Suiciderock: For people not familiar with the band, Defuse, how did the band come about?
Hylzy: Alright, we met in the year 2000 and there we put the band together. I called some friends if they wanna play with us and than we went to the rehearsal room and we started playing new songs. We are almost still the same members as we`ve been in 2000 when we started. Only the bass player has changed.  Ville was the original guy on the bass. Tero is now our bass player and he is much better than Ville was. We moved from here to Helsinki in  2002. Than we`ve played lots of gigs in Finland and hopefully soon also in Europe.

Suiciderock: Is the band the reason you moved to Helsinki. Would you say, that it is more difficult for a band to start from Kuopio than from Helsinki?
Hylzy: No that was not the reason. To tell you the truth, it was because we didn`t find a job over here. So we had to move to Helsinki, to get a job. Of course it's always easier when you live in the capital city of Finland. You get noticed by people easier, you can play more gigs and that was good for us because we had to play a lot.  Because we didn't get paid so much in our jobs. Nowadays it`s different. We are not so much into the basic jobs anymore, we can concentrate more on music.

Suiciderock: Besides the band, you have normal jobs. What are you doing?
Hylzy: Almost everybody in the band works except me. I`m just doing music and studies. So I don't have to work but I can live.

Suiciderock: In your opinion, what's the biggest milestone for the band since you started out?
Hylzy: Maybe it was the first gig in Tavastia with this band of course. The gig was a great thing. It was the Tuska After Party or something like that. There were so many people and they liked us.
Suiciderock: Was it sold out?
Hylzy: Yeah, it was sold out, `cause at the after party of the Tuska festival it`s always sold out.  We loved to play there. It was like our milestone.

Suiciderock: Is there a band that had major musical influences on your career and your music?
Hylzy: Of course, there are a lot of  bands. Machine Head, Backyard Babies, there are lots of bands we take our influences from, but we want to make our own sound and we want to sound like a original band.  We have just found our sound and we are Defuse. And we are very original.
Suiciderock: Would you say that you can find something of this bands also in your own style?
Hylzy: Yes, of course. You can hear some influences of those bands in our songs, but not so much.

Suiciderock: How do you feel that you have developed as a band through the years?
Hylzy: Yeah of course we get better and better within the years. Year by year. Just playing together. Now we know the style how the guys are playing, how things are working, we can concentrate more on the lyrics, the melody and everything around. We are playing rock, punk rock and melodic rock mixed together. Of course, we made a huge development. I think we are not there where we want to be, but we are getting closer.

Suiciderock: You`ve played some gigs in Estonia and Latvia as support of Mannhai. What was it like for you to perform outside of the boarders of Finland?
Hylzy: Yeah we played together, but there was no support band, actually. We simply played together. We just wanted to tour together. We all have our own bus, so it was quite easy to go there and to play a few gigs. There was no support band or no main band. We just enjoyed what happend.

Suiciderock: What was it like to play in those countries?
Hylzy: It was good. The audience is so different than in Finland. In Finland people just want to watch and party, but there the people are very much into music and they listen to it more. There were nice cities and nice people. We had fun.

Suiciderock: Do you have any plans to play in other countries, for example in Germany?
Hylzy: We have already talked about an Italian Tour and we probably go there in 2007. Before that or after that we are coming to Germany. It's open.

Suiciderock: Will it be your headlining tour or will you support?
Hylzy: Our own headline tour. We wanna go on promotion. There are some local bands playing, too. We are the „main" band. We were just at the studio this week. We`ve finnished some demos. The guys from Daredevil Records have to listen to them. They will distribute our album in Europe.

Suiciderock: And when can we expect the new material?
Hylzy: I think maybe at the end of the year or in the beginning of next year or 2008, because we have so much to do. So much promotion stuff, gigs in Italy and Germany and so on. Noone knows how it will turn out. But we are working on the new album and we try to finnish it as soon as possible, but you never know what comes up.

Suiciderock: Who is responsible for the lyrics in your band?
Hylzy: Me or Tero and also the other guys. Everybody brings his ideas and I take some written lines to the rehearsal room and than we talk about how the songs should sound like. Of course, we first try out how the lyrics work, but if the other guys don`t like it, it's okay, 'cause we have a democratic band. We are a big team.

Suiciderock: And what inspires you for your lyrics?
Hylzy: Basically the life itself. Everything that is around me.

Suiciderock: What comes first when you write a song: The music or the lyrics?
Hylzy: Both is important. We have done it like that I wrote the lyrics first and than the music came or the other way around.

Suiciderock: What does the future hold for Defuse as a band?
Hylzy: We want to tour and we want to make a good second album better than the first one and different from the first one. We want to tour in Europe. We want to make our own living. Just playing music.

Suiciderock: Some last words for the readers of suiciderock.com?
Hylzy: Buy the records and invite us to Germany. We wanna play over there, so buy the records.