I’m not sure. Ur Jordens Djup (roughly meaning buried in the earth or from the depths) has all the trademark traits of a Finntroll album; blackened folk with hummpa and polka elements, catchy yet darkly trollish riffs and moods. New vocalist Vreth fill’s Wilska’s shoes with nary a noticeable change and Finntroll still, at times, entertain the piss out of me. The thing is though, much like my often youthful, gleeful response to early Bal-Sagoth vs. my slightly colder response to them now-I’ve simply grown out of them.

Do I enjoy Ur Jordens Djup? Absolutely. It seems to mix the grimmer tones of Trollhammaren with the playful moods of Jaktens Tid (still the band’s best effort IMO) and has ample moments of knee slapping joy and catchy banjo and moth harp littered silliness such as “Sång”, “Korpens Saga”, “En Mäktig Här” and super catchy “Ormhäxan” but also has some moodier, nastier less polka ridden moments like “Nedgång”, “Slagbröder” and “Under Två Runor”. Then there’s the needlessly 13 minute closer “Kvällning” which initially sounds like it came from the acoustic Visor Om Slutet album before a lengthy silence then a drunken kazoo laden chant/ditty.

Production wise, the Sonic Pump/Finnvox mix of Ur Jordens Djup is damn stern, arguably their heaviest, but it all still just lacks that X factor that made their other albums slightly more memorable and longer lasting. The truth is, while I will always enjoy anything this band puts out, I’m simply more apt to reach for their back catalog for my hummpa/troll metal fix.

Give us a brief history of the band and the origin of the name Finntroll?
The name itself was taken from an old saga where some Swedish adventurers bump into a thing they called FinnTroll during their trip to Finland. This FinnTroll was described as raging lunatic that attacked them and killed most of them before they managed to bring it down. So we thought that the both name and the story behind it fit us. I started Finntroll in ’97 together with Katla. Sometime after that we released our demo, RivFader, which brought us this deal with Spikefarm. At that point, we decided to gather a full line-up in order to play live and to make a better album. After that it’s the ordinary bio-thing, album out, blah blah, second album out, blah blah, etc. [laughs]

A few of Finntrolls members are involved with other projects and some were before Finntroll.  Could you give us a quick summary of band member’s projects outside Finntroll?
I play also in Impaled Nazarene, B.Dominator plays in Rapture and Shape of Despair, Tundra plays in Rapture, Skrymer and Katla play in this stoner band called Seventh Planet and Trollhorn plays in Moonsorrow.

You guys have been given the moniker “black/polka metal.” How do you feel about this label and if you could label Finntroll yourself, how would you?
Hmm, I guess it’s all the same how people label us; it’s not that important for us. I’d say that it’s pretty hard to put our music in some specific genre.

Are you pleased with Spikefarm? You seem to be one of their high profile bands.  Have you had any interest from other labels?  Especially after the success of Jaktens Tid
Yeah, I think it’s safe to say that they’ve done a decent job. At the moment, Century Media is taking care of the most part of the world as they licenced Jaktens Tid. I’d say that future looks rather bright for us. Century Media has good distribution, so we don’t have the same problems we had on the first album concerning this matter.

You guys don’t seem to take yourselves very seriously, Is this part of Finntroll’s “act”, or is that the true personality of the individual members?
I’d say that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Life is shitty enough, so I see no reason trying to make it even harder by cutting out the humour. I’d say that we’re just having a fucking good time with the thing that we’re doing.

When a new form of music arrives, it is quickly cloned. However, I have yet to hear any bands that sound remotely like Finntroll.  The only one I’ve heard that comes close is Eisregen, purely because they use a tuba.  To what do you attribute this lack of copycat bands? Does this make you happy to be the only band of this style? Are there unheard or unsigned bands doing this style of music?
If someone would try to imitate us, it would be too obvious. And then again, we are not that big a band, so copying us wouldn’t give you any major benefits. And we’re quite happy to be the only band with this style.

What do Finntroll listen too, in their spare time? Are there any bands fans should be on the lookout for?
Um, too many to mention here. All of Finntroll members have very different musical tastes. That’s probably the reason why we combine so many different influences in our music.

The band Moonsorrow?s last album Strength and Honor had English translations of all the lyrics. Are there any plans for Finntroll to do the same in the future? Are English lyrics available anywhere?
On our first album we had these English explanations of the lyrics, but they were forgotten from the new one some time during the artwork project.

I understand you are writing for the new album, can you share any information about it?
It’s too early to reveal anything from the next album, but you can expect the same kind of progress that happened between the previous albums.

You had to cancel some shows due to a problem with Katla’s vocal chords. How is Katla’s voice doing?  What was the feeling in the band after having to cancel shows?  What was the fan response?
This was a major tragedy for us, but we managed to get substitude singers to take care of the upcoming gigs. Right now we’re waiting for Katla’s voice to recover. No substitute could ever replace him totally.

What are Finntroll?s immediate plans? Any plans to tour the U.S.?
Hopefully, but I guess it depends on how our album is received there.

Anything else for the trollish horde?
Thanks for this interview, good luck with your ‘zine and hope to see you on tour someday. Meanwhile keep on Trollin’.