Gaahls Wyrd- interview met Kristian ‘Gaahl’ Espedal (vocals)
Gaahl: “We might be one physical character, but we are much different energies on the inside”
Het spoor van Kristian Espedal aka Gaahl loopt dwars doorheen het verhaal van het ontstaan van black metal in Noorwegen in de jaren negentig. Aan uiteenlopende bands als Trelldom, Gorgoroth, Wardruna, God Seed, Whispering Void en nu ook Gaahls Wyrd droeg hij zijn steentje bij met een verrassend divers muzikaal spectrum. De man die naast zijn muzikale passie ook nog galerijhouder is en biologische wijn teelt, is een rustige prater die alles haarfijn uit de doeken doet. We waren dan ook al vlug een uur aan de praat en selecteerden deze notities over het tweede Gaahls Wyrd album ‘Braiding The Stories’ en het leven.
Vera Matthijssens Ι 18 juni 2025
What were the first ideas for inspiration you had when thinking about making a new album with Gaahls Wyrd?
I kind of had the conceptual idea of the album. We had already planned it during the concept of ‘The Humming Mountain’. Musically we had a lot of music that we saved, plenty of songs where we had kind of done the foundation, I think it was at least twenty tracks that we recorded. It was a kind of base, just the rough recordings of drums and guitars. Then I sat down and did the selection of the songs that I wanted to work on this time around. The other songs might end up on mini albums or something like that. They were also good, but I ended up with these tracks. Some were just thrown away again and we brought in some new elements, like these three interludes, like the intro and track 3 and track 6. Those interludes are basically just guitars and vocals. That is how we started and then we kind of built the album out from this.
At a certain moment you decided to give more freedom to Ole and his guitar skills. What can you say about that development, was that kind of new for you?
When we did ‘GastiR –Ghosts Invited’ (2019), Iver (Sandøy – producer – Vera) and I worked together on the recording in the sense of being in the situation where he actually had to work with me. He tuned the drums like back in the days, that was the first thing. I have always known him as a drummer, not as a producer or engineer, but this time around we were already kind of established, so we have a really good relationship and I know Ole has worked with him prior, especially with Sahg I think, so he was the one that kind of convinced me to try out working with him and it worked excellent. For me I feel that Iver is kind of part of the band whereas we communicate really well and both Ole and I are really happy with the result and very glad with what we managed to create.
The title suggests that you wanted to tell stories, music-wise it is kind of braiding the sounds, but lyrically as well. Can we compare that?
Lyric-wise it is already in my universe in a way, so I don’t allow anyone to interrupt me in that process (chuckles), but I don’t write down lyrics, I only work with them. Now that I am getting older and forgetful, I might forget and have a tendency to just write down two words and then I have some kind of idea where I build the universe out from that. I like to work just by memory though, from word, rather than writing them down.
In that way it is very spontaneous, but sometimes maybe hard to reproduce?
Yeah but it is very open, it is kind of frustrating, but it is good to have struggles when you work, because of the solutions that arrive. If things go too smoothly, if I feel too comfortable, I don’t think the music will be that interesting. So you always need to kind of create small obstacles. We don’t want it too easy when we work. There’s a lot of different things happening after these tiny frustrations that appear in the creative process.
The theme of the album is dreams, while the subconscious is very important…
Yes. I don’t like to fill too many words in, because it is very important that the listener is getting his own ideas and feelings. We don’t want to guide people too much around in their experience of the works, because there is no sense of intention to kind of ‘this is what I want to tell to you’. This is what I present and you interpret it how you want basically. It is important that people experience things and allow themselves to figure out what it means for them. I like it when people reflect on their own inner. Their own ideas, rather than being told ’this is meant to be this or that’. I want people to dive into their own minds, having their own interpretations.
We have enough information to think of, you go to sleep, then you dream and who knows what’s next…
Exact. I always liked the idea of letting the sub consciousness be as close to reality of real life as close as possible.
What also struck me was that you really have a wide range of different vocals on this album…
Yeah they are characters just falling into my head and I just try to bring them out as how they end up.
It reminds me of different forms of art, like theatre or an actor and that suits with your admiration for artists like Peter Gabriel…
I didn’t think too much about it back in the days, but first I have to hear the voice in my head and when I hear that voice in my head, I only hear things that I know I can execute and then it comes to figure out ‘what is this?’ and then I have to think about the physical shape of this thing – if there is a physical shape – and also the age, everything around it basically. So I approach it a lot like an actor would with a character. I have always used languages and dialects, because they are also kinds of part of the energy. Like you said with Trelldom, I just change my dialect to make the emotion and the feeling that they wanted to bring forth. ‘By The Shadows’ I have written and sung in Norwegian. But I could not find the taste, it did not feel musically correct to do it, so that is why I translated everything into English instead. There is some sort of acting in it, but it is more to build wishes with the voices.
Also different kinds of moods I think…
We have a lot of different things. We are not just one, but many. We need to kind of create the whole inner spectre for the outer-spectre in that sense. We might be one physical character, but we are much different energies on the inside.
That’s what makes it interesting and also a bit mystical of course…
We like to keep things mystical, because that’s where we grow most ourselves. We should treat the world as if we have never met it before, being three and a half years old constantly (chuckles).
Did the music you created for Trelldom or Whispering Void in some way left traces in what you do now with Gaahls Wyrd?
I try to figure out ways to kind of… we always have many, many things. There’s so many spectres we want to do, most of them don’t happen, but some happen and I try to affect all the different bands in a very different angle. We need to do more things than just one, otherwise we would never have created Wardruna back in the days. When we met – I think it was late 1999 or early 2000 – through Gorgoroth, in 2001 we started. Einar and I were not only this energy that we represented in Gorgoroth, that’s how we started to create Wardruna back in the days. Some of us grew tired doing it and wanted something else and some of them kept doing it. We have always been many different spectres.
That’s better than AC/DC…
(laughs) yeah, as long as AC/DC can be AC/DC… same goes for Motörhead, great that Motörhead managed to maintain Motörhead… even though I personally would not want to join them. It is not my energy to just be one continuing kind of similar energy.
Talking about those influences from the eighties and the nineties, there are two songs on the album – the title track and ‘Flowing Starlight’ – with even a gothic-like catchiness. Do you agree with that?
Yeah, I think the outcome of the idea – when I picked out the songs that we ended up using, me, Iver and Ole – and we talked about what could fit to combine these songs together, that’s when we kind of threw in those kind of eighties sound. That is how it started and for some reason it merges in well. We also feel that there is a lot of this goth sound to it. It was not an intentional thing, but it is the outcome of it and I am happy about it in a way (chuckles). It is accidental goth, but there is probably a lot of lovely gothic music out there. Not that I pay too much attention on it, but I liked The Cure, of course, but it has never been a kind of idea to add that to our soundscape, but when we tried to merge in this kind of eighties sound, it turned out that way. It is interesting, it is just sometimes for me the need to allow things to happen and become the thing. It is just emotions, it is just the feeling. You paint the music as you go along in a way.
I have written down while listening to the album, it is a kind of elixir against this hectic world…
I am glad to hear that, because people need that kind of sit down and just communicate with themselves. We are always changing, luckily, we have one core, but it would be sad if we just maintained one expression. Every song should have its own life, in many ways. And of course we try to build it in a conceptual way, but every song should be approached as individuals, just like humans or anything else should be approached as individual. We shouldn’t just let the good things for the things that one is most passionate about, one should allow things to become what it feels that it wants to be. Of course I have favourites and things after, but hopefully they change. Hopefully they can be replaced by something completely different.
It is also funny that I liked the isolation during the pandemic and it was pretty fast… maybe it had to do with the need to escape from the hectic world…
I am kind of good in escaping of anything in a way (laughs). It is very difficult to get me in a hectic situation, I take everything I do very serious in a way. Especially with music, so I think it is being serious in the way of approaching the work or the song that turned into what it turns in to. Instead of being too controlling, you allow your emotions to be the ruler of where you go, instead of controlling in the sense of where you end up. I think that is my nature of creating, I don’t think of it as me creating anything. I think of something wanting to be created and therefore you end up creating it.
In that way that it has always been there, but you have to see it and pick it out of the sky?
Yeah basically, just allow it to kind of fall into your head and then out your mouth haha
I also like the kind of spacey mood in the last song ‘Flowing Starlight’…
It is a kind of song that I never thought it would end up doing. I did have a different mission for that song originally. I did have one song for the album, meant to finish with and then I had ‘Flowing Starlight’ as more of a kind of centrepiece, with a completely different approach. I completely changed the idea when I had saved that song as the last one I wanted to record. I always leave one song to be the conclusion or a binding. When I picked out the songs, I was certain that it would be the final track on the album, but I missed some elements and I asked Ole to bring in some small interlude, just to kind of glue the album together. Then he came with one way too long interlude. When I record full lengths, I always have to consider the vinyl format. I cannot stand double albums and these things – of course there are exceptions – but I don’t want to have a double album. So we kind of need to work within to get the best possible songs. There is 22 minutes on each side. This is something that I do, even though I might work with songs without thinking too much of the length. Still I want to know ’okay, the album cannot be more than this and this’ if you want the sound to be as good as possible. So I said ‘it is a lovely song, but we need something structured in three minutes maximum’. Then he came with three different tracks, just the melodies basically and all of them would work as a matter of facts. What we did was that I threw away the last track – we left that for a mini album or something in the future – and then I decided: ‘okay, now ‘Flowing Starlight’ can turn into the conclusion of the album and then I approached it in a very different manner, and that’s when you got this kind of spacey elements in the middle, but for the rest it is straight rock in a way. Almost embarrassing to sing like that, but as long as I am a bit uncomfortable it is okay (chuckles). I think it ended up as a good song at the end, but I am a bit embarrassed of it still. The three tracks, kind of interludes, ended up as the intro, as ‘Voices In My Head’ and as ‘Through The Veil’. That is basically what we brought in at the end of the recordings and I am really happy with them, because I think they really make the album a smooth journey. They are without drums, only guitar and vocals basically.
In that ‘Flowing Starlight’, you sing ‘this is the dream’, so it is full circle
Yes it is and I start the album with ‘The Dream’ which is kind of the same lyrics as I ended ‘The Humming Mountain’ with, at least the last track of ‘The Humming Mountain’ EP called ‘The Sleep’. I start with the same lyrics as I end the album ‘The Humming Mountain’ with, I just switched the words ‘the sleep’ and ‘the dream’. That was intentional, before I kind of started the recordings. I had the idea to bring the same lyric in just to kind of having a connection. ‘The Humming Mountain’ is kind of the transition into this release.
Was that the reason why you chose the format of MCD for ‘The Humming Mountain’?
I like to call it a mini album. I think it is bigger than an EP. I like the format mini album, because there are a lot of things that don’t fit to a full length. There are a lot of full lengths out there where half of the album is good music and then you have just a few fillers, songs that are made just to fill the album and that is due to the record business. They don’t take the smaller formats seriously and I think for the sake of music, we should bring way more mini albums out there than we actually do. We used to, back in the eighties and also seventies, but then it is sort of vanished. Nowadays people are – not in the metal business but in a lot of other genres – people just listen to one song and they are not connected to any other song. Sadly, the record labels, they want the full lengths instead of pushing enough effort into promoting and taking the small releases and mini albums serious. Why should you actually squeeze in forty minutes when you can release something that is really fantastic just having 20 minutes? I think a lot of the albums that are out would be way better if they were allowed to be mini albums instead of be filled up with a lot unnecessary stuff. The modern way is listening to singles, not many people put on a full length. Maybe only metalheads are good at this (chuckles), compared to others, but a lot of people just listen to one song. I like to build things into having connections and some sort of linear storytelling. Of course it is fantastic if one song can be enough, it means there is a lot of quality in it, but it is the more typical way of listening to music nowadays while I think a lot of songs would be understood if heard together with the conceptual idea around things. It is more like a symphonic idea.
I also wanted to ask something about the artwork and about the artist Oivind Myksvoll…
Oivind is usually doing the layout and everything. He has worked with me both in the layout of some of the Trelldom releases, also Wardruna back in the days. There is a connection with who I am, I have worked with him for many years. Not much as an artwork artist though. The artwork for this was basically: I bring him the picture and he combines it. I like to work in threefold. He is a good photographer and a designer in general. I wanted the conceptual idea of the album reflected on the cover. There is so much information musically, so I wanted to keep the artwork very simple, stripped down in order to have not too much. Just small symbolic ideas around it. I had prepared everything for him to come into the gallery and did a tiny photo shoot of all the elements and then we went through and we have been sending things back and forth and these are elements that I can relate to in the sense of we can put them in the meaning of the conceptual idea of the album. That is basically how we ended up with this piece. So it is instructed artwork (chuckles).
In the seventh song I heard some Wardruna influences…
In which specific part?
In the use of drums or percussion…
Oh yes, I think that is just… the drummer Kevin Kvåle ‘Spektre’, he has a master degree in a specific kind of drum, a very traditional drum. Very few people even know the sound of this drum. I always like to bring that, because he has a very special technique to get sound of it and make it actually work properly. It is like a really deep snare, it is kind of a … it looks like a tom but it basically is like a snare. We also used that on ‘GastiR’, on the song ‘From The Spear’.
Wow, that is special indeed… yes and then it gets very experimental. You went in the direction of The Swans for a moment…
Well, I have never heard The Swans, so I don’t know what it means, but I heard a lot of people mentioning The Swans, when they were talking about the album. Even people I have been working with in music never heard it, even Ole I asked it, so it is a fantastic accidental thing. We might be connected in a way, but we have not experienced it yet. It is a fantastic world.
Now that we are in Norway, from time to time your way of singing reminded me of Green Carnation…
I have no idea. I have met the people, but I have never heard them. I never paid attention to their music. I am terrible at giving attention to music and especially in metal. I let my ears stop listening to that many years ago. Back in the nineties already I stopped listening to metal.
How did you get into Peter Gabriel and prog?
Not in a big sense, but I like all sorts of music. There are a lot of musicians who have this strong signature. It has more reference to emotion towards music, but Peter Gabriel has a lot of lovely stuff, but it is not an artist that I really dived in to. For me Bowie is one of the artists that I know, paying a lot of attention to. Nina Simone and Grace Jones. I think these are the artists that I can always relate to them. I do listen to a lot of other music as well, but that is kind of the three corners that I always have paid attention to.
Which era from Bowie do you like the most?
It depends on my mood, roughly. I think I saw him live in 1996 and I had something like ‘now I understand it’. When I saw him live, I thought: okay this is really fantastic’. And it was pouring rain, I really have a strong memory of that. I love rain (chuckles). It was an outdoor concert. I think the things that spoke most to me at that time were the things that he did on ‘Outside’ (1995). But of course also ‘The Man Who Sold The World’, ‘Hunky Dory’, ‘Station To Station’… fantastic things happening… he has so many albums, and now with ‘Black Star’ a crazy good album! I think ‘Outside’ might be the album where I kind of found everything. It is excellent. It is a really interesting storytelling. I know that most traditional Bowie fans are not that pleased of him at that time, but for me, that is really ace. I like also some of the things that he did under the name Tin Machine. An interesting phase… Most people almost forget that they existed, but in general Bowie has so much fantastic songs. ‘Let’s Dance’ or ‘Ashes To Ashes’, fantastic tracks. He is always doing something good. He is the kind of artist, worth paying attention to.
Indeed, also with the space things…
He has a strong signature, but he still breaks his own rules and he is always changing. I think that is one of the things that I really love. There is no stagnation and there is always some sort of memory of who this is. That is what I like with artists in general, working with many different mediums and you actually don’t need to see the signature, but you can feel the signature in the progress and also the less known works, that’s when you know there is a connection between what is released from that artist and what is anti artist, because it is easy to make songs without putting yourself into it, it is easy to make fake artworks basically, but to put yourself into it, that’s what makes it worth.
It is good that we have art…
It fills my life with a lot of happiness and extensions, so that I have something to reflect upon and to draw on basically. I am pretty sure that everything that allows you to talk to yourself is inspiring, even though if it is something that you might pass by, as long as you reflect and think about it, I am certain that it could be some sort of potential seed for what you will become the next day.
If that is what you experience, you can be happy…
Yeah I collect all the good things that I come up with (laughs) in a way, good people, collect what is good and things will grow…
Are you going on tour with Gaahls Wyrd?
Yeah most likely. At the moment I have the first show now, on the 13th of August. It is being part of this Quorthon tribute, doing some shows with them and most likely some touring at the end of October with Gaahls Wyrd will happen as well, early winter basically. There should be several gigs. Nothing is confirmed at the moment, but we are working on it.
