APOCALYPTICA's Eicca Toppinen On 7th Symphony - "There's More Of A Classical Flavour To This Album, But It's Very Aggressive Stuff"

APOCALYPTICA's Eicca Toppinen is featured in a new interview with Ultimate-Guitar.com. An excerpt is available below.

Q: In another interview, you explained how you composed the vocal tracks for 7th Symphony with vocals in mind, and that the instrumentals were originally composed as instrumentals. You described that as "a big difference this time around."

Eicca: "Yeah. When we wrote songs for our previous albums, it wasn't very clear whether the songs were going to be vocal tracks or instrumental tracks, so in the end we had all instrumentals and some would end up with vocals as well. Therefore, maybe sometimes some people get the feeling that when they listen to the instrumental tracks, they sound great but they would sound even better with vocals. This time, we wanted to avoid that kind of feeling, and wanted to have instrumental music which is exciting by itself and stands on its own. We had a lot of leftover vocal tracks from the pre-production, and even when we had a lack of instrumentals, we decided we weren't going to transfer those leftover vocal tracks into instrumental tracks. We'd rather write something totally new and exciting, so therefore, I think the instrumental tracks on 7th Symphony have a better variety of styles. I think there's more of a classical flavour to this album, but it's very aggressive stuff and very classical stuff which I think is more exciting."

Q: Considering 7th Symphony's vocal tracks were written with vocals in mind, are they more comfortable?

Eicca: "The song structure of the vocal tracks pretty much have this verse-chorus-verse-chorus kind of thinking, and with the instrumental tracks, we thought that they could go just further and further and further and without repeating too much of the same stuff. Of course, when you have a song which you feel is great and could actually be a single, that also starts to lead the production towards some direction. If you have a great song though which you feel could be played on the radio even, you want to make the production in such a way that you can use it as a tool to promote the record."

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Back In November, Apocalyptica postponed their November and December North American tour dates due to undisclosed health issues with Perttu Kivilaakso. They have now been rescheduled in 2011 and are as follows. Tickets already purchased will remain valid for the new dates.

March
3 - Fort Lauderdale, FL - Culture Room
4 – Tampa, FL – The Ritz Ybor
5 – Lake Buena Vista, FL – House of Blues Orlando
7 – Nashville, TN – Cannery Ballroom
8 – Flint, MI – The Machine Shop
9 – London, ON – Cowboy’s
10 – Montreal, QC – Metropolis
11 – Ottawa, ON – Bronson Centre
12 - Albany, NY – Northern Lights
13 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
15 – Hartford, CT – Webster Theatre
16 – Allentown, PA – Crocodile Rock Cafe
17 – Sayreville, NJ – Starland Ballroom
18 – Richmond, VA – The National
19 – Greenville, SC – The Handlebar
20 – Knoxville, TN - The Valarium
23 – Houston, TX - House Of Blues
24 – New Orleans, LA – House Of Blues
25 – Corpus Christi, TX – House Of Rock
26 – San Antonio, TX – White Rabbit
27 – Dallas, TX – House Of Blues

In other news, PitCamProduction has uploaded the following video of Apocalyptica performing an acoustic version of 'End Of Me' on October 24th at Hard Rock Café in Berlin, Germany.