During the months that followed the release of
Kivenkantaja (remember we are in 2003) they did several concerts, including Tuska festival in Helsinki on July 11th, and recorded a new videoclip, this time for an edited version (five minutes instead of ten, approximately) of “Jumalten kaupunki”. In an interview of December 2002, Henri didn’t seem too happy about the idea of making a video: “A video would be nice, but as our songs are not the shortest around, it would pretty frustrating to edit the songs to last for 4-5 minutes, as they tend to lose their musical meaning then in my opinion. If we ever did one, though, it must be done very professionally and good-looking. This kind of band has all the elements of failuring the video lurking behind, as there is a very fine line between «pompous and dramatic» and «pathetic and laughable». If I could choose, it wouldn't be a
Autumn in Finland
«story» but more like a scenario, or «sum» of the story of the song. And of course it would include forests, castles, horses, swords, battles, fire, and things like that with no guitars etc. at all. Now imagine how easy it would be to turn a great, Ýberpompous video-idea into a massive pile of world's most pathetic crap a'la Grave Digger or Rhapsody.” But finally they did it, and they did it the way Henri wanted: with warriors and swords. Mitja studied Image and Sound and had worked in a television studio; that studio is where they recorded the video, and the director was Mitja himself. “We got this huge TV-studio for one weekend for free because Mitja has studied and worked there previously. So he got some of his fellows to assist on the production (or “production”). We set the staging ourselves and shoot some shit with two expensive cameras. Also we got these guys who are mad about Viking and all the medieval stuff acting some sword fights”, tells Marko. Those guys he mentions are involved in an association dedicated to medieval and iron age re-enactment, some of which are old friends of
Tuska 2003
Henri’s. The videoclip turned out to be quite decent, but later they stated that they will never make another video. “We just concentrate on being ridiculous otherwise. We don't need any videos for that”, joked Ville, in the same interview in which Mitja told, “it was supposed to start with the words «Now, this is spinal tap! », but Henri disagreed”.
On September 6th 2003 they announced that they had signed a new contract with Spikefarm for two more albums. The first thing they did was to immediately start preparing the re-release of
Suden uni, since Spikefarm had finally got the rights from Plasmatica. That autumn they sent it to Mika Jussila to have it re-mastered (or rather mastered for the first time - see chapter 2.1), designed a totally new booklet with a different cover artwork by Niklas Sundin (guitarist of Dark Tranquillity and professional graphic designer) and translations of the lyrics, took some new promo photos, put together their two videoclips and four songs recorded live at Tuska 2003 in a DVD, and on December 8th it was in the shops. I found a review whose writer complained about the album being re-released after only two years; obviously, this person didn’t know the story of all the trouble with Plasmatica. Truth to say, the improvement in the sound of the album is noticeable. Concerning Tuska, the four songs included are all they played
A wolf's dream as imagined by Niklas Sundin
except for one; the lacking one is “Raunioilla”, whose sound quality wasn’t considered good enough to be published. (However, that particular song was aired by the Finnish TV channel YLE in a report about the festival that also appeared in the internet; if any of you readers own a good quality version of this footage, please let me know!) Moreover, they added a bonus track to the CD: “Tulkaapa äijät!”, recorded during the
Kivenkantaja sessions and featuring the Lejon brothers and the Thyrane guys. It’s a Korpiklaani-like traditional party tune, recuperated by Swedish duo Nordman under the title “Kom un gubbar”; Ville translated the lyrics of this version into Finnish, and it’s played in a very ‘alcoholic’ way – which is quite, erm, unexpected, since the lyrics talk about a funeral and are supposed to be spoken by the dead person. But apparently funerals in Scandinavia used to be quite big parties in the past. There’s no need to say that the Plasmatica versions became then rarities.
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