By this point, a band sure to be on many people’s radar, especially fans of doom and gothic metal, has to be that of Cemetery Skyline. With members from established acts like Dark Tranquillity, Omnium Gatherum, Sentenced, Dimmu Borgir, and Amorphis (to name only a few) coming together, it’s bound to pique some interest. Worthy of the hype, the act’s debut, Nordic Gothic, merges elements of gothic, pop, doom, and more into a hooky yet melancholic sound. We spoke with guitarist Markus Vanhala to get a better picture of how the band came to be, their goals, and much more.
Dead Rhetoric: You all are in other groups, where’d the idea come about to do another band together?
Markus Vanhala: It actually happened during 70,000 Tons of of Metal, the first sparks of Cemetery Skyline. I was speaking with a few friends in the bar, and we talked about it and then we wrote an album and we’re an actual band now! We all love this kind of music. It’s what we listened to in the ‘90s, growing up. We were metal teenagers but everyone was listening to stuff like Sisters of Mercy and Type O Negative in secrecy. That’s kind of the thing that ties us together in the band. It’s totally different than what we are all doing in our own bands. It wouldn’t make any sense to form another band and do melodic death. I already have two of those, and Mikael [Stanne] already has a few of those.
Dead Rhetoric: It does seem kind of silly to get all of these people together and just play the same thing you’ve been doing, just in a slightly different way.
Vanhala: It would be really boring. The idea of this band is to keep everything really interesting for ourselves and doing something we haven’t done before. For example, Mikael has never sung for a whole album. It’s been a while since I was in a band with a clean singer. It’s been really nice in keeping it nice and fresh for us. In the end, we tried to copy Type O Negative and Sisters of Mercy and I guess we failed. The album doesn’t sound much like them, so we accidentally went original.
Now it somehow seems like gothic music is trendier. There are bands like Unto Others in the US, and I just listened to the new song from Tribulation yesterday and they have been going in that direction. There’s a Netflix show about Wednesday, a gothic girl. All of those things happened since we formed the band four years ago. It wasn’t trendy at all then, so we were just going off of the nostalgia in our minds. Now it seems like we hit the right spot for this kind of music somehow. It’s weird.
Dead Rhetoric: I do remember in the early 2000s there was a ton of gothic metal coming out, that Sentenced sparked with their last few albums. It’s been a while but yeah, now there is a new wave coming in. You’ll get there before everyone really gets back into it.
Vanhala: That’s how the music world works. It’s always in circles. A few years ago, everyone was doing ‘80s-type music and synthwave. Now it seems like the ‘90s is trendier. Then theres bands like Lorna Shore and newer groups sounding like Dimmu Borgir. Somehow music always goes in circles.
Dead Rhetoric: You mentioned the band formed at the bar. Is it safe to say that this is more a band of friends than anything else?
Vanhala: Definitely! We are all friends. I hate the word supergroup. The label is doing this because it’s people from different bands, but for us, it’s more like a band of friends. We have known each other for a number of years. We have done a bunch of tours and met in the buses. For us, it’s like doing this with people who are your really good friends who are easy to work with, and have a lot of fun together.
Dead Rhetoric: You have been at this for a few years. Was it a matter of schedules lining up to get it together or ensuring nothing was rushed?
Vanhala: Both. Because when you look at the calendar when you look at the members, its insane to work on trying to get gigs and stuff. But we are actually going to do that at some point. We took our time because we didn’t even exist for the people. We did it for us, and we didn’t have any deadlines. Usually we would have a plan for bands like Omnium Gatherum on labels that you have to have an album by this time. But we didn’t have that pressure so we took our time. It took four years. It’s the longest time I have spent on an album. We really worked hard on this one, and we wanted it to be the best, most mature Cemetery Skyline album we could present. I’m really happy with the album after many months, so we did something right!
Dead Rhetoric: Given your history, what’s the most important piece to you when presenting a new band?
Vanhala: Down the road I have been noticing that marketing a band, you have to have a band. Back in the day, it was more about the music. Unfortunately, the band needs to have some sort of story and this whole 360-styled thing. Of course the music comes first, and that’s what it is all about. We started to do this to do music that we really liked. Mikael came up with a really cool concept about the lyrics all around this album dealing with Nordic/Scandinavian gothic style living. Which is about living in solitude and being alone in the North. Which some might romanticize but it’s real, and it’s self-chosen because people here in the North are antisocial than those in the South, and we don’t have the kind of culture of big families living together.
So we have a lot of people living alone and the largest rate of people dying alone. When you are alone in your apartment, you always hear about people lying dead in their own apartment. That’s pretty much what the album is dealing with. We want to do the music videos to create this world too. We got this crazy, great French guy to do our videos called Metastazis. He’s quite a household name in metal visuals. He worked hard to make this Cemetery Skyline world with his artwork and “The Coldest Heart” music video. So we are building our own world, it’s more than just music.
Dead Rhetoric: Do you think that the whole concept sells people on the idea, rather than just being absorbed by the music?
Vanhala: Yeah, that’s what people are after. They aren’t after just the music, but brands and images and words. For example, Ghost. I love Ghost, and there’s nothing wrong with them. But if Ghost had been more ordinary band, with guys just playing in jeans and stuff with short hair, it wouldn’t be as interesting to people. Or Amon Amarth, without Vikings.
Dead Rhetoric: So what makes Cemetery Skyline stand out to you? In terms of the music, presentation, or even just in contrast to the other bands that you are involved with.
Vanhala: It’s a completely different band, so it’s a really different music that I am used to doing. Which is what makes it more interesting and fresh. Of course, working with my buddies that I have known – Mikael and Santeri [Kallio] for 15 years and we have done a number of tours together. We never imagined that we would be in a band together. We always had late night jams and drinking beer and getting to know what our musical tastes were. We were really in the same lane in our way of the thinking for the music.
Of course, I was always a huge Sentenced fan, so having Vesa [Ranta] drumming for us is amazing.When I was 15 years old, I was listening to Sentenced, Amorphis, Dark Tranquillity, and Dimmu Borgir, so it’s quite weird that now those guys are in the same band as me. You have to stop and think at those type of moments and think, “This is actually really cool!”
Dead Rhetoric: I know you said you didn’t like the term supergroup. The other thing we tend to do nowadays is that bands, despite presenting an original sound, inevitably get compared to other things and categorized. What are your hopes for that? Are you trying to avoid the goth label?
Vanhala: It’s tricky because at some point we just said ‘goth.’ The working title for the band was ‘Finnish/Swedish goth band.’ But I agree that we are not just ‘goth,’ even though the labels call us that. I would say we are more like dark rock or whatever you want to call it. It’s music. I think the album is quite different. There’s pop metal, there’s ballads, and really gothic stuff. I don’t want to label it too much, but people can listen to the album and figure out what they want to think. If they want to say at the first press release that we are a doom band, then probably everyone would be asking if we are a doom band. People always get fooled by the terms on the press releases and then people buy it.
Dead Rhetoric: You have a number of bands you are in that have a melancholic tone. Where do you draw inspiration when it comes to gloom?
Vanhala: In my world, every band is really different. Omnium Gatherum is really uplifting and technical, Insomnium is really gloomy and melancholic and very Finnish music. Cemetery Skyline is then something completely different. It would be melancholic, but it can also be poppy. There’s a bunch of pop elements and hope on the music and lyrics. There has to be some hope if there is despair, but there’s really no despair without hope. Then it’s all black. But that’s just the way I see music. Finnish Christmas songs are really miserable. Finnish church songs are really miserable, and this melancholic music is taught to kids at a young age, so I guess that makes a big thing in terms of the Finnish bands being more melancholic. It is programmed into our DNA at a tender age.
Dead Rhetoric: What do you feel is an important aspect to riffs within metal songs? What do you aim for when writing?
Vanhala: There’s never a real template for how I work. Sometimes it can be a good riff that doesn’t make a good song, and sometimes a silly riff can make a song golden. I don’t know how doing the music happens, it’s always a different kind of process. It just kind of happens. It’s never easy, but I would say that some people might think that I am doing four albums in a short time, but it’s never easy. I don’t get those songs out of nothing. It’s a lot of work and it’s hours and hours in the nights, awake and doing music. Music should never be easy. If it records too easy, then its probably bullshit. That’s my experience from my own adventures. You have to suffer a bit to make something that will stand out.
Dead Rhetoric: You talked about moving away from just the music earlier, what do you other shifts in terms of metal have you seen through the years?
Vanhala: The rise of social media, which is horrible. I don’t have TikTok. It’s a scary world for me. All the people listening to music for 20 seconds in TikTok and that’s how many bands are getting their breakthrough. Now with all this artificial intelligence coming in with music, it doesn’t look too bright in the future. But luckily, we are getting old, so soon we will be gone [laughs]. I like the old world better, so maybe I’m a boomer, but music had some value. You actually had to buy the cd and listen to it. It gave it some value. It’s not something people just click on Instagram and have some random music play for their story…which will be online for 24 hours and it’s gone.
Dead Rhetoric: It’s more disposable…
Vanhala: Yeah, that’s the word. Metallica had the song, “Disposable Heroes.” They did that in ‘86 but it’s about modern times.
Dead Rhetoric: If you had a goal with Cemetery Skyline at this point, what would you want for the band? What would you like to see for Cemetery Skyline in the future?
Vanhala: The album isn’t out yet so we don’t know if people will hate it. But if they do, it doesn’t matter because we are really happy with it. We worked so hard for four years and now it’s just about enjoying what it will become. We are doing a small number of gigs, and that’s already a big bonus for me because we were not supposed to be a live band. But we played our first festival this summer.
There is already some hope for next year, and we have ProgPower in the US confirmed. That makes me happy enough that we are doing some gigs. We are not going to be a big touring band because there’s no time with everyone’s schedules with other bands but if we can play a show every now and then that’s okay by me. We are already writing stuff for the next release. Looks like we are not going to be a one-album wonder. We actually signed a deal with Century Media for more than one album.
Dead Rhetoric: Plans for the rest of this year and into 2025? Anything going on with your other bands?
Vanhala: Tomorrow I will be leaving for Japan with Omnium Gatherum. We are touring Asia for three weeks. Then we have a record release party in NYC at Duffs for Cemetery Skyline album. I have to fly right to New York so it will be interesting with the time zones. Then I am off, so I have to write the new Omnium Gatherum album. Also, I Am The Night is doing a new album at the moment. Then Insomnium is going to South America and Insomnium and Omnium are touring Europe together. So for the next few months, I know pretty much every day where I will be. My future is quite planned by other people. I don’t have any problems of thinking what I would do with my free time. But I’m used to it.