To misquote The Twilight Singers, "They love me down in Turku/ my home while I'm away". Finnish Sue-zine reviewed "The Once And Future" and gave it the lowest marks they've got, ouch! Check out the review here!

Tonight, tonight! At 10PM in Vaasa's Gloria we will have the premiere for "Now - The Once And Future Live" concert film and you are invited! I got a chance to preview it yesterday on the big screen and I can say that I'm truly satisfied with the way the film turned out, apart from a couple of my singing mishaps it's all killer!

"The Once and Future" is out now! Eleven years after our previous album, it's finally here and I strongly suggest you download it on iTunes or listen to it on Spotify ( it's also on Amazon, Deezer, etc. if you prefer those). And those of you with a quirk for physical copied, a CD is also available, contact us at info@graceskull.com for further info. It's a steal at 10€!

Okay, it's official! 20th December att 22.00 we will be celebrating the release of our third album "The Once And Future" with a concert film premiere at Vaasa's Gloria movie theater! The concert is us playing the record from beginning to end at Malax's Malakta Art Factory and it was shot by a bunch of great people December 1st. The editing is now wrapped, so I must lift off my hat to Jukka and Toffa who have worked their asses off on the film. See you at the premiere, here's the link to the Facebook event

Okay, folks, settle down. We're proud to announce that our new album "The Once And Future" is going to be available December 18th 2013! It will be available on iTunes and Spotify and some other digital retailers, but also we have some CDs actually, a very limited pressing I might add. You can get one of the CDs right now, just contact us info@graceskull.com. The price for the CD is 10 euro, postage and packing included. Also everyone who orders a CD before Xmas will receive something special from us on December 24th!

Yesterday was a long day, I'll tell you that. I can't exactly tell you just yet what we did but a film crew was involved. Exciting times, my friends!

Been working on a new song on and off for a couple of weeks now, well mostly in my head actually but I also got some tracks recorded yesterday. It's a bit tricky to get this one done because it's a bit different to the usual stuff (bass driven, for one), the arrangement needs a lot of detail I think. "Colors" is the name.

Lazy updates, ya ya ya! Well actually the "we're recording stuff!" updates have somehow landed more on our Facebook page than here. If you've not heard of Facebook it's this bulletin board type of new thing that the kids seem to be crazy about. Anyway, the Hills (of Vaasa) stuff that we recorded with Coma is out and about, check it out online at the new Hills (of Vaasa) website!

Shazam! It's been a surprising week as I've been working in the studio with The Bullets. They're back! We rehearsed for the first time in years on Sunday and then hit the studio on Wednesday to record three great songs. Blitzkrieg, motherfuckers! Anyway it was really a lot of fun, it was also my first time at Midas Studios here in Vaasa, it was a really nice studio. Besides playing bass and shouting backing vocals I also had the task of writing lyrics to these songs which I did basically on lunch breaks and in the toilet (how appropriate!), sometimes finishing a verse just seconds before Macke started to record it. A different kind of writing for me, I'm more used to letting the words come to me instead of chasing them on a jet ski. Of course the lyrics that a Bullets song require are different to the majority of Graceskull stuff and maybe that's why I actually was quite pleased with the shit I came up with. Really really really pleased on the other hand I was to how "Start Believing" - the song - came out, this one is going to buy my mother a house! Still needs a mix though, let's see which year we pick out for that session...

Sent our forthcoming album to the printing plant yesterday. That's all, bye for now.

A different kinda session yesterday, me and Micke visited our rehearsal facility with a new project in mind. I started off trying to put some warped guitar and vocal tracks on the beats Micke was coercing out from his machines but the night ended with the both of us jamming some druggy dance stuff on two iPads. Fucking iPads, they're everywhere now...Remains to be seen what form this setup will take, stay tuned as always. And in actual Graceskull related new, I've been writing the lyrics to "TV Eyes" at a rate of maybe two lines a day. It's a bit tricky since my idea once again is pretty strong and so is the intended rhythm of the vocals so there's very little room for filler there, I've thrown away heaps of stuff already. Hope the end result is worth the toil.

Easter came and went and yours truly kept himself busy as bee, not collecting candy dressed as a witch (it's a Finnish tradition, nuff said) but doing music stuff like a motherfucker. First off me and Coma have been working up a new project of sorts (which we're calling Hills Beats but it really, really can't be the final name) and for this project - or maybe it's a new band? - I had a couple of song ideas that came to me. One of them I even did a really rough demo/sketch of and Coma seemed to like it so it'll go into production as soon as I find some time to throw some tracks together. Then I had an intense couple of days working on Graceskull stuff. I mainly attacked songs that have been left half-baked, ie. songs that are missing parts or choruses or just some details are wrong and need fixing. On "Faith" I redid the demo vocals and added some guitar and fixed some piano stuff that was off. For "Hunger" I picked up where I had left off and added a middle eight type of "crescendo" part or whatevs, so guitars, Rhodes, organ, all types of shit got added. Pretty much the same for "TV Eyes" which I first edited one instrumental part out of, I didn't get it all finished though but the rough idea of how the parts go should be on tape now. Then there was this idea that I got somewhere in between all this tinkering for a song called "This Is War". It's not quite as rough as the title suggests but I guess it's still harder than a lot of the stuff Graceskull is known for, looking forward to seeing where the road leads with this ditty.

Well that was a fantastical couple of days! Monday/tuesday Hills (of Vaasa) session at Fried studios went even smoother than expected, though I don't know why I didn't expect it to go this smoothly considering Mr. Arttu Peljo was behind the faders. He always makes the sessions happen so effortlessly I'm just left wondering if we forgot to do something essential because it didn't feel like work had been done at all. Anyway, another nice part of the session was noticing (and receiving confirmation on this from the golden eared Arttu) that there was a lot of useable tracks already in our demos that didn't need re-recording. The main thing was getting vocals, drum stuff and grand piano recorded but we also added some other fun stuff in there like feedback guitars and some plinky-plonky iPad keyboards (first time using iPad as a real instrument!) Everything sounded just fantastic and we left the tracks in Arttu's hands, he's going to mix them sometime in the not-too-distant future. In between all the singing and playing we also had time to get some promo shots taken by the esteemed photographer Juuso Westerlund. The idea for the photo was quite an unusual one (Coma came up with it) but I'm pretty sure it too turned out quite super, hope I get to show it to you guys soon. One more thing we had time to do between all the takes and being photographed was to eat well, Arttu took us to this restaurant called Hoku and dang it if it didn't have one of the best lunch dishes I've ever had! If you're in the neighbourhood, try the salmon! Just do it!

Jesus H. Christ ("the H is silent")! It's been a good few months since last update and well what can I say, we've been lazy I guess. But some non-Graceskull news are trickling in however, as me and Coma - that's Hills (of Vaasa), baby - have booked a few days at Helsinki's Fried Studios with the by now world famous Arttu Peljo. We're going in to record this and that on two songs which it seems are called Hello and Go Tell Jesus You're In Love With Me. Updates on our session soon-ish!

So yeah, I forgot to write it here but since everybody's on Facebook nowadays I thought that y'all know this already. We have a gig, it's going to be just me and Julius this time, at DOM in Vaasa next Wednesday. Also playing is our occasional axeman Macke, his solo stuff is super, believe you me. So you should be there, goes without saying, doesn't it? We've been rehearsing some with Julius and I think we have a good number of songs arranged for the duo setup, the most difficult hurdle has actually been overcoming the cold temperature of our rehearsal facility, it's been fucking freezing. I'm hoping the landlord has fixed this for tonight's rehearsal, maybe this time we can play with the winterjackets off.

Some more rehearsing yesterday, this time with only myself and Julius. Amazingly enough we seem to have a minor gig coming up next month and we decided to round up some songs for a duo set. Unfortunately the landlord had not gotten the heating going just yet at our rehearsal space (despite outside temperatures dropping like they do in Finland this time of the year) so I rehearsed with my jacket on and still had ice cold fingers which made playing quite a lot harder. We still managed to get through a good number of songs and weed out the impossible ones. Some oldie - and actually one newbie too - surprises were added to the possible setlist, I think we'll see how we get them arranged the next time we get the time to rehearse. More info on the gig coming up later!

During the last week or so I've been getting some nice ideas for new songs, I guess I have three tunes that I'm working on now. Two of these ideas have strangely enough come to me while I've been taking a shower, I don't really know why, the soothing sensation of water pouring or some zen-shit like that? My new shower gel? Whatever it is, I guess I should be showering more often just that to keep the ideas flowing in despite the fact that it's not that rock'n'roll. Anyway, the furthest developed idea (I've even gotten some lyrics down) is for this song called "Animals" (it's not about animals, I'm allergic and shit). Then one is called "Switchblade" for now (for no reason at all) and the third one is still without any proper name. The last one is really just a pile of ideas that hang together loosely by a thread, I don't think even the melody is right yet, the driving for for that one is a one note bass thingy. Lord only knows when I have time to get flesh out these things and get some tracks recorded, hopefully soon. I spent some time working on tracks yesterday but they were old tracks since I had to sort out some samples and other stuff for the live setup, we're probably rehearsing again tonight since Andy J. is in town, yay!

A spectacular rehearsal by Graceskull last night, I can't remember the last time I've had as much fun playing. We were only three (Paati on the drums) but we got a lot of work done, mainly went through the new album which I think we're going to perform in full in the correct running order on future gigs. Some drastic decisions were made on the gig setup, well mainly just Julius's set of gear, we thought that some of the songs needed to comply with the instrumentation on the record so we need some synth stuff happening, probably. A couple of new songs were also tried out but I'm mostly happy about getting the songs on "The Once and Future" working live. Planning to do some more frequent rehearsing in the near future, hope we can pull it off!

At the rehearsal space with Julius yesterday, we had a great time working on this song were calling "Smooch" for now. I made a demo of this song quite some time ago and had just about forgotten all about it but Julius had some warm and fuzzy feelings about it so we decided to have a go at it. The main thing that bothered me in the original demo was that it was just too cheerful so we jammed on the verse for quite some time trying to find a darker feel to it. Finally Julius had a breakthrough idea that made the arrangement work and I was able to work out a new vocal melody that was closer to the feel we were after. There are still a good few kinks to sort out but I think we managed to breathe life into this song and it may yet find its home on the record.

Some more lyric work yesterday (and it seems to continue today), after "Accident/Alive" I took on another new song "Sidestep" (which is actually quite a fitting title for this song). I got the first verse done and some ideas for the second one too. Reading the first verse today after a night well slept I see there's room for improvement ie. some stuff that's not exactly fully formed, I'm gonna work the kinks out later tonight, I think. Also I've been brainstorming where to take this song because I just have the verses and some other bits and pieces done, I think it still needs a strong middle eight to be just perfect (and actually same goes for "The Hunger").