Grutle Kjellson & Ivar Bjørnson - Enslaved

June 21 2009 (Hellfest - Clisson)

For just this one, I (spirit) was eager to add my voice to the interview. It's after offering some French goodies to our Norwegian friends of ENSLAVED, that we started this interview about their numerous projects, their last album "Vertebrae", their album to come, their philosophy and the luck they have to be decently acknowledged by their own government.

Bspix: After your participation (in replacement of Mayhem) in 2007, are you happy to be here at HF 2009?
Grutle Kjellson (Vocal/Bass): Yeah. We had an amazing time in 2007. We just had the offer like one gig before the festival, so it was all done in a rush. The response was fantastic, it's probably one of the coolest experiences that we've ever had. I remember when we hit the last tone, SLAYER started playing "South Of Heaven", it was a bit afterwards, they (the audience) were like standing, for us to finish, because the stages were like facing each other. The crowd just turned around and watched the other show, it was great. Except for the mud (laughter).

Bspix: Will you have backdrop videos this evening?
Grutle: Yes.
Ivar Bjørnson(Guitar): (We'll) have the full show tonight.

Bspix: You latest DVD release (Return to Yggdrasill) took place just after the release of Isa. 4 years later with two more albums, and the videos backdrop , do you consider making a new DVD soon?
Ivar: Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if we can make it, but we are talking, we're thinking about doing something in 2010. But it takes a lot of planning, you know, it needs to be special, so we have some ideas that we're looking at. That's not so easy to make happen, but we're working on it. Because we don't want to do something wrong, with the next dvd we want to make something special. Special scenario, extraordinary atmosphere for a dvd, not only festivals film crew. It's cool with that too, you know, but we want to do something different. I've seen so many concert dvd's stuff.

Bspix: I've seen your show in Hamburg, which was on the internet. It was really nice, if you can do it again.
Ivar: Yeah, we got a lot of response from people in Europe and in the U.S, from our families too.. It seemed to be quite easy, just two of three guys who came in, put up the camera…We'll do it more.

Bspix: From Hordanes Land to Vertebrae, there is quite a distance. How do you see this evolution? Do you think there's a parallel between this evolution and your personal lives?
Grutle: Of course, I mean, it's a huge distance in years too. I think it's a good thing that we've changed. Stagnation has never been our thing, we just move on, develop, basically just go with the flow. I think the reason why it's so different, these albums, is because we hate to do similar things, twice, so we just wanted to develop more on all levels, both personal and musical.
Ivar: I think with the music, personally, for us it's very important to integrate old ideas with the new ideas. It's sort of, you move away from one thing, when you find a new place, then you try to bring your history with you. So, we still listen to the old stuff, we played the material from the old albums live. If we have some new ideas, or some new lyrical concept, on a philosophical level, we'll still want to integrate the old ideas. That's why I think, it's a long distance from Hordanes Land to Vertebrae, but it's still part of the same history. You see a lot of bands that suddenly go straight out, they come with something very different.

Bspix: Could you say something more about your presence in the Hole In The Sky festival?
Grutle: This is the tenth Hole In The Sky festival, so it's time to really do a little celebration. We have played a couple of Hole In The Sky festivals before. We played at the first one, and in 2003, and 2005, so it was time to for us to play again and they asked us if we can do something special, do a little celebration, a historical thing. So we decided to bring in some friends, , we're gonna include Lars Göran Petrov from ENTOMBED, we're gonna get Attila from MAYHEM, Nocturno Culto from DARKTHRONE and Samoth from EMPEROR…So, we going to share the stage with them for both ENSLAVED songs and cover songs.

Ivar: The first part of the concert is gonna be new material from "Below The Lights", "Isa", "Ruun" and "Vertebrae". And then in the middle section, we're gonna do for the first time the entire "Hordanes Land" album, with some guest appearances from the other guys, before we'll do (for the last parts) the cover songs.

Bspix: As I have read on your myspace blog, representatives from Norwegian Embassy did attend one of your show in Washington DC. For us French, it's seems incredible, as there is no official recognition of metal in France. Is there is a real "metal support" in Norway?
Ivar: It is. We've tried, when we talked with the people of the embassy, to find a definition of why this is important for the Norwegian mentality. I think it's a kind of music that was more or less invented (in Norway), the Black Metal extreme scene in the early nineties. It has its own look, this aesthetic style, the sound, the production, the philosophy, even though it's a long distance from a DARK FUNERAL album or a DIMMU BORGIR album. But it's still something that makes them both a Norwegian extreme metal band. When we released our demo, it was copied on a Xerox machine and sent the cassettes were sent around the world. So actually, the extreme metal music is still played by the people who invented it. If you go see a band on tour, you'll see the same people that played it when they were (in) highschool at 14 or 15. It's what makes it very special, because it's still the original people. We find pride in that. You know, it's a small country, it's few people, France has Ludwig the 14th, castles, colonial traditions, italy has its history with the roman…Norway, we got the Vikings.
Grutle: The metal scene as a unit is actually the biggest Norwegian music export. So the government kind of have to acknowledge it, because it's a big segment in the Norwegian music.

Bspix: Any clue about the orientations of the new album?
Grutle: We never know (general laughter).
Ivar: The writing is in the first phase, and a lot is gonna be done in pre-production in July and August; when we have our break. I think the last time, before we start the writing, I think 'atmospheric' was the key word before Vertabrae This time, I would say 'intense'. That's not probably mean fast, because our drummer (Cato) is getting really old (general laughter), but intense in another way.

Bspix: Congratulations for the very well-balanced vocals in your band. The clean voices by Herbrand are very good, which is not always the case in this kind of music. Do you agree with me if I say that the clean voice is at some times close to Alan Parson's Project?
Grutle: Oh really? Well (laughter). You're probably right, I mean, people can find traces of inspiration from all the musical sphere in the music. Of course, we've heard something about PINK FLOYD or RUSH for instance. It's the first time that we speak of ALAN PARSON'S PROJECT though. (Spirit - I wonder where does fab always find its comparisons)

Bspix: Well, it's more about the quality of the voice and the way of singing, than something similar.
Ivar: (turning towards Grutle) We got to listen to that when we come back.

Bspix: A word about your side-projects?
Grutle: I kind of put on ice for the moment, for my part.
Ivar: The first thing that's gonna happen in April 2010, when we're gonna be in a sort of artist's residence at the Roadburn festival in Holland. So, on the first day of the festival I'm gonna play with DREAM OF AN OPIUM EATER, the instrumental thing with the original horror movies. On the Friday, with Ice Dale (Arve Isdal - Guitar) we are performing with TRINACRIA. And then Saturday, we're doing the show with ENSLAVED and the Norwegian SHINING. So that's gonna be a lot of rehearsing I guess.
Grutle: Drone music and death metal
Ivar: And we're gonna start after this, to write the second TRINACRIA album. But I don't know if it will happen in 2011 especially with the noise people that we work together with. If you ask them if they have any time in the calendar, it's like "yeah, call me back in 2015". They're just travelling around and around the world…

Bspix: Will you play with these bands in France?
Grutle: It's gonna be difficult, because these bands needs a big production, there's a lot of people at the same time.
Ivar: We just need a festival that realize that they could offer something special to the audience, even if it's more expensive, because there's a lot of people, the video and the sound production. But it's a really nice thing to present at the audience of a metal festival. Dream of an Opium Eater played at wacken after two heavy metal and some black metal, you know a lot of people are listening to the same thing for three days in some metal festivals, so, it was good to have something completely different, refreshing. You just need to terrorize the organiser of the festivals (laughter) send them thousands mails.

Bspix: I love "the watcher" video. Any things to tell us about the making of this beautiful video? And who's in charge concerning the storyline?
Grutle: The lyrics are kind of dreamlike, it's a conflict between the outer consciousness and the inner consciousness. So that's why there's the floating bodies, like when you're asleep, and the great landscape. When you sleep, you're kind of using 70% of your brain, or something like that. It's more than when you're awake, so, all the solutions are kind of on an unconscious level.

Bspix: As you have started writing the new album, do you still use the Nordic Mythology as direct inspiration? Or it's gonna be more subtle?
Grutle: Actually, that's not that hidden. I spoke to a lot of people that read a lot of Nordic Mythology, and they still get it, they see what I'm talking about. They can trace all our metaphors to certain myths actually, that must be pretty fascinating. I talked to a guy from Australia who could tell everything from the lyrics of Vertebrae. It was pretty scary (laughter). He was taking every line apart like "yes! That's correct" (laughter). It's in there.
Ivar: Nordic mythology is just a part of our personality, so it's unavoidable.

Bspix: Fun question: Do you still go fishing with Nocturno Culto (from Dark Throne)?
Grutle: (General laughter) Sometimes. We were supposed to go fishing this spring but he did have not time He likes fishing but he didn't always have the time.
Ivar: Maybe he will have the time around Hole In The Sky festival.
Grutle: Yeah, probably. But it's just a couple of times per year, no more.