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Interview with Suicide Love Boat, by Margarita Khartanovich.
We spoke to Tommi Thunder of Suicide Love Boat, and he told us lots of heart-piercing stories about the band’s scam tour to Germany, stolen guitars, cut fingers, lost brothers, playing drunk and many others.
Suicide Love Boat is a Finnish metal band from Tampere with simple catchy tunes, creepy lyrics and heavy sound framed by a spooky fabled story they keep telling around: “One Cruise. A Horrible Accident. Ten years on a remote island. Now they have returned to bring you hell and destruction.”
Where does the name of the band come from?
I am not sure what the official story is but what I know is that our guitarist back then had a tattoo with three letters “SLB”, it meant something in Finnish. And they were sitting, drinking and thinking what else it could mean. And thus, they created this 'Suicide Love Boat' and realized it could be a cool name for a band. I think our first song was “Suicide Love Bitch”. We released it on MySpace, and people liked it.
That means you are a pretty young band but your line-up has changed several times already.
Yeah, that’s very unfortunate but things happen. The first singer had to leave the band. Then we met Teemu (Themes), he was a good guitarist.
And you made him sing, didn’t you?
Yeah, we made him sing also. We thought he was a good guy. And we knew from the beginning that he might not stay with the band. And here it is: he is going to leave this autumn. So we have another change coming up. Then we have had problems with our bass player who managed to cut his finger...
With a string?
No, with a knife. He was trying to open a package of sugar and cut his finger – it took him two months to recover.
And what about Viljami? He was also one of your band members.
He actually sings in all our recordings so far. He left a week after our first video 'Immortal Sexuality' was shot. Well, that happens.
You need to learn how to clone people: ask them to leave some hair, for example, before they go. Or try to find same looking band members.
So that nobody would notice the change? Haha, should try. And we’ll be like: no, we haven’t changed anything, honestly!
So, is music your profession or are you making it for fun?
I think it’s more for fun now. But we do everything professionally. We spend a lot of time on making songs and new graphic design. It takes loads of time! And we all have other things to do like our regular work and families. And we do search for a record company to sign us, sending singles everywhere. We might release an album this year. Or next one. Well, I hope something will happen soon.
You have an interesting image of the band. Does it help?
Of course, it helps if there is some story behind but it is not the main point. The main thing is Rock’n’growl. The music! Our style changes, costumes and everything. Sometimes we wear masks at the gigs, it always changes but the music is the same.
How many songs do you have now and who is writing them?
Around 15. We have a lot of new songs but we don’t play them at the gigs yet. As for composing...It was Viljami who wrote the songs. Then Chris is making some too. And Mike. All the lyrics are from Chris, I think...
Do you have any favourite songs?
‘Slaughtering Jack Sparrow’ is one of my favourite. It’s not one of the favourite with the crowd. Of course, I like ‘Thunder Motherfucker.’ I don’t know what is so special about this song. It is very simple actually. But maybe that’s the reason – it is easy to sing along.
Frankly, your music is quite simplistic in general.
Yeah, it is very simplistic. We are not trying to create anything difficult. We are more into simple guitar riffs and catchy tunes. So people could remember the lyrics.
Do you have an active audience at the gigs then?
I think our crowd has been quite good this year. But it depends on the venue. For example, if you play in Amadeus, no one stands up there. They always sit no matter what band is playing there. It’s not about people – it is about the place somehow. In Yo-Talo people are always near the stage jumping, cheering, and singing along.
You used to wear make up a lot for some of your gigs. Isn’t it hard?
Yeah, it’s hard. As we really need a make-up artist. If we do make up ourselves and we are in a hurry to go up the stage, we just quickly put something, and it looks damn awful! It is not difficult to get this kind of a person. Before some gigs I usually ask the guys from the band “Did you ask anyone to make us up today?” and they are like “No-o”. I can do that myself but I don’t want to. I prefer to drink beer and relax before the gig.
You are Tommi Thunder. Why do you have such a nickname?
My real name is Tommi Salama, and “salama” means ‘lightening’ in Finnish. Somebody just made up: oh, you are Tommi Thunder. And I was like: no, it is lightening! And then there was this song 'Thunder Motherfucker,' and there was sort of a joke about me. Then Themes came and we were thinking about his nickname too. When I met the guy for the first time, it was like, man, feels like I have known you for ages and you are like my brother! So you really must be my brother, my lost brother which we found.
And you gave him your name?
Yeah. I’m pretty sure our new guitarist will be Thunder too.
Are you searching for a family?
Thunder Family.
Do you earn any money with the band?
We pay for everything ourselves. We’ve had many gigs this year, and there was some money earned, of course. I think nobody asked for money from me for a while. So I guess we are getting money from somewhere. But we have to spend our own money as well on travelling and we like having some merchandizing so that people could have something from Suicide Love Boat. And it’s costly to print the shirts. Nobody would like to buy them for 30 euro. Now we sell them for 10 or 15 euro. It costs the same to print them.
Your songs and looks are so creepy. Don’t you think it can affect teens anyhow who are listening to you?
We have violent lyrics. Some awful things in our songs! But I don’t think it makes anyone violent. There are always some things you can learn from. Let’s take one of our songs ‘Thunder Motherfucker,’ about a man who does terrible things to everyone, he hurts people a lot without even thinking. He is a motherfucker. There are lots of guys like him out there. And probable if you recognize such a guy in a real life, you can stay away from him. Finally, in the song the guy punishes himself; it doesn’t end nice for him.
Your German Tour has been cancelled. What’s happened?
Those guys they found us. They promised that everything is paid for. The only expense on our side was supposed to be the flight to Germany. Hotel rooms, food, drinks, transportation, everything was taken care of, they said. It sounded so good. They claimed they would compensate things with the money from our gigs. And then we talked with the bands that dealt with that company. And they said that nothing was done for them. The bands had to pay to the clubs so that the bands could play there. We heard this stuff and then we started our own investigation. We contacted the venues where we were supposed to play and they had never heard of us. To some venues the company promised that our band would pay something like 400 euro. So we had to cancel the whole thing.
Why didn’t you investigate things before announcing the tour?
Well, you learn by mistakes. Next time...
And what happened to AP, your session bassist? His guitar got stolen I heard.
Yeah, it was stolen from AP who played with us when our guitar player cut his finger. He was having fun going out at night. He met some guy in a bar who seemed to be nice and everything. He said he was from Turku and didn’t have any place to stay for the night. And our friend offered him to come to his place and sleep there. And in the morning the guy was gone and the guitar as well. So I think AP didn’t listen to our songs carefully: he would have noticed that the guy was “thunder motherfucker” and wouldn’t have invited him home.
Tell us about your best and worst SLB gigs.
The worst one was in Tampere at Jack the Rooster. It didn’t go well…because I was drunk. And that was the first and the last time when I was drunk at a gig. It was really hard to play. It’s an awful feeling when you know how the song goes but your hands don’t do what they have to do. We didn’t have to stop the songs or anything but it just didn’t sound good.
As for the best gig, we had a great time on New Years Eve in Helsinki playing at Gloria. We played just before midnight. We had one song left when the clock struck 12. Then there was this counting down, and Chris welcomed all the audience to the stage. And the crowd came to the stage screaming our song. They were not out there somewhere but around you dancing. It was a great feeling.
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