The year 2025 starts to look already a promising year. After a three year of hiatus, the Finnish duet of Tuomas Saukkonen and Mikko Heikkilä will be launching Dawn of Solace’s fourth studio album.
Affliction Vortex (2025) will come out in February 2025 and brings us back the earliest raw and harsh vocals that we were looking for. Haunting, dark and gloomier, Metal Imperium conversed with the talented multi-instrumentalist Tuomas Saukkonen to learn more about this new and promising project, the whole process to develop the album, and a little bit of Saukkonen’s personal life in terms of managing three bands at the same time.
The album is under the seal of the German label, Noble Demon, that holds a music repertoire of melodic, atmospheric black and death metals where Dawn of Solace brings us noire guitar riffs, darker lyrics and, at the same, clean and harsh vocals that fit in perfectly.
M.I. - If we had to compare Affliction Vortex (2025) with Flames of Perdition (2022), how distinct are these two albums?
The vocals make a big difference. There aren’t any growling vocals, except in the debut album in 2006. Almost 20 years have passed, and me and Mikko brought the growling vocals back. Not only just me with the harsh vocals, but also lower and higher screams from him. With Mikko’s black metal style vocals, it allowed me to write darker stuff, such as real doomier parts, and, overall, we’re talking about a heavier album.
M.I. - In one of your social media posts, you mentioned the 4 stages of creation (spark, vision, hope and desperation). Why are these specific to DoS?
There’s some humor in these stages. The beginning is quite accurate: the spark is the first idea and then you get the whole vision inside your head. Hopefully, you have no boundaries with your imagination, but when you go to record in studio that’s when desperation takes place.
Sometimes your imagination has layers and they’re not from the physical world, and not everything can be put in the place. For example, in your head they are something you cannot hear with your ears. You can put a lot of stuff into the songs, and it ends up not being possible to mix. At the end, you start to lose your frequency or your momentum, but there was no desperation side.
Usually with Dawn of Solace I don’t remember this existing part in any album. Desperation would occur more in Wolheart when it comes to executing the riffs and drum patterns, because it is definitely demanding. It takes a lot of you to rehearse stuff, but with Dawn of Solace we don’t have this demanding and physical aspect; the music is much more easily playable. It was a funny Instagram post with Mikko doing the facepalm, but we don’t have this feeling in Dawn of Solace, even though our sound is doomy and dark, we have a lot of happiness in studio.
M.I. - You lend your talent not only to DoS, but as well too Wolfheart and Before the Dawn. How do you find the time and energy to put your whole dedication into such different bands?
I always work on one album at the time. When I was working for Dawn of Solace, I wasn’t thinking about Wolfheart of Before the Dawn. To me, they don’t coexist at the same time, even though I’m playing shows with Wolfheart or writing with Dawn of Solace.
When it comes to creating music, I only have one band to keep up with the attention. It is super simple and very natural to develop each album per year, when I can divide the attention. To work with 2 albums simultaneously would be very confusing to me, and I don’t I would enjoy. Focusing on one album at a time is how do. Again, I could be playing live with the other bands, but the creative part is not connected to this. It would be repeating the existence, instead of using any of my creative force while I’m touring.
M.I. - A perfect blend of heavy riffs with dark and haunting melodies. Can we say that “Invitation” is the embodiment of these categories with Mikko’s haunting voice and your raw vocals and powerful guitar riffs?
Yes, it is! I think what made the album wholesome is also Jukka’s guitar solos. On the previous two albums we also made guitar solos too.
The original plan was supposed to be more of Mikko’s vocals, a more traditional structure with two clean verses. Instead, I gave Jukka another direction where he wanted to take the solo and the double-length of a solo. He sounded so good, and we decided not to put vocals here anymore, and give more room to Jukka. It did change the main arrangement, but for the best.
I think this is the idea of Dawn of Solace songs in general. The perfect combination of everything.
M.I. - Where was the video for “Murder” recorded, and why you chose this scenario?
It was recorded in the studio. It’s my favorite song in the album. I believe this is the best album from Dawn of Solace, so far. Of course, having Mikko as a sound engineer, it did help a lot. At least for me, it helps me have a visual side of the music, to connect the song with the place, as well as the scenario where the album was done.
The studio scenario, looking very old, does help a lot to build the perfect combination. It fits really well. That song fits definitely well that place we chose.
M.I. - It seems to me there’s a pattern in every DoS artwork: nature. Is this set on purpose and why the choice of Affliction Vortex’s imagery?
This is the first time I have gone completely backwards. Usually, I write songs and then show them to Mikko, and the same happens in Wolfheart and Before the Dawn. Then, we started to work from this initial vision, but for this album I contacted a designer on Facebook.
I reached out to him about two years ago. I asked him how much it would cost to have his artwork in the next upcoming album. The branches of the trees and the scenario make this visual vortex, which sits very well in the album title. Plus, I wanted him to match the cover with the lyrics and songs too. I was basically building a soundtrack for the album cover, and not the other way around.
It’s important to keep your eyes open, in order to draw some inspiration including in your social media. For the music “Fortress” I decided to draw inspiration from an Australian firefighter’s poems. When we were performing, I read a few of his poems would fit quite well in Dawn of Solace, and he allowed us to use his poems. It was the right place at the right time, where this album came from very good accidental directions.
M.I. - To celebrate the release of this upcoming album, you will perform in Finland and Switzerland. Any more upcoming shows for this year?
We’re going to play three more shows. It’s going to be the busiest year in 19 years. We’re going to announce also a few cool shows. I do like this approach. A show with Dawn of Solace is something very special and exclusive.
With Wolfheart and Before the Dawn, I can easily do 16 or 17 shows a year. It’s a different approach. With Dawn of Solace, it’s something remarkable for us, different for the band, and keeps things kind of fresh.
M.I. - What have you been listening to lately to recommend to our readers?
I’ve been listening to a lot of pre-production and final mixes of one album, but I cannot yet reveal it.
When I was done with the Wolfheart tour, in December, I got back to working out in the gym, I mainly listen to Orbit Culture and old Whitechapel. These are the bands I listen to in the gym. I don’t do any playlists; it’s usually Whitechapel from 2012 or the full-length of Orbit Culture.
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Listen to Dawn of Solace, on Spotify
Questions by André Neves
