by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

The initial idea was straightforward enough. Four young Finnish cellists, gigging with an ensemble that covered Bach and Jimi Hendrix, pondered the possibilities of doing metal, classical-style. With their 1996 debut, Plays Metallica by Four Cellos, Eicca Toppinen, Max Lilja, Antero Manninen and Paavo Lötjönen - Apocalyptica, collectively - achieved that goal. The album was a rich, raw, ferocious success, the rolling thunder of rage and lightning flashes of sorrow creating a perfect musical storm.

But simple ideas have a way of hiding more complex and fascinating possibilities. Over their subsequent discs - Inquisition Symphony with its Pantera and Sepultura covers, Cult with its original compositions and furious reworking of Edward Grieg's "Hall of the Mountain King," Reflections with Slayer's Dave Lombardo supplying drums, and this year's eponymous disc, sporting singers - Apocalyptica have consistently branched out to new turf.

The Mirror spoke to Apocalyptica's Eicca Toppinen, 24 hours into the band's latest tour.

Mirror: A lot has been said about how Apocalyptica are shaking up the classical scene, but I'm as interested in what you have to teach the metal scene, specifically about broadening their limited emotional scope.

Eicca Toppinen: I think that we have brought a lot of possibilities for those people to listen to classical music, and making classical music more acceptable. Especially now, in our own recordings, when we play our own songs, the emotional scale is quite wide for a metal or rock album.

Cross with "crossover"

M: I've been following Apocalyptica since the first album, and it's been interesting watching the idea unfold.

ET: Yeah, for us, it was a natural development. When we made the first album, we weren't actually a band. It was more like school friends who wanted to have fun playing metal music by cellos. And then, accidentally, we got the first record deal. Kind of a nice accident (laughs). But then, when we made the first album, we didn't know so much about studio work, and we didn't have much experience playing those songs live. We began to find new pickups and microphone systems for the cellos that allowed us to be loud without feedback. After a couple of shows already, we realized, shit, it's sounding completely different from the first album. We played more and more shows, and realized we had to make another, because we wanted to update the sound.

Since then, every time we release an album, we get on tour and find out what kind of things work best for the band, all the time developing the sound and playing techniques. We felt the only possibility was to go to original music, because then we felt more free to find out what we can do, really, by cello. We'd made so many covers already, and we found a routine, how to do them. When we write our own songs, they are influenced by all the kinds of music we're listening to. Personally, I listen to all types. Ten years ago, I was more into metal and classical only, but the last five years I've been listening to every type of music. In general, you can find the same kind of emotions and moods in very different musical styles. A band like Massive Attack, for example - in a way, it's much heavier than most of the metal bands (laughs).

M: A lot of people seem to see a vast distinction between classical and heavy metal music, but I don't. True heavy metal, as distinguished from hard rock, has always had a prominent element of classical music. I think that's what allowed Apocalyptica to transcend the novelty classical/rock crossover, which is fun, but not an artistic endeavour.

ET: Yeah, I hated that people were calling us a crossover band, because that always meant, to me, going halfway. When rock bands add classical elements to their music, they use the most obvious style, the romantic style. On the other hand, when classical musicians make adaptations of rock songs, they stay at the level of academic fun. They're not growing, emotionally, to the end. It's a good question at the moment, what is the classical music of our time? Does it make it classical if it's written for a symphony orchestra, and then non-classical if it's written for a rock band? I don't really know if there's a difference. A lot of pop and rock is our times' classical music, made for people of our time, and that's what classical has always been.

With Eyes of Fire at le Spectrum on Friday, Sept. 16, 8:30 p.m., $24

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