REKINDLING THE VARANGIAN FLAME: PART 1 by Rowdy Geirsson “Never have I seen a more complete denouncement of the meaning of human life than that murky, yellow obscenity that hovers above the rooftops of Miklagård like a celestial plague raining its poison down upon the feeble souls below during the darkest depths of the eternal night,” Alexi Laihiala sighed heavily, his face serene despite the grimness of his statement. “It made me want to kill myself.” Sitting beside him with an appropriately dangerous-looking acoustic axe resting on his lap was Ville Mäenpää who played a few strings and quietly hissed, “Kiss of the death-cloud! Burning in your lungs. Kiss of the death-cloud! Now your life is done.” Alexi twisted his neck to avoid the strands of long, dyed-black hair that the wind insisted on blowing in his face as though he were currently filming a melancholic music video and continued speaking once the short musical interlude had ended. “The infinite pointlessness of the travesty known as human life overwhelmed me, as did the vastness of all the blasphemous airborne particulate matter. I could barely breathe and thought only of slipping away into the quiet embrace of the final, black void.” And thus began my formal introduction to Varjagikaarti, the most influential and innovative band to emerge from the underground extreme metal scene that has since come to be known as the New Wave of Finnish Varangian Metal (NWFVM). Essentially, a spin-off of its Viking and folk metal brethren, NWFVM altered the course of metal history forever when its adherents abandoned !1 Geirsson / Varangian Flame their mock long-ships and medieval war gear on stage and actually went a-Viking, thereby living out the content of their lyrics rather than just growling about them into a microphone. I was seated with the four members of Varjagikaarti atop an eighteenth century stone wall on the island fortress of Suomenlinna watching the sun fade over Helsinki’s harbor. Alexi, the band’s enduringly pessimistic front man, sat beside me, an intense expression of forlorn hopelessness on his face as he stared at the rippling white and blue cross of the Finnish flag flying atop the nearest stone tower. Next to him sat Tuomas Laiho, the stereotypically bald drummer and beyond him were the guitarist, Ville Mäenpää, a pale, skinny guy with long blond hair and a morbid northern disposition and Jari Holopainen, the mostly silent bassist, hardcore drunkard, and creator of the bands’ epic and fantastical album cover art. The band had granted me an exclusive interview and we had taken the ferry out to Suomenlinna because an abandoned Baltic island fortress just seemed like an appropriate place to discuss their pioneering role in NWFVM. Plus, it was a fine Finnish fall day, and the vibrant reds, yellows, and oranges of the leaves set against the gray stonework and slate blue of the harbor presented us with a dazzling backdrop. It stirred the blood deep down inside and touched on something primeval in the human genetic make-up, causing a swelling of desire to go a-Viking, right then and there. But going a-Viking is a modern-day logistical challenge and without an appropriate longship, crew to row it, and all manner of armor and medieval weaponry, completely and utterly infeasible. So, instead we supressed the urge and attempted to content ourselves with awkward conversation and some lengthy bouts of traditional Finnish silence, one of which we currently found ourselves deep in the throes of thanks to Alexi’s latest proclamation about the sub- par air quality of Miklagård—otherwise known as Istanbul to non-Old Norse speakers—and thoughts of suicide. !2 Geirsson / Varangian Flame Our shared silence and generally depressed mood was simultaneously accentuated and alleviated by the presence of a one-liter bottle of raspberry-flavored Finlandia Vodka that we had been passing around like candy among school boys and that Jari, the bassist, was currently inhaling like a newborn baby going at his mother’s rippened red nipple. I leaned forward to watch this public display of adult suckling with an expression on my face that must have belied my inner thoughts because he uttered a barely intelligible, “Fuck you,” after swallowing and passed the bottle over to his guitar-wielding neighbor. Alexi chose this moment to expound further on his personal evaluation of Istanbul’s air quality. “The ephemeral mucus lining the tender passages of my nasal cavity turned black with the stench of diesel-death and man-made toxicity,” he sighed. “Life has no meaning.” I stared at the cobblestones on the path below us and tried to think of something constructive to say. “So…uh, why was it that you even bothered to go there then?” I thought it seemed like a reasonable question, plus it was about all that I could muster. On the one hand, I’m a pretty shitty journalist. On the other hand, I’m not good at dealing with people, especially people who express emotion of any sort, be it of the positive variety like we generally goad on to the point of irresponsible and reckless phoniness in the US, or the negative variety which is much more endemic to the Nordic condition. “To die,” Alexi answered after a moment’s silence. “We went to Miklagård to die.” And then silence engulfed us once again only to be broken by the squawk of a seagull in the distance and some harsh gutteral noises being made by a group of obnoxious German tourists walking nearby. When it became apparent that Alexi had no intention of elaborating on his last remark of his own accord, I took the bait and asked the obvious follow-up question. !3 Geirsson / Varangian Flame “Because life has no meaning,” he answered. “The pointlessness of life is as vast and deep as the murky oceans that engulf this waste of a planet. We are nothing more than tiny specks of self- consumed insignificance cowering under the might of the infinite cosmos.” “But, hey you know, the thing is, dying on an adventure in Miklagård would have been just so much more epic and brutal than, like, jumping off a bridge or drinking bleach or something like that,” Tuomas, the bald drummer, chimed in. He spoke with a light-pitched, quirky accent that reminded me of Canada and Canadians. “Most of the suicides that happen here in Helsinki, they aren’t very epic, you know.” “Yeah, but, I mean, why did you guys all want to die in the first place?” I didn’t get it. “Were you all depressed or something?” “Yes,” stated Alexi matter of factly over Tuomas who had also begun to voice his own response at the exact same moment. The two eyed one another disapprovingly as Tuomas began to speak once more. “Well, it was really only Alexi here who was depressed or whatever. The rest of us just thought going a- Viking would be really cool and informative since we had been taking the band in a Viking metal direction anyway. What other metal band has ever actually gone a-Viking before?” I just sat there and looked at him. “Okay, so the thing is,” Tuomas continued. “We were having a lot of disagreements as a band at that time, you know? And most bands break up when that happens, just creative differences or whatever that guys can’t get over and so they just want to go their own separate ways. And we came close to breaking up too, but then we had this idea to go a-Viking together first, as sort of like a last ditch effort to resolve our differences, so we thought, hey, it’s at least worth giving it a shot, right?” !4 Geirsson / Varangian Flame “And just how would going a-Viking resolve your guys’ differences?” It still didn’t really make any sense to me. “Well, we thought it would at least kinda get us all on the same page with a common vision for the band’s direction,” Tuomas answered. “Ville, Jari, and me, we just wanted to go a-Viking because it’d give us some creative insights for our music and just be cool, like I said. I mean, no other band had ever actually gone a-Viking before, so we would be the first. We didn’t really want to die, except for Alexi here who kept saying he did, if you can believe him. But either way, you can get yourself killed pretty easily when you go a-Viking, so this idea, it offered something for all of us to be happy with.” “Death by a-Viking…” Alexi muttered with a hint of approval in his voice. “…is truly a man’s way out.” While I fully understood that going a-Viking has always offered an abundance of means and methods by which one could get oneself killed, I was still baffled about the band’s decision to actually engage in the pursuit of Vikings themselves. The bald drummer, Tuomas, seemed to be much more willing to share useful insights than Alexi, so I looked at him and asked, “So how bad were the band’s differences that you guys actually had to go a-Viking just to fix them? I mean, they had to have been pretty bad, right?” “Oh, totally,” Tuomas admitted. “We were in really bad shape as a band at that point. So the three of us—“ he pointed to himself, Ville, and Jari “—we were all basically on the same page about being a Viking metal band with everything that goes along with that, you know.