Montreal Rocks chats with Insomnium frontman Niilo Sevänen about their excellent new album, Anno 1696, which is released on 24 February 2023.
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"We wandered through the wintry wilderness. Across a frozen lake.
Up and down steep, rocky hillsides. Beyond pathless treks and deep enough to never hear church bells... *
At its strongest, music is a gateway into another world. The key to a gate nothing else can pry open. Music, essentially, is a weapon to destroy the walls we built around us - and Finnish metal melancholists INSOMNIUM are amongst its strongest wielders. Their ninth masterpiece, “Anno
1696”, leads us deep into a dark and troublesome past in Northern Europe, a time of witches, of superstition, of bloodlust and frenzy. And of
werewolves. Set to their latest batch of achingly beautiful, ravaging, soul-cleansing post-doom dirges and accompanied by a blood-curdling, sombre short story written by frontman Niilo Sevänen himself, INSOMNIUM
once more summon a manifesto of grief and hope from the ever fertile and melancholic Finnish soil.
This time around, INSOMNIUM take us into a world woven of sorrow and last crumbling vestiges of hope, of wrath and morbid lullabies. Welcome to 1696. Welcome to hell. This is an age of unrest. The witch hunt is in
full swing all across Europe and the gruesome witch trials have even reached the remote and majestic landscapes of Finland and Sweden. “The Torsåker witch trials were a horrible source of nightmarish inspiration,” Niilo Sevänen says of his ghastly muse. “All that talk about 70 women beheaded in this small Swedish parish? It’s real stuff from history!” he groans. “And as if that weren’t enough, there are also some very dark tales of cannibalism and child murder from the years of the great famine.” Stories don’t get any more metal than this.
"I see her by the lake. Dusk has already crept over the land, and a cold breeze can be felt coming from the north. Birch leaves are rustling in the wind. Lilian stands knee-deep in the water. She’s washing herself, wiping off blood from her thighs... *
30 percent of Finland’s population was killed during 1696 and 1697. Good times for paranoia and bloodlust. “Anno 1696” deals with this dark chapter of Finnish history while also paying tribute to the legendary Finnish novel “Sudenmorsian” by Aino Kallas, one of the only werewolf stories ever to emerge from the land of the thousand lakes. “It’s probably the single best novel ever to come from Finland,” states Sevänen. “It has this very dark and tragic tone that I wanted to capture when writing my story.” They capture it in their pure, heartfelt, visceral music as well: Never before have INSOMNIUM built apexes like these, never before have they balanced the forces of light and darkness so well. “Anno 1696” is a thundering demonstration of power, a work of art both relying on the strengths of their beloved trademark sounds and a new sense of grandiose, melancholic, aching storytelling.
Founded in 1997 in the Karelian city of Joensuu, INSOMNIUM first gained recognition in 2002 with their wintry debut “In the Halls of Awakening”. Quickly building on this with fierce death/doom juggernaut “Above the Weeping World” (2006) or melancholic masterpiece “One for Sorrow” (2012), the Finns surprised everyone with their sublimely beautiful, achingly forlorn “Argent Moon” EP in 2021, only to shed their skin once more. “We have found our own thing and that trademark sound, but yet we don’t want to keep repeating ourselves and make the same album over and over again,” the singer and bassist underlines. “With every new member we have evolved a bit since all these incredibly talented musicians have brought their own magic along. If someone thought that we have grown soft with Argent Moon EP”, he impishly grins, “I think ‘Anno 1696’ shows that there is the same old spirit left.” Exhibit A: The raging fury of gargantuan album opener “1696”. And that’s only the beginning. Guitar wolf Markus Vanhala sums up: “This album shows INSOMNIUM in it’s most blackened form to date. This was something we were were aiming for both musically as the grim story set the path. It definitely was time to go back to a more primal and rawer delivery.”
Mixed by Jaime Gomez Arellano (Orgone Studios) and mastered by Tony Lindgren, “Anno 1696” is by far their most accomplished, emotionally rattling, soaring achievement. Their ninth full-length hasn’t been the easiest genesis, though. “But we made it, and it’s coming straight from the heart”, Vanhala says. “Making art is always a battle with yourself, is about beating yourself up and both channelling and enduring the strong feelings rising within you. But when you succeed in getting your creative process successfully done, there aren’t a lot of things beating this tiny moment of victory. Chasing that brief fleeting moment - that’s why we’re doing this for 25 years. Brief is the light on our chosen path.”
Негізгі бет INSOMNIUM - Niilo Sevänen - The "Anno 1696" interview
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