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Helsingin Sanomat has issued the following report from Matti Riekki:
If everything had gone completely according to the original plan, then the members of rock act LORDI would still be unknown to the general public - aside from in their monster roles and extravagant costumes.
Such a vacuum in their civilian profiles would have paved the way for a truly splendid work of fiction about their monstrous characters and behaviour.
Things did not go quite that way, however. After the sensational Eurovision victory had been snatched up by Mr. Lordi and his scaly and sharp-nailed chums, the entire five-piece outfit wound up on the tabloid flyers with their faces rudely shorn of latex.
YOU being a monster after that.
Jussi Ahlroth's lavishly illustrated 270-page Lordi volume deals with the monster rockers by their given names rather than their roles - in other words they are real people with real lives.
This is simultaneously the book's strength and its main weakness.
On the one hand, the approach does work. The history of the phenomenon known as Lordi, with its disappointments and lucky breaks, is dealt with in such a way that it is obvious to all readers that the band's boss and front-man, Tomi Putaansuu from Rovaniemi, has worked his ass off in order to realise the dreams he had as a little boy.
Then again, this is really just about his work, and for all the interesting details and sometimes surprising connections that are thrown up, the shaping of Putaansuu's dream into its present manifestation does not make for incredibly fascinating reading.
To boil it all down: a man who has always wanted to be a monster, is now one, and that's about all there is to it.
There is also a slight problem lurking in the fact that basically Putaansuu is a nice gent.
There's no getting away from it; he doesn't get trashed or throw TVs out of hotel windows, and as a result the team doesn't exactly stampede across the pages of the book, either.
Of course, opinions can vary, but in my view at least, a book about rock should be able to sling a little ordure on the walls.
The most exciting stuff in the Mie oon Lordi book (the title translates to "I Am Lordi", but delivered in a thick Rovaniemi dialect - the one Putaansuu shied away from using too much for fear it might undercut the menace of his character) is on the level of who was going out with whom, and what people thought about it.
And this is not really enough.
Still, I suppose the official biographical tomes about Lordi's great-grand-daddy, the American band KISS, were not themselves exactly a milestone of gonzo journalism. So the Finnish band are on the same wavelength as their idols.
The object of the book is presumably to present properly the idea of and the background to the whole Lordi creation, and to correct some widely-held false assumptions, and in this department it does its job well enough.
Ahlroth writes fluently, the book is well structured, the layout is nice, and it is not difficult to wade through the entire package.
A little extra scaly flesh around the bones comes in the form of an appendix that collects all sorts of trivia information from the background to the individual Lordi characters through the making of the masks and the stage pyrotechnics on, and on to merchandising matters.
In a few "Lordi Lets Rip" side-bar panels, our friendly demon expresses his opinions on various subjects that get on his wick, such as music critics, the media, and booze. It would have done no harm to have a bit more oomph in this section, too, as most of the growling is pretty predictable stuff.
The book is actually at its best in the opening pages, where Putaansuu's monstrous - in the nicest possible sense of the word - childhood is presented to the reader more in a narrative fashion than in dry reference book manner.
One witty touch is that his childhood snapshots have been systematically retouched to show Mr. Lordi's features rather than the young Tomi who smiles out from the family album pages.
This entertaining opening section again makes one ponder what could have been achieved with a fictitious bio, if only the mystery surrounding the band and its members had not been punctured along the way, or in other words without all the fuss surrounding this year's Eurovision Song Contest.
Then again, without that, would it be likely we'd have had this book at all?
In any event, Jussi Ahlroth's effort is unlikely to be the last word on Lordi, at least if the rumours that the legendary KISS manager Bill Aucoin might be getting involved with the band prove to be true.
Source Helsingin Sanomat |
