'It feels good to be here'

Marko Saaresto, the frontman of Finnish rock band ‘Poets of the Fall’ (POTF), is a man of many words. The band was recently in the City to kickstart the India leg of their ‘Temple Of Thought’ world tour.

Metrolife spoke to the vocalist about their new album, the artwork and how the band is still together after nine years of making music.

While the trademark sound of the band is retained, the new album is a lot mellower than their previous ones. “We just work on the album and then look back at it to see what we have accomplished.

There’s definitely a few ballads in there that I really like but then, you also have something crazy like ‘The Happy Song’ in the end,” says Marko, who acknowledges that the band is constantly experimenting with new sounds.

“The way I see it, we pretty much have everything from this end to that end of POTF. You have the mellow stuff, mid-rock as well as the craziness and punkiness coming out!” he adds.

The band has been together long enough and have done their fair share of experimentation with genres ranging from jazz to the abrasive grind-core. But the one thing that seems to remain constant in their music is the theme of love.

“It’s a good topic and there’s a lot of criticism in it, according to me. But everyone can read and understand the lyrics from their own point of view, be it about love, hope, dreams or anger. It gives a lot of possibilities to understand differently and that’s the most important thing,” defends the vocalist. Interestingly, it is he who writes almost all the lyrics for the band.

As always, the album artwork reflects a lot of symbolism and shows that a lot of thinking has gone into it. When asked about the masterminds behind it, Marko says, “Before I was into the music business, I was a graphic designer. I’ve a lot of friends in that field who help with the album art. I do the art direction and after that, they have the free right to bring their own ideas and magic to it. Usually, it becomes something better than what I thought.”

The artwork does speak volumes about the sound of ‘Temple of Thought’ with its dark colours and designs that seem to take you into the musician’s mind. “For this album, we collectively decided to focus on the duality of things and points of view. It was all about finding alternative vantage points and solutions,” shares Marko.

Like the artwork, it’s a similar process when it comes to making music. “Whoever comes up with the strongest vision for a song is the one who gets to decide what we have to do. The starting bit is usually Olli (the guitarist) and me doing an acoustic version of the song. Then Captain (keyboardist) comes in and puts more elements like strings and drum loops and bass into it,” he explains.

This is the band’s third visit to India and as in the past, this time feels like home too. “The last time was so great and everybody started making requests for us to come back. We’ve been working on this for the last six months so here we are! It feels good to be here,” says Marko with a smile.