It has to be said that, as self-styled “Viking welcomes” go, the one put
together by the combined Scandinavian delegations is pretty tame.
Well-scrubbed young TV presenters munch on tiny Nordic nibbles with
Eurovision Song Contest entrants who look every bit as Eighties as they do.
The proliferation of mullets and turquoise chinos suggests that little has
changed in this world since 1984, when the Herreys, from Sweden, took the
Euro honours with Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley.
So when Ox — the skull-faced “hellbull” who plays bass with the Finnish heavy
rockers Lordi — ambles towards the smorgasbord, your eyes naturally follow
his journey. After a couple of seconds spent assessing the fishy
profiteroles, he seems to conclude that it would be too fiddly to pick up
said snack with his zombie fingers and guide it between his snaggly undead
teeth. So he wanders over to a bowl of olives. The character described on
Lordi’s official website as “the giant powerhouse on hoofs” realises he can
manage olives far better. He simply tilts his head back and, as his bony
corpse jaws open, drops them in one by one.
Across the other side of the rooftop terrace at the Hotel Divani in Athens,
Lordi himself, the frontman with the most talked- about Eurovision entrants
in recent memory, is telling a Dutch journalist that, contrary to reports in
the Greek press, he isn’t a Satanist. “Of course, there were some
misconceptions about the band because of the music, but if they take their
time, they will see that we don’t eat babies for breakfast. If we really
lived up to our music, there wouldn’t be a single person alive here.” Two
aggrieved pink demon eyes peer out of his glowering prosthetic face towards
the other side of the pool, where the Swedish pop starlet Carola Häggkvist
is singing her 1983 runner-up song, Främling. “There would be a massacre.
Think about it.”
In the surreal world of Eurovision, where an air of Benetton-bright positivity
seems mandatory, it’s not difficult to see why Hard Rock Hallelujah, Lordi’s
entry in tomorrow night’s contest, has caused consternation. Written
especially for Eurovision, the song gives warning of something called “the
day of rockoning” and declares that “the saints are crippled/ On this
sinners’ night”.
But with a chorus that rocks like an ocean liner in a hurricane, it’s also
emerged as one of the surprise favourites to win the contest. Ask Lordi — or
Tomi Putaansuu, as his septugenarian parents call him — if he thinks his
group will win, and he conspicuously refrains from pledging to harness the
power of Beelzebub to vanquish his rivals. “The UK entry (by Daz Sampson)
doesn’t do it for me, although I think Anna Vissy’s song for Greece is
good,” he says, thoughtfully. “It is a strong power-ballad.
“As for Lordi, being here is already a victory. Whatever happens on the night,
this will change things for us.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by the Finnish music writer Anna Mutanen, who says:
“Lordi weren’t one of the biggest bands in Finland when this happened. Not
like, say, the Rasmus or HIM. I would say they were somewhere in the
middle.”
As the band’s tour bus heads for the Finnish embassy, Lordi articulates his
exasperation at a Finnish media that has struggled to understand what his
band are about. “All the critics are usually putting us down because of the
lyrics,” he says, and describes the mixed reaction that greeted their
current album The Arockalypse: “They’re like, ‘That is so puerile.’ Or: ‘It
doesn’t make sense’.”
That seems a little unfair, I suggest. Take for instance, the couplet: “Who’s
your daddy, bitch, who’s your daddy/Who puts you in your place?” (Who’s Your
Daddy). What’s not to understand? “Exactly! This is entertainment! Or
Chainsaw Buffet — that’s me imagining if Leatherface from The Texas Chain
Saw Massacre had a girlfriend and his family invited him out to dinner.”
Unsurprisingly, horror films and a love of rock monoliths such as Kiss and
Alice Cooper loom large in Lordi’s universe. Growing up as an only child in
Lappish Finland, his fascination with the grotesque extends as far back as
he can remember. “I used to watch films like The Evil Dead and think, ‘I
want to do that, I want to be that’.”
When he was 7 — he’s 32 now — he began experimenting with his mother’s
make-up. “I would draw monsters on paper, so it seemed logical to draw them
on my face.”
At the Finnish embassy, Seija — a journalist who knew Lordi when he was plain
old Tomi — remembers a “nice, shy boy who was making films even as a
teenager”.
“That’s right,” Lordi says when we get back on to the bus. “My parents bought
a video camera when I was about 10, and I knew exactly that I wanted to make
horror films with it.”
Before finding a way to combine his governing passions — horror and hard rock
— Lordi graduated from film school and earned a living drawing storyboards.
I tell him that as a 12-year-old I saw An American Werewolf in London, which
prompted a mild obsession with Jenny Agutter. He says that he had a similar
experience, but developed an arguably more noble kind of obsession with Rick
Baker, “the guy who did the special effects. I learnt a lot after buying one
of his books.”
When I tell him that I live in the London suburb where Shaun of the Dead was
shot, Lordi is touchingly impressed: “Really? Tell me, the Winchester — the
bar in the film — was that a real pub?” It’s amazing, but after a while you
really do forget that you are talking to the “unholy overlord of tremors”, a
“cyberundertaker”. “Look at these,” says the singer, pointing a black, 3in
long fingernail at his knees. On each knee there’s a skull that opens and
closes its mouth when Lordi walks. Just above them is a switch that makes
their eyes glow red. “That was my design,” he beams.
Gazing around at the rest of Lordi, the band, in their frankly restrictive
attire, it’s hard not to wonder how they tend to their more pressing
physical requirements.
“It’s a little tricky,” concedes Lordi. “If I would have to take a dump, I
would need to take off everything.” He pulls up a flap that hangs over the
Lycra undergarment covering his legs. “For a leak, though, it’s a matter of
taking off the gloves. Someone helps me remove them.”
Whatever Lordi’s detractors have to throw at them (raw meat is their apparent
preference), it’s impossible to doubt such cosmetic dedication to the cause.
It takes three hours in front of the mirror before Lordi is brought to life.
How tedious must that be? “Well, I am quite a lazy person,” comes the
self-deprecating explanation. “I’ve been doing this since 1997, so it p*****
me off when I start. But after about eight or nine minutes I forget and I
remember once again that this is fun.”
The tour bus arrives outside the Underworld, the Athens club where Lordi are
due to play a pre-Eurovision set. It’s a low-key gig. Perhaps fearful of
courting further controversy, Lordi will opt for water instead of fake blood
for his squirty chainsaw. As the group alights from the bus, a large crowd
converges around them and stares at them. Doing his bit to subvert democracy
in the city where it was born, the band’s German label manager hands out “I
vote Lordi” badges.
It might just be wearing furry monster boots in the baking Greek sunshine, but
Lordi looks slightly uncomfortable. “In Finland it’s very different,” he
explains. “If the Finns see anyone doing anything unusual, they pretend they
haven’t seen it.”
He tells the story of a Lordi photo shoot for a Finnish newspaper in which he
was required to stand in the middle of Helsinki during rush hour. “Hundreds
of people and not one stopped to look. We are not assertive people. We will
do anything to avoid causing a scene or being the centre of attention.”
Cometh the hour, cometh the band, cometh the Day Of Rockoning, that will
change.
The Eurovision Song Contest, BBC One/Radio 2, tomorrow (8pm). The
Arockalypse is released by Drakkar
Eurovision makes you crazy — the proof
KOJO
When the German teenager Nicole won with A Little Peace in 1982, Finland’s
entrant called her a “stupid virgin”.
CETIN ALP AND THE SHORT WAVES
Represented Turkey in 1983 with Opera Opera, which sounded like an
idiotic cross between the Divine Comedy and Radiohead. It fared even worse
than Denmark’s love song to a washing machine.
PAULO DE CARVALHO
Unbeknown to him, the beginning of E Depois Do Adeus was the signal
to launch the military coup in Portugal in 1974.
