[Interview conducted May 2008]

Despite what some critics might have you believe, the mighty roar of Norwegian black metal is far from dead and Keep of Kalessin are right at the forefront, taking the genre to epic new levels.  It's hard to believe that the band once existed in the shadow of Emperor and Dimmu Borgir, but any doubters left after Armada hit the scene will be wiped away by the monolithic war cry that is Kolossus.  Mammoth riffs, battalions of drums and huge, sweeping arrangements make for a metallic experience with a distinctly cinematic scope.  Guitarist Obsidian C. has been there from day one and was more than happy to chart the band's rise to domination.

How was your recent tour of the US?
It was just amazing.  We couldn't have hoped for a better tour for us in the States.  Going out with Behemoth and Dimmu Borgir – I couldn't think of a better line-up to go with for a first tour.  The guys in both bands are really cool guys to hang out with, all the gigs were really good with a lot of people at every show.  Also, I was surprised by how many people showed up early enough to catch our set, so that was really cool.  We got to hang out with the fans after the shows and talk a bit with them and there were a lot of people who had been waiting a long time, some of the really hardcore Keep of Kalessin fans have been waiting a really long time to finally see us over there, so it was really nice meeting all those fans.  And to see that many people showing up to see a 100% extreme metal tour.

Are you the sole songwriter?  What input does the rest of the band have when it comes to writing and recording?
I compose most of the songs.  Actually, I composed all of the songs on Armada and Kolossus.  I usually sit down with my guitar and just jam some stuff, make two or three or four riffs that match together, then take it to the rehearsal place and start arrangements and try to find a middle part and stuff like that.  I have different techniques of composing.  Like the title tracks on the latest two albums, are made in different ways because I know what kind of atmosphere I want, the feeling I want.  So I'm thinking about this for days and weeks and even months sometimes.  When I feel like I have this great build-up of inspiration and have thought so much about it, everything just clicks into place and the whole the song is written in just a few hours.  So sometimes I do that and create all the melodies in my head and almost create everything in my head before I touch the guitar.  But also sometimes I just jam a lot on the guitar and create riffs that way, so there are a couple of different techniques.  I also like to have a little bit of diversity and not do the same thing over and over again.

The arrangement on the song "Kolossus" is very unusual.
Yeah, I wanted like a two-piece song.  I wanted an intro and also a middle part that was really big and epic, maybe not even played on instruments just using some horns and guitars in the background.  So I knew how structurally the song was going to be but I didn't have the riffs.  So I was thinking about the melodies and stuff and suddenly just sat down and made the whole thing.

There is a great deal of diversity on Kolossus.  When you come up with song ideas, what is it that makes you say 'This should be a Keep of Kalessin song' or not?
I always ask the band members what they think and they seem to agree with my decisions all the time, so I guess my judgment is pretty good.  They have respect for my songwriting.  I think there are too many bands out there nowadays, especially in the black metal scene, that don't really put riffs that match together.  They just put a bunch of different riffs together, there's not an overall thought behind the individual songs.  I think they have great parts sometimes but you can never pinpoint individual songs.  I like to create songs instead of a lot of parts, so I think it is important to spend a lot of time on arrangements and also on building the actual song.  You can hear that on Kolossus and each song has its own individual atmosphere and you can separate the songs form each other.  That's where we use most of the time in the writing process.  The songs "Ascendant" and "Escape the Union," those two songs were actually one song at first before I decided that this is too many riffs in one song, I need to split this up in two.  The riffs and the riffing style is very much similar, even though it doesn't sound like that on the album now.  We also have a lot of leftover riffs because, instead of putting all the riffs …  Even the best riffs are not on the album because they wouldn't match into the song or something like that, so I just had to wait on those riffs and hopefully try to get them onto the next album.  To write riffs is very easy.  I write a lot of riffs and most of them don't even make it to the album, even though they more than good enough.  The thing that is taking the most time is to arrange them into good songs and really build the songs so they have a good structure and some kind of climax to the song.

You have been through several labels – how did you end up on Nuclear Blast for Kolossus?
We had been talking to Nuclear Blast for over a year.  We had offers from some of the bigger labels as well, but Nuclear Blast seems to be the biggest fans of Keep of Kalessin and they also went out of their way to get this band signed, so that shows a lot of dedication.  They are really truly fans of the band and that's very important if you're going to sell a product.

Can you tell me a bit about your other band Headspin?
Headspin I would say is a mix between Exodus and maybe Coroner style of thrash metal.  I've been a thrash metal fan since the 80s and I really enjoy playing that kind of music live.  Having a thrash metal band is so much easier as I make a lot of riffs in that style and at one point I had so many riffs like that which didn't fit into Keep of Kalessin, so it was like, 'Hey, we need to start a thrash metal band.'  I love playing that kind of music live and it's a bit different from play8ing black metal, it's more made for the live situation.  It's a lot easier too; you don't need to have all the pedal boards and equipment 110%.  Everything needs to work, every night, with Keep of Kalessin as far as the effects and all that shit.  In a thrash metal band, you just plug into any kind of amp and it sounds really good anyway because the riffs are more… not even easier, but they don't consist of so many strings and maybe so many different variations, so it's easier to have a better sound.  When you don't have to think about all the shit that can go wrong and you have this attitude like a thrash metal band, I like that kind of vibe.  We recorded the drums and the guitars over a year ago but we have been too busy with Keep of Kalessin so we haven't had time to [finish it].  Now we have one month but I'm still waiting for a fucking PC for the studio that was going to be here this week.  I hope to get it this weekend.  But now we have one month to finish that album and hopefully record a bunch of other stuff, as well as pre-producing the next Keep of Kalessin album.  I'm really hoping to get this Headspin album done in the next couple of weeks and get it out this fall.  I'm really happy with it; I love the riffs and songs on it.  You will hear a different side but then again you can actually hear it doesn't sound like any other thrash metal band.  But like I said, it's kind of a hybrid between the Exodus stuff, sometimes technical but really heavy type of riffing, but also the Coroner style with a lot of tapping and stuff.  As far as the rest of the thrash metal scene, I think bands like Exodus and Testament that have really gotten a revival now are really cool.  I love the new Exodus albums; I think they are fucking awesome.

Will you be releasing Kolossus on vinyl?
Yeah, it's supposed to be ready upon release of the album actually.  It will be a double gatefold with great artwork, so it should be out there.  I'm not sure about America, but I know we're getting a release in Europe so it is possible to import it or order it online or something.

Do you think there will ever be a healthy business model for legal music downloads?
Healthy… I think there will be a business model, but I'm afraid it won't be healthy for anyone other than the ones running the site.  I think DRM is maybe not the way to go.  On videos, it might actually work, but I think on music you will have problems with that because people so much want to take it with them on their portable mp3 players and there are too many restrictions on DRM.  The problem is I think the price will go down and people are talking about offering subscriptions.  Let's say iTunes or any other big store online, if they were to change their business model to a subscription or something, it would be so unfair for the artists and the artist would earn so little from the albums, I'm not sure how it would work.  Right now, we are probably earning more on a physical album than from a download, even though a download is almost the same price and I have seen sometimes the physical albums are even cheaper in some stores than the downloads.  The problem is the Internet business, the ISP, the actual store, they are taking so much of the cake that there is almost nothing left for the artist.  People who think that artists are making a lot of money on their merchandise and their live shows, they need to have a reality check.  Let's say that album sales are 60% of an artist's income and you just take away that 60% - it's hard enough to survive as an artist anyway.  In 2006, I was touring with the two most successful metal bands from Norway at that time, Keep of Kalessin and Satyricon.  Those bands were the ones touring the most and having the albums that got the most attention during that time of all Norwegian bands, and I was not able to make a living touring with both bands at the same time.  People who think that you make a lot of money don't realize that if you get like 2000 Euros or even 10,000 Euros, the expenses on a tour – you need to have your own crews, a tour bus, all that shit, it costs so much money that people are not aware of.  So it's not like the salaries of the musicians are really good.  And somebody who is downloading an album, they don't necessarily buy two T-shirts at the show.  They say, 'Oh, but we buy more merchandise,' but, oh, do you really?  That's just bullshit.  I hope [a decent] business model will come someday, but it will take a lot of time and during that time you will see a lot of good bands falling off because it's impossible to survive.  Also, the only thing record labels care about is record sales.  I get a lot of e-mails from the U.S. saying that there are fans that want to see us there and I'm trying to convince the labels and promoters to get us over there, and they were saying (this was before Armada), 'Well, you only sold 80 albums over there – 80 albums in the whole of the U.S..'  It's impossible to tour when you don't have the album sales to back it up.  With the downloads, it's impossible to have some kind of tracking system of where you are actually popular.  Let's say the new album was downloaded 10,000 times and that's not even really a far-out number and we sold 10,000 albums, then you'd have 20,000 people maybe – we would never know how many downloads.  There is a tour starting pretty soon and they are saying, 'We need a 20 to 30,000 selling band – how are we going to convince people that we have that many fans in the U.S. if we don't have the album sales to back it up?  I'm not really against people downloading, but I hope people understand the seriousness of not buying the album.  It's the medium-sized bands, not the big ones that are really getting hurt because they aren't earning that much merchandise and show money.  The medium-sized bands are also where you have the hungriest bands and the most quality.  Look at the history throughout metal; it's always before the really big break of any band that they have released their best albums.  But now those kinds of bands with the album sales going down, they don't get the money for the studio.  Maybe they have this great potential but you'll never hear about it because they are not capable of recording a good album because it costs shitloads of money to record a good album and you need some kind of support.