photo by Tomi Mäenpää
(On October 9th Cruz Del Sur Music will release Let the Posers Fall!, a new album by the Finnish doom band Cardinals Folly. This provided an occasion for our Comrade Aleks to re-connect with the band for an extensive new interview with Mikko Kääriainen that we present below.)
A band like Cardinals Folly can afford to title their albums in such a brazenly provocative manner… Such Power Is Dangerous! Our Cult Continues! This Is No Church! And this time Let the Posers Fall!. This is the Finnish doom masters’ seventh full-length release in nearly twenty years, and the band, led by vocalist and bassist Mikko Kääriainen, excels not only in the studio but also on tour. Mikko, albeit with a varied lineup, has not only conquered Europe but also made it to the US, which, given the lack of major label support, is an achievement in itself.
Incidentally, thanks to touring, the Cardinals Folly lineup almost broke up, and Mikko recorded new material with Joni Takkunen, who drummed in the band for 12 years, and Tuomo “Space Doom” Kosonen, guitarist of Pohjoinen. Considering Mikko’s stubbornness and obsession with his creation, I’m not surprised that these changes haven’t affected the new album’s quality. Let The Posers Fall! is a blast, and there’s some truth to the pathos of the joke in the title.
Cardinals Folly are still as good at everything related to jaunty trad-doom and solid heavy metal, and their songs seem to have even more of the latter. Here’s our traditional interview with Mikko, and it’s traditionally good.
Hi Mikko! How are you? Cardinals Folly released Live by the Sword in 2023, how did you entertain yourself since then?
Mikko: Hello, Comrade Aleks! Well, a lot has happened in these 3 years again. We have played about 80 live shows since then, in Finland, Sweden, Norway, USA, UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. And changed lineups and wrote a new album, recorded it, and produced it. Busy times as always.
I also had to say goodbye to both Juho and Joni, our longtime guitarist and drummer. We remained good friends, but the crusade of Cardinals Folly was no longer theirs. Juho moved to another city far from here and Joni’s family is expanding and he doesn’t wish to travel anymore. Life changes, you know. At least for most. For me, it always seems to go back to playing this metal and exploring the world. But we had no problems, I am humbled by the journey we had together. These guys will always remain close to my heart and we definitely had our time together. So thanks to them.
So it seems that I skipped such a huge change in the band; can you introduce your new bandmates? I found only that there’s Tuomo Kosonenin on guitars; it’s a shame that his band Pohjoinen didn’t release anything new since 2015.
Tuomo joined as a guitar player in late 2024. He definitely brought a lot more into the sound. We started writing new stuff pretty much immediately, it just clicked.
Right now we have Rami Moilanen from Fall of the Idols, Black Mass Pervertor, and Wolfshead as a live drummer. He hasn’t decided if he wants to join permanently yet. The distance is a factor, as he lives in Oulu. But man, he has blended in so well I am starting to give a damn about the distance…
You play regularly in Finland and crossed the whole of Europe. How often did you play live and where in-between Live by the Sword and Let the Posers Fall? What are the highlights?
Mikko: I already sort of answered this. Maybe the live highlights of this era between the previous and upcoming album could be:
Dutch Doom Days Festival, 2023, Rotterdam
Dammenation Fest 2024, Belgium
Finnish tour with SOLSTICE, 3 shows, 2024
Riders of Doom 2025, Warsaw, Poland
Legions of Metal Festival 2025, Chicago (and most American shows in general – there has been a total of 29 in these couple years!)
UK tour with Iron Void, 9 shows, 2025
Baltic Tour with Spiritus Mortis, 3 shows, 2025
Your tendency to charged, faster tracks is clearer than ever in Let the Posers Fall! Did you already play a totally “fast” set live?
Tumppi: We try to mix all kinda songs, like let’s say “Secret of the Runes” for an example is always a good live doomer, but you can say the main focus in our live sets is a faster set that makes you move, groove, and doom! And I think this tendency for faster stuff had started already way before this album and before I joined the band, slowly but steadily.
Is this new material a result of collaboration or does the band have a sole songwriter nowadays?
Tumppi: Well, usually it goes like this: someone brings a riff and we start to jam around it. And before you know it, there’s a song forming. Some of them stay in the rehearsal room and never leave, but most do. Of course they are not ready at that moment yet, but yeah, we write riffs and song structures together under Mikko’s guidance. He’s basically showing the way and then we’ll take it together from there.
So Let the Posers Fall! is your seventh album, and that’s an achievement in itself. Don’t you feel exhausted or is it a comfortable pace for you?
I do feel exhausted sometimes, but it’s not due to making seven albums, three splits, and two compilations. It’s due to all the other things, that come with running this package. Basically I’ve always had to do 95% of everything regarding band management myself, because Finns aren’t exactly blessed with willingness or skills in those. That’s how I interpret it at this point. We would badly need a booking agency that could help us with shows in both USA and Europe. There’s a lot to handle, and also musicians have been coming and going, as there’s been many live session musicians due to basically never having a permanent line-up that could tour. To be honest, I have in my mind given up the idea of having a permanent line-up that could keep up with my pace. And I’m not willing to succumb to anyone else’s pace either. So it is what it is. But I definitely don’t regret bringing things to this point, because otherwise I would’ve already lost my motivation on the way. A push was definitely needed.
Mikko, now you have seven full-length albums and a bunch of smaller releases in your discography. Isn’t a problem yet to produce some new ideas while avoiding ripping off your own stuff and, unconsciously of course, some other bands?
When you listen to the new album, does it sound like it would be? Hehe! I think the guitarist changing helped a lot. Otherwise we would’ve been more stuck in the same ways. That path had run its course and it was time for a new chapter. In the end, this ripping-off thing is a thing that’s stuck too much in musicians’ minds. They always like to jam at their rehearsal space and say that this sounds like that and that sounds like that. In my opinion, it’s too much of that and too little something more inspired. Many musicians are terribly insecure. They have to compare everything to something all the time. More healthy confidence would be needed, to overcome the comparisons and doubts, and prevail through combining your ideas into something that stands on its own.
Well said! And yet Let the Posers Fall! sounds like an ambiguous title. Do you see Cardinals Folly as an opposition to some doom bands? And how would you define “doom posers”?
I don’t really see Cardinals Folly as being opposed to other doom bands. The word “poser” is much bigger than the doom scene. Posers are everywhere — in music, in politics, in culture, in everyday life. People pretending to be something they’re not, following whatever is fashionable, and accepting things because they’re told that’s just how the world is.
For me, Let the Posers Fall! is partly about that. We live in a world that often feels increasingly artificial, cynical, and fucking soulless. Everything has to be packaged, marketed, and approved before people are willing to accept it. We don’t want to accept that as the only possible reality.
Doom has always represented something different to me. It’s heavy, it’s sincere, it’s uncompromising, and it doesn’t need to apologize for being dark or ugly. So the title is our way of saying: let the bullshit fall away. We don’t have to accept that the world has to be the shitshow it is today.
And of course there’s some humor and provocation in the title. We’re not claiming to be the ultimate judges of who is a poser and who isn’t. We’re just reminding people — including ourselves — that you don’t have to follow the crowd. You can still have your own ideas, your own taste, and your own fucking standards.
That’s probably the real meaning behind Let the Posers Fall!.
Okay, then let them fall of course. You tend to such… I would say both witty and provoking titles, a kind of manifest. And it’s a cool attitude, because there are too many serious doom bands around, and we love them for their serious stuff obviously. How do you find a balance between these poles in working on the concept of a new album? Do you have someone around who stops you when it’s enough?
Not really. At this point, this is my brainchild and I do what I want with it. I do think we have a good relationship with Tumppi in the sense that we both know what a GOOD SONG is, and aim for the best musical result. I point the direction and then we take it from there together with all the ideas. We have different angles where we come from, but are socially gifted enough to find the meeting point.
You use a lot of recognizable cultural references in your lyrics: serial killers, Lovecraft and horror movie influences, etc. At the same time, you have this Mexican vibe in the “Luchador” song, and I guess that “Chiusura Invernale” is an Italian title. How natural was this slight change of direction? Or did you feel that it’s the right moment to add something different in Cardinals Folly songs?
It was completely natural, but lyric-wise this album also has many ideas that have existed for a long time, but weren’t brought to fruitition until now. “I am the Zodiac” is probably the oldest idea, but I couldn’t come up with the words for it until the riffs came in 2022. “Luchador” was a clearly different song compared to others, I ironically called it “Folly’s football anthem”, haha! So I decided to go for different lyrics as well, with a touch slightly less macabre than what most of the album represents.
Of course changing a guitarist changes the sound of the band a bit anyway, so why not explore some new territories lyrically too. It’s always been my intention, but maybe this time the leap is more obvious.
What about doom bands in Finland? It seems that some disappeared during recent years, as some work quite spontaneously without putting much effort to “keep the flame burning”, if you allow me to use a black metal cliché. Let’s say, I stopped checking if this or that band recorded anything new some time ago, as almost nothing happens there as it seems.
I use and love that same cliché, so go ahead, haha… well, I would suspect it has a lot to do with the general situation of the music industry. That combined with the extreme unpopularity of real doom metal, when compared to black metal for an example.
Selling records is difficult nowadays, and both that and getting recognition are managed best when a band tours. And for a band to tour, the right line-up, connections, and financial compensations are needed. As I already mentioned before. If a band doesn’t tour or find a way to go onwards, it usually affects the motivation, no matter what someone says. Then bands often get passive and wither away.
Finland is often labeled as the promised land of heavy metal and stuff like that. But the facts are:
The scene is totally overcrowded.
Yet there’s more musicians than fans.
Finland is logistically an island, you need to travel a bit to even reach mainland Europe.
Even if there’s lots of culture and knowlege, Finns have a tendency of acting like there weren’t. Many bands have a terrible chemistry and can’t solve their issues. And the ones who have a good chemistry have their chemistry often broken down when a band member or members go through changes in their life.
So it’s simply very difficult to find a working solution. It’s often much more rewarding in life to go for something less complicated. You have to be a bit of a nutcase to put the effort into this that I’m putting in. And I know a ton of people here think even I do it only because I’m rich or something. That just goes to reflect how hard it is.
You changed Soulseller Records for Cruz del Sur Music, does it make a difference? In which way?
It’s too early to tell, but style-wise Cruz Del Sur Music was in our TOP 5 label options anyway to begin with. Soulseller sales were not bad by Finnish doom standards, but I think he expected more. I did suspect since the beginning that the label is too black-metal-oriented to be the right channel for us, but the offer was good and he’s a solid professional, so we went for it.
With Cruz Del Sur it has pleased me a lot that he understands the album and we had a clear joint vision since the beginning, that the album should come out accompanied with sufficient visual productions. Hence he hired Annick Giroux to do the first music video for “New York Ripper”. We really love the video and I think Annick totally nailed it. Right now we’re shooting another one ourselves for the title track “Let the Posers Fall!”.
Our collaboration with Cruz Del Sur has been very good so far, and Enrico is a true professional as well. It’s definitely a fitting label for us. Now just having our fingers crossed, that we could get ourselves around Europe even more than before.
I hope that Annick didn’t disband Cauchemar because of your video! By the way, you haven’t tour in Canada, right?
Didn’t they quit the band some years ago anyway? So I thought. I actually saw them here ten years ago, when they had a European tour. She did great job with the video and I met her in Finland just some months ago, as she had travelled to Finland again for the Heavy Metal Maniacs festival, that we played as well.
No, we never toured Canada so far. Probably only Toronto and Montreal would be worthwhile? I have no idea, really.
You toured in the US in 2022 and hoped to return there in 2024. At least, you played a short tour there this spring. Was it worth it? How did you decide to tour there with so few gigs in your schedule?
We actually returned there in both 2024 and 2025. It’s been an annual thing as of late! And I must say it did work out exactly as I had planned and hoped 3 years ago. Summer 2024 we had a run of 14 dates around the Midwest and East Coast USA, our longest tour so far. And in 2025 I went back for 10 more dates, including the legendary Legions of Metal festival in Chicago.
I wouldn’t be doing it unless it was worth it. This spring, 3 months ago, I went back again and there indeed were only 4 shows this time due to our busy schedules. But it was still very good for a mini tour, and there’ll be more coming! America has offered many good opportunities, and our local backing band there, Matthew Hopkins (guitar) and Holden Crow (drums), have provided a 100% functional and trustworthy touring unit, and our adventures during our 33 shows across a total of 13 states have breeded some legendary touring stories on the way. I’m really hoping a long tour there will materialize for 2027.
Okay, you said it: What kind of tour anecdotes are you ready to share now?
There’s too many. But I like the tight spots the most. Like getting stranded in Iceland for 24 hours on your way to the US, getting wasted while being pissed off, and then making it to the show so that you skip the soundcheck as you arrive to the venue right before showtime after having a 36-hour journey around the world.
Or landing in Belgium late, because you had a flight transit in Germany and some kid messes up the whole European aviation for a couple hours due to playing with his drone camera. And then after all that, having to take a bus to Northern France from Brussels, that arrives 2 hours late. And again, straight to the stage as you arrive but you still made it to the show.
In the UK, our van also broke down TWICE last year. But we still made it to all the shows.
Once in the US, I got a huge food poisoning before the very first show in Madison after travelling all day from Finland. Couldn’t keep anything inside. I vomited a 24-pack case full, that was my trashbucket. Felt like dying, had no power in the body. Lied in the van on a mattress alone outside the venue for like 4 hours, then guys came to get me and I just went straight onstage and delivered. Funny thing is, after that our drummer Holden got the food poisoning as well and vomited out of the van window while driving from Chicago to Detroit.
I’m brewed in some hellish wells… bring it on, Folly never dies!
What are your plans for the rest of 2026?
The album Let the Posers Fall! comes out in October, and we have about a dozen shows booked currently for the remainder of the year in like 6 countries. And like 3 or 4 for 2027 already as well. I think I’ll be away from home fairly alot. No rest for the wicked, let the bacchanales begin… I have a feeling that this upcoming era of the band will be its most challenging, but also rewarding at the same time. This album will point the future of ours. We don’t do albums every year, so we need to make it count at this point. I have faith – and deranged pagan gods are on our side.
Thank you once again, Comrade Aleks, for an inspiring chat. And probably not our last one. Let’s keep the flame burning 😉
Yep, and let’s Dangerous Cult Continues! Thanks for the interview.
https://cardinalsfolly.bandcamp.com/album/let-the-posers-fall