“What the fuck is I Am Your God?” – Finnish melodeath band refines their sound in a black core

The Finnish melodeath band I Am Your God released their third album “△” on April 25. Nefertiti Malaty and Chaoszine caught up with the singer Julius Vetämäjärvi and the guitarist Joonas “Johnny” Erkkonen to find out what kind of a journey it has been from cold Lapland to the hottest venues of London.

Melodeath group I Am Your God from Rovaniemi is on the rise in the metal scene of Finland. The band released their third full length album “△” on April 25. The journey began in early 2018, when Julius Vetämäjärvi got the idea of forming a band. Vetämäjärvi had had a longer break from music and he started to miss playing together with other people.

His playlist at the time was full of traditional Finnish rock music like Juice Leskinen and Popeda. The original plan was just to play some older stuff in a cover band. First members to join the group were the guitarists Joonas Erkkonen and Matti Hietala. The former was an old school mate and the latter a friend from the army.

Joonas Roivainen was also another school mate and Atte Autio another army friend. Both of them were on board soon too, Roivainen as bassist and Autio as the drummer. The line-up was complete.

“We quickly realized that we were all metalheads, so we started to play metal covers like Bullet For My Valentine’s Tears Don’t Fall“, Julius recalls.

After the third band rehearsals or so, Matti and Julius already started to work on original songs right away. A fun get-together-project soon turned in to a serious band and the group took more ambitious direction with their music.

A mixture of old and new

The vocalist’s job was a new role for Julius Vetämäjärvi as he had previously mostly played drums. One of the biggest challenges was to learn the techniques of growling and screaming properly.

“My singing had been mostly clean and then I tried to imitate Ville Laihiala’s (ex-Sentenced, Poisonblack, S-Tool) rasp vocals”, Vetämäjärvi says and shakes his head.

Besides Laihiala, Vetämäjärvi mentions Matthew Tuck (Bullet For My Valentine) and Alexi Laiho (Children of Bodom, Bodom After Midnight) as his idols as a vocalist. YouTube videos helped him to train and Vetämäjärvi was singing all the time while driving. He was on his way from Rovaniemi to Oulu in 2019, when he noticed, that he actually sounded good. What was even better, it didn’t hurt.

“I sent immediately a message to Matti. I told him, that I had learned to growl and we could record a couple of demos the very next day!”

Erkkonen says he got into Trivium’s music in primary school with his brother. Bring me the Horizon and Asking Alexandria are also among his favourites. Matt Heafy, Corey Beaulieu and Ben Bruce are some of his favourite guitarists, whose performances and breakdowns have inspired his own work.

Many other bands like Iron Maiden and Parkway Drive have also influenced various band members. The result is the sound of I Am Your God, which combines traditional Scandinavian metal and modern style core.

“Lost Boys or something”

The name I Am Your God was coined with the help of red wine. At first Julius Vetämäjärvi, as the frontman, wasn’t too excited about the idea. Would the listeners think that he was overstating himself or something? 

“I think I suggested ‘Lost Boys’ or something like that”, he recalls. 

Now they are used to the name and it has been found to stand out: “What the fuck is ‘I Am Your God’?”

The band has a strong Rovaniemi brand, but in fact only the bassist Joonas Roivainen was born and raised in the Northern city. Johnny had moved there as a child, but the rest of the members had ended up there with their work or studies in the 2010s. The local metal scene was pretty non-existent back then. Apart from IAYG, there was Suotana, and that was pretty much it.

The first single Betrayal was released in late 2019. According to Joonas Erkkonen, it was the song, when it really hit everyone. This was their thing.

“It’s a damn good thing that we waited and didn’t go out and release our first demos. We were really excited about them, but all of us realized, that it wouldn’t have been worth it to release them right away.”

Now the members are living all over Finland. Julius and Johnny are living in Helsinki, Matti and Joonas still in Rovaniemi and Atte in Ylivieska. The distance between the members is more than 800 kilometres.

“Practicing alone has become more vital and then the ones in Helsinki and the ones in Rovaniemi also play together as duos. Everyone does their homework and trains with backing tracks”, Johnny says. 

Long-distance relationship

The training place in Rovaniemi was actually recently dismissed, when they realized that it had been used only once during the last year. The band practices together before their gigs.

There have been situations, where the band has been able to play a new song together for the first time in soundcheck right before the show. This was the case with ‘Til Death Do Us Part at Tuska Festival in 2024. On top of that, a live video of the song was made on the same occasion.

Being “in a long-distance relationship” has its advantages. Sometimes it may be even a couple of months that the members of the band are not seeing each other.

“After that, it’s nice as hell to go to play a gig and see the guys after a long time. Maybe you can enjoy those moments more, when you don’t get tired of other people’s faces”, Julius is guessing.

A record deal with German label Out of Line Music was signed in 2020. A representative of the label spotted Flowers on Your Grave on Spotify’s editorial list. The same label is working as well with other Finnish melodic death metal and metalcore acts such as Bloodred Hourglass, Balance Breach and Mors Subita.

It was around this time that Covid really hit the world. Suddenly everything was cancelled. IAYG was qualified for band competitions and there would have been gigs in Southern Finland, but they did not happen. This was particularly annoying because the band had found it difficult to get shows south of Oulu. 

“We thought that we would finally get some visibility and access to other venues. There couldn’t have been a better place for a record deal”, Julius says.

Wild, alive and kicking on stage

IAYG guys are young, wild and hungry. The live acts are really energetic and the band is present. There is even a sense of danger in the air when the singer is staring fiercely towards the audience.

“The adrenaline on stage is something different from any other aspects of life. No matter what’s going on in your personal life and how stressed you are, when you’re on stage with the guys you get totally different kind of energy”, Julius says. 

“I usually smile, even though I’m supposed to look grumpy. It’s so cool to be there”, Johnny agrees. 

The men also express pride in their new album. It is titled “△” or spelled Trinity. The album showcases a more diverse band spectrum, ranging from black metal to metalcore. 

The triangle has many meanings. Apart from the most obvious, being the third album, it also refers to the band’s early logo, which featured a triangle. 

“If you are at all familiar with our lyrics, you might have noticed that there are religious references in them. The Holy Trinity is certainly not the first, nor the last reference of this kind”, Julius says.

Even though it is not intentionally planned, Julius admits that he has been recently listening to Kingston Wall. Some people might see similarities to their third album III-Tri-Logy though the genre is totally different.

Ready for anything

The first two albums followed pretty much the same line, but the second one took a direction towards a more varied expression, with rockier and heavier songs on the one hand, and more melodic and slower songs on the other. 

“We were expanding the musical vibes even more this time. You can hear elements of metalcore and also black metal in some of the tracks”, Johnny says.

An indication has already been given with several released single songs. The band has been keen to develop bolder arrangements and pay more attention to details, for example the piano parts played by Juho Kela on a couple of tracks.

A music video for Pyre of Fears will be released to coincide with the release of the album. 
The band admits that they consider videos important. 

“We’ve been thinking about how we could bring the live energy to our videos, so that through the audiovisual experience someone might be interested and would want to see us live”, Julius says.

Julius and Johnny consider the gigs and festivals abroad the highlights of the band career so far. They have played for example in London and Summer Breeze Open Air festival in Germany. It has been exciting to hang out with their own childhood idols at backstages. Their first festival gig was in Oulu’s Rock in the City. They were invited to play there just the night before.

“After that, you realize you can get through any kind of gig. One part of the experience was that our whole band got to witness In Flames playing at the same festival”, Johnny says.

“The whole journey together has been rewarding. We’ve grown and made progress as players, songwriters, everything. We’ve worked out all the details together and everyone is really committed to this thing.”

IAYG will do a small tour in Finland in May. The kick-off will be an album release concert at Helsinki Tiivistämö on May 2.

Interview and text: Nefertiti Malaty