VULTURE INDUSTRIES return with their brand new album Ghosts from the past’ which will see the light of day on June 16, 2023 via Dark Essence Record. So Abigael Paquet got to sit down and have a chat with Bjørnar Erevik Nilsen ( Vocals, additional guitars, keys, and percussion)
Words Abigael Paquet / photos Jarle Hovda Moe:
Abby: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself for the people who don’t actually know your band ?
Bjornar: Well, Vulture Industries is a band from Bergen, Norway. We’ve been active for 20 years. We have released five albums so far, or this is the fifth one. We are five guys who enjoy making music, touring, doing gigs and meeting new, interesting people along the way. We make music that is not so much bound by genre. We have often been termed as avant-garde metal or progressive hard rock. I’m not very interested in genres.
Abby: You don’t want to be labeled.
Bjornar: Yeah.I leave it up to other people to make the boxes and put us in whichever box they feel fits. I guess our approach is more to try to make a musical representation of ourselves, who we are. That’s the reason why it sounds like it does.
I don’t feel very comfortable with being labeled avant-garde because I don’t think that’s what we’re doing. For me, the avant-garde term is more when you kind of blow up the box and say, we want to do something completely different that doesn’t really relate to what has been done before. Whereas what we are doing is basically picking from the boxes we like and putting it into something that feels correct for us. We’re not, like, trying to reinvent the wheel. We are just learning how to drive in our own way.
Abby: How did you start your band ? Because you said it was 20 years ago.
Bjornar: It was started by Urban, one of our guitar players. We kind of formed it on the corpse of a prior band that he had. He had a band called Dead Rose Garden, which was more this gothic doom kind of thing and which had existed for a couple of years … And some members had quit and it wasn’t really functioning anymore. I had met him during civil service – instead of doing military service, you can choose to do civil service there in Norway – and we got to know each other there. And a bit later I moved to Bergen and I showed him some demos of an old project. Then we recruited some new members, and that was basically how it started. And during the first years, we were developing our sound, trying to find a way for the first demos and the first album. We were often compared to Arturas – a Norwegian band – which is very often termed as avantgarde metal; which is probably where we got the label from … because where we’re at today is quite far from that music. But labels tend to stick around once you get them.
Abby: And how would you convince someone who doesn’t know your music to actually listen to it ?
Bjornar: I’m not so much a salesperson, to be honest. Now, I guess for people who are a bit into music that’s not on the normal path, who are interested in music that at least tries to convey a genuine experience and to tell a story through music and through words; I think then you should check it out. If you’re interested in metal and hard rock that also includes elements from the darker brands of rock, then I think we can appeal to you. And if you’re interested in a show that’s a bit off the beaten path with some surprises, then you should come to one of our concerts.
We do stuff that isn’t so common. We try to make our shows immersive. So, instead of having this one way show where we’re just standing up on stage and giving the same performance each day to the audience, I try to involve people too, like going into the audience and interacting with the audience. Maybe dancing a bit with the audience, if people have their dancing shoes on. At one point I had this noose that I used to put around my neck and I’d throw the rope into the audience and I’d have a tug of war with the audience, which was sometimes fun and sometimes very painful.
Abby: Depending on who it lands on, I can imagine ! [laughs]
Bjornar: I used to aim for somebody who seemed a bit tipsy but also friendly. And maybe a bit weak, but at times they would bring their huge friends over their shoulder, grab the rope, and pull me off of the stage.
Abby: No way !
Bjornar: Yeah … My wife doesn’t want me to do that anymore, now that I have kids …
Abby: So, you can’t do that anymore.
Bjornar: No,I’m not allowed anymore …
[laughs]
Abby: Yeah, better be safe ! So, your new album is coming out soon; how are you feeling about it coming out ? Are you excited, are you anxious ?
Bjornar: I’m excited about it coming out, but it’s also very stressful. There’s lots of shit to do when you have an album coming out, especially when you’re basically the one who wrote almost all the music and also the lyrics. Then, I have to do pretty much all the interviews. So, that’s a lot of work. And I’m a bit of a DIY type of guy, so I’m also packing all the mail orders and stuff like that. We partly crowdfunded the album, so we have to ship out all of that and also everything that came in through the band webshop … like writing personal notes and all of this stuff. It’s fun, but it’s a lot of work and it kind of keeps you grounded and in contact with the people who actually listen to it. So, I think that’s nice.
Abby: And how does it compare to your previous music ?
Bjornar: It is kind of very different from our first two albums. Our first two albums were more metal, this one is more rock, I would say. And I think in the past we’ve had a tendency to put a lot of ideas on top of each other, which can be interesting, but at the same time a bit of an aggravating listening experience. It’s a bit too much all the time, so you don’t get a break on this album. I think we’ve been better at spazzing out the ideas and letting everything develop and grow in a way that justifies the ideas more and make compositions that are more easily enjoyable. I think it’s quite a varied album. And yeah, it’s a bit of a journey to listen to, I would say, with lots of dynamics, different atmospheres. I’m very proud of it. I think it turned out to be a really good album. We finished mastering it about half a year ago now, so it’s very difficult when you’re in the process to see if it’s good or not. But now I feel I have the space to say that it’s the best we could do at this point.
Abby: And how did that impact your creative process ?
Bjornar: I think when it comes to inspiration, for me at least, everything around me will have an impact on what I write and what I create. So, being in the middle of a pandemic while I was working on this stuff, for sure has made a footprint both on lyrics and atmosphere. It’s not an album about Covid though … You can’t really tell, I guess, that it was written during Covid but it would have been different if it wasn’t, for sure. It was a very different period for us. I guess it would have been easier to finish earlier if it wasn’t for the pandemic, because then our regular pace would have continued. But the pandemic turned everything upside down and it wasn’t possible to do rehearsals and stuff like that.
Abby: That’s what I was going to ask: how did you work together then ? Did you work remotely or did you just leave it until you could meet up ?
Bjornar: We worked remotely. Basically, what we do with writing is that I make most of the material on this album. The bass player wrote one of the songs and I wrote the remaining six. Basically, I have a studio, so I can make pre productions and demos that are pretty close to what my intention is; or at least on how it should sound like. So, I make a sketch that has programmed drums, bass, guitars, some of the vocals and also keyboards and stuff like this. And then I send it to the guys, they give me input and then we work from that and then another round of input, and then we take it into the rehearsal room and do adjustments together and they put their personal touch on arrangements and everything. And then, we go into the studio and we always leave quite many loose threads so that there are still some spontaneous things happening while we are recording, because I think that is important to kind of keep the human touch. I think lots of modern music, especially modern pop music and modern metal, is way too produced and streamlined. Everything is 100% in pitch and everything is 100% in time. And it’s nice when you hear it the first time, but in the end it turns pretty boring quite quickly and also tends to sound pretty generic.
Abby: And what’s your favourite song from the new album ?
Bjornar: I think it’s probably the last one, Tyrant Sweep Alone because it was the hardest one to finish. And in the end, I think it turned out really nice and it’s got a really dynamic structure with lots of parts. It’s like a journey in itself. I think it sums up what we’re about, in a good way. It kind of has everything because it was more difficult to finish. It feels like an achievement as well.
Abby: So, what is your least favourite song that you’ve ever made and why ?
Bjornar: Least favourite song ? I guess … probably Race for the Gallows from our second album, because it’s quite long, it’s super intense and there’s screaming vocals going from start to finish. So, singing it on stage is like a complete throat killer.
Abby: So you don’t play it that much at all then ?
Bjornar: No, we don’t really play much from that album anymore. We kind of moved away from that. But I’m not embarrassed that I made it …
Abby: Yeah, you just don’t like singing it, that’s fair enough. Now, what would be your dream country or city to play in and why ?
Bjornar: We played most countries in Europe. I guess the only countries we haven’t done in Europe so far is Portugal. We’ve been booked to do shows in Portugal, in festivals, but they didn’t happen. And we haven’t done Moldova and mini countries. We haven’t done like San Marino, Monaco, and we haven’t done Ukraine. We were supposed to do a festival in Ukraine but Russia invaded Kim, so the Ukraine currency went down the drain and yeah, the festival canceled most of the lineup because it wasn’t doable anymore. I would really like to go to Ukraine. I would like to go there to do a gig, but I’m not sure I’ll get everyone on board with that.
But I actually saw this band: Rome. They just did a couple of gigs in Kiev.
I had this idea to do a tour of countries that are not internationally recognized, because nobody does that. It’s not like I really want to do it because nobody does it, but I would really like to visit these places which are kind of in limbo, but half of the world says your country doesn’t exist. How is it to live in a place like this ? How do people relate to this ? I would like to see this.Bjornar: Would also like to play in North Korea.
Abby: Yeah, I don’t see that happening …
[laughs]
Abby: Now, what was your worst moment on stage ?
Bjornar: We played at HellFest ten years ago and we had brought this pillory and the crew was handing out tomatoes and eggs and stuff to throw at me. It was fun but it hurt a bit.
Mhh, I often have dreams where I can’t find the stage. And I also had a dream where I was a standing guitarist for some black metal band. And the singer – who was the boss of the band, he hadn’t told me what songs we were playing, and when he gave me the set list just before we were going on, I realized I don’t know any of these songs.
Abby: [laughs] Well, thankfully that didn’t happen but I love the tomatoes and eggs story. They weren’t rotten eggs, though, were they ?
Bjornar: No, they were nice to me in that regard, only fresh eggs [laughs]
Abby: Still, it would still hurt though [laughs] And are there any questions that you wish journalists would ask you but they don’t really, or they never do ?
Bjornar: I wish they would stop asking about lyrics because I hate talking about lyrics.
Now, you can have a brief discussion about it, but it’s lyrics, it’s words. So, it’s better to leave it at that and actually experience the songs and interpret the lyrics yourself. Because I think some of the magic happens in the meeting between the music and the listener, when the listener puts his own understanding and his own personality and mind into it and gets a personal experience instead of actually being told what it’s about. I’m not trying to put ideas into people’s heads. I’m not trying to sell people solutions. I am trying to convey something that I cannot really do in merely words, by combining words. And it’s up to the listener to make their own experience and their own thoughts from this.
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