Well, as Ted Nugent put it, "I'm alive and well, still raising Hell"… 2020 has just started and the band is getting back from holidays and getting ready to hit the road again.

As we had lots of material ready, we decided to just get them recorded. You know, we are getting older and you never know when Alzheimer hits us, so it's better to get everything recorded while we still remember the songs. Lol Seriously, yes and no. I mean, if you start trying to get everything as good as it's humanly possible, you'll never finish. I mean, there's ALWAYS something you think that could have been done better and if you always start fixing everything, you'll never finish the album. On the other hand, while you think you're making it better, it might actually be getting worse, so I think it's better to give it up when most people seem happy about the result and move on to the next album.

Here's the deal. I think the biggest problem was communication between the band and AFM. Yes, it was 2019 and yes, there IS actually internet even in Brazil, but it's never going to be the same as if you can just drop by the office personally and talk about things. And as you know, AFM headquarters are in Germany, while the band is in Brazil… So, to make things easier for us, we decided to do things on our own this time.

Many of those B-movies are SO bad, they are actually pretty awesome. We just had the idea of putting two completely different themes, Viking and zombies, together to make a character, which is our Viking Zombie. But anyway, the Viking theme is something we've always been interested in. Myself, obviously, being born in Finland, Scandinavian culture has always been a part of my education. Now, when you talk about Viking metal, people automatically think about bands like Amon Amarth, so I see us more like a power metal band, writing songs about the Viking theme. Mixing that with a bit of zombie thing, might help separate us a bit from actual Viking metal.

Well, "Viking Zombie" is a fiction that tells the story of a Viking who, due to some events, was turned to a zombie, and now he has to find his own place in the world. It's something very different, we know. But you'll see in the lyrics that everything makes sense. It's important to say that all lyrics from 'Viking Zombie' are fiction and has no religious tendency. Armored Dawn admires Viking culture, beliefs and virtues, and respects all religions.

Not really. After all, our singer, Eduardo, wrote "Viking Soul" from the first album long before the TV series and long before even I joined the band. It's more like a happy coincidence.

It just makes playing a bit more exiting. I mean, playing just straightforward metal tunes for 2 hours every night is pretty damn cool, but if you mix that up with some tango and great melodies, it's a bonus. It keeps things more interesting. Basically we are just writing the kind of songs, we would want to go to see in shows ourselves.

Good question… I think you'll have to come to see us live to really see the difference. Anyone can record a perfect album these days, thanks to modern technology, but not all can play those songs on stage… We can!

As I mentioned in earlier question, thanks to modern technology, anyone can record a perfect album, but not so many can really play like that on stage. I've seen a LOT of younger bands who release fast, very technical things and then suck badly on stage trying to play those without computer editing. I'm an old-school musician and like to hear real musicians, playing real instruments while occasionally making some mistakes. You know, the things that makes them sounds like human and not a fucking robot. Many people seem to have forgotten that music is art and not sports. It's about feelings and not speed. After all, there's NO point in running, if you don't know where you're going to.

This time we tried to do something a bit more modern sounding, so there's a lot of keyboard stuff. Otherwise, it was basically the same as previous albums. First our singer comes up with basic melodies and then we work the rest around those melodies. For me, particularly, it would be a lot easier to start with riffs and just add the lyrics later on, but this way seems to work out as well.

Well, I think the track "Rain of Fire" would be a good choice, because it says 'Nobody knows who I am or what I have become'. Nobody knows the path we had to follow to get here today. Sometimes people may think that was easy but, definitely, it's not. We worked and still work very hard to be where we are, to be who Armored Dawn is today. We finally found our place, you know, and no one knows what we've been through.

The challenges are pretty much the same to any new band. The biggest problem for everyone, is money. Album sales aren't what they used to be, and unless you're Metallica, you can't count on that to survive. Touring is expensive, but then again, that's the reason we do what we do. Releasing your albums digitally is easy, but not very lucrative. I'm sure somebody makes a LOT of money with that, but sadly it's not us, the musicians… But as I said, that's a problem for everyone these days. Metal WILL live on forever and even we won't be able to drive a Ferrari, we still prefer to play metal than work in a bank or something.

We did few shows in Germany and Italy in the end of 2019 and we surely will be back for more this year. Some summer festivals would be pretty cool… Let's see how things work out, but surely there WILL be more touring worldwide.

We will do lots of touring in 2020, South America, USA, Europe… Asia would be cool as well. Let's see how things advance. We are negotiating with some labels, so let's see what happens. New album, I think just in 2021, but we are already, slowly, writing some new tunes.

Thank you so very much for having me talking here. Hope to see you somewhere on the road in 2020. Keep the metal alive!!!

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