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Ensiferum / Sami Hinkka takes us to the high seas

The folk-inspired melodic Death Metal of Ensiferum is set to take a slightly different path on the bands upcoming eighth studio album, ‘Thalassic’, which will hit the shops 10 July 2020.

‘Thalassic’, taken from the ancient Greek as ‘of or relating to seas’, incorporates the traditional orchestrations and folk instrumentation, along with roaring guitars, bass, and drums, which we associate with any Ensiferum piece of work, but this is the first album from them to be built around a theme.

Bassist/vocalist Sami Hinkka told MetalTalk: “The idea of it started to brew in my mind when I was doing interviews for ‘Two Paths’ and many journalists asked if it was a theme album, and I noticed that I was answering all the time that, because of the way we compose, it’s almost impossible to make a theme album.

“This really started to piss me off and the decision was made: the next album would have a theme.

“At that time, we already had a few songs almost ready for the next album and I started to listen to the demos much more from the feeling aspect instead of analyzing them musically. For some reason, all of them took me to a seashore, and the theme was found: something related to sea or water.

“So I started to read about history, myths and legend around the world that had something to do with the theme, but even though all of the lyrics are obviously inspired by this, I tried my best to keep Ensiferum’s heroic mentality in them.

Cover of the Ensiferum album Thalassic

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“In the end, there were too many ideas for lyrics, because I didn’t set myself any boundaries – like all stories would have to be Nordic, etc, and one of my favourite songs on the album tells about Andromeda from Greek mythology.

“I can’t promise that this way of lyric-writing will be the future of Ensiferum, but at least we did this once.”

But that will not deviate from the traditional sounds associated with Ensiferum. Indeed, the band are excited about the future.

Hinkka continues: “I think we managed to take another step ahead musically and we also utilized the best parts of our old sound.  There are lots of Ensiferum’s trademarks: beautiful folkish melodies, ass-kicking riffs, a nice mix of different vocals and great singalong choruses.”

Looking ahead, the band only intend to keep on doing what they do best. “We are very privileged to be full-time musicians, but you never know what the future brings. I hope we can keep doing the thing we love the most.

“What I really hope happens is a support tour with much a bigger band because in the folk, pagan, battle, whatever Metal scenes everyone knows Ensiferum – so Steve Harris, if you are reading this: we are ready!”

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