HATE is another export product of Poland which we do not have to introduce, and their more than 25 year history has been already supported by 9 official releases and one DVD. While enjoying 8th edition of the Brutal East Fest I managed to exchange more than a few words with Adam a.k.a. ATF Sinner, front man of Warsaw’s Hate. I did not expect that I will find out so much from The First Sinner at all so without further ado we go to the interview.

Arek

Welcome to Bialystok for, or rather just after, the 8th edition of the Brutal East Fest. How would you judge this visit after not being here for so many years, will you count it as a success?

Yes, Yes, a very successful event, I'll tell you, that after all these years is nice and friendly. I think we're going to come here more often. Reportedly five years have passed since the last visit, no wait, we played in February of 2010, and so it's been 6 years already.

2015 is behind us and so is "Crusade: Zero", how would you rate that year and are you satisfied with the Hate's ninth album?

Artistically I'm happy with this album, but in truth we feel a little unsatisfied. The band underwent various changes and turmoil in this time period you know. Now we have more steady and clarified line up right now and we've been working on new material for a few months. In September we are going to record a new album, because there is a good atmosphere in the band and we want to go with the punch. We want to take advantage of this situation, continue with the momentum and in September we will be in the studio. I think that new album should appear sometime in the spring of 2017. We don't want to miss anything or to have anything missing this time around, so it's simply all hands on deck and we are making the album and it is going to be the best of our aspirations, in our current lineup. Napalm Records will release it, that's already established. We will record in two studios in Poland. We are going to work with Arek "Malta" Malczewski on this album, these are things that I know and I can say this officially.

Change in the position of a sound guy? No more Wiesławski Brothers? All bets go to Arek Malczewski yes?

Yes, we're changing it, it's not going to be Hertz this time. We want to record a different album, we want to do something completely fresh, and we want to jump away from our recent formula, which in a way has expired for us. We got all the way to the dead end with that recent formula and we want to refresh it. Not just musically, but also fresh in the sound department. We want to refresh our message and hence such decisions.

By the way, about new line up, personnel changes are probably natural thing in biographies of metal bands. Tell me how it's been with you?

You know, in some sense, one can say that this is natural, but in this case it wasn't due to the natural progress, because we had such a tragic event happen in 2013 (Mortifer's death caused by cardiac arrhythmia shortly after a concert in Stuttgart on the night of 5 to 6 April 2013) and it was the rock that drew an avalanche. After this everything fell apart, i.e. first Slawek (Mortifer) died, and then our drummer Staszek "Hexen" left the band, whom somehow, this whole situation overpowered. He returned to music now and he's playing drums in a band called Belzebong, but for quite some time he went through a pretty major crisis after what happened back then.

If I remember correctly this whole horrific situation occurred during your tour?

Yes, Yes, it was on the tour with Hypocrisy in 2013, in the spring and a few days before his birthday in April. We can say that whole line up capsized after this event. Now we have a completely new group. I am on vocals and guitar this whole time of course, Pawel "Pavulon" Jaroszewicz, who had previously played in Decapitated and Vader and in several other bands, on drums. He also plays in Antigama nowadays. We still have two other people who are sort of associated with us. It's the bassist-Piotr "Cain" Kolakowski of Neyra and on the guitar "Domin" Dominik Prykiel, who played previously in the band Lost Soul, as well as several other bands.

Is it a permanent squad at this point?

It's a lineup that plays concerts at the moment. It is in fact a live lineup, but it's been there for about a year and a half. With Pawel and Piotr we traveled and played even longer. With this squad we played several tours, and quite a few serious things - HateFest with Six Feet Under, Marduk and Vader; tour with Belphegor not long ago and in a moment we're going to the Balkans with Decapitated for several concerts, and then there will be a few performances in Russia, also playing with this line up this whole time, so we are pushing forward with all our might, but in fact our main focus is the creation of new material and it is already been in progress for nearly a year. There is a lot of it. Even today, we played one new number at the beginning of our set. It was the first song, without any notice. That was a completely new song that's maybe two months old. Well, you know we try and sharpen our fangs and claws for the session with the new material with "Malta" in September. I think that by the end of the year we should finish with the mastering and so on. I think that in the spring of 2017 at the latest it should be released by Napalm Records. In Poland distribution will probably go through via Mystic.

It's very good that in the end there will be a Polish Distributor, because strangely enough it is hard to get your albums here in your country.

Yes, it's hard because, for some time now, we don't have a Polish publisher. All this time we worked together with the French Listenable Records and with Napalm Records lately. This time, too, it will be Napalm, but there will be some distribution in Poland.

By the way, the last two releases were linked to the Austrian Napalm Rec. and before that you encountered a long episode with the French. Are you happy with the cooperation?

Yes I am pleased with the cooperation with Napalm. This is an interesting case in general because it is a label that's never been that interested in this kind of music. As you know there is more heavy metal and folk metal in there. There is also a lot of soft metal with female vocals. We are one of the very few bands with a stronger type of metal. There is us, there's DevilDriver and not long ago Satyricon signed a contract with them also. So generally that label grows stronger and there's more they can do. They expand their hit zone, so to speak. Generally, we had a good correlation with them since the beginning.

How's the touring support?

Touring support, in principle, contracts do not provide. As a rule, you have to collaborate with a tour agency and we, until recently, collaborated with such agency - "Rock The Nation" from Austria. However, we have solved the contract, because they blocked us in some cases. We could not do certain things. Now we have a complete freedom of choice and we operate through our Tour Agent/Manager. Thanks to this we play way more concerts.

So, you're saying that sometimes a single person can have a better grip on things than a huge agency?

Yes, because in a large agency you always compete with someone. You always have to fight for what is yours. That's how it looks like.

To continue on a subject of touring - in April you were set to conquer Balkans with Decapitated and Thy Disease; Russia, Estonia and Lithuania hand in hand with Italians from Fleshgod Apocalypse in May, but when are you planning on going back to back to U.S.?

How do I say it! We had United States sitting in our cross hair for awhile now. We get various offers from there, but these are not the deals that we wished for just yet. At the moment there are two agencies interested in bringing us back over there. We played few tours in United States. We have achieved a lot over there at some point. After the album "Erebos" we played 3 large tours. One of them was 60 concerts. We circled the whole United States twice and we did Canada. Now we are waiting for a good moment to return over there and I do not know whether it will happen in the upcoming months - in the summertime or whether it's going to happen after the release of the new album, but we'll be back there - it is only a matter of time. The United States is a big market, touring costs out there are a lot of money and it must pay back. Not to mention that the work visas to the United States are terribly expensive, so these are simply the costs. We already did such tours, we took a longer break, but as I said, it is only a matter of time when we return. I think that it will be no later than 2017.

Back to "Crusade: Zero" for a little bit, I have to tell you that on this album I've missed a spark that "Solarflesh" had. I can't even answer the question of 'what is "Crusade: Zero" missing' to myself because there's energy, powerful sound, these are blasts and kick ass drumming…however... please tell me what kind of reviews has this album collected?

Album gathered good reviews generally. There are good, sufficient and very good reviews. I have the same feeling about the album as you said a moment ago. I agree with you 100% on that. We have some appetite left after this album. It happened in special circumstances. Drummer has changed and literally 3 months before the studio time came Pawel "Pavulon". All of this happened in a rush. The pressure was too high and maybe we rushed it a little too much. We wanted to finish before the deadline, because the label pressed us quite strongly. I'm not content myself, there are parts of it that I like, but this material somewhat doesn't entirely work. That's why we changed our philosophy in creating the new material. We want to make an album that you'll have to listen to in its entirety, from the first to the last song on one breath. Not too long of an album though. Generally, the songs will be shorter, like 3-4 minutes each. They will not be strongly expanded narrative but still quite functional, simply dynamic. It's going to be a good beating! We also want to completely refresh the sound so it will change a little stylistically too. I do not want to chat about this too much because it is all still in the works. At the moment we have probably about 12 numbers made. A lot of material, but we have yet to separate some of the songs out. We're probably going to record 8 songs.

Eight-tracks 3-4 minutes each, is this supposed to be Hate's version of "Reign In Blood", but on that one there was 10 pieces (laughs).

It's not that all of them will be short. So, probably the first four will be shorter numbers. Then they will lengthen, and perhaps the last two numbers will be combined into one long often changing number. Such is the plan, but it is still too early to talk about it. All this stuff is in the arrangement mode at the time. We've been sitting long hours in our practice spot and we keep deliberating.

How did it happen that you have almost a quarter of a century behind you but we don't see any anniversary releases, DVDs, something extra, some fireworks? Do you have any plans for this matter?

You know what, I'll tell you that there is a plan for anniversary DVD. Even recently, we received an offer from the Polish label Metal Mind Productions. Let's just say that we've been in talks with them for about a year now. It is crystallizing somewhere over there so I think that probably after this album we'll do such a DVD and probably Metal Mind will release it, but these are just guesses, because there is no contract yet. We would like to do something like this, although on the other hand, I'll tell you that we do not specifically like anniversaries. To celebrate all the anniversaries, to look back, to reflect and so on. Don't like it even more so when not all memories are nice which I mentioned already today.

Yes, I agree with you in its entirety. You play a guitar way longer than Hate exists, does the experience gained in playing guitar allow you to fully enjoy the possibilities?

I'll tell you that I am very happy with what I play and how I play it. Of course I am hungry for more but generally I am satisfied with the performance of the songs with the current lineup. It all plays out as it should, or is coming close to this as it should be. It is also nice because there is progress, and there is good direction while it is, of course, the race to catch the bunny. Man learns all his life. At least that's what I have experienced. I want to learn new things; I don't want to get stuck in one place with my music. You'll see it for yourself because new material will be completely different. There will be different music means used. The album "Crusade: Zero" was already close to eating its own tail and we got backed to the wall with our formula and now it's time to backfire and ricochet in a different direction.

Vocals are quite another story however, they're only as strong, as strong your body is, and those 25 years of touring had to have somehow put a stamp on it. Do you do something special, work on it somehow to get it ready for the tour and be prepared every next day?

No, I'm not doing anything special and I got to tell you that technique is something that shapes up over the years. This is a terribly difficult thing. I was very unhappy with my vocals on the first albums by Hate you know. In general, I became a vocalist by accident because no one in the band could do it and the first few releases by Hate come with vocals, which I can't even listen to. They simply annoy me. In fact, my vocals began to please me in the sense of tone and the character sometime around "Anaclasis..." in 2005. From that point on, I think this is a good direction, but of course it is not so, that it seems to me, that I know it all. Of course not. It is just like with playing guitar, you need to look for some new formula all the time. On the new album I will also try to do something distinctive.

We are being seriously rushed over here so let's finish this on subject of faith. I didn't spot an ounce of respect for the Christian faith in the works of Hate and you downright glow with antipathy to it. After the recent financial failures being uncovered and pedophilia investigations, does make sense to still go after them?

It's totally worth it, because I'll tell you what the paradox is despite all this, the church in Poland is very strong and I think that it's strongest that it has ever been. I do not remember church ever being so mighty and powerful institution but now is also assisted by politicians. This year promises to be dominated by Christianity - there are going to be some celebrations, the World Christian Youth Rally, 1050 anniversary of the baptism of Poland, and so on, it scares me. Also, in any case, we do not want to support this and continue to insist that this is something that is quite not needed for any man. Our country is a kind of phenomenon. In general, most of the world seems to leave religion behind and then there's us, quite the opposite - and that's that. Poland is a terribly monotheistic, traditional, religious country and I do not like it very much...

At this point our conversation was brutally interrupted and we had to leave the room with all the of the band’s belongings. Time to wait for new and divergent Hate!

With "Heimdal" Norwegian Enslaved have recently released their 20th album (read review here). It is quite a huge step forward for them but in some cases also pretty much back to the roots so I had a lot of questions to ask. Iver Sandøy (drums, vocals) was so kind to do a very nice Sunday morning chat with me via Zoom where I got a lot of answers and a deeper insight into the band which is still burning full of energy and creativity. Enjoy reading.

Michael

Hi Iver, how satisfied are you with the reception of the new album?

Well, we are extremely satisfied with it. The reception has been at times overwhelming. So the spirits are high in the Enslaved camp!

Personally I am totally flashed by the album and "Heimdal" is by far the best album since "Frost" for me. These breaks and the alternation of quiet parts with the eruptive black metal outbursts are great and always provide a surprise, because it all comes so suddenly and yet fits perfectly into each other. With which ideas did you go with the songwriting?

All the music, the instrumental bits, are written by Ivar so it's kind of hard for me to go into detail or to know the details of his initial inspirations. But for instance for a song like 'Congelia' we talked about in the early stages when we started talking about vaguely planning the new album. I said something like: "maybe we should have a section with that slow blast beat this time". In Norwegian we say "langrennspinne" which is translated into cross country skiing blast (laughs). Of course that comes from Darkthrone; Fenriz and his love for cross country skiing so it's not extremely fast it's just that slow going (laughs) but a very insistent kind of beat that we always have enjoyed. And that turned into a whole song when he started working on it. That's an example of discussion within the band when we say "that kind of beat is cool" and he will come back with this.

Let's take 'Forest Dweller' as an example - did you compose this incredibly versatile song in one piece, or did the ideas come gradually? You first have to come up with the idea of pairing these harsh black metal riffs with clear vocals and a Hammond organ in the middle and then suddenly starting with acoustic guitars again...

This I cannot tell you because this time it is very much Ivars album to the very details. Even many of the drum parts I didn't really change from his compositions. What Grutle and I contributed were more the melodies on top of what we are singing. Those we wrote on top of the musical compositions. But when I know how kind of Ivar works, I guess it starts with the loose ideas of course and then you get to a point like in 'Forest Dweller' where you arrange the calm with the rocking parts. Normally it comes quite intuitively.

So when you did do the vocals, was there already a complete song or how did you progress with it?

That's how it normally works. We do quite extensive demos before we record the album so when we get the instrumental demos from Ivar we start to decide where we should have clean vocals, distorted vocals based on the lyrics that we have for the song. Most often we write the vocals on top of the finished arrangement. What can happen is that when we start writing the vocals we see that we need to extend a section to make it fit with the lyrics. A song can be longer or shorter when we actually start working on the vocals so that it's not a totally rigid thing. But it is being more worked on in sections. The way it works is that Ivar presents us a finished instrumental composition and that we stay to that arrangement lengthwise with the vocals or like in 'Forest Dweller' we changed some duration of the instrumental sections to fit with how we wanted the vocals to be with melody and lyrics.

So do you write the lyrics also after the compositions?

I think that varies but most often the compositions come first and Grutle and Ivar write the lyrics after that. But for this and the latest albums the lyrical concept has existed even before all the music has been written.

How long did it take to record "Heimdal" with all the pre-production and demo stuff?

This one actually took a while. Ivar wrote intermediately and the songs didn't come in one session. It was over the course of a bit of time the demos arrived and every time we got a new song, Grutle and I got to work on the vocals a bit. I'm not sure how long exactly it took but maybe about half a year to write it and writing vocal demos and writing vocal lines took the same time. When we recorded it, we always aimed for a pretty concise, intense period for that, it took a month in total and then mixing came later and also the Dolby atmospheric mix that we did. This is also interesting and you can listen to it at Apple Music to the surround mix that we did this December.

And with 'Caravans To The Outer Worlds' you wrote an awesome thrash song, maybe the fastest song in a long time...how did it come about? Is it some kind of homage to the old heroes like Kreator?

I guess those influences will creep into the songwriting when the riffs are kind of thrashy and I come more from a thrash metal background from my youth. I wasn't really a metal drummer for many years so I wasn't part of the black metal thing in the 90s. I was more into psychedelic and progressive stuff then. When I got back into metal, my references kind of stopped in 1990 (laughs). So what I have to go on is the stuff that I learned from Slayer, early Metallica, Kreator, those kinds of bands. So definitely there will be an old school thrash metal vibe in those kinds of songs.

I dare say that with "Heimdal" you have an even wider range between progressive and black metal than ever before, do you agree?

I think that's a fair assessment. As we've grown older, we have started not giving a shit even more (laughs) so the references are probably even clearer. If we do a black metal homage then we just go full on and a thrash metal riff we don't hide. We just explore that to the fullest and also the progressive elements. Hopefully we managed to go further in every direction. It just makes the ideas more fully realized in a way. If you're going to go Krautrock and early Kraftwerk, let's just go for it!

Maybe it depends on my age and the fact that I'm also into some prog stuff like Rush after all these years only being into death, black and thrash especially when I was a teenager but with "Heimdal" it is pretty much easier to listen to than albums like "Isa" or the other stuff you released in the early 2000s – this was pretty more difficult to access to….

Well, that's interesting because in the minds of a lot of people probably the Heimdal album is the difficult one and especially compared to Utgard or albums like Isa. So it is interesting that you say that! Maybe it has to do with our age group but Heimdal is just more logical for us now. It explores more fully the influences that maybe have always been there but it's out now on display a bit more.

Yes and I think that there aren't so many compromises this time. All these twist and turns on the album are very surprising so that at least I quite often think: "wow, what the fuck is happening here?"!

(Laughs) There are less excuses. If we go there, let's just go there.

What made me a bit puzzled is this intro on 'The Eternal Sea'. It totally reminds me of some techno songs from the 90s. What was the intention behind it?

Yeah, I think you can totally say that. It's kind of repetitive, almost programmed to it and influenced by those 90s dark techno. But that's just a long lineage that comes from that 70s Krautrock German electronic music approach as well.  It's just logical and wrapped in metal and rock sounds but the way of thinking has probably much to do with the dark ambient techno electronic world.

"Heimdall" is the guardian of the rainbow bridge and the sound of his horn "Gjallarhorn" is supposed to warn of the downfall of the gods at the beginning of Ragnarok – so are you warning at the beginning of your album about the beginning of a dark time to come? I mean, since 2021 everything is kind of getting shittier and shittier….

Well I guess that's up to the listener to interpret it but it's not that we're being secretive about it. The album is called Heimdal and it's based on this Norse legend when he blows his horn one of its signals is Ragnarok. But the whole concept of Ragnarok is that the world is going to shits but let's not forget that the whole point of Ragnarok is the new beginning after it. So it's this circle but I don't want to go too literally into the lyrics because they are there for anyone to read and interpret in their own way. But yes, it signals both – the end of something and the beginning of something new. Your going into this album is going into a dream state and also coming out of a dream state.

Nevertheless I have to come back a little bit to the lyrics. Looking at the cover and reading through the lyrics, I get the impression that the sea and something to follow (Navigator, Beacon, etc.) play an important role.

I was born and raised on a small island and all the people who are in Enslaved now are coastal people so the sea holds a special importance for us, definitely. The sea and the ocean hold such strong symbols for all of us and it can be used poetically in so many ways because it has such a meaning and such significance for our people. I can only speak for the tradition where I am from but the sea is kind of both: a life giver and a life taker. So many men from my family, both my great grandfathers and his father disappeared at sea and this mightiness and the duality of the relation to the sea of taking life and giving life is important. In hard times people could always rely on the sea to survive as well while in the inland when your crops failed you had nothing to fall back on. The coastal people always had fish and other stuff so you could always survive from the ocean. There is a red line and I feel that we explored that on the previous album and on this one perhaps even more especially in songs like 'The Eternal Sea', exploring the history and the significance of the sea for us as people.

So you switched to another topic than the "Frost" theme….

Well, we're not Immortal. They can deal with the frost and snow and Enslaved is more about the water in its liquid form which is also appropriate for the music.

How much are you affected by the climate change in the area you live?

I think that everyone is affected by it. It's A difficult time in Norway  - we have had such areas that were still untouched by industry and now they are really pushing to take that away. I don't want to get too political here but it's just as important to protect whatever is left of nature as it is to electrify everything. Even though we are talking about climate change and moving away from fossil fuels the politicians are only talking about more, more, more. How many cell phones do we really need? How many cars do we really need and how big do our houses need to be? This is something that we should discuss.

Yes, it is the same here in Germany. So many things have changed and forests not far away from here completely died and nobody really cares about that. It is unbelievable!

I can definitely feel from my youth that the weather is getting just more extreme. Well, it's probably a nice excuse for all the climate change deniers, at the moment it's about 30 cm of snow in Norway and this is also extreme, even in Bergen that is traditionally a wet city. It's getting wetter and wetter and the weather is getting more extreme, like you guys had this summer in Europe this extreme drought. And let's not forget it's us, the humans. When I was born in 1974, there were 4 billion people on the planet and now it's doubled. Only in my lifetime! I know the theories that it will level out is what they predict but we have to reach 10 billion before that starts happening. So will there be anything left of nature? Or will it all be industrialized when we have finished killing all the insects. Then we won't have crops anymore. It sounds like a thrash metal dystopia from the 80s and now we are there.

Coming back to the history of the band - you never paid attention to any boundaries or opinions of others in your band history, was that the right way in retrospect or should you have made one or the other compromise in retrospect?

Do people have regrets? I am sure. We all spend time thinking what we shouldn't have done or what he should have done in another way but at the same time you just have to leave it behind. For Enslaved, in retrospect you can look at some of the albums and maybe say "okay, that wasn't the right direction or it could have been done in a different way". But at the same time you can say that we wouldn't have arrived at Heimdal if we hadn't been for even the missteps. Even if some the albums maybe weren't as artistically fulfilled and, not that it matters but some of them were less commercially successful but it was all part of arriving at the albums that did really matter and getting us to where we are now: where 16 albums a lot of people really care about what Enslaved do and that's a fantastic privilege. That we have people like yourself that actually care enough to go deeply into the stuff that you create, analyze it, have opinions about it and discuss it with us. As an artist that is the ultimate goal: to create something that holds relevance for people. Of course you have to start from yourself but you wouldn't be creating art and putting it on display if you only cared about yourself. We want to create something that people can relate to and hopefully find value in it.

Are you planning anything for next year as a 30th anniversary to celebrate "Frost" and "Vikingligr Veldi" accordingly? And this year a tour?

For 2024 there are no details yet. It will be a busy year this year. Vikingligr Veldi was released in 1993 and it is already announced that we will do a Vikingligr Veldi show in Germany at Party.San. We already did two Frost shows in 2019 and that was the 25th anniversary. So we did that and I'm not sure if we're going to do that again. To my knowledge we haven't been asked, at least not officially by anyone. We'll see. This is one year ahead from now. Anything can happen. We have plans for a little tour in Europe later this year but first it's the festivals like Brutal Assault, Party.San, Beyond The Gates in Bergen and a few others. But the US tour is coming up first for the whole of April and this is the big one this year. This will be interesting. We haven't been on a proper tour for that long since 2019 because it has not been possible.