I’m pretty sure that you’ve read numerous raves about “Meir” already and perhaps there’s nothing left to say about Kvelertak’s sophomore record. However, I’m still inclined to write a few words about it and state, or better yet, restate that it is a killer album. But, just before I justify why this is a killer record, let me just say that “Meir” is essentially a big middle finger to anyone that wrote them off a one-trick pony or anyone that thought they would tame down their wild and potent sound just because they now belong to a big-sized label like Roadrunner. This is a band doing what the fuck they want and doing fucking well.
That said, “Meir” sees Kvelertak sticking to the same formula that made their self-titled debut album such a joyous ode to the power of the riff and I doubt someone will blame them for that. Yep, the formula remains the same, a Molotov cocktail blending incendiary styles like garage-rock, punk-hardcore and black-metal, but now it seems to be more refined and cohesive than before, but no less potent or authentic. “Meir” is infectious from start to finish, filled with killer riffs and magnificent sing-along choruses (it’s Norwegian I know, but we can always hum). Numbers like “Bruane Brenn” and “Evig Vandrar”, in particular, showcase the band’s knack for writing ultra-catchy, hard-driving punk-rock tunes with just enough grime to mess with your entrails.
As I said on the first paragraph, it’s a killer record. 

Band info: www.facebook.com/Kvelertak
Label info: www.roadrunnerrecords.com

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Pentagram - Sign of the Wolf (Pentagram) 
Pentagram  (1985)
Awesome doom, one of my favorite bands! 

Truckfighters - Desert Cruiser
Gravity X (2005)
Badass Swedish stoner-rock. Perfect roadtrip-soundtrack. That's why were bringing them on tour, hehe. 

El Doom & The Born Electric - It's Electric
El Doom & The Born Electric (2012)
Norwegian heavy prog rock, if you're a fan of stuff like Mastodon I think you'll be into this. Another great band we're bringing on tour! 

Smoke Mohawk - Squaw Woman
Viva el Heavy Man (2012)
Catchy Norwegian retro-stoner-rock with people from bands like Gluecifer and We. 

 
The Good, the bad and the Zugly - Socks and Shoes 
Anti World Music (2013)
Another badass Norwegian band, they basically sound like a mix between old Turbonegro and Silver. The sample in the middle of this song is genious! 

Purified in Blood - Mind is Fire
Flight of a Dying Sun (2012)
An awesome cocktail of black metal, thrash and hardcore. Good friends of us from our hometown who inspired us alot in the live department when we were starting out! 

Nettlecarrier - Demoriel 
Nettlecarrier (2012)
Old school cold Norwegian black metal. This band consists of all the members of my black metal sideproject Djevel except for me, check it out! 

Blue Öyster Cult - Vengeance (The Pact)
Fire of Unknown Origin (1981)
I was pretty inspired by this album when I wrote the lyrics for "Meir", there's just something about melting eyes and arrows penetrating heads that appeals to me! 

Check out the official video for Purified In Blood's track "Mind Is Fire" below. 


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Can you remember the first record you bought?

Fotball vm 94 (Soccer World championship 94) compilation cd which featured the likes of Toto, Tina Turner, Queen and Monty Python.

Find a record that makes you nostalgic for your youth.

Dimmu Borgir - Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia

A record that is criminally overlooked.

Smoke Mohawk - Viva El Heavy Man. 

A record that makes you feel angry at the world.

Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind

What record do you listen to as a guilty pleasure?

Meat Loaf - Bat out of Hell

A record you wish you made.

I never think like that, so I can't come up with a good answer. I'm sure if I was to remake a album by myself the musicianship on it would have been pretty shoddy, haha.

A record that gives you a certain peace of mind.

Burzum - Belus or Crippled Black Phoenix - I, Vigilante. They are both sleep inducing in a good way.

A record that influences you, but people would never know it.

Blue Öyster Cult - Fire of Unknown Origin. Lyrically I was pretty inspired by this album when making the lyrics for "Meir".

What are the five metal albums that you would recommend to the new generation of kids to check out?

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Mercyful Fate - Melissa
Pentagram - Relentless
Mayhem - Mysteeris dom Sathanas
Bathory - Bathory

Kvelertak will release their highly anticipated sophomore album, "Meir", on March 26 via Roadrunner Records and we asked vocalist Erlend Hjelvik what fans can expect from this new effort.

"More of everything (hence the album title "Meir" which means "more" in Norwegian)! We've expanded our sound since the first album; the heavy parts are heavier, the hooks are catchier and it even rocks out more!"

More info on Kvelertak on: www.facebook.com/Kvelertak
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Norwegian heavy rockers Kvelertak have just released a video for "Bruane Brenn", the first single from the band’s highly anticipated sophomore album, "Meir".
Set for release on March 26 via Roadrunner Records this new effort was once again produced by Converge's Kurt Ballou and features cover artwork by Baroness’ John Dyer Baizley. 


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On paper, I admit that Kvelertak might sound like a terrible proposition, the prospect of a Norwegian band merging garage rock with black-metal isn’t very appealing and might even raise a few eyebrows to say the least. But once opening song “Ulvetid” kicks in, it becomes near impossible to resist the band’s tremendously contagious energy.
Arguably one of the best albums to come out in the last year, “Kvelertak” is a furious, dirty and catchy record that meshes the worlds of punk, garage rock, thrash and black-metal in a way that sounds so natural and wicked. Imagine if Satyr, Iggy Pop, Nicke Andersson and Lemmy all meet in a rehab program and decided to form a band to channel all their energies and frustrations into music, the end result wouldn’t be too dissimilar from Kvelertak self-titled debut record. The Norwegian piss all over the genre’s conventions that some of you hold sacred to discharge upon us all a potent and infectious blend of sleazy rock 'n' roll melodies, fist-pumping riffing, thunderous beats and harsh black-metal screams.
“Kvelertak” is a wholehearted recommendation for fans of everyone from The Stooges to Enslaved, from Motorhead to The Hellacopters, from Metallica to Turbonegro, and I bet it won’t be the one-trick pony that some are suggesting on various message boards. (9/10)

David Alexandre

Band info: www.myspace.com/kvelertak
Label info: www.myspace.com/indierecordings
For fans of: Satyricon, Enslaved, The Hellacopters, Turbonegro

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Seemingly from out of nowhere, well Stavanger-Norway actually, Kvelertak literarily took the world by storm with their incredibly infectious self-titled debut album which was already elected as one of the best works released in 2010. That’s no mean feat for a band that emerged only three years ago, when a bunch of friends decided to create a group just to overbear the tranquil and monotonous lifestyle of their hometown.
Yet not much is known from Kvelertak except for that, so I suppose the most obvious thing to enquire about right now is exactly who is Kvelertak? Some garage-rock musicians with a fixation towards black-metal, punk-rockers twisting around Satyricon tunes or just a bunch of individuals with a wide array of musical tastes and a desire shove them over your face, as violently and energetically as humanly possible?

“Definitely the last one! We are six very different people with different music tastes. We don't really subscribe to any sub-culture or scene, we just really like catchy rock music.”

Definitely “Kvelertak” is one of the most interesting albums to come out last year, merging genres as diverse as black metal, punk and garage-rock and into a potent and infectious amalgamation that defies conventional labels.
Do you guys ever pay attention to what people are saying about your music? Critics seem to throw a lot of different labels to describe your music.

“Of course we do! All bands that say they don't are liars. But it's not like we rushed out to pick up the reviews. We did not expect this massive acclaim obviously, so it's a flying start to a career, and we're very grateful for that.”

How would you describe the overall mood of the album?

"We wanted to make a party-album that you could listen to sober! It starts off right in your face, and then throughout the record the songs get longer and less single-y and more epic. I hope it makes for a good dynamic when listening through the whole thing. I like it when an album sounds like an album, and not just a bunch of songs.”
I’m told that you write all the music, while vocalist Erlend Hjelvik crafts all the lyrics."

Do you have a particular process that you go about when you’re writing music, or it’s just a matter of sitting down and jam whatever comes to you and then build from that?

“I'm not a jam-guy really. I like a good jam, but I'm not sure if it's a very effective way of writing songs. You can't just expect people to listen to something you came up with randomly. I record parts when I feel confident they are good enough, compile them in Cubase, play around with them for a while, re-record and mix, throw some midi drums and dummy vocals on top, pitch a guitar down an octave for bass, then send the mix down to the other guys, and hope that they like it. Sometimes, if there is a part I feel like I'm missing, we'll try it out in the practice area first, just to see if something comes up, then I will make the demo. ‘Nekroskop’ was the last song on the record to be written, and some of the stuff there we came up with together in the practice area, and that's one of my favourites on the record. But usually I will try to make a demo that expresses the idea as well as possible. Sometimes it's hard to get a certain riff or part across if it's not in the right context. It has happened that a riff that I've tried was rejected at practice, but when one was able to hear it with drums and vocals and all the parts combined, it made sense. But it's not a point for me to be the sole songwriter. We used to be several people writing songs, but it just kinda ended up like this. As long as the songs are good, doesn't really matter who writes them. It's not like it's going to get you laid anyway.”


All the lyrics were written in Norwegian and I’ve read somewhere that they deal with Norse Mythology and Viking Folklore, can you shed some light on what vocalist Erlend manifests through his words on the album?

“I guess it just makes sense thematically, since we're Norwegian and all. It would be really dumb not to utilize such an amazing source of material. Some of the lyrics are actually pretty clever too, in that they reflect stuff that happens to Erlend, but are disguised as your typical metal-lyric. ‘Liktorn’ may seem like a song about that whole thing with Balder, but it's really about this one time when I didn't pick Erlend up from band practice, or something (even I don't know half the lyrics). Balder is also the Norse origin of my name, pretty clever?? Too bad no-one will ever get to read that. Other lyrics are just very stupid. Let's just say they were written WAY before we even dreamed of releasing a record, hehe!”

There’s a long tradition of Norwegian bands that chosen to sing in their native tongue. In your case, it was just a natural choice, or it kind of happened by accident so to say?

“In the beginning we were playing around with the idea of mixing English and Norwegian, and so we had some really silly songs that would switch between the languages. We quickly realized it was a pretty stupid idea, and at that time it was not even a question, the lyrics had to be Norwegian. I guess the attitude was, no-one really care about lyrics because you can't hear them anyway, might as well be Norwegian. Unless you read them in the booklet, which we would DEFINITELY have none of. And we stuck with that. Turns out people DO care about lyrics! People are asking us all the time to release them. We have been on two European tours by now, and we see people all the time singing along to lyrics they couldn't POSSIBLY know! But they still have to sing along! That's pretty funny. And we love watching people post their own ridiculous transcripts. So we wouldn't want to kill all the fun by releasing them!”

One of the most interesting things about this new record is the production work. Sonically “Kvelertak” strikes a perfect balance between being engagingly melodic and rhythmically powerful. I take it the band is quite pleased with the work of Kurt Ballou at his GodCity Studios right?

“Hell yes! That was the best thing that could have happened to the record. I was kinda worried that my lack of studio experience wouldn't do justice to the song material that we had accumulated, unless we had a really kick-ass producer. So we set up a strictly hypothetical wish-list of producers, starting with Kurt. We didn't expect anyone would actually say yes. I assumed we would have to do it ourselves, so I was listening around to find references to music that I would use to describe the sound to a technician. When I started doing some research I realised Kurt's name was showing up on all my favourite references. I said “what the hell”, and sent him a bunch of demos on Myspace, and on account of that (he had obviously never heard of us before) he said yes the day after! I remember a huge sense of relief when I read that, the fact that he said yes based on that was really a testament to the material and his ability to hear it in a crappy demo. At that point I knew the record was going to be bad-ass, which it was, thanks to Kurt. Not to mention that Converge booked us for their tour without even seeing us, and way before anyone outside Norway knew about us. We really owe a lot to those guys!”

Are there any plans for a follow-up to “Kvelertak” yet?

“Of course! It will obviously be shitty, but at least there will be more songs to choose from live. ;)”

David Alexandre

All Kvelertak photos by: Paal Audestad

More info at: www.myspace.com/kvelertak

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