STORY OF AURINGON HAUTA
History of Solgrav / Auringon hauta from the eyes of Lari Hammarberg
The beginning of Solgrav, autumn 2001.
Founding members Janne Väätäinen and Sakari harju form the band from the ruins of their previous black/death/thrash project. From various options for the name, Solgrav (The tomb of the sun) was chosen. Originally bands name was ment to be in Finnish, Auringon hauta (The tomb of the sun), but at the time, Swedish/Norwegian equalient Solgrav sounded better .The band was now in existance, with the name Solgrav. The making of the first demo starts at december 2001 and continues to april 2002.
Drummer, spring 2002.
For me this journey started at early 2002, at the time I was without a clear direction with my musical interests and friends to play with... Then with the help of new technological wonder of digital collective consciousness, internet, i found this band, young guys like myself, playing some sort of mixture of extreme underground metal, and these guys stated at their website they are looking for a drummer. Without much hesitation i sent these guys an email. That resulted to a meeting between me and Janne. I was accepted as a full time drummer right away and that meant the end for the drummachine and for me it meant one step closer to my dream of becoming a musician.
First demo gets immortalized.
The ongoing recordings of the first demo release were already underway when i joined. This was done at a homestudio.. due to my late joining to the group, only performance for me on the first demo was one vocaltrack on second song "Sysimusta yö." This demo Pohjoisen Hämärän Sarastus was very limited and low budget, only 40 copies were made, which were mostly distributed to friends and some local recordshops. The music was very different from what it is today, mainly takin its influence from the nordic bands like Thy Serpent, Immortal etc.. The lyrics were about nature, paganism and anti-christianity. The lyrics were mostly written by Janne, but Jussi Sinkkonen, our longtime lyricist to be, wrote lyrics for the song "Kristallitaivas."
 
Duo, autumn 2002.
Sakari Harju leaves the band, due to his lack of motivation and time to concentrate on music writing, leaving me and Janne as a duo. It was a letdown, because Sakari was a talented guitarist. Despite this loss we carried on and writing of new material for second demo started. That time was groundbreaking for our musical direction, besides of change in sound to more organic one and the added diversity in songmaterial, our goal became clear; to include tradional instruments and lyrics to our vision of metal music we love.
Noitakansa, winter 2002-2003.
Writing of the second demo resulted in four brand new songs, 18 minutes of new material, enough for the recordings. We also had a fifth song composed, but we decided to drop it because it was not as good as the other songs. The search for decent studio was, luckily to us, quite quick and easy. Our friends in the underground metal scene here had used services of a nice little studio just "next door." After some phonecalls and deals about payments etc. we were all set. The recording session was decided to be held at 17th - 18th January 2003 in Media Workshop, Joutseno. It was my and Janne's first experience of a real studio environment and thanks to a talented and experienced studio engineer we had, the result was extremely pleasing at the time. Both performance and the production was more than enough for a first "real" demo. The release of this demo was really smooth and quick process, with only a slight delay with mixing, which was done by Matti Peltonen(R.I.P.). A pressing of 200 copies, pro quality booklet and decent production resulted in many good reviews and to growing interest among friends and the scene.
 
In search of new sound and full line-up, summer - autumn 2003.
At this time it became clear that deeper style changes and a need for full line-up is a requirement for our future endeavours... The language choice was clear since the day one. Go Finnish, or go home! The slight folk tradition feel we had, plus the somewhat traditional sounding lyrics seemed to be the way to go. At the summer of 2003, we found a new member, Taneli Kejonen, as our second guitarist. His skill was with 7-string guitar, and this later on showed to be a very significant thing for our sound, a thing which we shall be thankful to him for the rest of our days. Soon after with help of our newfound guitarist we found a fulltime vocalist, Niko Kuljuntausta. With this four member line-up we started writing material for yet another demo, this time backed up by mouthharp, acoustic and 7-string guitars, a dedicated vocalist, piano instead of keyboards and more members to divide our workload, the songmaterial made was a lot stronger than before. At these times a choice was made to deepen our lyrical side and start using ancient rune-singing type lyrics and poems in our work.
Pohjola Kotimme, Luonto Emomme, Pimeys Veljemme Ja Kirves Turvamme, autumn 2003.
We looked for a studio to record our 3rd demo, but in search for a more raw sound, we decided to do this by ourselves. Taneli arranged a digital 8 track recorder/mixer, some good quality mics were borrowed from Media Workshop and so on... The demo was recorded in our rehearsal place and got the name "Pohjola kotimme, luonto emomme, pimeys veljemme ja kirves turvamme". It was released after half year delay (Janne was serving his military service) at summer 2004 as a 299 piece pressing and got even more attention than the previous one. The production was quite weak, as predicted, but the material was stronger than ever. This demo raised attention of some record labels too and resulted to negotiations for a full length album. We had already decided before releasing the demo, that this was going to be our last demo, and that it was.
 
The fifth member and the debut longplay Auringon hauta, 2004 - 2005.
Need for a fulltime bassist arised from previous experiences with recordings and rehearsals. Janne and Taneli used to deal with the basstracks before, but it seemed that a fulltime bassist was to be our next goal with further completing our line-up. Petri "Hiienkirnu" Immonen was then found to punish the 5-stringer. Writing of the songs for first album was finished in late 2004, and at January 2005 we were ready for recordings. Suitable studio was then found after some negotiations with few different people. Sessions took place at Demoncave studio, which was also used by Horna and Battlelore as their reheasal room at the time. The engineer/mixer was to be Arttu Pulkkinen. Recordings started at January 2005 and the final master was ready in April. Mastering was done at Sonic House studio.
Negoatiations with various labels were troublesome, which delayed the release 'til autumn 2005. We signed a one album record deal with Finnish indie label Nocturnal Woodlands Productions. The album was released as a 1000 copy pressing. The feedback was controvertial as intented, we gave some interviews,and fanbase was growing. The Auringon Hauta album was sort of self titled and this planted the seed for our name change later on. Material was more diverse than before, new instruments were used, Kantele, Flutes, some percussion pieces and ambient sounds were first time introduced to our sound. The album was a theme album telling an epic story of humankind from rise to fall. Our old friend Jussi Sinkkonen wrote all the lyrics this time.
 
Split album Kaksi Perkelettä, the full line-up breaks, late 2005 to 2006
At the same time with making process of our debute we already had plans for next release, which was to become a full length split album with death metal band Fornjotr. Before its recordings took place, Petri Immonen left the band to concetrate on his main band Gaurithoth. Without a fulltime bassist Janne took the bass as his responsibility once again. It was also decited that Taneli Kejonen would not participate on the recordings of the split album, because he moved to central Finland 250 kilometers away from rest of the band. Taneli still wrote a few riffs, lyrics and was officially part of the band.
The split album known by the title Kaksi Perkelettä, literally Two Perkeles (originally Kaksi sutta / Two wolfes as portraied on the cover and in the song title) was delayed a lot, there were various problems with labels, Fornjotr changing their sound and name to F, problems with mastering to name a few and so on. For this release, we decided to buy some equipments and record the material by ourselves in our own Varjot audio studio. It gave us freedom that we wanted and we got the muddy sound that suited the music. The release were originally meant to be a vinyl only, but after a hassle with Nocturnal Woodlands productions we finally released it through our own Varjot Productions in july 2006 as a pressing of 999 CDs. This album was a slight change in our sound compared to last demo and the debut album, more death metal influences were used. This was to became also the last release containing new material under the Solgrav moniker.
 
Solgrav is dead, Long live Solgrav! Late 2006
Soon after the release of split album, the decision was finally made to change our name to our native language, from Solgrav to Auringon hauta, as the original idea was. This wasn't a quick or easy to decide, it was carefully thought over again and again. During the demo years that feeling started to change as we slowly went further away of our original sound. At the beginning it was fast paced, black/death metal, but after five releases and five years of work, our sound has became raw and deadly folk/pagan metal. And again we decided to dive deeper into traditions and originality. At this point we decided to also drastically move our image away from usual pagan metal look to a more historical and traditional one. Spikes and corpsepaint didnt anymore serve our needs, style and lyrics.
Ideologically we stayed true to our roots, anti modern society, main religions and endorsing the nature and our traditional heritage stayed as main points of our believes which we bring forward through our music.
I have to mention to keep it clear, that we have never been and never will be anyway politically oriented because of the rotten nature of the society today. We also never thought ourself as a black metal band, and with this imago and style change we wanted to really make this clear to everyone.
 
Towards the Auringon Hauta era, making of the 2nd album, autumn 2006 to 2008.
Soon after the recordings of the split album we began to write new material for second full-legth album, it was clear that this album too is going to be again at least partially a themed one, this time with a lot of variety in both style and sound. At this period it was decided that in a lack of fulltime bassist, Niko Kuljuntausta will take bassplaying as his responsibility besides of singing. Taneli Kejonen was also again back in our studio rosters after the absence in the last recordings. Writing of new songs went forward nice and slow, but with steady progress. New instruments were introduced, such as many different self made kantele's, Jouhikko (a Bowed harp), different mouth harps, flutes, accordion and so on..One major add on was the clean vocals, which finally took a major role in every song. The songs ranged from "old" Solgrav style blackish pagan metal to totally tradition based compositions. Material was a result of a long time and lot of hard work, oldest riffs were from autumn 2005 and writing process went forward all the way to the finishing touches.
Recording sessions took place again in our own Varjot Audio studio, which was now upgraded with a more modern recording equipments. The long making process and lack of any deadlines allowed us to arrange quest artists to perform too, Our newly found lyricist Juha Jyrkäs(Jyrkäs, Poropetra, Tenava 3, also writes lyrics for Korpiklaani) came to aid us with his throat singing and kantele playing skills. Our close friend Petri Ketoviita helped us with the recordings, borrowed some instruments, and his wife to be, Nina Jalonen did quest vocals for one song. Also we got a superb solo guitarist Ville "Tilu" Hassinen to perform on the opening song "Veden Loihtu." Recordings started in May 2007 and ended in october 2008.
 
Best of Solgrav, signpost of our musical evolution, 2008
There was compilation tape made of the best Solgrav songs and it was released through Ukrainian label Stuza productions as a C-cassette. This is the last release ever under the name Solgrav and we wanted it released as a celebration of our past and as a sign post of our musical evolution. The cassette is titled Pimeys yllä pohjolan: 2001 - 2006 (Darkness above the Northland) with exclusive artwork, original band logo etc. It was pressed only 500 copies.
First music video and a sneak peak to forthcoming album, 2008
Still working on the mixing and finishing the second album and long delays and problems with labels we decided to make a music video. The song used is titled "Köyry yö, juhla yö," telling a story of ancient Finnish midwinters party (which originally was held at around todays Halloween and later on moved close to todays midwinter/christmas as traditions developed), as such, the video became less tradiotional music video with playing parts having only minor role. The recording took place in Simpele in a cabin/small house in the middle of South Karelian wilderness, besides of the band, our lyricist and guest star Juha Jyrkäs plays a important role on this video as the master of the house. Niko Kuljuntausta's ex wife plays the lady of the house and their son Jyri is the baby. (Not many less-than-year-olds get to a music video.) Our long time friend and lyricist Jussi Sinkkonen did a great job helping us on filming and lighting, and rest of the production and editing were made by Janne Väätäinen as his art school diploma work. Video was released to the public on youtube 10.05.2008.
 
Second music video, midsummer 2009
Because of delayed release of second album and decission to use "köyry-yö" video as a promotional single we chose to make another video and delay its release to be the same day as the albums. This time we went old fashion with the video and made it to be playing oriented. The song chosen is the opening track Veden loihtu (The spell of water). Playing parts were filmed in North Karelia in a family summer house. The Imatra rapids and parts with the shaman(Juha Jyrkäs) were filmed in Imatra soon after the initial filmings. The production and editing were again made by Janne himself, with a help of couple of cameramen Nickolai Kuskov and Jukka Pelli.
 
Muinaisia muisteloita, noita syntyjä syviä, 29.10.2010
After all the trouble and delay with different labels, CCP records from Austria showed to be our label of choice and they finally released long waited second album Muinaisia muisteloita, noita syntyjä syviä (Ancient memories, those profound births) in 29.10.2010. At the same time "Veden Loihtu" music video was released. This album is a groundbreaking accomplishment to us. On this album we have finally found the sound we feel natural and what we will maintain and further develope in future too. The album became a sort of dream come true when it comes to songmaterial, overall performance, lyrics, feel and production. Our hard work has also been noticed by listeners and reviewers. As a themed album, the lyrics take the listener to the depths of ancient Finnish knowledge and tradition. Many lyrics are almost totally tradition based and the rest are perfectly aligned with rune-singing style. Thanks to the long production time we had more time to concentrate on playing performance, which is clearly hearable when comparing to our earlier production.
The Future, from 17.11.2010 onwards
At the moment we're working on our next full length album, the 3rd. in total and the second one for Auringon hauta.It will also be released by CCP records and recorded in our own yet again upgraded studio, but this time the gap between two albums won`t be five years long! Plans are to release the album somewhere in 2012. We're also planning to make more music videos in times to come and there has been even talk about live performances. Guest artist will perform on our future releases too.
Our sound will become slightly more death metal oriented, otherwise we have found our musical path. More work will be put on production and performance and it seems that our basic line-up will remain the same as on "Muinaisia.." album. This time, more detail is also put on basstracks and vocals.
To be continued....
Imatra, Finland, 17.11.2010
Lari "Noitavasara" Hammarberg |
