But anyway, 2012 is going to be an exciting year for us – and we’re probably going to have some exciting news next year! We hope your year will be great, too!

We are recording this album in two main sessions + some extra sessions throughout this year. This way has proven to be the best for us and our timetables and we’ve been using the same “take it slowly, make it good” method ever since our comeback in 2005.

What we did during the past weeks was recording the basic tracks for six songs. Now, it’s time for a short summer holiday after which we’re going to do the vocals and the keyboard tracks, and, of course, to write more new songs for the second main recording session, which is going to take place at the end of this year.

Trying to verbally describe the new songs is like trying to draw how they sound like. And even if we somehow managed to describe how the new songs sound like, they only represent one half of the forthcoming album.

Anyway, it has been announced that we’re going to play our second (and last) gig in 2011 at http://www.jyrkkafestival.com/ in Pudasjärvi. Which is nice, as this band was formed in the very same town and as a matter of fact, we played our very first gig on the same stage fourteen years ago. And now, after eleven years, we’re coming back to our original home town. Nice.

P.S. Want to see some photos? Go right here: Our Facebook page.

Sometimes it’s time for a tiny celebration. This time, it’s our website whose first version came online in February 1996. Unfortunately, the first version of our website is not archived anywhere but a 12-year-old version can be found here: http://web.archive.org/web/19990219104342/www.student.oulu.fi/~jpuolaka/etos.html At that time, our second album ‘Vilda Mánnu’ had just came out and we we’re going to have our first line-up change.

I remember creating our first website..  Things were so different back then. No Youtube, no Facebook, no MySpace, no Flash, just plain websites with text and graphics. It took quite a while to create a low-quality 30-second MP3 file and upload it onto the server. And it took minutes for people to download the file in order to listen to this low-quality music clip. Well, anyway, the most fundamental thing for having a website was the same: a band needs to communicate with the people who listen to the band’s music. Interaction, that’s the word.

Well, what about ‘right here, right now?’ We’re finishing our first batch of songs for the first recording session that takes place in late April. We could easily praise and drone on the new songs.. But we just say “it’s good stuff and we’re happy and satisfied with the new songs”.

There will be more news here once we start recording the material.

Thanks and cheers,

Jarmo P. & EToS

P.S. Oh, by the way, just in case you didn’t notice: we’re headlining Jalometalli Winterfest in late March.

It’s been a long time since we’ve been writing a blog entry here, so I suppose it’s time to summarize what we’ve been doing during the past 12 months.

We started our Finnish / European tour a year ago with several gigs here in Finland. You know, between 2001 and 2008, we only played four gigs (!) of which only one took place outside Oulu, our hometown (!!). There were a lot of reasons for not playing live shows during that time, and the most important reason was that between late 2001 and late 2004, we were in an inactive state – in short, this band didn’t even exist at that time.

But during the last 12 months, we’ve been doing more gigs than ever (excluding the year 2000 that was an exception in many ways). So, thanks to all who came to see us in Finland, Romania and Russia! We still have one more gig this year – Hamburg in a couple of weeks. There may be a gig or two next year, but we want to work on our next album in 2011.

Currently, we’re writing new songs. We already got a lot of ‘em but you know, there’s always room for new great songs. We have several ideas on how the next album should sound like… I can’t tell you guys much about the ideas but let’s just say we (once again) want to be versatile and try to to something new. We also want to make the album heavier, more extreme, more beautiful, more athmospheric than ever before.. Well, not in one song but as a whole.

The schedule is a bit tentative at the moment. You see, if there’s something we learned from the “crazy years” between 1997 and 2001, it’s this: we don’t want to wear ourselves out anymore. We did that ten years ago and that’s what caused us break up. We want to keep our schedules a bit loose. Ten years ago, we would have gone to the studio right after the last gig of the tour. Now, we need a bit more time.

So, we’re trying to get the next album out in early 2012. We’re going to have our first studio session sometimes in April and May 2011 and the second session sometimes during the autumn or early winter.

Thanks and cheers,
Jarmo Puolakanaho / Eternal Tears of Sorrow

P.S. Please take a look at these links, they contain videos and photos from some of the live shows we’ve played during the past 12 months.

Eternal Tears of Sorrow / Before The Dawn / Support Acts – Videoreport 2010/09/17

Eternal Tears of Sorrow – Tears of Autumn Rain (HD)

Eternal Tears of Sorrow – Prophetian live @ qStock 2010

“ETERNAL TEARS OF SORROW”, (Finland) 17.09.2010

Eternal Tears Of Sorrow, Before The Dawn