Suiciderock: First of all can you tell us more about your band?
Mica:
My name is Mica, LL Stud is our guitar-player, our keyboard player is
Mr Kess and furthermore we have our female vocalist Susannah, our
bass-player JT Guilt, Tommi our other guitar-player and Pitkä on
the drums. Hellcity 13 was found in 2004.
Suiciderock: The music industry usually tries to put bands into a certain corner. How would you describe your own music-style?
Mica: That's
a good question. Let`s say Hellcity 13 is something else comparing to
all this hard rock bands in Finland. We try to mix different styles. It
actually doesn't matter, which kind of music you play as long as you
believe in this music. We try to create the type of music that makes us
happy.
Mr Kess: And
you have to know that we are not concerned with the music industry. At
the moment we are negociating. A important point in our band is that we
are in control of the things and that nobody should tell us what we
have to play or how our music should sound like. It`s our own job.
Mica: We
are trying to create a new style for the Finnish music scene. In my
opinion all the hard rock bands here in Finland are following the same
type of style, but we try to do something else.
Suiciderock: Do you have any specials plans for a record release? I heard that you were planning to go to the studio.
Mica: We will finnish the record pretty soon.
Suiciderock: What will it sound like and what can we expect from it?
Mica: The
new songs are going to be wider than the three demo songs, which were
produced by Johnny Lee Michaels. There will be some similar songs, but
also songs, which will be totally different.
Mr Kess: We
rehearsed all the songs before going to the studio a lot. This time we
really wanted to make a band album and not so much a producer album. I
think all the songs are really strong. I guess we will get a problem
with choosing a song to become our first single.
Suiciderock: Do you know the exact date for the release?
Mica: Not exactly. It's better for us if it comes out in spring like April or something.
Mr Kess: And once again we are negociating with various labels. So the release date for Finland may be different to the one for Germany.
Suiciderock: Are there any plans for touring after the album release?
Mica: We
have had already a talk about touring in Greece, in Cyprus and in
Germany etc. I guess this will happen this year, but I do not want to
promise anything.
Mr Kess: We will definately tour in Finland and around Scandinavia.
Suiciderock: What can people expect from your life shows? Do you use any specials like pyrotechnics?
Mica: No,
no, no. We don`t use any pyrochtechnics. Basically it`s just us and our
instruments. I think we do a really wild show. We are trying to get
better and better.
Suiciderock: Who made up your band name? Is there a special story behind it?
Mica: Well,
we were just trying to figure out what the best name is for a band. We
are from Helsinki, so we just added another "L" so it sounds like hell.
The number 13 came from my idea of "Lucky 13", but when I found out
that there was this American Company existing, which was called "Lucky
13" I decided to use only the 13.
Suiciderock: Who is responsible for the songwriting? Is it a group project?
Mica:
I`m the main songwriter, but everybody adds his ideas for the songs and
the band makes the arrangements. But in the future it might be somebody
else who writes the songs.
Suiciderock: What inspires you for the songs?
Mica: Life itself does and of course the bands I was listening to when I was a kid.
Suiciderock: You had a couple of line-up changes. How did that happen? Is the current line-up fix?
Mica: You never know. Especially Hellcity 13 is a chaotic band *laughs*.There
are so many different personalities. There are like 7 people in the
band, there are some problems every now and than. But for my
understanding this is the fix line-up.
Mr Kess: Yeah, it feels good.
Mica: At least we have nothing to complain about.
Suiciderock: So many bands from Finland have reached stardoom all over
the world for example Nightwish, HIM and The Rasmus. Can you explain
that?
Mica: I
guess Finland has pretty long roots in hard rock. This roots go back to
the 70's, but nowadays it`s bigger. The bands have their own style. For
my taste the bands in the States sound exactly the same.
Mr Kess: You
have been in Finland for so many times, so you know that the view out
of the window changes every time. Especially in winter time it`s very
hard to jump on your bike and drive to the rehearsal place, so you
really need to love what you are doing.
Mica: It's like living on the edge when you are living Rock`n Roll. *laughs*
I would not like to get myself mixed with those "Hollywood-type
rockers", you know, let`s party 25 hours a day and so on, with all my
respect to the glam-scene. Not that we couldn`t have fun though...just
didn`t wanna point that out.
Suiciderock: The new year is just two days old. Have you ever made stupid New Years resolutions?
Mica: I was thinking about this last year already, but I made a decision that I won`t make any promises like that.
Mr Kess: I
think you know this kind of dropless January. A friend of mine decided
to have a dropless January, so I decided to have a Kaasu free January,
because he is boring without any alcohol.
Mica: Did you make any New Year's promises?
Suiciderock: Not really.
Suiciderock: Your future plans for the band except releasing the record and touring?
Mica: I
will write new material for the next album already. I have 10-15 songs
already done so far. Not really finnished but the basic work has
happened. That's are my futureplans for Hellcity 13. I hope that we get
bigger and that we get the chance to release more records.
Suiciderock: Some closing words for your fans and the readers of Suiciderock?
Mr Kess: Well, watch out the new album is coming hopefully this spring.
Mica: We want to go on tour and see you guys out there.
LL Stud: You really should come to see Hellcity 13.
