Suiciderock: For all those people who haven't heard about you guys, can you give us a short introduction of the band and it's history?
Ville Friman: I`m Ville Friman and i play the guitar for Insomnium.
Niilo: I'm Niilo Sevänen, I do the vocals and the bass parts. Our band comes from Joenssu, a town in Finland and we are working together since around 9 years now. This is our first real European Tour.

Suiciderock: What kind of topics do you treat in your songs? And where do you take your ideas from?
Niilo: Universal things like love and death.
Ville Friman: We are trying to write the lyrics as poems. Our lyrics are about universal things, they are not about one main topic, they are about feelings and situations you go through in your life.
Niilo: They are about sad stories (*smiles*). 

Suiciderock: What is the typical song-writing process for Insomnium like?
Ville Friman: Well, you have to know that we life in different cities nowadays because of our studies and jobs. Usually me and Niilo gather melodies and riffs and then we try to construct the songs out of them. I do the demos on my computer and then I send it to the other guys to get their opinion. When we have enough material we head to the rehearsal place to arrange everything together.
Niilo: It happens that somebody doesn't like a certain part or melodie of a song. Than we through it away and try something new. At the end everybody must be happy with the result. So it takes us some time.

Suiciderock: But isn't it difficult to rehearse if you life in different cities. Where do you meet in the middle?
Ville Friman: It is difficult. You have to travel all the time. When we recorded the album this spring the first half of the year consisted of traveling. We met in different cities every weekend to rehearse. It is a bit stressing. You can't go to the rehearsal room during the week. When we go to the rehearsal room at the weekend we just stay there. We eat there, we sleep there, we spent the whole weekend there.
Niilo: We've been doing this now already for about 6 years.
Ville Friman: Yes, after our first demo Niilo moved to another city so we are used to it by now.

Suiciderock:  Which bands had a major influence on your style?
Niilo: There are many bands.
Ville Friman: I think everything started with bands like Metallica, In Flames, At The Gates and many more. Also many finnish bands like Senctenced for example. So you see there are a lot of bands. But I think Metallica was the reason why I wanted to start playing the guitar.

Suiciderock: Your latest record „Above the weeping world" was released this year. What can you tell us about the album itself and it's recordings? (Single, Clip?)
Niilo: Well, we feel that this album is the best one we made so far.
Ville Friman: The repsonses are really good. We are doing lot`s of interviews and we get lot´s of reviews around the album. In Finland we even got in the charts which never happend to us before. We made it into the Top Ten and it is acutally the first time that we are selling abit more albums. I think the reason for this is that the new album is different. We had a new sound engineer and so we got the sound that we always wanted. The album sounds really happy, you can hear all the instruments. We recorded it in April and stayed in the studio for a month.

Suiciderock: We are in Munich today. Did you see something from the city already? If yes, what is your impression?
Niilo: Actually I had the chance to get around a bit `cause I have some friends here. So I was driving around with them. I've seen a bit of the city and the English Garden. We went there, had a coffee and stuff.

Suiciderock: So you like it?
Niilo: I really like it. I have been here before. It is a very nice city.
Ville Friman: The rest of us had to stay here, trying to get rid of the hangover. We had a big party yesterday the guys from the other band can't drink tonight as it will be a really important show for them tomorrow because the guys from the recordcompany will come to watch the show... So we haven't seen so much from Munich *laughs*.

Suiciderock: What can people expect from your show tonight?
Niilo *smiles*: Music. We will give everything we have. Unfortunatly we can only play 30 minutes as we are the support band for this tour.

Suiciderock: How does a typical tour day for Insomnium look like?
Niilo: Well, we wake up, we have hang-over,... First thing we do is to go to the toillet. Because we are limited on oportunities on the bus... Usually we wake up infront of the venue. We look for breakfast and usually there is some breakfast. Of course than you have to wait and wait. Later on we get all the stuff from the bus into the venue. If we are near the center and we have some time to take a walk throught the city. Sometimes you are somewhere far from the center than it gets really borring.
Ville Friman: Than we play the gig and wait some more.

Suiciderock: You are on tour since September. So you`ve seen almost every part of Europe right now. What was it like and how is the tour going so far? Any special tourstories to tell?
Niilo: We had shows in Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona and London. Yesterday Saarbrücken was very good. I can't name just one good show right now.
Ville Friman: We had a day- off in Paris so we went to see the Eifeltower and stuff like that. I think the worsd memory was when our bus broke down in Switzerland . We had a day-off and we had to spent this day- off on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.
Niilo: For the whole day. It was raining we had no food, we even had no electricity. So basically we were just waiting in the dark the bus would be fixed. Luckily there was this car service. So we found some help. It was a great day.
Ville Friman: We have lot's of fun on the road. We party a lot. We are getting along good with the band we are supporting. We are staying on the same bus. The guys are really great.
Niilo: One thing I remember is... Once our drummer past out during the night and we painted stuff into his face. Yesterday we did the same with guitar tech of the other band. He got „his own make-up" and he wasn`t that happy about it.  There are lots of stories, but basically we have a party.

Suiciderock: Halloween is about to come. Are you celebrating it in Finland as well and if yes, what`s the perfect Halloween outfit?
Niilo: Not really. It's quite new in Finland.
Ville Friman: There are some metal parties in bigger cities, but it`s not that traditionall in Finland like it is in America.
Niilo: Actually we do the trick or treat for the Easter time. I would be dressed as Darthvader.
Ville Friman: I think I'm boring and I wouldn`t get dressed at all. When I come back from this tour I guess I look ugly enough. So I don`t need a certain dress for Halloween.

Suiciderock: What does the future hold for Insomnium? Your future plans?
Niilo: Hopefully we will make another tour next year.
Ville Friman: We will promote the album.
Niilo: Let's see how far we can go with this album. Than we will concentrate on a new one.
Ville Friman: We have a deal for 4 records with our label. We have three done and ones left. After we finnished the promotion for the current album, we will start to work on the new one. I don`t know how long it will take. We are not in a hurry to get the next album out. We take our time and try to get better and better.

Suiciderock: Your last words for the readers of Suiciderock.com?
Niilo: To all the German fans: Come to see our shows!
Ville Friman: Hopefully we can come back again on our own headline tour. We will make some German summer festivals, like Summer Breeze and hopefully some more.
Niilo: See you!
Ville Friman: Buy our new album, because it is good!