Apocalyptica live in St. Louis photos and interview with Perttu Kivilaakso part 1.

Apocalyptica rocked The Pageant in St. Louis with their original "cellorock" Aug. 30th. Along with guest-vocalist Tipe Johnson, Apocalyptica thrilled fans with original music from past albums as well as new music from their latest release 7th Symphony and well-known Metallica covers.  

I had an opportunity to chat with Perttu Kivilaakso before Apocalyptica took the stage for their high-energy set.

Lisa: How is the tour going for you so far?

Perttu: It’s been intense. It’s been really cool to play new songs. That’s most enjoyable at the moment because we are really happy and proud of the new album and very satisfied for the results. It’s a wonderful feeling to bring those pieces in front of the audience and get the instant response, to see that people like it and share the same kind of feeling that we have for this music. So, therefore, it’s always really exciting to begin the tour.

Lisa: What are you proudest of with 7th Symphony?

Perttu: In general, for me, it sounds like quite a brave album. We have those certain elements we wanted to continue doing. Tracks for the radio; it’s pretty obvious that they are there, but even then, they are produced in a little twisted way, and not as most typical rock. Even, for example, “I Don’t Care,” from the previous album, was really like a smash hit and of course we had pressure, but kind of like a feeling that we should do something similar to keep it going on, but we wanted to approach the entire album like a little bit from a different angle, and ask a different producer to work with us to feel kind of free, even with doing a couple of mainstream tracks, but doing them another way around. A little bit twisted sounds, whatever could point it away from the most typical rock, mainstream rock scene. Besides them of course, the instrumental material; there we wanted as free hands as ever possible.

We considered a lot of the mood of the Cult album, because there, for ourselves, Cult is a culmination point of the band 11 years ago. The transition to the more completed own material. Therefore, the result of Cult was like rebellion, revolutionary, all one in that sense that the entire Apocalyptica theme was created with that one. We wanted to have that same youngster enthusiasm and f*** you attitude, you know, for the latest album as well.

Of course, now with the updated sounds and the knowledge that we have now learned, to use cello, and still we learned like a million new things in studio. It’s funny to have such an instrument that you use, that every time you go somewhere to spend time with new equipment and stuff, it’s just exploring and like a scientist-laboratory-feeling, like, “Wow, this kind of sound I never heard earlier, but hey, yeah, lets record it.” It’s very exciting to create new things, so 7th Symphony, for my ears, pretty much sounds like the attitude of Cult, the origins of Apocalyptica, we’re concentrating once again on building up the friendship into a new and better level and the original feeling of guys having fun with their favorite music.

We wanted quite a lot to capture the power and energy of a live performance for the album therefore, we played a lot of tracks together as a band and without fixing basically anything and also improvising a lot of stuff and not having any, for example, samples. All of the sounds were done in the moment.

I think you can hear it from the album that it’s truly fresh and strange. It is really strange because every song, they are so different from each other that actually we shouldn’t have done it like that. We wanted to have completely, like, a musical journey that leads you every possible place and still there is a connection. That is, I think, the biggest achievement in the album. It’s really binding, and it’s probably the instrument itself. The cello, however you use it, has a certain tone or something that makes the basics of music and therefore, for example, different vocalists, they don’t feel strange. At least this time, because they are more like different storytellers and characters of this lform of symphony, we’re having now, even if it’s not in the form of a practical symphony, but we wanted to name it as a symphony because it was 50 minutes of solid music that was guiding us through something, having some different acts and scenes and different characters telling their opinion and then we are already somewhere else. In the end, especially the beginning and final track, they kind of bind it together.

Read part 2 of my interview with Perttu Kivilaakso. Subscribe (spam free!) above (top of page by my photo) and/or follow me on Twitter for updates.