Getting to Know… Ultimatium | Interview 🎤

In the 398^th Q&A in our Getting to Know… series, we get the inside scoop from Finnish metal band, Ultimatium.

“We’re [a] fresh combination of Finnish symphonic/power metal and American progressive metal.” Right on, Ultimatium. Matti Pulkkinen, the founder of the Finnish metal collective, adds, “We provide some fast songs with double kicks as well as more complex themes and rhythms.” Pulkkinen provides the inside scoop on his band’s genesis, goals, musical influences, and current, and future musical endeavors. So, without further ado, let’s jump right into 🎤 Getting to Know…Ultimatium: Interview No. 398!

For those who may not be familiar with you, what would you say makes Ultimatium distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

We’re [a] fresh combination of Finnish symphonic/power metal and American progressive metal. We don’t rock socks off, but after a while you notice that one sock has turned inside out in your foot and other one is really twisted. So, we provide some fast songs with double kicks as well as more complex themes and rhythms. Without forgetting epic vocals.

Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did Ultimatium form and what were some of the goals or visions you had early on?

This band was formed in 2001 as response to Matti Pulkkinen’s need to showcase his keyboarding talents. So, the goal was quite modest, just to use demos as way to get into a bands, but that got way out of hand on third demo, which got us signed.

Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

Yeah, they’ve changed quite a lot. In early times, on two first full length albums, New Dawn and Hwainoo, we still had our focus on the live gigs, and we were aiming at least for serious touring. But as the years went by, we started to focus more on the albums itself, making them as great they can be, without any worries of how to play them live. That has led to current goals of making absolutely epic albums.

Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Whom would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

Early days it was Stratovarius mostly, with some side-influences from Helloween, Rainbox, etc. Obviously, every member have their own influences that are heard, but the overall was on those bands. Later on, and especially on our latest album, Virtuality, you start to hear lot of influences from Symphony X, Dream Theater, Ayreon and even Devin Townsend-project(s)

Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.

We’ve only done like handful of shows, so the wackiest is definitely our first gig, in Suomussalmi, Finland. We were performing for ~1000 locals, including all the creme of local town council. The event was for Marko Kemppainen for winning the olympic silver medal in skeet. That was quite like ‘what are we doing here, but hey, let’s rock out.”

Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

I think “Mindcaptives” is my favorite for recorded songs, that’s so lengthy, over 11mins with all five lead vocalists bringing on a total ‘prog power’ opera-theme to it. That was very fun to record, to hear the original idea coming to life with great vocalists.

Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

We have two multi-instrumentalists in our band – Harri Niskanen and Matti Auerkallio – both can play guitar, bass and drums (+ numerous amounts of other instruments) on a level they could swap places any time and rotate the instruments throughout the album.

But in the end, world should know about our albums, especially the last one, Virtuality, 65min ‘prog power’ opera with five lead vocalists (including before mentioned Matti Auerkallio doing clean and growl vocals)

Closing out, what is Ultimatium currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure.  

We’re working on new album, and that’s pretty much all I can say for now. We’re hoping to release more details of it during the early spring. We’re also produced two new videos for the Virtuality. “Hall of Heroes” came out weeks ago, and “Mindcaptives” is coming out on mid-February.

Thank you so much for sharing and taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward. 

Getting to Know… Ultimatium: Interview No. 398 [📷: Brent Faulkner / The Musical Hype; Ultimatium; Clker-Free-Vector-Images, Królestwo Nauki, OpenClipart-Vectors, Pete Linforth, Tumisu from Pixabay]