“We wanted to make an album that we could listen to at home” – Interview with Ginger Evil

When Chaoszine was invited to watch a band perform live earlier this year, it was a pleasant surprise to hear the music of Ginger Evil. The Finnish band has the band split in half between the capital Helsinki and Kotka, but it is in the studio and especially on stage that they become a unity and complement each other as artists, putting on a show that is worth watching from start to finish. Veli Palevaara’s precise bass, drummer Toni Mustonen’s contagious energy, Tomi Julkunen’s groovy riffs and solos and the powerful voice of charismatic vocalist Ella Tepponen show why this quartet is one of the great new bands coming from the land of a thousand lakes.

On February 14th, The Way It Burns, the group’s first album, was released via Frontiers Music. Once again Chaoszine went to see them live, but this time we had the pleasure of talking to the band and their music producer Teemu Aalto before their show at the Semifinal in Helsinki. It was an interesting chat about their debut record, fans’ feedback and future plans. Check it out!

The band’s first song was released in 2021, the rest of the material was recorded two years ago and last February you released the full album “The Way it Burns”. In these last 4 years of creating, producing and promoting this album, what are the best memories that come to mind from this whole process?

Ella Tepponen: I think we have had a lot of good moments. Lots of fun shooting some music videos and also from the band camp. I’ve enjoyed playing together.

Tomi Julkunen: The best moment for me was the first rehearsal with four of us because that’s when we realized “Hey, we have something going on here! We have the chemistry, finally!”. Like right members, because it’s been pretty easy from then on. So, that’s how it went for me.

Veli Palevaara: My best memory is when we start recording our music with Teemu. It took it to a next level. The production and all together, it was amazing!

Ella: Yeah, I agree!

Tomi: The good moment was realizing that we were only halfway there when we went to the studio with half finished songs. We thought the songs were like, “Yeah, these are the songs” but we didn’t know we needed a fifth member to see the big picture. So that was good.

Ella: I remember from the rehearsals when Tomi first played, the song was then called “STP”, it’s called “Flames” now and it was our first song that was written in the beginning when we started playing together. It was one of the first rehearsals, might have been the first rehearsal we ever had. At the end of the rehearsal you started playing, Tomi, and then we decided to dig in more.

I didn’t know that Teemu would be here, but I do have a question about his work. I really liked how organic the sound of the album is and it was interesting to find out that it was produced by Teemu Aalto, best known for his work with heavy metal bands. How did working with him help you shape the band’s sound?

Tomi: Well, we were thinking that we don’t want to have the so-called modern sound because, to me the modern heavy metal and hard rock just all sound the same and we wanted to have sort of organic sound that you can hear all the instruments, but not in the way of back in the 80s when the sound wasn’t that good. We wanted to update the 90s rock sound to this day and I think we did good.

Veli: These days many bands lose the dynamic and space in their songs, so we really wanted to bring that back to our music and Teemu was the right choice for that.

Tomi: I think the music these days has this big wall of sound. There’s guitar and there’s like fucking six of them doing the same thing and it’s so much, even the slower songs, like acoustic songs that just you can’t fucking hide the wall. They’re too loud and in our work you can actually hear all the notes on the bass as well, which is important to us.

Ella: Teemu did a fantastic job! We had a lot of things we wanted to say with our music, to create some music that lasts time.

Tomi: Let’s say that we wanted to make an album that we could listen to at home.

Teemu Aalto: Well, many people may consider me as a metal producer, but personally, I like many kind of music and for me this project was a dream come true, because there were no limits. It was kind of getting me back to 90s when I was a kid and had MTV, when there still was some good music, or music at all on it. It was kind of a trip back to childhood, if you could say that.

Tomi: I could tell it’s like he was this fucking mad professor, “Yeah, we can do this and this and this and this”.

Teemu: Many kinds of flashbacks to some other music I’ve heard in the past, so I think it comes from there.

Veli: A very good thing was that the session was very quick and easy, because he really knows what to do and we don’t have to wait all the time.

Tomi: He not only knows what to do with all the effects and how to record proper sound, so it didn’t take much time, but the best thing was that he actually took our songs apart and sewed them together again. The best way to make music is to leave ego at home, because then you’re free to think that maybe you’re not always right with your songwriting. So you need someone to point out that “That’s a good thing and that’s not a good thing” or “Let’s change the key” and all that. I’d say that the album wouldn’t be what it is without our fifth member.

Teemu: This team, I think our strength is that we dig the same band sound.

Veli: We love the music. Yeah!

Tomi: And we have the same kind of humor as well.

“Arrowhead” is an amazing song and is a cover of a J. Karjalainen song. I think the song expresses Finnish melancholy very well through the instrumental and Ella’s vocal performance. How important was it to work with Jukka and bring a bit of the national music into your art?

Ella: Well, thank you! Veli was the key person that discussed it with Jukka. We all have a huge respect for him as an artist.

Tomi: Yeah, Finnish music sort of has this melancholy but still it has this hopefulness as well.

Ella: That was one thing that Jukka pointed out, that he wanted to hold on to the hopefulness in the song, even though it was a bit more sad than his version, but we wanted to hold on to that feeling to have hope in the end.

The album was released by Frontiers Music, a famous international record label, so there are a lot of people all over the world listening to your music. How has the interaction and feedback with fans around the world been?

Ella: It’s been awesome!

Tomi: Even though we do this first of all for ourselves, and you don’t really have expectations, so everything comes as an added bonus and when we get messages from all over the world that “we love your music” and blah blah blah, it just touches you.

Ella: Yeah, it’s very confusing. You’re not really thinking that someone from São Paulo would send you a message.

Tomi: It’s humbling but it’s encouraging as well, that we’ve done something good, right?

Teemu: It’s cool to see that music really matters, at least somewhere in the world.

Ella: We’re still growing the fan base and we need to do a lot of work to interact with the people, but now that we have the record out, probably we will get more interactive with people and try to find some more fans, so thank you people for listening!

Veli: It’s a funny thing as we really don’t talk about our musical directions. We just make music and we don’t think about trends or how the radio is playing the music. We just make our fucking records.

Tomi: If you hear and copy what a big band like Pearl Jam or Guns N’ Roses or whatever are doing, you will always be a copycat. So we take influences from here and there and we do our own thing with our heads and the music we love. That is what makes Ginger Evil, so that’s a lovely working environment because everyone brings something…

Ella: …to the table.

And I really like how lovely and kind the replies to the fans are on social media. It helps make a healthy fan base.

Tomi: Yeah, of course, because without fans, there wouldn’t be fucking shows or anything.

Ella: It would be only walls.

First album out and many shows happening, but what else can we expect from Ginger Evil in the near future? What are the current plans?

Ella: Let’s talk about this because Teemu is here. So, we’re gonna start making new music soon, now that we’re done with the excitement of the new record. I mean, we’re still excited, but we need to look forward to the future and it takes time to create some new music, so we’re about to start record number dos.

Veli: We have already a lot of ideas. So it’s not the problem. The problem is the time when we have to get together and make some magic again.

Tomi: Live wise we just got a new booking agent and a manager. So hopefully we get to play a proper tour at the end of this year or early next year and of course the festivals in 2026. We have our eyes on that, but the thing that matters the most is that we just enjoy creating music and go from there.

Words by John Wins
Photos by Jansku – Love Is Punk Studio

You can listen to Ginger Evil‘s debut album “The Way it Burns” here: