Vocalist Erlend Hjelvik of one of the most interesting bands right now, Kvelertak, had a chat to Daniel Brockman at Vanyaland about his take on metal. Check it out!
What was the sonic plan for Kvelertak at the start did you intend the band to sound a certain way when you began this band?
Hah Not exactly! I mean, we never had any ambitions at all we never intended to release an album at all, let alone get a record deal. At the outset, we didnt really think about even playing a show, it took us a couple of years to get our act together and become a good band, we were really pretty shitty at first! But we started playing shows and we suddenly got all that stuff record deal, booking agent, all that, and it just kind of went uphill from there, and the sound kind of coalesced along with everything else.
You get primarily lumped in as a metal band do you ever feel any pressure to sound a certain way to cater to the expectations of those kinds of audiences?
Well, you know, we have so many different audiences all over the world when we started in Norway, we definitely had a pretty straight-up punk and metal crowd, but when we play now in all sorts of places we get, you know, emo kids and prog rockers and whoever. Although when we play the States its mostly metal dudes who come to the shows, it differs from country to country.
And you know, maybe once in a while a German guy will show up and tell us that he likes the heavier stuff better, but we get plenty of the opposite, people who tell us they prefer the catchier stuff. The good thing about our band is that no matter what style we lean on, it sounds like us, at least to us.
To English-language ears, anything in Norwegian sounds metal; you could probably write a song about dish soap and wed think it was about burning pyres in the snow for Satan or something.
Hah! Although, you know, Norway is more than black metal bands, its a really diverse place, theres so many great bands that have nothing to do with that whole church-burning thing.
To read more, head on over here
