LORDI Frontman Talks About Inspiration For First-Ever 'Fictional' Compilation Album 'Killection'

Mr. Lordi of Finnish hard rock/heavy metal monsters LORDI spoke to Tuonela Magazine about the band's upcoming album, "Killection", which will be released on January 31, 2020 via AFM Records. The effort was described in a press release as "a compilation album that simply says 'what if' LORDI had been in existence since the early 1970s. It contains all LORDI's imaginary hit singles from different periods done with painstaking attention to detail using authentic studios and vintage technology."

Asked what "Killection" sounds like, Mr. Lordi told Tuonela: "Well, that's an interesting question, because the album sounds like… There's, what, 11 songs or 10 songs, [and] all the songs, they sound different. It's a fictional compilation album, so it is an album with a collection of songs that are supposedly from different years and different eras in time. So, there is two songs from the '70s — on the vinyl version, there's a third one even — there's a lot of songs from the '80s, and then there's two songs from the '90s and then only one song which is like from 'today.' So it is a fictional compilation album.

"So, to answer the question: how does it sound like? It sounds like a compilation album, which it is," he continued. "Even though all the songs are new, it is supposed to give you the idea, or give you the feeling, that it's a compilation album of a band that has existed for fucking 45 years of something. That's the idea behind it. So, it's very complex."

According to Mr. Lordi, the idea behind "Killection" is something that — to the best of his knowledge — had never been attempted in the past.

"We tried to look for anything like this, has anybody ever done it before," he said. "I think Dave Grohl or FOO FIGHTERS have done something similar, but not quite. But that's all the things that we found out. It seems that nobody else has done this before. I could be wrong and we are just bad at searching, but I think this is the first fictional compilation album."

Mr. Lordi also spoke about his inspiration for "Killection", explaining that he had "gotten so bored with the fact that when you're making an album, all the songs, they sound the same on every album. I mean, you have 10 songs on an album, or whatever — 10 or 11 songs — and they all sound the same," he said. "You take any artist, any year, any album, you hear from the sound of the album, 'Oh, this song is from that album,' and it sucks ass. Because unless you're AC/DC, [which] is supposed to sound like AC/DC all the time, then that's not good. Because for us, the problem has been — it's a positive problem, but nevertheless… Because I write so much stuff, so on every LORDI album, if there's 10 songs, that means that there's 20 or 30 songs that I left out. And on those 20 or 30 songs, there's always one or two jewels or diamonds that we did not put on the album even though everybody fucking loves the songs. But the problem is that, 'Yeah, but it doesn't fit the sound of the fucking album, so it doesn't fit with the rest of them.' And that's the wrong way of thinking. That is the song being a slave to the production or slave to the sound, and the priority should be the other way around. First you select the best songs, and then the sound should follow — the songs should have the sound they deserve, to be the best possible songs that they can be."

LORDI won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2006 with the song "Hard Rock Hallelujah" and remains the first and only winner from Finland in the history of the competition. Since then, the band has gone through several lineup changes. The original members who are still active with the band are Mr. Lordi and guitarist Amen.