I translated this short interview from the
Soundi magazine Jan. 2007 issue.
Alexi Laiho's year 2007
We were on the last tour for 13-14 months straight and played 290 gigs in total. We really ploughed through it with some serious fucking speed. There really wasn't much time left to be spend at home. The tour included 4 U.S. tours, European tour, we were in Japan three times, and also went to Australia. In addition, there were few gigs in Finland and a bunch of festivals.
The plan for now is to yet take a honest time off for January, but then we'll have to begin working with the new material. In fact, now it's the first time when we don't have to stress so much about it. We won't be entering the studio until late summer, so that leaves us with plenty of time. We'll have a couple of festival gigs in Finland and some other ones somewhere in the lines of Germany-Spain, but besides of those, we won't be touring at all in 2007. We'll concentrate on the new album and the rest of the year will obviously be spent on the promotion.
It's so restful now, that I'll probably have to go search for myself in India. It's just that it's the trip which no one ever returns from. But seriously, some rest feels very good right now. Especially when I've gotten over the thought, that: "fuck, I'm finally at home, all I want to do now is to just sleep." After that, it gets pretty confusing like: "what the hell am I supposed to now, what use is there for me on this planet?" Right now I'm trying to spend my time rationally making some new songs. On the other hand, I could do something with Kylähullut or something like that. And then there's, of course, the eternal question of the next Sinergy album, which we began recording over two years ago. That too could be finished now.
And yes, we're going to play in Dubai in May. The first time I heard about that it made my flesh creep and I was like, no, we're definitely not doing that. But then i understood, that I'll have to try that one out too. When you think about the globe, that corner is pretty much the only place, that I haven't seen yet. On the other hand, we've turned down Israeli gigs.
Translator's notes:
As you can see the interview is already a bit dated. The Dubai gig is cancelled because of Alexi's injury. Kylähullut album is already in the making. And the bit about India is a joke, in case you didn't get it. You can really tell that the band, or at least Alexi was really exhausted after the massive touring (290 gigs in a little over year!). So next time someone decides to post a message whining how COB never plays in location X, maybe he should think twice about that, because the band has toured as much as humanly possible!
Anyhow, nice to see that their working on the album and we'll probably have a new COB album in our hands this year / early 2008. Can't wait for that.