Apocalyptica biography
Cult
Respected sources, the oldest surviving cello can be dated back to 1572. It was fashioned by the Italian Andrea Amati, a Cremonese craftsman who could never have guessed that distant cousins of his cherished violoncello would one day be fitted with pre-amps & pick-ups then remorselessly bowed to the brink of sawdust.
"Oh, we love to punish our instruments! Most of the time they are full of hair & sweat & rosin our old teachers definitely wouldnt be happy!" Paavo.
Simply, there is no other band like Finlands Apocalyptica a four-strong collective of classically-tutored cellists (with attitude!) who have successfully brought together the seemingly disparate worlds of classical music & hard rock without diluting either one. Since 1993, when these Sibelius Academy graduates first raised their black-haired bows in rocknroll anger, they have released two critically-lauded albums (of covers & originals), with a third, the Kai Hiili Hiilesmaa-produced "Cult", due out in November through Spitfire Records; during this time, the Helsinki-based heavy cellists have put their suitably dramatic monicker to over half-a-million album sales and topped the three-figure mark for concerts in more than 20 different countries, picking up accolades (such as the 1997 Export Project Of The Year Award) along the way.
Not bad for a band who started out playing Metallica songs for fun.
The turning point for Apocalyptica came in December 1995 when they were asked to perform at the heavy metal club Teatro in Helsinki; it was here, whilst giving the full four-cello treatment to Metalli-classics like Master Of Puppets and Creeping Death, that the burgeoning A-Team were spotted by local independent Zen Garden Records, who suggested they make an album showcasing the modern metal classics nearest (and dearest) to their collective heartbeat. The rest is heavy cello history Released in Spring 1996, the debut Apocalyptica album ‘Plays Metallica By Four Cellos’ has notched up worldwide sales in excess of 350,000, gaining rich & ready approval from both sets of supporters (strictly classical & hardline rock); what’s more, by focussing on the unadorned sound of the cello, this dare-devil disc of Metalli-covers not only gave a dramatic twist to high-profile outings such as "Enter Sandman" & "Sad But True", but also showed what well-wrought compositions they really are.
"Well, obviously it’s heavy music," says Max. "It is something that we love, but there’s enough melody there, including in the vocals and the supporting riffs, for it to be played on stringed instruments. It’s really all to do with melody & harmony." As a result of the recognition afforded to ‘Four Cellos’, two tracks from which were featured in US movie "Your Friends And Neighbors" (1998), the band were able to take their maple wood & metal show to a host of European territories, including Germany, Switzerland, Estonia, Turkey, Portugal, Belgium, Austria, Holland, the UK, Scandinavia & Finland, headlining in some places playing major festivals in others. No doubt about it - word on this uniquely rockin outfit was seriously starting to spread; even before they crossed the threshold of Millbrook Studio, Helsinki, in January 1998 to set to work on the Four Cellos follow-up, there was already anticipation as to what kind of record this might be.
Would these Four Bowmen Of The Apocalypse (!) continue to file their fangs on the music of Metallica (an act they’d already supported twice in the Finnish capital), or would they choose to add some other ingredients to a pot that was already on the boil? In the event, Inquisition Symphony saw the band taking a more w-i-d-e-s-c-r-e-e-n view, casting their net over a broader range of covers and further enhancing their recorded sound. This time, just four of the 11 tracks were full- blooded Metalli-covers, with the bulk of the LP being divided between Sepultura, Faith No More & Pantera remakes, plus (most significantly of all) three outings by Eicca himself the first time that the Apocalyptica mainman had committed his own tunes to tape. "With the metal covers that we do, we are effectively transferring the songs to cello," explains Eicca. "We tend to stay true to the ideas of the original composers. When it comes to my own stuff, however, I feel that I can produce the sounds in many different ways and make the arrangements a lot wilder its just much more fun!"
April 1998 in Finland and internationally thereafter, the IS album once again saw the band shifting into total tour mode, starting with dates in their native land and then striking out to other countries, some of which (Italy, Greece, Luxembourg, Mexico, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Bulgaria, etc.) were figuring on the itinerary for the very first time Says Eicca: "The four dates in Mexico were quite overwhelming, and the same holds true for the shows in Eastern Europe, which is currently one of our best live areas; we’ve been selling out halls of 2,000-2,500 in Bulgaria, and last time in Lithuania we played to around 3,500."