Como forma de homenagear o nome do website, pensámos que seria interessante entrevistar algumas das personalidades da música pesada e tentar saber um pouco mais sobre a sua relação com os videojogos.
O primeiro entrevistado é Jari Mäenpää, vocalista, compositor e fundador da banda finlandesa Wintersun.
MBG – Hi! First of all I want to thank you for your availability to take part on our new interview series. Could you start by telling our readers who are Wintersun and what genre of music do you play?
Jari Mäenpää – Wintersun can be any genre of music and even not just metal. When I started the band the whole point was, no genre or music limitations! But I guess many know us mostly fitting in some sort of Epic Metal genre with progressive elements and combining metal music with beautiful and atmospheric melodies and creating soundtrack style worlds and universes around the basic heavy instruments (guitars, bass and drums).
MBG – Winter, dreams and death are some of your lyrical themes. Where does such inspiration come from? Is there any videogame, book or movie that inspired you to write such lyrics?
Jari Mäenpää – I guess I like to write and wonder about things that I don’t understand in this universe and try to make some sort of sense of it all to myself and into my personal life, which I include in the lyrics as well quite a lot, but hiding in metaphors. I guess space, time, life and death “why are we here!?” are just interesting subjects to me. Of course I’ve been influenced by lots of movies, video games, art and many things in life in general.
MBG – Have you ever been a “gamer”? If you had to choose a game as your all-time favorite, which one would it be and why?
Jari Mäenpää – I was a gamer maybe until maybe when I was 20-25 years old and then I started to lose interest in gaming and also ‘cause it was expensive and I couldn’t afford the games or PCs that can run the highest quality graphics. I didn’t want to “ruin” the game experiences playing them with lower resolution, so the interest in gaming faded. After our US tour in 2013 I wanted to try gaming again and I bought an Xbox, Skyrim and GTA V and I enjoyed them quite a lot, but only some months and then I got busy again with music, so I haven’t played anything since. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and 007 Goldeneye (especially the multiplayer) are probably my all time fav games.
MBG – There are countless 8-bit versions of Wintersun songs on youtube and they sound great in my opinion. Have you ever thought of producing the soundtrack for a videogame? If so, what kind of game would it be?
Jari Mäenpää – I have not. I have so much music for Wintersun that I need to do first, so I probably don’t have time in this life to produce video game music, but never say never! I love the 8-bit C64 game music though, I would probably want to make something like that.
MBG – How important do you think a soundtrack is to a game? Is there any soundtrack that you really like?
Jari Mäenpää – I think it is very important. It creates the whole atmosphere and mood for the game. And it’s the same for the movies. I specifically like soundtracks with a theme and a key melody, so you always recognize which movie or game the soundtrack is from, but some ambient soundtracks can work well too. I love the soundtracks for Last Ninja and Last Ninja 2.
MBG – If you were to cover a videogame song, which one would it be and why?
Jari Mäenpää – Well funny thing, when I was in Ensiferum we actually played the first level music (bridge melody) from Last Ninja 2 at some of our shows and I’ve thought about covering more from that game, but haven’t had the time.
MBG – Are you playing any games right now?
Jari Mäenpää – Nope, don’t have the time. Last I played was Skyrim and GTA V a bit in 2013.
MBG – The band is currently holding a crowdfunding campaign until april 30th. Can you tell us more about it?
Jari Mäenpää – Yes, we have big ambitions for our massive future album projects. They are not your everyday normal albums and it would be very uneconomic, inefficient and risky to rent a 3rd party studio to record them in. So our dream is build our own studio, where we would be able to record them exactly to our vision, how we want them to sound. Which is of course what our fans want as well, the best production possible! So it is an a future investment. The studio would also be our own rehearsal place, which we haven’t had since forever. Many have thought “what makes us so special to deserve our own studio?” and I would say to them, absolutely nothing! We don’t think we deserve anything. We have made a killer product called the FOREST PACKAGE which includes our new album The Forest Seasons and now it even comes with the FOREST PACKAGE EXPANSION. It’s a killer product and insane value for the money. And we are only selling (pre-order) our product via the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign directly to our fans and are open about our future plans. And if people want to buy the product, great! Then we can maybe build the studio and so far it looks great! Looks like our dream might be coming true in the future, thanks to our dear fans!
MBG – Wintersun are playing for the first time in Portugal at Vagos Metal Fest in August. What can we expect from your concert?
Jari Mäenpää – Yes, this will be fun! I love coming to warm countries, because the winter’s are long and depressing in Finland. Although maybe in August the weather might be even too hot for me, but I like it hot hahah! We will be playing some of the new stuff, but of course as well some old stuff and we will have a new line-up with a new guitarist (TBA soon). I will be focusing only on the vocals. It will be epic!
MBG – I want to thank you once again for accepting to give us this interview. Anything else you want to say to our readers? Any comments?
Jari Mäenpää – Thank you for the interview! Check out our NEW ALBUM and the FOREST PACKAGE from our Indiegogo page. There’s still time to order until April 30th! Cheers!
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