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Following an acrimonious split with Dimmu Borgir, ICS Vortex aka Simen Hestnæs didn’t sit around feeling sorry for himself and decided to roll up his sleeves and start working on a number of projects that have been laying dormant for the last few years like Arcturus and Lamented Souls, plus he rejoined Borknagar and even had time to create his first solo effort.

Recently issued by Century Media, “Storm Seeker” might surprise a few people as ICS Vortex probes more emotional, progressive territory and lets his creative spark get more expansive than ever before. The progressive and hard-rock style contrasts heavily with ICS Vortex previous endeavours, yet the ambitious instrumentation and dazzling songcraft proves that the musician’s name holds up pretty well on its own. ICS Vortex discusses the making of the album and his future plans.

Now that the Dimmu Borgir chapter is closed, Hestanes says that the relationships between him and his former band members are pretty much broken and there’s no chance of collaborating with them again, ICS Vortex is determined to give a new lease of life to some of his long lost, but highly missed projects like Arcturus and Lamented Souls and to finally to commit to tape some ideas that have gestating in his mind for quite some time.

“I had these songs in the back of my mind for quite some time now. I had a lot of material laying around in minidiscs, tapes and hard discs and I started collecting the material and produce it. There’s stuff that goes back to 2001, songs that wouldn’t fit in any of my other projects or bands. Songs like ‘Blackmobile’ had been finished for a long time, I think I first jammed that song with Nicholas Barker and the other guys on our first tour with Dimmu Borgir in 2001 I believe. I’ve just added the clean vocals and it turned out quite better that I thought it would.”

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