This interview was conducted by Philip A. Wickstrand with guitarist Obsidian Claw at the Hawthorne Theatre in Portland, OR on November 23, 2011.

Everyone knows that Norway was the place that made Black Metal famous back in its earliest days. Some may argue that the torch has burned low in later years because of bands “not keeping true to the style.” Hogwash. If the music doesn’t evolve, it stagnates at best and atrophies at worst. KEEP OF KALESSIN are counted among the bands that evolve. While not everyone may have like some of their more recent output, they have dared to be different and had the balls to not compromise their own artistic vision.

Phil: How’s the tour with MAYHEM been?

Obsidian: It’s been pretty good. We think we see that KEEP OF KALESSIN is starting to get a little more following over here; we have better response now from the crowd than we’ve ever had, so it seems like it’s pretty good. We had a rough time with transport the first week of the tour, though, to get into it all we had to rent two cars and do some public transport and shit between some cities and that’s so fucked up, but now we’re in the middle of the tour and everything is running pretty smooth. Of course, we know MAYHEM from before, so we’re good friends with them and they treat us very nice and also we got to know the ABIGAIL WILLIAMS guys and HATE we have been touring with three or four times now, so it’s a good package and it’s nice personnel in between all the bands and shit, so it’s good.

Phil: Are you going to be playing anything you did off the EP with Attila?

Obsidian: We have talked to him about it, we don’t know yet because we tried to do “Come Damnation” early in the tour but it’s easy to see that even though there’s a lot of Black Metal fans out there and MAYHEM fans, they still don’t know the Reclaim EP that much over here actually. So whenever we do the Reptilian shows we have a good crowd, whenever we do something from Reclaim the crowd really drops for us and we only have forty minutes, so we need to keep the momentum up there and so we don’t know. Maybe Attila will join us for one or two shows, we might do it, but we’ll see.

Phil: Do you think you’ll be doing a North American headlining tour anytime soon?

Obsidian: Probably not anytime soon - we are much too small over here to do that yet. We would like to, of course, but if we go out and draw like twenty or thirty people every night, it would destroy the band instead of building it. So right now we just support some good bands, maybe try to support some different bands, maybe not so much Black and Death Metal bands but more like more extreme Heavy Metal bands because that’s where we are right now, so we’ll see about that.

Phil: Would you say the tour you did with SEPULTURA earlier this year kind of helped on that front?

Obsidian: Yeah, I think we gained some new fans with that tour. But I don’t think KEEP OF KALESSIN came across as we should on that tour; we had so much technical trouble and things were really hard for the support bands on that tour and we also played much earlier, so there wasn’t always that much people into the venues, so I think this tour is doing better for us.

Phil: When will the follow-up album to Reptilian be coming out?

Obsidian: We have a new album out probably in October next year. Normally it would be out before the summer but we decided to take a step back, take it easy a little bit, focus on writing the best possible album and not stress it like we did on the last three albums. It will be October probably, 2012.

Phil: Anything you can tell us about the direction you’ll be going with it?

Obsidian: It will be KEEP OF KALESSIN, it will be maybe a little bit more Thrash Metal than we did earlier, but I think we just continue in the path we have now. Our focus is also writing some songs that will do well in a live situation and Reptilian songs do better live than all our previous albums, so maybe a little bit that direction, but we’ll keep… I mean the melodic and epic stuff will be more epic but the thrashy parts may be more thrashy and more of everything I say.

Phil: A lot of people, when the song “The Dragontower” came out, just crapped all over it. Was your reaction more of ambivalence towards this or did you just find it funny?

Obsidian: Well, it was both things because a lot of Metal fans crapped all over it, to put it in your terms, but it gave us a whole shitload of new fans as well, so it’s not all bad. And to be honest, I think that not just because of this song, but I think it’s sad to see that the Metalheads are so fucking narrow-minded and that they cannot accept the fact that a band or musicians like ourselves want to do different stuff and okay, it’s a commercial song; it’s a Pop song in a Metal suit, in Metal packaging, but still I think it’s a good song. The song has everything that a good song… a song that you are supposed to play on TV, it has everything that we need. And I personally like the song, so I cannot be dictated by what everyone else thinks. I like the song and I’ve heard so many people come up to me, they hated the song in the beginning but then they started liking it and when they heard the version that is on the album, they got a whole different feeling from it and stuff like this. Also I think if you hear a song like this and you totally disregard the whole album just because you heard one song from it, you have to realize that this was the song that was going to sell the band… and I use the word sell; it’s not problem for me to say that yes, I want to sell albums, I want to sell the band into a broad audience. This was the song that was going to get the broader audience and it did big time in Norway, and the rest of the songs are for the rest of the Metal fans, which are good KEEP OF KALESSIN songs, maybe some of the best shit we’ve ever written, like “Reptilian Majesty” I think is one of our best songs ever. So the album has something for everyone, I think. If the Metalheads want to disregard the album just because of one song on there, what the fuck can we do? Like I said, I cannot be dictated and I would be a sellout if I started thinking about what other people would think about me and I’m not that kind of person - I do what I want; I don’t give a fuck what the Metal people want from.

Phil: When I first heard the song, I kind of thought “Why is everybody pissed off?” I didn’t get it - I thought it was a good song. Were you surprised at all when people reacted that way?

Obsidian: No. I knew it was going to happen. I was very aware of what we were doing, I knew it was going to happen and I decided… I actually talked to the band; I said “Are we doing this or not?” It’s like, “Why shouldn’t we do it?” “Oh, because the Metal people will be so pissed at us.” It’s like, we never even thought twice about what the Metal people think about us. We’ve never done that and we’re not going to start doing that, so we knew it was coming but we cannot be dictated by anyone, not even the roots of the Metal scene.

Phil: Have you put any thought at this point in the band’s history into putting out a live DVD?

Obsidian: We have been thinking about it for a long time but it’s always like we have to have a pretty big following to make it economically-wise and we don’t want to do like this small club show and then we put out the DVD from that; we want a big, fucking epic show with a lot of audience with props, with a lot of effects, a lot of stage setup, you know? And to do that, we need to be a fucking big band. We might do it after the next album, I think. We almost thought about doing it after Reptilian but we will wait one more album and then maybe then. But we have so many plans; we have plans to release a B-side… like a full-length, but with all B-side material, like songs that have never been released before, a whole fucking album with those kinds of songs and because some of the other members also write music and some of those songs never made it to the albums, but they are still pretty good, and we would like to release them. And I think a lot of Metal fans would actually like those songs. So we will do that and then we want to do a “Best of” album, just put all our best shit on one album and of course a live DVD and stuff like this. So we have a lot of plans but it will maybe not happen before the next album, then after that.

Phil: Capitalize on the momentum, basically.

Obsidian: Yeah.

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

Obsidian: Well, if I’m going to recommend a book, it would be the whole Earthsea series, of course; it’s where the KEEP OF KALESSIN name is taken from. It’s a great fantasy, if you’re into that kind of shit. Personally, I think they’re some of the best fantasy books that I’ve ever read. It’s a lot of dragons and shit in those, so that’s what I like, so check it out.

Phil: Did you know that Ursula K. LeGuin actually lives here in Portland?

Obsidian: No, I didn’t.

Phil: Yeah. A few months ago, I was at Powell’s Books, which is our huge book store out here, and just taking a break from work, grabbing a book at random and I hear over the loudspeaker that LeGuin is going to be doing a reading in ten minutes and I’m just like, “Okay, I’m taking a longer break!”

Obsidian: Oh, really?

Phil: It was pretty awesome. She’s getting up there in age but she doesn’t seem frail at all, seems pretty hale and hearty.

Obsidian: Cool! If I’d known that, I’d try to meet her or something. [laughter] Maybe she wouldn’t be so proud of us, though. [laughs]

Phil: Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

Obsidian: Just hope that the fans here in Portland support the band and come back the next time we come back here and come to see our shows.

Keep of Kalessin's Obsidian Claw

Interviewer: Philip A. Wickstrand

December 18, 2011

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PHOTOS BY PHIL A. WICKSTRAND

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(Click on Photo to Enlarge)

Formed 1993
Trondheim  NORWAY
Label: Indie Recordings
Genre: Melodic Black/Death Metal

CURRENT LINE-UP:

Thebon:  Vocals
Obsidian Claw:  Guitars
Wizziac:  Bass
Vyl:  Drums

DISCOGRAPHY:

Through Times of War (1997)
Skygger av Sorg (Demo-1997)
Agnen: A Journey Through the Dark (1999)
Reclaim EP (2003)
Armada (2006)
Kolossus (2008)
Reptilian (2010)