Panu De Ła Rocka’s always on the go, and today’s no exception. Somehow, in between teaching himself drumming and heading out to a band rehearsal, he’s about to pause for a few minutes to reflect on the success of his first solo album, ‘Nightmare Reborn’.

“It came out at the end of October [2024]. Yeah, wow. Or at the mid-point of October or something like that. I feel great because the more I’ve been thinking about it, actually, the more happy I’m about it. Sometimes it’s really hard to see all the things that we do with the right perspective l at the moment when you’re doing it and right after you’ve done it. I think that time is a good way to measure like how did you do, how well did you do. You know like it’s not just about the feedback of other people but also like how your own perception about it changes after a while and I still keep getting feedback about it. For example, yesterday – this literally happened yesterday – I was talking with Peter Sandorff. Peter received his album over a year ago because I remember that the vinyls came out on the summer and we had to wait with the vinyls, you know, for the release day which was in October. So the actual physical album has been ready for over a year now and Peter has had the vinyl over a year now. And literally yesterday he sent me a message like ‘hey, I really like this mixing on this album. Like who did the mix?’”

Sandorff was one of the all-star lineup of collaborators on ‘Nightmare Reborn’, which also included Hanna Hush, Dax Dragster and Vic Victor. “The way I see it,” says De La Rocka,  “I managed to… I want to say ‘squeeze out’ the best characteristics [from] all those guest artists like their strengths, the kind of things that they do best when they do their own thing. And I just feel that I managed to kind of like work with all of them in different ways to squeeze those characteristics out of them for the songs that we did together. If there is one person that became like a really, really dear and close friend to me was actually Thomas, aka Dax Dragster from Godless Wicked Creeps because we are working together on more songs like right now.”

More De La Rocka music is an exciting prospect, and the process began as soon as ‘Nightmare Reborn’ was released. “I remember that it was something like after the release show because you know we had a really big release show here in Finland when ‘Nightmare Reborn’ came out. I think that it was something like one month or two months after that that we had like this really, really long phone call with Thomas and he just asked me like straight: ‘hey, what do you want to do next? Do you want to do more songs or is this it? Was this just what you wanted or do you want to do more songs in the future and if you want to do more songs, do you want to do them alone or do you want to do them with me?’ 

I told him that the full album, doing the twelve songs plus the cover song of ‘Nekronauts’, it was such a huge operation, it was so… well, physically and mentally, it was probably a little bit too much, so I [said] to him that yeah, I definitely want to do some new stuff but not in that way. The working methods, they were really aggressive, like consuming, I would say, so I was so worn out after everything was done. We started thinking about ‘hey, maybe we can proceed in the way that we just keep on doing’,  just concentrating on doing just fun single songs and nothing else, but at the same time keep our eyes open. If we actually get to do as [many] single songs that there could be like a bigger picture in there, but at the same time not stressing about the big picture. That’s basically what we have been doing, and right now we are actually rehearsing two new songs. One was written by Thomas and like, it’s ready to go, like we could perform it with Thomas right now if we need it to. We have been rehearsing that a lot and the other song was written by me. I’ve been writing a lot of stuff and composing a lot of stuff, so I would say that we have got past the ‘Nightmare Reborn’ album at this point. I think it’s too late to do something like this year because I don’t know… maybe you have gotten this kind of image about me [already], but when I do something I do it 150%. I don’t settle for less so if I would aim for releasing something this year,  a single or two songs or whatever, I could probably do it but it would probably be something like 75% and I’m not doing 75%! I want to do 150 or more. ” 

The De La Rocka cover of Nekromantix’ ‘Nekronauts’  came out two weeks ago, signalling the start of his next era of music. “I’m a fan of the early stuff of Necromantix and I very much appreciate all the skill that Peter Sandorff has on the guitar. That’s actually like a driving force for me when I started like… well, not started playing guitar, but when I started like practicing more stuff and getting more into the kind of stuff that I want to be good at. One person that I kept looking like really really really closely [at] was actually Peter Sandorff and what he does and what he did. Something that not many people know –  actually, I haven’t even told Peter, I think someday I’m gonna tell him –  but during the corona stuff, some bands some artists did these kind of ‘Facebook Lives’ where they would just play music. Some were just playing from their living room and people could see like live, this like small acoustic show from somebody’s home or bedroom or whatever. I believe that Peter did like three of those, I think it was three live shows that he did from his living room and they were so much fun. I tuned in for all of those because I’m such a big fan of his playing and performing, it’s really entertaining, so I saved all those videos and I actually chopped them up with my video editor, like every song to a separate video file. I just kept like watching the performances and the songs again and again and again, slowing them down and trying to learn as much from the master himself as possible. That was so interesting and I learned a lot. 

Regarding the recording of the ‘Nekronauts’ cover, it was such a huge thing for me when I actually got help from Peter Sandorff with the song. Some parts of the song were easier to try to learn with the guitar, but some like the solo, the lead parts… there’s some really tricky stuff in there, or that’s what I thought. Peter actually showed me everything I needed to do, and he even helped me choose the actual cover song. We were trying to do a few different [ones to] test out like what works, what doesn’t. The first we tried to do with Thomas actually, we tried to do a cover of ‘Save My Grave’, which is partially sang in Danish. Yeah, it makes sense that we do it with Thomas because he’s from Denmark, and we tried it and we actually made a really decent demo out of it. We just kept listening to the demo and thinking like, yeah, this sounds like a really quality demo, but it’s a little bit boring, and then we started thinking about something with more energy, like we need more energy, we need it, it’s the De La Rocka style!  I asked from Peter his opinion, because my favourite album actually is ‘Return of the Loving Dead’ [which featured Sandorff]. For me it’s the most highly produced versus highly written album. In the end it came to the last two options, the one was ‘Generation 666’, and the other one was ‘Nekronauts’. I asked from Peter like, ‘hey, what do you think? which one we should do?’ and Peter said, ‘I think you should go for Nekronauts’. He has really good memories about the song because they started writing it when Sandorf was with the Nekromantix during the first album at that time, and they started writing the song ‘Nekronauts’ already back then. Obviously there was a point when he wasn’t in Nekromantix, and when he came back they just finished ‘Nekronauts’, so he had a nice little story about it.”

It’s the blend of psychobilly and his other influences which create such a vibrant ‘De La Rocka style’. “I didn’t start with Psychobilly,” he shares. “I actually started with metal music. In my past life, I’ve played in, I think, at least three metal bands., and at some point I was like a really, really huge metal fan, and but always I was also listening to rock and roll and rockabilly music and this kind of music. At that point, at some point, I had no idea that this genre, Psychobilly, even existed, because I didn’t have any friends or relatives, cousins, or anything, like growing up who would listen to that kind of music and introduce it like, ‘hey, here, take this.’ I’ve heard so many stories about people who had somebody who introduced them. And obviously, if you don’t know anybody, then I honestly think that Psychobilly is the a sub genre of a sub genre that if you don’t go looking out for it specifically, there is a really big chance that you will never come across it in your life. I remember that me and some of my friends went to this one festival in a small town where I was living and there was some a lot of different kind of shows. There were a lot of different genres of bands playing on that two day festival, and I remember that for some reason The Meteors played there. I remember seeing all those people with –  what do you call them, like the blue and white jeans with the cow patterns on them or something like that – and I was like, hey, these people are having good time at the Meteors show in my small town. I remember at the same festival…well, this isn’t particularly psychobilly, but nowadays a little bit related… Peter Pan Speedrock were playing, and obviously Peter Pan Speedrock has a very tight connection with Batmobile.

Obviously when you’re talking about Finland, there’s so much metal and heavy metal in Finland. So, it’s not a surprise that there’s more than one heavy metal festival in Finland. The one we played [in 2024] was the second biggest metal festival in Finland. They had this kind of thing going on that the main promoter insists that every year on the festival’s main day, which is Saturday, there has to be one act with an upright bass. I don’t know what’s up, but they had this tradition for a very, very long time. And obviously we wanted to fulfil their request!” He laughs, “it was so much fun!”

 

“It’s always connected in the way that they have this burlesque group performing like before that particular show and right after that particular show. And obviously there was a chance for us to have like a number together with the burlesque people. They actually were in contact with us and they asked like, ‘hey, could you send all your songs and maybe a set list and maybe you could make some kind of like a note of the songs that you would feel that would be a good one to have backing dancers, backup dancers for? And then I got really excited like, ‘yeah, maybe we should have like a Planet Psycho’. It would be really nice to see like a burlesque show on our gig and you know, well, obviously they didn’t do anything like a big, but they were there like a dancing in the songs and it was really fun. So yeah, we did a metal festival!”

I think that there are certain metal festivals where people go for like really, really hardcore, like very specific bands, like a really hardcore bands that you know. I think that the metalheads that go to the kind of festivals that we played are a little bit more open-minded. There’s enough different kinds of metal festivals for all the different kinds of metalheads in Finland. But yeah, the people in that festival were and are like really, really open-minded and we had a lot of fun.” 

If the metallers of Finland are convinced, then he’s definitely doing it right! Of course, De La Rocka has more shows already booked with his band. “We have like some really, really interesting shows coming still this year in the autumn and winter and also the start of the next year. The next one is going to be next month in Elm, at Summertime Is Back in Elm in Germany playing with Batmobile, but also there’s Dukes of Tijuana I think playing in there, and then the Rocking Batz from Germany. It’s going to be so much fun, and for us, it’s going to be like a really cool adventure so that’s something that we are really looking forward to. 

It’s going to be like a really, really super special show because we are doing it together with Thomas. So, for anybody who has ever seen either us play together with Thomas or seen videos of us playing together with Thomas, you can probably know what to expect. Like, let’s see, is there some famous band that Thomas used to play in? Like, do they have any famous songs? Let’s see. Do we have some songs that we did together like a Nightmare Born album? Let’s see. Do we have some new song or something that we might be able to play in there together?” He laughs, pretending to be mysterious. “There’s so much special stuff like related to that specific next show. But also continuing with the shows in Finland, we have some stuff coming up in September. And playing with other Finnish bands, Flatline Rockers and this band called Wanton. I don’t know if you heard about Wanton, but they don’t do a lot of shows nowadays, and it’s been a few years after their last full album. They are still performing, but not so much; I really like this band Wanton and it’s really nice to get to play with them again. In November we’re doing a whole weekender with Klingonz and Thee Creepfreaks, and that’s also going to be really nice. And on January we are playing first time ever for me, for Del La Rocka, for every one of us…we are playing on a cruise ship! It’s a cruise from Helsinki to Stockholm and back. It’s the whole full weekend, and we’re playing together with Restless and some other bands.” 

Whether it’s on land or sea, De La Rocka will be spreading his high-energy, collaborative psycho to a town near you…you’ve been warned!

Kate Allvey

Buy a copy of ‘Nightmare Reborn’ here