BATTLELORE have issued the following in-depth diary of their recent video shoot for the song 'House Of Heroes', taken from their new Evernight album:

"We started to plan a video for the song 'House Of Heroes' with Markku Kirves, who also directed the previous video 'Storm Of The Blades'. Markku’s plans and ideas sounded so good that we decided to go with them and let him do what he does best. The basic idea is here: Our hero, an old man, walks to his death on an icy lake and sees some ghosts from his past on the way. As the ghosts there’s also the band playing the song as we decided to let people see us with our live show gear and make-up on. Beautiful Finnish winter landscape and us with our instruments. Markku shot some shots already before we started shooting our parts in Sysmä and Helsinki, Finland. It was one of the coldest weekends this winter, the 24th and 25th of February, and it went all the way down to minus 30 Celsius degrees."

Tomi Mykkänen (vocals):

Day 0:

"The whole video shoot started nicely. Markku (the director) called me in the evening, telling me that we should delay our coming to Sysmä a bit as it was -30 Celsius degrees and the lights couldn’t be put in place as they would explode in such freezing cold. Of course all this lifted my sprits up a notch as I knew I was supposed to wear nothing but my kilt and my sleeveless leather top. I think it was enough for my mind that I realised I will be shooting a video in freezing hell wearing basically clothes that suit temperatures up from 20 degrees a lot better . Well, you have to do some ugly things for the art…"

Day I:

"We arrived at Sysmä around 11 o’clock am. The temperature had risen a bit, so Markku and Taru had been able to set things up before we arrived. The temperature was at measly -15 Celsius degrees. We knew that this was going to be a funny day. Of course there wasn’t the whole band at that shoot. Just me, Henkka (drums) and Honkman (bass). I think the other people in the band and Markku had something against us since they wanted to make us suffer. Go figure!

We were once again shooting the video at Markku’s parents’ farm. The video for 'Storm Of The Blades' was also shot there. Markku’s mom took good care of us, just like last time, so we had a nice breakfast waiting for our arrival; owen made rise porridge, warm coffee, fresh milk etc.

After eating and talking about how frigging cold it will be and how we are going to suffer we started getting the normal winter clothes off. It was actually quite funny to watch Taru and Markku put on all these woollen shirts and down jacket and warm trousers when we were taking off all our clothes. I and Henkka are sporting kilts and sleeveless tops on stage so we needed to go that way this time also. Timo thanked his higher forces for the fact that he uses leather pants on stage. Gladly his top is as cold as ours so he was able to feel the art quite well too. After we had our 'clothes' on we got our faces dirty and were quite ready to start the shoot.

At first the freezing coldness didn’t actually feel as bad as one might have thought. We shot the whole song a couple of times. Henkka seemed to have been handed the worst job as his right hand kind of froze. Well, at this point we were instructed to go sit in the car which was running and parked outside. Oh, the warm breeze of air conditioning caressing the skin! Markku’s mom also did some nice hot chocolate which we enjoyed in the car. We felt really warrior-like at this point, I say!

Well, the bliss wasn’t meant to last so Markku came and forced us back to get more shots. This time around the temperature had gone down again, a couple of degrees and the warmth of the car still in our minds, the freezing cold felt so bad. Extremely bad I might add. I and Timo had it a little better, of course, as we were able to move around to try and keep warm (hahah! Forget that. Or: nice try…) but Henkka had to sit behind the drumkit the whole time. Poor guy. We did some more rounds of the song and then we shot a 1/3 faster version of the song. That was quite funny. It will look cool on the finished product though. Henkka got so frozen that he just had to leave. I and Timo stayed for a bit longer and we shot some individual and more detailed footage of us.

Then it was time for lunch. We had some nice meatloaf, great salad, potatoes, mushroom sauce… And the room was warm. Oh, life was treating us good.

The sun was going down, and so was the temperature. We still needed more film of us playing, so we went back. We also did some double speed versions of the song and that was getting quite hilarious. Try singing and moshing to a song that goes on double speed and all the things sound like chipmunks on speed. After this Henkka had to pay for the cowardice he showed earlier: me and Timo were able to leave but he had to stay for his individual shots. I heard they used some snow on drums and all these nice, possibly good-looking things. Which won’t probably be used on the video in the end… Haha!

We got back in the house. We had a nice surprise waiting for us there; Markku’s mom had put some delicious, warm (!) coffee and in the middle of the table there was a gateau (that is a layered, sweet cake for you who don’t know fancy words)… Damn, it was good! Timo and Henkka took the clothing and 'make-up' off and put their normal, warm clothes on. I wasn’t given permission to do that. The best thing was left to be done the last. After the coffee and cake the sun had gone completely down with the temperature and I still needed to return to the set. Markku wanted me to forge a piece of metal on the anvil that we had on the set. When I took the metal in my hand it felt like taking a hot coal from a fire. Damn it was cold! Well, what can you do. Markku filmed shots from different angles of me forging the metal. Felt horrible. But then I heard the words from heaven (well, Markku really said it) 'you can go in and change now, we are done!'. Huh! I must say that it was a cold experience I’m not looking forward to in the near future… Markku and Taru still had a few more hours work ahead of them - they had to go back to Helsinki to get the studio ready for the next day’s photo shoot with the rest of Battlelore. Crazy people!"

To read the diary entry for Day 2 click here.

Watch for a full interview with Battlelore vocalist Kaisa Jouhki in BW&BK; #103.