Coming down from the first leg of a world tour grind that boasted “three shows in a row, a day off, three shows in a row for several months in a row,” Nightwish bassist/vocalist Marco Hietala is enjoying what he calls a “relaxed” summer festival schedule. He is also using the welcome breathing room between gigs to focus on his long time pre-Nightwish band Tarot and their new live DVD, Undead Indeed. It comes on the heels of the band’s Nuclear Blast debut from 2006, Crows Fly Black, their seventh studio album to date and their first bout of real international exposure. And while the timing of Undead Indeed couldn’t be better, what with Nightwish’s latest album Dark Passion Play’s phenomenal (and unexpected) success, Hietala makes it clear the release of the DVD was in no way orchestrated by the label as a cash grab. He readily admits the Nightwish connection has helped Tarot a great deal, but the band has been around far too long – over 20 years – to start whoring itself out now.

“No, that’s definitely not the case,” says Hietala. “The guy who is actually the executive producer of the DVD, Tuomo Leskinen, he’s an old friend of the band and he’s been doing stuff on and off for us in different situations. For instance, he was involved in recordings for the To Live Forever album in ’91 – ’92. He thought that Tarot was in good live shape when we toured for Crows Fly Black and asked us, if he were to get the cameras and the technical crew together, if we’d be willing to film a show. He wanted us to have the chance to get this package out, and because we’d never done it before we were interested in doing it and preserve it for generations to come, so to speak.”
“I think this package is a good opportunity to check out what Tarot is all about,” he continues. “There definitely are some people that discovered the band through Crows Fly Black and even Undead Indeed, and because of my connection with Nightwish. We have a lot of material so it was really a business decision to do mostly stuff from Crows Fly Black and the album before that, Suffer Our Pleasures (2003). Those are the albums that people know outside of Finland, so it made sense to present those songs on the DVD. But, whether they get into the band really comes down to whether they like it or not and not because I’m in Nightwish.”
“It’s important to remember that Tarot is not a project,” he adds. “It’s band to be taken seriously on its own. I hope people find enough time to give it a chance.”

Undead Indeed features a single show, filmed in Tarot’s native Finland in Kuopio last August following some brief touring through Europe. This included the ill-fated Earthshaker Roadshock tour – also featuring the likes of All Ends, After Forever, Machine Men and Finntroll – which came to a grinding halt mid-way through its run due to poor organization.

“Overall I think we did a lot of really good shows,” Hietala says of Tarot’s run for Crows Fly Black. “We started doing shows even before the release of the album, so we were out for almost a year-and-a-half before we shot the DVD. The band was in really good shape, so I’m happy to see that it’s getting some recognition. Of course the Roadshock tour was a bit of a disaster, but the shows we did manage to do were quite good. We were taking a risk, yes, but we were only playing small clubs so I think we broke even; we didn’t make a profit but there wasn’t very much damage either. The whole idea was to show our faces, pull some people in and make music, and that’s what we did.”

Seeing and hearing Hietala front and center is hardly unusual if you’re a Nightwish fan, as his role in the band has grown since he joined their ranks in 2002. Many Tarot newbies – the ones that never bothered to read the Crows Fly Black liner notes – were shocked to discover that he shares lead vocal duties with one Tommi Salmela, a gentleman that sounds like Hietela’s vocal twin on tape and on stage.

“Yeah, that surprised a lot of people that didn’t know about Tarot,” Hietala laughs. “In the live situation I think we sound a lot alike, but when you listen to the albums you can hear the small differences, so it’s pretty easy to figure out who’s doing what. It’s a good situation for us, because it gives us the opportunity to do split leads, harmonies and anything else we can come up with.”

Hietala confirms a new studio album from Tarot is in planning. When it actually sees the light of day is anybody’s guess, however.

“It’s going to take some scheduling again because I have a lot to do with Nightwish. But, there’s going to be some time off next winter so I guess I’ll get together with the Tarot guys and we’ll go over the song material everybody has for the recording of a new album. A new Tarot album is pretty much inevitable, but that will happen whenever the Nightwish tour winds down.”

A potentially frustrating situation for his Tarot bandmates, particularly in light of the amount of attention Crows Fly Black received and the increased buzz with Undead Indeed.

“In some ways I think it probably is frustrating,” Hietala agrees, “but I think everyone in the band understands the situation. I make my living mostly from Nightwish and they know it. But, these are my good friends, and we’ve been to a lot of strange places and played a lot of strange shows together (laughs), so I’m definitely going to try and keep Tarot going as long as possible. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s made possible because Nightwish and Tarot are both with King Foo Entertainment. They book gigs for both bands and always know where I should be and what I should be doing (laughs). It makes avoiding double bookings very easy.”

Hietala is candid in discussing the highs and lows of Dark Passion Play’s success, making it clear at the same time that new Nightwish vocalist Anette Olzon has indeed earned her place in the band.

“It goes both ways. We definitely were scared when Dark Passion Play was ready to come out and we started touring. We didn’t know how things would go and if people would still like the band, if they’d buy the album and come out to the shows. It turns out they did, and they actually bought the album faster than and a lot more of them than we expected (laughs). That was the good part. It wasn’t easy, though, because we started by touring really heavily, more than ever before. It was hard for Anette, who was wet-behind-the-ears when it came to that kind of thing. I think we could have started a little easier because it was really like a jump in the fire. Also, this past spring was hard because we’d be home for a week, then out for five weeks doing shows almost every night. It got heavy even for us, but we knew that we’d be done by the end of May and then the festival season would start. By keeping in mind that there would be some breathing room after the last tour we were able to make it to the end in one piece.”

He’s not complaining, though. Quite the contrary…

“I thought we would have to fight and struggle a lot harder than we did,” he admits, “but to be honest I think Nightwish is blessed to have fans this faithful. Of course some of them are gone, but a lot of them stayed, and we made quite a lot of new fans as well who were turned off by the classical opera vocals we had before. I think that’s because things are more down to earth now, things are all for the better. We’re just really grateful for all the people that stayed with us.”