Keeping It WHEEL

Written by: Jimmy Wah - Sense Music Media

For those of you who don’t know, WHEEL is a Helsinki-based prog-metal band formed by English born James Lascelles in 2015. Their sound is defined by bass driven polyrhythms, grooves and abstract time signatures to create a unique sound that first appeared in 2017 on their first EP titled The Path. This was followed closely in 2018 by their second EP The Divide before a stellar debut album Moving Backwards in 2019. After the loss of bassist Mikko Määttä and the addition of Aki Virta, 2020 was set to mark their very first headline tour but of course we all know what happened in 2020. As a substitute for their loss of live shows, WHEEL went into the studio to complete their second studio album Resident Human.

I was lucky enough to sit down with the man himself, Aki Virta, to talk a little bit about how it all happened.

The Interview

Hello! Hello? Aki! Good to see you. Can you see me? (waves at the laptop screen)

(Long pause) Hullo. Yes, here we are.

Yes! Aki, How are you man? Do I have the pronunciation of your name right? Ah-Khee?

Yes, that’s me. Aki.

Awesome, well it’s nice to finally meet you. I’ve spoken to you a couple of times on Instagram chat which is how we ended up here. Tell me, what made WHEEL decide to start livestreaming on Instagram?

Well a year ago this week exactly, when the global shutdown began due to Covid and when Finland finally got shut down, all our shows got cancelled. The band was picking up speed at that stage and gaining a bigger audience, so we discussed how we wanted to stay in touch with our fans. Usually you hang around after a show at the merch desk and you get to interact with people when they come and say ‘Hi‘ but we couldn’t do any of that anymore. So our first livestreams began about a year ago with any given band member at the time. Then when the making of the album became really intense, we didn’t really have time to think about it so there was a long gap until it recently when it was no longer in our own hands. So we got back to the idea of livestreaming and decided to include people from other bands because when you’re out touring, you’re interacting with other bands and their fans as well. So we’ve been kind of mimicking being on tour and collaborating among a wider network of people in that way. It’s also been really unique because it gives fans a chance to see us interacting with each other as if they were backstage; and speak to us in a relaxed kind of way while we’re kicking back in the loungeroom and having few beers and laughs or whatever, which has been really cool. So it’s been a really fun collaboration platform and leaves us feeling less isolated during these tough times.

I thought it was really cool because even being at a show and at the merch desk - while its really cool - doesn’t give you the level of intimacy of hanging out in your living room like you say. What’s more, given that you’re in Finland, guys like me over here in Australia would never have been able to chat with at all! So it’s an opportunity I wouldn’t have had otherwise and I’m very grateful.

You’re speaking to me from Finland right now, correct?

Yes, that’s right, I’m here enjoying snowy landscape outside my kitchen window and enjoying the Winter (takes a sip of coffee).

That’s so cool! What time is it there?

(Laughs) yes very cool. It’s 10am here, so I’m just waking up and it’s already evening time for you right?

That’s right, it’s 7pm here. Those livestreams were at about 3am for me. I heard a buzz from my phone one night telling me that WHEEL was livestreaming and I thought, ‘Ah, fuck it! Why not?’

(laughs) Yeah that’s one of the things we noticed. Cos you guys in Australia seem to be really into us, we decided to start streaming at varying times so it’s not always 3am for you and it’s not always Friday evenings for us. Like the last one we did with CALIGULA’S HORSE for example it was just like this, so hopefully we can reach more people this way.

Speaking of that, I’ve been around the Sydney prog scene for the past 10-15 years and when I first heard you guys I noticed that your sound is very similar to a lot of the heavy prog sounds we get around here. I could have sworn I’ve heard you guys at something like Progfest back in the day, which is an annual festival we have here in Australia. I even had to check that some of you guys weren’t Aussies who decided a change of scenery. So tell me, are you guys influenced by Australian prog?

Isn’t KARNIVOOL Australian, right? They’re one of the biggest influences for James our vocalist, who does most of the song writing. I think if he had to choose his biggest influences, it would have to be MESHUGGAH, KARNIVOOL and of course TOOL. They would be the top three for him in terms of influences growing up, making him want to become a musician and play big, loud and mean guitar. So KARNIVOOL is up there and i think that explains, some of the sound.

That makes Sense. Speaking of James, he’s the only member of your band that’s not Finnish. Is that right?

Yeah so he came over from England originally for music about 10 years ago and fell in love with the beautiful country… Also fell in love with a beautiful girl… and never went back! (laughs)

Of course, that’s always the way. So how did you guys come to be in contact with each other?

So I’m the… oh wait I’m not the newest member anymore because we recruited a new guitarist last Summer. What happened with me is that WHEEL were doing their second tour with the band SOEN - which is a Swedish supergroup - and in the middle of the tour they had some problems with their previous bass player due to his health. They didn’t even question it because health always comes first but it meant that Mikko Määttä - who is a great bass player of his own accord - had to return home in the middle of the tour. So the guys were just out there in the middle of a tour, sitting in a tour bus with the guys from SOEN thinking ‘What do we do now?’ (laughs). They didn’t want to cancel the tour so they called on a mutual friend Jyri Helko who is a bass player - a great one - from a band called OCEANHORSE to see if he could play but he couldn’t he couldn’t so he called me. After Santeri (WHEEL drummer) called me and I said that I honestly hadn’t really heard of them, I went home and listened to the last track of the album Moving Backwards and my mind was blown. I called him back immediately and said yes, I’d do it no matter what… which resulted in 4 days of me manically trying to understand what was going on with their music and only one full day of trying to get a grasp of their set… which was basically all of the album Moving Backwards without ‘Up The Chain’ after I learned ‘Skeletons' on the road. So I flew out to Milan and in the sound check we all went ‘Well this works!’ and I played a wonderful week of shows in Italy and Uri ended up playing the last couple of shows with them. "When they finally got confirmation that Mikko was no longer going to be playing in the band it was natural for the guys to ask me to join in because of how well we seemed to fit together as a group."

Well from what I’ve heard it definitely works! What was your musical background before playing with WHEEL?

I’d been doing loads of freelance work, lots of cover gigs and things like that, which I think is something that all of us have done loads of over in Finland. It’s one of those working opportunities where you can have a nice career playing a lot of music and meeting lots of great people. At some point though, I think I started to get disconnected with the covers stuff and started to be interested in band playing original music. I was in one proggy band called XENOVERSE but everyone went their separate ways. So I was in a place where I was taking a step back from music after playing for 10 years and trying to decide if that’s what I wanted to do. I was actually driving a truck when I got the first phone call from the guys then before I knew it… BOOM! I was on stage in Milan having the time of my life.

I saw some pictures of you on Instagram playing a double bass and violin. Are you classically trained as well?

Yeah that was for another band I played in which was more of a folkish pop group. I owned a double bass for about 10 years but never really got as good as I wanted to be. I don’t know if I could say classically but I have studied. I think Santeri and Jussi the new guitarist both went to a school in Helsinki for pop and jazz music. I had a similar schooling in another city before coming to Helsinki to a university of applied studies and I think James even did a bachelor’s degree in England before coming to Finland. So we’ve all studied to some extent but I don’t think James thinks about music theory when he’s writing, the music just takes him toward very intricate chord structures and rhythmic arrangements. None of us do much counting or anything theory related unless we’re stuck in a really tricky situation where we’re having trouble connecting the parts. Sometimes it ends up that the direction you were thinking of heading is different to the other band members and you just need to discuss it. Most of the time when we were recording the new album I couldn’t really explain what was going on, I just had to feel it.

That’s when it works the best. I know a lot of people that were really blown away by Moving Backwards. What can people expect from Resident Human that makes it different?

I think Resident Human is a really natural continuation in the discography of the band. Of course this is the first recording that I’ve played on with the band and I’ve listened to their other work a lot to get a real understanding of the style. I think the first 2 EPs already show a natural progression towards Moving Backwards but even looking beyond that, this is more WHEEL than anything previously done by the band I think. We’ve already had some feedback that the band was closer to TOOL with their earlier work which is where James and Santeri get a lot of their influence whereas I’ve only discovered TOOL more recently who with their most recent album (Fear Inoculum) really started to draw me in.

Resident Human is starting to make WHEEL sound more like WHEEL. I’m already curious to see what the next album is going to sound like (laughs). We don’t really consider it to be a concept album but more of a really cool combination of songs that work well together and interact with each other really naturally. In one of our other interviews we were asked “What’s the best way to listen to this album?” and we all agreed that you should just spend some time with the album. Get yourself a good pair of headphones, lie down on the floor and just let it really sink in…

Album Review

So after telling Aki it was a pleasure talking to him and to “Keep it WHEEL”… that’s exactly what I did.

Resident Human opens with one of the albums longest tracks to draw in the listener and ensnare them in it’s proverbial grasp. Dissipating reminds me of one of Australia’s most defining progressive sounds over the past 20 years, starting out with clear, delayed guitar picking met with bass that opens up the aural canvas to become a vast, desert-like landscape. No I’m not talking about KARNIVOOL, I’m talking about COG whose 2005 debut album The New Normal was painted with very similar tones as cymbals wash and drums boom to as if to accentuate the immensity of forever. The bass continues to wander the open plain, and drums begin to walk a steady beat before the iconic vocals of James Lascelles enter to give a unique flavour that soon becomes layered with swelling guitars and melodic hooks as the WHEEL begins to turn. It’s easy to get lost in the expansiveness of the drums and bass fill the chest and carry you forward as they fall back to their former arrangement. The vocals as questions in tones as well as words and a Sense of unease is built in the layering of sounds. After nearly 5 minutes of reeling you in, the tempo changes along with the key as the music closes in to give a kick of adrenaline and suspend you in anticipation that opens back out into dissonant phrasing before picking up pace and lifting the wave back up only to pull it way down again. This continuous undulation is overlaid with evocative vocals that launch you into the final phase of the song where the every instrument has a chance to shine and the rhythms become their own.

The second song and first single release Movement is self described by the band as “a song directly about the rhetoric surrounding the events that happened following the murder of George Floyd (not the murder itself)”; and I gotta say they did an awesome job of capturing the turmoil and fiery destruction that happened both literally and metaphorically in our society. If Dissipating had flavours of different prog influences, this one is is distinctly WHEEL. If you haven’t listened to Moving Backwards do yourself a favour and get a Sense of what I mean. Rolling toms and unrelenting bass give the effect of a snowballing ride with no escape. The film clip works as a great jusxtaposition, with slow motion, static portraits that could be you or me staring back at us, before being punched in the face as directly as the music does. The themes explored through the lyrics and video emphasised by whining guitars reminiscent of 90s sci-fi thrillers, this song will spoil you with the loaded brush of WHEEL.

By now you’re getting a feel for what’s WHEEL… so the slap in the face by another high momentum, high complexity and tightly performed track is not unexpected. That’s exactly what you get with Ascend, which brings you everything there is to love about WHEEL; aggression, energy and dynamic grooves that will leave the base of your spine tingling from all the headbanging as you forget where your body is from the movement it will carry you through.

Hyperion is the second single release from the album. Another 12 minute progressive voyage that carries you through the highs and lows of existential complexities of life, the music is a true reflection of the message. Inspired by a series of science-fiction novels called‘Hyperion Cantos’ by Dan Simmons this song is said to consider humanity’s relationship to it’s own mortality. Strap yourself in for a dynamic range of instrumental explorations including meter changes and wide open production that gives you a taste of just about everything. You’ll definitely find something you like somewhere in this song, or if you have good taste, all of it.

Fugue is another short dive into the deep underworld of bass-driven soundscapes. The opening of this song sets the tone of being and dark, as if beneath succumbing to an inescapable shadow. I keep cycling back to the reference of a wheel when describing the way this music sounds which isn’t just a pun… it truly is like a wheel. No matter where the music takes you, there is a well-defined momentum that carries you on a journey. In this case there seems to be an emergence of self led by the evocation of flawless vocals that break free from beneath the surface of the darkness. Not without its musical dynamism and core meaning behind the lyrics, Fugue is a trip.

For what could be considered the final song and title track of the album, Resident Human is a 10 minute expedition that opens with the unsettling swell like artificial storm clouds ready to unleash. This is met by an equally uneasy phrase of guitars speaking their electrified tongue before the drums kick in to ground the sonic disconnect. This begins a musical conversation that grows in intensity with brilliant syncopated arrangements that keep you in a deeply cut groove before vocals begin. The fluctuations move back an forth in to create an oscillating backdrop that builds to break free from it focused range into an open canvas of heavy expression. The passionate vocals are carried ever forward on a journey that you have to experience to understand.

The album closes out with a short, yet definitive instrumental piano piece that acts like the final page of an epic novel.

The Verdict

Resident Human is a dynamic progressive masterpiece that does justice to what seems to be a true exposé of today’s world that we live in. Until the stage comes back to life and you have a chance throw yourself around in the pit, get yourself some headphones and find yourself a piece of floor.

8.5/10

Resident Human is out through Wild Thing Records NOW!

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