Prog Rock outfit Pennies By The Pound present “The Waters,” a great sonic cleansing experience and invigorating shot of fresh air, beautifully expressing their own unique ideas and sound through the prism of fantastic British Progressive Rock. Watch the official video for the track through the YouTube player below:
Not long ago, this Finnish trio released their album “Heat Death of the Universeb” via the Lilith label. Mastered by Ride frontman Mark Gardener at his OX4Sound Studio in Oxford, this long-player was produced, recorded and mixed by Rauli ‘Rake’ Eskolin, a well achieved Finnish producer who boasts over a dozen No. 1 records in Finland in the past 20 years.
“The Waters’ is actually one of the first songs I wrote for the band, but it took a while to take shape and thus, didn’t originally end up on our debut EP. But that is a good thing as we managed to make the song a whole lot better for the album! It’s an exploration of some of the generally unnamed, but powerful feelings evoked by certain things in nature and certain types of landscapes. I grew up and spent all of my childhood summers at the lakeshore, and the hundreds of lakes in Finland are quite a mysterious thing for me even to the present day,” says Johannes Susitaival.
Pennies By The Pound unique sound blends ’80s Prog Rock and ’90s-early ’00s Alternative Rock. Heavily guitar-driven with a touch of keyboards, they love big choruses, guitar and keyboard solos, bridges and grandiose arrangements.
Hailing from Helsinki, Pennies by the Pound was formed in 2016 by Johannes Susitaival as a solo project, but quickly became a three-piece with musicians from his past bands. Earlier, the band released the lyrics video for “Indigo Screams” and finally now got to realise their vision for ‘The Waters’ video.
“We had all sorts of grandiose plans for making a big video earlier (with a different crew and director) in time for the album release, but the pandemic ruined all of that,” says Johannes Susitaival.
“After some pondering, I contacted Martin Brown (an old bandmate of mine, and I knew he’d been doing things with film of late) in the hope that he would be able to do something on a smaller scale. We managed to put together something that could be shot without a large production, but still looks pretty epic! We were certainly helped by the magnificent – while a bit too hot – weather this summer.“
While still in a punk rock band, Johannes began exploring quite different musical avenues, which led to Pennies By The Pound’s self-produced “Bloodshed and the Blinding Sunlight EP” in 2018. After several years of searching, they found their ideal producer and began recording demos in 2019 for this album. Due to the pandemic, they were only able to record these tracks in autumn of 2020.
On October 29, the “Heat Death of the Universe” LP will be released on limited edition pink vinyl. Digitally, it is out now, available across the usual platforms, including Apple Music and Spotify. The album can be ordered directly from the band, both as digital download and on vinyl, via Bandcamp.
