Interviews : Enslaved (Ivar Bjørnson) – 31/10/2008

Having just released their brand new album “Vertebrae”, I had the honor of speaking to guitarist Ivar Bjørnson, about everything Enslaved.

Metal Obsession: First up, congratulations on Vertebrae

Ivar: Thank you very much mate.

MO: I’ve had it on constant rotation, it’s brilliant. After speaking with many people who have already heard it, I haven’t heard any bad responses and some people are already saying it’s album of the year. Were you expecting such a positive response?

Ivar: We were hoping for it but I think being around for so long has taught us not to expect too much. I really expected responses, strong responses, because the album is sort of a big step compared to many of the earlier albums, but I didn’t dare hope for them to be so positive so it’s really cool and very overwhelming at times how positive the response is.

MO: Do you think the band are becoming bigger and more well known with each album?

Ivar: It seems so. I think we’ve kept the focus on the right place. We’ve developed the album and the sound and I think for a while there, maybe the mid-period of the band, we spent more focus on finding the right sound for the band than necessarily to expand commercially. And I think we’ve focused the last few years on playing even more live, and things like that which also helps a lot. So it seems to be, since I would say “Below The Lights” in 2003 there’s been a very steep curve going with each album.

MO: With each album, the band seems to head in a different direction. Is this something you are going to continue doing?

Ivar: I’m not sure where the next one is going to go. I definitely see that we are at a right place now, but, it definitely does not feel like any conclusion of any sorts. It doesn’t feel like we’ve found the perfect Enslaved album. It’s closer than ever, but it’s still our motivation to try and work hard and do that.

MO: On “Vertebrae” there seems to be much more progressive rock influences, and a higher use of clean vocals. Was this something that just happened to fit into this particular album, or something we’re going to continue to hear?

Ivar: I think the whole progressive rock thing is going to be there. It’s something that we’ve been listening to for so many years, ever since the very early days of the band, and you know, our lifestyle is about music, we are music collectors. When we are out travelling we go to vinyl shops and find old stuff, and we still recommend things to each other. I guess tape-trading, those days are over, but there’s a lot of recommendations going on, on the net and all that. So that’s 100% us, and what we do outside the band, all influences intothe band. So I guess as long as we will be listening to that, I think it’s going to be there.

MO: What music styles do you mainly listen to?

Ivar: Myself, I think I have a balance of, sort of the natural background, the extreme metal thing, the death metal is always there. And then there’s classical 70’s stuff – Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, King Crimson and that sort of stuff. And the third part for me, is that alternative new stuff. That could be alternative metal like Neurosis or Isis or I even listen to stuff like noise or experimental jazz or whatever. It’s balanced, but everybody in the band has that foundation of classic rock, prog rock and extreme metal, and then we differ. Like Grutle, he doesn’t listen to anything new. He just goes backwards and finds obscure prog rock albums from 1969, whereas I’ll go the other way and find some Japanese guy doing some noise or whatever.

MO: Looking back on Vertebrae now, is there anything you would change if you could?

Ivar: Not at the moment, I think would need more distance. I think of course, it depends on the parameters. I think if we had unlimited studio time, maybe if I knew how the sound would turn out, I would have spent more time on setting up each instrument and getting a little bit more subtleties and nuances going there, but it’s always going to be there and right now, I think I am very satisfied with the album.

MO: Can you give us a bit of an insight into the writing process. What is the process between coming up with a few initial ideas, and recording the final?

Ivar: Yeah, well, we don’t write on the road so after the RUUN album come out in May 2006 we did a lot of touring so I guess we started writing ideas more or less immediately after that, when we had some time off. It’s me who writes all the music, I make the compositions. I have a little home studio; it used to be a cassette player with multi-tracks, now it’s with computer. Basically, I just document every idea I get. Sometimes you’re out, you’re on the bus or travelling, then you have to use your cellphone or whatever just to get your ideas down, or write it down on paper. Then when everything is structured I make, it sounds like demos I guess, like old demos,  and I program some drums and add some guitar tracks. When I’m happy with the song it gets distributed to the other guys in the band and they start making their own parts for the songs and then we sort of glue it together in the rehearsal rooms. Sometimes that’s a repetitive process where we didn’t really hit it off when everybody tried their parts in the rehearsal room. Then we have to go back and rewrite the demos, and back and forth. When we feel we have a good structure for the song, then we do what we call the preproduction where we do a test recording of how the song ended up. When that’s done, that’s when we go into the studio and record it properly.

MO: Do you generally prefer writing and recording, or playing live?

Ivar: It’s very hard to pick one these days. I think it just depends on where we are at the time. Right now, I would go for the live one because it’s been one year in the studio and I really feel like going on the road and playing the songs live. If you ask me again after six months of touring, I guess I’m going to be hungry for the studio.

MO: How did the whole Vertebrae theme come about and can you explain it a bit more?

Ivar: Yeah, on the previous albums we’ve been working with some more complex grandiose, hehe, concepts inspired by, again, these 70’s prog rock albums. And this time, we felt like we didn’t want a big concept, we were looking for some sort of theme. We looked at the songs and the lyrics we had written and there seemed to be the common denominator spinning around individualism and the very narrow possibilities for individual development in the world today where young people or, well everybody, is sort of indoctrinated with the belief that you need to, first and foremost, belong to something. Some type of dogmatic grouping, you know, some call it politics, and you have the monotheistic religions; Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and all those. Then you even have trends, for young people, and if you don’t belong to any of these you’re dead in a way.

MO: Yeah and I think that is definitely something metal fans can relate to.

Ivar: Absolutely, and I think it’s getting more and more extreme. I remember in the 90’s with black metal bands. I was thinking about this and it’s relevant but today it’s getting to the point where it’s very extreme, and we wanted to make an album that could be a sort of inspiration for the opposite. To say that we need to reverse that development and go back to the point where the individual comes first, in the philosophical sense that you need to explore yourself and find out what you want to do with your life before you dedicate it to leaders that basically want to enforce their political, monetary or sexual position by having you as a member of their group. And that was the essence of it and we were looking for a word, a concept, a metaphor, some kind of symbol that summed up all those thoughts. That’s when we came across the vertebrae, the back bone. That gave off all these associations that really fit the concept.

MO: The album cover is fantastic, I’m assuming it’s the same artist as the last few?

Ivar: Yeah, it’s the same guy, actually this is album number five that he has done. He’s really getting into the matter of the band. He’s sort of taking it one step further and we’re noticing he’s inspiring us back again. It’s a really good artistic circle going around.

MO: Do you or any of the band have much of a say in how the artwork turns out, or is it left up to the artist?

Ivar: The process is pretty old school, it’s me and Grutle, we write the lyrics together and develop the concept so when we have an idea, we travel to his home town and just sit around in his painting studio and talk through the lyrics, listen to the songs. What he will do is use his sketch board and while we’re talking, he’ll make up all these small ideas and normally within the first two to four hours we’ll hit something. It’s very rapid. He’ll paint something and we’ll look at it, and maybe think “no, not exactly”, and at some point all three of us will be like “yes, that’s exactly what we are looking for”, and that’s when has the basic sketch;  the outline, and the shape of it all, and he just takes it from there. So we are all agreeing on the basic and then he develops the details all by himself.

MO: The past few albums have had that simple, black and white design scheme. Is that something you want to continue with or was it coincidence that it fit each album well?

Ivar: Well it fits really well, and I don’t think we gave it too much thought that it was developing into a pattern. Maybe “Isa” and “RUUN”, they had that and it became sort of a trademark. I noticed that we really, really appreciated the red he added this time. A bit of a change from the previous ones, so I think at least for my own taste, I would really like to see some experimentation develop. It’s a way to keep the last few ones very special. If they can remain in their style, and we can do something new with the next one, that would be great.

MO: As far as the actual sound of the album goes, I find it to be much more laid back and relaxed, with perhaps less crunch on the guitars than the last few albums. Was that a conscious decision or just how it developed?

Ivar: I think that was as close to a conscious decision as we can probably get. We try to keep things just happening and spontaneous. We did talk about that, and we talked with Joe, who did the mix of the album, about the necessity of getting the tones and everything through because that is the balance, you know we’re still an extreme metal band and want to keep it distorted and heavy and everything but a lot of our material is based on being heavy and one thing that surprises a lot of young bands is that you actually lose a lot of heaviness if you apply too much distortion I guess. It’s good for the fast stuff but it can sort of take away the low end if you have too much of it. At the same time, the philosophy for the album was that we wanted a classic recording where the instruments would be represented like in a live way. You would have just one guitar in the left speaker, the other guitar in the right speaker, drums in the middle; to make sure that every instrument was coming through in the proper way and we have so many, like in guitars, you have so much picking and we’ll be using a lot of chords, you know it was just about finding that balance where you can hear every detail. But at the same time, keep it heavy. It’s a very challenging balance that I definitely think we will be working on finding, and continue to search for the perfect balance on the next one too.

MO: Do you have a favourite track off the new album?

Ivar: Yes, right now it’s “New Dawn” because we’ve been rehearsing for the live set and that song really, really came through with how it sounds live. It’s changing all the time you know, last week it was “To The Coast” and now it’s, yeah, “New Dawn”. Who knows, hehehe.

MO: Will there be any music videos done for the new album?

Ivar: Yeah actually, we spent last Friday in Gothenburg, Sweden, recording a music video for the last track “The Watcher”. So that’s going to be done in something like, I heard, 10 days from now and then it’s going to be, I guess, all over the net; Myspace and all those channels.

MO: One thing I noticed was that there wasn’t much in the way of updates or earlier news on “Vertebrae”. A lot of people didn’t even know you were recording a new album until the Indie Recordings signing announcement. Was this the bands decision to keep it quiet?

Ivar: To be honest, it turned out a little bit mystical at the end. I know, especially these days with blabbermouth and all those.

MO: Yeah, there are usually constant updates from the very beginning of a recording.

Ivar: It’s like you get an update where a guy writes that he is about to go to the store, buy bread, he’s going to eat the bread and then he’s going to think about writing a song [laughs]. And we didn’t even put out anything, it came like a surprise. The whole thing was about the label situation because we did have on album left on the old label when we started recording this album, and they did a lot of changing around and a lot of bands left the label and somehow they, you know, we’re old school people and we wanted to give, well we wanted to honour the deal, we wanted to give them sort of a last chance with this album. So we stayed there, and half way through the recording process we discovered things were not exactly how they were portrayed to be so we ended up doing a little bit of a legal battle in parallel with recording the album which was pretty bizarre. We knew it would turn out for the best but we wanted to keep a lid on it and be discreet about it, and let it work itself out in the background. Around the time of the mix everything was sorted out and we were in place with Indie, Nuclear Blast and all that, and we could go public. The thing is, the conflict with the old label was with people who were leaving at the time, so everything was hunky-dory with the new people and we didn’t want to give them a rough start or anything like that. We gave a little bit of an effort to keep that conceived. But, you know, when we started to do that we also discovered exactly what we’re talking about now; keeping it a little bit secret would add some organisation to it, with this overflow of information that’s going on.

MO: I know it’s probably far too early to ask this, and you touched on it a bit earlier, but do you have any slight ideas or predictions on what direction your future material will take?

Ivar: No, I haven’t. Right now I’m working on, well not even working, but theoretically working on two pieces for the next album and I guess they could both fit into the concept of Vertebrae, but it’s impossible, it’s far too early to say. I guess from what we talked about before, this is the first initial ideas stage.

MO: You can a couple of the other guys are involved in another band called Trinacria. I had a quick listen before and it sounds amazing, how did that come about and is it a full time band or a side project?

Ivar: It’s sort of a full band, within time limits, when nothing else is going on. It’s planned out in between what Enslaved is doing. It was firstly commissioned just to be a live act for ten shows. It was sort of ordered or commissioned by the governmental concert agency in Norway. It was pretty bizarre; some guy there decided that they needed to bring some extreme metal and noise music around to the countryside in Norway. So we did those ten gigs, and it sounded good so we decided to do an album. We had three weeks before recording the Enslaved album so it happened in there. And that album turned out really well, so now I think we’ve decided to do more stuff after that. I guess we are going to write stuff for that in maybe, towards the end of 2009 we’re going to be writing a few new songs for that, but a second album will definitely be happening. I think that the reason why it’s turned out quite original and strong is nobody had any thoughts for it more than a few weeks ahead. I think if it was supposed to be a full time band, I think it would have stressed us out [laughs].

MO: You guys had an Australian Enslaved tour booked for last year, but it fell through, what happened there?

Ivar: We were so close you know, we had been actually calling embassy people in Norway and setting up to start clearing everything for visas and everything. What happened is that our guy over there set up the shows, I think it was something like four shows, and then two or three really big extreme metal tours, I think Cradle Of Filth and some other bands had sort of booked on top of that, so he ended up having shows where he would compete with these other really big shows in the same cities around the same date. He found it to be too big of a risk, which we can relate to that, and no tickets had been sold or anything like that, so you know. I think we came so close that everything is really ready for us to do a proper one now.

MO: So you are planning to tour here for Vertebrae?

Ivar: Absolutely, I’d love to say that we have any complete plans, we don’t as of now. But as I said, we came so close and really those shows both, you know, for the band and the label, it was in the label’s interest down there. And especially now that Nuclear Blast are handling the Australian things, the statistics show that Nuclear Blast bands do actually get to go down there so, we’re definitely ready to do that.

MO: You’ve toured fairly extensively throughout much of the bands career, and have a six week tour coming up with only a few days break in there. What do you do to keep yourself energised and motivated throughout such an intense tour?

Ivar: My theory is to try and keep it a lot like the rest of my life, so to speak hehe. This is tour number 22 or 23 or something that I’ve been on and, well for the first few tours it’s all about getting away from home and all that. And you know, we like to party and you’ve got to give yourself room to relax and all that. I do try and keep myself energised enough to do stuff like meet with people. When we do a tour like this that’s 40 shows, there’s a lot of people that have thoughts and ideas about the new album, what’s going on with the band, and all that stuff. So that’s also definitely energising. I suppose you can get really tired and worn out so then it’s tempting to lock yourself in the bus, so it’s definitely a good trick to force yourself out there and hang out. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to drink three litres of vodka in a night, but a beer or two never hurts!

MO: Is the setlist going to be focusing on the new album or be broader?

Ivar: It’s pretty broad. There are so many different aspects on the new album and we noticed the way people reacted, we did aspects from every part of the Enslaved catalogue so we ended up taking quite a big chunk of the new album out on the road, something like five songs from the new album in the setlist. But also, then we have songs from “RUUN”, from “Isa”, “Below The Lights”, “Eld”, “Frost” and actually, if we do the full setlist with all the extras then there’s actually two songs from the first mini album, the split we did with Emperor.

MO: Well that’s pretty much as broad as it can get really.

Ivar: Exactly, well in terms of minutes the most represented albums are the first one, and the last one.

MO: Any chances of a new live DVD?

Ivar: Yes, definitely. We haven’t formulated the plan yet, but the last time we did a live DVD was to show the new lineup and the new live qualities of the band and now it’s definitely time to do that again. Somewhere along the line we have to find a show or a festival or something like that and just set up the complete recording for that. But we definitely have to show where we are at now.

MO: Have there been any gigs or tours in your career that really stand out to you, whether good or bad?

Ivar: I think, I suppose there haven’t been any really, really bad tours, but the conditions on tour will never compete with the first tour in Mexico in ’95. Nothing will be as crazy as that I guess. We travelled around in a little car there around the countryside, and did like ten Mexican shows; some in big cities and some in the countryside. That was pretty insane. They had never really seen a Norwegian extreme metal band down there but they all knew about it, the bootlegs were going around and it was just crazy. Basically, the promoter, with two days left on the tour, he left us on the curb in some Mexican city. We were standing there with no idea, he left us some money, he had the dignity to do that. We had to go off and try to speak English-Spanish and try and find out how to get to the bus. It took us 26 hours on really shitty buses with Mexican farmers to get back to the border [laughs], but luckily, one of our crew from the US side of things sort of smelled the rat when nobody picked up the phone and he hung out by the border and picked us up from there. All totally sick, diarrhoea and everything but still very happy to have done a Mexican tour.

MO: [laughs] Well that definitely would have been an experience.

Ivar: Totally, I think we ate for four or five hours consecutively after that at some American junk food place [laughs]. So that was definitely special. In terms of good tours, of course I think all of the touring since “RUUN” has just been amazing because we have stayed away from touring. We did that for many years, for lineup reasons and other things, and being back on the road and catching up with the fans has been totally amazing.

MO: What are the bands plans for 2009, will it be largely touring?

Ivar: Yeah we’re going to be touring some more in Europe in April, with some dates that are going to be confirmed very soon, as part of a bigger festival package. Then we’re going to head straight over to the US in May and then we’re doing festivals during the summer, and then I suppose we’ll be touring some more. We’ve got some more dates to organise, with Australia hopefully on that list in autumn. And hopefully there will be some time to, you know, take off a few weeks, go somewhere and start writing a little bit for the next Enslaved album, and possibly the Trinacria album.

MO: A couple of general questions to finish up, have you had any real favourite albums of 2008?

Ivar: Yeah, there have actually been quite a lot of albums. I’m about to go out and buy myself a little stack now because I’ve seen so many, like the new Gojira which I want to check out. From the albums I have heard so far, I really like Ihsahn’s solo album “angL”, that’s quite a favourite. Opeth’s “Watershed” is really up there in all terms; the songs, production, everything’s just great. I think those two albums are my pick so far.

MO: Any disappointing releases?

Ivar: Hmm, no not really. I think I’m at the point where I can be considered to be a bit cynical. I tend to buy stuff I’m already pretty sure will sound great.

MO: Well I suppose you won’t often be disappointed then which is good.

Ivar: [laughs] Yeah, It’s quite practical I think.

MO: Do you know any Australian metal bands?

Ivar: Umm, not many. You have Destroyer 666, Sadistik Execution, an old classic. I don’t know if they’re around still but they were a big part of the extreme metal scene when we grew up. Those two are the first ones that spring to mind.

MO: Well that’s more than what most international bands know, haha.

Ivar: [laughs] Ohh, and there’s one new one that sounds a lot like AC/DC.

MO: Airbourne?

Ivar: Yeah, Airbourne, exactly. Umm, and Wolfmother, are they from Australia?

MO: They are indeed.

Ivar: They aren’t metal, but they have guitars [laughs]

MO: Any last words for the Australian fans?

Ivar: I would like to say thank you for being so patient, and especially those people that got ready ahead of time when checking out those dates from last year that didn’t happen. We’re definitely pushing the label and everyone to make sure it happens this time around. I’m pretty confident it’s going to happen. People, you know, just check in on the Myspace and the web page from time to time, there’s going to be news. And also, I hope people set aside a bit of time to check out the “Vertebrae” album. There should be something in there for every metal fan.

MO: Ok, thank you for taking the time to chat, and best of luck on your upcoming tours.

Ivar: Thanks for the interview!

Interview by Mitchell Booth (Mean Machine) on the 31st October, 2008.