How do you describe In Times? Is it a more progressive and aggressive work than the latest albums from Enslaved? What was your intentions when writing this album?
Grutle: Well, we never have any specific goals, we just like to go with the flow and see where it takes us. For us, the fact of having plans to write, kills the creativity; we have no idea when we start working on new albums of what to do, and this time, yeah, it ended being more aggressive, and well, the production too has a lot of factors. But at the end, we were satisfied on how it ended; it is like a bridge back to the old stuff—aggressiveness.
When you start writing, do you have a process to keep the flow going?
Grutle: Yeah, there is a process of course; it starts with writing riffs, then demo-ing the whole stuff when it’s finished. With this we can decide what to change or keep from each song. I guess we just start jamming, like if we were playing live, until we all get into the same path, and get the live band feeling. We like to record playing all together, not one by one like a contemporary metal band. With this we can create a connection between all of us when we are recording.
You mention contemporary metal band. I guess everything changes with time; how do you feel right now as a musician? Since you started the band up until today?
Grutle: Well, I hope I have improved haha.
Ivar: I hope so haha. The easiest thing about how you become a more skilled musician and more skilled band, since we have had the same line up since 2003, is how you become a better song writer making those demos while recording, I get to know more of my own self and more from the other guys. So I guess we are on the right place since we started the band, we have learned from ourselves and from each guy from the band.
What about the setlist? You have a lot of material to choose; how do you decide what to include on the setlist?
Ivar: That’s the alchemy; I honestly don’t have an idea on how to do it haha.
Grutle: Yeah, theres too many albums to pick songs from, so we try to pick some old favorites, and obviously some of the new material, and of course we try not to play the same songs that we played in the last tour—we like to create a balance. It’s kind of hard; we just sit down and ask each other what we want to play in this tour, and we ended up with 2 songs from Vertebrae, and we didn’t realize until a couple of days ago. I don’t know, it is more like an spontaneous thing too.
How do you feel playing for people from different music cultures?
Grutle: We like to do it! In the US, we like to tour with bands that are kind of far away from us musically to make an interesting package. This is not actually new to us, I mean, the last supporting tour we did, we had Dimmu Borgir and Amon Amarth.
Ivar: Opeth!
Grutle: Yes! Opeth has been the closest band to us musically. But Dimmu Borgir and Amon Amarth… they are far away.
Ivar: I wouldn’t say far away…
Grutle: Yes they are, they aren’t as close as Between The Buried And Me to us musically. So for us this is not the huge stuff to be honest.
Ivar: This is challenging for us, we have to go onstage to lots of people in the audience that maybe are not even familiar with the band, they have no idea what to expect; some people may be like “okay, this is gonna be a lo-fi Norwegian black metal” and I see their faces full of surprise when we get to the first melodic parts; it is an interesting process to them and to us of course.
Text / Photos: Saúl Torres