Yesterday we covered the brand new single from Silent Voices, Darkest Night, but if that’s not enough for you, we also caught up with drummer Hurtsi and bassist Pasi for a lowdown on the single. Check it out below!
What is the story behind Darkest Night?
Hurtsi: It’s actually based on a short novel I wrote. We were planning to do a whole theme-album around it, but since we went with a mini-album, I decided to make an “abridgement” of it. 🙂
In short, it’s a part of a story I wrote one night about an officer serving the third reich. He gets more and more disgusted of what’s going on around him, and starts to stand up to his superiors. As a result, he is stripped of his rank, pumped full of experimental drugs, and gets thrown in jail. Over the years he loses his mind, forgets his past, falls in to a comatose-like state and starts to dream. Decades later after being liberated he starts to remember, and get flashbacks of his “former life.” After finally realizing what he was a part of years ago, he decides to take his own life.
I know. Deep. 🙂 Movie rights are up for sale by the way!
What made you choose it as a single?
Pasi: Basically the decision was very easy as Darkest Night was the first song we wrote completely after Reveal The Change. We already have lots of material for the follow up album but we wanted to release Darkest Night before, to let people hear today’s Silent Voices with original material.
Can you describe the writing and recording process for the song?
Pasi: It was quite an ordinary writing session for us. Timo was jamming riffs with Hurtsi at our rehearsal room and then Timo and I sat down to continue the process and recorded a rough demo of the song at his home studio. We composed some more riffs but basically arranged the material that Timo and Hurtsi jammed for the song. The recordings took place once again at Studio57, Alaveteli. We recorded basic tracks and guitar solos at that point and Henrik recorded his parts at his home studio as usual. Hurtsi wrote lyrics and we got back to our rehearsal place to finish the vocal arrangement and got back again at the Studio57 to track them. I mixed Darkest Night and it was mastered at Chartmakers by Svante Forsbäck.
Would you say it’s representative of your next album or is it more of a standalone piece?
Pasi: Darkest Night definitely shows what Silent Voices is today. But as it’s always been, we have a lots of variety on the songs on the albums, more heavy, more progressive, more rock and more mellow songs. You can hear what kind of material is coming on this single but on the forth-coming album you’ll surely find all the Silent Voices elements.
What was it like working with the new band lineup – did anything go differently compared to past recording sessions?
Pasi: It’s perfect, all the members are so dedicated to music and they have lots of ideas and good taste when coming to song writing and arranging. Hurtsi did his final drum part arrangement at home and we went to the studio without any rehearsals together. He just nailed his part and we couldn’t do anything but smile when heard all his ideas and details on the arrangement. You can imagine that it was quite easy to continue the tracking after that. When we were tracking Teemu’s vocal parts, it felt really much the same. He performs the song with so much presence.
The biggest difference compared to the Reveal The Change sessions is the lyrical side, beside Hurtsi being an amazing drummer, he is also an amazing lyricist and I think he has already written at least an album or two worth of lyrics. We all write lyrics but for him it’s much more natural than for the rest of us.
