Congratulations with the new album. I like it very much!
Thank you. I am glad to hear that. I am very pleased with it myself, so I am glad to hear that other people can enjoy it.

It has been a while, but that seems to be normal with the pandemic and things like that… The previous album ‘Stranger Times’ came out in 2017. Can you resume what happened after the release of that former album?
Yes, I guess the main reason why it took so long to release ‘Ghosts From The Past’ was not so much the pandemic. It was more because two of us became parents. I got my first born on the day that I was supposed to go in and do like the final mixes on ‘Stranger Times’ and then do the adjudgements on the mix. So that was postponed back then, but after a week it was safe, so I was able to go into the studio and do the final fixes. Then we focused on mastering and we managed to do some touring, but then after that, properly go into a creative mindset while having small children seemed pretty difficult to me, being the main song-writer. After our first born came the next child two years later, so it was a time of very little sleep and spending a lot of energy in that. When it comes to being creative in Vulture Industries, you cannot just do it half an hour here and there. You have to properly immerse into the material and kind of ‘live it’ for a period to get where I want to be with the band and make full songs, not just easy tunes, but something that really conveys and bring the listener in to make something that needs more than just a quick listen. And to be able to create that, I need to go deep into it and stay there for a long while. Having small kids around then, that was difficult, so it took some years, but now we are there.

Good that the vibe returned! Indeed, in the infosheet is standing that the album was created in a period when big changes occurred in your personal life and in the world…
Yes, in the personal world it was children arriving and in the world the pandemic and the war. It seems that the world is shifting towards totalitarian regimes. This is scary stuff! It makes you think a lot about this kind of things, where the world is heading and what you have brought them into, the children. Of course, one is hoping for positive change and maybe to some degree we can be able to contribute in that respect hopefully.

Yes we should stay positive, although it is not easy sometimes…
(chuckles) I believe if you are a bit kinder to the next person you meet, the next person will be a bit kinder to the next person he meets, which will be positive for the next person he meets and so on. At some point that might come back to you and in the process, you make the world a little bit better.

That is well said…
It is not going to fix everything, but it is worth trying.

Is there a kind of theme on ‘Ghosts From The Past’?
No, the theme of the album is basically how I see the world, what’s happening around me, painted in a bit stronger colours, with a bit sharper edges, to make it a bit more interesting as a piece of art. It is about old men desperately trying to secure their own legacy and risking the world burning in the process. It is like a monster hiding under your bed to keep away from the monsters of the world. It is about my fears, and it is a bit about being nice to each other.

These are deep emotions. I can understand that you have to concentrate on it when composing, instead of being distracted by the noise and sounds of the world around you…
When it comes to inspiration, everything can contribute and everything can be a trigger. It is like a mirror of who we are. It is a window into our souls. We bring everything that we are into our music and in that respect, everything that we experience and everything that we have experienced is a part of that influence which makes the music, if that makes any sense.

Is Vulture Industries a band which has toured often until now?
Yes, I think we played 150 shows until now in total, which is not extremely much, considering that we exist for a long time, but I guess following the release of our second album, we intended to have at least a short European tour each year. Lately last years were less, because of the pandemic and also because of changes in our private lives, but we surely hope to get back on the road again. One of the main goals of doing music, is to be able to travel around in interesting places and see places and new people that you would not be able to meet if you were not doing this and also seeing it from a very different side than you would have as a tourist for example. So I find this very rewarding. Of course lack of sleep and lack of hygiene on tour are not so much fun, but I still like it. Like being a travelling circus or something like that. It is like diving into a very singular experience, it is very much a bubble. You exist on the side of everything else when you are doing a tour. It is what you are doing now and that’s all. Then you come back home and okay, it is cold shower: back to work, back to normal life.

Don’t you have problems to make that click?
Not so much anymore, but when we were younger, we were partying harder when touring. It took me a couple of days off at work to sober up (laughs). But now it is pretty fine.

What is for instance a place that really struck you with the band?
We travelled most of Europe. I think of European countries, there are not that many that we haven’t played. We have not been in Portugal. We have not been in Ukraine. We have not been in Kosovo and a couple of smaller countries. But most of the bigger music markets, we played multiple times. I guess one of the countries that we connected the most with is Romania. I don’t really know why or what the cause is, maybe there is some kind of inner link or something with our expression that clicks with the mentality of Romanian people. We also have lots of friends from Romania. We worked with Costin Chioreanu for multiple albums, he is a Romanian artist. He did the artwork for ‘The Tower’, for ‘Stranger Times’ and also multiple videos for us and also other collaborations. The Dordeduh guys are also good friends of ours and Edmond Karban was working with us on ‘Stranger Times’. So I guess there is probably some kind of similarity between The Romanian and the Norwegian mentality that works in a way.

Oh yes the Dordeduh guys are very friendly. I talked such a long time with Edmond…
He is a fantastic guy! I don’t see him so often, but I still consider him as one of my closest friends.

I think that Vulture Industries can also be successful in a scene larger than metal only. Did you already experience something like that?
With our music? Yes, I think what we are doing is quite broad. It includes elements of lots of genres. It is not like we set out one thing, to go from there and there to make some strange mix and I don’t think it turned into a strange mix either. I think we have a quite distinct personality that shines through, even if we fall within progressive rock for a part or we are post-punk or we are closer to gothic metal at some point, or doom or whatever. I think all of our stuff can be really distinctly heard as Vulture Industries. It is easy to recognize the band once you have heard it a couple of times. Okay that was a little bit aside of the point. Well, our audience is very diverse and there are fans of many genres. I wonder, are there so many people that are only into technical death metal for example? Don’t people listen to multiple genres really? I guess most people do. From that perspective, it kind of makes sense that a band can also cross genre lines without being a problem. It is possible to really appeal to people interested in various things.

It is true what you say, most people have a broader taste than one segment only of the subgenres…
When we set out to make music, we wanted to make an experience. We didn’t want to be limited to a specific genre and I guess this can resonate with most people who are interested in music, especially in music you have to immerse in, a true experience. We make music that I think can work for many people, but of course, when you like us, who are diverse, it is also a bit difficult for people to market it. That side gets a bit fucked up, but it is what it is.