This time it took five years since the previous album ‘Wild North West’ came out in 2021, but that makes sense, because the pandemic was still going round. Did you finally were happy with the reception of the former album ‘Wild North West’? Could you tour enough in the end?
Yes, the album got a good response and fantastic reviews and everything like that and we did some great festivals, but what was missing is that we did not tour as much as I hoped and that was basically rather a big challenge for the band, finding the right tours and obligations otherwise, This time around I wanted to do a lot more live touring, but that is the only thing I am not that satisfied with regarding the previous album.

Okay, over to now then, when did you start thinking about new material and how did it come into being?
For myself, I pretty much write music most of the time, so it is not like starting to write when a new album has to be done. It was around 2023 though, that we started to think about doing something new. We made a single around that time, called ‘Flammen’. After that, as a band we went through some heavy times. Soon enough I realized that we did not get everyone’s attention within the band at the same time. Everyone needed a pause to think. We decided to have a break and asked ourselves: is this how we want to spend our time and if you don’t want to do it, let me know, because I don’t like to do things for 60%. So we took a break as a band, for a year, we did not play together at all. I wrote music and after that we gathered up in a cabin, with some good food and good drinks and started to brainstorm with our ideas and rehearse. It felt really good and this time even Sture came up with some ideas for riffs, for the song ‘Chaos’. He has written most part of that one, so that was something new and I felt that kind of made the vibe between us better again. We went into the working process right away. Obviously.

That must have been a relief…
Yes, it was good.

Did you have some older ideas to bring in or something you put forth to work towards for this record?
There were some ideas left from earlier sessions, as I said, but not really a direction. There is always a certain sound to it, of course and we love to explore, but we came out of a process of making eight music videos for the previous album, turning it into a movie. I was working a lot on movies, listening to a lot of soundtracks, I have seen so much movies, over and over again, so that must have had its reflection in some of the songs, certainly in ‘Kraken’ and ‘Loving The Dead’. These songs come from a movie inspired world, just as much as from music.

Is there a theme running through the lyrics, except for as you said, it is Sognametal from your region?
It can be very diverse, all inspired by my life. Using history, movies, my own thoughts, always curious to go back in time and finally understanding that you know less and less.

That is the first step to wisdom, knowing that you don’t know anything…
The only thing I am certain of is that I know nothing at all. I think it makes life more bearable let us say.

When you listen to the album, it is almost like a movie. You enter different scenes, you imagine different worlds even. For instance, the first single ‘From These Woods’ starts in your homeland I guess…
Yes, I wanted to go back to nature’s roots. That is where everything starts. My first memories and this life, there are so many things happening that we don’t have any idea of this world, how small you are in a big nature. It is kind of that element that I want to kick off the album with. In my head I consider an album pretty much as a movie. Different phases, and I think All the albums that I enjoy, have always been like that. If you take an album like ‘Master Of Puppets’, it starts off with ‘Battery’ and it takes you down with ‘Sanitarium’ to the instrumental ‘Orion’ and brutal ending of ‘Damage, Inc’. These are journeys. I am really, really into musical journeys, so much more than when each song is pretty much alike. I am going that way and I hope that the listeners can also find themselves in this way that we are sounding.

Musically I think ‘From These Woods’ is also a bridge between everything you have done before and going into new adventures. Do I see that right?
It is a great compliment. It is how I want things to be, because then often you create a kind of cycle back to your own music for all the new elements in your inspiration. I think a lot of the music that I listened too when I was 12 till18 years old is still what defines me. I like to go back there, but I don’t want to stuck there, because it should only be a way to sparkle imagination and enjoy it, see where it brings us. We always try to find a new angle, but I know where it comes from.

Indeed, because the third single ‘Loving The Dead’ has a totally different approach, with female vocals from Djerv. I was very surprised. It is almost poppy…
(laughs) Yeah it is very melodic, it is a kind of mid tempo song, very cinematic. When I started with the opening riff and words – I had the music and the lyrics pretty much at the same time –  it is obviously more inspired by seventies rock and eighties gothic rock. An old Alice Cooper and Type O’Negative vibe for the foundation and that was what I was searching for. I tried with kind of let’s say normal vocals first, but this song is another dimension and I was thinking about Agnete from Djerv. She has such a nice voice and she really liked it. She came in and she brought her own lines and she has written some of the lyrics as well, so it was a very, very great experience – also for me – to see that my ideas, shaping it into something else; paid off. It is one of the songs I am most satisfied with.

It has unexpected twists. In the end it gets really creepy…
Oh yes. This is a song, like I said, going back to the music that I really enjoyed when I was younger and kind of lost, but taking it also further in a direction that goes broader.

There is another guest on that track, more precisely actor Chris Pontius from the ‘Jackass’ movies. We can speak to him as well now. Chris, it is a nice surprise that you seem to have a long time fascination for Norwegian extreme metal. How did you get into that?
Chris: ‘It started years ago with a friend. He lived in New York but with days like Thanksgiving we got together and had some food. He had this black metal celebration every year. All of our friends were flying in and he made us dinner. He was also vegan, so he made vegan food. It was a weird combination, vegan and black metal, but he was a visionary on black metal and he is the first one who turned me on to black metal in the early nineties. Then I started to travel around Scandinavia with my family. A couple of years ago I was actually in Sweden and visited the record stores where they had a black metal section. It was really amazing to me and there was a record in a grocery store, they never had that in America, So I checked the albums over there and I saw Windir. That was my favourite, so I put it on the Internet and recommended it. A friend of Jarle saw it and Jarle wrote me on Instagram and he has got this music festival, Tons of Rock where he is co-founder, and he invited me. We were actually almost going home before the festival started and my wife and I decided to stay and change our tickets. We said ‘this is a sign, we should stay’, so we changed our tickets seeing Norway. We had a great time and became great friends with Jarle. So here we are! You have to pay attention to the signs in life, that’s what I always say, even though when they are hidden.’

Jarle: ‘After that we kept in touch. We actually went to California for a vacation and got in touch with Chris again. We stayed there for three months and then we also started doing a documentary. We don’t know how it is going to end yet, but it was a project like a demo, it was like a band starting a demo. We have a story we want to tell here and we will see where it brings us. Chris went over for a couple of weeks to me. During the summer we also had some new ideas. For the new album I was working on, I sent a song to Chris and said: ‘this is a bit different. It is more like a gothic rock song. Chris liked it and said ‘maybe we should do a video for it’. Together we were jamming on the song and he was playing a lot to it until we were satisfied and here we are with ‘Loving The Dead’. We in Norway we were growing up with one state TV channel for a long time, so there was a lot of boredom that sparkles you imagination. Then there was ‘Twin Peaks’ coming into my life. I was 13 a 14 years old. It was pretty much the same time that a lot of extreme metal came into my life, so both things influenced my direction. I wanted to create something unique and we started talking about that amongst friends. Now with Chris it is the same thing. We had so many things in common. More or less the same age, we have been drawn to the same things, we were kind of outcasts from our own place in the world.’