Enslaved
is a big chapter for the Norwegian and worldwide black metal scene. They
used to be the pioneers and they still try to maintain their position within
the elite of metal with releases like “Below The Lights”. Behind an important
band always hide important people and strong personalities, so it was a
great opportunity for us to have the chance and have a big and interesting
conversation with Ivar Bjoernson…
1.THE BAND’S NAME MIGHT BE ENSLAVED
BUT AS IT SEEMS YOU ALWAYS HAVE THE ABSOLUTE FREEDOM TO EVOLVE AND ESCAPE
FROM THE ABSOLUTE TERMS OF BLACK METAL WHICH GENERALLY ISN’T AN EASY GENRE
TO EVOLVE. SO, WHAT DOES YOUR NAME REPRESENT?
It represents I think in short our
dedication to music and to the band. Enslaved by the need to create music.
I suppose as you say it’s not being enslaved by any genre, black metal
or anything else.
2.WHAT HAPPENED TO ENSLAVED SINCE “MONUMENSION”
TILL NOW? WHICH ARE ACCORDING TO YOU THE MOST IMPORTANT MOMENTS OF THE
BAND’S HISTORY?
What happened is quite shortly is that
we had some line up changes, two members out of the band, one new and a
session member. We have been touring In America, Europe and Scandinavia
since “Monumension” and of course making the new album “Below The Lights”.
When it comes to the most important moments of the band’s history, not
to sound potentious but I think every album we made has been very important
and has been a big change but of course I think if you have to point that
something, I think “Frost” was a big change and also I think “Monumension”
and this new one represent important changes in the musical direction of
Enslaved.
3.YOU HAVE A NEW ALBUM OUT UNDER THE
TITLE “BELOW THE LIGHTS”. TELL US A FEW THINGS ABOUT IT. WHICH ARE THE
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES WITH YOUR PREVIOUS RELEASE?
It contains seven songs, quite long
songs…The differences are that this time each song has a really stronger
personality. On “Monumension” there were more different styles in each
song, now we take the time to explore everything more. The production is
really strong…It’s the darkest album that Enslaved did in a really long
time.
-ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH THE FINAL RESULT?
Oh yes!!!
4.DO REALITY AND YOUR EMOTIONS AT EVERY
GIVEN TIME, INFLUENCE YOU AND THUS DIRECT YOU ON HOW EVERY RELEASE WILL
SOUND?
Absolutely! I think every release is
a part of reflecting the personal development the personal emotions of
the people in the band. A band you know is a really personal thing, it’s
not only a place to play the music you like. It’s really connected to who
we are and how we are developing every time…
-I AM ASKING THIS CAUSE THERE ARE MANY
PEOPLE WHO SEE IT AS BUSINESS.
No, no, no! If we saw it as business
then we’d be horrible businessmen! Ha ha ha!
5.IS “BELOW THE LIGHTS” A CONCEPT ALBUM?
WHERE ARE YOUR LYRICS REFERRING TO? IS IT ABOUT THE FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS
PEOPLE HAVE WHEN THE LIGHTS ARE GONE, WHEN THEY ARE ALL ALONE? BELOW THE
LIGHTS, UNDER THE EARTH PERHAPS?
It’s not a concept album like “Monumension”
whose lyrics were all connected, it was a big concept. If you make a comparison
to say that this albums were books I think “Monumension” would be a book
whose songs are different chapters of the same story, but this album is
more a collection of short stories or poetry. “Below The Lights” and the
artwork are a description of the total emotion of the album. When you say
if “Below The Lights” is when people are alone, this can be one interpretation,
that’s the idea that describes the mood and how you feel about it or it’s
how I feel about it, cause we are different. It’s has this common feeling
of all the places where you are alone with your thoughts, this is when
the real process of creation it takes place.
-WELL THAT’S THE ESSENCE THE TITLE
CREATED TO ME…
Yes! That’s right! This means that
already works in association to the lyrics and music.
6.TELL US A FEW THINGS ABOUT THE COVER
ARTWORK AND ITS CONNECTION WITH THE LYRICS.
We used the same painter as for “Monumension”
and this time he came to visit us, we sat down and listened some parts
of the album, talked about the lyrics and the title and our emotions about
it, so he came back with his interpretation of how he felt. We took a look
and we could only say that we agreed! It’s an artistic interpretation of
our music and lyrics.
7.YOUR MUSIC WAS ALWAYS BASED ON THE
CHANGE OF EMOTIONS. HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO KEEP THE BALANCES IN A BLACK
METAL SONG?
We don’t really have a problem of thinking
how black metal should be. We are already standing a bit outside. It has
a strong black metal feeling and black metal aesthetics because we are
still interested in this kind of music but we have given ourselves the
freedom of mixing more stuff together but of course the balance is really
important and I think we are getting better in finding it. To make something
beautiful you have to contrast it with something disharmonic or if you
make something hypnotic you have to break it up in order to make people
start all over again and get into it better.
8.THE FIRST DAYS WERE FILLED WITH NORWEGIAN
TRADITION, BUT THINGS HAVE CHANGED FROM “MARDRAUM”. WHY DID YOU CHANGE
ALL THOSE EPIC ELEMENTS? LOOKING BACK FROM WHERE YOU ARE AS A BAND NOW,
HOW DO YOU SEE AND JUDGE YOURSELVES OF THOSE EARLY DAYS?
It’s not a change so much but an evolution.
We took this cultural elements and heritage and mythology more and more
into ourselves, instead of being something outside of ourselves we managed
to take it inside ourselves, when we are making music. When you teach mathematics
you have to learn how to say the numbers and then work with them and I
think it’s been a little bit the same with us.
-YOU HAVE ABSORBED ALL THESE AND NOW
IT’S NATURAL TO YOU…
Now it’s more natural to us than it
was. Of course we will never reach the end and the full understanding,
this would be too optimistic but at least we post new questions that are
ore relevant to us and the new questions are closer to our personalities.
I think we kind of crossed that line with “Mardraum” when we tried to use
it more in our own daily existence, it’s like a role playing where you
look backwards to traditions and also we have really strong feelings that
the pagan tradition should be brought into use and become relevant to life
today. It’s not possible to change the course of time, it will always go
forward, so for paganism to survive it needs to go forward. When it comes
to our early days…it’s something we are really proud of. It contains different
elements and it’s the chore of what we are now. We will never disregard
or be ashamed of anything we’ve done in our career, even if we do different
things now it’s natural because it’s evolution and a long time ago and
it will always be something we are really proud of…the demo, the mini lp,
the first lps, everything like we are proud of the new stuff.
9.UNLIKE ENSLAVED THERE ARE MANY BANDS
THAT CREATE LONG DURATION SONGS AND TIRE THE LISTENER. WHILST COMPOSING
HOW DO YOU KNOW WHERE TO STOP ADDING IDEAS IN ONE SONG OR DEVELOP THE ONES
ALREADY EXISTING?
To be honest we have no idea what we
are doing when we are doing it!hahaha There is no scientific approach
to it, it’s how you feel and when you think it’s time to stop, you
stop or when you think it’s time to do a little change. We see ourselves
as ginny pigs, we have primitive preproductions in the rehearsal room,
then we try to record it and take it to a party and listen to it and aaahh
this is too long and we change it if we feel we should…
10.THE POMPOUS KEYS AND UNORTHODOX
(FOR METAL MUSIC) BREAKS THAT YOU HAD IN YOUR MUSIC IN THE PAST ARE NOW
GONE. IS IT BECAUSE OF THE EXPERIENCE YOU HAVE GAINED IN PRODUCING ALL
THE EMOTIONS THAT YOU WANT WITH THE STANDARD METAL INSTRUMENTS ONLY OR
DO YOU THINK THEY DON’T SUIT YOU ANYMORE?
It’s the same thing we talked about
in the balance. You need to have a balance in the song but also we try
to see longer than that. You have to have a balance in your whole career
or balance between 2 albums so of course when we go deeper and try to make
complex breaks and stuff like that, rises a need to do the opposite to
balance it and I think that these feelings can be better produced this
way than through complexity. It really underlines the point and you make
it more direct to the listeners.
11.YOU’VE ALWAYS USED YOUR NATIVE LANGUAGE,
WHICH MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR US NON-NORWEGIANS TO UNDERSTAND YOUR LYRICS.
WHY DID YOU DO THAT?
I don’t know! I have no idea it’s just
when we started we decided to make it because of the concept and the theme
of the band and we really wanted to make it. We wanted to make something
special that would stand out from the rest of the bands. There were many
bands that were trying to create their identity through the paint and all
those satanic stuff while we wanted to have another approach to try and
stand out. Every band has a need to create a special identity and I think
this was one of our things.
12.IN THE NEW ALBUMS YOU DIDN’T USE
THE OLD LOGO. ANY CHANCE TO SEE AGAIN IN THE FUTURE THAT ALMIGHTY, HARD
TO READ LOGO?
Yeah! It’s still there! Ha ha ha It
will always be with us. The thing is that for the new album because of
the cover artwork, we didn’t want to mix 2 paintings in the same picture
because we didn’t want to show disrespect to both artists. We see the logo
not only representing the text or the word enslaved but a painting representing
what the band is about. Like for “Monumension” there was no room to put
anything, this time we had the possibility to put some text for the title
and stuff but the logo would create too much “noise” and it would interfere
with the painting. Of course it will always a part of the t-shirts and
our website.
13.IS IT DIFFICULT TO PERFORM YOUR
MUSIC LIVE, MEANING THAT SINCE YOU HAVE 2 ERAS AS A BAND THE ROW AND SELECTION
OF SONGS MIGHT DISPLEASE SOME DIEHARD FANS OF EACH ERA?
We try to change the live set from
time to time. We like to change the focus like this year’s live set is
different from almost all our live sets of the last 5 years. We found it
was time to include a lot of stuff that weren’t played before and of course
when you often have many requests for the same song, you understand that
you need to change it cause after all when you play live there are a lot
of people who travel and pay money to see you…If there’s a lot of people
who want to listen to one song, then if a band has respect for its audience
should play it as long as this is possible of course. We try to change
but of course we always make the live set that we feel will give the best
performance and give the best picture of what Enslaved is today.
14.YOU ARE ONE OF THE FIRST BLACK METAL
BANDS TO EVER COME OUT BUT YOU NEVER REALLY USED THAT STRAIGHT ANTI-CHRISTIAN
IMAGE BUT A MORE PAGAN STYLE. HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT ISSUE?
I think for us this is what we believe
in personally and what we wish to bring further, to keep this tradition,
to keep this alive and all this make us keep on doing this. It’s very positive
that there is still a scene with not so many but at least with some serious
bands that deal with this pagan tradition, it’s important because they
are carriers of strong meanings in a meaningless world of MTV and stuff
like that. Of course it might be regarded as very potentious to deal with
these issues like paganism and individual freedom but I think…
-I THINK THAT THESE KIND OF THINGS
MISS FROM OUR WORLD TODAY…
Yes!
-PEOPLE DON’T PAY ANY ATTENTION TO
NATURE AND DESTROY THINGS WITHOUT REALIZING WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE US AND
WHAT IS ABOUT TO COME…
Absolutely! I think that’s the reason
why so many people experience the feeling that there’s no point or I don’t
know they are depressed or even worse or totally disconnected to the world…
-ANTI-SOCIAL
Yeah anti-social! I think this paganism
is closer to nature and looking to the world today everything is changing
every 20 second…I think people misunderstand it and think that this is
how it really is today and then you get back home and see that not everything
changes every 20 seconds and you think your life is a failure because it’s
not dynamic and MTV like. That’s the point where you can should take a
walk outside or hang out with friends just because they are friends and
not because you do terribly exciting things together…
15.DO YOU CONSIDER HOW BIG WAS YOUR
ACHIEVEMENT TO MANAGE MIXING (IN ALBUMS LIKE “FROST”) BLACK WITH EPIC METAL,
2 GENRES THAT AT FIRST LOOK SEEM TO BE INCOMPATIBLE TO EACH OTHER?
At first look yes…I think it can b
done if you don’t pay too much attention to it. You won’t manage to do
it if you are trying to mix 2 different stuff, but if you do it without
knowing what you are doing you’ll do I successfully. We don’t have any
musical education or any theoritical knowledge on what we are doing. We
are doing what our hearts tell us and if it feels right we don’t give a
fuck if people tell us this is totally wrong or you can’t do I according
to theory this provokes us to do it a lot more. It might be a bit childish
but that’s how it is…
-WELL, I THINK MUSIC IS MAINLY AN EMOTION
AND LESS MUSIC THEORY.
It should be this way!
16.DO YOU HAVE ANY PLANS FOR TOURING?
IS THERE A CHANCE TO SEE YOU IN GREECE?
Yes actually it’s funny…we almost had
something figured out for Greece, but I don’t know what happened…A guy
set up some gigs and we said ok let’s go and he disappeared off the map.
We are working on both a European and American tour for the autumn. I don’t
know why but it’s weird that we yet haven’t played to Greece, we want to
come and we might come for a festival there, we have always been receiving
mails and talking to people from Greece and we’ve played a gig with one
of Greece’s better bands Rotting Christ.
-DO YOU LIKE THEM?
Yes! At least I really used to like
the old stuff and some new stuff I didn’t get to listen to and then I heard
the new album which they played in Poland and it’s really good. A bit more
back to what they were doing in the past. It could be a possibility to
do something in Greece, so we hope and working for it!
17. IF YOUR MUSIC WERE AN EMOTION,
WHAT WOULD IT BE?
I think it would be…Wow! This is a
HARD question! It would be something intense. It could be…the sense of…hmm…somewhere
in between exstatic happiness and almost exstatic nostalgia. I think it
would be the kind of feeling you get when you are so happy with how things
are that you become a bit sad that it will end…
-THAT THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO YOU
AGAIN…
Yes! Exactly!
18.IF IT WERE A PAINTING, WHAT WOULD
IT SHOW?
It would be lots of colors but I think
it’d be abstract. A kind of picture where people could look in and they
would see a lot of what’s inside themselves.
19.IF YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO MEET THE
CREATURE THAT CREATED THE UNIVERSE, WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO ASK HIM?
Hahaha! I think the first question
I’d do to him would be “what would be a good thing to ask you?”.
20.IF YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO TRAVEL
BACK IN TIME WHICH HISTORICAL PERIOD WOULD YOU LIKE TO VISIT AND WHAT WOULD
YOU MISS THE MOST FROM OUR TIMES?
Ohh…let me think…hmm…That’s almost
impossible. I think I would like to go in pre-human period. If we could
go as far back as we wanted, it could be boring to go to a period that
you know some things about, so I’d go before historical times, maybe in
the dinosaur age…
-IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO SURVIVE THOUGH…
I guess so! I’d have a button to push
whenever I’d want to leave…Hahaha
21.WHICH IS THE STRANGEST/FUNNIEST
QUESTION SOMEONE’S EVER ASKED YOU?
We did this interview and this guy
asks me why we change members all the time and I say “I don’t really know,
it’s I guess because we change musical style all the time” and then he
says “are you sure it’s not because you are crazy?”. I wasn’t sure if he
was joking so I replied “yes we are very crazy!”. “Is it because you drink
so much alcohol?”. He thought that all these happened to us because we
drink alcohol and smoke crack all the time! This is really psychotic! Then
he said “yes I understand but you should know that this kind of lifestyle
isn’t good when you play live”.
-WHAT IS THIS? WAS HE FROM THE CHURCH
OR SOMETHING?
He was a French journalist who was
trying to tell us that we should not make that kind of music and then I
just understood that this guy was crazy and just ended the interview in
a polite way. Hahaha!
22.WHICH IS THE RECORD YOU WERE LOOKING
FORWARD TO HEARING BUT COMPLETELY DISAPPOINTED YOU AND WHY?
Oh…I think Quorthon’s solo album after
“Twilight Of The Gods” when he went to record “Octagon” was I think because
I expecting something a solo album from the god Quorthon to be something
really special and it was just like horrible rock ‘n’ roll.
23.THANK YOU! HAVE I FORGOTTEN TO ASK
YOU ANYTHING AND YOU’D LIKE TO MENTION?
No! Just if there’s anyone reading
this interview or hearing about this that knows any possibilities of taking
Enslaved to Greece shouldn’t be embarrassed to get in touch. It’s
one of the few countries in Europe where we haven’t played this far. So
we really like to go there!
-OK! IT WOULD BE NICE TO SEE YOU! BYE,
BYE!
Yes! Bye, bye! Take care!
Christine
“azriel” Parastatidou George
“Volt” Tassis