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NAGLFAR
Blood, Fire, Death
By Alex Ristic
When it comes to Norwegians Naglfar, the two things you most need
to know are that for one, you may have to wait a long time for material,
but it usually ends up being killer, not filler. And two, without
really even trying, and with a lack of corpse paint and silly names,
they’ve still ending up being just as enigmatic as Fenriz et
al from Darkthrone.
Going backwards, the enigma they have created has been quite by
accident. They probably didn’t mean to wait five-years between
full-length releases (‘98’s Diabolical to ‘03’s
Sheol), but with nary a peep from them the mystery abounded about
what was taking so long.
And adding further fuel to the fire are the obsessively based lyrics
of blood, fire and death. One would almost think they were a Bathory
tribute band if it wasn’t for the over-the-top blastbeating
and varying vocal delivery’s – that and the much better
production.
To top it all off, because of only one or two songs in their catalogue,
already they have been relegated to Viking metal status, even while
the bulk of their material is nowhere near earning that distinction.
"Yeah, that is strange," agrees Jens Ryden, singer for
Naglfar, and also addressing the issues in a reverse order. "The
only song where we ever mentioned anything as Vikings is "Ragnarok,"
or the song "Devoured By Naglfar," otherwise we don’t
have any lyrics about Vikings or Norse mythology. I just think it
has to deal with our band name, because the band name ‘Naglfar’
is taken from Norse mythology. So I guess people think that we are
a Viking band because of that. I can understand that, but still
if these persons have read the lyrics they should think twice. Also,
why we picked the band name in the first place was not because of
it was from mythology, but for its meaning. Do you know the actual
meaning? [No]. The story goes like this: Naglfar is the ship of
death that brings the warriors to Hel (Norse spelling). So we’re
a death metal band, and it’s the ship of death, so it’s
a good name for a death metal band. We’re not into this Viking
stuff, so a lot of people have got it wrong."
But what about those Bathory comparisons? It’s kind of hard
to ignore – on a lyrical level, not musical – the eerily
similar themes, of blood, fire and death, with songs lyrics like
"Perish in flames – burn, burn, burn," from ‘
Unleash Hell,’ or "See disaster spreading from nation
to nation. Now the great yellow tempest bears witness of annihilation…
of death," from ‘Force Of Pandemonium."
"Bathory is of course the biggest influence to the Swedish
and Norwegian black metal scene since the beginning," Ryden
says, but disagreeing with the Bathory comparisons. "But I
mean, when Bathory was doing their classic albums I was just a kid,
so I can’t say I’ve been around for Bathory since then.
I’ve heard all the albums and some are good, and some are not
that good. Personally, I don’t see Bathory as an inspiration
to my song writing, but the sound is… Bathory is the godfather
for all Swedish and Norwegian bands. I mean, we are a death metal
band, and that’s what death metal is all about in my opinion.
We don’t get inspiration for lyrics from other bands. We get
inspirations from the concepts behind this music. We are pretty
much influenced by everything from Bathory to Morbid Angel albums,
horror movies and just dreams and thoughts in our minds."
He continues, summing up his lyrical position in basically one line:
"Hell. If you read the lyrics it’s pretty much about –
as you said – blood, fire, death, demons, the end of the world.
In all mythologies fire, when you think of fire, you think of destruction.
And fire is part of death."
One other element that leads to the enigma tag is the fact that
there was a German band, who started releasing albums shortly after
Naglfar, but titled Naglefar (notice the ‘e’?). With two
bands going about – with similar musical direction, and damn
close names – it had many saying ‘would the real Naglfar
please stand up?
"It was annoying at first, but I think they have split up now,"
says Ryden on his German counterparts. "I heard some rumours
about it. I think maybe they had the problem because we were formed
before them actually, we took the name before them, and we put out
both the demo tapes and the first album before they put out their
first demo tape, so when people spoke of ‘Naglfar,’ everybody
was thinking of the Swedish band, not the German band, so I think
they had a problem with it, not us. Of course I was pissed off,
but not that pissed off. I didn’t care that much really."
Now that the issue of enigmatic behaviour has been addressed, we
can talk about the powerful black/death offering that is Sheol,
a nine-track wunderkind of an album. And although a powerful mule-kick
of an album, don’t you suppose five-years is a little long
to wait for the Naglfar faithful to keep the home fires burning?
"Bad luck," begins Ryden on the wait. "First of all,
the album has been delayed numerous times; it was supposed to be
released last year actually, but for many reasons it has been delayed.
There were some problems in the studio, problems with writing the
lyrics, taking longer than we thought. We got this new guitarist,
and we had to (teach) him all the old songs as well, and then when
we were supposed to write the songs for this album we went touring
instead. So everything takes time, with the song writing you know,
and we had tons of bad luck as well. Small problems like being without
a rehearsal place for example. It sounds like a small problem, but
we try to write all the songs together as a band, and it’s
difficult to write songs if you don’t have a place. All that
shit combined with label problems and studio problems and everything,
problems finding front cover art… that’s why it’s
taken five years. I hope at least some people still remember us
(laughs)."
At least it wasn’t rushed. Although readers don’t always
necessarily agree with critics, as far as black/death metal goes,
Sheol has to be considered one of the stronger albums of the year.
And while critical acclaim is not necessarily the bands goal, Ryden
does say that part of the lengthy process in Sheol seeing the light
of day was the need to ensure strong songs.
"I know five years is a long time. I can’t believe it
myself because it doesn’t feel like five years since the last
album. But you know how it is in life; lot’s of things going
on. The members, they have to work or study full time as well, so
it’s not easy to put an album out every year. So instead of
doing that we really take our time to do one really good album instead.
The oldest one is four years old maybe ("Of Gorgon’s Spawned
Through Witchcraft"). Actually when we recorded the Ex Infernis
EP we had more finished tracks as well, but we did chose to only
record that one for the EP. I think "Of Gorgons Spawned Through
Witchcraft" and "Devoured By Naglfar" is also quite
old. Just because they are old… when we write songs, the process
could take a good long time writing the songs. Most of the songs
we write them over and over again. First we do an early version
of the song, and then we rehearse it a couple times over a few weeks,
then we discover that a middle part of the song sucks, so we change
it into a new version, and so on. So, the finished version of a
song most of the time is version number five or six, so just because
the song is old, that’s just the first version of the song.
Some bands work in a way like they write 20 songs, then pick 10
for the album. We don’t work that way. In this case, we wrote
eight songs that we were 100% satisfied with, and we only recorded
these songs. Over five years we came up with material for another
full-length album, but the material wasn’t good enough. So
instead of writing 20 songs, we write eight good ones."
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