photos by Pasi Nevalaita
(Finland’s Hooded Menace have a new album on the way, set for release on October 3rd by Season of Mist, and today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview with Lasse Pyykkö.)
My eyes filled with tears of affection when I put my hand on Hooded Menace’s seventh album Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration. These seven tracks captivate with the inspiring melodies of ’80s heavy metal, the mood and sound of ’90s death-doom, and even a hint of VHS horror soundtracks. These songs warm with a reminiscence of early Paradise Lost, and even Harri Kuokkanen‘s exemplary death metal growl at times recalls the roar of Holmes in his prime.
Meanwhile, the guitar harmonies (Lasse Pyykkö‘s specialty) can’t help but evoke sheer metal classics. Drummer Pekka Koskelo, with a quarter-century of underground experience, hammers away with the focus and intensity of the possessed — and in short, this trio is a dream team.
I can’t hide my excitement with this driving, filled-with-hooks record, but I prefer to hand the floor over to Lasse Pyykkö himself; he has a few things to tell about Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration.
Hi Lasse! How are you? What kind of things occupy you most?
Hi, I’m fine, thanks! There has been a lot of interviews lately.
There are five more or less active (or rather not disbanded) bands in your record service. Do you really have something now besides Hooded Menace or is it your central focus?
Hooded Menace is my main focus. I’ve nothing else going on currently.
How big do you feel Hooded Menace is nowadays? How would you measure its success?
I don’t know, I would feel really big-headed for calling us “big” but I guess we are relatively big for an underground band. I mean we even were nominated for Emma Gaala (Finnish Grammy) in the metal category for The Tritonus Bell album. That’s on the mainstream side of things for sure. But yeah, there are plenty of newer extreme metal bands that are way more successful than we’ll ever be – they tour a lot too. It’s very cliche to say this but I’d rather measure success by how satisfied I am with our music, how happy I am with our latest release – I can’t complain much.
How long did it take to write the new material? Was it covid that slowed you or you weren’t ready mentally to do another album?
Covid had nothing to do with it. I think I worked on the new material from 2022 to 2024. I just took my time and didn’t rush it. Life with its ups and downs can slow things down a bit but overall the process was business as usual.
Yeah, I know there is a bit longer gap between the last two albums than usually but that’s okay. I don’t get stressed about such things. We don’t have timetables until we book the studio. That’s when the record label starts scheduling stuff. Songwriting takes as long as it needs and hopefully people think the album was worth the wait.
Your new album Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration has all the band’s features, but somehow it seems that you slightly surpassed yourself… I don’t know, it’s not that obvious because The Tritonus Bell (2021) was already so damn good, but you know – it’s like a steady progress, no stagnation, slightly sharper focus – things like this. How do you see the band’s progress in this material?
Thanks, that’s awesome to hear! I think you put it quite well. The progress is more about refining the elements that were already there on the previous album than reinventing yourself totally. The most obvious new elements might be the cello and the ’80s Iron Maiden-esque synth sound – both of which are used very sparsely, however.
The emphasis on ’80s heavy metal is even more pronounced on the new album, and production-wise we wanted it to be heavy and polished because that’d serve the song material the best. Inspiration came from the fine-produced heavy metal albums from the past rather than, say, Autopsy’s Mental Funeral – which is a masterpiece for what it is – but this time we looked up to records like Balls to the Wall by Accept, Empire from Queensryche, Iron Maiden’s Somewhere in Time, Black Sabbath’s Tyr, and stuff like that.
I had a question like don’t you want to return to the formula of Darkness Drips Forth with just four huge tracks for 40 minutes, but then I checked the duration of Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration tracks and found that they are quite long too. It just happened that I listened to the album several times and didn’t pay attention to its duration as it’s full of ideas, energy, and just great songs. So how much did they change at the studio in comparison with your original ideas? How long did you work them through?
Thanks again! The songs are always very well thought-out at the demo stages already. In the studio we just tried to find the best sounds and balance for the songs. The studio’s engineer/mixer Heikki Marttila was great to work with. We used different reverbs for the drums depending on the nature of the song or certain part in a song; I dusted off my Yamaha SPX90 for some nice additional guitar effects; we recorded empty glass jars that didn’t end up on the record though…
We got to try things more than usually because this time we booked a local studio so I was able to be present at all stages – for better or worse. I mean, towards the end I was pretty burnt out and neurotic even if we worked a day here and there, but the process continues in your head, you know. I can’t remember the exact number of the days spent at the studio… I suppose it was somewhere from ten to fifteen days, but we only recorded the drums there, and of course mixed the album. The rest of the stuff was recorded elsewhere, mostly by ourselves.
Harri did all vocals again, and he’s absolutely good at that; yet didn’t you think to return to vocals again?
I sure did not. Based on the demos that I recorded for each album track, I can assure you that Harri´s vocals fit so much better to our current style. My deep growling can’t keep up with the dynamics of the music we play nowadays – it’s bordering on cheesy, trust me.
Once you said that “the lyrics are always the last thing we do; it’s something that just has to be done”. Who wrote the lyrics this time? Was it a common effort as usual?
Yeah, music always comes first but you can go pretty deep with the lyrics too when you dig into the process. For the new album I did most of the lyrics, Harri wrote “Daughters of Lingering Pain,” and the former member Teemu Hannonen penned “Into Haunted Oblivion”, with me contributing to it by putting together the spoken-word part.
Also you said back then that it’s all about escapism. Does that still work with all the shit happening around us? Does Hooded Menace still help to deal with reality and its absurdities?
I sure hope so because the world is going crazier and crazier. It works for me at least.
You covered Duran Duran’s classic “Save a Prayer” for Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration, a nice surprise, and it’s not that impossible to recognize the song. How did you find that this track might work for the album? Who offered it and why?
Duran Duran is an old favourite of mine and I have a soft spot for the Rio album (which has “Save a Prayer”) especially. When I was a kid I secretly kept borrowing my big sister’s Rio cassette and played it in my room again and again. I loved that stuff. You know, I was into heavy metal and I guess I didn’t want her, or anybody else, to know how much I liked that new wave pop band!
Duran Duran have stuck with me for all these years and at some point I started to play with an idea of a Duran Duran cover by Hooded Menace. “Save a Prayer” has a strong melancholic vibe to it so I thought it might translate to our style pretty well, especially with the lead guitars playing the vocal melodies here and there.
At first I was hesitating a bit because our version sounded almost like a lost track from Paradise Lost’s Icon album or something… But what’s wrong with that? They are a huge influence to us. It’s kinda funny actually, almost like we covered two bands in one song (laughs)! I think it turned out pretty cool, it’s forged in metal but still recognizable. It is sure to confuse some people, which is not a bad thing either.
When will you finally cover one of Cathedral’s songs from their Blind Dead trilogy?
If we are ever gonna cover Cathedral it should be “Ebony Tears”.
Once again you entrusted mastering to Jaime Gómez Arellano — did you search again for Paradise Lost’s spirit? Did you change your proposals regarding the sound in general? Or did you say like, let The Tritonus Bell ring again?
Yeah, we worked with Jaime on Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed and he impressed us whether it was about mixing or mastering. Heikki Marttila who mixed Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration doesn’t like mastering his own mixes and the first guy I could think for the task was Jaime. It was not for a “Paradise Lost spirit”, we just knew the dude knows his way around the knobs. But yeah, of course he has done great job with bands like Paradise Lost which is a plus for sure.
You started in 2008, how do you see the main changes regarding the metal scene? I mean now it’s ridiculous to even think about MySpace, online streaming finally starts to give bands some income, yet CDs sales drop further… As for gigs… By the way, how much did the situation with the gigs change for you?
Well, there are certainly more bands than I can keep up with. I haven’t followed the scene too much anyway. It’s just too much for me. Record sales were down when we started so in that sense not much has changed. When it comes to gigs we haven’t played live since Kill-town Death Fest 2018. There’s just so many annoying aspects that come with gigging, and when you can’t even get that magical kick out of performing I think it’s best to exit the stage.
Being a songwriter and being a performer are two completely different things and I am not a performer, I guess. I just don’t have the passion for it and I don’t need that kind of attention. So it looks quite unrealistic that we’ll play live again. Never say never but I wouldn’t hold my breath for it.
Thanks for the interview Lasse, let’s sum it up… what are your plans for the rest of 2025? Did we skip something important?
Nothing special in plans. I’ll be watching with great interest how the album is received and then slowly but surely start writing material for the follow-up. I think we got all the essential stuff covered. Thanks!
https://hoodedmenace.bandcamp.com/album/lachrymose-monuments-of-obscuration
https://www.facebook.com/hoodedmenaceofficial