Why Kampfar Respect Women

Originally written for Soundshock.com

Since signing to Napalm Records for their 2006 release ‘Kvass’, Norway’s Kampfar have received a significant deal of attention worldwide. In the last two years, the black metallers have managed to play prestigious metal festivals such as Wacken and Hellfest and soon they will embark on their debut North American outing. But despite the peaks they have accumulated, frontman Dolk considers these past two years the most strenuous and draining of Kampfar’s career since their inception in 1994.

“When a band gets more interest, in a way, you have to make new decisions every single day and it starts to become more like a job. It feels at least sometimes that it’s not good to be in a band any more.” It has been two years since

 Kampfar’s last comprehensive tour and Dolk is more than enthused to return to the road, delivering a stellar show to those in attendance. “I’m really happy to be playing again and I haven’t felt like that for the last two years. “ Drummer Ask submits the footnote: “We finally get the reward of the stress and the chaos.” This year marks the release of the Norwegians’ fifth album ‘Mare’, a mature release adding a bevy of variety to the black metallers’ catalogue. Naturally, Dolk is proud of the album but is more astounded by the attention the release has earned: “We sold as many albums of ‘Mare’ in the first five days as we did with our last album for two years. So it was like “Wow!”” Perhaps this impressive result can be partially attributed to Kampfar working with legendary metal producer Peter Tägtgren for the first time. “It was a natural choice. For me at least, it was very very important that he wanted to do this because we didn’t want to go into a studio because it’s a famous studio or it’s a famous guy doing the sounds. We wanted to take a new direction, of course, to create art. We needed someone who wanted to push the boundaries and limits to get with us. It was really important for me that he really wanted to do this album, not just “Yeah, I’ll do it,” but with passion. The last time I talked to Peter before we really decided to go that way, I asked him “Are you really up for this?” and he said “Fuck yeah!” The only thing we can say is in some ways it’s bad that we didn’t do this earlier.”

Ask highlights how important it was to have a producer who knew precisely what the band needed for their record and this kind of producer would have to be well-versed in all kinds of music as opposed to exclusively black metal. “We’ve always been a bit stubborn about keeping it a little on the low-fi. We’ve always taken thing away and this time we said “Fuck it, we’ll do everything. We’ll see what happens because if it doesn’t work you can always remove things.” So we choose to work with a producer who could do bigger productions and it’s very interesting how focused he is because we played Hellfest last year and he played there with Hypocrisy and the studio had been booked well in advance. We were watching Fear Factory play from the side of the stage because we both love the drummer and I’m talking to him and he’s well drunk. I’m explaining exactly what kind of sound I want for the studio and he remembered everything and had everything set up for that sound and he completely nailed it, exactly what I wanted. He thinks with a band. He doesn’t go in there and say “OK I’m going to give you my sound.” He says “I’m going to give you the sound that is best for you.”” Naturally, Kampfar will not consider anyone else when producing their next album.

‘Mare’ is something out of the ordinary for Kampfar and indeed black metal as a whole. The album is dedicated to all those women brave enough to subscribe to their own lifestyles and follow their own paths in life. This idea was inspired by the fate of women who were misunderstood by priests hundreds of years ago in Norway and were branded a witch and burnt. Ask sheds light on Kampfar’s only profound religious remark: “The thing is that to be a woman today and do what you want to do then maybe it’s a little harder than men but two hundred years ago, it was a lot worse. If you were a woman two hundred years ago and you said “No, I want to do my thing. I want to learn about what I want to learn,” [they set you on fire]. That’s our religious statement.”

Kampfar’s fortunes have not come without misfortunate. Late last year, founding member Thomas decided to part ways with the band on good terms. Thomas’ guitar work is instantly recogniseable and signature to Kampfar, carving a unique identity for the band. “The reason his guitar playing is quite different to other guitars is because he’s actually playing piano on a guitar. He thinks in piano. There were never two guitarists so he always played two melodies at once, basically, two harmonies at once. He plays deceptively simple. He’s actually an incredibly skilled musician,” Ask notes. Dolk is highly optimistic about Kampfar’s future with one of the founding members now absent from the line up: “We’re gonna nail it, without Thomas or not. We’re still brothers. When I go back to Norway, we’re having a barbecue party and he’s invited. We’re really connected but we just had to stop work with this kind of music together. We ended the line there, really.”

With the unhinged success of ‘Mare’, Kampfar’s position as co-headliners on tour with black metal stalwarts Secrets of the Moon and Vreid and a

highly anticipated North American tour, the band’s limits are not yet capped and they will continue to harvest a multitude of success that most black metal bands will never achieve. Kampfar demonstrate that persistence and artistic endeavour is the key to their outstanding results.

The End for Bal-Sagoth?

Originally written for Soundshock.com

Recently, black metal in the UK has truly developed a consistent scene with bands like Fen, A Forest of Stars and Wodensthrone acting as the vanguards of a new movement. However, before these bands, one of the most uttered names both at home and internationally in the UKBM scene was Bal-Sagoth. In the past few years, the fantasists have kept a low profile but why? Mainman Byron Roberts explains why he considers the band to be in semi-retirement.

  

In 2006, Bal-Sagoth released their last studio effort, entitled ‘The Chthonic Chronicles’ on one of the biggest metal labels Nuclear Blast. The album was very well-received by the metal community and an international showcase of UK black metal.  “We haven't been writing any new material, because we have yet to decide whether to carry on for further albums. I think eventually you will see the other members of the band branching out into various other projects, as realistically Bal-Sagoth won't last forever. I suppose you could say that Bal-Sagoth is in a state of semi-retirement, which wouldn't actually be too far from the truth! So essentially, the band has just been playing a handful of shows per year since our last album "The Chthonic Chronicles" came out in 2006,” Roberts notes. “Over the last five years, we've played in countries such as Finland, Norway, the USA, Portugal, the Czech Republic, etc. It hasn't been a deliberate decision to avoid playing the UK, it's just that no suitable offers had really come in until recently.” 

Given the bombastic and grand sound Bal-Sagoth exude on record, it can be incredibly difficult to replicate the music live. Opinions on Bal-Sagoth shows vary widely, dependent on the quality of the sound and the knowledge of the sound engineers at the time. “It's impossible to accurately recreate the multi-layered sound of the albums in the live environment. We just have to settle for getting it as close as is humanly possible within the overall confines of the live show. That's partially why I've never been satisfied with our gigs over the years. I personally don't think there's any need to play this stuff live. Every time we play a show it perhaps erodes a little bit of the magic this band has. I would hope that the energy of the live experience might go some way to make up for it, but there's only so much you can do. Quite honestly, our material is not designed or written to be performed accurately live. Bal-Sagoth has always been more about the album experience; sitting back with the stereo on, booklet in hand, with the listener getting lost within the sonic universe of our discography.”

Unlike many metal acts, Roberts admits that Bal-Sagoth’s strength is not in the live show. The prominence of the lyrics in the band substitute for this though; each album is a conceptual piece, concerning itself with fantasy and sci-fi worlds conceived by Roberts himself. “The whole concept for the band was essentially built around the lyrical content. I had many of the lyrics written and the albums planned our years before I even met the people who would eventually end up being in the band. I came up with the band concept around 1989, but back then, seemingly no one was interested in being part of a high concept metal band with fantasy and sci-fi lyrics. That was the height of the whole socio-political thrash and death metal band surge, and it just wasn't "cool" to want to start a band dealing with mythological and fantasy topics. It was a real problem finding people willing to give the idea a chance. Eventually a guy I knew called Mac introduced me to some people he had been jamming covers within their bedroom. They were looking to start a serious band too, and to cut a long story short, Jonny and Chris ultimately agreed to be part of the Bal-Sagoth project. Only then did the music start being composed.”

With such dedication to the lyrics that are written over a period of years, it seems unusual that Roberts expresses these stories through music as opposed to a medium that would allow him to limitlessly narrate, such as a novel. “The reason I wanted to tell these stories via music was because of my love of black and death metal, and fantasy & sci-fi literature. Fusing those two loves seemed like a good idea at the time. The whole idea was that the band would be an extreme and symphonic musical project which would be underpinned by this elaborate lyrical universe. Originally, it was also driven by a desire to create the kind of music and lyrics that I myself would like to hear and read as a fan, because there wasn't much of that kind of stuff around back then. Pretty much everyone opposed the idea at some point, even people in the band itself, believe it or not! But eighteen years and six albums later, here we are.” Persistence is obviously the key for Byron. He states: “The other members aren't really reading enthusiasts, to be honest, and they certainly aren't big readers of fantasy, sci-fi or mythological books. I'm sure they eventually read the album booklets once they get copies of the CDs, but they generally don't take any great interest in the lyrical side of the band, and never have. And that's fine with me, because the lyrical side is exclusively my domain anyway.”

With a power-struggle between the music and the lyrics, it is worth considering how the songs are written and which aforementioned aspect is the priority. “When we write albums, I'll give the composers an outline of the kind of stuff I need for each song. Sometimes it will be a very broad outline, merely mentioning the overall mood required for a piece. Other times, for the "flagship" songs, it will be a much more detailed outline listing the events of the story and so forth. A lot of the time Jonny just comes up with something unconnected to an outline and just submits it to me, and I then decide which lyrics are best suited to that particular composition. More often than not, the actual final lyrics are kept a secret from all the other members of the band until the mixing process is underway! So, ultimately, our way of writing songs is a mixture of collaboration and isolation, and that's the Bal-Sagoth method.” A method that is unlikely to change if Bal-Sagoth decide to continue with new material but for now, it’s all up in the air and all dedicated fanatics should catch the live shows because nothing is set in stone for these symphonic black metallers.