PARTY HARD

IT'S BEEN A WHIRLWIND YEAR FOR BLIND CHANNEL, ENDING AT THEIR MASSIVE NEW ALBUM. HERE, JOEL HOKKA, NIKO MOILANEN, JOONAS PORKO AND ALEKSI KAUNISVESI TELL ITS STORY.

- JAMES WILSON-TAYLOR

You'll have first popped up for a lot of people thanks to Eurovision. When did you decide to enter and what was your initial approach?

Joonas: "It was summer 2020 and we didn't know what the next thing would be. We'd switched managers, we'd just made a really good album from our point of view. What should we do? Then we heard that UMK, the qualification for Eurovision, might have a place for a rock band. We'd always thought 'no', but now seemed like the perfect time. Let's go there and kick some ass, and don't care about anything else."

Niko: "It was the only thing to do. We suck at waiting, we want to do things and it looked like we were just going to have to wait for this pandemic to be over and who knows, was it going to be one year? Two years? A decade? Nobody knew. So Joonas suggested we enter UMK and the more we thought about it, we decided to take it as a promo. We're there to take a huge step in our career. Let's go up in front of 200 million people and show our middle fingers. That's the Blind Channel way, and where the idea started."

Joonas: "After Eurovision, we got the record deal with Century Media and lots of new fans all over the world."

Joel: "Dark Side' was in the charts in the UK, Germany, Belgium, and everywhere in Europe. It was a top ten song in many countries. It was a big deal for the alternative scene overall."

And Eurovision leads us on to this new album, 'Lifestyles Of The Sick & Dangerous'. When did work on that begin and what were your initial aims for it?

Aleksi: "We wrote most of it before Eurovision, and thank God we did. The songs were almost ready and then we finished it up during the summer."