Over a year in the making, Kamala, the Thrash Metal trio from Finland, have finally released Sota Sisällä. Translated as The War Inside, the song marches along wonderfully as thundering bass from Minttu Minkkinen and acidic, powerful drumming from Timo Ruunaniemi combine with the driven riffing from Karita Kivioja who spits out lyrics with distasteful passion.
Distasteful, yes, as Finnish Civil War events inspired the song in 1918, but it took on new meaning in the spring of 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine. “As a teenager in the ’90s, I never thought I would see two European countries at war with each other,” Karita Kivioja told us. “Less than 1000 km away, all the horrors of war are suddenly happening all over again. Horrors that should have been consigned to history.”
Kamala – Sota Sisällä
– This is a cracking, haunting anthem.
Sota Sisällä was recorded at SN-audio studio in Jyväskylä, Finland, in 2023. The lyrics and vocal style went through quite a mill in the studio, including the appearance of Putin’s face in front of Karita’s face in the vocal booth. When the singer felt like the embodiment of the spirit of Rocky Balboa when she screamed, the band says they started to get close to the final sound.
The song’s inception comes from a visit to the Civil War memorial of the Dragsvik prison camp in Tammisaari during a summer holiday in 2018. “I stayed to read the names of the dead prisoners, the children, in the largest mass grave in Finland,” Karita said.
“The grave was the final resting place of 3100 prisoners who had died of starvation and epidemics, near the barracks area. One story was particularly poignant. The parents of a 17-year-old boy from Ostrobothnia had come all the way to Tammisaari to bring him food. But the guards would not let the prisoners who had lost the war feed their children, so the boy died in a concentration camp. These names are on the memorial in plain sight.
“The Civil War tore this country to shreds and made ordinary Finns into victims as well as torturers and murderers.
“This stopped, shocked and disgusted. The lyrics of the song were born from stories passed down through the family and the shock of prison camp hell. Also mixed into the lyrics were experiences of the hell inside the head and the hell in modern society called homes.
“Acts of the sick human mind against others, both because of the prevailing environment and because of mental breakdown.”
Kamala shot the music video with Jaakko Manninen on 22 December 2023. The choice of date was perfect, as this was the darkest day of the year and director and cinematographer Manninen was to film using only natural light.
Final production took over a year, but you can’t argue with that when being inspired by Kamala and Sota Sisällä. This is a cracking, haunting anthem.
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Kamala / Epic New Single Inspired By History And Modern War first appeared on
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