When I heard about the fact about the re-creation of an gig which took place 20 years ago including NORDLYS, LUNAR AURORA, NAGELFAR and MIGHTIEST I decided that I had to visit this, even if I and my attendance had to travel to Freiburg / Black Forest, Southern Germany. For the first time I visited the "Crash"-Club, the dark vault cellar is predestined for black metal gigs. LUNAR AURORA and NAGELFAR ceased to exist, so the line up was completed by KERMANIA and a project band called WELTENGÄNGER (named after LUNAR AURORAs debut album). The concert itself was a great experience (here you can see some pictures published by the local news portal), so some months after I decided to do an interview with A. from NORDLYS.
First of all: how did you experience The „Past is alive“
concert at the Crash in Freiburg with MIGHTIEST, KERMANIA and
WELTENGÄNGER ? In my opinion (and my attencance felt the same) NORDLYS was the
„strongest“ band on this evening. And how exactly did the idea of took shape,
who had the inital idea ?
It was a great event and experience, we really appreciated
the effort the guys from Mightiest, especially Oliver, put into making this
possible and as enjoyable as possible, not only the gig itself but also
everything around it. The initial idea came from Mightiest to re-create an
event that I had organized 20 years ago in Bad Wörishofen with Lunar Aurora,
Nagelfar, Mightiest and us. First plans were simply to meet up after all this
years but the whole thing turned out a bit bigger. Great to hear you enjoyed
the performance, it went surprisingly well in regard of us meeting up for
rehearsing only a couple of times before the gig.
2
I discovered NORDLYS for the first time on an compilation
called „Enccylopedia Pestilentia“,a 3-CD Compilation with a lot of Underground black metal bands such as NAGELFAR, HIRILORN (pre-Deathspell Omega) and so on,
released in 1997. „Feuer der Nacht“ is the title by NORDLYS, with a
relatively hymnic approach…Do you still remember how this compilation was realized and did someone ask you to take
part in it ?
If I remember right, the label that released the compilation
wrote to us and asked us if we want to participate. The song featured there has
later been released under the “Pest” band-name as 7” along with another song.
It must have been an immense effort for the label back then with the tapes
& paperwork to be collected from all the bands for the compilation, keeping
in mind that everything was done by mail back then.
ca. 1993/1994
NORDLYS changed their name for various time, to „Pest“ or
„Die schwarze Wut“ . I think because of this a lot of people lost sight of
NORDLYS ? Why did you choose in the beginning a norwegian/ danish word ? And
changing to Pest was maybe no good choice as well, there was/ has been another german
black metal band with this name among Pest from Sweden and Pest from Finland….
Yes, we haven’t been really fortunate concerning band-names,
always some problems appeared. The norwegian name was chosen as a tribute to
the original norwegian black metal bands that started the whole thing.
Unfortunately many thought we try to be some norwegian copy-cat and we got
frustrated with that since it became even an issue getting signed by a label.
Nowadays things are different, so it was kind a natural decision to return to
the original name. Beside changing the name, we also split up for some time
after the release of the Pest EP and during that time I got more involved with
Nocti Vagus. Later on I moved to Finland which slowed down things a lot,
especially after I joined Horna and later on found Totalselfhatred.
Can you give us an overview of the current and past-line up
and related projects ? You are part of TOTALSELFHATRED from Finland, who
released a new album these days. Maybe you want to tell the readers something about this. And are you actually part of other
finnish bands-are you living in Finland ?
Nordlys is basically me, A. and Torstein, us being founding
members. Back in the days Asmopath joined on bass and we played a couple of shows
together in the 90-ies. Right now we are joined by Kriya on bass, who has been
also part of the band during the times I haven't been an active member of the
band. Together with Torstein, Ozeloth & Desmotes (guitars) and Lord Aarsang
(vox), this line-up released the 2012 Demo “Das Blut der Toten”. Besides Nordlys, Torstein & me had a more
folk influenced project named Orkburg which never got released, but we consider
using these songs on a possible future Nordlys release, since they’re musically
quite close to Nordlys, maybe a bit less Black Metal. I’ve also had the
Schwarze Galle project with Torstein & Wyhryd of Lunar Aurora, which we
decided also to release under the Nordlys name (on the Split with Lunar Aurora)
for the same reason. This time musically the Black Metal influences are again
very strong.
And yes, I’ve been living in Finland for 17 years now and
been playing in a couple of bands here, but my own band / project indeed is
TOTALSELFHATRED which we found in 2005. Our latest album “Solitude” has been
released by Osmose in April and most likely we will tour in late autumn, mainly
in Germany. For the last couple of years I’ve been also playing and composing
lead guitars for Korgonthurus but right now there’s only Totalselfhatred & Nordlys.
Metal Archives said you were involved in NOCTI VAGUS. I already knew this band a little bit, heard
sometimes about NOCTI VAGUS, but for he first time I listened the whole Album these days on youtube. It’s not revolutionary, but good black metal, the album was
released in 1998. In this year LUNAR
AURORA and DESASTER for example released each their second album, but in
general, although the high quality of NORDLYS and (NOCTI VAGUS as well) most
black metal bands are / were much more known, the already mentioned DESASTER and LUNAR
AURORA, but SECRETS OF THE MOON, NAGELFAR, MAYHEMIC TRUTH, EMINENZ , to name a
few, as well. What’s the reason do you
think ? Because you never released an official album ( maybe the same case is
MIGHTIEST, who released their debut ca. 20 years after starting the band)?
Pretty much the same reasons I
mentioned in one of the previous answer. Also, where others worked and
developed with the same band over all these years, I had been in different
bands & projects taking different roles within the band. Eventually I poured
all these experiences and influences into one band, TOTALSELFHATRED, which has
been around for 13 years now.
What are your most important (postive and negative ones)
memories, looking back to all these years with NORDLYS and other bands ? Which
bands do you still listen to from the „old days“ and what are newer bands you
can recommend ?
Of course the glory old days are great to remember, it was a
really magic time when the whole Black Metal thing started in the early
nineties, musically and spiritually. Through black metal is supposed to be
narrow minded in some sense, I never really was fond of the “black metal
rulebook” which some tried to establish. Seemed contradictious to me since the
whole movement is so much about rebellion and individualism in my opinion.
Basically I still listen and own the records of all the
basic bands from back then, no need to mention any particular, you know them all.
Latest discoveries for me have been Tribulation & Sinmara.
And, as last question, the maybe most important one: Will
you record and release some new stuff with NORDLYS ? Will there be further live appearances
in the nearer future ?
We do definitely have plans for both and we are currently
working on how we can make it happen with the long distance inbetween and the
lack of an own rehearsal room in Germany. I have composed already a fair amount
of songs, so this ain’t the problem. The song-material so far leans more
towards the early Nordlys style (second demo), yet updated with some fresh
ideas and skills learned throughout the years. We’re also supposed to
participate with 2 Songs in a 12” split release.
The last words are yours…..
Thank you very much for the great interview and interesting
questions!
