Elina Siirala understands the power of contrast. As the frontwoman of ‘Leaves’ Eyes’ since 2016, she’s spent nearly a decade navigating the space between light and darkness, delicacy and harshness, ethereal beauty and raw intensity. With the band’s new EP arriving March 6th, that balance has never felt more essential. The lead single “Song of Darkness” draws from the medieval Icelandic saga of Gisli the Outlaw, a tale steeped in murder, revenge, and guilt-ridden dreams. It’s heavy material, and Elina doesn’t shy away from that weight. “For me, I have to use my voice range-wise and tone-wise also pretty much to the extreme. So it’s really challenge and also great for me because I love doing this. It has a lot of darkness to it but also this very light part. So it’s an extreme contrast, I would say, also musically, vocally for me,” she explains.
EP Track Listing:
1. Song Of Darkness
2. Hall Of The Brave
3. Until The Last Day
4. Roots Eternal
The song came together in an unexpectedly spontaneous way. Elina and Alex Krull, the band’s mastermind, sat down in the studio with no predetermined plan, just the intention to create. “This song started in a very traditional way of me and Alex sitting in a studio room just sitting there playing around so it was like from zero and we came up with some,” Elina recalls. She recorded a vocal line on her phone, just the first melody that came to mind for the chorus. Alex heard it and immediately recognized its potential. They built the entire song around that moment. “He even kept my line ‘every time I dream.’ So it was like what I sang just something and then he kept it and it was really like it fit the song actually the topic. It was cool,” she says. That organic process resulted in what might be the most surprising track on the EP for Elina herself. “The way it really then turned out maybe was a little bit surprising for me.”
Vocally, “Song of Darkness” demands extremes. “It’s pretty high and then it’s pretty low,” Elina notes. But the challenge goes deeper than range. The high parts require restraint, not power. “The high parts are not the ones that you would like, let’s say, push out. It’s not like a battle song. So it’s kind of has this ethereal quality to it. So you have to when you have this emotion to go to the chorus, you kind of have to hold back a little bit also vocally. So to balance this is sometimes not so easy when you have all sorts of guitars and drums behind you.” It’s a delicate act, one that forces Elina to find new dimensions in her voice. Coming from a classical background with years of opera training, she’s accustomed to inhabiting roles and telling stories through performance. But ‘Leaves’ Eyes’ pushes her in different directions. “Developing myself as a singer and vocalist, becoming more more versatile and everything gives me more and more confidence also. Because then you can also use the voice more to bring out the colors and different ways of telling the story,” she reflects.
The EP itself balances cinematic scale with personal emotion. While Alex typically selects the sagas and historical topics the band explores, Elina contributed the ballad “Roots Eternal”, writing both the music and original lyrics. “Musically and lyrically also originally from me. So I wrote the music and then we worked on the lyrics to make it fit into the world of Leaves Eyes and we made it about this sacred tree which I really really love. I love the image of the roots spreading around the world and connecting everything and symbolizing the cosmos,” she says. Another deeply personal track, “In Eternity”, was written for Alex‘s mother after she passed away. “Of course, it’s like special connection also with the lyrics,” Elina explains. But she’s quick to clarify that personal connection doesn’t only come from writing the material herself. “It doesn’t mean that I don’t connect with the other songs. So it’s just a different way.” With “Song of Darkness”, the connection comes from the performance itself, from discovering what her voice can do within the song’s framework.
The music video for “Song of Darkness” captures the same contrast as the song. Alex directed, filmed, and edited the entire piece, paying obsessive attention to every detail. “You can see how much he pays attention to all the details. And especially with this video, how visually striking all this contrast with the two ladies, also the dark one and the light one, those creatures in the forest, how the lighting,” Elina describes. “You have no idea how long it takes to get it right in the rainy, cold forest and then you have to get it exactly right.” The result is a visually stunning piece that matches the song’s epic scope. ‘Leaves’ Eyes’ have always invested heavily in historical authenticity, working with Viking-era reenactment groups and handcrafting costumes to create an immersive world. “The people we work with are really very authentic with everything. It’s really honor to be able to be part of this world and also, for example, filming music videos in these surroundings where everything is kind built to resemble the original stuff. It’s really, really cool and I think it’s essential part of Leaves Eyes,” Elina says.
Live, “Song of Darkness” serves a different purpose than the band’s heavier battle songs. “Playing live, this song, it’s been really well received. It’s kind of like this, at the same time, a bit calming moment in the set. And it also has this tension that I really like to bring it on stage. It’s not the one where people necessarily go, yeah, but it has a different kind of tension,” Elina explains. She views herself as a storyteller on stage, taking audiences on a journey. “As often I’m in the role of the storyteller in the song. So it’s not so often that I’m speaking from, like, how do you say, in first person. So it’s like I’m telling the story,” she says. The band already performed “Song of Darkness” during their Latin American tour, and European audiences will get to hear more new material when ‘Leaves’ Eyes’ hit the road with ‘Catalyst Crime’ after the EP’s release, including recently announced dates in Japan.
What keeps Elina connected to these songs night after night isn’t artificial emotion or manufactured intensity. It’s the music itself. “It really is the music that does it for me because it’s every time, even years after years, I sing, let’s say some classical piece and I still get goosebumps, like just from the music. It’s just something about it that it kind of takes you with it,” she explains. “It’s also the energy of live performance when you see the people and it’s the energy that goes between the crowd and the band. So it’s everything together.” She’s honest about the reality of touring. “Of course, some nights it lights more than others, I’m not gonna lie, it’s not like every time you’re in this flow, but yeah, it is the music ultimately for me.”
For Elina, the power of music lies in its ability to connect with people in unexpected ways. She doesn’t want to dictate how listeners should interpret “Song of Darkness” or any of the EP’s four tracks, which also include “Hall of the Brave”, “Until the Last Day”, and “Roots Eternal”. “I never really want to tell people how they should take the song. I want them to feel it, how they feel it and interpret it. You can always translate all these ancient sagas into today’s world and what’s happening maybe in your own life or in the world. And sometimes it’s in a sad way, sometimes in an inspiring way, sometimes it helps. And that’s the force of music. It’s incredible, really. Like it gives you goosebumps, it makes you laugh, it makes you cry. That’s something that we shouldn’t underestimate.”
When asked what audiences can expect from the upcoming tour, Elina returns to that essential contrast. “The way that Leaves Eyes music is always constructed is that it gives you the visual, it gives you the world of totally different world from where we live and can dive into something both visually and musically and experience extremes. Very delicate and very harsh things. All these epic topics, epic music and also very gentle stuff. I really like the shows that they have this motion of energy and I hope people will feel this, join us, celebrate with us the new EP and we can’t wait to see all of you.”
The EP drops March 6th. The saga continues.
