An Unpopular Take on the Wintersun vs Nuclear Blast Debate

I’m sure that by now many of you have read all about the recent Wintersun vs Nuclear Blast public blowout and have come to form an opinion aligning towards one side or another. Even if you aren’t a fan of the band, its been an interesting debate to behold —- and wow is it a debate. On Facebook, on Twitter, and on various popular metal sites fans are saber rattling back and forth and with varying levels of vitriol, or in some cases, sarcastic apathy. That its such a huge headline is a testament to Wintersun’s popularity within metal worldwide, as well as a barometer for the passion of their fans. Most of the comments I’ve read have been leaning in support towards the Jari Mäenpää / Wintersun camp, with blasts of venom directed at Nuclear Blast and in particular their unapologetic response. That’s to be expected of course, given the now mythic rock n’ roll parable of bands being screwed by the suits at the label —- and also, you don’t usually find die-hard fans of a record label, let alone those willing to defend it at every turn. But there are a few things being overlooked in the discussions surrounding this issue and I feel the need to point them out. To better understand the delays behind Time II, its worth taking a look back at the production delays of its predecessor.

 

Nuclear Blast’s response to Mäenpää ‘s allegations that the label is the cause for Time II’s delay can best be characterized as being rather patient. They really could have nailed him to the wheel by revealing facts and figures about their level of financial commitment to Wintersun over the years. In case you needed refreshing, Wintersun released their debut on Nuclear Blast in 2004, and then proceeded to take eight long years to produce a follow-up. Emphasis on the word produce, because the saga that was the making of Time I revolved around Mäenpää’s penchant for turning studio perfectionism into procrastination. Remember that the album was half finished in an actual recording studio with drums, bass, and guitars recorded by the time the initial November 2006 release date passed. This was a band making progress, even while suffering from an initial delay —- which was understandable and generally accepted by their fans at the time. Mäenpää however insisted that the synths, guitar solos, and vocals would be finished at his own home studio, and so the years began to trickle by. The next major update came when Mäenpää went public about needing a more powerful computer to handle all the orchestrations he was layering, and as we’ve found out since, Nuclear Blast provided the additional funding for this equipment. By the time Mäenpää had finally managed to progress to the mixing phase, it was late 2011, and yet another year would pass until its release in October of 2012.

 

In all this time spent waiting for that release, Wintersun’s popularity blossomed and echoed, their debut continued to sell well, particularly in South America and Japan. The continued recording delays however made it difficult to take advantage of that popularity through touring (the odd one-off festival appearance aside), and so tangible income was virtually non-existent. Most labels wouldn’t pony up for tour support in the wake of a declining music industry, much less so for a band whose new album was now perennially delayed —- particularly when they had already reinvested in its recording costs. Its hard to fault Nuclear Blast for Time I‘s near decade long delay, as by all accounts they lived up to their end of the bargain. Mäenpää himself said as much in an interview with Radio Metal:

 

Of course they gave me some hard times! (laughs) With good intentions, though. But they believed in me and in our band, and they supported us as much as they could. Of course they couldn’t give a 100,000€ budget, because we’re still a very small metal band. It was just impossible to give us millions! (laughs) But they definitely helped us as much as they could all these years. They always helped me get the new equipment and the new computers I needed.

 

 

In the same interview, Mäenpää claims that most of the delays were due to technical problems with the recording process, particularly in the lack of computer processing power. He admits to being naive at the start of the recording process in thinking that he could do everything at home on his own home computer:

 

 

I was a bit naive at the beginning. I didn’t realize that making those orchestrations would take so much computer power. Actually, I didn’t have much experience, or any experience at all, to record music with computers. After the first album, I got my first computer programs and sample libraries, and I started learning on the go. I learned quickly, but I also realized quickly that this stuff needs a lot of power! These orchestrations are usually made with much bigger computers, like those soundtrack composers use, like ten computers linked together. I could only afford one computer, and I had to work with that. It was time-consuming, the process was very slow. It took a lot of time.

 

 

If you read the above quote and immediately thought to yourself, “Well why didn’t he just cut his losses and go back into a professional recording studio with knowledgeable engineers who could help him get what he wanted?”, you are not alone. Mäenpää  knew going into Time I‘s recording process that his songs were meant to be long, complex, and requiring massive layers of keyboard orchestration, yet his whole approach to the recording process was backwards. As many metal bands with symphonic elements to their music have already known, a home studio is best for tracking rough demos of songs, crafting rudimentary keyboard sketches for future symphonic elements, and occasionally even recording album quality bass and guitar work. Drums are best recorded at a professional studio, and there the rough homemade keyboard sketches can now be translated into studio quality keyboard orchestrations with a professional at the helm of software and hardware designed to handle it. Mäenpää failed to understand that basic, common sense laden schematic and allowed a measure of self-delusion and grandeur to lead him to believe that he could accomplish an orchestral production with little to zero skills as a recording engineer. Okay, so the album finally came out, and one could look back on that experience and say “Lesson learned”. Incredibly, Mäenpää is all too eager to repeat history with Time II, insisting on being allowed to handle the production all by himself yet again.

 

His demand to Nuclear Blast is for the label to fund the construction of a full-time Wintersun studio (as opposed to the apartment based home recording studio he used for Time I). Mäenpää elaborates on the reasons why in his statement:

 

Building a professional studio for Wintersun would give us the freedom to make music nonstop. It would upgrade our album sound significantly and most importantly speed up the album making process significantly. This would even raise our live game. With proper pre-production, able to tweak our live sounds and setup properly we would sound pretty incredible live. We would also be able to rehearse more and that would allow us to be able to play live more often and come to places where we normally have not been able to come. The studio would allow us to have more time for everything.

 

That only sounds reasonable if you aren’t aware of Mäenpää’s history with self-recording, and even then barely so —- the costs of building a recording studio from scratch are incredibly high. You’re talking about purchasing or leasing a building, buying multiple computers with high powered processing capability, hard drives galore, numerous speakers, guitar rigs/cabinets, recording consoles (go ahead and Google some prices), soundproofing construction work for a drum room, a practice room (presumably, since he’s talking about using the place for live rehearsals/pre-production), and installing security systems (because duh). Nuclear Blast understandably denied this request, and there are rumors that they had already paid Mäenpää the recording budget for Time II in full (where did that money go?). As these concerns have been leaked to fans, someone of course suggested a Kickstarter campaign. We aren’t privy to the details of Wintersun’s record contract, but its likely that a Kickstarter campaign would violate a few things. Nuclear Blast does have a business model they typically adhere to, and its hard to fault them for sticking to it in this case. I see it this way: They are the company that have invested monetarily in Wintersun and getting the fruits of that investment has proven to be way more difficult than needs be. Why should they allow Mäenpää a contract-breaking, risk free way out of the debt they have incurred on his behalf? This is a business after all.

 

Consider the recording history of another Nuclear Blast artist in Therion, who have been with the label since the release of 1995’s Lepaca Kliffoth. If you’re unfamiliar with their music, Therion create heavily symphonic, organically recorded string-drenched metal with a variety of male/female backing choir vocals. One listen to any one of their albums post 1995 will give you a general idea of the complexity that is involved in the recording process of a Therion album, but before I give you a more specific example, consider this: Therion’s recording strategy over the early years of their deal with Nuclear Blast was fragmented into specific goals, the largest of which was the continual construction of their own recording studio, Modern Art, which was achieved over time by directing portions of their recording budgets towards its creation over the course of many years and albums. They bet on themselves and their continual touring that they’d sell enough of each album to repay Nuclear Blast every time, and they did.

 

Other successful metal bands also worked hard at achieving similar goals in business relationships, such as Blind Guardian (with Virgin Records Germany) who established their own Twilight Hall studio over many years and continue to record there today. Back to Therion, their success at this strategy culminated in Nuclear Blast giving them a 100,000 Euro budget for the recording of their 2004 twin albums Sirius B and Lemuria. The sessions for these albums included a total of over 170 musicians including a full symphony and various operatic vocalists, a wide variety of different musical instruments, as well as a few special studios to record those specific elements in. The main recording work was of course done at their home base of Modern Art studios. Two albums delivered in one recording process that took an amazingly short nine months and cost less than Mariah Carey’s in-studio catering budget. Oh, and they’re both masterpieces that make Time I‘s production sound like child’s play.

 

That’s how you do it, that’s the blueprint right there. You don’t take eight years to deliver your second album, and then publicly call out your record company for not plunking down a truckload of cash for a recording studio (that would cost far more than 100,000 Euros). You continually release a series of albums in a reasonable amount of time, tour furiously in between each, and grow your band as a small business that can repay the investments made by your record company while saving for your own investments (like a recording studio). You get with the program and realize that there are many professional recording studios where many well known symphonic metal bands like Nightwish, Kamelot, and Avantasia (to name a few obvious choices) go to get some fairly spectacular results. There are skilled engineers and producers that can work with you can help you achieve what you want —- Miro Rodenberg from The Gate studios in Germany comes to mind —- and most importantly, they can help you achieve it in a time frame you can afford. I want to know about all the meetings that Nuclear Blast had with Mäenpää where they tried to persuade him to let a professional studio and engineer help him finish. Labels have relationships with those studios, there’s a rapport and trust there built on past experiences. Mäenpää could’ve had his studio by now if he wasn’t consumed by his own nitpicking need for perfectionism and control. You tell me if I’m being unreasonable.

 

Having said all that, I’ll freely admit that I do enjoy Wintersun’s music, and I want to see the release of Time II happen, but I can’t in good conscience agree with what Mäenpää or his fans are asking for here. It would set an incredibly damaging precedent for Nuclear Blast to agree to a Wintersun kickstarter campaign, as well as painting them in a poor light business wise within industry circles. If your impression of the people at Nuclear Blast is one of suits and accountants, I’d suggesting getting a grip on some perspective. Yes they have a business to run but if they were really all about the money, they wouldn’t be in the heavy metal business would they? I think that the people at that label are pretty similar to most of us, they’re metal fans who happened to love it enough to make a career of it. I’ll receive no benefits for siding with Nuclear Blast on this issue believe me, and some of you will vehemently disagree with my stance —- I’m fine with that. If you’re an agitated fan who was previously venting their anger at Nuclear Blast for what you see as an injustice, I’d like to think I’ve given you something to chew on. I look forward to talking more Wintersun in 2020!

 

10 Comments

  1. Mike Reich
    August 4, 2014

    It does seem unusual to expect NB to fund not only the recording, but also the entire studio, in the context of tumbling album sales in recent times.

    Reply
    1. The Metal Pigeon
      August 5, 2014

      Nuclear Blast has never really had a public history of bad mouthing their bands or leaking dirty laundry to the media or fans, but I think they could respectfully go public with facts and figures from the accountants in this case. It might go a long way towards evening out fan opinion and push Jari closer to making reasonable compromises (which every band makes).

      Reply
  2. Robert Brooks
    August 4, 2014

    I was beginning to question a few things myself a few months ago when fans on their facebook account started complaining about the non-stop merch hawking that was being done, and no word on Time II’s release. Finally, after a few weeks of this, Jari responded with a few words by saying we basically didn’t understand the funds needed to release the record. Now I know the rest of the story, though, thoroughly disappointed that it may be years, if at all now, that Time II is released.

    Reply
    1. The Metal Pigeon
      August 5, 2014

      I was joking towards the end of my article with the new Wintersun in 2020 bit, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did take that long, particularly if things get litigious.

      Reply
  3. Trajan Paul Murphy
    August 4, 2014

    It seems like most people are now taking the same stance as you are. Although no one has taken it as eloquently as you. I like reading your blog, because even when you criticize an artist, you do it in a way that feels intelligent. Most who hold similar stances to you have acted like complete douchebags.

    I’ll admit, I was very quick to side with Jari on this, as I’m always automatically inclined to side with the artist on anything. I even signed the petition started by Wintersun fans (which, looking back now, probably wasn’t the best idea). But now that I’ve thought about it more, he’s either extremely OCD or an extreme egomaniac, and I’m much more inclined toward the first idea.

    Reply
    1. The Metal Pigeon
      August 5, 2014

      Thanks for reading and for the compliment! I think signing a petition was a good idea if only to provide some sort of measurable tally of fans who want to direct money towards Wintersun (be it via kickstarter or just buying albums/tickets). Nuclear Blast is likely to be aware of it by this point. I’m not sure its actually going to do anything to resolve what is essentially a label vs artist conflict, but it doesn’t hurt.

      I think what Jari needs most of all is an outside voice he can trust in the studio, be it a producer or an engineer, of which there are many who are well versed in the type of symphonic metal he wants to produce. This isn’t the Beatles with George Martin seeking to redefine the idea of studio productions with Sgt Peppers, its just a thrashy, melo-death album with some keyboard orchestras. I could spit out a handful of names that could work with him and understand what he’s trying to do. Chances are Nuclear Blast has been spitting out those names for years now.

      Reply
  4. Vocarin
    August 4, 2014

    Yes. Yes you are being utterly unreasonable. Because what you don’t understand is that Wintersun is rife with creative vision, and that you can criticize Jari for being inefficient with his money is just proof that you’re not an artist, no, not a creative person in the least yourself. Because companies should bend over backwards for the artists no matter how much money they aren’t making, and if you think that’s not the case then you clearly don’t think that any artist have ever been dicked over by a label ever at any point, and…

    Can’t do it. Dammit, but I can’t do that. My brain hurts way too much now to act like a rabid fan.
    I’ll admit that I knew very little about this debate (very professional word for it, by the way) before I read your article, so I decided to educate myself on the matter. And I think that anyone taking you to task for siding with the label after knowing the facts is a few money bags short of a bank vault, because even in the most unflattering light, one cannot disagree with NBR being patient. In the best light, they are saints for putting up with this stuff for this long. Given the comments Jari has made regarding his own studio when, as you point out, AAA bands who have earned their chops make some pretty amazing stuff in a 3rd party studio, and might even prefer it that way because of the different input they can get from the different engineers and staff there, it’s hard to take the guy seriously.
    And I wonder if this will come to reflect negatively on the band, because while they clearly have a strong following among their fans, it is possible that people will look at those interviews and the way Jari tries to validate what he wants and they be turned off from his work if that’s who they know they are financing. It’s certainly crossed my mind since I started reading up on this little episode.
    In conclusion, for what it’s worth, I think your perspective is the one that people will support, either initially or over time. Because it’s hard to look at the facts as you present them and as they are in the interviews and articles and not think that, this time, the artist is the one in need of a reality check rather than the label being a ‘that pound of your flesh was just an appetizer’ tyrant. Interesting read, intriguing situation overall, so thanks for presenting it, and, as always, keep up the good work.

    Reply
    1. The Metal Pigeon
      August 5, 2014

      Hah you had me there for a second. You mentioned AAA bands and my thoughts came to a band like Kamelot, who aren’t at the Nightwish level budget wise, but who are able to create the kinds of symphonic atmospheres and arrangements that are present on all their albums. They use the Gate Studios with Sascha Paeth and Miro Rodenberg. If you listen to the past few Kamelot releases and then listen to Time I, I think its a tough call as to which sounds more complex —- for my part, I think that Time I for all its layering sounds awfully thin at points.

      Reply
      1. Robert Brooks
        August 5, 2014

        Talking about the layering on Time, I actually think some of that production may in fact be intentional. I don’t know if this is one of the instances you noticed, but I noticed at the beginning of the final track Time, after the 2 minute lead in, that the instrumentation seems distant then goes full bore with Jari’s scream. I just think that is part of the effect. I heard others that I thought seemed sketchy, but I don’t know if it was for effect or not. Jari is hard to read.

        Reply
  5. Garret
    August 7, 2014

    Ironically, with kai Hahto taking over drumming duties for Nightwish because of Jukka’s health, I noticed that in the video that nightwish released that Kai was wearing a NBR shirt during his interview segment. I don’t know if he was trying to promote peace between both sides or something:)
    I don’t know what to think really on the situation since I respect both parties. I mean yeah how many labels would honestly keep a band that has been around for over ten years and only has two albums to show for it. At the same, I enjoy Jari’s music so much I’m almost willing to support him in anything. Either way, both sides gotta compromise on something in order to avoid a 2020 release for Time II. I guess maybe a positive out of this whole thing is that now that this situation has gone public it’ll give both sides an impetus to getting something done. Not getting my hopes up too much but whatever. As long as we can get Time II soon I’ll be happy. Still, being a Wintersun fan is an abusive relationship to say the least with all the waiting between albums.

    Reply

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