Paganfest USA was a dream come true for many long time North American Folk Metal fans. Never before has such a line-up been presented outside of the Heathen Crusade festival in Minnesota. There were two stand-out acts on the Paganfest USA tour - ELUVEITIE and TURISAS. Hailing from Finland, TURISAS have been a big deal in Europe for awhile, but got little to no recognition across the pond until their sophomore album, "The Varangian Way", was released in 2007 by Century Media. Since that release, they name of TURISAS has spread far and wide...

Tell us a little bit about the filming of the "Rasputin" video and what inspired you to play the song.

"Well the inspiration for the song came... that's quite a long time ago, it was probably in 2000 or 2001, like years before we actually started playing it. I was taking one of these ferry trips between Finland and Sweden, which is sort of a floating discotheque, kind of a really weird setting on the hull. It's like people go on the boat to get drunk for two days, they have a cabin and there's like night clubs and stuff like that on the boat. I don't care about that stuff, but I was just taking the ferry over to Sweden to actually get somewhere, not just turn around, but there was this '70s, '80s disco cover band playing all sorts of stuff from ABBA, BEE-GEES and obviously BONEY M, and I heard them play 'Rasputin' and it just kind of clicked that it would actually make a really cool cover song in the sense of all the elements from the original could be kind of translated into our way of doing things in kind of a nice way. I often have ideas here and there and just put it aside and maybe return to something years later or whatever and that was something that didn't happen until 2005 or 2006 when we started. We just took it up in our lives then, because obviously we were already playing headliner shows here and there with only one album, so we had to fill up the set a bit. It kind of took the whole audience by storm, you know, and just turned into some sort of a live hit, if you want and then we just decided, because all the fans were like hoping for us to record it, so we just decided we're doing the new album in 2006 to also record 'Rasputin'."

What about the next album? What ideas do you have for it and what musical direction will it be taking?

"Well, to be honest, I haven't really gotten into the work on the new album. Obviously, there's ideas, but no concrete notes have been laid out or anything. Ideally, for 'The Varangian Way', I kind of wrote sort of going into depth on the concept behind the album and the story-line of it. It originated being kind of bigger, but then I realized that I had to narrow it down to make it make sense in an album format. And so, hopefully, I mean, I'm not one hundred percent sure, but initially the idea has been definitely that 'The Varangian Way' come out and continue. And not in the form of 'yeah, we had an album that did well, let's do a sequel' kind of trying to just cash in on that, but from the very beginning, it's been planned as a bigger whole and how much we end up using out of that is yet to be seen."

Any particular lyrical themes the band would like to take?

"Obviously, we are dealing with a lot of historical thematics, like the whole new album is strongly based on a lot of stuff from there, but it's not about bragging about historical facts here and there or stuff like that, but I kind of try to still make it on a kind of personal level, even if the framework is historical and still make it so personal that there's actually something in there for somebody living in our society, in the modern day world, and I think there's a lot of reference points, something that might, on the surface, seem kind of just concept, historical stuff, to actually... modern day topics, thematics or stuff like that. But it depends on how deep you want to go into that. But I feel it's easy to work with this sort of, kind of getting the inspiration from the historical concepts and that sort of framework is easy to work with."

What about the disappearance of Lisko (former accordian player)? What was the follow-up of that?

"We've been a bit bad on actually giving any press releases here and there, but for us, it's mostly been because the situation has been more or less in the open still and we don't really know in that sense what to do, but obviously we know what happened originally was that he let us know on really short notice that... he took off in Amsterdam or wherever... let us know that he wouldn't be able to do... we did a five week European tour, headlining, and the we came on this tour, so we got a bit into trouble because of that and it kind of pissed us off, as well. Then we had to make some quick decisions and we found Netta. Now we're doing these two tours, she was already filling in for him last Autumn when we played with ICED EARTH and ANNIHILATOR in Europe, so that was a really easy way to go and a person that we knew that is, first of all, really skilled and a person that's really easy to work with, so she jumped in and after that, we haven't really cared that much about Lisko and his doing because for us, the band is obviously the band that's on the road and on the stage, not like disappearing here and there. (laughs) So if you want to ask if Lisko is returning or whatever, I don't think so, because right now we have kind of a team that's done so many shows together already this year - before the Summer, we'll have over seventy shows done, so we have a really strong package and it doesn't make any sense to get someone back in the band who was just trouble to start out with."

I was more wondering just what happened to him, that was about it.

"Yeah, what happened was he had a few hours off in Amsterdam before taking the plane back to Finland, because we had played a show in Holland and what basically happened was we were supposed to meet back at the airport and he never showed up and just sent us a message that he won't come to Finland right away, he'll come later or whatever and we didn't really mind, but then we didn't relly get any contact with him, so it was really difficult to actually get any decisions done, because obviously, like a lot of pre-work had to be done for this tour, like the flights and the visas and all that shit, so then we just had to make a decision, sort of putting him aside. So what's happened with him since that... we actually heard on our last tour that a friend of ours, or actually, a guy who worked on the last tour as a technician, had actually run into him somewhere in rural Finland, wherever, and he sends a message 'we are here by the riverside drinking together' and stuff like that, but to be honest, I haven't had a clue about his whereabouts since Amsterdam and now it seems that he's back in Finland, but we don't really care."

What are your thoughts on the rise of National Socialism within the Metal community?

"Well, I think, first of all, Germany is a tricky place. I don't know if you've been to Ragnarok or if it was just a question. Germany is a tricky place because something that's, you know, funny or considered perfectly normal or whatever, in Germany, it still kind of rouses or raises, really... there are topics you where you don't want to really get into because it's just too complicated. At times, it's really annoying because you kind of get the feel that 'please get over it, move on', but then again, you have to see the point that you can't count back to the war ending in '45, but it's actually only since the Berlin Wall fell down that things have changed. Germany is, in that sense... you have to understand that we have had the generations to filter it all out, kind of the post-war whatever, feelings to what other direction, but they have only have been counting since 1989 more or less, so they still all need a generation or so to kind of move on, in a way. And so, sometimes when playing in Germany, you know, first of all, there's this anti-right wing movement, which is actually sometimes feels more fascist than the actual fascists or those who pretend to be fascists or whatever. It's so silly that for the Paganfest part in Europe, so many bands on this tour got accused for having sympathies for that direction, which is so far from the truth knowing all the bands personally, as well. But when it comes whatever National Socialistic Black Metal or whatever they call it, I'm really not interested, I'm really not following that stuff. I guess that's expressing yourself - religious or political views or whatever through music has always been there, I don't think it's going to change, so just as much as whoever can sing the gospels of Jesus or sing other political songs, I guess... I'm not saying they that they shouldn't be allowed to make music or whatever, but personally, I don't really care about that scene at all."

Are there any chance of TURISAS' demos being reissued on CD?

"Maybe. (laughs) It's more kind of a thing that I know that the fans would appreciate having, not because of the actual musical ecstasy they would get out of it (laughs), but more for just the fact to kind of hear the band in it's early stages. But right now, I'm a strong believer in good packages, so I don't want to just scatter things out just push things over YouTube or wherever - I'd rather find the right gateway to actually package it and use it as a good goal where it actually makes sense, rather than losing the value of those demos. It sounds like I'm talking from a label marketing perspective, but it's more like about the kind of... it's also kind of a really hard thing for us to... like nowadays, you record an album and then the label expects you to come up with five bonus songs for this and that and a DVD here and there and everything to get added value and the kind of material I work with, there's really no kind of B-songs, like 'I finished this song, but it's really not like good enough for this or that, so we'll use it as a bonus', so everything I put myself into, I finish, so there's really no bonus songs or bonus material coming up here and there." [FIN]