Lordi
- Story by J. Bennett
Taking the piss with the man behind the latex mask
They swear they’d never even heard of gwar when they designed their foam latex monster costumes and began pounding out KISS-worshipping arena rock anthems 10 years ago, but Finnish pyro enthusiasts Lordi no longer feel they have much of anything to prove to anyone. After all, they won a fucking contest. That’s right: Much to the dismay of Macedonian pop skanks, German country singers and Latvian boy bands, Lordi took home the top prize in the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest in Athens, Greece, trouncing the competition with their pyro-enhanced monster mash and seizing the Eurovision glory for the benefit of their frostbitten motherland. Then they promptly held a free outdoor victory concert at Market Square in Helsinki and landed in the Guinness Book with a world karaoke record: 90,000 fans singing along to “Hard Rock Hallelujah,” the song that took Eurovision by storm. As if that weren’t enough, the band recently opened their own restaurant, Lordi’s Rocktaurant, in their hometown of Rovaniemi, in the Finnish Lapland. Having recently signed with The End Records, Lordi will release their latest album, The Arockalypse, in North America before beginning production on Lordi: The Movie, a full-length horror film that frontman Mr. Lordi promises will have “no guitars whatsoever.” In the meantime, he’ll be doing his best to dodge the paparazzi and avoid pissing himself.
How’s the restaurant business treating you?
Pretty good. Although it’s a little early to say, because we only just opened on the 15th of December. You’ll have to ask me again in a year, and I can tell you whether it was worth it or not. It’s a huge gamble if you think about it: You have a horror-themed restaurant in a small town in Lapland, in the Arctic Circle, that only plays ’80s hard rock and metal. [Laughs] So it’s kind of a marginal thing.
I like the menu items: “Headless Chicken,” “Sacrificial Lamb,” “Rudolf’s Last Journey.”
“Rudolf’s Last Journey” is a good example of Lordi’s sense of humor. In the States, the legend of Santa Claus has him living in the North Pole, but in Europe and Japan, he lives in Finland, in the Arctic Circle. And Rovaniemi is Santa Claus’ town—there’s an amusement park here and everything. So imagine a family from Germany, with small children, who come to Rovaniemi to see Santa Claus and his reindeer. And then it’s time to go back to the city to Lordi’s Rocktaurant and they see on the menu, “Rudolf’s Last Journey.” We’ve actually had angry mothers and fathers asking us, “How can you be so cruel?” But, you know—people are stupid.
Are you in costume right now?
No, no… [Laughs] We do all the interviews for TV in the costumes and the makeup, but that’s not really the kind of costume you’d want to put on for fun. It’s not like we dress up for phoners or radio interviews.
It’d be funnier if you did, though.
Yeah… it would be funny for someone else, but I can say personally that it wouldn’t be funny for me. It takes three hours to put it on and one and a half hours to take it off.
That sounds fucking horrible.
Well, human beings are strange, you know… we can get used to anything.
Can you smoke while you’re in costume, or would the whole thing go up in flames?
Yeah, I can smoke. We have quite a lot of pyrotechnics onstage, so all the costumes are—what is the word?—there is this liquid that I soak all the costumes in that prevents them from catching fire. They have to be; otherwise, no fire marshal in any town would allow us to use our pyrotechnics. And I smoke so much that it wouldn’t be possible for me to do it any other way.
Some of the masks—especially your drummer’s—look like they’re difficult to eat in.
Yes, that’s kind of difficult for everybody. The problem is that you have about 10 or 15 centimeters of stuff in front of your mouth, so there’s a long way for the spoon or fork to go. Of course, on our rider, we always need straws. The other four members cannot drink from the bottle. And we usually eat before we put the costumes on and then we don’t eat again ’til they come off. But that’s a good thing, because I’m a big boy, and if there weren’t a few hours in the day that I couldn’t eat, I’d be like Homer Simpson.
Are the costumes designed for easy access if you have to go to the bathroom?
[Laughs] These days, I’m glad to tell you it’s not a problem for us if we have to take a dump or something. But years ago, when the first set of costumes was done, I didn’t think about the toilet business at all. On the first costumes, underneath all the rubber pieces and armor, there was like a one-piece jumpsuit. So it was impossible to go the toilet without taking everything off. If you felt the urge, there were two choices: The gig was going to be late or you just got onstage and tried to suck it in. But if something extra comes into your pants, then… [laughs] well, we fixed that on the next costumes.
Did anybody piss themselves onstage?
I did, yeah. In the middle of a show, if you just need to pee, what are you gonna do? I just let it go—and it’s not like anybody knew it. We’re already wet, and the costumes smell like hell anyway, because it’s a mixture of rubber and dirt and dead skin and latex.
Over the last year or so, a few “unmasked” Lordi photos have appeared in the European tabloids. As the band becomes more well-known, has it become harder to maintain your anonymity?
Yes and no. Our drummer, Kita, actually counted all the people that were in the pictures around Europe that were claimed to be of Lordi members. And if you believe all those pictures, there are 17 people playing in the band right now. Some publications have printed photos of other Finnish bands—like Children of Bodom, for example—and say that it is Lordi. But, to answer your question, it’s not difficult—it hasn’t gotten any harder than it was a few years ago. If it’s a good day for the paparazzi, what can you do? You cannot live your life like Michael Jackson. And you know, people lost interest with these trashy papers that published [unmasked] pictures of us. It’s been quite a while since they’ve run a picture of Children of Bodom and said it was Lordi. [Laughs]
Is it true that you’d never heard of GWAR before you started Lordi?
Yes. Our bass player, Ox, didn’t even hear about GWAR until about three months ago.
You’re shitting me. How is that even possible, given the type of music you play and the obvious theatrical similarities?
The answer is pretty simple: GWAR was not even a small band in Finland. They were so far in the margins that you had to know about GWAR to even find them. You could not accidentally come across them. And even when they were coming out in the late ’80s and early ’90s, there wasn’t that much stuff about GWAR in the magazines like Metal Hammer or Metal Edge or Circus. They never really found their way to Finland. Four years ago, when we were doing our first tour in Germany, all the journalists had questions about GWAR. And we’d be like, “What’s GWAR?” And they’d say, “Hey, c’mon…” They couldn’t believe it, but we honestly hadn’t heard of them.
You’re the Chairman of KISS Army Finland. How long have you held that position?
President is the actual title. [Laughs] I’ve been doing it since ’95. Before that, there was no Kiss Army Finland. My friend and I decided to start it. Of course, nowadays, I’m kind of busy with some other stuff, so I haven’t had as much time to spend on it. And Finland is a really small country—only five million people—and there isn’t that high a percentage of KISS fans. And out of them, even less would want to join a fan club. So we have a few hundred members, but that’s about it.
KISS obviously paved the way for bands like Lordi. Are you learning from their mistakes, like when they took off their makeup?
For a KISS fanatic, it’s hard to see anything they did as a mistake. From a business point of view, you can say, “OK, it was a mistake to take off the makeup,” but you know, they did OK. They survived through the ’80s in the non-makeup era. At least Paul Stanley was carrying the torch and writing good songs. Of course, the lineup with Bruce Kulick and Eric Carr was a totally different band than what they are today or what the band was in the ’70s. But all of KISS’ mistakes and victories are a really good guidebook for us because they did it before we did. And it’s funny how little the world has changed in the last 30 years, because, of course, we’re getting the same accusations now, with the Satan-worshipping and things, which KISS got back in the ’70s. The music business is faster now, though. What happened for them in 10 years has happened for us in four.
Was it through your position in the KISS Army that you got Bruce Kulick to play a solo on the new Lordi album?
No, that’s a coincidence, actually. We were on tour in Europe in 2005, and we had a day off in Copenhagen. We went and saw ESP, the Eric Singer Project, at the same club we were going to play at the following day. So we drank some whiskey, got drunk, and watched the band. After the show, I was totally wasted and I went up to Bruce Kulick and started spouting the usual fan stuff, talking way too much of course, and I asked him to do a guest spot on our album. Of course, the next day I was really ashamed. When we got back home a week later, there was an email from Bruce and he had agreed to do something on the Lordi album, so it wasn’t that bad. After we got Bruce, it was like, “Well, what other idols can we get?” KISS and Twisted Sister are the two greatest inspirations for Lordi, so we got in touch with the Twisted Sister camp and got Jay Jay French and Dee Snider on the album.
How did you get Udo [Dirkschneider] involved?
Well, we’d already got Bruce and Jay Jay and Dee, so we figured it didn’t hurt to ask. Udo is one of my favorites of all time. I think he has the most distinctive voice in heavy metal. Some people love it, some people hate it, but I’m in the first group. So our A&R guy from the record company got the contact for us. And Udo already knew about us, because we had been touring around Europe. You know, he is the nicest guy in the music business ever. Well, maybe Ronnie James Dio could be close, but Udo is like the Santa Claus of metal men.
And they’re both about four feet tall.
Yes, they are both midgets. And neither of those guys is young, either.
Last question: How does it feel to join ABBA and Céline Dion as Eurovision champions?
[Laughs] Well… let’s put it this way: It’s really nice to join the same company as ABBA.
