Ivat Bjornson never set out to be a rock star. All he ever wanted to do was write songs – and as the 32-year-tenured lead composer for progressive black metallers Enslaved, he’s living the dream.
From his adolescence in Norway’s black metal scene to touring the States in a beat-up van, these are the things he’s learned in three decades of genre-pioneering music.
BLACK METAL WAS REVENGE AGAINST HIPPIES
“My parents were hippies; all the black metal kids had hippie parents – [our music] was our revenge against the hippies, I guess.”
BUT I DID BOND WITH MY DAD OVER MUSIC
“My parents were divorced. My dad lived in Haugesund and every Saturday he and his new wife invited friends over. I remember, he pulled out his guitar to play All Along The Watchtower and I was fascinated by these people all being in love with music. Aged eight, I asked my dad, ‘Can I do this with you somehow?’”
ANTHRAX WERE MY FIRST OBSESSION
“At 10, I heard Anthrax on the radio, then they had a show in Oslo. It was so awesome! Every time at school, if the assignment was ‘Write about something you’re interested in’, I’d bring in a boombox and play Anthrax incredibly loudly. My teacher would go red-faced: ‘Thank you, that’s enough!’ The next class would be: ‘Write about a country you’re interested in.’ I’d put, ‘This is the USA, where Anthrax are from.’ Out came the boombox. [Everyone thought,] ‘Oh my god, this kid…’”
THRASH WAS EVERYTHING
“I had a thrash band called Obnoxious with my friends when I was 10. I saw posters of Mille [Petrozza] from Kreator where he kept his hair in front of his face, so I never took my hair away from my face, even at dinner. My parents were crying and threatened everything from ‘We’ll take away your guitar’ to ‘We’ll cut your hair!’”
EURONYMOUS WAS A FRIEND AND MENTOR
“I was lucky to get to know Euronymous [Mayhem guitarist and Norwegian black metal ringleader Øystein Aarseth], because I was such a small kid. Whatever esoteric, Satanic beliefs he had, he didn’t discuss them with me. All that we had in common was music and guitars. I remember going into his record shop [Helvete] and trying to impress him: ‘Do you have anything extreme?’ He was like, ‘Shut the fuck up! Listen to this!’ and gave me some Norwegian prog.”
BLACK METAL ISN’T INHERENTLY RIGHT-WING
“People connect Norwegian black metal with politically problematic things on the righter side, but Euronymous was very community orientated. He was an outspoken communist. He would have been very against what came along later, when black metal became about positioning yourself above others.”
ENSLAVED AREN’T TRUE BLACK METAL
“Euronymous, at some point, told us that some people in the scene had expressed concern that Enslaved were so close to black metal while our ideology, the Norse mythology, had too much love and peace in it. When the term ‘true Norwegian black metal’ was coined, the people it was for – Mayhem, Burzum, Emperor, Gorgoroth – agreed it meant ‘metal with a Satanic ideology’. By that definition, Sammy Davis Jr, with his Church Of Satan membership, is more black metal than Enslaved, who sounded like black metal but with no Satanic ideology whatsoever.”
BEING DIFFERENT MADE ME A TARGET
“During the difficult days where people [in Norway] were paranoid about Satanists, a guy got way too drunk and was this bad combination of a good Christian and a karate expert. I had some kind of black metal back print on my jacket and just heard, ‘You fucking Satanist!’ Then everything went black. Witnesses told me I got a flying kick to the back of the head and he smashed my head against the edge of the kerb a few times. They ran after him but he was too fast. That was on my 16th birthday.”
YOUR BANDMATES SHOULD BE YOUR BEST MATES
“I found out that Euronymous had been murdered by watching the morning news. It was horrible, but I’m glad that me and Grutle [Kjellson, Enslaved singer and bassist] have been through this entire journey together. He had an even closer relationship with Euronymous; since they were [closer to] the same age, they could discuss vinyl collections and women and more grownup stuff. It would’ve been pretty bad if it weren’t for us being a duo and talking about it quite a lot.”
THERE’S NO SEPARATING THE ARTIST AND THE ART FOR SOME PEOPLE
“It was just a couple of years ago that [Euronymous’s murderer, Burzum founder and far-right extremist] Varg Vikernes stopped bad-mouthing the people that were ‘on his side’, but there’s no side to be on in his case. It’s devastating because what he created was so unique and now it’s impossible to enjoy it. The stuff that he created was groundbreaking and is still affecting music and art in a major way, and it’s too bad that it’s so tainted by what happened on a personal level.”
ALWAYS REMEMBER YOUR VISA
“I was 17 and got a letter from someone saying a friend of his in New York was a promoter and wanted Enslaved to do a US tour. We agreed and got on one of the last flights where you were still allowed to smoke on the plane. We dressed up as tourists because we didn’t have working visas; we were in Hawaiian shirts, smoking, asking for beers. We went through customs yelling, ‘We’re not a band! We’re just tourists!’ At that point they were like, ‘Whatever. Shut the fuck up.’”
SOMETIMES, STANDING OUT HELPS
“On that tour, we basically had to down vodka to get to sleep. We had a van and two drivers and we all had to sit on the floor. We broke down in the South Bronx. Grutle woke up and sleepwalked through the Bronx, with no t-shirt on, yelling, ‘I’m Santa Claus! Do you want any presents?’ We ran around looking for him until somebody told us about this dude with bleached hair and a silly moustache walking around.”
METAL OUTFITS LOOK COOL, BUT AREN’T ALWAYS PRACTICAL
“We did 12 shows in 14 days in Mexico. Some of them were in the countryside, with no roof on the venue. We had our Viking gear with us, since we were touring [second album, 1994’s] Frost. The first show, we got onstage to play the first song and Grutle had his replica helmet on. The minute his nose protector touches the mic, he’s zapped by all the electricity in the building and starts shaking. Then the promoter scammed us by leaving us behind in some city we didn’t even know. He was just gone. Finally, we found someone who got us onto a bus to El Paso. It was a 28-hour journey and we had diarrhoea, but we still thought, ‘This is the best time ever.’”
SEIZE EVERY OPPORTUNITY YOU CAN GET
“While in the US, we got an offer from [Type O Negative frontman] Peter Steele to do a full support tour. Me and Grutle were both like, ‘Ah, shit! We need to go back to school in August!’ But how the fuck were we gonna say ‘No, thank you’ to Peter Steele, so we could go to school? We were playing the same festival in New Jersey and, when we were invited onto his tour bus, we saw he had a Frost CD. He was really into black metal. We were hanging out for almost an hour and then some guy came in with a couple of girls: ‘You have a meeting in the back, Mr Steele.’ He was like, ‘Excuse me,’ and went into the back lounge, which had a heart-shaped bed in it. I later understood that this thing they called ‘a meeting’ was probably not!”
FOLLOW YOUR OWN PATH AND STICK TO IT
“I remember this super-black metal lady coming up to me in Bergen after [2000 album] Mardraum came out and saying, really close to my face, ‘I’m so disappointed. I’m never going to listen to Enslaved again.’ I felt so happy. ‘This is fucking fantastic,’ I thought. ‘We did the right thing!’ I pretended to be really offended – ‘Oh, I’m really sorry that we disappointed you’ – but I don’t think I pulled it off. I just walked off.”
BLACK METAL NEEDS TO OPEN UP TO THRIVE
“I wish there were more bands both conserving and experimenting with black metal. There’s an ocean of bands giving the impression that they’ve just hung up their weekday jacket and are putting on their black metal jacket because it’s Friday and they want to be the bad guy in the school yard. It doesn’t create the same wonderment. There’s a bit of arrogance in Congelia [a song on Enslaved’s new album, Heimdal], because a part of me wanted to say, ‘We’re not a black metal band, but we’re going to show you how it’s done.’”
Heimdal is out now via Nuclear Blast.
