AK: Thanks! I’m very busy, but very happy – feels soooo good to have a new album out and also to get back on stage! And the sun has finally returned to Norway, that makes everything a lot easier...

LH: It’s been three years now since the release of Desiderata, and when Eight Ways landed I jumped for joy! There has been talk for a good couple of years about the new album, and it seems to have taken such a long while for it to come to fruition. Considering you are now settled on Peaceville Records and have none of the unfortunate circumstances you had around the time of releasing your last album, I must admit I was expecting this one out sooner. What were the reasons for the delays with putting out this album?

AK: I think most of all the logistics of recording the album ourselves, and then there’s also the matter of earning a living in between the artistic frenzies. I think we’d completed all the songs by autumn 2007, but then we spent most of January to June 2008 preparing the practical side of things - you know, rebuilding the rehearsal space, ordering equipment, setting everything up etc. The actual recording took place in June/July/August, and then BP spent most of the autumn mixing the record. Also, I spent the autumn term at Cardiff University, so it made sense not to start the release process until I got back. I think most labels like to have at least four months between final mastering and the release date, to prepare for the promo work and so on. In this case, the release date got pushed back a bit as well, partially so as to not collide with the new My Dying Bride release, amongst other things. It also allowed us to get a video done, so all in all, I’m pretty happy with the way the schedule worked out. It did take some time, but at the end of the day, all that matters is that we’re releasing an album that is just how we want it to be!

LH: Not meaning the above comment a criticism, of course; the biggest mistake I think some bands tend to make is putting out albums too close together and not taking their time, putting out substandard albums year on year till the fans get sick of them, which you certainly cannot be accused of. I get the impression that you let the music come very naturally, and don’t try and force it to meet some sort of annual target, which results in quality music from the heart. Would you agree with this?

AK: Absolutely! I mean, all these other considerations come up only after the songs are ready. The actual music has always been the only thing that is truly important, and if we need to take our time, we will. On the other hand, we’re sort of overflowing with ideas these days, so we actually had to put a stop to working with ideas, otherwise we’d have much too much material to put on one record. I’m hoping that investing in recording equipment ourselves will allow us to record more often – we certainly have the ideas for doing so!

LH: Peaceville are known for being the sort of label that very much values artistic integrity and I am aware of many of their bands that are totally happy with the working relationship. I imagine they are happier for you to go at your own pace and they are confident that you will put out quality albums that way. As you’ve been with them now for the past two albums, how have they worked to nurture you as a band and how has it compared to your experience with Century Media?

AK: Thus far, our relation with Peaceville has been very good, and they’re really being supportive this time around. I think we’re the sort of band that are better left alone while we’re writing, but it’s crucial to have the support of the label when it’s time to release and promote an album, and they seem to be taking a true interest in our music and to really be working to get it out there.

LH: Speaking of Peaceville, obviously they have a great range of artists; bands like My Dying Bride, Novembre and Gallhammer at the heavier end of the scale. I could see your style really working well in a collaboration with any of these artists and maybe a vocal duet between yourself and Aaron Stainthorpe as an example I think would work absolutely brilliantly. Is this something you have thought about, and may consider doing on future albums?

AK: Hehe, I’ll keep your suggestion in mind! Well, we’ve had some loose talk amongst ourselves about doing something like that. Trouble is, we’re pretty self-sufficient when it comes to our music. If we would ever do a collaboration like that, it would have to be because the song needed a particular voice or style of playing that we couldn’t provide ourselves, and this far, we haven’t really done anything where that has been the case. I think that’s pretty natural, too – our music is usually best expressed through our voices and style of playing, since that is where it originates.

There are definitely lots of great musicians that I’d love to work with, in some way or other, but it might be easier to make that work in a separate project outside of MM. We will certainly not have guest appearances just to get a nice sticker on the cover...if ever anybody from outside the band appears on one of our albums, you can feel pretty damn sure it’s because we felt it was right for just that song.

LH: Onto some questions about the album, Eight Ways. First up, the artwork is rather striking, not to mention surreal! It really took me by surprise when I first looked at it, and certainly is one to ponder over, which I’m guessing is what you were going for. I was wondering if you could elaborate on the cover art and how it fits together with the album itself.

AK: Hehe, surreal does it for me any time! More than anything, the cover is the brainchild of Christian Ruud, our cover designer. He was in the band on “Mercury”, has been a close friend of ours ever since and has done all our covers since “All Flesh Is Grass”, so he’s practically our sixth, visual member. And so we wanted him to have a lot of room to express his own ideas, and I think the result speaks for itself.

The machines you see on the front cover, are signposts, or guides, or transporters, and if you look closely at the album front cover (not the promo, since that’s a bit smaller), you’ll find eight of these machines... Also, we really wanted some bright colour on the cover, since the album is very colourful and vibrant. Christian is actually working on what will be the second video for the album. It’ll be for “Where Dream And Day Collide”, and it will be a fully animated video, based on the cover artwork. Animation is a slow process, and this is a huge undertaking, so we’re expecting it to be done some time late this autumn. We’re considering maybe releasing it with an EP to get it out to as many as possible, because the result will be AMAZING – original, colourful and very much in tune with the music.

LH: I noticed on your website that the album was produced by B.P. and was recorded out in the countryside. I’m guessing that this gave an experience for you in the studio with little distractions and also I’m guessing there were some benefits to having it produced by a member of the band who obviously knows the band well. Could you talk a bit about the studio experience?

AK: Well, one thing’s certain: It’s not necessarily easier doing it this way. Since you’re working on your own music, you often end up being extremely (or excessively) thorough, just because it matters more than anything else in the world. Nevertheless, it was very nice not having to worry about the expensive studio hours ticking away, and it gave us the opportunity to pay the kind of attention to detail and little experiments that we’ve always wanted to. It was also very good to be in familiar surroundings, going home to a barbecue after the day’s work instead of dozing in some humid basement room. It does take its toll, especially on BP, who gets stuck will all the responsibility and all the hard work on top of performing as a musician, but again, I think the result speaks for itself. By the way, we’ll be putting our studio diary on the new website, and there you can follow the progression of the recordings day-to-day.

LH: The album is very recognisable as being Madder Mortem, though if we’re talking about progression I’d say maybe the metal groove heard on Desiderata is a little less constant and less obvious; it’s more mellow in a way and yet the jazz influences make it all more crazy! Obviously in four or five years since you wrote/recorded the last album you will have grown as artists and as people and got new ideas and influences along the way to put into the album. You seem the sort of musicians that aren’t afraid to experiment and to grow. Do you think this is something you have noticed yourself in your music?

AK: Oh, yes. I actually think that might be the most central fact about us. Boundaries and genres and rules are there to be tampered with, and that is part of what keeps it interesting to us, as well, just seeing new possibilities and trying to do stuff we haven’t done before. Desiderata was a very guitar oriented album, whereas I think this album gives a lot more room to the vocals, and also to the softer side of our music. That is a consequence of us getting a lot better as musicians at doing the softer stuff, but it’s also a sort of reaction to things we’ve done before. We’ve explored the heavier-than-thou territory for quite a few years now, and so it’s fun trying to make the heavy stuff work well with something completely different...for instance a proper shuffle!

LH: One of the things I love about your music is its unpredictability. It refuses to conform to any one style, or one particular emotion; many bands you could define as being aggressive, or melancholic, whereas you incorporate all those emotions and do so very well. I think perhaps this makes it sound more real and more human; nobody can feel only one emotion at all times and you seem to put across a variety of aspects of your personality. I imagine this makes the whole songwriting process easier for you as you aren’t limiting yourself to singing and writing in a certain way. Would that be correct?

AK: Yes, absolutely. And also, I think the whole idea of setting limits on a song before you’ve even started creating it is downright silly. To us, it’s more about working with the ideas and trying to figure out where those ideas want to go, than deciding on one feeling or one direction and then trying to get ideas to go with that. That sounds pretty boring to me. Even though it needs to be harnessed and controlled, it is unpredictability and change that breeds worthwhile, original music. There’s no point in setting out to do exactly what others have done before you, you need to find you own voice and your own expression, and then you need to express those things as honestly you possibly can. I think that allowing yourself the room to express the entire range of human emotion simply gives you a bigger vocabulary, so to speak.

LH: I’m assuming that music is an essential aspect of your life that you couldn’t live without; you need that outlet for you to express your emotions and you’d be pretty lost without that?

AK: Spot on! But you know, it’s not all about these huge, dramatic things either, the little things (to quote myself, hehe) are just as important. It’s about how much fun you have playing around with ideas, and how fulfilling it is to make those ideas work and build on them and play them as a five-person unit. And it’s about how much joy you can get from listening to music that speaks to some part deep inside you, no matter by whom or when that music was made. And it’s about the very peculiar intimacy of sharing music with other people, or about the pure physical pleasure of a really groovy riff. So it’s certainly an important outlet, but it’s also, to me, an essential inlet of inspiration, energy, intellectual satisfaction and pure fun.

LH: This also seems to fit with something I read in an old interview, that you cannot listen to certain albums without separating your own personal meanings, and to listen to a particular album will bring a lot a things flooding back to you as you feel the music so deeply. Similarly, is it sometimes hard for you to return to old songs you have written that have meant something to you at a certain time?

AK: Less and less so, I think. I used to think that I needed to immerse myself completely in the situation and emotions that the songs came from, but through the years, I’ve come to realise that it’s more important to remember those things, and then sort of filter these through who and where you are at the moment. And that puts a slightly different perspective on it – you can access those emotions and bring them out in the music without having to plunge fully back into it. And that is good, because to keep ripping old wounds open can make you nearly unable to reach for new experience and new forms of expression, and stops you from growing as a musician and as a person. But there are certain songs and lyrics that are more difficult to keep that distance with, simply because the emotions they’re using are so powerful and so deeply rooted.

LH: I was wondering if you could tell me about some of the lyrics on the album. I understand it isn’t a concept album, but there is a kind of thread that links all of the songs. Could you elaborate on this?

AK: Most of the lyrics sort of revolve around the concepts of time and change. Time is really an irrelevant measurement to a human – what matters is what is experienced. In other words, time as in hours and seconds is an artificial concept of measurement. The natural measurement of human existence is experience. “Formaldehyde” and “The Eighth Wave”, for instance, both deal with the idea of time without change, how one second, though stretched to last for an eternity, will nevertheless only hold the experience of one second, and would be just static, unending duration, not life. Other songs, like for instance “The Little Things”, “Armour” and “Life, Lust & Liberty” deal with change and desire for change, accepting and instigating it. And I think through it all, in connection with the concepts of “life measured as experience” and “life is change, immobility is the absence of life”, there’s an underlying message of how important it is to not “slip in to lethargy”, to quote myself again. Life is much too short for boring music, indifferent food and lukewarm feelings!

LH: ‘Get this Monster Out of Here’ has a nice contrast between the mellow verse and a very angry, tormented kind of shout on the chorus. My interpretation here is that this is someone being driven to insanity by their own “monsters” in their head, trying to shoo them away to regain some serenity and peace of mind. Would this be very far off the mark?

AK: Well, I think it’s a good interpretation, though my take on it is a little different. I think everybody at some time or other end up in a situation where there are things that we’re trying really hard to ignore. It might be situations where we know, deep down, that something isn’t right in our lives, but to keep the status quo (not the band!) going, we stick our fingers in our ears and go “la-la-la-la-la.” Often these things are clear as day to everybody else, but we just refuse to deal with it. And this “elephant in the room” is the Monster, in this case – “all we worked so hard not to know”. (To visualise it, try imagining a nice, genteel tea party where one of the participants is Frankenstein’s monster, with bolts and all, and all the nice, little blue-haired, knitting elderly ladies are trying to act as if nothing’s out of the ordinary).

LH: I was reading that Annie Lennox is a big inspiration to you as a singer; perhaps not one that would spring to mind when listening to your voice. On one of my personal favourites on the album, ‘The Flesh, The Blood, The Man’ I made a comparison on one part to Kate Bush. As your vocal style is quite different to many of the female vocalists within metal, I wondered if you take more inspiration from vocalists outside the metal genre and what kind of artists do you consider to have influenced you?

AK: Hmmm... Well, Annie Lennox has certainly been an inspiration. When I was a kid, I was a big time Eurythmics fan, and I still am, for that matter. I’ve also been very impressed with for instance Dalbello, who does the most brutally honest vocal production I think I’ve ever heard. Kate Bush is probably a reference point for all singers, since her style is so innovative and instantly recognisable. Other than that, I’m a huge Faith No More fan, and of Patton’s voice in general, particularly his versatility and will to experiment, so that’s very much been an incitement to try to do new things with my voice. And then there’s Chris Cornell for how to keep you power when you’re doing high-pitched vocals, and James Hetfield for “how to pronounce your lyrics as if you really mean them;” (Just listen to the line “halls of justice painted green, money talking” and you’ll know what I mean). And although I got into AC/DC pretty late in life, I’ve learned so much from doing their songs in a covers band I play with. I think all singers would benefit from listening to what Bon Scott does with timing. Timing is so crucial, but is so often forgotten.

LH: I often see gothic metal used to describe your music, which I’m not sure I would consider accurate any more than I’d consider a band like Opeth to be gothic. There seems to be the assumption that any metal band with a female vocalist is gothic metal. Do you find there are certain expectations people have of you being a female in a band, and do you personally identify with the ‘gothic metal’ tag?

AK: Oh, yes...the expectations are many and usually horribly misleading. One expectation that occasionally annoys me a bit, is that quite a few people seem to expect me to not have anything to do with the creative side of things at all, let alone write songs. Having the right kind of “plumbing” is not a prerequisite for making music. I think people also tend to expect women in bands to be either quite dainty and decorative, or on the other hand complete tomboys trying to be as un-feminine as possible. I’m neither, and I’m very happy with that. I can “cook and sew and make flowers grow” (Dylan), and I tend to prefer being around people who’ve recently had a shower, but I also have an incredibly dirty sense of humour, take my whisky neat and can lift heavy things.

I don’t identify with the “gothic” tag at all, I’m afraid. When we started playing in bands, that whole thing was pretty non-existent...I wanted to be like Max Cavalera, and that sort of excludes the whole pale-and-interesting thingy. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of good bands that get labelled “gothic”, but often it’s not so much about musical similarities as the simple “line-up-has-a-female” line of thought.

LH: On the subject of gender, I was wondering if you have experienced any sexist attitudes from within the scene. Being that you so clearly put the majority of your effort into the music I can’t imagine it being a major issue; when you compare to a band like Lacuna Coil where Christina Scabbia puts such a great emphasis on her appearance, whether you see that as a good or a bad thing, in a way I think that almost invites negative and derogatory comments. I was wondering if you have experience any of this yourself, or what your opinions are on attitudes to females in the metal scene?

AK: Nah, not much, really. I think it’s generally pretty self-evident that I’m not there for decoration in any way, so I’ve rarely had trouble with people’s attitudes. I think it also has a good deal to do with us clearly being very much five people in a band, not a backing band and a singer. Then again, I do know that it hasn’t been that easy for every woman in metal, and some parts of the metal scene in general can be extremely narrow-minded and conservative. That never ceases to amaze me – if you embrace a form of music that IN ITSELF is a rebellion against conservatism and rigid norms, it makes no sense to adopt the views of a middle-class, deeply religious small town mayor.

As for females in the metal scene: I couldn’t care less whether people are female or male. Anybody who’s passionate about their music and willing to do their part of any work that needs to be done is ok with me. Again: it’s about the MUSIC.

LH: On a final note, it would be great to see you play over in the UK. Are there any plans to come over here and tour on the back of Eight Ways?

AK: We’re working on doing a tour this autumn, and if that tour should turn out not to include any UK dates, we’ll definitely want to sort out some shows anyhow, so yes!

LH: That’s me all out of questions! Thanks for answering this interview. Hope to see you over here soon, and keep making great music!

AK: Thanks to you too! I’d like to add a little advertisement for our upcoming video. It’s for the song “Armour”, and it’ll be a mix between band footage and 2D animation. I think it’ll be very unique and absolutely beautiful, so keep a lookout for it! It’s scheduled to premiere on our release party here in Oslo on the 15th May, so it should be out there for the 18th.

For more on the band check out http://www.maddermortem.com
http://www.myspace.com/maddermortem
http://www.peaceville.com/maddermortem/eightways/introduction.html

Interviewed by Luci Herbert

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