[IMGLEFT]http://www.russell.ultimatemetal.com/Interview/ninfront.jpg[/IMGLEFT]By Katalin Sipos
The metal factories in Sweden seem to be unstoppable. What is more, they keep surprising us from time to time with innovative, young bands. Like in case of Ninnuam, who are mixing black and death metal with metalcore, and creating a lusty and powerful final product. Their debut album, Process of Life Separation was quiet refreshing in the sea of mediocrity we are listening to day after day. It gave me the feeling they used the best moments from bands like Naglfar, Dimmu Borgir and Heaven Shall Burn and this wondrous mix a balance between energetic aggression and dark, dramatic atmospheres - is blowing away the fans of melodic extreme music. Of course, I had to find out who these guys were, and what their motivations. I talked to their guitarist, Kim Laakso.
Please introduce Ninnuam to our readers, give us a short history of the band.
To tell you a brief story of Ninnuam we started up this band back in 2001 and it was basically just a couple of friends wanting to have fun and play brutal music, this is still the main reason for our existence today. This six-piece band started up as a small hobby, which got more and more serious the more great responses we got from people around us. In 2003 we landed a record deal with Low Frequency Records with a worldwide distribution deal with Crash music Inc. and now, one year later we have released our debut album entitled Process Of life Separation.
You started under the name of Yxa, why did you change to Ninnuam?
Yxa was just more of a "work" name that we came up with when we first started to form this band. When more members joined in and we started to take our music a bit more serious we decided that it was time for a name-change. Yxa is actually the word for axe in Swedish... not that cool, haha.
Your demo 'Scar Salvation' is available for download on your homepage. How many times, do you know, has it been downloaded?
At first we kept track over the downloads and it actually went to a couple of thousands in the first months. It's free goddamit!! Now it's more common that people download the samples from our album instead.
After one demo you got signed to Low Frequency Records, how did this record deal come about?
We where pretty lucky to get this deal after being a band for just a couple of months and with only a 4 track demo in our luggage. We where actually negotiating a deal with another label when LFR contacted us. We decided to sign with LFR since we thought that they were able to give us the best deal and we are now signed for one more album. I think that Low Frequency and Crash Music Inc. has done an awesome j...ob with our promotion. We feel that they honestly like our stuff, and are working hard to get the album spread around the world.
I guess it is pretty strong for a debut album. Don't 'fear' the expectations might be too high towards your upcoming materials?
I don't know about the fans but I think that our expectations are a lot higher now. We know what we are capable to create and I know that in our next release we will take our music one step further. We have constantly grown as musicians and are now more experienced so I think that will make the next album an absolute killer. The reaction of our debut has been awesome. The majority of the reviews we get have been positive and in general people seem to really like what we are doing. At this point we don't have the slightest idea about record sales, since this is a quite small genre and the fact that this is our debut I don't have to high expectations of the sales but I know that the CD has sold out in a couple of record shops.
Your music is a good mixture of black and death metal with a portion of metalcore. How do you form your music?
When we are writing new material we don't think about what genre or category it will end up in. Basically we just do music we think sounds good. The writing process usually starts with me having made the basic guitar structure or a concept for a song. From that everyone gets involved and we begin to fit the pieces together with the other instruments. We usually do a lot changes in a long period of time before the song is finally ready. We put a lot of time and effort in each track to get it to sound exactly as we want to so I guess that we rather work with quality instead of quantity. The material for the album is something that we had been working with for over a year, some of the tracks in the album are actually from our demo that we recorded earlier. All together we spent about two months at Sensus studio to get everything recorded and mixed. The studio is located in the same city we live in and the fact that the producer Fredrik Olofsson is a good friend of our made it fairly easy to decide where to record the album. Fredrik is very easy to work with, and he knew already from the beginning wat sound we where striving for to get. He did a hell of a job to get everything to sound the way it does.
What band could you name as influences of Ninnuam?
There are a number of acts that in some way have made an impression in our style of playing. We all grew up listening to various styles of metal and to namedrop a few bands that have influenced us I have to say that most of them a Swedish acts such as At the Gates, Entombed and Dismember.
What are your lyrics about?
It's our vocalist Mattias that writes all the lyrics. I don't really know where he gets the inspiration from but the lyrics are quite dark and often deal with misplaced and misunderstood people.
The album cover is great. It might be a shot from a horror movie as well as the cover of a book that deals with supernatural. Whose idea was this concept?
The idea for the layout came from the cover artist Johan Hammarman after that he had listened to the title track Process Of Life Separation. From that he decided to build up a story about young man being murdered. The pages in the booklet contain news articles about his abduction, notes from the crime scene, Morgue reports, suspects and so on. I think that the concept is brilliant. We are very satisfied with how the final result turned out and when reading reviews of our album they often mention that the booklet is something out of the ordinary.
Ninnuam comes from Necronomicon. For those readers who did not know this, please tell us the meaning of it.
If you don't know anything about the book it's a book about demons. In there you find the name Ninnuam and it is described as the power of a demon called Marduk. We didn't put that much thought into it, basically we picked that name because it sounded cool and liked what it stands for.
Necronomicon is a highly debated book, some say it was written in the 8th century while others say it was written after the Lovecraft stories. What do you think? I guess you have read the book...
Yes, I've read it. I don't really have any opinions about the book but I think that it's something that HP Lovecraft and co. made up.
Your album has been out for months, what are you plans for the rest of the year, and for 2005?
We are booked for a couple of more gigs this year and hopefully we will be able to do a smaller tour in the beginning of next year. We have started to create new songs for an upcoming album but I don't know when we will enter the studio.
Any chance we will you on stage outside of Sweden?
Hopefully this deal will get us to do shows outside the borders of Sweden. To perform live is the main reason for this band to exist so it would be awesome to do a tour. As I mentioned earlier there are plans to hit the road in the beginning of next year but I don't know yet if we will be able to do a couple of shows outside of Sweden.
Thanks for the interview, last words are yours...
Thanks for the interview Katalin. And to all you readers, make sure to visit our site at: www.ninnuam.com and read the latest stuff about Ninnuam. Don't forget to pick up our new album.
Cheers!
Ninnuam Official Website
Low Frequency Records Official Website
The metal factories in Sweden seem to be unstoppable. What is more, they keep surprising us from time to time with innovative, young bands. Like in case of Ninnuam, who are mixing black and death metal with metalcore, and creating a lusty and powerful final product. Their debut album, Process of Life Separation was quiet refreshing in the sea of mediocrity we are listening to day after day. It gave me the feeling they used the best moments from bands like Naglfar, Dimmu Borgir and Heaven Shall Burn and this wondrous mix a balance between energetic aggression and dark, dramatic atmospheres - is blowing away the fans of melodic extreme music. Of course, I had to find out who these guys were, and what their motivations. I talked to their guitarist, Kim Laakso.
Please introduce Ninnuam to our readers, give us a short history of the band.
To tell you a brief story of Ninnuam we started up this band back in 2001 and it was basically just a couple of friends wanting to have fun and play brutal music, this is still the main reason for our existence today. This six-piece band started up as a small hobby, which got more and more serious the more great responses we got from people around us. In 2003 we landed a record deal with Low Frequency Records with a worldwide distribution deal with Crash music Inc. and now, one year later we have released our debut album entitled Process Of life Separation.
You started under the name of Yxa, why did you change to Ninnuam?
Yxa was just more of a "work" name that we came up with when we first started to form this band. When more members joined in and we started to take our music a bit more serious we decided that it was time for a name-change. Yxa is actually the word for axe in Swedish... not that cool, haha.
Your demo 'Scar Salvation' is available for download on your homepage. How many times, do you know, has it been downloaded?
At first we kept track over the downloads and it actually went to a couple of thousands in the first months. It's free goddamit!! Now it's more common that people download the samples from our album instead.
After one demo you got signed to Low Frequency Records, how did this record deal come about?
We where pretty lucky to get this deal after being a band for just a couple of months and with only a 4 track demo in our luggage. We where actually negotiating a deal with another label when LFR contacted us. We decided to sign with LFR since we thought that they were able to give us the best deal and we are now signed for one more album. I think that Low Frequency and Crash Music Inc. has done an awesome j...ob with our promotion. We feel that they honestly like our stuff, and are working hard to get the album spread around the world.
I guess it is pretty strong for a debut album. Don't 'fear' the expectations might be too high towards your upcoming materials?
I don't know about the fans but I think that our expectations are a lot higher now. We know what we are capable to create and I know that in our next release we will take our music one step further. We have constantly grown as musicians and are now more experienced so I think that will make the next album an absolute killer. The reaction of our debut has been awesome. The majority of the reviews we get have been positive and in general people seem to really like what we are doing. At this point we don't have the slightest idea about record sales, since this is a quite small genre and the fact that this is our debut I don't have to high expectations of the sales but I know that the CD has sold out in a couple of record shops.
Your music is a good mixture of black and death metal with a portion of metalcore. How do you form your music?
When we are writing new material we don't think about what genre or category it will end up in. Basically we just do music we think sounds good. The writing process usually starts with me having made the basic guitar structure or a concept for a song. From that everyone gets involved and we begin to fit the pieces together with the other instruments. We usually do a lot changes in a long period of time before the song is finally ready. We put a lot of time and effort in each track to get it to sound exactly as we want to so I guess that we rather work with quality instead of quantity. The material for the album is something that we had been working with for over a year, some of the tracks in the album are actually from our demo that we recorded earlier. All together we spent about two months at Sensus studio to get everything recorded and mixed. The studio is located in the same city we live in and the fact that the producer Fredrik Olofsson is a good friend of our made it fairly easy to decide where to record the album. Fredrik is very easy to work with, and he knew already from the beginning wat sound we where striving for to get. He did a hell of a job to get everything to sound the way it does.
What band could you name as influences of Ninnuam?
There are a number of acts that in some way have made an impression in our style of playing. We all grew up listening to various styles of metal and to namedrop a few bands that have influenced us I have to say that most of them a Swedish acts such as At the Gates, Entombed and Dismember.
What are your lyrics about?
It's our vocalist Mattias that writes all the lyrics. I don't really know where he gets the inspiration from but the lyrics are quite dark and often deal with misplaced and misunderstood people.
The album cover is great. It might be a shot from a horror movie as well as the cover of a book that deals with supernatural. Whose idea was this concept?
The idea for the layout came from the cover artist Johan Hammarman after that he had listened to the title track Process Of Life Separation. From that he decided to build up a story about young man being murdered. The pages in the booklet contain news articles about his abduction, notes from the crime scene, Morgue reports, suspects and so on. I think that the concept is brilliant. We are very satisfied with how the final result turned out and when reading reviews of our album they often mention that the booklet is something out of the ordinary.
Ninnuam comes from Necronomicon. For those readers who did not know this, please tell us the meaning of it.
If you don't know anything about the book it's a book about demons. In there you find the name Ninnuam and it is described as the power of a demon called Marduk. We didn't put that much thought into it, basically we picked that name because it sounded cool and liked what it stands for.
Necronomicon is a highly debated book, some say it was written in the 8th century while others say it was written after the Lovecraft stories. What do you think? I guess you have read the book...
Yes, I've read it. I don't really have any opinions about the book but I think that it's something that HP Lovecraft and co. made up.
Your album has been out for months, what are you plans for the rest of the year, and for 2005?
We are booked for a couple of more gigs this year and hopefully we will be able to do a smaller tour in the beginning of next year. We have started to create new songs for an upcoming album but I don't know when we will enter the studio.
Any chance we will you on stage outside of Sweden?
Hopefully this deal will get us to do shows outside the borders of Sweden. To perform live is the main reason for this band to exist so it would be awesome to do a tour. As I mentioned earlier there are plans to hit the road in the beginning of next year but I don't know yet if we will be able to do a couple of shows outside of Sweden.
Thanks for the interview, last words are yours...
Thanks for the interview Katalin. And to all you readers, make sure to visit our site at: www.ninnuam.com and read the latest stuff about Ninnuam. Don't forget to pick up our new album.
Cheers!
Ninnuam Official Website
Low Frequency Records Official Website
