Levi Seth of Sticks For Stones recently conducted an interview with CHILDREN OF BODOM‘s keyboardist Janne Wirman. You can read entire interview here, or you can listen to it below via YouTube.
Sticks For Stones: Was the direction of the new album I Worship Chaos planned before you went into the studio?
Janne: We don’t plan ahead, we just go in do what we think is right. There is never a plan about direction. It just happens. A lot of people have been saying it’s a bit darker but it’s kind of catchy and straight forward at the same time.
Sticks For Stones: How was the last tour of Australia?
Janne: It’s always fun for us to go there, but it’s just so far for us, it takes a lot of planning. It’s not like we can just go “Hey, let’s go to Australia”. But it is always fun for us.
Sticks For Stones: Do you see revenue from streaming services such as Spotify?
Janne: There’s no money at all in Spotify. None. It’s sh*t.
Sticks For Stones: Do you like your songs being on Spotify?
Janne: Personally, if it was up for me I would not put it up on Spotify. Personally I don’t even use Spotify, I don’t have an account. I just like it due to the fact that the artists are getting nothing out of it.
Sticks For Stonesi: Do you still collect physical records and CDs?
Janne: Yeah that’s a bit of a problem for me too. I don’t use Spotify, I don’t use streaming services. At some point I used to buy a lot of stuff of iTunes, but I kind of dislike the new iTunes too. So, it’s like, I don’t have a lot of ways to get music nowadays. What I really, really want to get, I have to get it on a CD. But then your house is full of CD’s and you know whatever. And record stores do not exist anymore, so then if you do really want a CD of something you have to order it or something. Yeah, I don’t know, it’s just sad that the whole state of music business is kind of weird right now.
Sticks For Stones: It’s sad to see artists getting the raw end of the deal…
Janne: Yeah definitely because now a huge part of our income is totally gone. Album sales just don’t exist anymore. It’s a really, really f*cked up situation I think.
Sticks For Stones: Its sad kids these days are missing out on collecting albums and reading the lyrics and the album art…
Janne: That’s how I am too, old school, but then at the same time I do understand how the kids nowadays don’t want to collects all those CD’s. I was just amazed that the format, like there’s nothing, it’s even difficult to imagine. Like the CD, nobody was even interested in re-inventing the CD, like coming out with a format that would still be a collectable… But I guess the MP3 is so much easier for the kids nowadays.
Sticks For Stones: How do you come up with the keyboard/guitar solos with Alexi?
Janne: Most of those unison solos happen so that he writes it, then I play the harmony on it. There’s a couple of parts where I’ve written my solo and we’ve decided that we’ll double it up with a guitar harmony. But for most of the times its Alexi writes his parts first, then I just play the harmony on top of it.
Sticks For Stones: How hard was it for you to learn to play so quickly?
Janne: I was already pretty technically orientated before I joined the band. Like the challenging, technical, trickier stuff. But at some point it was like pretty tricky for me to have to learn brand new fingerings and tricks to keep up with his guitar playing. Some of it just doesn’t contrast well to the keyboard. But like I say, it’s one of the trademarks of this band.
CHILDREN OF BODOM‘s upcoming album, I Worship Chaos, will be released worldwide on October 2 viaNuclear Blast. The artwork was created by Finnish artist Tuomas Korpi and can be seen below.
