Interview with Fenriz of Darkthrone
2010
By Bradley
Smith
Hells as usual Fenriz!
Your new album Circle the Wagons has finally
hit the streets (Let them Burn!) Do
you
feel like you have finally and completely painted yourself out of a
corner that
you got stuck in with your early career?
I mean the new album seems even more liberated than the
previous two and
it feels really free to breath?
the only time i got stuck is when i had
writer's block due to excessive
recording of albums (around 11-12 in 1993-1996) and too much work-hard
party-hard lifestyle. i was loosening up already with the blacknroll i
started
fully on ravishing grimness and onwards, then a whole variety of metal
styles
and even girlschool drum sound on HATE THEM, no, it was the new 90s
black metal
scene that painted ME into a corner, those who discovered bm in the
90s. they
have a whole other vision about it all that us who already knew it in
the 80s
have. as for liberation, it was already on both back wheels in 2005 on
the cult
is alive, i think we've actually narrowed down now to this
HEAVY/SPEED METAL + NWOBHM with punk vibes.
our early career was as free as now, the 1988
recordings were also kinda
motley (to say the least)
For quite some time you have been
on an increasingly extensive rearward looking search for metallic roots. Where will it end, 30s Big
band music and
Swing or perhaps all the way back to cave folk beating on rocks?
you could take all our albums and then trace
the inspirations till bands
from 83-93, but the last years i've kinda gone more to some other bands
i liked
in those years and also the years before back to when i grew up in the
70s and
beyond. you need a list, don't you?
:
OUR MUSIC FITS MORE IN WITH CURRENT BANDS LIKE
THESE NOW, PERHAPS.and
by CURRENT, i mean 90s, 00s, 10s. the 60s 70s 80s list will be listed
at the
bottom here.
GEHENNAH sweden - METALUCIFER - BLIZZARD
germany - THE LORD WEIRD
SLOUGH FEG - WOLF - ALPHA CENTAURI - METAL INQUISITOR - PORTRAIT - IN
SOLITUDE
- HELVETETS PORT - SPEED TRAP - ATLANTEAN KODEX - CHRISTIAN MISTRESS -
DEMONS
GATE - DOOMED BEAST - SONIC RITUAL - AURA NOIR - HARBINGER - ENFORCER -
BLACKHOLICUS - HIGH SPIRITS - WHIP STRIKER - NOIA italy - OLD -
ARIA/APUR
---------------------------------CRYSTAL VIPER - LONEWOLF - RÉSISTANCE
- GHOST
- SATINBLACK - IRON KOBRA - ARGUS -FUNERAL CIRCLE etc
THE OLD BANDS, mainly 70s 80s that we may or
may not be influenced by;
MOTORHEAD, DIAMOND HEAD, HEAD HEAD HEAD (JUST
KIDDING!), 1ST METAL
CHURCH, AGENT STEEL 84-86, MANILLA ROAD, FINGERNAILS '88, FATES WARNING
2ND AND
3RD, ANTHRAX 83-85, ACCEPT up to '83, SAVAGE GRACE master of disguise,
GRIFFIN
protectors of the lair, ENGLISH DOGS, METALLICA 3 first, SATAN court in
the
act, JAGUAR power games, early SAXON, OZZY '80-'86, HELLOWEEN 2 first,
IRON
MAIDEN, TRÖJAN, BLACK SABBATH '70-'82, EXCITER heavy metal maniac,
QUEENSRYCHE
first EP and THE WARNING, GOTHAM CITY, WITCH CROSS, MERCYFUL FATE,
THOR, HEAVY
LOAD, ADX, HOLY TERROR, OVERKILL, TYRANT'S REIGN, BROCAS HELM, CIRITH
UNGOL,
ANGEL WITCH, WITCHFINDER GENERAL, CELTIC FROST, BATHORY, OSTROGOTH,
TANK,
SCORPIONS 70S, URIAH HEEP, RUSH, PENTAGRAM usa,BARON ROJO, TRUST,
SAMSON,
AC/DC, KISS, FLOTSAM AND JETSAM doomsday for the deceiver, OMEN
'84-'86, DEAF
DEALER 1st, DEATHSIDE
but many of these i've discovered recently too,
like...the only diamond
head i knew in mid 80s were the songs that METALLICA had covered,
anyway, so
many of my songs...you could say they wouldn't exist without
"HELPLESS", as this song...well, i recently heard that it's
involuntarily
influenced at least one of the riffs on CIRCLE THE WAGONS, was it the
first
song or the title track?
No one can deny you have an extreme
passion for metal. No
one else is being
a vocal advocate for band recommendations and roots exploration like
yourself. You use
all forums to hail
bands and educate anyone whose attention you can grab.
What is your end goal here?
Do you think you are succeeding at generating
a more metal educated group within the underground?
the only goal i ever had was to get a record
deal, as i always dreamt of
RECORDING ALBUMS as a child, not being on stage. after that i didn't
have any
goals, all came to me (or was fought up by myself) rather
coincidentally..........
...........it is just MY WAY. and the road is
the important thing here,
not any distant goal. we don't make plans as you know, we just make
what we
feel like or need to do any given time. we dont discuss influences or
direction
at all, i am hung up on making list of my influences, Ted isn't. so his
material is always a mystery
and i haven’t done anything i haven’t always
done, i started
namedropping bands in my first interviews in 1988, just heard a long
VALHALL
radio interview where we typically played one song of our own and 4
from other
bands (english dogs, accused, o.l.d. etc), this was in late 88 or early
89, and
i just continued always spreading music, as i did before i started
being
interviewed all the time. myspace was there, the darkthrone page had a
huge
amount of "friends" that signed up, i feel embarrassed about those
who pimp up their pages to be all about THEM, starting to share cool
bands with
all these friends instead was VERY natural to me, but i don’t use any
forum,
like i have no time to be on facebook or twitter, i never even went in
there to
see what it was about
ALL FACEBOOK PROFILES, PRIVATE MYSPACE PROFILES
or twitter-fenrizes are
FAKE
On that note, do you think that in
general most people are too close minded when it comes to their musical
taste? I mean when
we were spinning
records at your place the bands were as varied as Dark Angel, Slayer,
Yes, all
the way to the mighty Kung-Fu Girls!!!!
that wasn’t so varied, i remember playing
diamanda galas, and her and
WHEN was COMPLETELY NORMAL to listen to among us black metal spearheads
of
91-93 for instance, variation is the key, i just pity the fools, the
FOLLOWERS
who really NEED to follow, thus always championing a TOTALITARIAN take
on
everything. fuckin crybabies, always believe those who paved the way,
not those
who comes to an already set table.
apart from that, i have to say i never met
anyone with more open minded
music taste than me, it was always like that ever since i was born. but
i met
many who aspire to like many music styles, and it's always great to be
with
these experts (already experts or aspiring ones)
In a recent interview Varg said
there was a lack of integrity in the metal underground.
Most everyone these days is practicing
followership rather than voicing their own opinions.
Do you agree and what to you is musical
integrity?
whenever i scent followers i just move away, i
made my own scene. i
wouldn't know, i just stray away if someone wants me to be part of
something.
but i believe i answered this one already above there. i think there
was a lot
of following back in the day too, like many times it seems EVERYONE
copied
reign in blood in 87 and 88 but it wasn't that easy, at the same time
the whole
press tried to hype SWORD's debut album, they maybe thought the
deaththrashers
were an invasion...and at that time it was right that sword was
shunned and
"slayer won", you know. i even said i hated heavy metal at the time,
but as usual it was because i had to make statements while swimming
against the
stream always. like i said i hated our first album for many years, i
still hate
the clinical sound of it, and i really wanted to get away from it, thus
i say i
hate it, but it will also always be a part of me and i love it as well.
i think
all of us think it seems so neat with totalitarian things because i
think that
maybe everyone has an ambivalent view on almost everything. if not,
then i'm
just special HAHAHAHAA
i agree with Varg because this is how he sees
it and i've been seeing it
for a long time, but when he talks about this topic it is the BM topic
and how
a gang of strong personalities were more or less followed, and then how
long
time it took, i mean, for many, BM hit usa 5 years after 1993, when it
was
pretty much all over here. it's just annoying seeing that many are so
slow to
get into stuff
The message of Circle the Wagons is
a sort of battle cry against modern metal and the traitors that promote
it. To you what is
wrong with instant
gratification in metal? What
aspects do
you think reflect metal being plastic?
And how do we fight the tide of plastic fans, plastic
music and plastic
voices?
been fighting this fight since 88, i mean, the
best thing to do is keep
on having organic sound. don't cross that line. there are a thousand
great
organic albums, there are a thousand lame ass plastic ones. i am still
shocked
when i write "dont send me your music if it has modern sound" and
they go "no of course not" but when i get the product the drums are
hopelessely triggered etc. really!
You aren’t allowed to listen to
music at work anymore. What
made this
change in company policy? How
has that
affected you? Your
time must be even
more limited now, especially when it comes to listening to music YOU
want to
listen to. Has this
created any
additional problems for you that you didn’t expect?
hah! but it was a false alarm, seems i got a
one year job as a video
coder and now i'm back on the juice. listened to lots of electronic
stuff
today, along with recently obtained music such as ARGUS, ATLEANTEAN
KODEX,
Striker, WHIP STRIKER, new OBLITERATION tracks, Satinblack etc..
on more job info, listen to I AM THE WORKING
CLASS haha. gotta make a
break now, NRK is showing another DERRICK episode
also, it's not a change in company policy, they
moved my job site to
outta town and now its the largest factory in norway with 2300 people
working
there, the main hall is noisy as hell and dangerous because of all the
trucks.
the real speed metal job would actually be driving a truck in there. so
if
people where all unconcentrated and listened to music all over the
place in the
main hall, we'd have sooo many injuries and/or deaths.
but especially around record launch, i do one
interview per day
(statistically) for 2.5 months, the rest of the year i do around 3-4
interviews
a month, this means i basically don't have time to wipe my ass around
record
launch as i then try to have a life on top of 2 more or less full time
jobs
You host a fair amount of visitors
from other countries that come to Oslo.
If you could pick the perfect “tour” of Oslo and its
surroundings to
show an unfamiliar visitor what all would it entail?
this is the opposite of what i do, i took you
and Dylan and Mirko and
his tattoo-artist-friend to my place because of bad weather, Mirko and me
were
originally going tenting. if there is something i avoid like the
bubonic plague
it's meeting new people (i don't even have time enough for my close
friends)
and downtown Oslo in general. after me and finally my job place moved,
i've
only been down there once to buy office supplies.
people ask and ask, one of the reasons i quit
reading messages on
myspace emails was all the people that wanted to HANG OUT, meet me when
going
on holiday here (!) and such. these people don't think i have a life? i
am
already overworked, using the shower to ponder who to answer and not
answer,
who to send stuff to and not send stuff...how i will get some time off
to spend
with my woman or friends, etc. reality is, i could, RIGHT NOW quit my
whole
life and spend the rest of my life just responding to emails and
messages. hell
is other people!!!
Spring is coming soon up there and
that means tenting season. How
many
tenting trips are you hoping to achieve this year?
Any new locations you want to try?
always new locations, i've tented 99 different
places in MARKA (1600
square kilometres of forest and lakes around Oslo) and 3-4 times other
places.
but i'm not telling, since gps came people could find and look for me
anywhere,
i'm not saying where until i've been there. after the Oslo-record of 40
trips
last year, i have to calm down this year. i used all my weekends and
holidays
for it, it'd better set off some more time to the missus and friends.
it's a darn late spring, it's one week out in
april now and there's
still snow all over the forest around where i live, ca 200 metres above
sea
surface
As the professor of metal there is
always time to educate people on music.
You brought up a really interesting point one night in a
discussion we
were having about the origins of sound-alike riffs in bands. You mentioned three. Do you remember what they
were? And do you
still think there are essentially
only three? And
which one to you is the
most intriguing?
3 or 4, it's
1 the intentional stealing of riffs
2 the Unintentional (subconscious) stealing of
riffs
3 the fact that there are only SO many notes
and rhythm-combos on this
planet, one is BOUND to make some riff that someone else made in any
other
style or same style of music.
unintentional stealing, you're readers might
say? well, for instance i
use the drum break example, i'd made and played a drum break for
Valhall in the
song PHOBIA, and then a couple of years later i heard again detroit
rock city
by kiss and BOOM there my drum break was. this means it was
unintentional and
SUBCONCIOUS as that song have been with me all my life, i made a drum
break i
thought was killer, but alas, i had heard it before, knew it, but did
not by
ANY means intentionally steal it.
i think the nr 3 is most intriguing. also
because people would always
assume you'd listened to the band/artist that you made the same
riff/part as,
but it hasn't got to be true at all. every kid that picks up a guitar
for the
first time can within the hour have put together the same notes and
rhythms as
a primitive darkthrone riff. by pure coincidence, having not heard our
band.
actually, i think there must have been a 4th
one, as all of this sounded
ooooh so logical
Any bands/albums you want to hail
for the readers to check out? What
makes
these albums special?
i do this all the time now, i got journos all
over asking me for lists,
i ain't so happy about making them, but everyone loves lists. i gave
you a fine
lists of bands we should be filed with, along with old bands i'm/we
might be
influenced by.
when it comes to good albums so far this year,
i am thinking
HELL DARKNESS
WHIP STRIKER
HELLISH CROSSFIRE
VOMITOR
KVOTERINGEN
NEKROMANTHEON
but i am not like the usual journo, i have
direct contact with all the
bands. i don't get the usual promos. also it's not important if it's
NEW. in the
underground thing moves in it's own tempo, sometimes slow sometimes
superfast.i
get demos, 7"s, you name it. new Power from Hell should be good,
there's
too many to mention, Christian Mistress are cool, if you like us power
thrash
with clicky drums try SATINBLACK from germany, if you like epic rough
produced
metal instead try ATLANTEAN KODEX, the best thing that EVERYONE that
i've
played it for digs now is
GHOST demo, they have tons of record deal
offers and will have an album
out this year. i'll probably make em band of the week tomorrow
You have hailed a lot of old bands
such as English Dogs, Heavy Load, Angel Witch and a ton others. Do you ever get contacted
by these old
schoolers regarding your hails? Do
they
seem appreciative and how does it make you feel when they take the time
to
acknowledge what you are doing for them?
yeah, sometimes. Devestation illinois got in
touch, and Angel from
VULCANO (just quit), i don't remember most, i don't have the
idolism-gene so i
forget...mostly it's THE NEW GUY in the old bands that gets in touch,
most old
folks don't follow underground and it has always been that way. digging
the
underground isnt bringing lamb of god with you on tour, hahahaha
again, i am never namedropping because i want
more contacts. as i said
before i try to DECIMATE my contacts, i don't want always more and more
contacts. for everything i say YES to, i have said no 19 times. you
wouldn't
believe all the stuff i turn down or don't even have the time to reply
to.
you'd all have to BE ME and BE WITH ME ALWAYS to know
i got rid of so many turdy people in my life
the last decade, it's
fantastic. and they know who they are. and you can all see who i'm not
working
with anymore.
You make a fair amount of
compilations that you share with other people.
What makes a good compilation?
How do you go about selecting the bands and the particular
songs you use?
ohh, a good compilation. a very good and almost
impossible question, Sir.
i expect a compilation to have some kind of BUILD, but many can become
fantastic by almost just throwing them together, for instance after
having had
a "period" of playing certain tracks as a dj can make you throw those
together as a compilation and succeed. i think a good compilation is TO
ONESELF
that you are contempt with the songs and guidelines to your soul or
spirit that
you are showcasing to others through a compilation. many times i just
do what
needs to be done, like with many darkthrone songs. some come
spontaneously,
others are a long planned sequence of your life, for months. i am right
now
putting together another summer-compilation and that means i take notes
for
months and then finally start pulling out songs i've written down. then
narrowing
it down to 70 minutes, then listening to it while working or travelling
to/from
work whatever, and see if the songs fit together, this is personal
FEELING
stuff, and one should always pick out mostly personal songs too, not
trying to
please mostly something out of yourself.
so far this year i made...around 6 comps. some
for private, some
official that are posted on a blog and is downloaded by thousands of
music
freaks. mostly sober. playing the same thing for 20 drunk people just
ain't the
same in the long run. pearls for swine - feeling isn't cool in the end.
then there's the longevity. how long your own
special order and taste
can stir your OWN accomplishment-centre.
others compilations i can listen to out of
track order, if it hits me
the right way it doesn’t matter. like the MOONSHINE comp of Erik and
Tomi
(mostly old country and country rock), i've played that on SOOO Many
tent
trips, it's a camping companion for life. but those comps are few and
far
between. i usually expect a compilation to give me 2-3 till 8-9 good
songs
maximum, its funny, no matter how many faves of faves of faves i put
on a
comp, there will ALWAYS be some hits and misses for the recipient of
the
compilation.
With all the different ways you are
being pulled in as you try to experience new music and educate others,
such as
your blog, compilations, interviews, and such, do you see yourself
getting
burnt out anytime soon?
i got burnt out in 1996, that's when i decided
i had to stop pouring
music out of me and pushing even more music INTO my brain. but since
2006, it's
been way too busy, 450-550 new titles to listen to every year each year
since
then, constantly understanding that i have to cut back, always
listening to
some music i don't wanna listen to instead of what i WANT to listen to.
so when
someone "gives" me a piece of their music, it's not usually a
"gift" for me, it's a time stealer.
Thanks again Fenriz and Die Hard!!!
been pushing music all my life and been working
since my teens - someone
else has to get practicing on dying hard HAHAHA
