CURRENTLY composed of members spread across two cities at opposite ends of the Earth – Melbourne and Helsinki – The Eternal is enjoying a highly productive period that began with 2024’s Skinwalker album.
Out on September 18, Obscured Horizons will be the eighth album for the bandvand the second release this year, following the EP Celestial, which appeared in January. It will mark the third straight release to feature this version of The Eternal’s line-up: founder Mark Kelson, guitarist Richie Poate, Amorphis founding member Jan Rechberger and that band’s former bassist, Niclas Etelävuori.
Mark Kelson tells us all about it.
Hot Metal: You’ve been quite productive over the past couple of years. You released an EP earlier in the year and now you’ve got an album coming out. That’s like a seventies-level release schedule.
MARK KELSON: “Skinwalker was in 2024, 2025 we had the first single from the EP, then 2026 we’ve got the new album, so it’s been a very productive time for us, I would say. What can I say? After the last record, Waiting for the Endless Dawn, there was a bit of a break there, but I think that was due to COVID and line-up changes and things like that. But when we hooked up with the Finnish guys, for Skinwalker, in 2019…. we’d played with Amorphis before, so we knew the guys. So when we hooked up with them to work in the band, it just set off some real resurgence of enthusiasm. They were so excited about it. Especially Jan (Rechberger), which is amazing for a guy that’s done it for his whole adult life prolifically. It really set us off and when we finished the Skinwalker, immediately we started demoing. Really we had a bit up our sleeves. By the time we signed to RPM and released Skinwalker, we had 15 demos in the bag! So it was pretty much before [that] album came out that material was already taken form. I think we had quite a lot, so at some point the label said, ‘Do you guys want to drop an EP?’ Which was really good, because it allowed us to, instead of holding on to all these songs, go, ‘This is the album, this is the EP’. What I think was really good about the EP was that it wasn’t one of these throwaway EPs. They asked if we wanted to put a couple of live tracks on it, and we thought ‘No, if we’re going to do an EP, it’s going to be its own mini-album’. Then we were able to focus on the nine tracks we had for Obscure Horizons. It’s good that we do everything in house, too. It was mixed and recorded in this home studio that I’m sitting in here.”
HM: You spent a fair bit of time in Finland with the guys. Did they then come here and work with you in Melbourne?
MK: “Yeah. We did some shows with Swallow the Sun in January, and Jan was here mixing the record. As far as the production is concerned, everyone has a background in sound, but probably me and Jan take the lead on the recording. We’re really passionate about that, so there has to be a point where we’re together for that. Once the demos were done, I went over there and we refined those demos together. We were there for about a month. Then we were there last year doing some shows and did a bit more work on the record, and then we were over here mixing it. I think one of the questions that comes up, and you probably ask it as well, is how do you work remotely? And it works really well!”
HM: It seems to be a thing that a lot of bands do. I did an interview with Nick Holmes (Paradise Lost) recently and he said they work remotely, and they all live in the same country. It seems to be something that has become quite widespread.
MK: “The technology makes it … you don’t need as much stuff as I have in this room to do that. We are really good at remote work, we send files, we have a shared drive, we have the same audio software. We like to build a production when we write songs. You might have noticed! We have a lot of soundscapes and stuff. Me and Richie do sit here and write riffs together. That happens. But at the same time, maybe because I’m a music producer, the whole production comes together as I’m writing the song. Writing this way is just the way I do it, and so for the other guys… Blowing out your ears in front of Marshalls when you’re 50 years old, I don’t see the need to do it that way. I have my space, my little world, and I can immerse myself in the writing, send it over. Jan wakes up the next day, he’s got my ProTools session and he’s working on it. What is important is to get that vibe face-to-face, address the sensitive issues. Like, ‘I don’t like that fucking part! It sucks!’ But you’ve got to be together for that or things can get misconstrued. We need to be in the same room for that. Jan’s really good at that. Finns don’t really mince their words. ‘I think that’s kind of shit!’ But it really is good, because previously with this band, I was the primary driver and songwriter and to have other people come in and to have the drummer submit full demos with guitars and the bass player and Richie as well submitted demos for me to sing on – there’s five songs before I blink my eyes! It’s really good.”
HM: Are Celestial and Obscured Horizons related thematically, or are they separate entities?
MK: “With Obscured, I was able to encourage us to leave the songs off it that didn’t fit the lyrical theme as much. “Casting Down Shadows” is kind of very Rainbow… it’s got a very mystical thing. We’re very influenced by Rainbow, so there’s kind of proggy seventies kind of vibes in there. So we were able to leave songs off and really lock the theme in. I think Celestial fits perfectly between Skinwalker and the new album because it has a few of these long drawn out songs and it also has a re-recording of “Everlasting” from our second album, which was a bit of exploring the back catalogue for the new guys. Once that was out of the system, and we made the decision about which songs were going to go onto Celestial, we paused the album and finished that off as its own piece and then went back and finished the album. Obscured Horizons still sounds like the same band, by all means, but it’s a far more refined version. When we did the first thing together, Skinwalker, the guys joined the band literally as we were recording. This time we worked the album up from scratch. They definitely didn’t come in as a rhythm section, they were ‘I like this, I don’t like this, this is what we should do here.’ Who am I to deny two gentlemen of such prolific lineage? The last album was the turning point that put the band back in motion. Obscured is a more collaborative and refined effort, and it’s also a shorter album for us.”
HM: It seems weird to describe your album thusly, but it was quite upbeat. That’s not something that I expected to find on an album by The Eternal.
MK: “I think that has a lot to do with Jan. He’s really obsessed with tempo and the groove and the feeling. And tempo, tempo, tempo! I think that comes from working with Jens Bogren. Jens Bogren pushes the tempo. I saw a review yesterday that said everything’s too slow! It’s really a matter of perspective. If you look at “Harmony Breaks”, which is probably our fastest song ever, Jan likes to play a bit faster! Even with the live set, he’s bumping things two bpm. It’s gotta be perfect for him. When he started pushing these things, it was a little bit foreboding. I was like, “I don’t like fast music!” But he’s pretty bang on with the tempos. We were really careful about the arrangements and we wanted a Side A/Side B kind of thing. We even made the gaps between the songs quicker. An immense amount of thought went into making things move a little bit more. We’ve kept the essence of what we’re about: my vocals, the melody, melancholy. It just moves a bit quicker.”
HM: I’ve been following your music long enough to have Desolate Eternity in my collection, so someone suggesting what you’re doing now is too slow obviously hasn’t heard that.
MK: “I’ve been in all kinds of bands. I did a death metal a few years ago called Nefariym, a kind of nineties death metal thing that [Richie and I] did. I don’t like it to the point where it’s fast and there’s blastbeats… I was playing in Dreadnaught for a while and that was too fast for what I enjoy playing. So when Jan’s pushing the tempo, he’s a successful musician and as a collaborator I’ve got to trust him. It’s not my show anymore. It’s a shared vision now, and he’s passionate about that. He’s passionate about the set order, and arrangements. It took a long time to build that trust, but if you get off your high horse and take some critical approach to your own music, I love that. I love that he challenges me and doesn’t go, ‘You’re right Mark, it’s your band.’ It just makes it so much more exciting and it makes the members of the band more excited.”
HM: If everybody’s contributing, everybody’s a bit more invested. It leads toward a stronger unity.
MK: “I think I always wanted to be collaborative but I don’t think I’ve met people that have matched my drive. I wouldn’t let anything stop me. I was going to tour the world, I was going to make records. I didn’t care how I did, I was just going to do it. And we did! We didn’t get huge, we’re not a huge band. But I did everything I set out to do. When you’re younger, you’re a little bit more ‘my way or the highway’. I’m a lot mellower now, maybe. But to finally have actual collaborators … and you’ve got to open your mind to have people collaborate with you and once you do that it’s such a weight off my shoulders… All of a sudden, the industry started taking interest and we have people behind the scenes taking a bit of interest in the band.”
TOURING WITH AMORPHIS THIS MONTH
September 23: The Croxton Bandroom, Melbourne
September 24: The Triffid, Brisbane
September 25: Liberty Hall, Sydney
September 26:The Basement, Canberra
