Jay Rohr
Heavier Trip has hit the scene. This absurd black metal road comedy sees the return of Impaled Rektum. This lovingly crafted satire of the heavy metal community is the brainchild of Jukka Vidgren and Juuso Laatio. They’re same filmmakers behind the cult classic Heavy Trip, this sequel’s obvious predecessor.
The first film is a gem that’s been circulating in certain circles since its release in 2018. In fact, according to Jukka Vidgren, the fans are part of the reason certain doors opened for the sequel. Suffice it to say, some of the settings as well as cameos might not have made it into the picture without the cult following that fuels the franchise.
Recently, Film Obsessive’s Jay Rohr spoke with Vidgren and Laario about the nature of both films, some rough cuts which needed to be made, and the origins of the authentic soundtrack for Heavier Trip. Below is a slightly abridged transcript of that conversation. For expanded details as well as interesting anecdotes from the filmmakers, follow the YouTube link below to the full interview.
Film Obsessive: You have this new movie coming out. It’s a sequel to Heavy Trip. This one’s called Heavier Trip. For folks that aren’t familiar, just give them a quick rundown. Let us know what these movies are about.
Jukka Vidgren: I’ll call them feel good films about a death metal band. So, they’re comedy films about this Finnish death metal band… called Impaled Rektum. And the first film was about these four guys who have a band who never played anywhere. Get this chance to go on a festival in Norway, outside of Finland, to have a gig in the metal festival. Their first film is about kind of getting there and getting over their fears because they’re a band that has never performed anywhere. So they’ve had the band for 12 years and they’ve never played a single gig outside of their basement. So first film is about them getting out of the basement and well, things don’t go really well with them. The second film starts them being in a prison and again getting to another gig, this time to Germany to a festival called Wacken, which is an actual huge heavy metal Festival in Europe and this this time it’s about these guys kind of, how do you stay true to themselves as they’re getting some fame and fortune on the way.
Juuso Laatio: Yeah, that’s a nice summary.
When did you realize you wanted to do a sequel for this for heavy trip? Was there always a seed of an idea or like when you realized that there was sort of like a cult following for it because it is kind of a cult classic for metal heads. Did you feel like, hey, maybe there’s more story to tell?
Jukka Vidgren: Yeah, yeah. I think the latter one is pretty accurate. The film, which we made as a Finnish film for what we thought was a Finnish audiences, took out of Finland and people found it all around the world and all. Of course a lot in the metal communities and people found this film and they seem to like the film and it did become. It’s this cult thing. And then that kind of brought us and the producers to kind of the idea that there might be interest for another film.
Even though it sort of pokes fun at the community, it is in a very loving way. I thought that the characters were a nice representation of what the heavy metal communities really is. Where did that authenticity come from when you were putting this film together?
Juuso Laatio: Well, I guess the metal part comes from me mostly and I’ve been like a metalhead since I was 10 or something like Metallica’s Black album was the first album I bought. We, me and you have studied, studied where I live currently in Ola which is in the northern part of Finland which used to be like the metal capital of Finland and Finland is the like the metal country of the world. So, I mean we knew a lot of like metalheads and bands and we did a lot of music videos for local metal bands and got to know the people. They are really, really like in contrast to, like, the violent music, they’re really mostly like quiet types geeks and nerds and really like, gentle, gentle people.
That’s one of the things I think you really accomplished with both of these films is walking that fine line where it gets to the point where it’s still joking around, but it’s in a kind place.
Juuso Laatio: Yeah, and we realize that there are a lot of like people who take the metal culture too seriously or people who can’t laugh at themselves. And like I guess there’s a little bit of that in Xytrax, but most of the metal people, at least who I know have like a very good sense of humor about how ridiculous it is sometimes to be, like, act tougher than you are.
And that’s one of the things I liked in this one was that I felt like there was a little bit more character expansion for a lot of the individual parts of the band Impaled Rektum. Was that on purpose? Did you feel like well we’re doing a sequel, we need to get more into the other guys as well.
Juuso Laatio: I think it’s always been clear that even though there is the main character, it is like an ensemble movie with four main characters, and we wanted each of them to feel whole and like they matter to the story and they all have like a part. So it was a really nice chance to expand on that and tell something new about the guys.
When it comes to like the original music for this… OK, like first off, where can people get it?
Juuso Laatio: I think there’s a soundtrack coming along at some point. I’ve been told.
Jukka Vidgren: Should be coming up some someplace. I think the first one you can find from Spotify and Apple music and stuff. Hopefully the second one will be coming out as well soon.
When it comes to the original music, but it’s the guitarist from Mors Subita, and you’ve done some of their music videos, like “Into Eternity”. Like how long does it take to get one of these original songs put together well?
Juuso Laatio: Well. There’s a few answers to that question. I think, like well for. For one, Mika is an awesome Mika Lammassaari who did the heavier stuff, he’s an awesome, like guitar hero type person. Very virtuoso songwriter. There’s a part in the second movie where I asked him, I need nine seconds of like this very brutal medal. Just nine seconds of metal and he provided me with like a 9-minute song. He’s very effective at creating stuff like really good stuff, really fast.
You got Baby Metal in this movie. How did that come together?
Jukka Vidgren: It was a very interesting kind of thing that happened. We just wrote the band into the film because it felt that this would be a great, great character arc for our bass player Xytrax and that would work really well… we got in contact with the band and they had their few days off the whole year which they were able to spend with us on our shoot and they flew from Japan to Lithuania where we were shooting the film. We got really, really lucky about getting them on the film and it was a great experience, and they were so nice.
When it came to like getting the the cast back together, the band back together, as it were. Did you have to coax anybody back?
Juuso Laatio: No, no. Everybody was like on board even before they were asked. I think they enjoy all the all the fan mail and fan art.
Was there other stuff that you had to end up cutting because of budget requirements or it just wasn’t something that could come together?
Jukka Vidgren: Yeah, we have, like, dozens of them. What they wanted to do, which were too expensive to make or would have taken too much time, and I think it’s always like that. But I think the other great thing that was able to come into the film was the metal festival, because that’s an actual huge metal festival in Germany and we won there because it’s just well-known, with the metal fans, especially in Europe, and again that was something that we just wrote into the film and then we had like long discussions and there’s a lot of back and forth. But again, it turned out that the guys who were running the festival had seen the first film and actually they had shown the film at the festival. So they knew the film and they really liked it. So again, that opened the door for us to go and shoot in Wacken.
Juuso Laatio: Yeah. And of course, like a lot of lot of stuff got cut in the edit. And in the script and like the films never get bigger during the production, they just get smaller.
What projects have you got going on in the future?
Jukka Vidgren: Well, I’m working on a TV series in Finland. Hopefully, we’ll get that shot next summer. That’s not a metal related related thing, but it’s a comedy series and we’ve kind of been tossing around some ideas and hopefully we’ll get some new ones going.
Juuso Laatio: Yeah, films take so long and there’s so many, like cooks working at the same time. So I’ve started like this therapy painting process, hobby, work, job thing where I can like see some immediate results and nobody can tell me what to do. So that’s what I’m doing at the moment. Probably get into some film work eventually.
All right, well, thank you for taking the time to talk to us.
Juuso Laatio: Thanks Jay.
Jukka Vidgren: Thank you. It’s been really nice talking to you.
