Finnish bulldozers Diablo fresh off the back of their maiden European tour alongside Children Of Bodom & Cannibal Corpse checked in with Metal Chaos to talk about life on the road and being number 1 in the Finnish music charts.

I’ll try to make it short then. We met with Marko when we were teenagers. We were living in a small town, in northern Finland, at that time. There weren’t too many musicians there - let alone musicians playing metal… So it was a very natural step to start to play together. Marko's big brother was playing drums and my younger brother played bass. The name of the band was Armatage and at that time we played pretty fast trash metal. We recorded three demo tapes with our 4-tracker. Then I moved to Tampere and Marko moved to Helsinki (located 200 kilometers south from Tampere). We tried to find own bands at first but decided then that we’d like to still play with each other. We first played with the assistance of a drum machine and did one demo tape. We called the project Diablo Brothers. Then we finally found skilful enough players and after a couple of demo tapes we change the name to Diablo. Diablo has released five albums: "Elegance in Black" (2000), "Renaissance" (2002), "Eternium" (2004), "Mimic47" (2006) and our latest "Icaros" (2008).

The band has just returned from the Children Of Bodom, Cannibal Corpse European tour. How much of a success was the tour for the band and how did you get on the tour?

Well, I have to say that the tour was very memorable and successful. We were able to reach so many new fans that I never could've even dreamt of. Last autumn our agent had negotiations going on with two Swedish bands but when those options went down I picked up the phone and sent a message to Alexi (C.O.B.) and asked if they had something going on in the beginning of 2009. Alexi got exited right away and after a couple of days he called back and said "Man, you're in, welcome!". We've known Alexi and the rest of the Bodom guys for a long time now, and thank God they are into our music, because without it this could have never happened, hah hah!

What do you think the Children of Bodom and Cannibal Corpse audiences made of Diablo and were there any particular countries you found more responsive than others?

On the stage I got the feeling that especially Bodom fans took us with great warmth, but on the other hand the Cannibal Corpse fans did not diss us either. I never heard any kind of insults from the audience etc. If that's what you mean? Anyway, horns rised in the air from both sides! So my guess is that it was a "win-win situation" for us. Response was really good in spite of the venue, considering that hardly no-one knew us beforehand. I don't want to rank places but things went really, I mean really, insane in cities like London, Paris and Milan. Just to mention some.

The band has enjoyed huge success in your native Finland but is less established across the rest of Europe. How did it feel to finally spread the word of Diablo, does it feel like you have to make up for lost time?

No, not really. I admit that there have been at least a few disappointments with how things have developed outside Finland in the past four or five years but that hasn’t really eroded our motivation for playing that much. Otherwise we wouldn't be rolling this band in 2009. Main feeling after this tour is the relief. Finally, we got this chance to shake away that "monkey on our back" when it comes to touring outside of Finland.

The tour does not appear to have been without incident, as you had to cancel some shows due to ill health. What much of a blow was this and is everyone back to health?

We cancelled only one show and that was in Austria. It was the first cancelled show ever for Diablo by the way. Of course we were disappointed and feel sorry for the fans who came to see us but sometimes these things just happen. When there is sixteen people on the tour bus and one of them gets the flu, that will for sure start to circle around. Now we are all fine, at least when it comes to physics I guess, hah hah

Mid 2008 saw the band release of your fifth album ‘Icaros’. Musically how do you feel the album progresses from your last album ‘Mimic47’?

From my point of view it is more aggressive and overall faster, but at the same time it is more "relaxed" than 'Mimic47'. Dynamics are better, I mean there are more nuances and I have also developed a lot with my vocals since 'Mimic47'. Maybe that vocal thing had something to do with increased self confidence too, I'm not sure.

Given the commercial success of ‘Minic47’ (going to number 1 in the Finnish charts), did you feel any pressure when it came time to write and record the new album?

Not at all! We never thought those kinds of things because we write this music mainly to ourselves and from our own selfish reasons, hah hah! When we started to write new material for "Icaros" the only thing we had in mind was that it should be faster than the previous one! If you're trying to please everyone you will for sure find yourself trapped in a corner.

‘Icaros’ was co-produced by yourself and long time producer Samu Oittinen. What makes working with Samu so integral to the recording process of Diablo?

To be honest: Marko Utriainen was co-producer as well. We have known Samu for something like ten or eleven years now and he was the guy who made our first demo tapes in his Fantom Studio over a decade ago. So that guy knows exactly what we want from production and that's why working with Samu is such a relaxed procedure. Nowadays Samu is quite famous, well known and wanted engineer in Finland.. That may tell you something about his talent.

I don't know because we have always worked this way, hah hah! Okay, to be honest it is sometimes mentally quite exhausting to decide when the recording take is good enough and when the balance between instruments is perfect. So you need to have strong nerves for that job. Pre-production is already done when we walk in to the studio. That way we don't have to waste any time and money into thinking about arrangements etc. when the recording process is on.

"Icaros" is our first record for Sakara Records. Well, maybe Sakara is small enough so they can pay enough attention for us. With a bigger label there could be a chance that you are just buried among the other bands. There are too many examples of that in the scene. Sakara Records is anxious to push us over the Finnish borders, and those guys made this tour possible, that's for sure.

‘Icaros’ has been tuned down quite dramatically and the complexity of the song arrangements has increased from previous albums, why change styles for the writing of this album? Do you think the gamble has paid off?

Definitely. Otherwise I would not be doing this interview, hah hah? Only intentional change was to drop the guitar tune a bit because it works better with my voice. All else came for good measure. I'm trying to say here that all changes came very naturally.

It's hard to say. One point could be that we don't show our feelings quite easily, besides when we're drunk. But especially in metal concerts it is "allowed to do", at least no-one is looking you squint when you are singing along or make that headbanging thing. Did you get the point, hah hah?

What’s next for the band? Any final words to the Diablo fans out there?

Next we're going to make few gigs here in Finland and after that spend some time-off from this business. Maybe after that we have enough time to spend some time with our guitars just for fun and give some thoughts to the next album. To Diablo fans I want to say that it was really our pleasure to meet you on the road. Hopefully we meet again and maybe even some new fans as well. Keep that metal faith alive there!