Meeting Bazie is always like a meeting an old friend you haven't seen in a long time. Which is true anyway, since I will  grant myself such audacity as to call this great and incredibly kind musician a friend of mine. This was the first time we sat and talked ''officially'' about all things 69, so make yourself a nice vodka on rocks, hold the rocks - and enjoy the following interview for HelsinkiVampyyrit.com! Oceans of graditude to you, Bazie!<3

Darkness 69: First, thank you very much for doing this interview for the Bosnian website and all the Bosnian fans. As you may know, people in Bosnia need visas for every single country except like Croatia and Serbia, so this is a good thing that you’re here!

Bazie 69: Yeah!

Darkness 69: So tell me, how was your trip to Zagreb?

Bazie 69: It was good, first we needed to wake up in the morning (laughs)…
but we’ve got Paul [tour manager, Eds.], so we’ve got no problem with that. It was quite a long trip from Bratislava,
but it was good.

Darkness 69: Tell me about the new album. You can literally feel just how much the new album stirred the blood in the veins of all the gothic rockers in Europe and USA, it's an amazing piece of work!

Bazie 69: Thank you!

Darkness 69: Besides the obvious - producer, raw sound, what is so different about this album that it stands out like this?

Bazie 69: I think that even though it sounds like it’s compilation of all of the things, styles that we have done before, it is something new. It’s really hard to say when you do the album, like how it turns out to be, you can tell like after a year. Because we always wanted to achieve the best, but on purpose we wanted to change, do things differently than before. We have “Angels” and “Devils” that are good albums, but they’re more like the same. Like “Blessed be” and “Paris Kills”, they are like the twins (laughs). After “Paris Kills” we wanted to change a little bit, change not just the style. But you never know how it’s gonna be, you bring some new people. I think in this one, we did it with a new producer, with a different approach that way. Actually, when someone who’s producing changes, they want Jyrki to rewrite the lyrics. The thing was that, we’ve always done albums in Finland, but it makes sense, these lyrics, like sometimes it was “this is English but I don’t get it” (laughs). It’s just nonsense. So there was a lot of work put into that, we started to do the album a long time ago. It’s really hard to say what’s special, but we did it differently, we did it in one period. Actually we did it in one place, concentrated thing, we started and it was finished. It was done in seven weeks, the whole album. So, eight weeks with remixing. Maybe that’s one of the reasons, everybody was there, concentrating in doing it, we didn’t do anything else but the album. Even though we were in LA, for the first three weeks, I didn’t even go to the bar (laughs), just work, work, work. So maybe, that’s what’s different. But you never know, when you do the album, how it’s gonna turn out to be. You just wish it’s good. Now we have more time. We had a lot of songs written for the album, but in the end, it was like, “OK, we’re definitely gonna use this”. There were 3-4 songs that Matt [Hyde, the producer, Eds.] didn’t pick for the album. I remember, we did “Suspiria Snow White”, that was a last minute pick, everybody liked the song. We had another song that was supposed to be on the album, but Matt said “No, this is too happy”. (both laugh)

Darkness 69: Is it going to be released later, like on a B-side single?

Bazie 69: Actually, we recorded two more songs, another one is still unfinished. It’s a really good song. It was ready, but then Matt Hyde wanted to change the lyrics… again… and the other song, it has no vocals, it’s finished otherwise. The music is recorded. So we’ve got two songs. At that time, we didn’t know, so we talked those two songs off. The other one didn’t make it for obvious reasons, ‘cause it wasn’t finished, and the one, it’s a good song…

Darkness 69: …but it didn’t fit the concept.

Bazie 69: Yeah. We wanted to make an album, not just a collection of songs. Even though there was a disagreement. Like, “nobody’s listening to albums any more”, but we don’t care, we wanna do it. It may be like, you never know the last time you can do it like that. Nobody’s playing CDs, great bands have decided to release like downloads, two songs or whatever, so I don’t know how it’s gonna be.

Darkness 69: Sadly, it’s like that now.
What usually inspires you to write music to a particular song? The title, the imagery, the intention?

Bazie 69: That was also maybe a different thing, approach to the new album. Usually it’s the melody, a guitar riff, that comes first, but now I’ve started many songs with a drum beat, that was the one thing I wanted to change. Like “Back In Blood”, I just wanted songs that were different, faster, so I started there. Same with “Dead Girls Are Easy”, drum beat is first. We wanted also to change that every song has little bit different vocals. Matt said that some of our album vocals seem to be of the same style, so we changed the style. Like “Jyrki, sing higher” and that kind of thing. But usually it’s a guitar, or more like guitar riffs. “Hunger” is another example, it starts from melody, and there was no guitar, so that was another way around. “We Own The Night” - that actually started like really some chords to a vocal melody, it was a different approach. Previously we had like the music, some songs start from vocal melody… I think there are many different approaches, how we did “Night Watch” and “Lips Of Blood”, they are like typical The 69 Eyes songs. “Night Watch” started with a chorus melody, and obviously “Hunger” started different. “The Good, The Bad and The Undead” that was all about the drum beat and the guitar. We’ve never had it like that.

Darkness 69: That’s a totally interesting song. That’s like a stadium anthem.

Bazie 69: Yeah, that was the intention. We decided “Ok, we need this kind of song” , it strikes right and it came out good.

Darkness 69: There’s all this talk about ‘the first 20 years of The 69 Eyes’. When it comes to the new album, what place do you think it will take in your discography?

Bazie 69: The album was first called “The 69 Eyes”, we were thinking that it was definitely, (laughs) you know, that way. But then, anyway, we decided “Back In Blood” is more like telling what the album is about. Like I’ve said, it’s a really hard to say after only like a year. But it was a must do, to continue, to do something to get yourself interested. Something new, ‘cause that’s the main thing. The whole band has to be… how can I say it… even though you play music for the people, you have to please yourself, the band. So, let’s see. I think it’s a good, strong album.

Darkness 69: It’s definitely a milestone I think.

Bazie 69: Yeah. A lot of fans have noticed that and they really like the album. Of course, some people don’t, but…

Darkness 69: Oh well, you can’t please everyone.

Bazie 69: Yeah.

Darkness 69: I’ve noticed you played some acoustic gigs lately in Finland and abroad. Did you enjoy that? Is an acoustic gig sometimes easier to do than the “plugged’’ one?

Bazie 69: Yeah, it actually started the way that we were asked to do some promotion for the new album, this radio kind of thing. We’ve never done it before. We said “OK, let’s try”, so we did one show in Stockholm in August and it went really well. It’s really good, ‘cause it’s channeling… I think, you can’t play the songs the same way. Everybody was a little hesitant about if it’s gonna work or not. Now everybody is really into that. So we maybe do some shows later. It’s interesting, because then we have to strip down all the songs, and it’s a different kind of songs…

Darkness 69: It’s more about the atmosphere…

Bazie 69: It is, because then you kind of concentrate on the songs, and there is more room for Jyrki’s voice. He doesn’t have room always for loud stuff, so he has to sometimes get through the songs, singing low. It’s really interesting, and I’m looking forward that we’re gonna do it later. So we can play some other songs, some songs we don’t usually play on shows. We had ideas to do it, but we were touring the USA and Finland then, so there wasn’t that much time to really discover the songs. Actually, that was the reason why we started playing “Wasting The Dawn” again, we’re gonna play it tonight too. It’s totally different, because you can just concentrate more on the atmosphere.

(continued on page 2)

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