Finnish musical everyman Marko Hietala has been through it all: mental health issues, leaving the mighty Nightwish and even a stint on reality TV. Fortunately his new album, Roses From The Deep, reveals that he’s still as much of a force as ever.
“Prog is not that visible in Finland... but it has a lot of fans!” chuckles Marko Hietala, whose love of all things progressive goes back to a formative experience as a kid in the subarctic Finnish town of Kuopio. “My dad used to be a jazz freak, but he got hooked on Jethro Tull’s acoustic music, and after that he started listening to guitar solos. The more the mainstream becomes more about simple music, the more people who like complex music will move away from it.”
That’s a great thing for Hietala’s new album, Roses From The Deep, a hard rock collection with strong prog elements all over it. Highlights include The Dragon Must Die, a prog-metal anthem featuring polyrhythms and Celtic melodies; a duet with Charon frontman Juha-Pekka ‘JP’ Leppäluoto on the anti-war Two Soldiers; and a song called Proud Whore, which we ask Hietala to explain.
“That one is about me!” he says with a laugh. “Maybe it’s a bit of a controversial title, but that’s what we performers are. There’s a certain pride in it, even though a lot of people think we should get a proper job and a haircut. You still encounter those granny attitudes here and there, but you know what? When we go onstage, people go, ‘Ooh, great, yeah!’ Do you think you’d get the same response if you put a politician or a preacher up there? I don’t think so.”
Roses is the second solo release from Hietala, who cut his chops in the metal bands Tarot and Sinergy – the latter of which is well-known to headbangers worldwide for the presence of Alexi Laiho, the late guitar hero who also founded Children Of Bodom, Finland’s second-biggest metal band.
‘Second-biggest’ is the operative adjective. One of the biggest-selling prog metal bands anywhere in the world, not merely in Finland, is Nightwish, whose epic, symphonic soundscapes were anchored by Hietala’s deft bass-playing from 2001 to 2020. The group experienced a huge surge in popularity during the early years of his membership, with fans attracted by the operatic vocals of singer Tarja Turunen – who guests on the Roses song Left On Mars.
“I have lots of good memories of Nightwish,” reflects Hietala. “First we did the Century Child album in 2002, but when we did Once in 2004, with the Nemo single, that put us on a totally different level. I’ll never forget playing all the big festivals, like Rock In Rio and Wacken, with 80,000 people cheering for us.” He adds: “Of course, when I had to go, it was a little bit of a dark period.” That leads us to the subject of mental health, something he’s been obliged to discuss regularly in recent years, and which inevitably crops up again on his new album.
“I had depression diagnosed over 20 years ago, and it always kept coming back,” he explains. “I tried different meds and combos of meds, and they worked for a little while; but they always stopped working and I’d start the slide back to the darkness – and usually I’d start again lower than I was to begin with.”
Did the rock’n’roll lifestyle play a part in his condition? “Well, I certainly did some questionable experiments with booze, but I gave up alcohol in 2010. With my brain chemistry the way it is, I’d play three shows and have a few drinks after each one, then come home and have four days of depression, thinking, ‘What the fuck is wrong with me?’ You can’t live like that.”
Even without the demon drink, Hietala’s depression worsened as the years passed, and in 2020 he quit the band for the sake of his health. “I went away to find out if I wanted to live,” he explains. “I didn’t just walk away from Nightwish: I walked away from everything. I left my home in Finland and got a place in Spain, in order to be cut off from everything so I could figure out what the problem was.”
Fortunately, his situation improved after a new diagnosis was made. “I talked to a new psychiatrist, who brought up the subject of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,” he says. “I hadn’t really thought about ADHD. I just thought that I was very imaginative, but I did some neuropsychological tests and there it was. Apparently that’s what I’d been having since I was born, which made sense because I felt like an alien when I was young. I was quite a bit different from most kids I knew.”
I don’t hate anybody and I hope none of them hate me. I had a valid reason for leaving
Once his ADHD was under control, the challenge was to adjust to his new normal. “I felt empty at first, because there weren’t a thousand worries pounding inside my head. I didn’t know what to do with it, although
I knew it felt fucking great! Since then things have just been getting better. Playing shows is a great way of keeping my brain chemistry up. They make a shitload of people happy, and I get a kick out of that.”
So no regrets? “No – I’m happy running my own band. I have to admit that I haven’t listened to any new music from Nightwish. I’m not qualified to judge it, because it would make me sad. But it’s not like we’re totally cut off from each other – we exchange messages, and I’ve seen some of the members, and we still have the old companies. Even if we hated each other those things would still connect us. But I don’t hate anybody, and I hope none of them hate me. Everybody knows I had a valid reason for leaving.”
Embarking on a solo career hasn’t made Hietala any less visible in his home country, partly thanks to TV appearances such as The Masked Singer, whose Finnish edition he won in 2020. “That was fun! I have a recognisable vocal sound, so some people knew immediately that it was me in the costume. But the point was to fool the judges. I knew I could do that, because none of them had Tarot or Sinergy albums on their shelves.”
More recently, Hietala has been performing on primetime TV in the 15th season of Vain Elämää, which translates approximately as ‘just life’. The show gathers a group of songwriters and performers, houses them in a Downton Abbey-style country mansion and gets them to play each other’s songs.
Finland is aware of the album because I did the TV show – we’re not sure about the rest of the world
“I’m sceptical about these reality TV things, but it was great,” he says. “You stay there for two weeks and they say, ‘You’re gonna be the king of the day and everybody else will sing your songs.’ There’s no winner – it’s more of a musical tragicomedy. Everyone shares stories about the good times and the bad times. There are no ego problems, so people bond really fast, and laugh and cry.”
More than just a handy way to pay some bills (“It’s pretty well paid,” he confirms), Hietala believes Vain Elämää is helping spread the word about Roses From The Deep. “Finland is very aware of the new album because I did the TV show – but we’re not really sure about the rest of the world.”
It’s an old-school album from someone who’s been over obstacles that would defeat many of us. Respect has definitely been earned.
