Finnish glam rockers Reckless Love released their eagerly anticipated fourth studio album InVader last week.
The band are currently on an extensive UK tour in support of their latest offering alongside their fellow countrymen Santa Cruz. National Rock Review recently had the opportunity to sit down with Reckless Love’s frontman Olli Herman to discuss the band’s latest album, their touring plans and which artist he would surprisingly like to cover one of their songs.
NRR: Thanks for taking the time to speak to us here at National Rock Review we really appreciate it.
Olli: The pleasure is all mine.
NRR: You released your new album InVader last week. How are you guys feeling today, you must have been celebrating at the weekend right?
Olli: Yeah, Spinefarm UK, Dante Bonutto who is the head of A&R there, he actually brought us a bottle of champagne for that. Yeah, of course, there’s a lot of partying on the tour, every night (laughing), so everybody has been in the party mood for the last weekend.
NRR: So could you tell us a little bit about the album and the inspiration behind it?
Olli: Well the album, it was two and a half years ago when we started writing it because two and a half years ago we released Spirit. With Spirit, we had this weird thing that we had it ready half a year before it was released. So for half a year we just did only a few shows, we didn’t do that much touring.
So we started writing songs and we started thinking about the fourth album, which eventually became InVader. We made a conscious choice of incorporating as much of new, fresh influences into the music and I think we succeeded pretty well. The album sounds really fresh and it sounds different from the previous ones, but it doesn’t sound like it’s forced or anything, it sounds really natural, it sounds like Reckless Love.
NRR: I know you just released your first single from the album as well “Monster,” could you tell us a bit about that song?
Olli: First when I heard it, I immediately thought of sort of like Nirvana meets Backstreet Boys meets Alice Cooper kind of flavour. Then somehow you know I started thinking of Alice Cooper and shock rock lyrics. I started thinking about plastic surgery and all the stuff that people do nowadays to themselves just to look the way they want to look. I started writing those graphic images down and realized that fucking hell this is gonna make a rad bunch of shock rock lyrics, just like Alice Cooper would, only with a glam rock flavour because it’s got to do with the true stuff that people do. I think it ended up really cool and you know people have really talked about the lyrics (laughing) they are pretty graphic I know.
NRR: Where do you find the inspiration for your songwriting?
Olli: Well, Pepe does most of the songwriting, I basically do all of the lyrics. I’m with him when he does that songwriting, but he describes it as a non-stop radio in his head. Sometimes he plays songs on that radio that he’s heard before, and sometimes he just comes up with a new tune and thinks of it for a while, is this somebody else’s tune or is this mine (laughing)?
Yeah I mean he says the less that he thinks about writing a song the better songs you can do. He basically composes these like almost ready kind of songs. They might be missing a middle part or something and he records it with his acoustic guitar and he sings the melody on top of that, but it’s basically like a blueprint for me to start writing the lyrics straight away and start exchanging ideas how it should go down and how the end result should sound.
NRR: What’s your favourite track on the new album?
Olli: Well that changes every day, but I’m gonna have to say “Child Of The Sun.” It has such a poppy kind of like really summery laid-back feel to it. It’s one of my favourites, quite possibly the one that’s the most frequent favourite of mine. Yeah, I love them all, it’s hard to pick a favourite.
NRR: You’ve been out on the road for about a week now. How’s the tour been going so far?
Olli: It’s been going great. The first night was sold out and Wolverhampton and Leeds after that they’ve been only a few tickets short of being sold out. So the houses have been packed. I hear the presales for tonight have been really good, I mean it’s going great.
It’s a good combination with the guys from Santa Cruz, we’ve known them for years now and you know they’re a bunch of great guys and I think it’s a good combination with the music. They’ve got a little bit more metal, a little bit heavier stuff and their sound is a little bit heavier than ours and I think it goes well, Scandinavian blondes (laughing).
NRR: What’s the highlight of the tour been so far?
Olli: Oh well, of course, the first night being sold out, I would have to pick that but then again Wolverhampton I like that place it’s a sweaty place and I like the sound in that place as well.
NRR: What’s your favourite track to perform live and why?
Olli: Well, we haven’t performed them all yet. So you know it’s tough to choose, but from the ones we’ve been playing so far I have to pick “Monster” because people have seen the video and they know the lyrics already and so we get a really good response from the crowd as well.
NRR: If you could choose any artist to cover one of your songs, which artist would you choose and which song?
Olli: Now that’s a toughie (laughing). Oh, I’ve never thought of hearing it that way, but I would be really interested for anybody to do a cover of our songs, I would be interested to hear it.
If I really had to pick somebody …. Kanye West, I’d love to hear him do the screams, he fucking murdered Bohemian Rhapsody already (laughing).
NRR: Do you listen to much music yourself and if so which bands are you listening to at the moment?
Olli: I listen to music quite a lot, but you know you never get rid of the bands that really first struck you when you were a teenager. So for me possibly the best ones still are Guns N’ Roses, Van Halen, Kiss, Def Leppard. But yeah I mean I listen to all kinds of new stuff as well. I’ve got no limits to musical taste, but the best ones are still like 80’s hair metal.
NRR: What else do you have in store for the rest of this year?
Olli: Plenty of touring, I mean we’ve got more than fifty shows booked right now. We’ve got like the Euro tour that we are going to finish off at the beginning of April in Moscow. Before that, we are gonna tour the whole of England, of Europe and come back to the UK and play the London show.
After the Moscow show, we are flying back to Finland where we’ve got quite an extensive tour coming up for the rest of the spring. Then we’ve got plenty of festivals in both in Europe and in Finland as well. We’ve just had a really nice offer about going to Australia, but we will see that’s still in the works, it’s still a plan, nothing confirmed yet. There’s plenty of touring coming up and I’m really eager, I like touring (laughing). It’s been a long time since we’ve done this much touring, it’s a good feeling to be back on the road.
NRR: Thanks for taking the time to speak to us we really appreciate it. We are looking forward to the show tonight in Newcastle.
Olli: Thank you.