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I'm a-writ[h]ing cowboy from Helsinki and your cold hands preacher, (un)educated as cultural anthropologist and Waldorf teacher

Amor Fati 1997

"The world was trying to stop me in 1997. After a few months of Das Ding (don't try to name it), I was reading too much Nietzsche, and his Zarathustra did not help at all. Nor did any of the others. But Colin Wilson had something to say, nevertheless. The band name was Cold Waste from Spring to Autumn 1997. We started playing rock and roll, a bit like At The Gates. But it was not rock or Swedish death, either. Anyway, we decided, if we were gonna do this, it had to be like that Amor Fati #1 , it was the new way, with Cure A Wound #1 trying to heal the seasonal affective disorder in July. In the beginning of August we recorded a real demotape in the old barn, with the spirit and smell of 5 real cows and 2 held horses (that used to be there decades earlier). In the Chain Room, as it was called since 1994. The studio was named Alfa-Laval, for some reason. There was hassle with the DAT and everything. We fucked it up well, with my Bullshit Voice and another stupid change of title and lyrics, from the beautiful poetic Brunhild and the Dreamless to The Shape Of Her Thighs, getting on with Mother Nature (and the Spirit beyond there, although, not finding anything but frustration). But the demo worked and still does in its very own way, like all things. I do not regret making it. Gravesilence #1 was the last song. Yeah, there were two more, Entombed showing the way, for Writhen #1 and Ammo #1, with a clean chorus in the former and Greek mythology m___d up with Samuel Colt in the latter. This happened in Autumn 1997. We got it on tape, a rehearsal session. This was the end of the line, for rock and roll & death metal. But not for Amor." From a note written in the Summer of 2020

COLD WASTE:


SIDE A 

SIDE B 

Bonus tracks

Recorded, mixed & fucked up at ALFA-LAVAL studio, in Vehkalahti, during the first days of August 1997 by CW. Music by Pekkola & CW. Lyrics by Filppu. The cover & band photos were taken by Filppu & Panu Huikko, in the Summer of 1997. The cover text was stolen from the works of Aleister Crowley, Friedrich Nietzsche and Colin Wilson (including the creator of Cold Waste himself, H.P. Lovecraft). The bonus tracks were recorded in Autumn 1997.

IT WAS THE SUMMER OF ROCK N ROLL, 
DEATH METAL & AMOR

FOR THE RISE OF 
THE NIETZSCHEAN SPIRIT was 
written on the original sleeve, 
and changed in 2003 for 
TRUE FINNISH UNDERGROUND 
COWBOY METAL


Tomi Pekkola
Lead, Acoustic & Bass guitars
Antti Filppu
Guitar & Bullshit Voice
Jussi Matikainen
Battery


"Young men are the scum 
of the earth" - R.D.

"Now that I look at it, after six years, that old cassette arouses a sense of nostalgy both in good and in bad; when we recorded AMOR FATI during the first days of August 1997 in an old barn surrounded by the smell of a decades old cow- and bullshit, there was indeed angst and misanthropy in the air. We had lost faith in a youth culture that would be worth the bet; the other choices back in our hometown area were the Nazis, the Nerds and the Hippies. We hated them all."
"In a way, this was supposed to be our strike against the idiotism of both the masses as well as the underground scenes. It is no wonder that nobody ever heard of that strike. Caught between the Devil and the deep brown shit, we were unwilling to go anywhere, to be anyone. But moreover we were just being depressed (or at least I was), 'cause it didn't come out as we had originally planned. In fact, we were so disappointed in it that we sold only something like a hundred copies in order to get the expenses back, and threw the remaining cassettes into a closet. I took them out last week."
"I will never forget the phone conversation I had with the guy from Z-Trading company. He had a rather strange vision of what 'just an ordinary font' means. The band name COLD WASTE with those old school Wild West letters caused a long-lasting hysteria in both me and Matikainen when we got the package from post office. After the shock was over we went driving around like cowboys on a steel horse, with the exception that nobody wanted us, neither dead nor alive."
"We'd been practising very hard, and not just through the summer. Back then the lead composer Pekkola was only fifteen! And the music is.... how should I put it? On that tape there's a lot of rock n roll and romanticism with a little bit of magic, too. The melodies are innovative but at the same time strong, seducing and unforgettable. And the hate is 'real', but it never loses that necessary amount of sincere black humour (which I believe is the thing that makes a lot of Finnish bands stand out)."
"The first recording day was a mess. We had to record one song in two pieces because the DAT we used was too short or something. I drank eleven KOFF IVB:s and wondered the next morning why all the vocals sounded so bad. Matikainen told me it was the beer, but I didn't believe him. The equipment we had really was lousy, full of shit, poor like hell. And so the next days were a mess, likewise. I don't want to remember what the mixer table was like. I wish we'd been in a real studio."
"We had to record two guitars and drums live (this was 'the first track'), and then using the headphones channel we added one track at a time into a mini disc and back again. The good thing was that in theory we had limitless tracks in use. The bad thing was that the sound quality got worse every time we did it. And with every new instrument added, every fuck up would be included without the slightest chance of fixing it unless we'd play the whole damn song again! A guitar solo in the end of the song would mean that Tomi had to wait until the last riff, and if he screwed up, he'd have to do it all again. And it was the same thing with me and my voice. But now that I listen to it, it's not so bad at all."
"We had Emperor on the wall of that rehearsal place. And we had Sentenced, too. I never liked the third riff of 'Cure a Wound' because it was a North From Here rip-off. So just take it as a tribute of some sort. And I had my own conscious and sub-conscious ways of tributing as well, I don't deny."
"Despite all of our misfortunes (or because of them), I think this little piece of shit rocks like hell. If you disagree, I don't want to hear it." - August, 2003


CHAOS - MOTHER - DESIRE - DREAM

"In October 1997 we wanted to leave behind the world of rock and death, and so we did. The song in between was Candles #1, with melodies, beats and styles from the classical vein (but of course from certain heavier things, also). Some parts of the lyrics have been preserved, along with a strange mixdown of the song, going backwards. The next one, Circle / Strings, was among the leitmotives of Pathways already. We were singing high and low, clean and cool, with a power(ful) chorus and all. Enough has been written and published about these themes and the process itself, with a heated heart and a cold wasted ratio mind. Endless fooling, around oneself and you, too. There were themes from the underground and the shadows, from the higher ground and the Light as well, for a sign of crossroads with a real mythological geography. Maybe one day someone will actually find the map, and walk with it. Or maybe not. Have I said this in the nineties already, and a hundred times after. But I didn't have the X.X.X.X to speak about it all in a straightforward way before. I was too young and too stupid. Finally, the papers / things were in order, or wait a minute...." From a note written in the Summer of 2020


Lyrics, references and more photos at
mythicpoetry.blogspot.com 

All records are available at