Eppu Normaali ends 50-year live career with three farewell concerts

Finnish rock band Eppu Normaali will end its live career with three farewell concerts at Ratina Stadium in Tampere this week, Yle reports. The shows will take place on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The band reached a three-concert farewell after tickets for the final show sold out within minutes. Yle will record the last concert on Saturday and broadcast it on Finland’s Independence Day, December 6.

The band’s 50-year journey has been marked by a final festival performance at Kuopiorock. Singer Martti Syrjä noticed that guitarist Juha Torvinen’s lower jaw was trembling during the show.

“It may be the weakness of old age,” Torvinen joked.

It may also have been sadness, as the concert was Eppu Normaali’s last festival appearance. The band’s sound engineer has already cried at two shows.

The band will not split up

Although touring and the band’s active work will end, Eppu Normaali will not disband. Torvinen said audiences had noticed during the summer concerts that the end was approaching, but he had tried not to think about it.

“Now we play and worry about it later,” he said.

The band announced its decision to stop touring last autumn. At the time, Syrjä described it as a “strategic and tactical move”.

The members will continue working together at Akun Tehdas, a factory in the band’s home city of Ylöjärvi that has operated since 2003 and organises festivals and television productions while also renting out audiovisual equipment.

“I do not rule out that we might still do something with music together. It is at least better to keep that door open,” Syrjä said.

From punks to a national rock band

Eppu Normaali began during Finland’s punk wave. The band’s early music featured Ramones influences and social themes.

Over time, its sound became less frantic and its musical range expanded. The band was eventually described, among other things, as Finland’s Dire Straits.

Versatile lyrics have been central to the band’s popularity. Eppu Normaali’s songs have told stories about life that have strongly resonated with Finnish audiences.

The band rose among the leading names in Finnish rock during the 1980s. Its 1996 compilation album Repullinen hittejä is the best-selling Finnish compilation album of all time.

Syrjä said he had only begun in recent years to understand what the band’s songs mean to people.

“It is good that they have reached people and stood the test of time,” he said.

The band’s music was produced with painstaking care, largely because of the perfectionism of Syrjä’s brother, Mikko “Pantse” Syrjä.

“We worked on the sounds in the studio until it became unbearable,” Martti Syrjä said.

Torvinen said the band made its songs and performed its concerts for itself, even though the audience was extremely important. Syrjä added that the members could not allow themselves to focus on what people might like, because that would have been a restriction.

The band stopped making new songs long ago. The 2011 studio album Mutala was its last.

“We decided that we had already made a sufficient number of good songs and would not force ourselves to make bad ones,” Syrjä said.

Syrjä said no one could continue in Eppu Normaali’s style. Torvinen also considered the band impossible to imitate.

“No other group sounds like Eppu Normaali, no matter how much it twists and turns,” Torvinen said.

Syrjä has rejected Vain elämää

Eppu Normaali has always primarily been a band. Its members have agreed that the band’s songs should not be performed individually. The few exceptions have mainly been at funerals.

The band is also why Syrjä has not taken part in Vain elämää, a television programme.

“I have been asked many times, but I have always refused. It would put too much emphasis on the fact that we are a band, while the programme focuses on individuals. It is not my thing at all,” he said.

Eppu Normaali’s final three concerts will mark the end of its live career, but the members have left open the possibility of future musical collaboration.