Andrew Craighan of My Dying Bride shares feelings of admiration and happiness towards vocalist Mikko Kotamäki

The band’s decision to bring in vocalist Mikko Kotamäki (Swallow The Sun) to front My Dying Bride for its 2025 live appearances following an apparent argument with founding singer Aaron Stainthorpe was discussed by guitarist Andrew Craighan of My Dying Bride in a recent interview with Australia’s Heavy. He was questioned about the origins of his partnership with Mikko, as transcribed by blabbermouth.net.

Well, he was chosen because we found ourselves vocalist-less, if that is such a word. I have to admit, we didn’t know quite how deeply Aaron’s solo aspirations were — let’s politely put it like that — which I kind of understand. People, you get to a certain age and you wanna make things happen and you wanna make ’em happen quick. But obviously it had an effect on us. We were left without a vocalist. And we weren’t ready for it. We didn’t have a plan — well, mainly because we didn’t know. And so we found ourselves in disarray, but we were sort of shocked at this. So once we’d got over the shock and we realized we really didn’t have a vocalist — [Aaron’s] got his new band, and it sounds like he’s putting another band together as well to enhance his solo career — we had to find a vocalist. And I think it was either Neil and Shaun or the combination of Neil, Dan and Sean, who were very fond of Swallow The Sun and they know Mikko’s history, ’cause I think Swallow The Sun, very early in their early career, were influenced by My Dying Bride. So he knows us. He knows what My Dying Bride is, he knows what the ethos is and he knows what it’s about. He won’t have any delusions of grandeur because he knows where My Dying Bride come from and where we presently are. And then the most important thing, we looked at his vocal range and his death metal’s different to the way Aaron would sing it, but his vocal range is very much what we needed. So we thought, ‘We’ll try that guy first.’ And he just said yes. And it was that simple. And then within a couple of weeks of him saying yes, we flew him across to Halifax and we had a meal and a meeting and we did some rehearsals and it was just easy. It was really quite something.

He was instantly welcomed in the group.

He’s got a very dry sense of humor, a phenomenally dry sense of humor, but he is very, very professional, to the point where we, we were quite shocked. We were, like, ‘Oh, fuckin’ hell. We’re gonna have to get professional now. This is what professionalism looks like.’ We weren’t ready for any of that. So, yeah, we all pulled the socks up a little bit. And it just works. We’ve just done three shows. We did one in Slovakia, one in Hungary, and one in Finland, in his hometown — well, not his hometown, but his home country at least — to great success. We had some equipment issues, but nothing musically or personality-wise. We all got on. We had a great time. And despite the shock of people… They knew Mikko was singing, and I’m not sure what they expected, but when he walks out on stage, they cheer. The joke in the band is that I’ve been in this band for X amount of years and they don’t fucking cheer for me. No, it’s been great, I have to admit. But it was strange beginnings, and we weren’t really sure what was gonna come out, but it’s been great. So this is how we’ll continue until we’re done.