Ambitious and popular Von Hertzen Brothers made their breakthrough with their second album, demonstrating that there is a wider audience out there for ambitious rock music that challenges the listener. Von Hertzen Brothers made their début in 2001 with the album Experience, which even the band themselves considered a project album. For example, Kie, the guitarist, was still playing with Don Huonot at the time. The sales figures for the album were modest, but the groundwork had been laid. Approach, released last year, brought the band wider popularity and a gold disc. The music pleased audiences and critics alike, and it was nominated for the Teosto Prize. An old musicians’ saying has it that there should never be a couple in a band, because that will destroy both the couple’s relationship and the band. Brotherly relationships are also very much to the fore in a band. “Of course they’re evident, especially with our personalities. There are no tensions as such between older and younger brother, but there are behavioural patterns. All this is at its most obvious in situations where everyone disagrees. The older brother usually prevails,” says Jonne, younger brother. “But it has all gone really smoothly. We just happen to be brothers, and it was easy to put together a band because Kie plays guitar, Jonne plays bass and I played drums. Now I no longer play, because someone has to sing,” says Mikko. Von Hertzen Brothers is not precisely true to its name, as its lineup also includes Juha Kuoppala on keyboards and Mikko Kaakkuriniemi on drums.“We’re the creative force, we write the songs. But Juha and Mikko are becoming an integral part of the band,” Mikko explains. In tune with the times The success of Approach might be considered surprising. Its music demands significantly more from the listener than is conventional; the songs contain a lot of information. However, Kie von Hertzen believes that it is this that has fuelled its success. All the brothers agree that progressive rock is now more popular than at any time since its heyday in the 1970s, but they hesitate to describe themselves as a progressive rock band, perhaps because the term has unfortunate connotations. “If we take ‘progressive’ at face value, then we have to acknowledge that groups like Mew, Franz Ferdinand or Radiohead were way more progressive than we are. I think we’re just a traditional rock band with some progressive rock influences,” Mikko says. The artist will not pay The band are about to embark on a promotional tour of Japan, and if all goes well, the Approach album will be released there too. Apart from this, the band are less than happy about foreign relations. “Publishing and promotion seems to be coming down to the principle of ‘the artist pays’, once again. We said, no way. We’ve been in this business for twenty years, and we’ve been there and done that,” Mikko notes. In Finland, the band’s gigs have been much in demand, surprisingly so. “It’s insane how many people there were compared to what we expected. Over half of the gigs were sold out, although the venues of course were very small,” Jonne says. “We’ll see later how well we did on those gigs and whether people will come to listen to us again. It’s easy to understand how our first gigs attracted people, since we were well covered by the media,” Kie says. Von Hertzen Brothers are also working on new material, and a new album is planned for release next spring. Its context is very different from that of its predecessor, since the band can now be sure that they have an audience. “I suppose the major difference is that the material for Approach was put together over three years. We only wrote songs when we thought we had a really good idea,” Mikko says.“Now we are finding out how we can create material under these circumstances. Judging by the songs we have written so far, we should be all right,” says Kie. Tero Valkonen, 2007 Photo: Jakke Nikkarinen