Fenriz: A Transcript In Full
Posted January 16 by bennett
During our lengthy interview with Fenriz for this month’s Darkthrone cover feature, the drummer/lyricist mentioned that he always wished his interviews—be they via telephone, email, or video—would be presented in their entirety so readers/viewers could see “the truth.” We thought that was a fantastic idea, so we promised him we’d publish the complete transcript of our telephone interview—all 10,000+ words of it—on the Deciblog after the cover story hit the stands. And what better way to cap off Darkthrone Week? Obviously, this lengthy bitch is for diehards only. (And please note: This transcript has not been edited for grammar or typographical errors nearly as thoroughly as a story in the magazine.)
Hello, Fenriz. It’s J. Bennett from Decibel magazine.
Yes! Hello. [Chewing sounds]
Are you eating lunch right now?
Yes, a burrito.
Sounds delicious.
Fenrito likes the burrito...
Should I call back later?
No, no. It’s okay.
How was your day?
Today, what happened was, when I finally got to work, I figured I’d always be getting this question, “So, how are you doing?” or “How was your day?” so I was thinking that since I’m a musical person, I’ve written down everything I’ve been listening to from this morning up till now. Now that’s quite a lot of albums, so I’ll just send the list to your email address or something. Because what’s important in interviews that I do is what kinds of bands that I talk about it. There would be really huge lists of those. Everyone loves music lists, but it’s better if I just jot it down and send it later so there will be no mistakes in spellings or what-have-you.
That seems fair.
Yes.
Did Ted tell you that we spoke?
Yeah, he did, but we don’t really talk much, we just text message back and forth. But the cool thing is that we’re able to do the photo shoot now because he’s coming down to see Slayer on Sunday. As a matter of fact, I just got a question if I could interview Slayer for the Norwegian BBC or Norwegian radio. [Laughs] But I’m not really comfortable being on that end of the interview situation. And what the fuck would I be talking to Slayer about? I haven’t really bought [their records] or heard them since ’88. And what would I be in their eyes? It would be like some guy from Dark Tranquility interviewing me. Like, “Who the hell are you?” Not a good situation. Anyway, what’s cool about the photo shoot is that we never really do photo shoots together. It’s been three years or something. And we’ve turned down many situations like that before, when they want to have exclusive photos.
Ted told me about the record shop—Neseblod.
It will be glorious. The only thing is that I look like the interior of that store. [Laughs]
So you’ll be camouflaged.
[Laughs] Yes. Anyway, that’s all grand. So I figured I should have a talk as well.
I appreciate you doing this.
Well, I usually do the interviews, you see. And I have a lot to say about certain stuff. And it’s hard for him to talk about my music and it’s hard for me to talk about his music, because we don’t tell each other why our songs are the way they are. I’ve been doing my stuff and he’s been doing his stuff. So when you want to do something a little bit bigger, it’s good to talk to both us.
I completely agree.
Thank you.
It seems like Darkthrone has been even more prolific than usual lately. You’ve put out an album per year for the last few years. Why is that, do you think? Have you just been overcome with ideas?
No, not really. Back in the early ’70s, it was really normal for bands to release two albums in one year—and tour! [Laughs] How the hell did they cope with that? They must’ve been on fire! In the years ’93 to ’95, I must have recorded or been a part of 12 or 14 albums, so it’s nothing new to me to do a lot of stuff. The Transilvanian Hunger album was an idea I got one day at work and then went home and started to record. That was a two-week period of time when I made and recorded the whole darn album. Nowadays, I just have to make five songs a year. That’s like an old pop tempo for me, man. It’s really relaxing. The first songs for the next album we’ll record next month, and I’ve been working on that since June, just mulling it over in my head. That’s a slow tempo. So it looks quick, but it’s not.
It just looks quick compared to the way other people seem to work.
Well, other people are more and more about controlling nature by being professionalists. Whereas when I have an idea, I like to get it down and then move on. That’s the way it’s always been with me. Actually, when you see the list I hopefully can send you later, you’ll see that I listened to all our demos today [laughs] so I’d be prepared and know what really went on back in the day. Because we’re at the point now, like 1988, except now we’ve got more experience and we’ve got some more secure playing skills. When we got the studio in 2005, it just felt like ’88 all over again.
We had sort of like three periods in Darkthrone, where I can see that we were clearly inspired by every metal record we listened to. And those periods were ’88, ’91, and 2005. Because for us in ’89, I can see that we were getting better as a band, but our style had kind of [makes whistling noise]. We didn’t have a lot of influences anymore—it was mainly Autopsy and Death. And some Sadus, I guess. So that’s one of the periods where no matter how much metal we listened to, there were only a few bands that we concentrated on.
In ’91, we were influenced by all the ’80s black metal stuff and some Mayhem stuff that was not yet recorded, but we had the Live In Liepzig tape, which was one of the first black metal recordings. So that was a year that we took a lot of different metal styles and put them altogether.
In 2002, it didn’t matter what we were listening to—we were still making only one style. But ’88, ’91, and 2005 were really magical. And since 2005, it’s been like that every year. Like, how many thousands of metal bands do we have in our collections, and how many of them do we let inspire us? [Laughs] Well, it’s a fair bunch of them now that goes into the concoction to make the Darkthrone stuff that we do now. Or at least my songs. I’m only talking about my songs here—I can’t really talk for Ted’s stuff.
How long did you have the idea for Darkthrone in your head before you actually started rehearsing or recording music?
Well, this will also be an answer to why I don’t really play live. When I was a kid in the ’70s, I really got a kick-start when my uncle played me a Pink Floyd record when I was like one or two years old. He really saw something there, and I was taken by that stuff in a different way that the children’s music that my mum and dad would play for me. So my uncle quickly gave me The Doors and stuff like the Easy Rider soundtrack, with Steppenwolf, Jimi Hendrix, the Byrds, Grand Funk and Uriah Heep. And from that day, I was always into this idea that someday in the future I would like to record albums. But I didn’t see myself onstage. In the ’80s, in my adolescent years, the other guys would go to see Iron Maiden and I would be totally uninterested because I already had the theory that I had a special bond between me and the album and the speakers and I didn’t wanna ruin that by seeing it live. So I always wanted to record albums, and that’s what I’ve been doing. A lot of albums.
How many shows do you think Darkthrone has done altogether? I know you did a bunch in the early days.
We started in ’88, and in ’89 and ’90 we played a lot. We played both of the punk places in Oslo, and I don’t think any other metal bands have done that here. We even played the squat and the Blitz House. It was people coming in from, what can I say, other states—no, counties. What state are you calling from, by the way?
California. I’m in Los Angeles.
Okay, L.A. So we played around 20 shows, 22 or something? That was from ’88 to ’91. It was sort of like we had to do that because we were from the underground. It went along with sending the tapes to the fanzines in like Costa Rica, South America, and in Oslo to get contacts. It’s just a natural thing to do when you’re starting out as a band. But it was never enjoyable for me.
There was a show in ’96, too, right?
Yeah, but that was Satyr talking people into stuff that they don’t really want to do. That’s the way he works. He’ll persuade people and they’ll just say yeah because they don’t want to… [laughs] It’s like a situation where you just want to get out so you’ll say yes to anything. The show was a total disaster. I still don’t remember anything about it because it was so horrible that I blanked it all out. Total crap. It was the early gigs that were important. ’96 was not an important year for Darkthrone.
What do you remember about the very first Darkthrone rehearsals?
The first rehearsal was just me and the first Darkthrone guitarist getting together in a huge house. [Laughs] I knew this guy Anders [Risberget] who would play for us in the beginning. I knew him from school and he lived right by me. But then he moved away and his father had this great idea about how to get a really big house really cheap: He let these carpenter trainees make it. [Laughs] It was a fantastic house, with a pool and everything, which is not really that usual where we come from. It was real flash, and it had a huge attic, so we started to play there. I got into this eagerly because I had been waiting my whole life for this, but in ’87, we had some people come and go, and it was really crappy. We weren’t professionals, so we learned everything ourselves—no lessons or anything like that. It wasn’t forbidden, but it just wasn’t the culture. I don’t think any of the Norwegian bands had lessons. It was really do-it-yourself. But I don’t really remember anything specific about the first rehearsal other than that we called ourselves Black Death. Slowly, we went from that to Darkthrone. So it was slow movements. From early ’88 to late ’88 we did a lot of rehearsing, real professional-like.
On the tenth of October ’88, I got a day job, full-time work. That meant I had a lot of money to buy equipment. So we really went for the jugular. ’89 was even more crazy and we developed really fast at that time. But as I said, we didn’t want to become something that was a product or something that people would enjoy listening to, so we just shunned away all our musical inspirations that we had and ended up playing straight horror death metal. We were really into it at the time, but I can see now that we were inspired by maybe 12 bands before, and by ’89 it was just three or four. I don’t know… that’s not so cool. So the inevitable happened: I started up my solo project Isengard in the summer of ’89, and I was back to listening to the Bathory stuff and the Hellhammer stuff a lot during 1990. Even though we were playing death metal, we were listening to black metal most of the time. And you could also see that on the Soulside Journey t-shirt that says ‘Wolves Among Sheep’—that’s a result of listening all the time to Blood Fire Death by Bathory. It was an early sign of things to come. We couldn’t just continue playing death metal when we were listening to Bathory and Hellhammer. Something had to change.
It would almost be dishonest.
Yeah, we had to follow our hearts. But the thing was that death metal was something we had been working on for one and a half years, training constantly. That was what we were eating and shitting, you know? [Laughs] So it was fun for us if we played death metal and then between rehearsals listened to the old black thrash stuff from the ’80s. I think I have maybe five death metal albums from 1990 or something. It was really boring. [Laughs] And then Cannibal Corpse came in and started sucking. The second Obituary album was something that really disappointed me as well. The whole thing about the ’80s underground and over-ground had something to do with how much it cost at that time to get a decent sound. How much money did Metallica use to get the Master Of Puppets sound? It was an enormous amount. So the underground at the time was really just a bunch of bands that wished to have a sound like that. Some people just wanted it raw, but some bands just wanted to get signed and get that treatment. Suddenly in 1990, something happened and you could get this fucking Pro-Tools click-click drum sound that everyone seemed to want. And you could get it for like 2000 dollars. That was the studio budget for our first studio album, and we had that modern sound. It was completely soulless, and we thought, “We’ll never do this again.” But then we saw everyone else keep on doing it. It destroyed death metal, except for Autopsy, of course. They had that Black Sabbath thing going for them and they never even fucking tried to become over-ground. They chose the lo-fi. So around 1990, suddenly being underground or being over-ground was a choice. You could have a raw sound or that click-click-click bass drum modern sound. Five years before, you couldn’t have the modern sound, you’d just have to go to the local studio and pay the man like 500 dollars and get whatever sound—as we can hear on the first Massacre demos, for instance. That’s the sound we grew up with, and that’s what I love, and that’s what we do now. Basically, we are going in, doing almost nothing with the sound—it’s completely coincidental—but at least we sound like ourselves, you know?
How well did you know Ted before he joined the band?
I didn’t know him at all. One of my mates had been trying out for Black Death in the very early stages—we’re talking maybe February ’87—but he couldn’t really play. [Laughs] So one year later, let’s say February ’88, he’s calling me saying, ‘I know this guy who wants to play guitar real bad. Maybe he could try out for Darkthrone.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ Incidentally, this mate of mine… this is really funny. I had just got the first Wehrmacht album [Shark Attack], and there’s a puke outro on the last track, the ‘United Shoebrothers’ song. When he first heard that, he had to run out of the room. [Laughs] He could not listen to the puking sound!
Anyway, I met up with Ted, and it turned out he had been living like four stones’ throws from me my whole life, almost. But it was different schools, so we never really crossed paths. We’re the same age, so if he had lived 400 meters in the other direction, he’d be at my school and we’d be knowing each other a lot earlier. But it seemed it was good the way it turned out. He came to see our first show, which was probably May of 1988, and that was the usual setup. The other guys would play the ‘songs,’ if you can call them that—it was so primitive and crappy. It was just rounding up a lot of different influences into whatever came out, as I figured out at work today. We were inspired by epic stuff, by death metal, by Celtic Frost—lots of Celtic Frost riffs from the first demo—and we were inspired by punk. I was singing while drumming at that time, and I wasn’t a very good drummer then. Some of my pals said I sounded like a walrus—no doubt. So that’s what Ted heard in that auditorium or cinema sort-of room. The show was called Follorocken, a competition for bands that were held every year in our region. [Laughs]
Like a battle of the bands?
Yeah. It’s stupid, but the culture department sets this stuff up in regions here so bands can get a taste of how it is to play live in front of an audience instead of just a rehearsal room. At least we had that in our region in the ’80s—I don’t know if they do that anymore. Anyway, he saw that and he still wanted to join, so it was all fine and dandy.
Did you hit it off with Ted right away?
Well, there was always his liking of King Diamond, where I would prefer to listen to Mercyful Fate instead. So there was a slight difference. We were on the same train, but there was a little distance there. [Laughs] At least we were going in the same direction.
Do you think about Darkthrone differently now than you did in the early days? Does it occupy a different place in your mind?
No, it is pretty much all-encompassing. It’s been a huge part of my life ever since I started it up. Every day.
It seems like lately, on the last few albums, with the camping trip photos and the film that Ted made, it seems like maybe you guys are becoming a little bit more comfortable with the way you present yourselves to your fans. It seems like those images would’ve never appeared in the early days of Darkthrone. Are you becoming more relaxed, more comfortable in that way?
Well, as I told you, what I was not comfortable with in 1990 was the decline of the death metal scene. We have these Donald Duck pocket books here—you don’t have them in the States, and I’m not sure why the Disney concern is that way—but what we learn from these stories is that, yeah, there’s always some rare coin and then they find 10,000 more of that coin. And then it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s a disaster! It was worth so much and now it’s worth nothing!’ What I mean is that the copycats come along and ruin everything. I seem to be enjoying music styles when it’s the birth of the style. When the copycats come along, I seem to tire a lot.
When I was into thrash, I saw all the big bands get really boring and starting to have even more of the over-ground sound. So in ’87, I went to the underground, where death metal was going upwards. And the same thing happened with death metal that happened to thrash metal. And then I was into black metal in ’91 and by ’94 it became ‘progressive’ or something. It was like, ‘Where is the primitive stuff?’ It turned out that a lot of the guys started playing black metal because they couldn’t play their instruments. We, on the other hand, had already done a technical death metal album. And then we chose to play primitively instead of technically. Secondly, we had chosen to move away from the over-ground sound. We chose the lo-fi, not the hi-fi. So you can imagine how fucking annoyed I was when all these people started misunderstanding all the stuff we’d been having a ball with for the last three years. So I also jumped off the black metal sound in ’94 and again went back to the thrash stuff. People who know me or heard me DJ in the mid-90s know that I was playing 90 percent thrash or other styles of music like electronic or what have you. I guess I sort of lost the thread… you were talking about being more relaxed?
With your image, I mean.
I was disillusioned, because first thrash metal went to hell, then death metal, and then black metal. And also, I happen to like doom metal a lot—like Black Sabbath, Pentagram, Trouble, the first Candlemass, Revelation, Solitude Aeturnus—but then came the rock, the desert style, where bands were just playing the funky stuff of Black Sabbath. So doom metal also died in the ’90s. And what happened to grindcore? I really enjoyed Repulsion and the first Righteous Pigs album, Live And Learn—as does Phil Anselmo. I also enjoyed Terrorizer’s World Downfall album. But then, oh no—the ’90s. The grind, the death-grind, always had this modern hi-fi sound. So that also went. What could I do? I could just sit in Oslo Rock City in all the pubs and bars. I didn’t have anything to do in the underground. What the hell was underground in ’91, ’92, ’93—compared to the golden years of ’87-’88? So I was unhappy with the metal situation from ’93 for ten years. Then I met Oskar from Old, and he sort of kicked my ass and showed me that there’s a whole new generation of kids who are not interested in copying the metal of the ’90s. They’re playing barbaric thrash metal like the first Kreator album, for chrissakes!
So, boom, what happened? I started changing my life, cutting down 400 percent on my drinking, stopped smoking, and then in May 2005, stopped going out. Because what I had was what I once had. I was back in the year of ’87, ’88 with the underground trading and the underground networking. And I’ve been doing interviews again since ’98, so I was well into that. But now I have something to say, I guess, and I’m not really that foggy, like I used to be.
Also, my new lifestyle. First, I started walking the trails around here, because it’s 1,560 square kilometers of forest around Oslo. First I got a map and started walking the trails. Then I started getting interested in different orientation sites. Then I got interested in the preservation of the old forest and then this has snowballed into this year, when I was on the nature show on the fucking TV here. I’ve been writing in the newspapers with an ecology professor, which also became one of the guys I go tenting with. And I’ve been writing tenting guides for Aftenposten, the biggest serious newspaper in Norway. And I’m totally content. And, as the professor says—this is an old Swedish thing, because he’s Swedish—it’s better to have your feet dry before you run your mouth. And that’s what I feel I finally have now. That’s why I can do street lyrics or scene politics in my texts, because if someone tries to call me on it, I know exactly what I’m saying because I’m not foggy anymore. I’m not depressed about the state of the scene anymore, because in the zero-zeroes, or whatever you call this new decade, it’s been fantastic. It’s just that the ’90s really sucked.
I hope you didn’t write that down—I hope maybe you have a tape recorder.
Oh yeah, we definitely have a tape recorder.
[Laughs]
It seems like before you wouldn’t be willing to use camping photos in your albums.
I started doing interviews in ’88, and it was the underground. It was really prolific back then. I did heaps of interviews, and since ’89, I started talking about things like why the hell did Vinyl Solutions remix the first Macabre album, Grim Reality, with more click drums? I would start to say what I meant about the direction of the sound of metal. Also, I could see that the second Carcass album sounded twice as great as the first one and I felt like I could see what was going to happen: Yeah, they were going over-ground, too. So I would start to incorporate that into the interviews, I reckon, but I was also saying great stuff about the bands I was into. But since ’91, ’92, we were totally in the zone of living the rancid black metal lifestyle that just tore everything apart.
I can explain another thing: I didn’t have the normal adolescent years where you hang around with other guys and have a beer. Instead, I was just working on music and just doing the underground thing. I didn’t have a beer until 1990. And when I first start doing something, it’s not a joke. I’m going all the way. [Laughs] Like I did with the band and the forest thing and also the drinking.
Is that what you mean when you say you were living the “rancid black metal lifestyle”?
Yeah. It was also really living out the whole thing about… we were fed up with doing all the interviews we were doing in ’88 ’til ’91. So it was easier to just go to the pub and just shut everyone out. So that was what we did. And that’s also why we didn’t do a lot of interviews between ’92 and ’98. At least I can’t remember that I did many. It wasn’t a very interesting time in Darkthrone, either, but some people seem to think otherwise.
In past interviews, both you and Ted have cited your day jobs as the key to keeping Darkthrone pure.
Well, it’s easy to be smug about having a band and never having to work again. But it’s sad to see that huge bands just can’t keep people in the band—people quit, something must be wrong, but oh, they’re making money. They’re getting into personal problems, drug problems, alcohol problems. Yeah, they meet so many people, they have a huge network, but how many of those people do they really remember? And what kind of music will they get around to listen to? Either they listen to the really old stuff that they’ve always liked or—the worst thing—they end up listening to the bands that open for them because they have no interest left in music. So why the hell do these fantastic over-ground bands start to suck? [Laughs] I guess their influences just aren’t the way it used to be. So for us working class people, it’s a whole different ballgame. It has nothing to do with applause or people kissing up to you—none of that. But I don’t know how many bands there are that we can compare ourselves to in that manner. I mean, I’m not against bands like Dead Moon or Anti-Seen that just plays and plays and plays and maybe don’t like having day jobs. That’s cool with me. But we are working class people and we have to meet normal people on a daily basis in normal situations. We’re not going to become super-assholes or anything like that. And it’s good to have the working class pride, because, you know, that kicks ass. [Laughs]
What do you do for work?
I’m sorting mail, and it’s basically always been that.
For how long?
Since October 10th, 1988.
Wow—20 years.
It’s longer than Bukowski, but you know, he couldn’t keep it up. He was too fond of women and liquor.
And writing about working at the post office.
But I’m just into music, basically.
So you can listen to your headphones while you’re sorting the mail?
Yeah. Okay, let’s take you through the normal day now, because that’s another cool aspect. Since 2003, I changed my life around slowly. It’s been taking five years. So I got disillusioned in ’93, seeing thrash metal die, death metal die, and black metal crumble before my eyes. And then I have to start working [night] shifts—no! That just busted my chops, because, as a kid—maybe you have to go to kindergarten, to school, and what’s your internal time clock when you get thrown into adult life? It’s get up in the morning. And now I have to work [night] shifts—that was fucking my life up even more. 2003 was a glorious year because I got my daytime schedule back. I have a routine like it was back in the ’80s. I can work everyday in a routine matter with the underground as well.
So you get up early.
Yeah, I get up at six in the morning. Today, at twenty past six, I started listening to Cause For Alarm by Agnostic Front. Then I listened to some old Brazilian music, then I listened to Deathside, which is a 20-year old punk-metal band from Japan. Then I played Morrigan, a very good project from Germany. They recorded just one album called Headcult, which is very much like the two Viking metal albums from Bathory in ’89 and ’91. Yes, it’s very nice. One of the guys from the band was in one of the few cool bands from the ’90s called Blizzard from Germany, they played the total style of Motörhead, like the Swedish Gehenna. Anyway, then I move on to listen to a fantastic ’80s USA album called Master Of Disguise by Savage Grace. Then I move onto Broken Bones from ’84, the Dem Bones album. Then I listened to a mix by Justin Martin, it’s like electronic-techno mix. Then I listened to all the Darkthrone demos, which was strange. [Laughs] Then I listened to a compilation of ’50s/’60s rockabilly and music like if you watch Twin Peaks. Then I have to go work out at the health center and I listened to the five best songs from the Dickies. And you know what? The Dickes… I have two bands that I discovered this year, one old and one new. I had never got into them before—I discovered them this year. And the best new band this year, as most people in the scene know, is The Devil’s Blood from Holland. It must’ve reached you by now.
Yeah, I love it.
Most people are agreeing that it’s by far the best album this year. I don’t just like it—I actually bought five physical copies of the first single because I wanted to give them to friends. Because I knew it was going to be great, I bought one that I listen to and one that’s, like, not played—in real nerd manner. It’s not often that I do that. And I had to contact them, of course, to say that I was into them, and I got this Come, Reap album from the guy that released it because he wanted to have like a statement he could use for promotional value. I wrote something like, ‘The Devil’s Blood is magnificent occult rock that leaves the lame new world behind’ and stuff like that. [Laughs]
Then, when I get into the weight training, it’s the first two Sick Of It All albums. I like to listen to the New York hardcore, but not all New York hardcore works when lifting weights. I find that Judge works like a charm, Gorilla Biscuits works kinda good, Cro-Mags first album of course works really great, but then there’s other stuff that doesn’t work so well. People think they can lift weights to every New York hardcore band, but that’s fucking soulless. [Laughs]
When I’m back to my place, I listen to this series of Italian beat music from the ’60s and ’70s that was put on films and stuff, Beat At Cinecitta. Very, very hip—like I’m a hipster. But I’ll send you that list if you want it, along with other lists. The important list for me is active bands that I support, and I give that to everyone that interviews me. I’m not that good with the computer, so I actually have to write down all the bands for every interview. [Laughs] No shit.
Wow.
You will say wow when you see the list.
You’ve been putting lists in the latest Darkthrone releases as well. It seems like you’ve become quite a musical scholar over the years. Have you ever thought about trying to write a book or something?
Well, in Norway, there has always been a culture of music journalists writing about their record collections, so I think maybe I should write something else. I’m doing enough lists as it is. I have my own crew of people from around the world that I call ‘one of us’—people from Brazil, Australia—all my fucking cool contacts. I need like 30 or 40 of those guys, and I already have them. But if there’s some new guy with good enough taste that I’m letting him in and saying, ‘Okay, I’ll trade with you,’ that’s a good scene. That’s the kind of scene that I’m interested in—a music worshipping scene. And you have to have knowledge of ’60s, ’70s, ’80s music, and up to now. And it’s also good if you like not just metal but also electronic and left-field music or anything strange or weird. I post lists of what I’m listening to each month on the Darkthrone MySpace page, so anyone interested should swing by and check it out. There’s lists of what influences us, plus music blogs that I do, and so far it has 3000 persons every single day clicking by our MySpace. It’s the only active web page we have, so it’s a good place to gather extra information.
You and Ted live six hours away from each other and have so for years. How has that affected how you operate as a band?
Well it’s been like that for over 15 years, and in those years we’ve had good times and bad times. The best thing was when Ted proposed that we just buy our own studio. I was like, ‘Yeah!’ I knew immediately that was what I wanted to do. I knew we could deal with things differently. We don’t want to sit and nerd out about the sound anyway, so it will be rough. So for my part, I will make the songs that are best for that environment.
Ted mentioned that you used to handle the business end in the early days, but now he does…
Oh yeah, he’s been taking care of business since ’98.
Why the change?
Because I’m not a business person at all. For me, the only ambition I had in life was to get a record deal so I could start making records. When that happened in early ’90, it was like, ‘I’m out of here.’ I signed a contract with Moonfog Records after we quit Peaceville, but that wasn’t really dealing with business. That was signing a paper, which is basically what I did. I booked a studio for Ted to do vocals on Transilvanian Hunger because I used all the [tracks] at the portable studio that we had at that time. Anyway, stuff like that, but it wasn’t a lot. I made maybe four business decisions from ’90 to ’98. I started the band, so of course I had to make some decisions in the early days. And every little decision you make is scene politics and it affects art. Even now, I’ve been mulling over the final part of one of our new songs for two months. Will it go slow, or in the same mid-pace as the rest of the song? If you’re doing a hobby band, you make that decision at once in the studio, but you can make it into an entire political act, like, ‘If I do it slow, then I show support for the epic or doom approach, but if I let it go at the same speed, it will be more like punk or speed metal.’ It’s politics—at least when I’m doing it now. Is that a business? I don’t know.
The thing is, Ted really had to take some calls, in ’98-’99, if you know what I mean. He had to deal with contracts and money, because we did nothing in ’97. And I was perfectly happy with doing nothing in ’98 before Ted said we should start again. It was his work to say those words, so I turned the steering wheel over to him. No problem. It was his initiative.
What were you doing at that point?
Well, Ted had two kids. And in ’98 I got the depression, so he had to pull me out of that, out of those cement shoes of the mind. He was like, ‘Let’s do something!’ and I was probably like, ‘I don’t know, man—black metal sucks now.’ So, you know, it was a slow start. Between ’98 and 2001 I probably wrote just three songs. Not that I even tried to make more. It was Ted’s turn, because I’d been running the ship since Transilvanian Hunger. I wrote the album in two weeks because no one else was doing anything. It was the same with Panzerfaust. So it made perfect sense that he wrote a lot on Ravishing Grimness and the Plaguewielder album. So I did two albums basically by myself and he did two as well. Since then, we’ve been cooperating. And I can’t make business—I’m just really bad at it. So it was great that Ted started handling that. If Ted had handled the business side always, I reckon we’d have a lot more money from merchandise sales. It’s ridiculous—we sell so much merchandise compared to the albums. It’s like Motörhead, a band that influences people but doesn’t really sell that much. That’s us. And that’s what Lemmy complained about in his book.
I really enjoyed Lemmy’s book.
Me too, because it teaches you something that I’m always thinking about, and here’s the example. Darkthrone and Motörhead are the opposite of Nickelback. This is a band that sells 16 million albums but you never see anyone with a t-shirt because it sucks so bad and no one wants to show the world that they’re into it. And they influence no one. It’s a horrible situation, but that stuff sells. [Laughs] The thing with us, and Motörhead, is that we don’t sell many albums but we sell a hell of a lot of merch. And we didn’t even see much money from that until recently because Ted has been working on getting good deals for us. And that’s fantastic. I could never do that. I’ve never asked for one kroner in my life. It’s like John Fogerty says in the song, ‘I was born on a Sunday, on Thursday I had me a job.’ Before I got the full-time job, I was working since ’83 doing different paper routes and doing jobs for my father, just to get money to buy all those albums. It was always about work and never asking for anything. Ted is better at it—he can strike a deal, he can talk to people. I’m like, ‘Can I not take this phone call?’ So it’s good. Ted runs the formal things and I’ve been doing all the maniacal things since 1998.
You have your own Eddie now with Mr. Necro.
Yeah, it’s kind of lame to start that on album number 13. But I always figure that since our music is so clear-cut—it’s got a dirty sound, but it’s clear-cut—it’s not the chaotic style like Obsessed By Cruelty by Sodom or INRI by Sarcofago or something—it’s good to have a busy cover, and drawn! Because I stopped being into the visual aspect of Darkthrone in 1996. I took a ten-year hiatus from that as well, because in that time there were a lot of computer-made covers, and I didn’t give a fuck about that. I was only into the music, the little music that I made. I was not interested, and I said it specifically in many interviews. But in 2006, I decided to get back into it because I was tired of the totalitarian aesthetics that were really starting to take a hold of us. I wanted more ’80s stuff—not so much black pages. I think that stuff sucks, and I hate the computer graphics. But in 2003, you know, I didn’t care. It’s strange, but I have the ability to be really not curious and not caring about one thing for a long period of time. But when I start getting interested again, I go gung-ho. What we do now on the covers is that we have a patch on this guy and it’s a new upcoming band.
I saw the documentary you were in recently—Until The Light Takes Us.
Oh, yeah. I haven’t seen that.
You haven’t?
No, and I don’t think I will see it.
Why not?
Well… I explain on our MySpace blog why I say no all the time to do documentaries. It was enough to do one, and I’m thinking it sort of takes a lot out of me at that time. And I’m starting to think this is not right, because this will have a bigger effect than I thought it would on how people perceive me. So I wonder what the future will be holding. Now I will have to do documentaries every year? I get maybe six or seven requests for filming every year and I say no to all, but I’m thinking maybe I should say yes to all since it will be this one that will show… This is really hard to explain. I saw that movie Control, about that guy from Joy Division. Of course, the Joy Division guy killed himself, so there’s an actor playing him. That’s a little bit close to home now, because I see someone is making a black metal movie with actors playing us.
The Lords Of Chaos movie.
Yeah, and there’s actually a guy who’s going to be playing me. To me, it’s so idiotic and feels so wrong, and I have a huge problem with the whole film thing anyway. But then again, another thing that is horrible is that I do all these interviews—like right now—and when I see them later it’s like, ‘I know I didn’t say that,’ or ‘I know I didn’t say that in that context,’ and it’s a really usual problem. It creeps me out. So I’m thinking if every interview was filmed and there would be no cutting, then people would see the truth. This could be done, and it would show reality, but I doubt if people really want it. And the people who would do it, like journalists, I doubt they would want it, either. Everything would be on camera. This is just an idea we have. We could have the truth, but we don’t want it. [Laughs] So when you start talking about the documentary, I have a lot of ambivalence.
Are you sorry that you participated?
Well, the filming thing doesn’t really enter my philosophy because it is so far away from music, which we’ve sort of established that I’m into. So, I don’t know. [Sighs] For instance, do you know how many live DVDs I have at home? I have one. It’s Live After Death by Iron Maiden. I am not interested in seeing musicians play. It’s not in my world. So what can I say to you? It doesn’t touch my philosophy. It’s so far away from the music that it doesn’t touch my world. So I’m thinking I shouldn’t even see the documentary maybe, because it might have a lot of impact on the way I see myself and the way others already see me.
Why did you agree to do it?
[Laughs] Well, they’re really nice people, Aaron [Aites] and Audrey [Ewell]. They’re the best. You’ve got to remember this is like seven years ago, before 2003 when I was starting to wise up about things. So I wasn’t into the wising up phase at the time.
There’s a scene in the documentary that’s kind of strange—it’s you in your apartment watching footage of Varg that Aaron and Audrey shot for the same documentary. So the audience is watching you watch documentary footage of Varg that appears in the same documentary they’re watching. It was bizarre from a viewer’s perspective. What was it like for you?
Well, I hadn’t seen Varg then for, what, eight or ten years or something? If you haven’t seen someone in eight years, it’s always kind of strange. It’s a face, you know, like how much stardust are we made up of? It’s a unique face you haven’t seen in years and suddenly it’s popping up in front of you. It’s like, ‘Oh, yeah—I remember his ways.’ That was my reaction, I think. There’s no philosophy around that.
The film revolves around you, Varg and, to a lesser extent, Euronymous, and the way it’s set up is that it presents the three of you as the creators of what we would call the ‘second wave’ of black metal. One guy is dead, the second guy is in prison for murdering the first, and the third guy—you—avoided all of that and is still out in the world making this music.
[Laughs] I don’t see what’s that dramatic about it.
Did you make a conscious decision to avoid the violence and the church burnings that your friends embraced?
Well, everybody was talking about it in every situation. It’s become a kind of folklore, you know.
That’s exactly what it is.
I’m getting questions about the ’90s in almost every interview, so I’m really used to talking about that stuff and I’m taking that opportunity to tell people about metal history. It’s a great way for me to extend my role as a lo-fi role model. [Laughs]
But did you feel like that stuff was ridiculous when it was going on?
No, because I didn’t see any of it. Or I didn’t want to. They were just talking to me in different settings and that would be it. I was never thinking about the angle—that it could be hurtful or not. I’m still not that used to being exposed. When those things are shown on TV here, I try to avoid seeing it. I’m not really comfortable with seeing myself onscreen at all. And the documentary will fall under that category, too. I think it would be really sick, you know? Like, ‘What are you going to do today?’ ‘Well, I’m gonna kick back and watch some footage of myself, maybe have a donut.’ I think there is something wrong with you when it’s like that. I think it should be uncomfortable to watch oneself. And for me, this will be one of the mothers of uncomfortableness. And all the questions that will come? You would not believe all the daft questions thrown at me on a daily basis, you would not believe it. That’s my life—replying to silly questions.
Well, here’s another silly question for you: How do you distinguish watching yourself on the screen from listening to all the Darkthrone demo tapes, like you did today?
[Laughs] Well… watching myself in the mirror, that’s just an image. The music is the magic of the universe, you know?
But it is you playing the music, it’s an image of yourself in a way, right?
Yeah, sure, but it depends how much I work with the final product. Like if I had to direct myself, then I’d be really embarrassed if I didn’t like it and I’d be really pleased if it went well. But all in all, I don’t have too much control over the sound of our stuff. I mean, me and Ted are the only guys who are watching this Darkthrone world from the inside. Everyone else is watching it from the outside. Now, that is the eternal problem. That’s why you’re interviewing me, you know? You’re getting a peek, but no one can really be on the inside. But there is another philosophy that once you release the music, everyone owns it, and everyone has the right to their opinion, and everyone has the right to shape the truth about it. To me, that’s strange. I know what I did when I made the song, and I know about the decisions—even though I might not remember them. [Laughs] But I was making conscious decisions. Of course it will be sometimes strange to listen to it, but it’s also interesting to know what you have become. It’s like KRS-One says: ‘You don’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you came from.’ So I guess listening to your own music is really necessary.
The first guy I met in the flesh from the underground was Necrobutcher from Mayhem. I hooked up with him in ’87 when I was a total rookie, but he was willing to talk to me about music. They had recorded in the studio, and I hadn’t really done anything. He told me that I’d be smart to record something and then don’t listen to it for eight months—to get a sober distance from it. And that’s always been mulling over in my mind. I understand what it means, that it might be ideal to do this, but it goes both ways. If you take the distance of eight years and then listen to the whole album, you can go, ‘This is actually really good’ or you can go, ‘Oh my god, this really sucks. Who the hell made this decision?’ If you record it and no one hears it for eight years, who decides if it’s good or not? [Laughs] Now that’s a deep question. I’m not sure we should get any deeper than that, man.
Is there anything you hear on the demos or even the Darkthrone albums that you wish you’d done differently?
Oh, that’s a standard question that will get a standard answer. Most people would say, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t change a thing,’ but my favorite albums are from the ’70s when I grew up. In ’74, Uriah Heep did a song ‘Sweet Freedom,’ which goes like this: [starts singing] ‘If I had the time to relive my life, I don’t think I’d care to change a thing.’ There you go. It’s in my blood, man. I can’t help it.
So, no regrets whatsoever?
No, but that’s what most people would say. If you interviewed Dead Moon, they would say the same thing.
But you don’t seem like most people—which is why I ask.
[Laughs] Well, there’s this and that, but my mother always goes on about, ‘Everything happens for a reason.’ [Laughs] And I think maybe if there’s some album with a sound I’m not happy about, like when I told you earlier about the modern sound on Soulside Journey, then I’d learn from that and never go back. I could say, ‘Damn, man—we should have tried to record it ourselves.’ But you know, actually we couldn’t. The only way we could do was go to Sweden to record that album. We only had that money, because I was fucking broke from buying all that equipment and stuff. So there was no choice. Then again, with the Total Death album that came out in ’96, I would have had a different mix, I would have changed my song structures, but what would I have learned from that? And then, actually, when I sort of did that on the new album, I was thinking, ‘I did that again? When will I ever learn?’ [Laughs] So if ever I make a bad decision or a wrong turn, at least I can learn from it. Yup.
Did you see Ted’s movie, The Misanthrope?
Oh, yes, it was even showing in a small cinema here in Oslo. I went to the premiere—it was nice. And then when I got the DVD, I didn’t see the movie again, but I saw the extras, and Ted put a song by a Norwegian band called Virus as the soundtrack to different photos that were taken in Japan and things like that. And that was really touching, man. It’s fantastic. That would never happen in Satyricon, you know—he’d have his own music all throughout. [Laughs] But that’s what I feel is the most important in interviews—when I name-drop other bands. And that’s what Ted did in his movie: Instead of having his own music on that part, he let another unknown band shine through. That’s the bee’s knees, man.
I was reading an old interview you did in the early ’90s—’94, I think—and you were asked why you don’t play live or tour. You said, ‘We would not risk to die in any country but Norway.’
Ah, very good thinking!
Do you remember saying that, and do you still feel that way now?
No, I don’t remember saying that, and of course I don’t feel that way now. I was totally fucking nuts and really angry and upset back then. As I told you, ’94 was a really bad year for black metal. And anyway, how dramatic are you when you’re in you’re late teens and early 20s? That’s all it is—drama, drama, drama. And you can’t just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in questions. There’s so many times that I feel like I want to just answer yes or no when I do email interviews now, which is basically all I do now except for this one. So instead I write whatever’s on the top of my head so at least I feel like I’ve given something more than a yes or a no. Many times I’ve had real thoughts behind what I’m saying, but instead I’m just crapping out of my mouth.
Do you see interviews as a necessary evil?
No. I’ve been doing it my whole adult life, so it’s kind of hard to question it now. But as I said earlier, what we learn from these tales from the Disney books over here is that it loses value when it starts being on the assembly line. But of course, there’s the assembly line of interviews with every album release. And I’ve always been wondering why don’t people interview us when it’s half a year after we’ve released an album? They’d get a fantastic interview—we’d talk for hours! [Laughs] But no, instead everyone’s ganging up. C’mon, people, you know? Think!
Maybe we feel like we need to strike while the iron is hot.
With the Internet, it’s a flat society structure—everyone can contact us. It doesn’t have to go through Peaceville. The funny thing is, Peaceville thinks I’m doing a moderate load of interviews, but the fact is that I’m doing lots of private ones as well—Uruguay and weird places that they’ll never know about, because those people can’t go through the usual syndicated system that goes through Peaceville Records with the same interviews in the same magazines every year. But it’s all dandy.
Why did you initially leave Peaceville, and then why did you go back?
Well, in ’94, what were we doing? Ted had moved away, so we’d been running our course for part one. Ted was away, and I had a studio and I had more to give, so I just kept recording the Panzerfaust album. Our contract was out—it had ended in not the best of ways, so it was not logical to go knocking on Peaceville’s door like, ‘Hey, can we get another contract?’ I mean, we’re talking ’94 here—as I told you, it was a total lost year, a year of disillusion, a horrible year for black metal. Of course the kids will say it was a great year, that black metal got great sound and people started playing twice as fast. ‘Woo-hoo!’ [Laughs] But it was a horrible, horrible year.
Did it end badly with Peaceville because of the “Norwegian Aryan Black Metal” slogan printed on the back of Transilvanian Hunger?
Yeah, sure, but also the sound quality of the album and us not even having photos on the album and not talking to any press and being a general nuisance. Also in ’94, there was the breakup with my wife. [Laughs] ’94 was a horrible year altogether—both for me and black metal. But I did a lot of music—that was good. ’93, ’94, ’95—a lot of music.
So why did you go back to Peaceville in 2005 if it ended so badly in the first place?
Well, you’d have to go talk to Ted again because he was running the ship then. I’d just be like, ‘Okay, Ted—whatever you say! Very good, as long as I don’t have to take a phone call.’ I was like Dennis Hopper in the River’s Edge movie: ‘The check’s in the mail!’
One of my favorite movies ever.
Oh, you know what? The cinemateque here just showed that and it was 20 years since I saw it. It first came out here in ’88, so I went to see the 20th anniversary because now that I’ve got my day job back everything is back to ’88 style. To see this movie again sealed the deal that I am back in ’88. Although the sort of music I make now is totally ’79 to ’85. There are some riffs that are older and newer, but basically it’s those years—and I think that goes for Ted’s material as well.
The more recent albums have a real sense of freedom about them, and it seems like you guys are acknowledging that with the “break the chains!” exhortation on the back of Dark Thrones & Black Flags.
The “break the chains!” is fantastic. It was the total message of the ’80s or even the late ’70s hard rock from Germany. It was always about ‘break the chains’ and ‘free yourself.’ It’s funny, almost ironic. When I came into the scene, it was in the aftermath of that, from ’84 to ’87, when punk and metal were really starting to mix. Even the crowds and punters were that way. It’s like Motörhead: Is it rock? Is it punk? Is it metal? I don’t know, but it kicks ass. That’s the deal. Then you had Metallica, who were into punk, Slayer were into punk, Venom were into punk, even Sepultura were tremendous worshippers of Discharge. Kids today don’t know because of what happened in the ’90s. In ’89 when thrash metal sort of broke down, New York hardcore also sort of broke down. Then there was really nothing. At death metal shows in the ’90s, there would be only death metal people. At black metal shows, only black metal people. At power metal shows, only power metal people. It was completely hilarious, and it was completely against everything that I grew up with—the eclecticism. And we still see in the over-ground aftershocks of this today. It’s actually horrible and the result is that kids don’t know the punk roots or heavy blues rock roots of metal. They think metal was something brand new when Pantera came out. It’s horrible.
So the chains are the walls between the genres. I’m already talking here to my church, you know, but if I can make just one guy think, ‘Why am I only listening to one style of black metal? Can I listen to something else?’ then I’ve actually done something a little different in this world. I’m trying to get stuff back together. But the new underground scene of this new decade? Fantastic. Lots of trade-off between New Wave Of Heavy Metal, speed metal, black, thrash, epic metal. It’s absolutely fantastic now, but it’s in the underground now. There are a lot of trendies who haven’t really understood anything. I guess we had that problem with a few in the ’80s, but ’87 was fantastic. Even in Germany, there was a label that started up called We Bite that was mostly trash bands that were into the punk scene. But then—boom—’91, the walls started building. They tore down the Berlin Wall, but in the metal scene, the walls came up. Thank the lord for Ronnie James Dio, but I don’t think he was seeing the real reasons why metal was becoming difficult for him in the ’90s.