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Hebosagil - Osku Kähkönen

05/12/08 || Kampfar

Helosan

Fuck you and welcome to yet another of my patented interviews. I didn’t say excellent, only patented. Anyway, this time around I question a fucked up lot hailing from somewhere in Finland, – hail Ukko, but you are mucho sucko – which is one of the very few countries I wouldn’t suggest as a candidate for “carpet-bomb back to basic”. And answering on behalf of the lot is the bass dude, namely Osku Kähkönen. Fucking welcomes, mate, your time and effort is much appreciated. So, here goes.

Osku Kähkönen: Thanks for having me! It’s six o’clock in the morning and I’m drinking coffee in my shithole apartment in Kajaani, the arsehole of Finland. I might as well pretend to be a rockstar for a moment and start my day with an interview.

Global Domination: What the fuck is a Hebosagil exactly, the monster lurking behind the curtain? I wouldn’t know, but from now on I’ll anyways refer to my penis as one. Bullshit aside, what did ye guys have in mind when choosing moniker?

I haven’t been with the band from the start, but I’ve heard the guys came across some old Malaysian folklore of the witch of Sagil. Sagil is a Malaysian small town, so apparently Hebo means “which”. My guess is that whoever came up with the name misspelled it, since I can’t google it up. “Hebosagil” has a nice, peculiar sound to it, so the meaning of it to me is unessential. It’s just a name.

Hebohomohomo How long did you fiddle around to make “Colossal” sound this fucked up and mean? I downright love the mix, at least now that I got a hefty stereo, but there’s no way around the fact that it sounds as if you guys shot the mixing board before and whilst recording. And that’s fucking cool. So, what’s the secret?

Thank you for your kind words, we worked really hard to make it sound right. It would be easy to say we just made it over-distorted. There’s a lot of delay on the vocals and the drums and lots of Big Muff on about everything else. Remi also sang on the album and I think it made it sound even cruder. But I don’t think it’s appropriate to thresh everything we did on the album – basically we thought about everything and kept on trying to find the sound we wanted. Remi, who also mixed the album has got a very delicate auditory sense, I suppose. Eventually the mixing took a lot more time than the recording itself. A benefit of not having a deadline – but then again it actually became our worst enemy, since we couldn’t decide when it was done. I’m glad we stopped working on it – it’s clearly finished. All in all the first recordings took place in June of 2007 and the mixing and mastering were finished in November or December of the same year, so we worked on it for about half a year.

How has yer debut been received, has there been (m)any: what the fuck’s!?

It has had a surprisingly good reception, especially in the Finnish media. I didn’t have great expectations so naturally I was amazed when good reviews started to pop out! Too bad the two biggest Finnish music magazines totally ignored us, since “Colossal” was released on a small label. Maybe they didn’t like us. There’s been a few inevitable what the fuck’s. We didn’t think “Colossal” would please everyone.

I still downright love the mix, but it isn’t much good on fast(er) songs, and the (sole) proof is “River”. Do you agree this to be the weakest song on “Colossal”?

If I had to choose the weakest song out of those seven, then it would probably be “River”, but not because of the mix. We still didn’t want to change the mix for that song, since we fell in love with the sort of mashy sound in a way. It’s a bit difficult for me to speak about faster or slower songs, because I don’t think “Colossal” is a slow or a doomy record in any way – to my mind there’s only one slow song and the other’s are more or less rocking. But you’ve got a point there, “River” is clearly faster than the others. We don’t play it live too often since it’s also the hardest song on the album.

Now tell me, how do your tunes happen? Do you collectively bang them out in the rehearsal room, or is there an aspiring Adolf who is in control of most or all the song-writing? You know what, I’ll name my penis Adolf Hebosagil.

Our songwriting habits are in a transforming state right now. Usually Antti and Remi write the songs at home and maybe make demos of them and put them online for us to hear, but we’ve recently started jamming and making songs in our rehearsal room, which is a much more social and creative way. I think it suits us better, we’ve got a load of new songs at the moment. Antti and Remi still come up with most of the stuff, so they are our little Hitlers and they usually have the last say.

Regarding the matter – we are currently writing and rehearsing material for our forthcoming album. It won’t be out anytime soon, but I thought I’d mention it just so that people won’t think we are in a state of hiatus or just sitting on our asses doing nothing.

Do you think shiny happy people can enjoy Hebosagil’s music?

Yeah, why not? I think people can only make out maybe every 10th word anyway, so no one really knows what type of heavy topics we are dealing in our songs. We don’t market our music to any specific audience, so even shiny happy people may feel free to have a listen, although somehow I feel our listeners aren’t generally the most cheerful type of people.

I’m sure your parents won’t be reading this, very few parents are, so tell me, are you guys on drugs? Ones manufactured by Pfizer, and the likes, of course utterly included. I’m a hashtard high on hate and coffee, by the way.

I drink way too much coffee. Unfortunately I’m not at liberty to speak for the others.

Hebohooray Are you comfortable with Hebosagil being labeled as sludge? Anyfuckingway, what would be the best way to describe your music, using 3 words only?

I don’t mind being labeled as sludge, after all it’s quite a trendy genre nowadays – so maybe we have benefited off it! After all, being labeled as a sludge band is more about the overall sound, not the songs. I never thought we were a sludge band, but I do understand the definition. I don’t stress it too much, it doesn’t matter to me what our music is called. Our definition is Oulunsalo death fuzz, which of course is a lot better, because it is unique at it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I actually made that up just now, but I think I should standardize that term. At the moment we’re arguing whether the next album should be called “Oulunsalo Death Fuzz” or “Homo City”. Oulunsalo is our home town.

Oh, you need to comment on these bands, a snippet or two or ten will do:

Hail!Hornet:

I would recommend this as a starter for someone, who’s not too familiar with the sludge scene. In my mind Hail!Hornet is like a sludge supergroup – after all it features members from Sourvein and Buzzov*en, which are classics. I liked the album, but it wasn’t the best I’ve heard from these guys. Considering the amount of meaningless, insignificant sludge records, their album is way, way above the average. Didn’t get to my power play, but I like to listen to them occasionally.

Laudanum:

I base my opinion on two of their songs on MySpace, since I couldn’t find anything else from them. The first one featured the stupidest riff I have ever heard. The other one was a lot better, but I expected better vocals and some variation, which never appeared. I file them to “promising”.

Black Tusk:

They clearly show talent, but I wonder who the fuck came up with these riffs. The album had its moment and the sound was okay, but I burst into laughter several times listening to them. Some of the riffs were… plain stupidity.

Fight Amp:

“Hungry For Nothing” has got two of the very important elements most sludge bands miss – loudness and a compact running time. It’s actually like listening to a rock’n‘roll album. Sludge bands should listen to Fight Amp and learn from example. They’re not pure gold and occasionally sound like what you’d imagine any random sludge band would sound, a bit monotonic. Once again, no power play stuff, but I like hearing them and listen to “Hungry For Nothing” every once in a while.

Salome:

A bit boring for my taste and I didn’t like their sound too much. Their album sounded a bit musty and stuffy, whereas I’d like it to be more striking. On the other hand, I’ve heard the album only once, so maybe I should give them another chance.

Voyager:

Not a very good choice for a name, since I bet there are tens of Voyager’s in the world already. Again, I couldn’t find anything from them expect their MySpace page. I couldn’t help hearing some Isis-influences in their atmospheric metal, even though they don’t list them on their page. I would like to listen to them more, if I had a high quality version of the EP. I’ll include the link to their MySpace just in case so that everyone knows which band I’m talking about. This Voyager here is not to be confused with the terrible Australian power metal band.

YOB:

YOB is a great band, but in my opinion their reputation doesn’t correlate with their albums. I mean, I like them and the two of their latest records have been very good, but I don’t know who proclaimed them classics. Some of their songs are way too long and don’t really hold up to the end. Anyway, they’re clearly one of the best of the mentioned bands here, but I hope their best album, the classic, is yet to come! They have interesting ideas and tones, particularly on the vocals, which sound very original at times. Plus they are not too loud the whole fucking time, so I’m not exhausted after an album or two.

Gonga:

I heard their album “Transmigration” and it was very weird. The sound was very much garage-type, muffy and ponderous. It was also mixed in a pretty, erhm, interesting way. I like good clean vocals in metal music in general, as long as it isn’t too pompous and haughty, and Gonga’s certainly wasn’t. They’ve clearly got sense of melody, but I really couldn’t get a grip of their album. I hope they record in a better studio next time and have someone else to mix them. I couldn’t tell if they were retro or just lo-fi.

Herem:

They sound otherwise good, but I simply can’t stand the black metal vocals (in general, not only in Herem’s case), so it pretty much ruins Herem for me.

16:

I had pretty hard time trying to find them on the internet because of their name. I wasn’t able to find any of their albums, but I liked the few songs on MySpace. Apparently Relapse will release about their entire catalog next year. I’ll definitely check them out then.

All in all, I’m pretty hard to please and I don’t get excited about new music too easily. I thank you for your recommendations, I’ll keep an eye on 16, Voyager, Gonga and Fight Amp in the future!

Hebosallad Are you a sought after live band, or do you have to call around yerself to get your asses on stage? In plain English, are you doing any gigs? How ‘bout festivals, carnivals, etc., done or going to do any of those?

We are way too lazy to organize anything ourselves, so we don’t play gigs too often – maybe once a month, mostly in bars and clubs. We would like to play more gigs, but there’s not too much going on in northern Finland and it’s quite expensive to go to the southern cities. We play almost every gig we are offered to play, however. Our first festival experience was Amplifier Worship in Turku in October, where all the bands played more or less sludge type of metal. It was probably our best one so far and it would be cool to play there again.

How ‘bout interviews, busy on that front?

Not exactly. I did a few when the album was released. Remi and our former drummer Ilpo also appeared on some local radio station last year. The culmination of our modest career in heavy metal!

Tell me how you ended up doing the bass, and, are you self-taught or have you attained lessons and shit? Even more, for I’d also, for the sake of those who care, like to know yer exact gear and setup. Are you true to one brand of amps and basses, or are you the kind of guy who switch around to keep things fresh?

I am originally a self-taught guitarist, and I joined the band kinda by accident: The guys had a gig coming and they didn’t have a bass player, so I filled in. I wasn’t supposed to stick with them but here I am still, for the fourth or fifth year now. I’m not very gear conscious. My bass has always got some really heavy strings tuned down to H and I always use a Big Muff PI. Right now I’m using a Squier Jazz Bass, some pretty lousy Carlsbro head from the 80’s and a self made 1 × 18” cabinet. They sound okay, but I’m thinking of getting a new cab in the near future – I’ve got to have more volume! When we do gigs, I use whatever I can get for amplification. On Colossal I use a Washburn bass and a selection of overdrive pedals, mainly Big Muff PI.

Is Lemmy one of your heroes? Sure is one of mine, he and his fucking Rickenbacker.

Oh yeah, Lemmy’s great. I saw Motörhead live here in Oulu just couple of years ago, and I couldn’t believe how fucking loud they would let them play. I’d love to play a Rickenbacker, but I’m a pretty small guy, so it would make me look ridiculous. I couldn’t afford one anyway.

Rate these bands on a scale from 1-10:

Impaled Nazarene – 7

Children Of Bodom – 7

I used to like a couple of their tunes, when I was 14 or 15, but they never were a great inspiration to me. I’m glad for their success, though.

Nightwish – 2

Sacking Tarja Turunen was probably the best thing they’ve ever done. The single “Amaranth” was pretty nice in a pop sense, particularly the chorus. Otherwise they are a lame band and I don’t enjoy hearing their music.

Total Devastation – 4

A bit too modern and serious for my taste, otherwise decent stuff.

Lordi – 3

No way in hell would I name my album “The Monsterican Dream” or “Deadache”, but their titles are masterpieces in their own camp sense. The singer Putaansuu (or Mr. Lordi, his stage persona) said they will one day grow up to be bigger than KISS. I don’t know why Gene Simmons even bothered commenting on that statement. Their music is dull and they’ve got one of the worst vocalists I’ve ever heard, but they’re pretty funny to watch. And a funny rock band isn’t absolutely a good thing. I remember seeing them live a few years ago before they’d won the Eurovision. It was some festival in Finland and I went there to see some other band, honestly, but somehow ended up watching Lordi’s show for whole six songs. I then realized I had turned 9 ages ago and shouldn’t be watching them at all cause it wasn’t any good. They didn’t play very well. Mr. Lordi wasn’t at all agile in his suit – he could barely move his hands. It was so sad I had to leave.

On the other hand, maybe I’m taking rock’n‘roll too seriously.

Enochian Crescent – ?

Black metal isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but Enochian Crescent had some tasty riffs. I only had a quick peak on their MySpace page, so I feel I don’t know enough to grade them.

The Wicked – 1

For some reason I can’t stand industrial metal. I give them one point just for the title “Digital Satan”.

Finntroll – 5

I wouldn’t buy their album, but I would love to see a Finntroll show.

Stratovarious – 0

Catamenia – 0

Hyi perkele! These were my opinions and no one should give a shit about them. However, if I hurt somebody’s feelings, please do address your hatemail to: band (at) hebosagil dot com.

Frodo Baggins The none retarded and educated reader noticed that all bands listed above is of Finnish origin, so therefore they understand why I now ask you, Mr. Kähkönen, about your take on the Finnish scene. Me? I think it is quite ace, apart from the share of power “poop” metal bands, that is. And you?

Metal is mainstream here, so I’ve recently got a bit tired with the oversupply of it. A lot of bands are just copying each other’s act and you can’t really tell the difference, so you have to dig through to find the good ones. On the other hand, I’m not a huge metal fan, so you might have a more appropriate knowledge of the Finnish scene. But sure, we’ve got our share of excellent bands. I recommend everyone whose view of Finnish metal is based on mainstream bands such as Children of Bodom, Sonata Arctica, Nightwish and HIM to check out Finnish underground bands Stumm, Fleshpress, Loinen, Viisikko and Disare, just to name a few. To my mind Disare is a very professional sounding grindcore band. We recently did an asskicking split CD with Viisikko, which is available from Recordshop X.

What is the very worst Norwegian band ever? And the best would be?

You’ve got too many good Norwegian bands to mention. I think Immortal is both the best and the worst Norwegian band.

I just ejaculated into one of my eyes, and it hurts, so now I’m pissed.

I feel your pain.

My estimates show that between 95%-99% of humanity should be killed off and dumped into the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean because, and piss me in the face if I’m wrong here, I think there are lots of fucking sharks in that pond. And I sure like sharks. Anyway, what is your thoughts on my estimates?

What a way to die, your plan has my full support! That would pretty much solve every crisis mankind has going on – finance crisis, AIDS, hunger, wars… I hope you have considered a career in politics. The great white shark is my favourite shark, a fierce killer.

Salma Hebohayek Being a Finn and all, how many alcoholics do you know?

The only chain of liquor stores in Finland is state-owned, so the government pretty much keeps the taxes on alcohol low and thereby sales high. I know a lot of alcoholics, but fortunately there are none in my family.

And the Sauna Champion of Hebosagil would be? Please include time and temperatures. You know what, I think ye fucking Finns should arrange a national Metal Sauna Championship. What band do you think would win such an event?

I guess we are an exceptional Finnish band, since we aren’t actually too eager sauna-goers. In Lutakko, Jyväskylä we shared the stage with Disare, who went to the sauna straight after their set, but we decided to skip the sauna-foreplay and start drinking immediately. I wash only twice a year – every Midsummer Day and Christmas – so it wasn’t the time for sauna anyway.

What would you rather have, a B-52, or a nuclear-powered submarine?

With a B-52 I would be unstoppable. Imagine the magnificent view while I’d bomb down schools and hospitals!

Do you, like me, hope Barack Obama gets shot in the head by an Indian Chief who’s sick and tired of white-thrash and niggers occupying his country “already”? Barack is two in one, you know, both nigger and whitey, so it would be a bullet well spent. I piss on the parody that the western societies have become, do you join in?

I think the “Obamania” (I can’t believe I’m using that dumbass term) will start to discolor as people realize he actually won’t be able to save the world overnight. Winning the election with the anti-war label was a bit cheap, considering the fact that he will probably invade Iran in the near future ‘cause of their nuclear program. Anyway, better him than McCain.

When was the last time you felt for bashing someone’s face in? While at it, how would you prefer to end the days of your worst enemy?

I bumped into an online petition the other day that really pissed me off. Some Finnish teenagers were boycotting McDonalds because the company had raised the price of a cheeseburger from 1.00 € to 1.10 €. Don’t get me wrong, boycotting McDonalds is always the right thing to do, whatever the reason, but I think the standard of living is way too high when people have the nerve to complain about things like this. I hope my worst enemies choke on McDonalds’ cheeseburgers.

Hulg Hobo Hogan Tell me a bit about your entertainment habits, are you big on series and movies, or do you prefer to shoot people in the face on your PC, or whatever?

We rehearse a lot, but aside from that I enjoy music, movies, socializing (drinking, that is), UFO hunting, reading et cetera – boring stuff that normal people do. Some of us have got jobs, some of us are still studying or doing nothing. I like to stay up late, listen to records and drink coffee. I get bored quite easily. I even went skiing once last winter. What a stupid idea that was.

Oh, have you ever played a game called: “Can you spot a Swede in Malmö”?

No I haven’t, never been to Malmö.

This is the fucking end, let’s all wish for Santa to bring total war and bloody annihilation upon mankind.

Amen!

Interviews