How’s the tour going for you guys so far?

Grutle Kjellson: Very good, actually. Pretty good turnouts due to the fact that there are a lot of tours going on at the same time.

Who’s your biggest competition right now?

I know that there’s Black Label Society with Children of Bodom, there’s Nile and Keep of Kalessin, there’s Watain, so we’re competing with four or five other tours.

I would think that this is the bigger draw though – isn’t this the first time that Enslaved and Dimmu Borgir have appeared together on a tour?

Yeah, actually, well, we had a European leg before this American leg, but this is the first time in the States. Though we did play a festival together back in ‘99, that was the first appearance together.

Well, hopefully it does really well for you guys because the new album is fantastic and it’s been getting tons of raves.

Thank you.

So let’s just jump right into that then. Axioma Ethica Odini. What does it mean and is there an overall theme for the album?

So Ethica Odini, the second part of the title, is the name of the Latin translation of the old Norse poem Haavamaal – it’s an old poem that’s survived orally for centuries before it was written down in Iceland in the 12th century, and translated into Latin in 1655, I believe.

It’s a poem with 164 verses and deals with well, old life wisdom – how one should deal with other human beings, towards nature, towards your own spirituality and so on. And there are a lot of ideas in that poem that have been lost for many centuries but still make sense in modern life. So that’s the red line through all the lyrics.

Obviously, Viking mythology has informed all of your albums – would you guys say that you’re well-versed in it? Do you get as well, “geeky” about it as Karl Sanders does with the lyrics for Nile? That’s a good thing, of course.

Well, it’s written down, but the language is kind of strange to most Norwegians nowadays because it’s written in a metaphorical, 8 or 900 AD Viking age poetic langauge. So we like to dig into it and find the initial meaning. That’s how “geeky” we are. (laughs)

Back to the title though, this book or poem is one of our biggest axioms, therefore Axioma Ethica Odini, like an absolute philosophical truth, as opposed to a scientific truth. An axiom is like an invincible truth.

So can you give an example of one of the axioms that you put forward on one of the tracks on the album?

The first song, “Ethica Odini,” deals with how you should always be aware of a situation before you act. Always use your eyes before you speak, use your ears and listen before you preach. Basically, beware. And try to stay sane.

The lyrics are still very mythological, so although there are a lot more personal and metaphorical elements, the mythological parallels are still there. You can find a lot of traces of that mythology, but you actually have to know the specific myths to find them. So that’s a little, how should I put it – easter eggs for the fans.

That’s great. It’s refreshing to actually have some content that’s worth reading into.

Yeah, I always write lyrics that you can just read as a piece of poetry, and there’s my initial meaning, but there’s also room for other people to interpret it their way. So it’s like a three-layered thing.

So let’s jump back to Vertebrae, which had a lot of your mellowest, most progressive moments to date, a lot of Pink Floyd elements bubbling up. But Axioma is much more aggressive, probably the most you’ve been since Isa. What brought about the shift?

Well, I wouldn’t say there was an actual shift in the inspiration or the actual music. I think if we’d used this production on Vertebrae it would have sounded totally different, so they’re actually not that far from each other. They would have sounded a lot more similar. It’s very organic though, that’s the way we wanted it to sound back then, so this time we wanted it to be more cutting-edge, with sharper guitars, a more ‘metal’ sound.

You guys changed recording locations and worked closer to home this time, right?

The keyboard player (Herbrand Larsen) and the guitar player (Ice Dale) have their own studio, and everything was recorded there apart from the drums, which were recorded in another studio in Bergen, which is run by a friend of mine. We wanted to record the drums there because you need a big room, so you can get the correct feedback from the room, from the wooden walls. The guys have kind of a small studio – not really suitable for the drum sound that we wanted.

You guys live in or near Bergen, right?

Yeah, I live in Bergen, everything was recorded there and then mixed in Sweden.

Did being closer to home make for an easier process?

Yes and no, I mean, if you are away and recording an album, it’s easier to stay focused all the time, and it’s a little more pressure. But on the other hand, if you have your own studio, and if you have the right focus, you are able to try out different ideas and focus more on the details.

So did you have any successful experiments or iterations this time?

Yeah, we did a lot of experimentation with the guitars and the bass sound, moving the microphones around, and spent hours to find the right sound. So that’s the biggest benefit to recording on your own, spending the time to find the ideal sound, or at least the closest you can get to ideal.

What about the track “Night Sight,”then. That’s somewhat of an experiment – it’s got a very distinct ‘70s vibe to it. What inspired that sound?

Well, it sounded a lot different to begin with, actually. It wasn’t supposed to be that way at first. Ivar made the riffs and a pre-production version, and then he and I just wanted to change it, to make it really mellow, and then explode into the rest of the song. So we cut away all of the aggressive guitars and kept a really mellow, down-to-earth sound, with mellow vocals and bass, and we actually used a different drum kit on that part too. An old, small 70s drum kit.

You guys like that contrast? You think you’ll do more like it in the future?

Oh yeah, we love contrast. And the idea behind the song was to use the dynamics as much as possible. That was the whole idea, actually.

Jumping back to albums like Blodhemn and Mardraum – it seemed to me that there was a really definite shift there in your sound too. At what point did the progressive or psychedelic elements you’re using now really come into play?

Well, it actually happened a lot earlier, on Frost I would say.

Okay, right, and the keys on Vikingligr Veldi.

Yeah, that was more like traditional, epic extreme metal, longer songs. But on Frost we started to experiment with clean vocals and odd beats and stuff like that. Still very aggressive, but I think those elements have just become more and more evident in the music over time. It wasn’t really a conscious move either – we don’t have any plans or rules or boundaries, and we just include whatever we feel. We’re not afraid of using any kind of inspiration.

Which is fantastic, because as a listener, every album has unveiled something new. I just remember with Vertebrae, the Pink Floyd really hit me full on.

(Laughs) Yeah, we listen to a lot of Pink Floyd. We like the music from the 70s in general, like Rush, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Gentle Giant, all those good bands.

Most metalheads that are into you guys do too. No surprise. Speaking of metalheads, you guys are heading somewhere where there are apparently a lot of them. You’re heading to India next, right?

Yeah, for the second time. We went over in 2007 as well.

I wasn’t aware of that. I saw a documentary called Global Metal, and Maiden played there and the crowd was going batshit berserk, but it seemed like they were one of the first bands over there. How was your reception when you played?

Well, there are a lot of people in India, and obviously some of the people are into metal too, so the last time we were there the audience was maybe between eight and ten thousand.

Wow.

Yeah, it was maybe the biggest cultural coalition I had ever seen (laughs). You had metalheads with turbans and Venom shirts going like AAARGGHHH!! And women with saris and sarongs, dancing in trance to the music, it was crazy (laughs).

It might sound weird, but the difference between us and that kind of Indian folk music, and the distance from that music in energy, well, it’s not that dramatic actually when you compare it to extreme metal. It’s very easy for Indians to adapt to it.

So does that mean we can expect an Indian crossover Enslaved album one day? I’m joking, of course.

Hey, we could have some sitar and stuff, it’s not impossible.

Yeah, you could do a whole album depicting the Vikings going to all of the different cultures that they encountered and fought against, where each song has different elements from those cultures woven in.

(Laughs) Well, we never reached India you know. Pretty close though.

Well okay, America then. Native Americans. Those Indians.

Yeah, in Newfoundland. They kicked our asses and threw us out again. (Laughs)

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Enslaved are currently on tour with Dimmu Borgir.