Korpiklaani

Korpiklaani (Finnish for The Backwoods Clan) is a Finnish folk metal band from Lahti that was formerly known as Shamaani Duo and Shaman.

History

Shamaani Duo

Korpiklaani started with folk music before turning metal. The roots of Korpiklaani can be traced back to a Sámi folk music group under the name of "Shamaani Duo", an "in house restaurant band" created by Jonne Järvelä in 1993. An album of folk music (Hunka Lunka) was released under this name before Järvelä relocated and "Shamaani Duo" morphed into "Shaman".

Shaman

Shaman formed in 1997, and was notable for the heavy use of original native Sámic music elements and lyrics in Northern Sámi. The band's music was based on the folk music of Shamaani Duo. The most widely used elements were the shamanic drum, yoik and humppa. Besides yoik, the vocals varied from clean to rather aggressive growling.

The musical style of Shaman was quite distinctive, especially in slow songs, due to its entrancing atmosphere created by the monophonic, "narrow" synth sound making the deep contrast to the spacious sound of the acoustic guitar, the shamanic drum and yoik singing.

The first recording released under the name of Shaman was the demo single Ođđa máilbmi (New World in Northern Sámi). The video clip shot for the song featured a wolf breaking free from its cage and running into the forest. Besides the single CD the song was included on the band's first full-length album Idja (Night in Northern Sámi, 1999) as well.

The band released another album, Shamániac, in 2002.

Korpiklaani

In 2003, Shaman became Korpiklaani (with only Järvelä and drummer Samu Ruotsalainen remaining from the previous Shaman lineup), changing the music style to a more conventional folk metal with folk/thrash vocals instead of yoiking. Shamániac had already featured a strong resemblance to the future Korpiklaani style, with the song "Vuola lávlla" sharing musical Korpiklaani song, "Beer Beer".

Jonne Järvelä credits his work with Finntroll as the catalyst for the shift in emphasis from folk to metal. Their song lyrics are often related to alcohol and partying. In their first three albums, most of their songs were in English and only a few in Finnish. However, in the following releases this changed, with most of the songs in their latest albums being sung in Finnish.

According to Jonne Järvelä, Korpiklaani's music would be seen as "old people's music with heavy metal guitars" in Finland.

There has been some collaboration between Korpiklaani and Finntroll, as Samu Ruotsalainen of Finntroll provided session drums for their debut album Spirit of the Forest and Järvelä provided the yoiking for the title track of Finntroll's album Jaktens Tid.

Juha Jyrkäs has written some Finnish lyrics to Korpiklaani and from 2011 lyrics are written by poet Tuomas Keskimäki, who writes lyrics in the old Finnish "kalevalametre".

The name Korpiklaani means "Backwoods Clan" in the Finnish language. In spoken language "korpi" means dark old forest. In biology it refers to boreal forest appearing on moist moraine soils, characterized by dense growth of spruce and a deep layer of moss as undergrowth.