Photo by Lassi Kojola
(In two days from now Prosthetic Records will release the politically charged debut album by the Finnish death metal band Unearthly Rites, and to help pave the way we present Comrade Aleks‘ very interesting interview with vocalist Sisli and guitarist Santtu.)
Here’s a quite fresh and dirty entity from very North of Finland. Unearthly Rites was formed back in 2020, and since then they released only a self-titled EP in 2021… until now.
The lineup in Unearthly Rites includes members from the bands Dome Runner, Fosforos, Frogskin, Fuck-Ushima, Bolt Cross, Praise, etc, so this company of two ladies and three gentlemen seem to be quite busy with different sorts of underground activities. Yes, right, Unearthly Rites is a blackened death metal band, and one of the women is the person who roars in their full-length album Ecdysis.
Prosthetic Records are ready to release Ecdysis on May 3rd, so here we are to support this band with their absolutely crushing sound, a dedicated approach, and an attitude worthy of respect. Sisli (vocals) and Santtu (guitars) provided us quite an in-depth and interesting interview.
Hi Unearthly Rites! How are you? What’s going on in your lair?
Santtu: Hello, could be worse I think. Our first single and title track from our debut album Ecdysis was just released and now we are waiting for the full album to come out (May 3rd) and preparing ourselves for the record release shows.
All of the band’s members play in different bands, what made you unite as Unearthly Rites? Do you have a main ideologist in the band or something?
Sisli: It was our guitarist Santtu who got fed up during the pandemic and put this up. So he’s the mastermind behind the band, who united us. First Unearthly Rites began as more like a studio project but then people wanted us to play gigs as well, so at that point Santtu asked Jennika to join us for the bass.
Unearthly Rites’ self-titled EP was released in 2021, so it took over two years to finish Ecdysis. Was it a constant process of writing and recording, or did you work on this material when you only had free time?
Santtu: Actually, Ecdysis was recorded about a year after the release of the EP in 2022, so after that we just have been waiting for the label to put it out. The writing process was quite intense and not too many rehearsals (together) were held before the recording.
Photo by Eetu Kolehmainen
What place does Unearthly Rites take in your priorities, taking into account all the bands you’re involved in?
Sisli: We all have different bands but Unearthly Rites has something special to it. The grim musical atmosphere that is in sharp contrast with the daily circus of our band members, for starters! Now with the new album coming up UE will be the main priority for sure.
The album’s name means one of the metamorphosis’ stages in the world of insects. What do you put in this title?
Sisli: The title as well as the whole album draws strong inspiration from nature. Ecdysis comes from the deep disappointment with modern humanity, a wish to metamorphose into something earthier, so to speak.
I was surprised with the song’s title “Fuck Ecofascism”. It could be interpreted in both ways, as there are corporations which ruin the environment and, on the other hand, there are quite deranged eco-activists. Sisli’s vocals are predictably “unreadable”. So what’s it about?
Sisli: Well actually, the lyrics tell about neither. In the era of capitalocene and climate crisis, many western thinkers seem to find the same old nihilistic truths about “Humanity” as the main issue. That we, as humans, are to blame, and humanity as such is an error. That if we had less people or if people would go extinct the planet would survive better. And for some reason, the “less people” argument usually points the finger towards India, China and so on. But it isn’t humanity that we should blame, it’s the rich and greedy, it’s the colonialist capitalists who run this show.
The richest biodiversity in nature is found in areas where there are also indigenous people. They have been living there for generations without any trouble. I believe we have a lot to learn from them. And we have zero to learn from the ecofascists, who try to scapegoat the global South to take guilt for the global North’s emissions and for the ecocide that the colonialists have caused to their land.
With more people losing their homes because of drought, fires and wars caused by climate crisis, this is a painful issue that we cannot just ignore. Fascism forms new ways and ideas and sneaks in our societies if we are not awake and ready to root it out, and this means we have to be alert to identify also the new ecofascist tendencies.
Do you see this morbid form of death metal as an adequate instrument to channel any message you want to channel?
Sisli: Most definitely yes, it’s a grim world, these are grim times, we need more grim music.
By the way, what are the other songs about? “New Venus” for example? How does your environment – cultural or social, whatever – shape the songs’ lyrics?
Sisli: “New Venus” is about the risks of climate engineering, or geoengineering which is the current term in use. The mad technological solutions offered for the climate crisis, none of them go for the core issue, which is overconsumption of resources. We cannot escape the facts of matter and energy. According to space research, Venus underwent at some point a catastrophic climate change that culminated in a runaway global warming. This is one of the worst-case scenarios for our planet in the future. This all too might turn into a scorching world, that is uninhabitable to the majority of all life we now know to exist. A new Venus.
I live in the Arctic North, about 1000 kilometres from the capital of Finland, Helsinki. As I’m writing this it’s -30 Celsius degrees outside; that should give you some perspective. There isn’t much going on culturally, when it comes to extreme metal or punk gigs. Sometimes there’s a gig in one hour’s driving distance but that occurs like once a year or so. So my cultural bubble is strongly located in Southern Finland. Here in the North I try to live as ecologically as feasible, which means I grow a lot of my own food, forage herbs, berries and mushrooms, and am active in the local environmental movement. This all of course shapes my understanding of the world a lot.
The climate warming is not uniform. The Arctic North has warmed four times faster than the rest of the world. Everything is changing, the local nature is changing so fast that the animals cannot adapt to it. Even the snow is different.
The worst thing though seems to be the so-called green transition, which means that our nature’s minerals are extracted through extensive open-pit mining with fossil fuels to create the so-called clean energy. The mines are located next to nature conservation areas or even beneath them as, surprise surprise, where there’s interesting minerals there’s usually rich biodiversity in nature as well. Multinational mining companies come here with their money, corrupt the local villages by donating to youth sports and new schools, steal the land, pollute the waters, destroy nature-based livelihoods and the nature itself, and after 10 to 20 years they are gone with their money, the mine is closed, the people are unemployed, the destroyed nature will stay there forever, the tailings continue polluting for generations.
So our environmental movements exist to protect life, to speak for the future generations. This all is where I draw my inspiration to my lyrics. I offer no easy solutions to complex topics and I hope that can be heard through the dystopian grief and anger. I guess it would be easier to just sing along about hiking metal punks, for sure. Maybe I’ll do that when I’m finished with this.
You have a tour coming up this year. How many dates do you already have confirmed? How did you decide to start its organization, as you have only one EP released yet and the album will be out only in May?
Sisli: We have a bunch of release gigs first in Finland in May, and in October we are heading up for a Euro tour with our good friends from Tunkio (tunkio.bandcamp.com), a killer goregrind band you should most definitely check out if you haven’t heard of them already!!! I haven’t got the most recent update on our tour dates right now. We have had overwhelmingly positive feedback on our past gigs so I guess it was just time to gear up. We have to prepare stuff well ahead also, because we all are adults that are more or less busy with bands, jobs, families, fighting against multinational mining companies, you know the basic stuff, right?
What are your ambitions regarding Unearthly Rites’ future? Will you put more energy in this band or do you already switch to your other bands?
Sisli: Haha, that’s a bit arrogant, right off! For me Unearthly Rites is my main project at the moment, the rest of my energy nowadays goes to the environmental movements of the Arctic North. I love it when it’s time to hit the night train and I know that after a 14-hour ride, in the morning I can walk from the train station to wake up my bandmates, drink way too much coffee, and then hit the band practice.
And speaking of ambition, we have the songs pretty much ready for our second album. It’s gonna be even darker — we are preparing for stuff that will give you a lifelong insomnia of horrors, so I hope you’re prepared for it!
https://www.facebook.com/unearthlyrites666