The two-metre monster who knows what he wants

By Jussi Ahlroth in Athens
     
      Mr. Lordi sits in the front seat of the band's minibus and waves a laid-back "Yo!"
      The image is a tricky one to get your head around. Here is this monster, like something straight out of a splatter-movie, chatting jovially and laughing throatily. This is the bit of Lordi that the public doesn't see: Tomi Putaansuu chatting in Finnish, but in the Lordi mask and make-up.
     
A few minutes earlier, Mr. Lordi and the other band-members joined the scrum outside an Athens hotel. They simply stepped out through the doors and all hell broke loose.
      Hotel guests and passers-by stopped and gazed slack-jawed at the two-metre tall monsters in full gear. Eurovision Song Contest staffers, accredited journalists, and photographers were milling around all over the place.
      Michal Wisniewski, the green-haired lead singer and lyricist from the Polish Eurovision entrants Ich Trojen, stands slightly to one side. The Polish show was among the most spectacular. Here, nobody pays him any mind.
     
A large black car pulls up in front of the hotel. From the windows blasts out the sounds of Hard Rock Hallelujah, Lordi's monster-metal anthem for this year's competition. Jaana Pelkonen, one of the two Finnish commentators for YLE TV, rocks back and forth to the music.
      The monsters strike a pose. They are photographed from all sides. Their departure threatens to be delayed. Katja Toivanen of SonyBMG Finland does her best to keep some kind of lid on the situation. She doesn't have much success, and once again the band are late getting on the move.
      On the way to the arena at the Olympic Indoor Hall, part of the Athens Olympic Sports Complex, the band's drummer Kita is excited. "Get a look at that! That bus driver is taking pictures, too. Pretty cool!" Sure enough, the driver of a bus in the next lane is taking a snapshot of the band.members while he is at the wheel.
     
The record company people are grinning like Cheshire cats. "We've made contracts for the release of the album in fifteen new European territories", enthuses Kimmo Valtanen, CEO of SonyBMG Finland.
      Valtanen introduced Lordi to the other European regional managing directors about a month ago. "They were like so many little kids - getting themselves into photo ops up next to the monsters."
      BMG made the right decision a while back, taking Lordi as a complete package - music and image.
      Before that, record companies used to growl and grumble for years, by turns telling the band to change their sound or change their image. Putaansuu was having none of it. No compromises. And now here they are, with a police motorcycle escort, heading off to perform in the Eurovision final for a hundred million viewers.
      Not bad.
     
Lordi combines two objects of fond desire for Tomi Putaansuu - horror movies and 1980s melodic hard rock. For the 32-year-old from Rovaniemi, life is Lordi from dawn till dusk, and often beyond. He has made practically everything that one can see or hear of the band.
      "No, no, the whole PLACE is a workshop", he replies to the question of whether he has a workshop at home for making the gear the band wears on stage.
      "The kitchen table gets used by turns for sewing and for making plaster casts or working latex. If there's something good on the TV, then there's latex and pots of acrylic paint all over the sofa as I watch and work at the same time."
      Putaansuu's live-in partner is the band's semi-official seamstress and costumier.
      Last fall, Putaansuu made the outfits for Lordi's new album and the album cover. The band's accoutrements are changed somewhat with each new release. "Our uniforms remain the same for just the one tour of duty."
     
Lordi released the look for their latest album, The Rockalypse, at the turn of the year, a couple of months before the CD hit the stores. At the same time two new band-members were introduced - bassist Ox and keyboards player Awa.
      In the course of the spring, Putaansuu designed T-shirts and other merchandising items. He also goes through all the band's promo pictures with a fine toothcomb, and makes sure that everything looks right.
      "I've noticed that if you let these things slide even a bit, you easily end up looking like a joke or alternatively all too serious."
     
Putaansuu is clearly a control-freak, but then again he also simply happens to know exactly what he wants.
      So what does he want, ultimately? Where does he want to see Lordi going?
      Putaansuu's greatest dream is the same as it was four years ago when the band's first album Get Heavy! appeared.
      "A big budget Lordi horror-flick is still my biggest dream and the end-goal, even if it is a rather distant one. I guess I'll have to go and have a chat with [Finnish movie producer] Markus Selin", laughs Mr. Lordi.
      Putaansuu certainly has no shortage of ideas in his head. "I've been into this since I was a kid."
     
A short visual dip into Putaansuu's treasure-chest of ideas will soon be available in the Finnish magazine Jysays!, which is to publish a five-page Lordi strip-cartoon.
      "But the music is really the most important stuff. I'm composing new numbers all the time."
     
Mr. Lordi has been wearing a new pendant around his neck for the Athens gigs, featuring the crest of Rovaniemi's surrounding rural district.
      Putaansuu crafted it while the monster band were in Greece. "It's a tribute to my home town and to the ‘land for the band' campaign", he grins. This is a not-too-oblique reference to hopes that a plot of land might be forthcoming if there is success in Athens, along the lines of what many Finnish communities have done for local-hero sporting icons.
      Although the other members are not necessarily from the north, in the Finnish qualifiers for Eurovision the Lapland credentials of the band were well to the fore: around half of Lordi's votes came from Northern Finland.
     
Putaansuu himself has to live in Helsinki  because of his work - namely Lordi, but he admits he'd prefer to be elsewhere if he could.
      "I do miss the peace and quiet of Lapland, the natural surroundings, and the more laidback way of life up there."
      After Thursday's Eurovision semi-final, Putaansuu just withdrew to his hotel room to get some peace. He has a wake-up call before 6 a.m. to start putting on his make-up, long before the other band-members have to get in costume.
     
At an official after-show party on Thursday night, I ran into two Finnish men.
      I looked at one of them and recognised the same pair of eyes that peek out from behind drummer Kita's mask. I shook the other guy's hand, and felt the mighty fist that pounds Ox's bass guitar.
      Kita swore me to secrecy: "Hey, we've got a right to party sometimes, too."
      Absolutely.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 20.5.2006
     
Note: as will be obvious from the above, this article appeared BEFORE Mr. Lordi, Ox, Kita, Awa, and guitarist Amen went on to break the mould of the Eurovision Song Contest and bring home Finland's first-ever victory in the event. The linked articles describe what happened later, and also how the monster-rockers and Hard Rock Hallelujah made it to Athens in the first place.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Lordi and Hard Rock Hallelujah bring it home after more than 40 years (22.5.2006)
  SATURDAY NIGHT AT EUROVISION: LORDI, LORDI, LORDI, what HAVE you done? (20.5.2006)
  Finland´s monster-heavy band hardrocks into Eurovision final (19.5.2006)
  IHT: Monster band inspires national identity crisis in Finland (19.4.2006)
  Lordi to carry Finnish Eurovision greetings to Athens (14.3.2006)
  Back in 2003, Lordi were just another Finnish metal band... (21.1.2003)

Links:
  Lordi official site
  Lordi (Wikipedia)
  Musex Finland
  Eurovision Song Contest 2006