For the first time it took a bit longer to make a new album, but of course we had the pandemic after the release of previous album ‘Wolf God’ (2018)… How did you personally and as a band cope with this unexpected situation?
Well, we kind of just stopped. We were on tour in March 2020 and we got sick, but we still played and then our agent called us up and said that we had to try and get airline tickets and leave the next morning, because otherwise we would be stuck in the UK. So when we got home, I was in bed for like two and a half weeks, then I got better and then we kind of just did nothing (chuckles) for almost two years. There was not any point in doing anything, because we did not know if everything would get back to normal again.

I can understand that you chose for a hiatus. You could not tour and the motivation for making new music is also going down and could you keep on working? Because you all have a normal job besides the band I think…
Yes, we were fortunate that was the case, because it was very tough for bands who did not have any other job you know, doing this full time. It was not any personal economic disaster for us. We kept in touch, but we basically just stayed in touch and when we feel like it, we could start talking about making some new music. We did some festivals actually back in 2022, which was fun. Then we kind of decided – because I felt inspired again – that we wanted to take the whole year 2023 to write and record a new album, so that is what we did.

That is nice, that you could take the time….
Yes absolutely. To me it is always nicer to have specific time to write new music, because I have never been able to even think about new music when you are on tour, playing festivals and stuff like that, I need to have time when I don’t do anything else apart from my day job or ordinary life. Being on tour and writing and creating is a totally different life.

And see what came out of it: a concept album for the first time!
(chuckles) The idea to make it like a concept album, really just happened when we were doing music and I started to think about it. Some of the songs were a bit different and I just suddenly felt like ‘hey, this album is going to be about Beowulf.’ And I don’t know how that happened really, but sometimes the stuff we do is – and has always been – emotional anyways. It is not a specific plan or anything, it just happens and the Beowulf thing is something that I have been fascinated by ever since I was a small child. So it has been with me my entire life. It just felt right to kind of use that as a framework for this album.

It is a heroic fantasy story, but with references to reality as I understand, isn’t it?
Yeah you could say that definitely. It deals with – obviously there are monsters and dragons, stuff like this – but it is really a story that contains a lot of the fundamental aspects of human life. It deals with life and death and love and hate and victory and defeat, all the basic things that every human in different ways has to deal with and it is also – like many myths – pretty much the starting point for everything that has been written afterwards.

Grendel is also an important figure in that story… can you tell something about him?
Like I said, the stories or the poem is what it is. For me it is more of a starting point for my own ideas, but basically Grendel is not a mindless monster. He has feelings, he is filled with envy towards the people in the beer hall or the party hall. He might kill some people, but he would rather be different. He feels cast aside and he feels lonely and misunderstood and things like that. Like I said, it’s got a lot of different layers to it, the story.

Grendel has feelings, is it something like a werewolf? Werewolves sometimes do not want to be bad, but it is their destiny?
It is never really spelled out which kind of monster he really is, but definitely he has human aspects that are recognizable. Obviously he is more than a human, but he could be a werewolf and the werewolf is obviously also something that we have written songs about in the past. It all kind of fits together I think.

Indeed, I was thinking: when Grand Magus is present, then the wolf is always somewhere around…
(laughs) That is true.

Let us talk a bit about ‘Winter Storms’. That has such a magnificent atmosphere!
Cool, thanks. That song is written from Grendel’s perspective, more or less. Those are his feelings that the lyrics deal with.

Another exceptional song is ‘The Black Lake’. You are singing so low there!
It is a bit different I guess, for us.

Ah that is one of the different songs then?
Yeah I would say so. I mean, I think it kind of goes back a bit to our earlier songs. It has a kind of major riff that flows through the whole song.

I think you must have been glad that you could return to the place where you recorded the previous album. The studio is near drummer Ludwig Witt’s homestead in Sweden. I remember it was very nice to record over there with Staffan Karlsson…
Yes, exactly. We did pretty much exactly the same thing as with ‘Wolf God’. So it is the same studio, with Staffan Karlsson and we lived the same way and recorded it the same way. We had such a nice time when we were doing ‘Wolf God’ over there. We wanted to do that again. Of course, this is the second time we have done it, so we know each other a bit better and Staffan knows more about what we mean when we say things and what we are after. So it was a very good experience this time as well.