In the heart of Finland’s metal underground, Vanguard are carving out a sound that refuses to sit inside any mold. For their debut full-length, the band traded click tracks and computers for sweat-drenched rehearsals, old-school recording methods, and endless late-night jamming, reshaping chaos into something fiercely alive. We sat down with vocalist Markus Martinmäki and guitarist Mikko Saviranta to talk about their genre-bending identity, their obsession with organic songwriting, and the raw energy that fuels them.

The name Vanguardian suggests being at the front line: a leader, a guardian, a fighter. What does the name personally mean to you as a band?

Markus Martinmäki: Yeah, well, you said it. It’s kind of about being on the front lines and experimenting, not being afraid of new things and just pushing forward no matter what. Being relentless and without fear. That’s the main point. It also has some linguistic ties to France and to the East. Usually if it’s just one guy, it’s Vanguardian, but it can still be a Vanguard even if it’s just one person. So…

Mikko Saviranta: I personally feel the name represents us doing what we want, the way we want to do it. Not following too much of the outside pressure about how things should be done. But rather doing things in our own way.

Your music mixes black metal, sludge, progressive metal, and rock ’n’ roll, yet it feels organic, not forced. How did that unique sound evolve?

Mikko Saviranta: We’ve actually had a lot of internal struggle about how to define our music, how to even categorize it. All of us come from different backgrounds and grew up with different bands, and in this band we wanted to bring all those influences together. Everyone is their own person here, and we want the listener to actually hear that: the individual characteristics, preferences, all of it. So it becomes this mixture of everything. But we don’t want it to feel forced, you know? Most of our music happens really organically, just jamming together at our studio or wherever we’re working.

Markus Martinmäki: Yeah, it’s hard to fit into any mold when you don’t really have boundaries for what kind of songs we write, or where things can go. So it ends up being a pretty interesting mixture.

Mikko Saviranta: But I would argue, we make it work. It’s really strange, yeah — but doing things together, where everyone contributes something, gives it this certain feel of chaos. Still, in the end, we always manage to land on a good song that we all genuinely like.

What influences each of you bring into Vanguardian’s creative process, and how do you make them coexist without losing focus?

Markus Martinmäki: Well, I think I bring, as a singer or vocalist, mostly the punk rock stuff, from early Ramones to some hardcore influences too. I don’t really see any of our influences battling with each other. It’s always like we throw everything into the same pot and whatever comes out, comes out. So we don’t struggle with mixing our influences, it’s just the organic result of what we do together.

Mikko Saviranta: Yeah, we like a variety of music. Like it’s not just metal music but we listen to a lot of different kind of music. Depending on how it goes, sometimes you have this pop-rock phase. Or then some extreme metal at some point. And maybe some of the songs that are being made kind of represent that time. That there might be influences drawn from certain kind of genres at certain time. And then I think that we all share love for music in general. So we can appreciate when somebody brings a new idea from completely different genre to bring to our music. So it’s kind of like I think it’s more like a harmonized mixture rather than a battle.

View this post on Instagram

What do you think makes Vanguardian stand out in today’s Finnish extreme metal scene?

Markus Martinmäki: We have a different kind of style, I think, when it comes to composing, arranging, and recording songs. We went to Astia-studios in Lappeenranta, and that really taught us a lot of old-school recording techniques. Most of it has to be played live and actually feel alive. We don’t use metronomes or heavy edits or anything like that.

So I think our music has a much more organic, live feel to it, and that really translates to our live shows. We can play the songs on stage exactly the way you hear them on Spotify. The energy and the sound stay the same.

And as a lyricist, I’d also say we try to make every recording like a story. There’s some depth to it, and it’s a continuing story, there’s always something new to find or add lyrically. And these guys are pretty good at playing those instruments, too.

Mikko Saviranta: I think the whole process really starts with us spending countless hours together in the rehearsal room. We build everything (songs, themes, even whole albums) from jams or ideas that grow into something complete. And because we don’t use metronomes or edits or anything like that, everything has to be genuinely tight when we play live and when we record. So we put in this almost ridiculous amount of time getting every nuance right, making sure we’re playing together as tightly as possible before we even hit the studio. Then we go in, record the drums, guitars, whatever needs to be done, and take that same mentality from songwriting into the recording process. And I think that’s where we’re at our best live. We’ve grinded through every second of those songs for hours and hours, so when we finally get on stage, it doesn’t matter what happens. We’re so aware of the material that we don’t have to think about what we’re playing. We can just go with the flow, let go, and give the best performance we can in that moment, without overthinking a single note.

Markus Martinmäki: Yeah, and we don’t rely that much on computers. So if there’s a global shutdown of computers, we can still play. It’s old school, but with a modern touch. A lot of new bands today, I don’t think they really know the old-school recording techniques.

Mikko Saviranta: Yeah, and I personally enjoy the things you can hear on classic albums — those little fluctuations in tempo or the weird shifts between parts. We like keeping those details in, because they make everything sound more human, even when we’re playing extreme metal. It’s nice to have that human touch in there, and that’s really the whole idea behind the music we’re making. Yeah, it’s really cool.

Your debut full-length III: Inhumanity came out via Inverse Records this October. How does it feel to finally release a full album?

Mikko Saviranta: So goddamn good. I think we’ve been making this album for… two or three years? And like I said earlier about how we make our songs — it’s finally there.

It’s kind of hard to grasp that it’s finished, done, and about to be published. And that we get to play those songs live now. There’s this excitement that it’s finally out, that we’ve completed the first album.

But I also have to say: there’s this thing I think every musician struggles with. You grind these songs for two or three years, and then suddenly it’s time to go out and be like, “Yeah, listen to this one.” Meanwhile, you’ve heard that same song 1,500 times during mixing. But still, it’s great. So the main feeling is that I’m super excited. I’m really proud of how the album turned out. Now it’s just the home stretch.

Markus Martinmäki: Yeah, happy and relieved and proud. It’s nice.

If someone has never heard Vanguardian before, what song from Inhumanity would you play them first, and why?

Markus Martinmäki: Probably the first one. Because it’s like a full package: a story from start to finish. And I also like listening to the whole album that way. So I think “Gathering Momentum”, the first song on the record, is the one I’d play. And then I’d just see when they want to stop… because it’ll keep playing all the way to the end.

Mikko Saviranta: I would probably go with the song “..In Humanity” from that album. I think it has the harshness and the metal elements, but also some clean passages and clean guitars. It has different moods inside one song. There are guitar solos, and of course, as a guitarist, I love guitar solos, and there are some interesting turns at the end of the track where people will probably go, “Wait… did they really do this?”

It’s got everything: the heaviness, the clean and beautiful parts, the solos, and those twists and turns that I hope will have a positive effect on the listener.

You built your own recording space, Univaltakunta Studio, in Jyväskylä. How has having your own creative environment changed the way you make music?

Markus Martinmäki: I think really, really much. We can always jam there, and that’s a big part of how this album came together. At the same time, after we had finished our second EP at Astia-studios in Lappeenranta, we knew we always had the possibility to play together, create songs, hang out, and learn. We’ve been able to study the recording process, where to place the mics, how everything works, and do it as a community. There are other bands around us, producers, engineers… it’s a whole environment. That makes everything feel much more human compared to making songs over Zoom, or everyone composing at home alone on their bed and then sending files to each other. Instead, we’re right there, present, deciding how things should be done together. Very positively, I think.

Mikko Saviranta: And I want to say that it’s not completely ours. There’s also Jami Honkala and Ville Mikkola, who are a huge part of the whole studio thing. You have everything right there. I think we made three or four rounds of different demo versions before we started actually recording. And it was so easy when the studio and the rehearsal room are in the same place: you can just throw microphones on the drums and guitars, make demo versions, listen to what works and what doesn’t, and then come back a couple of weeks later and try something different. I think it gave us almost unlimited time for that “studio magic” to happen. You’re not rushing anywhere: you can track guitars day after day. It’s nice, though it can also be a problem if you have too much time on your hands. But I think we avoided that trap.

There’s less stress when you don’t have a tight recording schedule. You have more time, and that gives space for spontaneous creativity to happen when you can record in your own studio.