Yeah! Yeah! Die! Die!
Death Metal Symphony In Deep C
Performed live with Avanti! Symphony Orchestra 1995 in Helsinki
CD released in Finland, Germany, Austria and Switzerland 1996
Performed live with Turku Symphony Orchestra 1997 in Turku
The Story : Part 1
Kärtsy:
In the beginning... there was an idea...
At the age of five I heard all those Atom-Heart-Mothers and Deep-Purple-"classical"-things. As long as I have played in bands there has been this idea about mixing rock and classical music... although it was more or less a joke because I thought that it could never be possible...
Question: So this has been an ancient dream?
Kärtsy: In fact this idea came to my mind in the summer of -92 when I was listening a lot to Morbid Angel... and Celtic Frost. Once, when I was at our country place, one of those beautiful days, I gave myself the freedom to make something totally new. When I was walking from the village to our house the melodies of the second part started to flow in to my mind. At this time... summer -93 I never thought that the symphony could be done. This would be a 10-year-project, a nice free-time hobby for me.
When I came home from that "village-trip" I sang the raw versions of the 2nd and 3rd parts to a tape recorder. Till the end of that same day I had sung and taped almost the whole of the 5th part too. The rap-part was also made during the same summer.
After summer -93 I left the symphony aside for a long time...
During the Big Bang-sessions, in the end of -94, I had a couple of phone calls with Ismo Alanko, who arranged rock concerts for the Helsinki Festival. We started to have discussions about how to build all this up. Alanko (vai enkö ala) was trying to find the right orchestra and conductor for this project, so during the BB-sessions he phoned to me saying that there was this guy called Riku Niemi... are you interested? I said at once: "Sure..."
Riku: Ismo called me...in fact, it was Elukka "Animal" Eskelinen, the producer of Helsinki Festival...he asked me if I was interested in this kind of project.
Ismo had heard Avanti's rock things (for instance Purple Haze etc.) He had liked them. So he thought that I could do this thing.
They asked me if I knew Waltari. I did, but not so much. Then I met the band at a club, was it Vanha or something...
It seems to me that I was not so much afraid of them because I promised to come along...
Q: Did you have in mind such a big production already from the beginning?
Riku: No, no. In the beginning the plans were totally something else. They told me that it would be a project with a 20-piece orchestra. But when I spoke with Kärtsy I understood that this is symphony-orchestra-stuff. This is something BIG...opera...BANG-stuff, after the first contact I thought that it would be more like modern...
Kärtsy: (shouting) Like Zappa...
Riku: Yes, something like that. In fact I had some reservations in my mind for music like that. I thought that we will see, what is going to happen. And, well...we did!
