[Interview conducted January 2005]

Enslaved may be from Norway and may have many of the same pagan and black metal influences of bands like Emperor, Immortal and Satyricon, but they have resolutely walked their own path from the very start.  In place of corpse paint and satanic poetry, Enslaved has draped themselves in Viking imagery and written about history.  The tunes are extreme, incorporating some very unique folk and progressive elements into their sound.  Their latest, Isa, is another masterpiece and guitarist Ivar provides some insight into the process behind the genius…

Can you tell me a little about the album title and how it ties in with the songs on the record?
Halfway into the songwriting for the album, we do a little pre-production - nothing fancy, just in our home studio to get an outside perspective of the songs in an early stage - this is where we normally come up with the title.  You know, kind of put the name on the atmosphere of the music and at the same time make a link to the lyrical universe of the album.  Be a bit pretentious (laughs), which is always important I guess.  This time, the music kind of gave us a certain horizontal line, so to speak; it sounded big, landscape-y, icy.  We've been into the rune thing for a long while and it's very important, a very important cornerstone in the Enslaved lyrics.  We searched a bit and found this run called Isa had a lot of the characteristics or things within it that fit with the music well.  It symbolizes stagnation and [couldn't make out this word-dH] of the moment.  This might sound negative at first, but it's also an important flipside to the dynamics and development and evolution, all that stuff.  To maintain growth, it is important to have these containers or moments where it stops and contains what has been built.  So we found it very fitting.  It was a point in Enslaved's albums where it felt right to consolidate in a way.  You can hear it in the music also.  The music draw influences from the old Enslaved albums in a way.  After finding that title, it was really easy to come up with the lyrics.  There's no story or complete concept behind it, it's more like all the lyrics relate in a way to the title.  They all have this atmosphere of freezing the moment in a way.

When you are writing an album, do you have an overall vision of how it will be or does it just come one song at a time?
I think it happens more or less during the first song.  The first song is almost every time the key, sets the mood more or less for the album.  The process when we start writing an album is somewhat blurry; there's a lot of ideas and directions and all that stuff.  I guess the album is set more or less when things are taken away and we decide not to go in certain directions.  This time, for instance, we spent a lot of time trying to make things large and heavy in a way and also have more room for vocal usage.  The guitar stepped a bit back to give more room for different things with the voices.  That happens really early in the process, but it's never a conscious effort in the songwriting that we need to go in that direction and it needs to sound like that, it just more or less happens.

You guys have always had some incredibly diverse arrangements, like "Lunar Force" just for example (heavy parts, ambient middle piece, almost reggae sounding bit).  Is it usually pretty obvious how the songs should be put together or do you try a lot of different ideas until it clicks?
It's the latter.  It's basically starting at one end and, I don't know which happens most often, but an idea comes along for a song and it's being made out on the guitar and then it is more or less just trying out different impulses.  You just get that feeling when you go from one thing to the other one if it sounds right.  But of course, there is some preconceiving.  Sometimes you have a riff that is intense or upbeat or something and then you feel the need to kind of go down a bit or the other way around - it's just these notions from time to time.  It's very important what happens the first time you try it out.  We're not the kind of band that, if we listen to two riffs combined and if it doesn't sound right the first time, it's not like we're, 'Okay, let's try a few more times' - it's just in the trash bin immediately.  If it snaps the first time, then it's probably right.

You choose some really interesting and unusual chords for many of the songs on Isa, reminding me a bit of Voivod, more in the willingness to experiment with new ideas rather than actually sounding like them.  Is that just from wanting to experiment with different sounds or just liking how those particular chords sound?
It's both.  I like the thing with metal and we're a metal band and have been playing metal, that's our expression, but for me there are a lot of interesting things that you can do with a guitars and keyboards in metal besides the traditional power chords.  For me, an eye-opener was in the early 90s what Mayhem and Thorns were doing, I think that was more influential than maybe Voivod - that came later.  You know these bands were doing the black metal furious thing, but they were the first ones as I remember it from the Norwegian bands that involved all six strings, which was the basic philosophy of Euronymous, the songwriter from Mayhem.  I remember him talking about that, that at some point black metal would realize that there was a lot of strings to be found there, you could use them.  Instead of using three or four guitars in the studio to accomplish harmonies or disharmonies, you could do it with one guitar and that would also sound better live because you wouldn't have the same possibilities or orchestrating as you would in the studio.  I found that really intriguing and I like to pick up chords and ideas from other sorts of music, like some alternative music or rock or progressive music.  Especially disharmonies I guess, because there is a certain… the expression 'disharmonies' is misleading because it sounds like a mistake, but it's not, it's just the same as like off-beats, it's just a matter of being used for something.  When you listen to Eastern music or whatever, the scales sound fucked-up, Arabic scales or whatever, but for [someone] who has grown up with those scales, our Western music sounds pretty disharmonic to them I guess.  The point is that in my musical culture, it's a bit boring with just the regular fifths and thirds and all that stuff because you've heard it so many times, it doesn't give off that reaction.  Voivod became an inspiration when I was listening to their stuff with its disharmonies, the combination of tones that you haven't heard before.  It gives a certain pleasure, kind of being rubbed the wrong way in a way.

"Neogenesis" is quite an epic track.  Did that one just kind of grow and evolve into what it is or was it planned out from the beginning to be such an involved composition?
That was the last song written for the album and I knew that at some point I wanted a closing song for the album that kind of summed up the other songs in a way, a long ending song, a bit inspired by the 70s epic albums by bands like Yes and Pink Floyd, their early stuff, where they would often on the vinyl B-side have a really long song.  It kind of contains more songs in one, in a way, I wanted to have more elements.  I started with that first thing and the rest just came naturally, so it's both.  It's got this mission as a song on its own and it's also got this mission of concluding the rest of the album.

It's also got a very cool, extended solo toward the end.  It seems like guitar soloing is starting to come back finally after being so absent the last few years.
I think solo guitar has a very important part in all sorts of rock-influenced music.  Of course, if you're doing some kind of lo-fi desert thing, it would be a bit weird to have a huge solo on top of it, but I think that all the way from the 60s, 70s and 80s, the solo guitar has been important.  I think some bands are good without the solos and a lot of black metal music is better off without them, but for songs like "Neogenesis" and some other Enslaved songs, it just fits nicely and kind of breaks up the song.  We're lucky to have a lead guitarist, Arve [Isdal], which is more than competent enough to do this.  I suppose if we were a band with just one guitarist, me, then there wouldn't be any solos

I understand that you handle the keyboards for Enslaved as well as guitar.
Yes.  We have a keyboard player who does it live and in the studio but they kind of make out most of the keyboard stuff.  In the old days, before we had a keyboard player, I'd be doing both.

Are the keyboards usually the last thing to come into the song or do you ever write with that as a starting point?
Actually, this time I did it the other way around for the song "Ascension," that one started out with the keyboard arrangement.  That's the first time I've done that and that's because this is the first time that we've had a keyboard player, so it kind of gave me the idea, 'Okay, now we have a real keyboard player, it's not just a guitarist doing keyboards on the side,' which is often the case.  So I think people are going to hear more of that in the future, that we're going to base more stuff on the keyboards.  It can be done successfully without becoming pompous or like vampire theater, cartoonish stuff.  It can be done in a classy way if you listen to stuff by Jon Lord and that kind of stuff; it's really driving and it's not inferior to the guitar at all as an instrument if it's being used in the proper way.

That interplay between Jon and Ritchie on some of that old Deep Purple stuff is just amazing.
Oh, it's perfect.  I was listening to "Highway Star" earlier today and it's just amazing.  It's better than a lot of two-guitar stuff being done.

What are your feelings about analog vs. digital, both in terms of your keyboard gear and also the recording environment?
On a theoretical level, I'm 100% analog because I think it just has this totally different sound to it.  But at the same time, digital stuff sounds good too.  You have to be pragmatic about it.  We're not like billionaires or antique collectors so… I love the sound of a real Mellotron but there's like two of them in Norway, old ones, so I could either be sitting in a dark corner and cursing the world for not providing me with a Mellotron or I could use a sample.  But still, even using the sample, I'm hoping to get a real one someday.  I'm a total fan of the old ones with the tape rolls and the small quirks and mistakes they make.  I have an old tape echo machine which is actually interesting just listening to that.  You play a little song on it and wait ten minutes for the roll and then start making up new stuff with what you did ten minutes ago.  That's what it's got that digital stuff doesn't - [digital is] perfect, it's streamlined and that is good for one use.  If we can use the original thing, then we do that, but if the choice is using something that sounds 80% to the original, then we'd rather use that than nothing at all.

Since you in a unique position concerning your viewpoint on Enslaved's music compared to someone like me, what do you see as kind of the thread that ties all of the albums together?
I [hesitate] to say as the guitarist the guitar playing, but I think there is some truth in that, that it kind of sticks out from some other metal.  I'm not saying it's a lot better or a lot worse than anything else, but it's certainly different in song aspects.  What ties it together is we've been influenced by a lot of different genres but it always comes out sounding like Enslaved in some weird way.  You might hear some direct influence from Darkthrone on one song and the next song will be more King Crimson inspired.  It still has the same signature to it.  I think that comes from the fact that we started out doing Enslaved before we really even learned to play, so the whole development of becoming musicians has been within the framework of making Enslaved songs.  We kind of pushed our limits by being our own...  by being really ambitious and being blind to limitations.  We could come up with song ideas that we had no chance of actually playing but that wouldn't stop us, we'd keep on trying to do that.  A band like King Crimson, they are way above us when it comes to skills, but you can actually learn something by listening and how they solve stuff and every time you try to do something above your level, you come a little step closer.  Or if you're even luckier, you make a mistake in doing it which makes it sound even more like yourself.

Enslaved seems like a band that likes to play live quite a bit - is that the case?
Oh yes, absolutely.  We don't like to travel around in a little car around the whole of Europe for several weeks but at the same time, we enjoy being on the road, doing 30 or 40 shows in a row.  We're lucky in that we get do some festivals, not just metal festivals, but some other festivals and we try and do as much as possible and develop the whole live thing as much as possible.

Do you find that playing live helps with writing new material, in terms of giving you a chance to really analyze your songs and seeing what works and what doesn't?
Absolutely.  It's a totally different thing from the studio to the live thing and I think the songs are put to the real test when it comes to [playing] live; the strength of the actual written song is put to the test there.  You can trick the ear by whatever means in the studio, but when it comes to live, it's just the song coming out of the five musicians and if it sounds right live, it's probably a really good song.  It can be inspiring because you hear stuff that you can't handle too well and needs more work and at the same time you hear what strengths the band has that you can keep on developing.

In older interviews, you guys always had good things to say about Osmose Records.  What prompted you to move to a different label?  Any why Tabu?
We still have a good relationship and a fair and square split up from Osmose.  I'd just like to point out that they kept every obligation that they ever had to the band, they kept every promise and I think the other way around, too.  It just came to the point where, after Below the Lights, we got a real boost of energy, we were really happy with that album, and we were moving in a more or less new direction since Mardraum, including more experimental stuff, taking more risks, doing our own thing, and gotten really a lot of good feedback on that.  There came a time after Below the Lights where we changed the line-up, we consolidated the band and decided to work harder on both live and studio things, which some earlier members found it too ambitious or too bothersome or whatever, and that was just a good thing, and we decided it was time to look into the record label thing, too.  Of course, it was a bit strange because after working with them since '94, we knew them very well personally, too, but we had to be honest about it and look into it and we saw that we could go to another label and it would be better off for us.  I don't know if it is better off for Osmose, but we had to put the band first.  We saw that, okay, maybe it was time to find something new or people who were more interested or enthusiastic about the new direction for Enslaved, whereas Osmose had been more or less going in the opposite direction.  In the past few years or so they grew more underground, in the sense of the more hardcore black metal and death metal bands, whereas we were going in a more spacey direction or whatever.  Which I guess, ten years was enough, it was time to move and when we looked into it we saw that it was quite seldom for a band to stick around with a label for ten years.  But it was a good working relationship as long as it lasted, but I think it was a good decision to try something new.

Did you get a lot of offers from different labels?  What was the deciding factor for you in the end?
We got some offers.  We didn’t get a lot of offers as someone like Robbie Williams probably would if he screamed out, 'Give me a new label!' but we got quite a few good ones.  The deciding factors...  of course, there's always, no matter how blue-eyed and idealistic you are, you have to look into some economic aspects.  Those being covered, the most important thing as I sad was enthusiasm for what we were doing and to see potential in the band and maybe also the same way that bands try and go new directions we needed a label that was willing to try new solutions and new ways to put some weight behind the ambitions.  Along came Tabu, a Norwegian label.  Also, sounding strange as it may, it was an important factor to us that we have a Norwegian label, we wanted to try that out, too.  With all of these ideas and stuff for the live show, we wanted to do a video and all that stuff, we knew there was going to be a lot of chatter back and forth and it would be easier having a Norwegian label, being able to meet them more often.  Also we knew some guys from the label from earlier days, they're from my hometown, so it all came together quite naturally I guess.

I've never thought of Enslaved as a political band at all, so I am just curious what your own thoughts are on the current state of the world?
We have our personal views of course and we're lucky enough to have different views within the band that we can quarrel and fight at whatever time we're drinking, but when it comes to doing interviews for the band, we are talking on behalf of the band so we never get into those kinds of things.  For some reason, politics and religion leads to some form of exclusion and that's no good when it comes to music.

Your bio states that you just completed a video for the title track.  Can you tell me a bit about that experience?
The recording was great because the director is the same guy who has been doing our design stuff.  When we play live, we have some video stuff up as a backdrop for the show, he's been doing those things too, so he felt ready to try and do a music video and we felt it would be a good thing to work with him.  So we worked out all of the ideas and traveled up to a quite desolate place further up north in Norway, spent the weekend there, and recorded it.  It came out quite nicely, even though it was quite a cold experience being outside recording in Norway.

I've read some rumors of a US tour for this record.  Is there any hope for that?
There's definite hope and I think it's gone beyond hope.  It's in the making.  We're working with Plastic Head America and that's all going really well and I know that they're working on setting up something concrete.  It's just a matter of logistics, finding a band or two to tour with and setting dates and all that stuff, but it's gone so far that I think we can say it's going to happen, yeah.

http://www.enslaved.no

ENSLAVED is:
Grutle Kjellson - Bass/Vocals
Ivar Bjørnson - Guitars
Arve Isdal - Guitars
Herbrand Larsen - Keyboards
Cato Bekkevold - Drums