interview with Rifftera

Have any of you played in other bands? Everyone of us has previous experience in bands / projects, but Rifftera is the first one that has actually officially released something.
How is it that you started playing music? It has probably something to do with some musical background from the families and falling love to metal music in preteen / teen -era.
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?J anne Hietala - Guitar & harsh vocalsMikko Kuoppamaa - Guitar & clean vocalsAntti Pöntinen - KeyboardsJupe Karhu - Bass
Our ages differ between 29-34.
Have you had other previous members? Not actual members, but Thomas Tunkkari plays drums on our upcoming debut album.
Did you make music even when you were young? Janne and Antti did start playing their instruments more seriously at the same time by forming a band with a couple of friends back in the year 2000. A song called “Pimputus”, which is Finnish for “Tinkle”, was a first song played by the band. It was composed by Antti and Janne. And it was pretty bad.
Where are you from? Now a days all of us live in Vaasa, which is a city of 66 000 people, located in western Finland.
What year did the band form? Janne founded the band in 2010. Antti and Jupe joined in right away and Mikko joined in 2012.
What's your style of genre? This has always been a bit hard question. Our influences come especially from melodic death metal and thrash metal, but you can hear stuff influenced by other genres also. If one genre needs to be chosen, then it's probably melodic death metal.
What inspires you? Good music, atmospheric movies, life in general; including depressing news and stupidity of human beings.
How often and where do you rehearse? We are trying to keep up with pace of one rehearsals per week (in our spacious rehearsal place).
How have you developed since you started with the music? None of us were born with instrument in our hands, but if we look back to time when Rifftera was formed, the most significant improvement has happened in the vocal department. Actually Janne has not been in a front of a microphone before Rifftera and Mikko had only experience in backup vocals. Improvement from the first demo recordings to our debut album is huge.
Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? At the moment we are not capable of doing live shows because we are missing a permanent drummer. So we’ll have to fix this problem first, before we can really start to make things happen in the live-department.
Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? We are just about to release our debut album. “Pitch Black” was recorded in our own expense with our own production and will be released through release agency company called Inverse Records at 28th of August 2015. We haven't really thought about the future after that.
What made you decide to make this music? Cliché, but this is the kind of music that we want to listen. Well, at least the kind of music that Janne wants to listen, since he writes most of it.
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? Janne writes all the lyrics and most of the music. Other guys contribute by making some riffs / melodies and everyone spices up their own parts with their own style.
Do you start with the music or the lyrics? 99,99% of the times music comes first.
Do you compose in a certain environment? Usually it's just Janne sitting in the front of his computer and writing stuff down. Not really that exciting. For some reason shower and sauna seem to be good places to come up with song ideas and melodies. And then it’s a challenge to get to the computer before those ideas are forgotten.
What language do you sing in? English.
Where have you played live this year? We are pretty weird band due to the fact that recording music has always been our top priority over live performances. This is a result of the fact mentioned earlier, that our previous bands haven’t released anything official, although gigs have been played and some demos made. So this time we aimed for the releases right from the beginning. We have also been having problems with finding a suitable drummer, which of course causes a bit of an issue with gigs.
Since we did record an album with session drummer, our priority no 1 has been filled. Now we’ll try to get live-things happening, which means finding permanent line-up addition.
When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? The only thing we have for sale at the moment is our upcoming debut album, “Pitch Black”.
Where can people buy your merchandise? For example: http://www.inverse.fi/shop/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=515
What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? Not liking it. If you love listen to music of some band, it’s not really much to ask from you to go and buy their album. Music can mean so much to people that it’s sad how little they appreciate artists who made it.
How do you think the music industry have changed because of this? Bands make all of their money with gigs and albums are pretty much just the necessary evil that needs to be done now and then, so that new songs can be added to the setlist... So Rifftera's operating philosophy kinda sucks big time!
Maybe that was a little bit exaggerated about the albums, but at least the fact is that all of the money seems to be made with gigs nowadays... Unless you manage to do a hit song that gets tens of millions of views on the YouTube and plays all over the radios and dance floors. But that's maybe not happening with Rifftera's music.
What do you think of my work? You are doing valuable work by giving some visibility to unknown bands that need all the publicity that they can get.
How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? Publicity is always a good thing. Maybe someone will read this, ends up listening to our music, likes it and starts to follow our band... And maybe, just maybe, even buys our album!
Do you have any role models or idols? Everyone has their idols, when you play in a band. There's always some reason why you have picked up your instrument. Well ok, you could have also done that just to get girls.
One really big influence in Rifftera's music has been Soilwork, so it's truly strange that we got their singer, our idol Björn “Speed” Strid, to do guest vocals for one of our songs. Pretty nice extra for the album!
What have been your biggest obstacles? In the past, time before Rifftera, biggest obstacle in band stuff seemed always to be finding a suitable vocalist. After Rifftera was formed, that obstacle was surprisingly solved out from within the band. Now we have the drummer-dilemma. And of course it's a huge challenge to get people know about you. There are so many bands putting out their music all the time, that as a new unknown band it's really hard to get anyone listen to your song, no matter how good it is.
Do you have any new material? Since “Pitch Black” hasn't even been released yet, it's all new material. But it doesn’t end to that; new songs for the future are already been composed.
What are your web sites? https://www.facebook.com/rifftera http://www.youtube.com/user/rifftera
How can people reach you? Through Facebook or by mail: rifftera @ gmail.com.
What are your plans for the future? We are curious to see how people will react to our debut album. After that we'll decide our next moves. The drummer issue can hopefully be solved in the near future so we could start planning our live performances.
Do you have something to add? If combination of melodic death metal and thrash metal with harsh and clean vocals doesn’t sound scary, go check our first single “Rotten To The Core”. You'll be positively surprised. Guaranteed.

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