“It’s about time for us to hit the U.S. and Canada, and a tour like this is a good way to start,” said Korpiklaani bassist Jarkko Aaltonen from his home base in Finland, just a couple of weeks before embarking on the North American leg of PaganFest II. “We actually did one indoor festival show in Calgary a few months ago – October, perhaps? That was a good show. We played good, and the audience seemed to like it.”

This year’s Pagan Fest has 21 scheduled stops across the continent, including shows in both Edmonton and Calgary, and Korpiklaani is set to headline a lineup that includes fellow elite folk metallers Primordial, Moonsorrow, Eluveitie, Swashbuckle and Blackguard, and the Finnish sextet is hoping for more than just stiff back from the tour bus.

“I do hope that the North American tour will open the market there for us. I’m sure that at the shows there will be lots of people who’ve come to see one of the other bands, and not us, so this kind of a tour is a really good promotional opportunity,” Aaltonen said.

But first and foremost, they want to be seen as “having fun on the stage.”

“I’d say that the key word is fun. In the middle of all doom and gloom death metal, we’re the fun people. Some may refer to us as “the drunken idiots” as well,” he jested.

Korpiklaani released their first full-length album in 2003 and received solid reviews for their upbeat and technically diverse sound that incorporates both English and Finnish lyrics, as well as a host of traditional and modern instruments like accordion, violin, flute and jouhikko .

Since “Spirit of the Forest” [Napalm, 2003], they’ve unleashed a total five full-length albums, with a new one, “Karkelo” [Nuclear Blast, 2009], set for release in June.

Vocalist/guitarist Jonne Järvelä once referred to Korpiklaani’s music as “old peoples’ music with heavy metal guitars,” but there’s so much more going on than that. That said, how would you describe your music to readers who have not heard your music before?

We are a band that has roots in traditional folk music of Finland, which is a combination of Western Europe, Slavic melancholy and original music of the Sami people. However, our roots are also in the traditional heavy rock and the first wave 1980s thrash metal. The result is music with strong sing along melodies, heavy guitar riffs and fast tempos.

How does your live sound differ from your recordings?

I’d say the biggest difference is that our instrument selection is more limited. In the studio, we use all kinds of traditional instruments like tin whistles, pipes, recorders, jouhikko, mouth harps, etc. Those instruments are not really suitable for live use when blasting 100dB on stage, so we’re only using accordion, violin and bag pipe (Estonian torupill) on stage.

What kinds of challenges are you expecting touring in a country as widespread as Canada?

Traveling is of course a challenge, but we only have to take care that we’re in the bus on time; the rest is someone else’s problem. A bigger challenge is that we have to be constantly really good on stage and do our very best every night so that every audience member will afterward think that we kicked some serious ass. We have to be able to show everybody that we deserve the headlining slot on the tour.

What do you think the main difference is between playing touring festivals and regular tours?

Before the last years PaganFest [ed. note: Korpiklaani was part of PaganFest 2008's European leg], we’d only done headlining tours. They were small in the beginning, but still headlining, which meant that by the time we were finished and out from backstage, the venues were empty and it was time to get in the bus and drive to the next town. On Pagan Fest, we had a really nice opportunity to watch other bands after the show, have a few beers and meet people. That’s of course different again on the forthcoming tour, since we’re headlining again! But I guess the main difference is that on our own tours, we have more responbilities, which is not necessarily that nice. The whole crew works for us and we are sort of responsible for everything. On the touring festival, it’s the promoter and his tour manager who have the responsibility and we’re basically just working for them like any crew member.

How important is touring, in terms of making a career in music? Do you think it is becoming more important than it used to be for bands to be out on the road?

It of course depends on how much your albums sell. With bands like us, the album sales are not that big and therefore don’t really provide any means of living, so if you want to get some bread for your family you have to tour. On the other hand, when you tour enough, you may not have a family to feed anymore, so it’s constant balancing between the two evils.

How do you keep yourselves alert, entertained, or just plain ready to perform after so much travel, especially with such lively and uplifting songs?

The band – or at least four members of it – drink quite a lot. It’s quite common to get up in the morning, have a few beers or drinks, watch a metal DVD, etc. Basically, stuff that any normal group of men would do. On the tour, we just have to do that in the morning and quit by the afternoon so that we will be able to the job. And it’s never that difficult to get in the show mood. Everyone in the band loves being on stage and performing live, and everybody is on the tour for just that reason.

Do you improvise much on stage, or do you tend to stick with how the songs were originally written?

There’s not much improvisation. Accidentally perhaps! The songs may have developed during the years to a different form that the recorded version once was. Live situation brings front the important stuff and leaves out the not so important.

The band uses more instruments than one person could ever play at a time, so how do you decide which ones to use when working out a song and for live situations?

The one who writes the song usually has a general idea what he wants. Then again [Jaakko] “Hittavainen” [Lemmetty], the multi-instrumentalist he is, may suggest something else. Sometimes the melody composed with guitar and meant for a violin is just impossible for a violin, so it must be changed or done with a different instrument. Live situation is different, since we’re limited to only the three folk instruments I mentioned earlier. It requires some rearranging, like flute parts to accordion, etc. or just leaving something out.

The band original played just folk music. What inspired the evolution towards heavy metal, or did it just seem like a natural development?

Heavy metal was the first love in the mid ’80s when some of us grew up listening to bands like Black Sabbath, Motörhead, Iron Maiden, WASP and, later, Metallica and the first wave of thrash metal, which of course now is called old school thrash. Three of us were born in the early ’70s, so by the mid-80s we already had our first bands that were all metal or hard rock. We already had our first bands when our accordion player Juho [Kauppinen ] was born in 1986! The folk part came later in the early ’90s when Jonne moved to northern Finland to live with the original Sami people. He got really deep into that culture and for a few years performed their traditional music in a duo and, when he finally moved back to south, he just decided to combine these two quite different musical worlds.

Were elements like the traditional Sami singing style yoik and Finnish humppa rhythms prevalent in the band in its early years?

The band’s roots are in pure traditional acoustic folk music duo with yoik singing, so for that part the answer is: yes, definitely. That humppa rhythm is basically just a normal drum beat in every faster thrash metal song, the only thing we did is that on some songs we changed bass line on top of it to this old Finnish dance music style.

Many bands who perform and sell records in North America tend to include more – or even all – tracks in the English language, but you haven’t caved to this practice, which I think really adds to the overall mood and appeal of your records. How intentional has this decision been to keep writing in Finnish?

At first, when the band was still called Shaman, our lyrics were all in Sami. At the same time, when the band was forced to change it’s name, the language was also changed to English. Jonne was the only writer at that point and just felt more comfortable with English than his native Finnish. Later, our friend Juha Jyrkäs provided us with some Finnish texts and we realized that they worked really well with our music, so since that we’ve used most of the texts he’s ever sent to us.

I have the same feeling like you, that the Finnish texts actually make the overall mood more interesting. Finnish language doesn’t seem to bother European audiences at all, and we just have to hope it’s the same with audiences in Canada and U.S.

Do you incorporate the rhythmic nature of the Kalevala, or are the lyrics inspired by the words of the poems themselves? Can you elaborate on this a little for me? [ed. note: The Kalevala is a book and epic poem about Finnish folklore from the 19^th century and is considered one of the significant works in Finnish literature. Korpiklaani has drawn much inspiration from this text.]

Most of the Jyrkäs’ lyrics are written in strict Kalevala measure “trochaic tetrameter.” Sometimes the rhythm of the music requires a change in that though. He’s a great writer and luckily also a musician so he realizes that changes are necessary and let’s us re-arrange the lyrics quite freely. Sometimes there’s actually quite a lot of twisting and turning until they fit the music.

What kinds of themes from the text has inspired the band?

Nature is one of them. Some texts are not real stories but just pictures describing a certain moment. The song “Tuli kokko” is a good example of this. Then we’ve had Finnish folklore turned into song lyrics. Some stories are pure fiction, and some have at least some historical truth in them. And then we have songs about alcohol and sex, like the real Finnish folklore. Lots of really naughty stuff was left out of Kalevala in the early 1800s, but we include everything!

Can you give us any hints to what we can look forward to on the upcoming “Karkelo?”

I think it’s going to be good album. I am actually waiting to hear the finished product myself. This has not necessarily been the fact with some of the earlier albums when I’ve been bored to death with them even before the albums were released. So I guess the new material is more interesting then. There’s some really heavy, slow stuff, a couple of faster drinking songs, and even a cover song.