“Harder to breathe” deals with the guilt of having passed on an extremely difficult situation to the next generation. Yet there’s the expectation for the young ones to step up and change the trajectory. It’s a heavy heritage, born out of selfishness, but which can only be fixed together. The colors of the video are … Read more
“Foreign agendas” is a B-side from the Forensics sessions. I made a lyric video for the song, which shows varied imagery from all over the world – including abandoned mines, and the cities and art that were built out of those minerals. Everything you choose to do, has a cost. It’s good to occasionally stop … Read more
‘Never leave the shipyard’ is Unzyme’s most acoustic, and one of the saddest songs in the catalogue. Joona made a lyric video out of video clips from his adventures during the covid years. Stills from the video.
Don’t accept your fate was the first track to feature a more organic sound. I had been experimenting with semi-authentic string sounds, and came up with this string riff. Finding a new sonic landscapes can inspire a fresh kind of melody. It might seem typical now, but when I first wrote this melody, I thought … Read more
I’ve written lyrics for three albums, but I still find lyrics to be the hardest part of songwriting. Recently I joined Scribd, to have an easier access to books on lyric writing. Of course there are similar services like Scribd, but it seemed like a good place to start. The information in blog posts and … Read more
Title, pronunciation, story, details, rhymes, repetition, length, viewpoint, tense – so many things to consider!
I write lyrics on my laptop, which are often based on handwritten drafts and improvised demo lyrics. I have several tabs open in my browser, and I constantly use various writing tools to find suitable words and check for some expressions and semantic nuances that I may not be sure of. The tools that I … Read more
Anniversaries has stayed in our live setlist for a long time. Structurally it’s one of those Unzyme songs that start off with relatively small elements and end up in a massive chorus storm. It’s a very dark song about having big dreams and constantly having to put them off. The frustration of not getting any recognition for … Read more
I always write the music first, and then start working on the lyrics. For some reason, the original melody is so important to me, that I’m not willing to change it in order to write the lyrics more easily. I feel that if I replace the melody, the feeling of the song would lose something important. Relying … Read more
Covered clearance is a very special song to me. I like to explore and photograph underground tunnels and abandoned places. These photos are very much present in the album booklet, especially on Override. When I was composing Brainforest, I came across this beautiful photo of a tunnel with a hole in the ceiling. A story started to emerge … Read more