История Antipope

A History of Antipope by MJM as he recalls it

Updated on 7th of September 2011

For quite some time I have had in mind to write a history of Antipope in somewhat more personal way and to make it a bit more involved and detailed, so that it would offer something else other than facts about names and dates. I think that when it comes to talking about things like music and art in general, numeric data is by far the least interesting kind of information to read.

While I am writing this (early August, 2011 - it's sunny and warm outside), we have a new album nearing to its completion (more about it later). A new album stands for a new phase in the history (or should I say, in the future) of the band, so I felt that this could be a nice moment to get into a reminescent mood, and update, edit and re-write the history of Antipope. Before I manage to lose your interest, I better try to get to the point - if there is one.

Pre-history

Since this is the history of Antipope written from the point of view of just one person, should I go all the way back to how I found myself listening to metal? Or should I go even further back and tell you how my father met my mother? Maybe one day, but right now I just wish to write something that is at least a bit connected to Antipope.

How I got into metal music? I guess it was pretty much the same way almost all the kids do: I got to listen to some heavier music (AC/DC and Guns n' Roses, respectively) sometime in '91 or '92, thanks to my cousin. The cousin in question happens to be the elder brother of Juho, our guitarist. Anyway, he introduced me to AC/DC. They had just released The Razors Edge. I came across G n' R more by chance, I guess. It was G n' R that got me to start playing guitar again. I had studied classical guitar back in late 80's and given it up a year or so earlier. But this time it wasn't about playing "etudes". I wanted to go electric and loud! There was something in the songs by Guns n' Roses that made me go like "I want to write songs like that myself too!". Songs like "Don't damn me" and "Dead Horse" still give me goose bumps. It didn't take long for me to convince my friend Santtu, that this was the best music ever. Soon after we were asking around for people to start a band with. I had some experience with classical guitar, so it was quite natural that I took up the guitar. Santtu had never played anything before, but I convinced him that I could teach him what I knew and he chose the bass. Santtu happens to be the bass player of Antipope, which means that our collaboration runs back for almost 20 years!

From then on it was the usual story: a friend introduces you to some new stuff and on and on it goes. In my case a friend of mine introduced me to Iron Maiden, Helloween and Manowar, around 1993 I think. Back in early 90's those three were the biggest musical influence for me. One thing lead into other and after a couple of years I was taking my first faltering steps towards death metal and black metal by listening to Amorphis ("Tales from the Thousand Lakes" and "Karelian Isthmus"), Sodom and Mercyful Fate. (Someone out there might argue that MF are not black metal. Well, technically they are not, but the attitude mattered back then as it does today more than mere aesthetics.)

By 1997 I found myself listening increasingly to extreme metal in general. Bands such as Dimmu Borgir, Cradle of Filth, Emperor, Immortal, Isengard, Satyricon, Horna, Therion - just to name a few - had found their way into my musical universe. But I was still writing songs that were mostly inspired by Iron Maiden, Gamma Ray and Manowar. But this was soon to change.

Tuska

Thinking back now, it seems that the past of Antipope is filled with strange coincidents. As you all know, our drummer goes by the name Tuska E. Well, funny thing is that the first black metal project of mine was also named "Tuska". Tuska - the band - saw sinister daylight around March 1998.

However, let's not get there, just yet. It was sometime in the autumn 1997 that a friend of mine was visiting one of our rehearsals we had with the unnamed band back then. We had always had problems with drummers - which means that it was really hard for us to find one. Between 1994 and 1996 we had a friend of mine, who had never before played drums, filling in the drummers spot - he made some really nice progress, but he lacked in enthusiasm in the end. So, around 1997 it was me and our vocalist/guitarist Lasse taking turns on drums. This of course ment, as you might guess, that drum parts were more or less badly played. The friend of mine who was present that night suggested that we get a real drummer to the band. The friend happened to be Jyri - a drummer himself.

Jyri joined the band and I can tell you it was so incredible to play with a real drummer taking care of the beat! Soon we got fed up covering songs by Maiden and Helloween. Back then Jyri was very much into Sentenced and other melodic death metal stuff, and since I was more and more into black metal stuff, some kind of extreme metal was the natural direction to go to. After a rehearsal session in March 1998 we were hanging out and we came up with a crazy idea of writing a demo of most evil material we could and to record it on the following summer. The publication was to be made under the title "Tuska" ('pain' or 'agony' in Finnish). And so Tuska was born. Lasse was not so excited about all this extreme metal stuff, so it was me, Jyri and Santtu from then on.

I set out to write the songs, and in two months time we had seven songs and an instrumental piece that Jyri wrote in the spirit of "Sorgens kammer". Even though we had decided that Tuska should be a black metal project, I didn't chain myself with genre boundaries. I amalgamated elements from every style of metal that I found inspiring so far. Not to try to write songs that fit into a genre was the governing principle back then. I still work according to that. Antipope, even more so than Tuska, has always been about making music that I like, not about trying to fit under any label.

We rehearsed the songs during April and May and got a local studio booked on Midsummers Eve. Gods! That was magical, I can tell you, even if the results weren't that amazing. We recorded the seven tracks as studio live - I took care of the vocals and rhythm guitar parts at the same time. Lead guitar was the only thing to be recorded as an overdub. We went back to the studio two days later to mix the demo and made some copies on C-cassettes. I've no idea does any of those still exist.

The seven tracks recorded on Midsummers Eve 1998 were the only ones ever to be recorded by Tuska. The band at the time consisted of myself (guitars, vocals), Santtu (bass), Jyri (drums) and a keyboard player who happened to be my girlfriend at the time. There wasn't much activity with the band after the studio session, even though there was a lot of talk between me and Jyri about the future of the band as well as writing some new songs. That was the time of lot of changes in our lives, some of us like myself had to do the military service, and we all were moving away from our hometown Kajaani to study in universities etc. After a year or two we were getting into progressive metal and Tuska was buried sometime in early 2001.

the Blasphemous Conception

After few years of doing many kinds of experiments with what most would call progressive metal or rock, and some very free-jazz -kind of things, during a rehearsal session one night a question was voiced aloud: "Wouldn't it be great the play real heavy metal again for change?". I think it happened sometime in July or August 2004. We, meaning me, Jyri and Santtu, were all living in Oulu now. What happened was that the innocent question just asked pretty much changed the course of our musical future from what had become a dull and dead experimenting into something loaded with dark energy.

A minute after that we memorized one old Tuska song, "Aurora Borealis", and instantly we knew that this would be so much more rewarding and fun thing to do, no matter would anyone else ever hear us doing our stuff. During the next week I re-wrote an old Tuska song "Aurora Borealis" to be the first song of our new project. The song was entitle "To Bring Down the Blessed Mother".

Where did the name "Antipope" come from? A week or so later I came up with the title "Antipope" when I saw a text "Luther" written on the wall of the building where we used to have a rehearsal place back then. I can't explain how I came up with the title "Antipope" after seeing the name "Luther" written there. Maybe something woke in my subconsciousness, but I remember doing some research to find out if there was a band by that name around. To my suprprise there wasn't!. And so it happened that in the summer of 2004 original line-up of Antipope saw the daylight: Mikko Myllykangas (guitars/vocals), Santtu Heinilehto (bass) and Jyri Palmu (drums).

During the late summer and autumn 2004 that the first three Antipope songs, "Godmade Abyss", "Scorched heavens sunset" and "To Bring Down the Blessed Mother", were written.

Thanks to the technological advancements since the recording the Tuska demo back in 1998, we decided to record everything by ourselves. I had bought a second-hand Fostex 8-track digital recorder (which actually could record on only two tracks at once, meaning that we had to mix drums before the recording!) sometime before, and I mixed the "tapes" on home computer using "Cool Edit". The first recordings were done with a lot arrogance and very little experience, and you can hear that, if you manage to get your hands on the early material. The first three songs were recorded and only a few months after the inception the first EP by Antipope was ready. The EP was entitled Scorched Heavens, and it was never officially published. The only copy was taken by my friend to Japan, where he went there as an exchange student. I've no idea where that CD-R is nowadays. My guess is that nobody does.

It actually took some time for us to get Antipope really going. The first 12 months were time of intense writing of new material and some very long breaks. Songs such as "A Tale from Christian Times", "Foreplay for Overthrow" and "Stormbringer" were written during the autumn and winter 2004. We still were a trio, so we practised only to record the songs. Since I had to take care of both vocals and guitar parts I usually ended up singing the song for the first time when I was recording it. Definitely there was no over-producing!

The lyrical concept of the early Antipope was always pretty constant. The early songs, first 10 or so were all about the Prince of Darkness. I was very inspired by Miltonian concept of tragic Lucifer and that was what I wanted to write about. There were only few exceptions from the theme, "Viviane", "The Great God Pan" and politically oriented "Song of the Innocent". All of the songs were written as wicked satanic fiction.

An Angelic Apostasy

It was after a break of something like seven months that I sat down and listened to the recordings of Antipope tracks we had back then. I wasn't having any expectations about the quality of the material, but something in the raw power and uncompromising madness captivated me. I phoned to Jyri and suggested that we should carry on with Antipope, but this time we should look for a guitarist so that we might be able to take the whole project further and be able to perform live one day. Actually, I did have a name in mind already. My cousin Juho had been playing guitar in some local bands in Oulu. Every now and then Juho had also joined us for a jamming session. So I phoned Juho and we agreed that he would come to our rehearsals and see how it goes.

So, Antipope existed as a trio for little over a year until in the autumn of 2005 Juho Rikberg (ex-Disaster, ex-Jeesuksen Ryhti, ex-Catasthrope) took the responsibility of another guitarist.

After Juho came along, I recommenced to write new songs and between autumn 2005 and summer 2006 we had recorded demos of some 5 new songs. Songs such as "Razorwire" and "A Dying God" were written back then. Both of them have been included on our setlists every now and then. By the end of the year 2006 we compiled the material written so far on a CD entitled Apostate Angel.

As you can see from the picture above, "Antigram", the eight-pointed star with a diameter, was presented for the first time on the cover of Apostate Angel. Ever since it has been featured in the imagery of Antipope. Apostate Angel was a collection of songs that were written during what could be called a "black metal" period of Antipope. From then on other influences began to be more prominent.

4 becomes 5

I guess we were not too eager to "hit the stages", after all. It took almost two years after Juho joined the band for us to play our first gig. The live debut took place in November 2007 in a pub in Oulu, called "Yk�n Pubi". It was a Thursday night, but amazingly nearly thirty people (28 to be exact) showed up. I guess they were equally amazed as the band was. We played for almost an hour. Around that time I was writing material that would end up on our first official demo Chaosmos and songs like "Rhamnosia" and "Incantation to make all the welking ring the name of the Antipope" were performed live.

Around that time we decided to look for another guitarist. The new songs I had written over past year or so were more and more melodically oriented in "Iron Maidenish" way, so to say, and to take them to live situation wouldn't work with just Juho on the guitar. This time I had no one in mind in advance and we were preparing for a lengthy period of searching the guitarist. I posted a message on a message board on a website, where people look for bands and members to the existing bands. To my amazement it took only a couple of hours after which the first "application" arrived. As I read it, I was even more perplexed. The guy who had written it was someone I knew, and in fact, had known for 10 years! Antti J. Karjalainen, from Kajaani like Jyri, Santtu and myself, became the fifth member of Antipope in April 2008. I had had no idea that Antti was a guitarist, even though I had known him for years. It was a great relief to find the second guitarist so easily and that the person in question happened to be someone most of us already knew and got along with. April and May 2008 were extremely busy time for Antti as he had quite a lot of material to learn to play and to prepare for the gigs we had then.

The 5-piece line-up was now completed, but only for a few months.

Death

By the end of June of 2008 we were finalizing the recording of our first official demo Chaosmos. The songs recorded already were 11 minutes long "Theogony", "Monologue" and "The Great God Pan". I think around that time we were reaching the peak of progressivity in our music. Someone might say that we had already gone too far. On Saturday 28th we re-recorded an old Antipope classic "A Dying God" to be a bonus track on the demo EP. During that day we recorded drums, both guitars and vocals - we were still working on a "song in a day" method. Santtu was away from town, so the bass parts were scheduled to be recorded on the next Monday. As Monday 30th of June dawned and I was getting ready for work, I received a phone call from an unknown source. I was expecting it to be a phone-salesman or something like that, but the person who called me introduced herself as Jyri's mother. She told me that Jyri had died. He had died of a heart failure due to his inborn heart condition on Sunday night.

That morning of 30th of June is one of those that I guess I can remember for the rest of my days. Maybe I am a monster - I still have not decided - but my first thought after the initial shock was "what about the band?". Being a long-time friend and one of the founding members of the band, Jyri's death was not just a loss of a drummer but a huge blow on the personal level also, of course. Be it as it may, as I phoned to each member of the band and told the news, I had to ask how they see the future of the band. No one considered calling it a day. Thinking about it now, to do so would have been to mock the memory of Jyri. On that night we gathered to our rehearsal place which felt strangely empty. Juho noted that Jyri's (huge) drumset seemed to be somehow smaller, as if it had lost an aura. Maybe it had. Santtu recorded the bass parts and Chaosmos was ready. There wasn't much jubilation, as you probably have guessed.

Chaosmos

Before we released Chaosmos, and after Jyri's funeral, we began to look for a new drummer. It took a couple months of intense searches and auditioning that we found a drummer who could complete Antipope's line-up. We tried out few guys, but either it was because of the lack of talent or lack of right kind of attitude that none of them seemed to fit in. Finally found out about a friend of a friend of a friend who was a drummer. I contacted him and he agreed to come to our rehearsals. From the first moments we, the old members of the band, knew that this was the kind of a drummer and a person we had been looking for. Tuska E. (ex-Revenant, ex-Nidhug) joined us on the last day of August 2008.

In September of 2008 we finally released Chaosmos EP. Chaosmos earned positive and, not too surprisingly, confused feedback from the media. Antipope's original approach to extreme metal gained praise and irritation as well. Chaosmos remains the last published recording of drumming by Jyri and in many ways it marks an end of an era. Up to this point progressive undertones had grown stronger and stronger in Antipope's music. A vision of melting together black metal and progessive metal had turned out to be something that was exhausting the energy away from our music.

Excessive Use of Faith

Quickly after completion of the line-up I commenced again to write new songs. For the first time I also wrote two songs together with Juho. More straight forward and heavy metal influenced Excessive Use of Faith EP was recorded by the band during January and February 2009. The release of the CD version was delayed to late autumn 2009. The songs included were "the Stand", "Disillusion" - both collaborations with Juho - and "Bring Out Your Dead".

A word or two about the lyrical context. Sometime after Chaosmos I found myself unable to carry on the "Luciferian saga" and was actually somewhat distressed over the lyrics. It took me some self-exploration to realize that what I actually had wanted to write about had only been clothed in the satanic vocabulary and told through mythological tales. As this dawned to be, I felt great relief and I realized, that I could write about anything I wanted, and it would still be appropriate stuff for Antipope. It was more like realizing that I couldn't escape myself than finding a new theme to write about. Thanks to that, the lyrics that I've written after Chaosmos deal with a lot of different subjects.

As mentioned already, Tuska E.'s energetic drumming pushed us to more groovy direction creating the strongest release by the time of its release. EUF got positive feedback in the media, climbing to top class on Inferno magazine's demo collumn.

During the spring and summer 2009 we played more gigs, most notable performance being in the Jalometalli 2009 after party alongside Finnish black metal excellence Enochian Crescent and Baptism.

Desert

After releasing two EP's we decided to go for a full-length. The main reason for this was to gain more artistic room by longer release, in which individual song could support one another. In the summer 2009 Juho and I began to write material for what was to become the first official full-length. Between November 2009 and February 2010 we recorded nine new songs that form Desert LP.

Desert takes off from where the latest EP left and goes further into mixing extreme metal with heavy metal. However, we did not just refine what we had done so far. On Desert the use of synthezisers is more immanent, which makes the atmosphere of the album more intense. Desert is as far from an album where every song is a copy of another as can. Some of the songs resemble technical death metal while there's also songs of full blown heavy metal and an acoustic ballad. The lyrical concept of Desert is about human psyche and the album is kind of a trip that goes through various stages into subconsciousness. Looking back, it is a demanding recorded, and to be honest, we could have been more careful with the details while recording. But that's how it goes apparently. It's impossible to learn without making mistakes. Too bad these kind of mistakes tend to be public ones.

Desert gained positive but reserved feedback from the music media. The originality of our music was again praised while some technical aspects of the album got negative feedback. For the first time songs by Antipope were played on nationwide radio station.

House of Harlot

Not long after finishing the production of Desert I felt that I'd like to start working on a new album. Since Desert was about quite long tracks and about large textual concept I wanted to go to a different direction. I set myself a couple of rules by wich to write the album. One of them was, that there should be only one "idea" or "a thing" for each song. Other one was, that the songs should be of certain length, which pratically ment, that I wasn't allowed to write long songs this time. To write by some rules proved to be extremely inspiring and together with Juho we ended up having some 18 songs ready by August 2010 to choose from. Around the same time I began to work on the lyrics for the album. Instead of a continuous story, the songs would be like short-stories connected with a common theme. Since the last album was about mind, this one would be about the body - or about the carnal side of life, so to say.

During the autumn 2010 the pre-production of our second full-length took place. The actual recording process of the album was began in January 2011 and it was finished by July 2011, after which the album entered into the post-production.

As I mentioned before, Antipope has never been about being a [write a subgenre here]-metal band. We took off from where Tuska (the band) had been buried, and thus black metal was a natural starting point. During these past seven years a lot of things have changed and many things have happened. Of the original trio there are just me and Santtu left, and three other people have joined the band. Personally, I have never felt any urge to stick to any particular kind of music. Since I wrote the first song for Antipope, I have discovered dozens of new artists that inspire me, just like the old ones did and still do. Someone once called Antipope a "genre-eel" on Imperiumi.net message board. I think that's a pretty good description, if you insist to have one. When you think you have gotten hold of us, we squirm free and become something else. I could try to describe the new album "House of Harlot" to you, but I really don't see much point in that. It is metal, for sure, but that's pretty much all you need to know. Would more words make you feel safer? We don't want you to feel safe.

We are looking forward to release "House of Harlot traditionally in the autumn.

To be continued.

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