Today we're discussing "Tuleen ajettu maa", the second half of Hävitetty, an apocalyptic album which we couldn't agree if it's completely nihilistic or leaves space for hope, but Sasan described it best with the sentence: "it's like caressing the dog's head while you're putting it to sleep". You will discover lots of small details you never noticed before (it happened to all of us during the conversation) and you will find out which part of the song the guest is ACTUALLY on! Besides our silky voices, you will hear some little snippets from interviews with the band, as a teaser for the upcoming book Home of the Waves: Conversations with Moonsorrow.

I can't believe that it's been 18 years since this album came out and I discovered Moonsorrow. I'm an adult fan now.

Participants: Francesco from Italy, Abel from Hungary, Mikkel from Denmark, Sasan from the US, Thomas from France.

Fragments from other songs:

Jean Michel Jarre - Oxigène 1

Deep Purple - Highway Star

Uriah Heep - Easy Living 

Marduk - Baptism by Fire

Atlantean Kodex - The Innermost Light

Tuleen ajettu maa live in Annecy, France, April 2007

All our links are here:

https://linktr.ee/moonsorrow.podcast

I'm sure at this point nobody is surprised by the title and the length of this episode. That's right, we talk only about the first of the two songs of Hävitetty, and yes, for over two hours. Although, in fairness, we also spent a sizable amount of time discussing the album as a whole, because it turned out to be very special for all of us... except for one!

Did you know there's a book about Moonsorrow coming up? You'll hear some information about it in the first few minutes of this episode.

Participants: Sasan from the USA, Aleksi from Finland, Thomas from France, Mikkel from Denmark, Francesco from Italy, Abel from Hungary.

The second part of Verisäkeet is finally out! Here we analyze Pimeä, Jotunheim and Kaiku in more detail than anyone ever needed. You'll find out which song disappointed Mitja — in his own words, you'll hear very different versions of Kaiku and Pimeä and you'll discover the relation between Pimeä and grunge! We continued learning about Finnish folk instruments that are present in the album (in the previous episode we identified the jouhikko, now is the turn of the kantele) and realized that, even though Verisäkeet is less shiny than Kivenkantaja, it's not as raw as it may seem and there is no shortage of layers. If you want even more detail about Verisäkeet, we really recommend you to check out the Henri interview we released some episodes back, as he spoke in great detail about the songwriting for this album. We didn't reference that interview in this episode because we actually recorded it earlier than the interview — yeah, quite long ago, but hey, this podcast is TIMELESS!

Guest star: Shiva from the US. Team members: Sasan from the US, Thomas from France, Mikkel from Denmark, Francesco from Italy, Aleksi from Finland, Grilo do Demo from Hungary.

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Songs from other artists:

Helheim - Jormundgand

Pauliina Syrjälä - Church Bells

Yömyssy - Moonsorrow medley

Sebastian Penner - Pimeä (orchestral version)

We are back with the album episodes, this time talking about Verisäkeet. As usual, the conversation turned out very long and we split it into two parts, so this is 2h20' talking about Karhunkynsi and Haaska only. You know you wouldn't like it any other way!

Guest star: Shiva from California, team members: Sasan from California, Thomas from France, Mikkel from Denmark, Francesco from Italy (who had to start late), Aleksi from Finland (who had to leave early), Grilo do Demo from Hungary.

Songs from other artists:

Mayhem - De Mysteriis dom. Sathanas;

Enslaved - Vetrarnott;

Finsterforst - Urquell;

Helheim - Dualitet og ulver;

Arkona - По сырой земле (Po syroi zemle);

Antimony - Ending I.

The Epic Heathen Podcast is back, this time with an unusually short episode about an unusual topic: Moonsorrow live. Taking the recent special concert in Helsinki, on May 26th, 2023 as the starting point, we discuss Moonsorrow's approach to playing live and the choices they make in the face of the technology and the possibilities they have at their disposal. Although — not gonna lie — we also devote quite some time to the concert itself and the setlist they chose, because it was awesome. The participants are Aleksi from Finland, Thomas from France, Sasan from the USA and Grilo from Hungary.

Find a complete recording of the show on YouTube!

THE LONGEST MOONSORROW INTERVIEW EVER MADE

Today’s episode is an interview with Henri Sorvali, a 3-hour-long conversation about how he makes music, his beginnings doing home demos with Ville, how the process evolved, his most and least liked Moonsorrow albums and moments, his inspiration, his approach through the years, and we even have time to talk about video game music. It was done over two days, both are put together here.

It’s available in two formats:

AUDIO ONLY (this one). Cleaned up, nicely edited, more comfortable to listen to, and with lots of music fragments illustrating what we’re talking about. The version you should listen to (I mean, it’s 3 hours).

VIDEO ( https://youtu.be/JKjpFukDge4). Raw, with all the problems and none of the extras, but you can verify that it’s actually Henri and not a voice actor!

Interviewers: Thomas & Alexis from France, Mikkel from Denmark, Sasan from the USA, Francesco from Italy and Grilo do Demo from Hungary.

“Kuin ikuinen” cover by Francesco.

Kuolleiden Maa 2015 - Breathing Blood Remix available here: https://soundcloud.com/trollhouseaudio/kuolleiden-maa-breathing-blood-remix

Music fragments:

- Hades - Pagan Prayer

- Satyricon - Black Winds

- Satyricon - Taakeslottet

- Jethro Tull - Aqualung

- Obtained Enslavement - From Times In Kingdoms...

- Amorphis - Black Winter Day

- Joel Goldsmith - Kull the Conqueror

- Ahti - Soittajapaimen

- Joe Pesci in “Casino” (1995)

- Several Moonsorrow songs that you already knew

The war in Ukraine had the side effect of delaying Kivenkantaja part 2, but it's finally here, and 50% longer than part 1! These songs certainly have a lot to be said about — and we didn't even say everything we wanted about Matkan Lopussa. On the other hand, we took a detour to try and define folk metal. Not sure we succeeded, but we had a jolly good time! Stay tuned for the next episode because it's going to be something very different and not about Verisäkeet.

Participants: Leo from England, Thomas from France, Sasan from the USA, Aleksi from Finland (only the first half of the show), Mikkel from Denmark and Abel from Hungary.

The live fragments from the song Kivenkantaja are taken from the performance at Kilkim Žaibu 2014.

Raunioilla cover mixed by Sasan (opening the episode) and by me (the one at the end), with contributions from both of us, Alexis from France and two people from outside the team: a different Aleksi from Finland and Vica from Hungary. Other musical fragments by Francesco.

The Kivenkantaja episode is finally here, even if only the first half. For the first time we have a guest, no other than Leo Aragón, director of the documentary “Home of the Wind: A History of Moonsorrow”. He brought lots of quotations from the documentary interviews with the band members. In other, not-so-happy news, French Alexis has left the team and only appears in the intro song, but I can assure you that this isn’t the last you’ll hear of him!

The second half should come out later this month, so don’t worry, you won’t have time to forget the beginning before you hear the end! The whole thing would be around 5 hours so maybe it’s better this way, after all.

The paintings we mention during Raunioilla are:

Wilhelm Steuerwaldt - The Ruins of Heisterbach Abbey

Thomas Cole - The Course of Empire

Participants: Leo from England, Thomas from France, Sasan from the USA, Aleksi from Finland, Francesco from Italy, Mikkel from Denmark and Abel from Hungary.

Raunioilla cover mixed by Sasan, with contributions from himself, Alexis, Abel and two people from outside the team: a different Aleksi from Finland and Vica from Hungary. Other musical fragments by Francesco.

Check out our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLPa53rLLl8HUPf2aY1x0cA

Unboxing every single release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGd0f8jU-tQ

Check out Antimony, Sasan's one-man band: https://antimoney.bandcamp.com/

We take a deep dive into Voimasta ja Kunniasta, probably their most warrior-battle-epic effort, or as we have labeled it, Dude On Horse Metal. Besides the regular song analysis, we try our best to make sense of the story it tells, we speak about Marko's qualities as a drummer, about Bathory copying Bathory, about Sankarihauta resembling Mega Man, etcetera. All spiced up with some audio clips with different levels of rarity.

Intro music by Francesco and Sasan, editing by Grilo, additional foreign accents by Aleksi, Thomas and Mikkel.

The live clips are from Annecy 2007 (Sankarihauta), Wacken 2011 (Kylän päässä), and the third one is a surprise.