This was when the Norwegian black metal scene was starting to become active. What was it like going into Euronymous’ shop, Helvete, and having somewhere like that as a record store and a place to meet?
“Yeah, people forget maybe that it was actually a functional record store. Euronymous had the whole floor of the shop that he rented, so it was a kind of a big record store with few records. We got to know people from other parts of Norway that were hanging around there, and it was good times, really. I remember a couple of months after A Blaze In The Northern Sky came out, I was walking in there, and these two guys were in there, with the album in their hands, listening to it on the speakers. One guy was looking at me in some kind of awe. He said to me, ‘Do you know what you have done?’ And I was like, ‘What have you done?’
“Something had happened, and I understood it was the album. We got that vision out, and I’m happy that it turned out to be that good. But it took a year at least before I did catch what kind of impact that album had, because we didn’t read magazines or anything. But I realise now what we were part of, and luckily we brought something to the table.”
What do you remember about the attention and infamy black metal started gaining for the stuff people in the scene were doing?
“Well, I am born and raised in Oslo, and I moved away from Oslo in December ’91, before all those things happened, because I knew that something was going to happen. It was a bit more, let’s say, serious times. Everybody was young and [into] crazy stuff. But I took the first opportunity I got to move out, and I moved far away from Oslo. When I saw all these things on the news, I wasn’t surprised.”
How come?
“I could write a long book, which I’m not going to do, about having been there, and it’s something I will take with me. I learned a lot about a lot of things. But it was a very sinister way to view things. It was almost like a competition of how to be most extreme. I think, for myself and Darkthrone, our interest was music, so for us, it was a bit strange. But, yeah, I moved from Oslo early on. I like peace and quiet.
“I think we always thought, ‘We don’t need the personal attention.’ Our philosophy has always been to let the music do the talking. We are trying to push the music in front of us instead of all the other things, even playing live.”
There was always a real mystique around Darkthrone for stuff like that, being a bit more in the shadows. You quit playing live early on…
“We were eager in the earlier days to play live. I think we thought that this is what bands are supposed to do. But I noticed that Fenriz was getting more and more nervous about it, and he didn’t like it. We did play some shows, though, in Norway, in Denmark, in Finland. The last show we did was at the Rockefeller Music Hall in Oslo in ’96. But I’m happy, because we can use all our energy on being creative, instead of seeing each other’s faces every day and playing live.”
There’s the big question at this point of what the live experience would be like as well. At Wacken in 2004, when you sang Darkthrone songs with Satyricon, there was a simple genius to just having flaming crosses onstage. But you’re like Bathory now – there’s so many ideas of what it could be, all right and wrong as well…
“Yeah. If we were to do it, it would take a year to figure out, get good musicians, there’s the question of how we should do it, which is very complicated. Sometimes my head is in a cartoon world, so I’ll think, ‘Okay, I imagine headlining Wacken, and we’re going to give them some real evil.’ And by that, I mean the evil part is to only play [more death metal albums] Soulside Journey and Goatlord. That’s pure evil! We’ve had plenty of great offers, and we’ve turned them all down. Really, you can come up with all kind of excuses and things, but the bottom line is that we don’t want to play live. It’s not for us.”
That suits an album like Transilvanian Hunger, though. And that in itself feels like a complete expression – it sounds really cold because it was done on a portable studio, the cover is a photocopy of a picture. But you stick it on, and you’re right there with it. It doesn’t need playing live to be understood, almost.
“Absolutely. That was the expression we wanted to have. Transilvanian Hunger was very appropriate album for its time. Things are a bit more… let’s call it sad. The cover picture was actually done for Under A Funeral Moon, and photocopied. It wouldn’t look the same if it was just the real picture. It’s just a matter of making it a bit crappier. We used the same portable studio for [next album] Panzerfaust. I did the vocals on that album back at Fenriz’s place. It was a really warm summer day, and we were slightly drunk. I was screaming like there was no tomorrow, using my whole body. We looked out the window and there was somebody in the garden doing flowers.”
Do you regret the slogan that got put on the back of the first press of Transilvanian Hunger?
“I didn’t do it. I was living in the forest. I had nothing to do with it. But it’s stupid. I’ve been talking to Fenriz about it, and he said it’s the dumbest thing he ever did, and he has been punishing himself ever since. It’s a silly thing. It’s stupid.”