Finnish rockers Pearly Gates released their sixth EP recently. About “Unchained” and more the band talked for Progarchy. Read on!
You just release your new EP titled “Unchained.” Tell me about the creative process that informed the record.
Right from the start we had a feeling that we needed to release something that sounds professional and international. We also wanted to create something visual to show people the artistic abilities and different sides of our group and our music so we also made music videos for two of the songs.
First we chose the best songs from our live set and did a lot of work in the preproduction phase to get the most out of them. We added some catchy hooks and harmonies to the songs during the demo recordings and thought about all the details in the arrangements. Due to low budget the songs were recorded little by little over a two year period in multiple locations.
Original inspiration for individual songs came from different sources and all the music is written by our drummer Antti and singer Jonne separately and/or together.
Pearly Gates released six EP’s so far. Why that many EP’s, and why not a full-length record?
Before we haven’t really seen value in releasing a whole album without a record company backing it up but now we are planning to start demo sessions for a full-length record. It’s also worth to mention that most of the songs from our earlier releases are not in our live set. We feel that our songwriting is only now reaching the maturity needed to make an album that we’d be satisfied with.
All the releases before 2012 release “Spell Is Broken” are more like demo tapes that never really expressed the full potential of the songs or the band. “Unchained” feels like the first release that we can be truly proud of.
Did your writing approach for “Unchained” change comparing with “Spell is Broken”?
On most of our earlier recordings majority of the music was primarily written by our drummer Antti. On Unchained our singer Jonne has chimed in on the song writing and that has obviously altered our sound a little bit. We also made pretty extensive demos of all the songs before actually going to studio. It really helped getting everything to sound nice and tight.
How does the EP title effect the material presented on the record? Give me a snapshot of the topics you explore on the new songs.
Since there are two different lyricists on the record we didn’t really plan on a theme beforehand but all of the songs do have this sort of existential tint to them. Glass Eyes is a depiction of a person who has this insatiable need to destroy everything good in his life and Sink Hole is about voluntarily staying in an abusive relationship… be it with substances or people.
Lyrics in Unchained and Free Fall explore the process of searching something illusive that could fill the void in yourself so hard that you end up losing who you really are.
What evolution do you feel “Unchained” represents comparing with your previous works?
We have definitely gone a bit darker and modern on Unchained than on our previous EPs. We have always had a soft spot for “Southern Rock” type stuff but on this EP those influences aren’t playing a very big role anymore. We all feel that this is the direction we want to keep exploring on future releases also.
What were the biggest challenges you faced when making “Unchained”?
As an unsigned band we pay everything from our own pockets so that has its own obvious complications. The ideal would be that we could lock our selves in some cabin in the woods somewhere and record the songs there. Unfortunately reality exists and we had to spread the recording process to multiple studios and living rooms around Finland.
Tell me about the technical side of “Unchained”.
We made all the demos using Logic Pro. For the recording and mixing in the studio environment we used Pro Tools and all the other tools available. We also made some home recordings using variety of softwares and recording techniques. While making the demos we had already decided what kind of sounds and performance we want for each track so there wasn’t really room for improvisation during the recording.
We learned a lot about producing the kind of soundscape that we were after and we came pretty close to all of our visions.
How do you go about channeling this inspiration into writing?
Jonne: For me and probably to Antti as well songwriting is mainly therapy and purging of the soul. I can’t really write anything good unless I’m in a state of absolute self-loathing. I don’t really have a technique on making music. Some mornings you just grab a guitar and a song comes out.
Antti: I see a new song as a big stone that has a sculpture inside it. I need to hit my head to it until the shapes start to appear. I jam with my guitar and get the spark of creativity from some beautiful chord or groovy rythmn and try to listen where the song wants to go. I can’t really write a song in a day or too. It’s usually pretty long process.
Where do you see Pearly Gates in 20 years from now?
Well statistically at least one of us has died of cancer or something so it’s kinda hard to say but probably we are still playing in some basement somewhere. Hopefully living off of royalties from our hit christmas album.
Buy “Unchained” now from Bandcamp and follow the band on Facebook.
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