Medicated – Fresh Act May 2014
Although this band has been in existence since 2005 and released several EP´s during their career (e.g. “Magnum for Amen”, “Ways to Make You Fall”) it was not until the MyGrain birthday gig that this Finnish quintet caught the attention of STALKER. And that´s all about it how we got to know those guys, now it´s the turn of the band members themselves to introduce this act to you.
Who are you – can you introduce yourself and all of the band members?
We are Medicated, a metal band from Helsinki, Finland.
We consist of five lads: Aleksi Sihvonen (vocals), Samuli Hyttinen (guitar), Dani Nuutinen (guitar), Jani Kinnunen (bass) and Pertti Pätsi (drums).
How did you meet each other?
Samuli: Mostly through internet and random events by time.
Me and Dani probably met the first time (in real life) when we traded NES Games.
Pertti was introduced to me by our former bassist. Back then, Pertti was 15 years old and he had his own drums, which was nice.
Jani was always attending gigs where I was going too. He also made a memorable affection to me once in Tuska Festival when I was selling our first demo. He wasn’t in the band back then. Now he is. Can’t remember how it happened.
Aleksi got in touch with the band via internet when we were looking for a vocalist, after Dani decided to stop vocal duties. I went to meet him into a bar, and we had a nice chat about music and our relationships to music.
When and why did you form this band?
Samuli:The idea of the band started to form at around 2005. I and the other founding member and former guitarist Jesse wanted to put up a band and write our own songs. There really was no other reason to it.
After some occurrences, there suddenly was a whole line-up and a practice place, which helped the band in that time to start rolling.
The current line-up has been around since the spring of 2010. Now we’re simply enjoying each other’s company and love making music together.
How would you describe your musical style, and how did this style develop? What are your musical roots and influences?
Samuli: It is a mixture of death/thrash metal and Gothenburg metal with a melodic aspect. We include strong rhythmic elements, catchy melodies and groove in our songs, and we want to make riffs and beats that sound and feel good.
The style of our music has developed little by little, but the biggest impact on our style was when Aleksi joined the band and brought in his songs and way of making music. It included the strong melodic side and cool riffs! And very nice drum details.
The list of our common favorite bands consists of Soilwork, Gojira, Pantera and Lamb of God, among some others, whose influence can be heard in our songs. Needless to say, yet I´ll say it anyway, there are personal favorites which spice up the mix.
In which bands have you played before?
Samuli: Scaur and MadCraft. Now I´m also playing in a power metal group called Seraphiel and my first band-project with a funny name. Good songs, though, even after some 10 years!
Aleksi: Norther, Imperanon. Now also doing a solo-thingie called ASXX.
Dani: Chaos Infinitum, The Booby Prize and Novella. Nowadays alongside of Medicated, I play in a pop-rock/punk band called The 2nd Best.
Jani: I played in Divine Intervention, a proggy rock/metal group.
Pertti: Currently I am also playing in Seraphiel. There were a bunch of thrash metal bands where I played in around the time when I was asked to join Medicated.
How do you write your music and lyrics, is it teamwork?
Samuli: So far I and Aleksi have written the songs. We record demo versions of the songs at home. Then we practice the demo versions and tweak them at the rehearsal place, after which we do pre-production recordings before recording the actual end product.
Lately there’s been more collaboration and ideas from other lads, too, which has enriched the material.
Aleksi has taken care of the lyrics.
Is there a particular philosophy behind your works, or where do you get your inspiration from?
Samuli: There’s no mutual agreement of a philosophy. Each member brings his own ideas and thoughts to the table in the way he sees appropriate. We all have our demons, and I think that this band and our music work as a way to deal with them. In addition, movies, music, books and whatnot are sources of inspiration.
How did you come up with the band name – is there a story behind it?
Samuli: Even though I´ve been in the band since the start, I don´t really remember how we came up with the name. Most likely it was Jesse´s idea when we had the idea of forming this band. In the internet. Such a mysterious world.
What are your goals, dreams, what do you want to achieve with your music?
Aleksi: To make good music together and have fun along the way. And play good gigs and give the audience a run for their money. And if even one person likes our music beside us, it has served its purpose.
Are you looking for a record company or would you prefer to stay in the DoItYourself mode?
Jani: I guess our mentality right now is that we want to make music just the way we like it and the DIY method has worked out pretty well for us. So we don´t think about the record company thing too much as we want to concentrate on doing the stuff that matters, making music and playing shows. Of course we send our CD:s to companies and would consider a good deal if it came our way, but we don´t want to get too stressed about that.
What should an ideal record company for you be like, and do for you?
Jani: Well you always need resources for recording, producing, distributing and marketing material so those are pretty much the main things. But we definitely don´t want to make any compromises music-wise.
What are your live shows like? What´s the perfect venue/show for you?
Samuli: Energetic, heavy and enjoyable. We want to deliver our songs with good quality, yet still make heads nod in the audience. Perfect venue would be a nice intense club with enough room on stage to mosh! Now we´re dreaming of playing at the legendary Tavastia Klubi here in Helsinki.
Do you have a weird /absurd story to tell, e.g. about mishaps at a gig/tour?
Jani: Not weird or absurd but one moment that comes to mind is on one of our biggest gigs supporting Stam1na there was a pretty intense moment just before the gig was about to start. We came on stage with the intro playing but our guitarist back then Jesse noticed that there was a problem with his amp and there was no sound coming from it whatsoever. He managed to get it working just in time before the song started though. But yeah, that was pretty intense at the moment.
Samuli: Yeah! Jesse gave his cab a nice traditional smack, after which sound was back. Like two seconds before Pertti counted in the song. We actually got it on video too, got to dig it out from somewhere.
If you could freely choose a band to tour with, who would it be, and why?
Aleksi: Probably MyGrain because they are nice guys and we have more or less the same elements in music so we would make an awesome package for the audience.
Jani: MyGrain and Profane Omen. We´ve played with both before and it´s been great.
Samuli: I´d add Soilwork to the list! That´d be awesome!
The internet, a curse as well as a blessing – what are your favorite (promotional) websites (to present the band, e.g. Myspace, youtube), which others do you think are rather not recommendable to other bands (they cannot keep their promises, it costs a lot but does not do anything etc)?
Jani: Facebook tends to be the most important one for us but nowadays it´s just so packed with posts that fans don´t always even get to see their liked bands´ posts. SoundCloud is great for making songs easily available for listening. Videos are also very important so YouTube is a very valuable tool for bands. It´s good to have your material on all decent sites. The material should be as widely available as possible. At least in Finland, Spotify is very popular so having our songs on Spotify is pretty important. We haven´t really put too much money on those promotional sites though.
What are your plans in the (near) future?
Samuli: We are currently writing and practicing songs with an aim to make our very first and own full-length album. We plan to produce the album ourselves and make it as good as possible in every way we are able to in this current time.
We have a music video coming up from our gigs in February. Make sure you watch it – here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYnjd5hHhiU
Band website: http://medicatedband.com/
ORDER CD: http://medicated.bigcartel.com/