Fresh Finnish act Arctis make no apologies or excuses for their innovative approach to modern metal. Embracing elements of pop, EDM, and trance into their heavy base, it’s a sound that’s undeniably catchy and infectious. Not to mention fun. Their self-titled debut is just around the corner to being released through Napalm Records. So we had a chat with vocalist Alva Sandström and guitarist Björn Johansson to get an impression of what went into their particular sound. We also were treated to their sound within the Finnish spectrum, their goals as a group, and thoughts on pop music itself.
Dead Rhetoric: What is the vibe that you are trying to cultivate with your sound? What is your vision of the sound that you’ve started with Arctis?
Alva Sandström: We were kind of experimenting and trying things out as we started. But as we made new demos over the last few years, I think it’s going to be a bit less ‘rock’ but have even more of the ‘pop’ metal that we are promising. It’s definitely a start and we really wanted to get this mystique and magic of the North. There’s a bit of melancholy to the songs.
Björn Johansson: Also in the sound, we have this cyberpunk style interweaved with it. We have the traditional instruments of a metal band, the guitars, bass, and drums, but to the symphonic stuff we have added elements from trance and EDM. I would say that it’s hard to describe what we are aiming at. In a way, it’s quite natural and organic for us, because this is what happens when you put a bunch of maniacs into a studio in Finland.
Sandström: It’s really a blend of a lot of things, and we find inspiration from so many different types of music. So it’s really a blend and you don’t really know what way it’s going to go, because it can go in so many ways. We were aiming to have this heaviness and would layer in on top with the pop crown, which are my vocals and the EDM stuff. That’s sort of our redline, so to speak, that we need the heaviness and the lightness and trying to bring them together. So we are on that path at least.
Dead Rhetoric: In listening to it so far, it’s hard to compare it to much other than maybe Amaranthe if you removed the heavier vocals from it. I hate to throw the band comparisons around, but I am curious with the pop elements. Is that a piece you tried to aim for from the start?
Johansson: Yeah, actually. We have told this story a few times, but we actually had a band that was heavier and darker than this. But then we went into the studio with Jimmy Westerlund, who was our producer, and from the first song, we felt it was so much different than what we would usually do. We felt like we should make a new band from scratch. It was never a thing where we had to make it more melodic to appease someone. It came straight from us. We wanted to do something different and new, and I’m very happy with the result. It feels like we did bring something new to the table.
Sandström: With the pop elements, we felt like we needed something new. We already knew the dark and heavy, and we wanted to try something else.
Johansson: By going into the pop genres and borrowing ideas from them, we feel like we are discovering something new in the metal genre. I’m excited about it!
Sandström: Definitely! It’s a lot of freedom. To not be like, ‘we are symphonic metal.’ We have so many boxes. In people’s attempt to like it, they are getting angry if we aren’t symphonic metal so we are trying to say that we have the freedom to do what we want.
Dead Rhetoric: At least when it’s from the beginning, when you go outside the box, you aren’t going to get the close-minded people who complain that you went from one thing to another.
Sandström: That’s a good point. With our freedom from the start, we aren’t putting us into a specific box. You can have a lot of variety then. The people won’t go away. You can just get more people.
Dead Rhetoric: Most Finnish bands I speak to have more of a dark, morose sound. You are influenced by Finland but how does that play into your catchy and futuristic sound?
Johansson: The thing is, which is very unknown in the world, is that we are Fino-Swedes. We are a minority in Finland. Swedish is our mother tongue but we still aren’t Swedes. It would be like Canadian-Americans or something like that. We aren’t regarded as Swedes but we aren’t regarded as Finns either. They are really mean to us. But this influences the sound. We are on the west coast of Finland, and we are usually brought up with Swedish music and Swedish pop culture. When Sweden gets something new, we usually hear about it first, then it takes like 10 years and the Finns hear it. So we are quite caught up with the trends, and that’s why we sound very different from Finnish bands, because we are a small group of people who have a different culture and music than regular Finns.
Sandström: There’s definitely a bit more of the Swedes in us than the really Finn-Finns [laughs] but we are Finns at heart as well. We have this culture from Sweden too that does influence things.
Johansson: So it’s basically a pint, mixed with Swedish and Finnish booze. That’s what makes us, basically [laughter].
Dead Rhetoric: You mentioned the production a bit before. How did you assemble the production and mastering team for the album? There are some pretty big names in there.
Johansson: We had contacts from our management to Stefan Glaumann, who has done Rammstein and Svante Forsbäck, who we worked with before. We knew him before, but Jimmy was new. He was like a friend of a friend, and he is a Fino-Swede too. We are only 250,000 people but we run into each other eventually. That’s how we came into contact with him. But it was a lot through our management.
Dead Rhetoric: How important is the concept of the band and album? You have that dark and white piece and the futuristic look. I noticed that you all also have an occupation/character piece like “Captain, Magician, and Rambler.” How does that all play into the overall concept?
Sandström: We didn’t show much nature yet, which is the biggest influence as well. The redline is this light and dark – in the music it’s the metal and the pop. Then we have Finnish summers and Finnish winters, which are very light and very dark. We have me, the frontwoman, in white, and the guys in black. We have everything in contrast, and in that we find a lot to work with.
Johansson: The characters we have are kind of like extensions of ourselves and our personality traits. I am “The Captain,” and I’m a bit like a 19th century captain myself. I’m the oldest soul in the band. My personality fits into that characterization. Michael [Mikander] is “The Magician,” and to be honest he is a bit of a magician because he’s very mystic and no one really knows what the hell he is doing. He’s like a magician in his tower, working on stuff. Mika [Paananen] “The Sage,” the guy who loves books and self-learning. He’s like our secretary [laughs].
Sandström: The other thing I wanted to talk about with contrast was about nature and technology. You have everything in the organic state and then there’s the digital technology. We like to combine the contrast and see what happens in the middle. On top of that, we wanted everyone to be their own artist. To have a character. We aren’t a concept band, but the characters just amplify ourselves. It’s not like we are playing theater, but we wanted everyone to have their own character in the gang.
Dead Rhetoric: Does the character piece help to push you outside your comfort zones too?
Johansson: I would say it helps us get into other people’s comfort zones! You should see me when I get rum! That’s when I’m really “The Captain.” [laughter]
Sandström: I think it’s something that you can hold onto. Like it’s the essence, to have a character or personality. You take the essence of it to take a straight path to when you are performing and so on.
Dead Rhetoric: The video came out today, so what prompted the Lambretta cover “Bimbo?”
Johansson: It was suggested to us by our team. Someone in our management said that we should do it. The fun thing is that I listened to Lambretta back in the day when they released it. I thought it was really nice, and I’ve listened to it over the years and thought it was a really good song. It would be fun to do something with it. Our drummer hated the song, and then they suggested we should do it [laughs]! It turned out really good, and our drummer doesn’t hate it anymore. He doesn’t hate it anymore. He won’t suffer on tour [laughs].
Sandström: He just needs to play it for the rest of his life, maybe. That’s hope we get new songs! But yeah, it’s pretty fun. It was a song that we listened to when we were teenagers, and they are another Nordic band with a female-fronted group. There’s a lot of cool coincidences. It just happened.
Dead Rhetoric: You mentioned playing that song for the rest of your life. What do you want Arctis to accomplish? What are your goals for the band?
Johansson: We are always in it for the long game. That’s how we work with everything. That’s why we waited so long to release this album. It was done in 2020. But during the pandemic, it didn’t make sense to release anything, because we would not have been able to promote it live. We have written songs in the pandemic, so we have material for the next album and probably the third album as well. That’s how Arctis works. We bide our time and we are in it for the long game. Personally, I would love to see Arctis play in big arenas around the world. Making these insanely advanced shows with both projections and scenery. Everything to make a universe and experience with the music and the visuals. So that everyone who comes to the shows feels that they got the value for their money.
Sandström: I think that’s really where we will come alive. That’s how we were thinking from the start. We want to bring the North to everyone. They can get into this different kind of world. If we get to the point where we can have big live shows, we can do a lot of stuff on stage, that’s where we can really do this. So we are in it for that. And well, we just want to live and work with your passion, so we are not backing down. We are trying to make a living from it and do it for the rest of our lives. I’m really looking forward to everything that’s coming. We have waited a long time for this. Let’s make it happen now!
Another thing, when you are in this genre-fluid space, we want to get to this point where we are a band that is part of the evolution in metal. Like Bring Me the Horizon, who have done a lot of things. They were one of the first to put together other genres into metal, in a way. They started so different, so we want to be a part of that evolution of how metal will sound in the future. We want to be one of the first to be there. We are trying to work our way to that point.
Dead Rhetoric: So in terms of the evolution of metal, what do you hope to see as you move with it?
Johansson: I really hope to see lots of young people really getting into metal, so we have fresh blood in the scene in the future. That’s my biggest wish. I love the metal culture, because it’s a caring culture and it’s about cool music and having a great time. So I want to see a continuation of that. So I hope that we grow with it and bring in new fans and young people. That’s what I want to see.
Sandström: You try to trick them into going into the metal community by maybe sounding a bit less metal. But eventually they will come to love the metal in all of the music. We are actually trying to be a part of making metal continue on in the future, and to be something fresh.
Dead Rhetoric: There is a portion of the metal fanbase that is very stuck in their ways, to be somewhat nice, but I do think there is that need. In bands like yourselves, there’s this push towards breaking that traditional barrier and allowing other people in. I think it’s good to have that crossover potential with other genres. It definitely helps bring in new blood when you have a sound that people haven’t heard before.
Sandström: You can make it heavier again. It’s always the super heavy that is going to scare ‘normal’ people away. If you start a bit nicer, then maybe they will say, “Oh, I like this too now!”
Johansson: It’s like having an afterparty at your house. You start with the soft stuff, but then you have the really hard stuff over here!
Sandström: We aren’t super metal, and you can hear that on the album. We will have some heavier stuff, maybe.
Dead Rhetoric: You have been sitting on this music since 2020. When you look at it as you have been moving through time, do you ever have any times where you wish you tried something different and then apply it to something you are working on now?
Johansson: You definitely learn stuff by completing stuff. But you also come to accept that it is different, and things are moving and evolving. We are very proud of the first album and satisfied with the songs. It will be a bit different on the next album, but the essence of Arctis will still be there. The stuff that people love. But I think as artists, we evolve and make different records from time to time. It’s hard to be the same person you were four years ago. It’s hard to say how the third album will sound, for instance.
Dead Rhetoric: What do you like about pop music, in terms of inserting it into metal?
Sandström: [laughs] I don’t really like pop music! I just like to do what we do. I just like to experiment in the songwriting and there is so much…the typical pop music isn’t for me, but I take a lot of inspiration from other electronic genres. One of the things, vocals for those genres, can be very majestic and beautiful. You don’t go all in, like raw power like in metal. There’s a lot of dynamic I can bring in from other genres. But the soundscapes, that’s really what we love to work with. All of the atmospheric elements and soundscapes, that’s something we really take from other genres. So we like to get new elements and not just stick with heaviness. I’m not someone who listens to happy songs, I listen to more melancholic songs. But you can also find that in pop.
Johansson: First and foremost, just like everyone else in the band, I’m a metalhead at heart. I love big guitars. So for me, in feeling satisfied with a song, I need the guitars to be there. But I can still enjoy pop music for what it is. It can be very fresh and uplifting to listen to something completely different to what I usually do. What we incorporate into Arctis is that sense of freshness and open sounds.
I also enjoy the simplicity of pop music sometimes. Simplicity should not be mismatched with easy. It’s rather hard to get something easy and simple to carry a song. So I can admire the songs and the craft from the composer. The productions are always really inspiring. You can hear the hours that went into making it. A good pop song is awesome, but I do prefer melodic pop. An arrangement that supports melodies. I can’t really enjoy just vocals and beats, like some of what comes out today. There needs to be something more than a repetitive beat.
Dead Rhetoric: What are your plans for next year at this point?
Johansson: We can’t say much, but we are going to be busy. We will be so busy that we don’t stop until we are 70 years old, or something like that. But things are happening that cannot be undone. It’s like a wild horse that is going on a mad run, we just have to stay on it now. If we drop it, then we lose it. We have to be on top of it. Now is the time to forge while the iron is hot. We are going to make new music, do a lot of shows.
Sandström: We are hoping for another tour, discussions are ongoing with tours and festivals. We are working on album number two, and we will try to get that out pretty fast as well. As Bjorn said, we just want to get it out now and get the years back that we waited for. We aren’t getting any younger. We are all in.