With their new EP Mass Extinction coming out on December 12 via Season of Mist, Finnish grindcore lifers ROTTEN SOUND prove once again that brevity can hit harder than any doomsday prophecy. Recorded during the same sessions as 2023’s Apocalypse, the band’s 11th EP distills the world’s ongoing collapse into six cuts of weaponized grind — fast, bleak, and painfully relevant.
Despite more than three decades spent documenting humanity’s worst impulses, ROTTEN SOUND aren’t slowing down. Frontman Keijo Niinimaa, still one of the most distinctive voices in extreme music, uses Mass Extinction to tear into misinformation, political rot, and the slow-motion disaster we call the modern world. But between the blast beats and the bitterness, there’s still a flicker of hope — or at least the stubborn refusal to give up.
We spoke with Keijo about the new EP, humanity’s future (or lack thereof), the rise of conspiracies and AI, life in Finland next to an unpredictable neighbor, his long history in grinding extremity, and why concision has become ROTTEN SOUND’s sharpest weapon.
In 2023 ROTTEN SOUND released Apocalypse, and now the new EP Mass Extinction is on the way. Are you trying to reflect the spirit of our times — or do you genuinely believe the end of the world is near? And if yes, how much time do you think humanity has left?
Mass Extinction was actually recorded at the same session with Apocalypse and it did reflect the state of the world back in 2020–2022, when the material was written. Unfortunately it’s still very relevant. I’m not a prophet, but I wanted to share the worry of how things are moving from bad to worse. I think humanity may survive, but it’s hard to tell how much of the population will live without distress and despair during the next centuries.
If it really happened that tomorrow was the last day on Earth (like in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia), how would you spend it?
Seeing as many close people as possible and maybe having a huge party together to go out with a bang. I would assume that there would be more time to arrange the event than just today.
Considering that Finland borders Russia (I know you live quite far from that area, but still) — do you personally feel any sense of threat coming from that side? Are people in Finland worried about it?
People in Finland have been worried about Russia for centuries, but it’s obviously shocking that they started the “special operation” against Ukraine in 2022. Personally I really don’t spend too much day-to-day life in fear of potential threats. There are some darker moments, but I suppose I’m cleaning them up on every release and show we do, and that keeps my mind more focused on good things around us than thinking of the next possible war.
On the new EP, you touch on themes like disinformation, conspiracy thinking, and the difficulty of finding reliable information. Do you think the rise of AI will make that problem worse in the future?
I don’t think that AI is that big of a problem fundamentally. The problem is the people teaching AI, and some of them may not be into bringing up a nicer future. Work should become irrelevant in the future, when we start to produce clean energy and manage to have robots doing the labor. But the transition obviously has a lot of risks, and moving to fusion, hydrogen and such is still work that’s under construction. Again, if we just put all of our resources there instead of warfare and over-consumption, we could actually live happily ever after, I believe.
ROTTEN SOUND has always been known for packing a lot of ideas — musically, lyrically, and visually — into just a minute or two. What’s your secret to being that concise?
It’s actually a bit of an evolution in our material. We don’t really like repeating too much, and that has led to more compressed expression. I also think that both Mika and Sami try to make pretty unique song structures, with small unique details to keep the music interesting to listeners and ourselves. But it hasn’t always been like this.
What’s the shortest — and the longest — song you’ve ever written? (Not necessarily for ROTTEN SOUND, any of your bands.)
Shortest released song is probably “Suffer” on Murderworks, our little tribute to ND with its long snare intro. I don’t really remember what’s the longest song with ROTTEN SOUND, but “Obey” on Murderworks, for instance, is waaay too long.
MORBID EVILS has a few songs that are around 10 minutes, but I think the longest is “Supernatural” on our latest album, which is almost 12 minutes long. It also doesn’t have that much repetition, just many long parts and slow tempos. I started the band to really be almost the opposite of RS and it’s been really fun to do such songs.
You’re one of the few Finnish metal musicians who’ve been playing truly extreme music since the ’90s — in a country famous for its melodic bands. Do you feel like part of the opposition? Have you ever felt tempted to start something cleaner or more melodic yourself?
Since 1988 to be exact — we had VOMITURITION before ROTTEN SOUND. Country is irrelevant with music and many other things, actually. I have nothing against more melodic bands; some of them sound pretty good too, at least at times. We just enjoy doing more extreme music. I was in MEDEIA for three albums, and when the last one of them (Iconoclastic) got too melodic, I decided to leave. Singing in karaoke is somewhat melodic (I’m really not that great of a singer, haha), but doing music with such melodic content isn’t interesting to me or any of the ROTTEN SOUND members.
If you’ve seen the upcoming Grammy nominees in the metal category, you probably had a laugh — some time ago you posted your list of “the most overrated bands,” and now three of them made it: Sleep Token, Dream Theater, and Ghost. If you could choose the nominees yourself based on the past year, who would you pick?
Overrated doesn’t mean that they’re bad, you know, haha. Grammys and all competition or awards in art are artificial and nothing I like to contribute to really. There’s also so many great artists that it would be impossible to pick just “the ones” without excluding others that are great too.
And who do you think is the most underrated band right now?
I don’t really know, haven’t heard of them probably.
Back in 2017, you launched GOATBURNER — not identical to ROTTEN SOUND, but still living in a similar sonic territory. Why did you feel the need to start it? What makes it special or different for you — and do you plan to keep it active?
MORBID EVILS didn’t have a proper line-up at that time and I still wanted to tour more than ROTTEN SOUND is able to tour. I also wanted to write more music with guitar, and it’s been such an amazing ride with Spider. We can’t wait to record our third album later this year. GOATBURNER is definitely more death metal and sludgy than RS is, and playing as a guitarist-singer in a duo is a nice challenge for me as a musician.
Given all the bands you’re involved in, the shows, and studio work — do you ever feel burned out from music or touring? And if so, how do you deal with it?
I would like to say never, but obviously there have been moments when I’ve been more tired than usual. But burned out? No, I don’t think so. This is what I enjoy doing most, really. Generally I deal with touring with joy — moving around, meeting people and playing shows are simply amazing.
I know you’ve always had strong anti-fascist views (you actually remind me of Barney Greenway in that sense — and not only in that sense ;)). Did that stance come from personal experiences — maybe problems with the far-right movement in Finland — or more from the influence of the metal/punk scene around you?
Nothing too bad luckily. Some people want to confront me at times, especially in social media, but nowadays I just don’t really care and end up either blocking or just not talking back to them.
Also, how do you feel about situations where anti-fascist groups pressure venues or festivals to cancel certain bands? Do you think that kind of “cancelling” helps or hurts the cause?
Activists are doing what they believe is right, but since anti-fascism isn’t really organized, there are also actions which I don’t agree with personally. Violence is just coming back at people who think they mean well. Calling out fascists and racists is still something that needs to be done, because otherwise we stand with them and that’s not an option. If it leads to cancellation of shows, so be it.
The grey areas are of course more complex, when there are connections of musicians through their past activities. So sometimes I feel it’s not right to call someone out for being connected to a person who has turned toward inhumane art or actions later on.
And overall — do you believe any kind of censorship is needed on the metal scene or online these days?
Illegal texts should be censored, and this is the interesting part: fascist and racist texts are clearly not legal in some countries, but some political movements want to allow them and change the laws. The current rise of far-right parties is trying to polish the turd in a way that people think it’s freedom of speech, but as we know from the past (and also now), fascists are against free speech when it criticizes them. So, I would say that we should have a strong counter-force to keep the freedom of speech.
Finally — what would you wish for yourself in the coming year?
More great tours, new music to be written and, most importantly, less violence and wars on this planet.
Thank you so much. Grind on! See you at Maryland Deathfest 2026!
See you!
