Throes Of Dawn fan page

Henri: I met him in a school. It´s quite awhile ago…13 years to be exact. He was studying in the same school as I. We shared some common interest in music and one day just I asked him if we should start a band. So, we started to play death metal. That band was more of a joke, and we felt that we should really start a serious metal band. And so we formed a new band, which was later named as Throes Of Dawn.

Henri: You mean we are two different kind of people? If so, yes indeed, we are bit different… Jani being a talented musician, composer and the more social and open type of character. While I?m more of the quiet, “outsider” type. But I have to say that we get along very well, considering how long we have known each other and worked for the band.

Jani: We just to play in a band together with Henri before Throes Of Dawn.

Henri: We had some funny black metal project where we made some folk oriented black metal.. but that was like ages ago.. 1995?? Can’t remember… It was worth a few laughs. I think we even recorded something. Hmm… I wonder whatever happened to that tape?

Henri: I remember that it was horrible. I got attacked after the show by some redneck from the audience. Not a very pleasant experience.

Jani: Yep, can’t agree more. I even managed to break the string during the first song, and didn’t have another guitar to play with so we had to have a small break before we could go on. Huh.

Henri: There was really no other option. We were forced to do some major changes because I was moving to another city and Jani was moving to Helsinki. There was no opportunity to arrange rehearsals because of the distance. This was just after “Binding of the Spirit” was recorded. The band was just falling apart. We decided then that it´s better to just break the band. But that was harder than I thought. So after the band was dead for a few months, we decided to bring it back to life with Jani. We would get new musicians from Helsinki so we could start rehearsing for the new material.

Henri: We are still in contact with the past members, so there is no dispute between us.They are all very good musicians. All of them have luckily continued to play despite the break-up with TOD.  We share very good memories from those times when they were still a part of the gang. They are all good people.

Jani: Yes, we wish all the best for them. I run into them very seldom, but I managed to meet Teemu who played drums in TOD for a couple of times this summer. Also, I call the former guitar player every now and then.

Jani: We even played with Inearthed once in 95 I guess.

Henri: Never heard Catamenia, although the name is familiar… I don?t think there are any conscious decisions why we did what we did. I mean we have always played music that we would like to hear ourselves. It is not made for someone else. We have always enjoyed our own music and the style we play. In a way our music has always been quite  melodic, starting from the first demo tape. Jani creates his music around melodies and I like his way of composing very much. It?s the melodies that make a song work. I just recently watched a collection of new metal videos on DVD. There was like 20 bands, quite big ones as well, but the thing that bothered me was that I couldn’t remember anything from the songs few hours later. Not a single tune came into my mind. Why? Because the songs are lacking good melodies!

Jani: The first album, „Pakkasherra”, which means „lord of frost” in english, was released 1997 and was musically death/black metal, but still contained strong progressive influences. Anyhow, the sounds on that album are horrible, and we’ve even had discussions that the album would be re-mixed and re-released some day.

The followers, „Dreams of the Black Earth” in 1998, intoduced warmer sound to our music, containing also acoustic instruments. In 2000, „Binding of the Spirit” took our style more deeper, containing strong doom and folk influences as well. Both of the albums were done in Tico-Tico-studios, and the owner Ahti Kortelainen had a strong influence to the sound.

„Quicksilver Clouds” in 2004 was the first album with the current lineup. With this album, we felt that we were able to take the first steps out of the „most usual metal”-influences. It was also the first one where Henri started seriously to use clean vocals in the songs.

On „The Great Fleet of Echoes”, 2010,  we pushed our music more forward, which was just a natural thing to do after QC in 2004. Still, this was definitely the hardest album to make. We mixed the album 3 times, and the whole process from the first recordings to the mastering process took more than 2 years. There are lots of reasons to this, both joy and sorrow.

Henri: Hmmm, a hard question. I dont know if I would change anything.

Jani: I would record our debut album somewhere else than the studio we did back then.”

Henri: Yes… Oh, now that I think of it… That was a huge mistake to go there. The studio engineer had no idea what he was doing! And it can really be heard from the albums sounds.

Henri: I always write my lyrics in english, so I don?t even sketch them in finnish.. I usually try to write them so that they fit the music right away. Doing it that way makes it a bit slow process though.

Henri: …well there are not much leftovers, actually. Usually what is left is just pieces of something that didn’t fit or something like that. I would really love to write more texts, like poems, but I simply dont have time for that right now. I think that doing a normal day job really kills creativity.. Well, maybe it will be different some day, and I can focus more on writing.

Henri: Everywhere around me. Music, poetry and literature.. but the greatest inspiration is life itself. Memories, feelings, things I have experienced. Terrible hangovers are great inspirators!

Jani: I find inspiration in everything around me.

Henri: As an artist, it?s always nice to get feedback from people who listen to your music. We are so deep in our own music that we don’t necessarily hear the songs like our fans do. So, we get more independent feedback from our fans, which is always nice. I don?t think it has so much effect on our creativity, but you might get some encouragement to carry on if your motivation is lost. But it is also nice to meet the few people who enjoy what we are doing. I mean we don’t sell lots of records, and it?s always surprising to hear someone from the other side of the world praising your work.

Jani: I agree with Henri… It’s really nice to get positive feedback, but I guess it doesn’t affect the creativity process that much.