1. Could you please tell us a bit about your first steps on making music and how did you learn to play any instrument?
My musical career started rather classically, with piano lessons at the age of six, which I was moderately interested in. The next milestones were my first compositions with music sequencing software around the start of my teenage years, and getting a guitar, amp, and effects pedal with a built-in drum machine when I was about 16 years old. Subsequently, I taught myself to play guitar, but not very well: some mistakes that I caught too late became part of my technique, and erasing them would have required more practice than I had the patience for. As a result, I was never quite happy with the music I made, which, after a few years, led me to take a break from making black metal that would last almost a decade.
2. Is Nattsyn a one-man project by design or would you have preferred a complete line-up?
I generally work best alone, and Nattsyn is not least about my own, sometimes fairly idiosyncratic thoughts, emotions, and aesthetic sensibilities, so I've had no substantial desire to involve others. While there were times when I felt stuck with the project and would have been glad to have some additional input from other musicians with their own skills and ideas, those times never lasted long, and now, I'm all the happier that I've been able to overcome those obstacles myself, without having to relinquish any artistic control and authorship to someone else.
3. What is the main conclusion you have learned during these years about life and music being two inseparable things?
I don't think I've quite come to a conclusion yet. I could certainly say something about the topic, but my answer would likely be different from what it would have been a few months ago or a few months from now. Having a child who loves music is currently changing my perspective on questions like this, and I'd rather not commit to an answer until this process is finished.
4. How would you “describe” (in detail) the music of Nattsyn to those uninitiated?
The first lyrics on the album were written as an attempt to describe the kind of imagery the music evokes in me: The narrator is staring out of their window into the rainy night, trying to find the source of a light they saw out on the bog. And while they are distracted by the light, an evil spirit enters, frightening and then possessing them.
To describe it a little more concretely: it's a murky but not impenetrable blur of fuzzy guitars playing yearnful riffs at the same moderate tempo throughout the whole album, drumming of fairly frequently varying intensity, and occasionally a raspy, snarling voice.
5. Who would you say are the biggest influences impacting the music of Nattsyn, both as a band and you individually?
As you might expect, I try to make music similar to what I like to listen to, and my favourite black metal albums are Sargeist's “Let the Devil In” and Darkthrone's “Transilvanian Hunger”. The influence of the latter on my album is pervasive in its composition and production, and even in aspects like the whole album being the same tempo and the lyrics being in Norwegian; but since I wanted a somewhat different atmosphere, I also deliberately rejected some elements from it. The influence of the former is lesser, and probably quite unobvious, but it did give me some impactful impulses, perhaps most notably by significantly factoring into my decision to use more varied drumming than near-constant blastbeats, which would have made for a very different atmosphere. Other fairly major influences include Drudkh's “Forgotten Legends” and Paysage d'Hiver. Outside of black metal, I'm mainly inspired by the art of Romanticism and works influenced by it, such as the films of F.W. Murnau and the poetry of H.P. Lovecraft, as well as my own experiences of its themes.
6. You´ve released your debut album on June this year, How long did it take you all to create the entire album from start to finish?
I started drafting the first song in October 2021. After that, however, I was busy with other things for quite a while and also hadn't made some stylistic decisions that were necessary to proceed, so the bulk of my work on it didn't start until some time in the second half of 2022.
7. Explain to us what went into developing the concept and album cover for your new debut album?
One night, I was idly experimenting with guitar effect chains and at some point hit upon a tone that intrigued me: distinctively warm and sounding muffled or distant, but still somewhat forceful; it made me want to write music befitting it, and I came up with a few riffs virtually instantly. I liked the result enough that I decided to expand it into at least a complete piece, and if I would be satisfied with the result, perhaps even an album. Those first riffs along with that tone (with a few tweaks made soon after) defined its direction precisely enough that I rarely had any serious doubts whether a given idea I had for it would make sense, with really only major one exception where I toyed with the idea of adding passages with symphonic death metal elements.
However, it wasn't until much later, when the album was almost finished, that I deliberated what cover I wanted. I came to the conclusion that it ought to be something typical of black metal, which to me meant either a picture of myself with corpsepaint, or a Theodor Kittelsen artwork. I'm not very photogenic with or without corpsepaint, so I tried to find something suitable from the latter category first, and soon did: a painting illustrating an Ash Lad scene, which also inspired the name “Nattsyn” (Norwegian for “night vision”) for the project.
8. What rules and canons do you follow when writing music? How much is this process free and artistic?
I'm sure I follow many rules, but not consciously. I suppose I know enough about music theory and black metal that I could make myself conscious of them if I wanted to, but it would be tedious, and I prefer making music by following inspirations and experimenting, guided by my idea of what the result ought to be and my intuition about how to achieve it.
9. When it comes to your lyrics, what are some of the key themes you’ve chosen to focus on in Nattsyn?
So far, there is no particular focus, although there are recurring topics: A misotheistic attitude related to some sort of divine curse features in the lyrics of two of my songs, and three contain metaphors for black metal and its role in my life, but neither topic constitutes much of the album's lyrics overall, nor are they present in my current ideas for future lyrics.
10. Your vocals are very well done, both raw and sinister as hell. How much work did you put into the vocals on this album or does it just come naturally at this point in your career?
Because parts of my recording setup were only available temporarily, I didn't have much time to record or even meaningfully practice my vocals and thus performed them rather spontaneously. I hadn't done harsh vocals in years, which I think hardly affected how they sounded, but I didn't immediately manage to reactivate the technique I had learned to produce them without making my throat hurt (and probably damaging my vocal cords if I did it for too long), so I had to take breaks between tracks and decided not to re-record a couple of passages that I thought I could have done better.
11. What kind of ambitions did you have after finishing the recording of this album? It is a pretty solid and thoughtful work I guess!
Mainly, I was just satisfied I had finished it and managed to make it sound the way I intended. I don't only mean that in the sense of having fulfilled the duty of the creator to ensure the quality of his work, but also that I sometimes want to listen to music with some particular set of features, which may or may not actually exist, and a few times in the past, it was something like this album; not exactly it, nor even an ideal version of it without all its flaws, but something more similar to it than to any I knew. Coming closer to being able to listen to that may not be much, absolutely speaking, and I intend to improve on it with future releases, but it still was the best outcome I could have realistically hoped to achieve.
12. How much of your work is the result of conscious deliberation and how much is spontaneous inspiration? How, if at all, has your approach changed over the years?
To start writing a song, I need some sort of inspiration, usually a riff or two I think of spontaneously. But building on my ideas and connecting them into songs requires both careful thought and being in the right mood. This hasn't changed over time, but I've become more aware that I won't produce anything worthwhile when those conditions aren't met, and more willing to discard unsuitable ideas.
13. Are there particular songs that you feel best define the Nattsyn sound or perhaps ones you find most notable for whatever reason?
I think they're all fairly equal, although “Et gjenferd”, as the first Nattsyn song I wrote, could be considered prototypical, and is probably the only one to have influenced other ones.
14. What do you think about all the fashions that come and go in the black metal in general, in the recent years?
Maybe it's because I rarely get around to listening to new music until at least a few years after it's released, but I honestly haven't noticed a lot of change in the last fifteen years or so. A minor influx of hipsters perhaps, but rarely anyone doing something that hasn't already been done since the nineties, although they occasionally do it better now. However, there seems to be a trend for non-metal musicians to make use of black metal elements. Sometimes that works well, but often, especially if it's just short passages, it's only interesting for a few moments; for me, much of the appeal of black metal depends on it creating a somewhat persistent atmosphere, which can hardly happen when it's just one or two riffs tacked onto a piece with an otherwise different mood.
15. Do you support your black metal scene and where would you like black metal to go in the future? How can you, as a band, help in moving the scene forward? Are you in alliance with other bands maybe?
The few people in the black metal scene I had contact with despite my reclusive tendencies weren't at all on the same wavelength with me, so I didn't keep in touch with them and thus haven't had much opportunity to be involved and active in the scene. Even if that were to change now, I doubt I would have enough time to contribute in other ways than making black metal, which I hope will speak to others and possibly even inspire them for their own music that will ideally be better than mine.
As to where I want black metal to go in the future: I'm not sure it ought to or can go anywhere further. As I've said above, not much seems to have happened in the genre lately, and perhaps its potential for development is simply exhausted. If so, I wouldn't mind; this happens to every genre eventually, and the kind of black metal that already exists has brought forth quite a few excellent releases and will surely keep doing so. Nor would I mind if some band revolutionised black metal in a way I couldn't foresee. Innovation can be exciting, but the best works in a genre are often only made once it's been more or less stable for a while, although in the case of black metal, some of its early examples have proven difficult to surpass.
16. What do you love to do in your free time when you are not busy with your music project?
When I'm not spending that time with my family, then often with art, currently mainly music and video games; on the rare occasions where I can find enough uninterrupted time for them, I also enjoy literature and films. But I now read mostly nonfiction, with psychology, linguistics, and analytic philosophy being particular fields of interest.
17. Do you have any ambitions of spreading your creative and musical wings into another genre, say a death side project or something?
I am, in fact, doing that already. Some early Nattsyn material was significantly influenced by death metal and, somewhat less, a few other genres, which I soon found I couldn't integrate with the rest of my ideas. So I decided not to use it for Nattsyn but instead to expand on it as a side project named “Filthspectre” (no connection to Phil Spector), which has progressed far enough for a first release later this year.
I've also made various non-metal music before Nattsyn, starting with a project called “Leidwesen” in the first half of the 2010s, when I was in the process of deciding to take a break from black metal and adapted some of the songs I had written to a style influenced by Expressionism, dungeon synth, and synth-punk. A couple of years later, I also started making noise music and chiptune under the names “Monks of Venus” and “Skinigarmr”, respectively.
18. Let’s conclude this interview with you telling your future plans with Nattsyn. I hope you enjoyed the interview.
For now, nothing concrete is planned. I have a few ideas for more songs, but for now, I'm focusing more on Filthspectre, and after that, I'll probably be too busy with other things for a time to work on my music very much. But I know I won't be able to stop completely, at least not for long, so the next album will come in time.
Thank you for the interview; I did indeed enjoy it.
Comentarios