[MUSIC INTERVIEW] DARKTHRONE – Prehistoric Metal Interview

We recently conducted a Q&A with Fenriz about Darkthrone’s brand new Prehistoric Metal album. Here is how it went:

Subculture: This album brilliantly captures the old and new – does that come easy to you both or does it take a lot of work?

Fenriz: Hiya, top of the morning! Australia! You know, I’m embarassingly late to the party here but happy Tom from Turbonegro JUST sent me that MARCUS HOOK ROLL BAND song natural man and I’m DIGGING IT! BTW did you know that KISS Unmasked was a ‘flop’ BUT not in Norway and Australia?! A LOT of metal celebs from here are still crazy about that album, as am I. 

But to your question… couldn’t been easier for me as since 2015 I get most of the riffs while watching soccer matches (I watch cirka 300 a year these days) so it’s hard to even take credit for it – and yeah I do have to put them together these riffs but if you ask what inspired them I have no answer except for all the metal that is embedded in me since I was a toddler OR simply ourselves. It’s a mystery at this point but I suspect a lot of the metal I’ve heard in the formative years that I still love the best must be some kinda BASIS for these easily picked riffs that just fall into my head. So, my riff banks are insanely full of riffs. However, right before studio time I tend to make fresh stuff and get excited about that and just forget about checking out the riff bank most of the time which is probably a shame cuz the riffs there might be better but freshness beats it all and for this album I made some more savage stuff than usual so I scrapped the long planned cover and album title (deeply rooted) and instead I focused on a subtitle for one of my titles for the album; Draconian and Vigilant (prehistoric metal) and the studio session was more brute or wild than normal.

On top of this i was listening to The Barbarian by Manninnya Blade a lot in those times and so I wanted to call the album prehistoric metal and i made a sketch that was kinda influenced by PUKE back to the stoneage album cover and then the artist and we and Paul at Peaceville had to work together on it cuz I wanted the design to resemble ACERO METALs excellent Legiones album cover as it’s perfect for a shirt and we’d never had any good shirt-album covers BUT this whole process took a while and we were nearing deadline so I just decided to take several photos of myself looking the way I look on the inside when I listen to Sodom Obsessed by Cruelty STEAMHAMMER lp version (important) and so we went with that as the main cover and the other cover ended up on the special edition but really I wanted two covers equally like the first DEATHROW album that we adore (riders of doom/satan’s gift) but alas.

With Ted, I have no idea as usual as he starts playing guitar and making songs 3 months before studio time. But it’s probably kinda easy for him to, not like getting blood from a stone or anything. Oh oh! BLOOODSTONE!!! Cool priest-song!

Subculture: When you first sat down to work on this album what kinds of things were you talking about wanting to achieve or capture with this album?

Fenriz: When we entered Chaka Khan for the first time in 2020 we had done 7 albums recording ourselves on necrohell 2 our own ministudio which had gotten obsolete and missing a crucial part so I thought WAIT, NOW WE ARE GOING TO A REAL STUDIO?!

Time to make those songs I wanted to make since the beginning of the band back in 87 and 88, so there were several long drawn epic songs on the following albums but for this album I only did one and it was no riffs more than 4 times repeated after one another on that song but here’s what I’m leading up to: we usually don’t discuss much before starting on the material, as I’ve said i always get riffs anyway, but this time our small pre studio discussion was around that we wanted 8 songs meaning shorter songs, more riffs than ever and more effective. So that’s why I only have one ‘plodder’ on this album – hey, where’s my Iplod?! HAHAHA.

Subculture: It is rumoured that you collaborated more than ever with this album. Tell us a little about those sessions where you fleshed things out?

Fenriz: That would be in the studio as we haven’t rehearsed before an album since 2003. Well in the studio Ted just wanted me to do more bass guitar and also some guitar, and I am good at coming up with harmonies (usually AFTER the albums are out, doh!! Haha) so I did some of that and played a guitar ‘solo’ on the title track as well. But Ted is such a steady guitar player that I think it’s best he does 95% of the guitars at least. And he wanted me to sing more, must be weird singing other people’s lyrics and I usually do them and when he does the vocals he is his normal steady self but when I do vocals I do MY vocals so there’s so much feeling attached to it that I go totally mental.

I was like a crazy man hahaha (BAD NEWS reference).

Ted finally brought his pedal rack which my riffs on all 3 previous albums would have needed, haha, so we got a killer guitar sound and also he brought his new synth and seemed to play his best synth stuff even improvising I think. n the final part of they found one of my graves.

Subculture: You used some of the writing methods that you used in the early days – can you tell us a little about those methods?

Fenriz: Not at all like in the early days, I took up the quilting method I used back in the early 2000s, meaning…well, lyrics and interviews actually are the hardest obstacle for us releasing records all the time and tha’s a good thing cuz otherwise we’d be flooding the market with two albums a year which would be IDIOTIC INFLATION at this point in our career.

So, I pick up lines or lines come up and they are pretty much all titles, really. Stick them to paper with a pen, a process that takes 2 years, it goes so slow now cuz writing lyrics after having done that for 40 years…it’s almost impossible to not repeat oneself. So, when the album draws near it’s out with the papers and see which one of all the ‘titles’ gives me the most inspiration and then I sow together a lyric using many of the other lines that are already there, now and then adding on or rewriting and whatnot. O fcourse impossible for our videomaker-guy Matt to get anything comprehensible out of as it is just a well of hell, the most of it. So, it would be easier for our video guy if our lyrics went

Nocturno Culto checks out a local stream

While perhaps having a beer or two

Fenriz is watching soccer

Puts on an album by the who

If you get my drift.

Subculture: What was the recording process like?

Fenriz: First, the gruelling soundcheck, I play usually more on the soundcheck than on the entire album? Like one hour soundcheck and I doubt if I play more than 1 hour or 1 hour and 20 minute for the album, we usually go for first take hehe! No metronome or in-ear shit is used, after all we play pre-historic metal like the cave dwellers we are so that it sounds more ALIVE and not machines playing, like so many have sounded like since…i dunno, that RIOT album that came out in 88?

And it’s only gotten worse, now people mix at home endlessly on their DAWS adding stuff and moving beats to ‘perfection’ and making everything sound completely sterile. I mean, I even think King Diamond sounded too sterile compared to Mercyful Fate when I was a mere toddler! HAHA! SO I GUESS I am the one with the problem but that at least is an explanation on how we work in the studio and why we sound like we sound.

After drum feedback we usually do a couple of Ted’s songs as he sent the guitar versions of it before and I could do drumming in my head to them (I haven’t rehearsed drums since 94, I wanna regress to Ventor endless pain album KIDDING/NOT KIDDING) and then we play and record and Ted puts on a second guitar while I go through my songs so I can teach Ted how to play them on guitar and then we record some of mine and then repeat and then bass and finally vocals and synth if we have some.

We are quick in the studio and very hands off, let what happens happen and mistakes are often included.

Subculture: There is a very ‘in your face’ feel with the guitars was that something that you planned or did it happen organically?

Fenriz: Ted brought his guitar pedal rack and also he likes LOUD guitars. I like lower guitars but I’m outvoted which might be a good thing cuz if else we’d always have the same soundscape as piece of mind album by maiden and most metal albums would be better if it had that sound if you ask me but then again we and others wouldn’t sound like ourselves then, would we.

Subculture: You seem to drift easily through genres on this album – what do you feel were your biggest influences on the album?

Fenriz: Got no clue where my riffs come from but probably the stuff I like best from my formative years must be playing a part of it or else I might as well just get polka-riffs while watching soccer. If we were playing by what we like to listen to and trying to be like them, like IN THAT WAY influenced, we’;d just be doing the A-side of the first Metal Church album over and over, so we’re not influenced that way.

However, Tom’s guitar riffing style and vocal delivery had such a huge impact on me back when I

had short hair even, that I’s hard to escape it, it’s in my blood stream. Ted is certainly NOT influenced by Megadeth, rumours has it.