TEEMU KUOSMAMEN - SoulHealer

💿 Hi, It's a pleasure to have on Hardrockheavymetal TEEMU KUOSMANEN of SoulHealer! Hi, the pleasure is ours. Really nice to tell you about SoulHealer and our upcoming album.

💿 Can you tell us somethin'about your early days of your career? When is this all begun? Which bands have influneced you? The band was formed in 2009. I was the one who wanted to do something else than play cover songs and tried to find musicians who think the same way. 

Fortunately it wasn't too hard to find the guys and the first version of SoulHealer was born. We didn't use the name then but that's how everything started. 

At first we tried to do modern (hard) rock a´la Foo Fighters etc. but we noticed quick that wasn't our cup of tea. 

So we did what we needed to do and started to play what is natural to us. Melodic traditional metal is our thing and fortunately we realized that almost from the start. If I have to say one band that has influenced me the most, it's definitely Iron Maiden. 

The twin guitar harmonies come from there.

Big choruses and melodic vocal lines come from 80's metal music. 

And nowadays I'm open for almost all kinds of music styles and take influences from there.

That's what happens to you when you get older. 

💿 "UP FROM THE ASHES", your new full-lengh, is "hot'n'ready" and will be out in September (14th in Europe and 21st N.America).

Can you tell us somethin' about its composition process? Are you satisfied about this platter? We had the privilege to listening to it in preview and we were very impressed!

"Up From The Ashes" didn´t happen easily. There was a time our band almost quit and we were quite frustrated about the situation. 

Few members left the band and a few came in and that's what repaired the broken machine. We started with the new line-up and I brought new songs to rehearsal room. At that point everything moved forward smoothly and within a year we had 10 new songs ready for recording. I wrote all the music and the lyrics for 9 songs. 

Our bass player Lari Lämpsä wrote the lyrics for "The Final Judgement". We didn't want go to fancy modern studio but recorded the drums and vocals at our rehearsal room.

The guitars and bass parts were recorded by ourselves at home and after we had all the stuff recorded, I sent the tracks to our mixing and mastering guy Janne Tolsa and he did his magic. Must say the guy has Midas´touch. 

The mixed and mastered album sounds awesome! 

This is the first time with the new album I wouldn't do anything different and everything is just perfect.

Really looking forward to September! 💿 The real news in "music industry" is the return of vinyl; what's your feeling about this classic format and the "current" music business?

The music industry is kinda fucked up these days. 

In Finland we have few big domestic bands and they play at every festivals and of get best slots at clubs. It's very difficult for small bands – like we are – to get good club gigs or festival slots.

 Even harder it´s to earn any money of them. Fortunately we have our daily jobs and we don´t do this for money but within five years the situation has become worse. But we shouldn't think that. All we can do is to do our best and play as much as we can.

 That's the main point. About the vinyl...? I don't have any opinion of that. 

But the vinyl seems to be the thing today. 

Let's see when it will be forgotten and something else has taken its place. Of course it would be nice to have SoulHealer-albums as vinyl versions and put them on the wall. 💿 "UP FROM THE ASHES" will be out through ROCKSHOTS RECORDS. Can you tell us somethin' about relationships with them? We found Rockshots Records almost by accident. We were told by our former label that they wouldn´t release our next album and we needed to find a new label as soon as possible. I sent the demo versions of our new songs everywhere and we got some offers. 

Rockshots offered the best deal and we took it.

 We haven't had to regret that so far. 

The label has done everything perfectly and the promotion for upcoming album has been done great. 

We now do this album together and after that both sides have to think the future. 

But that's not the main issue at the moment.

💿 Can you tell us somethin' about your next live projects? In summer we have had and will still have a few gigs. This year has been a year in the studio and we didn't book the gigs as much as usual. 

In September after the album release we will have a small release tour here in Finland and then we will have a break for a few months.

 Next year we will do gigs as much as we can.

 For next summer we already have booked a few festival gigs and hopefully more is to come.

 We also are very open minded for gigging abroad but in those cases the issue is always the money. It's not free or even cheap to fly to for example to Germany and spend there a week travelling from the point A to point B, sleeping at hotels... But if we will have an opportunity to play abroad with reasonable terms, we definitely will take the chance.

💿 We love the cover of your album! Who made it? The cover artwork is awesome, we think so too! 

The artist Timo Wuerz has done the album artworks for two previous albums too and we didn't want to change that this time either. 

The skeleton guy with the hat is our mascot "Sin Chee" and we couldn't even think a SoulHealer album cover without him. 💿 Thank you so much for your time! See you soon on Hardrockheavymetal! Thank you! It's always nice to see someone is interested to hear the news from SoulHealer-camp. We will release the new video song in August and a month later from that will be the release date for "Up From The Ashes". 

So keep your mind open and check out our new album in September! Have a nice summer!

#SOULHEALER #ASHERMEDIA #ROCKSHOTSRECORDS