This interview was conducted by Philip A. Wickstrand with guitarist Ivar Bjørnson at the Roseland Theater in Portland, OR on November 23, 2010.

With twenty years of experience behind them, there is no one that can say that ENSLAVED have not paid their dues. Doing the Viking Metal thing before it was popular and then moving further and further into progressive territory as the years have gone on, they have remained ahead of the curve and stayed true to themselves at all times. With the release of their eleventh album, Axioma Ethica Odini, ENSLAVED show no signs of petering out or fading into irrelevance.

Phil: First of all, how's the tour with DIMMU BORGIR been so far?

Ivar: It's been really good. It's been a totally positive experience for us and they're really a gentleman band when it comes to creating their support acts, which is really important when you're out on the road for six weeks. So we keep getting lucky with that, I guess, 'cause ENSLAVED is a band that gets invited because people like the music, so things tend to go smoothly. And also, I would say that the response with both our own fans, but also DIMMU's fans, has totally over gone our expectations - they're a lot more open minded towards our more experimental style than I would've thought.

Phil: Can we expect another U.S. tour before another album, possibly headlining?

Ivar: Yes, absolutely so. What we're going to do is do this one, do a European headlining tour next year and then we'll be back for a U.S. headline tour. I don't know dates or anything, but I don't think we're going to make it in time before the summer festivals, so it's going to be early fall or something next year.

Phil: Tell us a bit about the new album, and I'm probably going to butcher the pronunciations, so please forgive me - Axioma Ethica Odini.

Ivar - You know, it's Latin, so I don't know how to properly pronounce it either.

Phil: Oh, okay. [laughter]

Ivar: But that's how I would say [it]. But it's gone really well. If we take the technical, dry facts first, it's definitely been our best selling album so far on all continents. Surprisingly enough, we even made it into the German Metal charts, which never happened before because they're, I guess, more traditionally minded, so that's fine. And North America is doing well. It's the mix of overwhelming responses both from the media, you know, the Metal media community, mixed with the fans, which is really cool. This time we really received a lot of old school ENSLAVED fans appreciating the harsher edge, maybe, the album has and we're also seeing the new fans, that they're still on board, so it's the same as maybe our first few albums, that kind of feeling, the buzz around the album - it's really special to have that feeling on your eleventh album. By that time, you're either a dinosaur or sort of going full speed downhill I feel, but we feel more alive than any time before.

Phil: So where do you feel that it stands amongst the rest of your catalogue, as far as favorite albums that you have done?

Ivar: I'm pretty confident that… the catalogue's so diverse and there's so many albums now that I don't think I would be able to select one favorite album, but I think it's going to be there amongst my favorites. It has some of the magic I feel that happened when we did Below the Lights, when we took a larger step for the band and older stuff like Frost and Eld - I think it's definitely going to be one of the milestone albums for us. But give me another six, twelve months and I'll give you a properly objective answer. Right now it's the new born baby and that always is the best looking and the freshest.

Phil: Tell us about the song writing process you went through on this album.

Ivar: Yeah, we've, I guess, developed a kind of pattern, you know, song writing. I write the basic music, the riffs, out on guitar. I would say the suggestions for the arrangements is also written by me. And then the final arrangements and lengths and dynamics of the songs are worked out between myself and the two singers, Grutle and Herbrand, and then in rehearsal, we do the final tweaking, also with Cato, the drummer, and Ice Dale, the guitarist. So it's based on one composer, three arrangers and then we work out the details.

Phil: Did you do anything different in the studio on this album or just what you're used to and comfortable with?

Ivar: We did it quite different. We never had done so much ourselves - we did everything except the drums is totally done by the band. Herbrand and Ice Dale have a studio in Bergen and so the difference was we had a lot more freedom, didn't have to keep an eye on the watch so much. But we also felt a much larger pressure because there would be nobody to blame if something didn't work out, so we spent a lot more hours just finding the little subtle things in the sound. But I think we were really good with it, we took it seriously and we worked almost scientifically on finding the right sound for instruments. So I would say it was a lot more pressure but the reward was even higher having done it ourselves.

Phil: What would be your favorite songs off the album, if you can pick any?

Ivar: Right now I'm thinking "The Beacon" and "Lightening."

Phil: ENSLAVED were one of the original Viking Metal bands and since then the genre, or subgenre, I should say, has gone off like gangbusters - do you feel that it's gotten to the point that there's just so many bands out there that are trying to tread on the same ground, that we're getting a lot of copycats and the genre's kind of running out of ideas?

Ivar: Yeah, I think so. When we called it Viking Metal, we were sort of more inspired by the whole thing that Quorthon was doing in BATHORY, you know, the Viking era of BATHORY, where it was more about a certain philosophy, a certain atmosphere, a sort of certain nostalgia, rather than dressing up and reenactment and that kind of stuff that Viking Metal became later, so I guess that's why we distanced ourselves from that. For us it was, this sounds maybe a bit cliché, but more of a spiritual thing than an image thing in a sense, so I would say that it's two different worlds. And I think it's very hard for those bands to come up with something new if they don't really have their identity. There are some bands, like AMON AMARTH and PRIMORDIAL and these bands, that have their own, let's say, agenda in the whole thing they're doing but they're still maintaining sort of a unique, individual identity. That makes them stand out. You know, AMON AMARTH is down-tuned Swedish Death Metal, PRIMORDIAL with their sometimes Irish, folkish sound and all that stuff, I think ENSLAVED belongs more together with those kind of bands than the strictly… there's just so many ways that you can put on a helmet and sing about drinking mead in the forest before you run out of angles.

Phil: What would be some of your favorite progressive acts?

Ivar: It seems to be a growing thing, which is, I guess, both surprising and not surprising, how big that scene's becoming. I would say, of course, OPETH is an obvious thing 'cause they're doing their Death Metal twist so well… which others do we have? [pauses] Of the contemporary Metal ones, I don't know if I'm listening enough to that, but of course you have the classics - you know, RUSH is still going strong. And of course, all the bands that are not around anymore. For me, it's weird because when it comes to contemporary music, I guess, I'm not listening that much to progressive stuff. Then for me, it's more Black and Death Metal when it comes to stuff that's going on now because a lot of these Prog bands are actually more retro than Prog is. It's so similar to what KING CRIMSON and YES and RUSH were doing that you sort of… maybe I'm cynical, but then I'm thinking I may as well listen to the originals. But I mentioned PRIMORDIAL, maybe that's taking it too far to call them a progressive band but I think  they have a little bit of it touching them and you have, of course, IHSAHN, EMPEROR dude - I think he's doing some really interesting stuff in his own, really in his own unique way. Did I forget something really obvious now? I'll think about it. [laughter] I'll rip my hair out later tonight. "Should've mentioned that!" [laughter]

Phil: I've noticed a lot of people have complained about "Oh, they're getting too progressive now" when talking about ENSLAVED, but going back and I listen to the really early stuff and it was there from the beginning - do you think these people just weren't paying attention or what?

Ivar: I don't know. It's the whole thing that I think you have as a musician, in the Metal genre especially, the extreme Metal genre, I think it's healthy to realize that people are so involved, you know, so much more than just a product that they buy to listen to. Like normal people, they'll buy an album 'cause it feels good to do house cleaning while listening to it and they have that more sort of consumer attitude, while the Metal fans have a much more owner feeling - they're so much more part of the scene and everything's a lifestyle. So I really feel it's important for me to expect that and if people tell me they only like Frost and Eld from ENSLAVED, it might sound cheesy but to me, at least they like two of the albums and they should listen to that, but I feel sorry for those that are hoping for those albums to be made once again because that's never going to happen - they should just listen to that and if they don't like the new stuff, that's fine, no problems with that. We have to make the music we want to make. I think that be defective if we tried to create something to please them. So maybe they're missing the point back then, that's quite possible, but I also get the thing where they invested a lot emotionally in the band in the beginning, of course it will feel like a bit of betrayal when the band changes, but I'm not willing to say that ENSLAVED has ever left our path or ever abandoned our roots, not at all - it's still part of the live set, we play the old stuff, we have a lot of respect for the old material and respect for people whether they like one album, one song or the entire catalogue.

Phil: Recommend a book for our readers and then explain why you recommend that particular work.

Ivar: Let me see… I think one of the contemporary books that's interesting now, it doesn't have anything to do with ENSLAVED, but I think the two books "Freakonomics" and "Super Freakonomics" are quite useful for people to read these days 'cause they're looking at a lot of phenomena in the world today from an economical and very cynical point of view which I think is what is needed in a sense. People need to realize more of the mechanics on what's going on around them, so those kind of books that are sort of breaking down reality in a sense to something measurable. I think this is very useful. And maybe it's not the most useful thing they can learn from those books themselves, but it's just that way of thinking that encourages to look behind mechanisms in society instead of just taking them at face value and becoming depressed because of whatever. They're analyzing in a very interesting way how politicians are manipulating voters, they're looking at how media and advertisement are trying to sort of tap into very primitive mechanisms, so yeah, those are good reads.

Phil: What are ENSLAVED for the next year outside of touring?

Ivar: Outside of touring, yeah. Next year's our twentieth anniversary, so right now we're actually struggling to make out a realistic plan. We want to do everything, you know - we want to do special concerts with other bands, we want to invite ex-members to do stuff, we wanna maybe finally do the ENSLAVED guitar tab book which so many people are asking for. I realize why, 'cause we're always complicating things with the guitar voices and we try to answer people when they send us mail on Facebook asking "How is this riff and how is this riff?" So that would be a dream come true being able to do that next year. Then there's talk about doing at least two anniversary concerts, both in Norway, one where we do cover songs of the bands that influenced ENSLAVED, trying to do everything from PINK FLOYD to BATHORY and the second one is… we've been asked to do a special concert on a tale from northern mythology about some guy who went from the west coast, where we are from, to have supposedly discovered Iceland back then. They want us to do something with that, so lots on the plate.

Phil: Okay, is there anything else you'd like to add?

Ivar: Just thank you to everybody who's reading this that's been supporting ENSLAVED for all these years and for those who are thinking about checking it out - it seems to be worth the while. [laughter]

Enslaved's Ivar Bjørnson

Interviewer: Philip A. Wickstrand

Formed 1991
Bergen, NORWAY
Label: Indie Recordings
Genre: Progressive Black/
Viking Metal

CURRENT LINE-UP:

Grutle Kjellson:  Vocals & Bass
Ivar Bjørnson:  Guitar, Keyboards
                             & Effects 
Arve Isdal:  Guitar
Herbrand Larsen:  Keyboards,
                                  Mellotron & Vocals
Cato Bekkevold: Drums

DISCOGRAPHY:

Hordanes Land EP (1993)
Vikingligr Veldi (1994)
Frost (1994)
Eld (1997)
Blodhemn (1998)
Mardraum: Beyond the Within (2000)
Monumension (2001)
Below the Lights (2003)
Live Retaliation DVD (2003)
Isa (2004)
Return to Yggdrasill DVD (2005)
Ruun (2006)
Vertebrae (2008)
The Wooden Box (2009)
Axioma Ethica Odini (2010)

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December 9, 2010

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