a form of extremely Technical Metal.

You are yet another band that sounds rather un-Finnish. How do you explain this?

Ace: The Internet is really a wonderful thing in that it eliminates the logistical difficulties in spreading and discovering new music. We are all exposed to heaps of new music from all over, and Finnish music doesn’t really have the same special position in our music listening that it might have had in the past.

What are Mekanism’s future plans for the rest of the year?

Ace: The biggest thing right now is shooting a music video for "Cicatrized", and it should hopefully be ready sometime in July. As for the rest of the year, we are getting as many gigs lined up as possible and writing a ton of new stuff. 

Alexandra Zischow - 15.06.2011