I started writing material in January of last year and basically had most of the songs finished by March. I guess before that, it took a long time deciding on the form of the album. But as soon as I had the parameters in mind, it wasn’t really that hard to write.

Of course, I took on the challenge so I felt I needed to do it all by myself, apart from playing the live drums. It takes awhile when I was doing the recording or writing or producing or mixing and all that. It’s a hard time keeping objectivity.

It wasn’t my intention to make it very complex, but I guess some parts are somewhat progressive.

Thank you! But it wasn’t my intention to do something very spectacular, full of technicality or anything like that. I really just wanted to make a full-on Metal album.

Well, by doing one voice, going back, doing a second one over-dubbing, doing a second over-dubbing. It’s really natural trial-and-error, I suppose.

I suppose lyrically this album is one of the harshest I’ve ever done. Probably because my intentions were very – even though it’s the same symbolic landscapes it’s been on previous albums, I really intended to be more specific and more clear in my symbolism because I really wanted to get my point across.

Astera Ton Proinum I would say is a tribute to Lucifer, because Astera Ton Proinum is roughly translated as Morning Star. That is, the Son of the Morning. He – Lucifer – is the Bringer of Light.

It’s really more of a "hero" song rather than a very "Satanic" song, if you know what I mean, because the album in general – the title in itself, The Adversary – sums up many of the characters I’ve used in previous lyrics as well. I’ve used Icarus, Prometheus. On this album, I was greatly influenced by the great Morning Son. These are all figures who dared to stand their ground alone. They dared to stand for something new, and wanted something more of themselves.

Most people will just follow the flow, and rather hold down those who want to bring about change, because most people do not want to be confronted, with least of all themselves. They’re too occupied with what’s politically correct or religiously correct.

Those who bring about change are those who dare to stand on the outside, and usually stand alone. This is a tribute to them, and at the same time a very harsh criticism of that exact mass who do everything to avoid being confronted.

It’s very hard to pick out because for once – it’s rarely so, but this time I have a very strong personal relationship with all the songs. When finishing an album, you usually draw on some songs that – not that you see as fillers, but that you’re not so connected to.

But this time for some strange reason for me, personally, it’s very pleasurable because I have a very strong connection with all of them. I can’t really pick out a favorite.

No, not really. Nothing really that spectacular happened. It was basically done in two different sets. It was really just intentioned to make a rather stripped down video which kind-of had the in-your-face aggressive parts with my solo shots, so to speak. We based this whole atmosphere to it. That was the whole purpose. It’s rather expensive.

At the same time, even though it’s a solo album rather than a band perspective, this whole album is really very much for a 5-piece Rock orchestra. It kind-of represents partly the atmosphere of the album, the aggression. At the same time it reflects the Metal musicality of the album.

I suppose there are some footage clips there from my past in Metal. It also represents my musical career and my Metal heritage in a way. It wasn’t meant to be very spectacular or have a lot of effects. In that way, I feel it represents the album very well. At least in my perspective, I think The Adversary is quite purist in its expression.

Not at this point because at the moment we’re doing some temporary reunion shows with Emperor.

Yeah, but the U.S. is getting more than Europe anyway because we’re just doing very, very few shows. The only reason there are 4 shows in the U.S. is because we were supposed to play one show in New York and one show in L.A. But they sold out very quickly, so we had to do a second show in the same places.

So, we did all the Emperor rehearsals, and keeping that on track, plus other work, there wouldn’t really be time to do the solo tour live; even though I had this in the back of my mind when making the album and arranging the songs. It’s very much a frame of mind, but since I’ve done practically everything possible except drums on this album, it’s not the natural progression with it as if you were a full band: All the members get to do all the songs together in rehearsals, then you go into the studio to record them, then you go play them live.

Whereas for me it would be a whole new project, hiring a session band, practicing while teaching them the music and all that. That in combination with the time schedule for the Emperor rehearsals, and the musical approach of having just one Ihsahn album to pick from. I’d rather wait and see after the second Ihsahn album and re-evaluate then and see if I’ll get a band together.

The reason we’re doing that was basically because ever since we quit the band in 2004, there have been a lot of offers for us to do a lot of shows. I know that we’ve been on a priority list for Wacken Open Air for quite a few years.

It just came to a point where we talked on the phone and said, "OK, if we are ever going to do a reunion show or something, we might as well consider it now."

As a music journalist, you’ve probably seen that there’s some great reunions and then there are some that are really sad. We wanted to be on the good part of that. At least we Want to do this. We took this very slow in the sense that we initially just talked about "Should we consider it?" "OK, let’s meet up in the rehearsal room, just the 3 of us and bring up the old songs, see how it feels."

We soon found out that it felt good to rehearse. So we thought that if we got to doing it live, there was a lot of pressure for us to do a lot. So we just set the premise that we want to do these in a tempo and on a level where we were all comfortable and that we would enjoy it.

If it was up to others, to be honest, we could have toured the U.S. twice by now. That is not our intention. We have focus on our own separate careers now. So we just want to keep the whole Emperor thing at the level where we can go out and play a few shows with the band in hopefully in different places of the world, where we all enjoy it and where the pressure from commercial forces aren’t that great.

It all depends. We’re still getting almost offers in daily, so we just have to consider. But for now it’s basically just those few shows – the U.S. shows then Wacken Open Air in August. After that time, we’ll just have to wait and see.

It would be cool – Emperor never played Japan, for example, so if something turns up there, we’ll see. We’re just taking it one step at a time.

We just came to a point – Peccatum had gone through many, many changes since we formed in 1998. I guess we felt that if we ended Peccatum with The Moribund People, which is our latest release, we felt we kind-of filled out Peccatum in a way that it would end on a very good note. We’re very happy with how Peccatum ended up.

In the meantime here in Europe we started up Mnemosyne Productions, it’s our own production company. If you’ve seen the full release of the new Ihsahn album, this is the third release on our own label, even though it’s in cooperation with Candlelight.

But we kind-of see Mnemosyne Productions as the umbrella for all our musical work. We have our own studio. We are the proud owners of a bigger analog studio. We want to be able to produce other bands. It’s a home for all of our musical projects. Whether we’re both involved or work separately. Ihriel will continue her work with Star of Ash, which just released an album. We will definitely do musical work together. We just had a meeting with some partners today actually for a new musical project.

But we just thought we reached the final chapter of Peccatum, and now that we have Mnemosyne Productions, I think we feel that we have a gathering point for our work, and that we stand more freely in how we use our resources, so to speak.

No. I think that for me, Ihsahn will kind-of cover my solo work from now on.

Yeah. Why is that, you may ask. Me and Garm, we go back probably 30 years now as friends. I’ve done guest vocals from when he was in Arcturus, I’ve done some vocals for the William Blake album by Ulver. So it was high time that he did some for me on one of my albums.

When I did test his vocals for that song , the vocal lines themselves were going to be quite easy for him to sing. It fit his voice so well. So, I think he did an excellent job with that.

Not really. I suppose I directed it together with Ihriel, and we had a company that we had used before – Trine og Kim - do it. But I was very conscious about having a very solitary cover. I very much wanted a kind of Demon figure that could represent The Adversary in a way. I didn’t want anything with too much chaos. I thought the album – as I said before – was very purist and very direct, so I wanted a cover that could hopefully represent that. So personally I feel that the cover on the record really reflects the lyrics, the music, and the whole package.

Yeah, just partly. I have some guitar students at the local cultural school.

Hopefully! I recently sent off the manuscript of an Emperor tablature book. Are you familiar with Emperor’s Scattered Ashes? It’s a sort-of compilation; a Best Of, really. I took certain original recordings from that in there. That covers Emperor songs from the beginning all the way through to Prometheus. I transcribed it all for guitar and bass.

I kind-of had my pupils to use as guinea pigs for that material. That book will be out later this year, I think.

No, not really. Some people have asked me about that, but I think there’s so many of that out there on general guitar techniques – there are so many good things out there already! I don’t see how I should add to that.

I did this book because - there are a lot of instructional videos and a lot of tablature books out there. My inspiration to do this was basically because I learned to play guitar from tablature books myself. My favorite music at the time was very much Iron Maiden.

From my knowledge, there’s nothing out there covering this type of music. So I thought I might as well. To be honest, there are a lot of decent attempts to write tablature of our first music, but because of the sound production and the whole speed of everything, it was very hard to pick out the actual play. So, I thought it would be nice to get at least something out there that people could be sure is correct. And it was always interesting for myself to re-evaluate with what I know now of musical theory, and go back and re-interpret what we actually did that we did on pure intuition when we were teenagers.

I hope so. I think it will be. It will be distributed by the same people as all Candlelight releases. I’m doing it with the same people. So, yeah, I think so.

Everybody contributes in some way, but the Einherjer trio had made most of the riffs and arrangements before I came into the mix. I don't play guitar, so I took care most of the lyrics, and that’s probably the way it's gonna stay. 

Basically, everyone pile up on personal material, which is then tried out in different arrangements. When the instrumental parts are all in place, I get a hold of the raw material, and add the vocals last, together with solos and other instrumental details. The lyrics themselves spring out of ideas that might have been conceived beforehand, but are then woven into the rhythm.

Battered is, despite being extreme in its expression, a real down to earth band in every way. We are not trying to be something that we are not, and I felt that the lyrics should reflect this. It would be plain wrong as I see it, if the lyrics were themed/violent or psychopathic, as I really cannot relate to it. That’s why the lyrics are reflections over things that run trough everybody’s heads. Everyday trails, frustrations, about musical inspiration, and some black humour. We also have some drip feeds of history and politics in the mix.

Industrial Killing is about the holocaust, and is a bloody reminder of how fucked up we are as a race. It’s been sixty years since the world suffered the Nazi regime, but this is our way of saying that we haven't forgotten about what happened. The only way to not go through history again is if we smear our faults as a race in our face regularly, so we will not fall to that low again. Sadly, it seems we are fighting a loosing battle...

You will definitely see a wider scope in all our material in future releases. Including vocal variations. Although we are all very satisfied with our debut, we all want to expand on what we are and to define ourselves more in the maelstrom of bands out there. We will still be Battered, but even more so.

Always a tough question, but the song I keep falling back on is New Lament. I think it has all the ingredients for a kick ass song, and I never tire of it.

Not at the moment, since we are all pretty tangled up in either school or work, but his does NOT mean that it won’t happen. Battered is a first rate priority to us, and we WILL get it out to you guys. Live shows is what it’s all about.

A sonic attack with all the ferocity of the album and even more! We really get high on playing live, and basically we go apeshit on stage. We all love the positive atmosphere of a gig, and ironically, nothing gets that through as much as really pissed of razorsharp riffs and tearing your vocal chords. You should check us out for yourself ;)

We filmed that one in front of a green screen, having no idea whatsoever of what the final results were gonna be like. The computer stuff came on later on. A funny thing might be that Ole just kept smiling like some idiot when he was alone with the camera. It was hilarious! That’s why there is no close ups of him in the video, hehe. But we are gonna try and compile enough live footage to make a new video, as we feel that would be more true to the bands core idea of live music. But that’s still on the drawing board.

Well, we would like to say thanx for all the great support we have gotten on our live shows so far! Seeing all those people having a good time in the pit with us rocking onstage is a huge motivation! Besides, I hope to meet many more of you crazy people at gigs to come, and check out our website www.battered.no for news concerning the band and upcoming shows. See you guys soon and thanks again!

Dark Funeral are: vocalist/bassist Emperor Magnus Caligula, guitarists Lord Ahriman and Chaq Mol, and skinsman Matte Modin. The Crowgrrl recently caught up with Lord Ahriman to talk about the new album and other news from the Dark Funeral camp.

Attero Totus Sanctus is an awesome album! Can you tell us about how the music has matured, gotten even more majestic on this work?

Attera Totus Sanctus is without a doubt our darkest, intense and most extreme creation up to date. We have keep true to our roots, yet brought the music to a completely new level of extremity. Musically it’s also our most technical album. It’s actually a huge improvement in all aspects I would say. On this album we have tried out many new things, like new riff structures, drum beats and rhythms.

The title means "Destroy the holy"! And it symbolizes both our anti-religious views as well as the hate we have been fuelled with during the last couple of years. Basically, we’ve just had it with everything. And if you stand in our way, we’ll destroy you! We give no more second chances…. 
 

That would be me while Caligula writes the lyrics. 
 

It all begins with me writing some guitar lines. And from there we start to built and arrange songs together with the drums. And when we have found a strong foundation for the songs Caligula begins to work on the lyrics. And we basically keep on adjusting the material until we put the final version on tape. 

Thanx. It was created by an Italian artist named Daniel Valeriani (Morbid). He created the artwork for our previous album Diabolis Interium too. And I’m pretty sure we’ll continue to work with him on future albums too. 
 

For the first time I cant really pick out just one song that I feel is superior the other, but if I really really have to pick just one it would perhaps be Final Ritual, but if you ask me again tomorrow, I’d most likely pick another one… 

The European tour is actually already completed. We did 35 shows and covered almost the whole Europe, except for a few countries that we unfortunately couldn’t squeeze in this time, but we’ll for sure play those countries at a later date. The tour was a killer for sure. And we had great support from Naglfar, Endstille and Amoral! 

Sure. We hope and plan to tour as many countries as possible with the new album. Up till now we have toured a bit over 35 countries. And we will definitely be visiting all of them this time around too, but I’m pretty sure we’ll expand and tour countries that we’ve never played before.

We have a few photo galleries from our recent tour available at our official website www.darkfuneral.se. They speak pretty much for themselves I think. So I would suggest that you take a look at them! 

Does your live set list contain mostly songs from Attero Totus Sanctus, or your other albums?

No. Even though the new set-list is based upon the new album, we always try to have a decent selection of songs taken from all of our albums. 

Yes. We are currently putting together a live video for the song Atrum Regina. And if all goes as planned we will make a "real" video for the song 666 Voices Inside. 

Yeah, we are currently collecting and putting together material for our first ever DVD production. It will most likely be a double DVD. Hopefully we’ll be able to put this one out before the end of the year. So keep your eyes out for it! 

No. They both used songs from our latest album Attera Totus Sanctus. At first I came in contact with Jonas Wolcher, the director of Die Zombiejager through a horror movie website I use to check out from time to time. At first he and I just talked about the film he was working on, before we eventually start talking about soundtracks in general for horror film. At that time he didn’t know I was playing in Dark Funeral, so I mentioned it. And when he got to hear a few clips from the new album he said he would totally like to use a few tracks in the movie. We agreed of course. And as far as our song contribution to Murder Island, it was all set up by our label so it was really nothing we was involved with. But since I’m a great horror, giallo, zombie fan myself it’s an honour if some movie directors wants to use our music in their films.

Sure. Personally I’m involved in a band/project called Wolfen Society, who besides me, features members from Acheron, Incantation and The Electric Hellfire Club.

We released a MCD entitled Conquer Divine back in 2001, but we got all ripped off by No Fashion/MNW, who did nothing whatsoever to support us or promote it. So fuck them! It’s such a pity, as it’s a killer MCD. We do however have plans to re-release it eventually. I do hope to get together with the guys again to write and record the much delayed full-length album asap. Other than that I’m talking to some other people/musicians about doing some projects together. And I guess the future will show what will happen with that. Caligula is doing a project called God Among Insects and Chaq Mol has a band together with his wife called Mordichrist.

Not really. Now go and check out our new masterpiece Attera Totus Sanctus! 
 

www.darkfuneral.se

www.myspace.com/darkfuneral

So you guys are getting ready to celebrate your 15th Anniversary?! I hear you have quite the party planned.

It’s going to be a big one at Garage, the local club in Bergen. There are a lot of concerts there. That place is where the whole Metal thing began here in Bergen.

It’s a big day! We have lots of guests from Bergen, from Norway, and from all over Europe – I think even as far as Italy. It’s going to be fun! Lots of local bands and friends are going to do Enslaved covers and stuff.

We are filming lots of things around our 15th Anniversary. What we’re going to do is: early next year, we’re going to look through all the material. There’s a lot of other media – television stuff in Norway and other stuff not in connection with the anniversary. We’re collecting all this material and our own films. We’ll look through it and if we find there’s some value in there, we’ll use it to make a proper anniversary DVD. It will be good!

Yeah, so they tell me. We’ve been touring in the ‘States lots of times before but not selling too well. This was an internal problem – the records didn’t have proper distribution in the ‘States before.

So it’s been really good for us being on Candlelight Records now for the last two albums. They really know how to get response and sales and press and everything. It seems like they’re able to push the album out into a much wider audience than we’ve had before.

Before it was just like an underground phenomenon where people would connect in some way and know where to go to order cd’s online. Now it’s changed to where people can actually walk into their local record store and ask for the album. It’s about time.

A lot of people – including ourselves – find the title track a sort-of peak on the album. Funny you should mention the last two ones. The album was made with the intentional double-beat, and we tried to put the songs in order like a vinyl kind of set-up. So, it’s like "Side A" and "Side B". We wanted to have the development build to the title track, then take it down a little bit then build it again. It seems to be working.

There are a lot of sources for our inspirations, I guess. I think we were very inspired by the line-up and the positive development of the band – we felt very good about the of the situation of the band.

We toured quite a lot after the release of Isa in Europe. The band was really [line went dead]

The main phone line here went down. It just went blank. Not good. So I had to try another phone.

Yeah. So, working on the new stuff, we felt that we were working on something that’s kind-of combined the roots of the band – the extreme Metal background in fusion with more melodic and ‘Seventies inspired stuff that we have been toying around with for the last few albums. Of course, we are people who listen to lots of music. So, everything from ‘Seventies Prog Rock, and of course Metal from the ‘Eighties and all that stuff.

But at the same time also, very inspired by contemporary music also. There’s a lot of good extreme Metal being released these days. And also more band music that we feel –every kind of music that gives us some sort of emotional response, that makes us feel something or react, I guess it inspires us in some way.

We’ve been so very focused on the Enslaved way of doing things, so we feel very comfortable with letting ourselves be inspired because in concert we’ll come out sounding like Enslaved in any case.

We work a lot in parallels. Normally how we would do it is to work out the basic musical ideas for the whole album. Then we’ll start moving around with arrangements and stuff. At the same time we’ll start working on lyrics. I guess you can say when the mainframe, the main part of the music done, then we start to work with the lyrics. Then the lyrics kind-of go back and change arrangements of the songs. Sometimes songs change and we have to go back and fix the lyrics.

So we say music is like the foundation, then the lyrics come in and kind-of cover the musical result.

Right now it’s the title track, but also the Tides of Chaos song is becoming a favorite of mine. It’s really heavy! I like that a lot.

Yes. We’ve filmed videos for the songs Path to Vanir and Essence. The first one, Path to Vanir, is already being shown on the internet and on Norwegian television. And I’ve heard it’s been screened a few times in the U.S. already on MTV2. So, it’s out there.

They are two very different videos. Path to Vanir is sort-of the Metal video where there’s a lot of performance by the band. It was filmed in the Norwegian mountains, so it has a very special atmosphere and very powerful scenery; and the story from the lyrics is also incorporated into the video.

The other one, Essence, is more like a short movie to the song. There’s no band performance in the video. It’s more like an abstract short story that we made to accompany the song. It’s more like a little movie where Essence is playing the role of soundtrack.

Yeah. That’s a first time for us. I guess it’s the first time for a Norwegian Extreme Metal in that connection. We were asked by the Short Film Festival. It’s the anniversary of Henrik Ibsen; he wrote a poem called Terje Vigen which is very famous in Norway. It’s in all the school books and stuff.

It deals with a historical character. It takes place in the 18th Century when the Englishmen were blocking off the coastline of Norway. There was like a trade conflict or something between the countries. So there was a lot of starvation and hunger in the Southern part of Norway. This guy became sort-of a hero because he would take his little rowing boat out at night, row across to Denmark, and pick up supplies – fill his boat and risk his life many times going back to feed his little community on the coast there.

Henrik Ibsen wrote a very powerful poem about this guy. Then in 1928, a Swedish silent movie director made a film dramatization of this poem. This is the silent movie we are going to do a soundtrack to live, outdoors during the Short Film Festival. We’re very excited to see how that turns out.

Yes and No. What we did – because they contacted us in connection with the Ruun release. What we wanted to do is combine the two, so we used like the raw materials from Ruun, the raw musical instrumental material and kind-of rearranged it to fit the movie. There will be some new elements into it, but the basic building blocks is going to be material from the Ruun album.

Absolutely! We’re going to film it from every possible angle.

We’re doing a lot of the Norwegian festivals this time. We’re doing, actually, quite a few European ones. We’re doing the Party-San Festival in Germany in August. There is some talk at the moment of doing some of the other ones. But right now it looks like it’s going to be mainly Norwegian. We’re going to do 7 or 8 of the main Norwegian Rock festivals, so that’s going to be quite special.

They’ve started in Norway – it’s quite cool – the bigger mainstream festivals so to speak are now including more Metal into the program. It looks like that’s going to be a big thing this summer. It’s going to be us and quite a few of the other ones. So, they’re going to have a stage for that kind of music, which I think is a good development. You can mix it all up in one place, and it also gives a different audience a possibility to see what’s going on. It is an important part of the Norwegian music scene.

Yes, starting on the 7th of September and doing 7 shows I think over there. That’s going to be like the start of the European tour. We are getting dates for the European tour confirmed around these days – it’s going to be in the next few weeks. A complete European tour is going to be announced on our website.

Oh, man, if you knew how hard they’re working to set that up! They’re working around the clock, all the time. It’s so important! Actually, we tried a lot for the Isa, but misfortune and some bad timing with the European tour made that impossible. So we’ve been working on that since we started recording this album. In fact, today our management told us they’re really closing in on something. We’re keeping all of our fingers and legs crossed, hoping we can go over there and do a proper tour. It’s been far too long.

Yes. The Dead Stare. That’s a song off the Below The Lights album – two albums back.

I have to give credit to the Candlelight department for arranging for all that. It shows we have good people over there!

I’m not sure. I’ve actually not seen that yet. Everything is moving very fast. We’re having a Norwegian, European, and U.S. release basically at the same time. I’m not sure – it’s probably going to be some music videos and stuff like that, maybe some stuff of the previous live DVD. After I talk to you, I think I’m going to have to make a call and check that out.

I think that’s for the U.S. release only. I’ve seen the European release, the Norwegian release, and there’s nothing like that on any of those. I think that’s going to be a U.S. exclusive.

Yeah. That’s Herbrand on the keyboard and vocalist, and our other guitarist Arve. They have a studio where they recorded that one. The Sahg album was recorded there, Gorgoroth has recorded a couple of things there. Also, all the vocal tracks from the Ruun album were recorded in that studio. Their very competent people.

Also Audrey Horne – Arve our lead guitarist is also playing in the band Audrey Horne. That’s also been recorded in its entirety in that studio.

Yes and No. What we do is – as I said, Arve is playing in that other band. Besides that, basically what we do is we do some projects, but the condition of those projects is that the project has to have a starting and stopping dates, because Enslaved demands a lot of focus. Not only in time, but also mentally. We focus all of our musical and creative energy into the band. So, we’ve come to the point where we’ve found that it does more damage than good if more than Arve would be included in other bands.

What we’re working on now, at least me and Grutle are involved with a contemporary music project for 2007, along with noise bands. There’s a famous Norwegian noise band called Female. So, we’re going to do some touring with that next year. There will be something like 30 or 40 concerts in Norway and Europe, which is a sort-of a mix between the most extreme things we’re doing with Enslaved mixed along with some Grindcore and Noise. It’s going to be good!

I want to thank the American fans for their patience waiting for us, because it’s been so long since we’ve been over there. We’re really, really happy and flattered that Isa and now Ruun are receiving such an overwhelming response in the U.S., both in the media and with the people going into record shops and buying the album. It’s just fantastic that in 15 years, people are still into the band over there, and more people are paying attention to it. And especially the fact that we’ve been trying our best to get over there and play, people are supporting us and waiting for us to come over there.

As I said, we’re putting every possible piece of energy that we have into getting over there. Hopefully people will still be waiting when we finally do get over there. Hopefully before the end of the year.

Yeah, it’s Norway’s National Day, which is like your Fourth of July.

No, everyone dresses in the National Costume, and walks up and down the streets waving flags. The National Costume is traditional clothing that’s handmade and therefore very, very expensive. For the women, it’s like $4,000 for the dress, and another $2,000 for the silver that’s worn with it.

It’s mostly for the children. Parents and children are the ones who celebrate it. Teenagers use it as an excuse to get drunk. And then there’s people like me who stay inside and hide.

Yes. There are a lot of songs on there that would translate well commercially, but it was a matter of length. If it’s a longer song, its going to cost more money to produce. I thought Now, Diabolical would have been a good song for a video, but it was longer so it would have cost more. Artists don’t pay too much attention to concerns like that, but management and the record companies sure do.

There is no song on there I prefer over another; they are all very powerful songs. Frost and I are very proud of this album.

That’s what Kerrang said. Kerrang is one of the biggest Metal magazines in Europe, and the quote used in our press release said,

Thank you!

Yeah. It’s funny, I produced Volcano as well, but one thing we’ve learned is that we didn’t announce the fact that I produced Volcano very well on that album. Nobody asked me about it. We’ve announced it better on this album, and I’m getting a lot of questions about it.

I love the production process. I like touring and playing live, too, but what I really enjoy is putting everything together – experimenting with sounds and nuances and complexities in the studio.

No, it’s not a coincidence.

I did that on purpose. It’s not only with that song but other songs on our earlier albums as well. But I don’t use it solely because it’s The Devil’s Interval, not solely for that reason. There are places where that sequence of notes just seem to fit to enhance the song musically.

U.S. and Japan.

No.

I think that can be said of all the songs on the album.

Each of the songs can be interpreted both ways. They’re very personal as to the way I feel, but they can also be interpreted in various ways.

Thank you. This is one where Frost really shines, he shows everything he is as a drummer. This is a song we really love playing live.

That will start in September, after the Festival season. We have a very big following in Europe, and there are opportunities to be one of the headliners at many of these festivals, which are very popular.

We’ve had offers for tours. We’ve had offers from Celtic Frost and Venom and even Ozzfest. The reason we had to turn down Celtic Frost was because it would have conflicted with the commitments we’ve already made with the festivals. The deal we were offered was not a good deal for us monetarily, either – we wouldn’t have even been breaking even with expenses.

As far as Ozzfest, we are not doing Ozzfest just because it’s a cool tour to do. It’s supposed to be a cool thing to play Ozzfest, but we have to make sure it’s the best thing for Satyricon. We just can’t get the same vibe from the crowd playing at 8:00 in the morning, and there’s limited time. We can’t do a full set.

But we’re looking at offers, we plan to tour in the Fall, and we will probably start with Europe and try to come to the U.S. later in the year.

I wouldn’t say we cancelled, we never agreed to do it in the first place. Our booking agent for Europe approached us with the offer, and we said, "Probably not, but we’ll see." We wanted to play a festival here in Norway which is very big, and we were waiting to hear about that.

We got a headlining slot on the European festival, and our European booking agent said, "But I already confirmed you for Metalcamp!" We said, "We told you Probably Not, but we’ll see." He took the chance and booked it anyway. We never agreed to do it in the first place.

He probably thought if he took the chance and booked it, maybe we’d do it.

Yeah, I saw that. I hate to see when Satyricon is made out to be the Bad Guy because of someone else’s mistake. It was a mistake, our agent never should have confirmed that because we told him "Probably Not" but he did it anyway. We never agreed to it at all.

There are no plans to right now. Everybody is putting out a DVD and that’s because CD sales are down but DVD sales are up. They want to make the money off of the DVD’s. But Satyricon is not going to do one just to make money. We’re going to wait until we have something really special and significant.

We recorded that in the early 2000’s. It was really ahead of it’s time! It’s a really great album. If it came out now, it would still be a little ahead of its time and still be an excellent album, but it was Way ahead of its time when it was recorded.

I would like to see it come out, but all the work was falling on me, and I’m quite busy with Satyricon. The project kind-of fell apart because of Phil’s drug problem, and Phil had a falling out with one of the other members in the project, Killjoy.] I don’t know exactly what that was all about.

Of course! I wouldn’t be involved with it if it didn’t include Fenriz.

I would love to see the album see the light of day, there are a lot of things involved in that. I’m very busy with Satyricon, though.

Phil will be in Norway this week or next. I’m going to be seeing him because of course he’s my friend, but I know conversation will come back to Eibon. We’ll see what happens.

That was a one-off.

There are no plans to, no.

Nothing, really. I think you’ve covered everything.