Tell us a history of how Swallow the Sun came to be. 
Aleksi: It started as a project for Raivio to get a few songs done that didn’t fit the style of his other band at the time. We got to play together, because we knew each other from previous bands and such. I think that after recording the first demo everybody realized that we have something here and the project became a band.

I see you worked with 3 labels so far has it been a tough road to get a stable label behind the band.
Aleksi: Well, to be exact, basically we’ve worked with two labels, Firebox and Spinefarm, and they have been licensing the album to other labels, such as Century Media and Candlelight Records. We started on Firebox, which was an excellent label, but unfortunately their resources for working abroad were limited. There were no difficulties in finding a label for the third album; we got some pretty good offers of which Spinefarm’s pleased us most.

Your music on " hope " reminds me a lot of Saturnus or Anathema  were or are they a major influence on your sound? 
Aleksi: We have listened to Anathema to some extent, but it’s not really a major influence. The biggest influence is also the most obvious, being My Dying Bride, though I think that we have managed to create our own sound by merging other influences with that kind of sound.
 
How did you get with Candlelight Records for the latest CD? 
Aleksi: Spinefarm has handled all the business with them, so I really don’t know.
 
You music is a strong mix of Doom, Gothic and Melodic Death metal. I really like the mix of Clean and Growled Vocals. Is this a popular style in Finland currently as I see Firebox is from there and I know bands like Skepticism and Thergothon came from there as well?
Aleksi: Even though metal is very popular in Finland at the moment, I wouldn’t say that this kind of doom/death -metal is a “popular style”. Actually, we have been rather surprised about our success here. We would’ve never anticipated anything like Top 3 chart positions with this kind of music.
 
If there was on band or project you could gig or record with who would it be and why? 
Aleksi: Slayer, because they are the best fucking band ever.

Is there a story or theme behind  "hope" CD?
Aleksi: There’s nothing that we planned on, but the common theme about the songs on “Hope” is that almost all of them somehow deal with the concept of hope, hence the name. That was not intentional, but when we were working on the album title, we noticed that it was something that the song lyrics shared.

Your website is very nice to you feel in the 21st century a major internet push is needed.  
Aleksi: I think it’s important to have a certain “web presence”, because much of the scene has moved to the Internet. People have gotten used to searching for bands and information on the web.

What you thoughts on digital downloads, myspace, bit torrents etc . Are you into the technology or think it hurts more then helps? 
Aleksi: Well, it’s a difficult question - it’s a good possibility to get to know bands by downloading a few songs from them, I myself have bought many albums because I had heard them on the Internet - but then again, there’s many people who download all their music, and think that all culture should be available for free, and that kind of thinking sucks ass. But it should be looked into, there could be possibilities to knowingly use the internet downloads as a promotional channel.

Do the members of Swallow the sun play in other projects ?? 
Aleksi: Juha’s and Pasi’s former band Plutonium Orange is showing some signs of life, Matti plays in Atakhama, which has done one album, and I play in Trollheims Grott. In addition, I am a regular session member in Ghost Brigade - which is releasing their debut album with Season of Mist this year - and I’ve worked a lot with Insomnium. And of course all of us have some other projects under work.

I do see members of Katatonia and Amorphis  guested on the CD how did that come about?
Aleksi: Well, Mikko just happened to ask Jonas on some festival we both played on that would he be interested in doing guest vocals, and as he hadn’t done anything like that before he was down with it. And Tomi came about when we were thinking of who could sing the cover song, and as we all like Amorphis a lot we thought we’d give him a call. It was a real pleasure working with both of them, they are very professional and we are huge fans of their bands.

Thank you for your time any closing thoughts here? 
Aleksi: You will hear from us. Let’s Metal!

Absolute Zero Metal