At this past weekend’s Download festival at Leicestershire, United Kingdom’s Donington Park, Eicca Toppinen of Finnish cello rockers APOCALYPTICA spoke to Alex Alicia about the band’s plans for the coming months. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We’ve been really focused on touring [in support of 2024’s ‘Apocalyptica Plays Metallica, Vol. 2’, the sequel to the Finnish band’s legendary debut record]. In five months, we played 80 shows, in Europe and North America. So there was not so much energy to think about what happens next. And then I was busy in the spring. I scored one movie, a long feature. It’s a really cool movie. So now when we started festival season, now we’ve started to talk, ‘Okay, what could be the next thing?’ Still we will tour with this METALLICA set till the end of next year at least. So I think we will do what we’ve been doing for a while already, that we will do singles, just individual collaborations with some people. And at the same time, we’ll work towards something that’s more wholesome, like an album kind of thing. But I think also we started to think about the album also from the perspective of what would be ultimately the greatest APOCALYPTICA show like, what all aspects it would include.”
He continued: “Now it’s great fun to play METALLICA, but this is so straightforward, like straight in your face all the time from the beginning to end. But APOCALYPTICA has so many more dimensions and I think, in a way, I don’t know any other band that can go from so sensitive, so classical, so minimalistic into such a really powerful chaos and everything in between. So, we haven’t done that kind of project. For example, a couple of years ago we did a tour in churches in Finland in the COVID times. And we made a special program for the church thing. I was, like, ‘Okay, this is really cool to do as well,’ and totally different thing than what we’re doing now. And I think kind of a hybrid of those where there would be space for all kind of qualities that APOCALYPTICA has. So that’s something what we are thinking… APOCALYPTICA can be this and that and that and that and then so many things. So it’s exciting.”
Also at this year’s Download, APOCALYPTICA lead cellist Perttu Kivilaakso was asked by Daniel Steer of Mike James Rock Show if there are any musicians left on his “wish list” for possible collaborators on the band’s future recordings. He responded: “We have worked with an incredible amount of amazing artists. And [METALLICA‘s] James Hetfield [who guested on APOCALYPTICA‘s cover of METALLICA‘s ‘One’ from ‘Apocalyptica Plays Metallica Vol. 2’], of course, has probably been the top of the list, kind of the dream that it would be unbelievable if he someday does something for us. But, of course, there are still so many fascinating artists. For example, I think that the charisma and incredible person of Nick Cave, for example, could be something really cool to make a dark, gloomy thing with the cello and his expression. Or whomever, like Pink or somebody with a really, really great attitude.
“The lovely thing about APOCALYPTICA is that we are very versatile with our music, that it could go from very beautiful classical elements to brutal thrash metal,” he explained. “And even still I would love to work more with the greatest growers — Alissa White-Gluz [ARCH ENEMY] or whomever — great artists there are. So the good thing is that the ideas never kind of end. You only end up having the problem with too many ideas and somebody in a business saying that, ‘Not all is possible, guys. Come on.'”
Kivilaakso went on to say that he and his APOCALYPTICA bandmates are grateful to still have a global audience with their unique fusion of classical cello music with hard metal elements. “So far, that has been really working,” he said. “And I just somehow started to appreciate more and more the fact that we still can do this for a living and entertain people around the world. And it makes us feel, I guess, blessed in that sense. And that gives you the sparkle to still continue and try to figure out more cool things.”
As previously reported, Hetfield attended APOCALYPTICA‘s March 3 concert at the Paramount Theatre in Denver, Colorado.
“Apocalyptica Plays Metallica Vol. 2” continues the journey that began in 1996 when cellists from Helsinki’s world-renowned Sibelius Academy played symphonic tribute to METALLICA. The “One” single saw Hetfield joining proceedings for a soul-stirring, spoken word of those inimitable, now-immortal lyrics.
The album’s lead single was “The Four Horsemen”, a song that originally appeared on METALLICA‘s 1983 debut “Kill ‘Em All”. It features a guest appearance by METALLICA bassist Robert Trujillo.
