Interview: Sami Hinkka of Ensiferum

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Just under 2 weeks ago, I had the opportunity to chat to a member of Ensiferum I’d not actually met yet! For those of you whom know me/follow the site, you’ll know that I’ve interviewed Ensiferum twice already in less than a year and I was keen to see who I would be chatting to. The previous two times, I’d spoke with Petri and Janne. Both of whom were lovely to talk to. This time however, I got to chat with the resident low end expert and all-round lovely gentleman Sami.

Thanks to Andy at MetalBlade for organising and Sami for his time.

Ensiferum | © ishootmetal.com
Ensiferum | © ishootmetal.com

You’re currently doing a little UK run with Metsatöll at the moment. How have the shows been going so far?

They’ve been going really well. The shows have been good and it’s fun to hang out with Metsatöll as they are old friends of ours. It’s nice to actually play outside of London for a change so we can see the people who can’t make it to London.

You’ve also got Netta stepping in for Emmi on this tour again. What’s it like playing with her?

It’s been a lot of fun actually. Ever since the first shows, things have just worked out naturally and like Metsatöll she’s an old friend of ours. Initially it was a little weird as she can move on stage so suddenly you have 4 people on the front and it was bit like “Ahh! Where’d you come from!?!”.

I remember from the London show last year that you decided to switch instruments.

Ah yes, that was interesting. I seem to recall it was Markus got the idea to switch them up and we were like “yeah why not!”. We won’t be doing that on this tour, as unfortunately I can’t remember anything on the accordion!

In comparison with the previous albums, how different would you say the music on the newest album is?

I’d say on this album, more things click into the right area than in previous albums. Obviously you want to your best on every album and be proud of every note, but I’d say this album just feels a bi tighter. One thing for sure is that our producer Anssi Kippo, really had a big part of the new album. He really helped shape the sound of the new album and we were really proud of the outcome.

It’s maybe a little early, but have you started working on any new material?

Yes, we have actually. When we get back from this tour we have one show in Sweden and then we shall work on the writing. We then have a tour with Fleshgod Apocalypse and then once that’s done we’ll get back into writing. We’re hoping to go into the studio early next year, but obviously we won’t go into there unless the songs are finished. We’re not the kind of band who go into the studio unprepared.

You also did some acoustic shows in Finland recently. How did they go?

They went really well actually and were a lot of fun. We were obviously quite nervous as we’d never done them before but it was good fun. After we’d played them we had a lot of hardcore fans come up to us afterwards and said that those were the best shows they’d seen. We’d like to take them abroad at some point but I think we need some more to get it really rolling and improve out skills.

Thank you for your time!

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