Sweatmaster are a Turku, Finland rock trio who started out in the late 1990s and build their name the old way, small rooms, familiar faces, and work done by hand. In interview, singer and guitarist Sasu Mykkänen frames the early era as a local band before it is anything else, a tight loop of friends, rehearsal spaces, and one more show to book.
The picture he draws is practical and DIY down to the packaging, CD-Rs copied on computers, covers picked up from a nearby print shop, and logos printed and placed at home. It’s not nostalgia, just how it works when the scene is small and the will is bigger than the resources.
Turku, he says, feels like a small city in a wave that mostly reads clearer from the outside. The band listens to the same records as everyone else in that Scandinavian garage-rock moment, but without the infrastructure of a bigger hub. Connections come later, through people and through movement, not through a ready-made scene.
The local circuit exists, but it changes. Mykkänen remembers more places to play back then, and the kind of rooms that let small bands keep momentum. Sweden is close, the ferry makes Stockholm reachable, and that traffic brings influences and contacts in both directions, including bands coming to play in Turku.
Then the band slows down and eventually stops. The way Sasu tells it, the decision doesn’t arrive with drama, it arrives with depletion, energy drops, progress stalls, and the work no longer points anywhere new.
They even set a last show, a final marker to close the chapter, and then life moves on into other projects. What stays is the sense that the ending is clean, not a breakup in public, not a long fade, but a decision that feels finished when it happens.
The return begins with a low-pressure test. A birthday set feels good and surprisingly natural, and that matters more than the idea of coming back as a concept. When Kesärauha festival comes with an invitation, the band says yes quickly, and the logic becomes simple, if you play shows again, you need new songs too.
The studio plan is built around not overworking the songs. The band tracks the foundations live and fast, then comes back for vocals, guitar doubles, and small additions. The point is that the songs go in as they are, not after being polished into something lifeless.
What Sweatmaster is at its core right now? It’s the forward-leaning feel in the playing, the decision to push rather than relax, and a focus on rhythm before melody. Sweatmaster tried laid back at some point, Sasu says, and it doesn’t work, they sound right when they’re slightly ahead of the beat and unapologetic about it.
That same mindset shapes the new record’s title track, More! The word is presented as a thread and a statement, the band returns because it wants more, and the song leans into that hunger with a blunt, almost elemental image. He calls it a kind of empowerment song, framed through a straight snowstorm metaphor that matches the band’s insistence on direct force.
Looking ahead, Sweatmaster keeps expectations practical. There are release related shows, summer festival plans, and the usual uncertainty about how things land once the record is out in the world. But one thing stays non-negotiable, if the band continues, it’s because playing together and writing new songs is still the main reason to do any of it at all.
Sweatmaster interview 08.12.2025
Sasu Mykkänen
Producer: Janne Vuorela
https://www.instagram.com/sweatmasterband/
WinAudioClean: https://github.com/PikkuJanne/WinAudioClean
Picture: Jan Trygg / Sweatmaster
