stories
..........................................................................................................................
|
BERGRAVEN On The Macabre & Noisome Story online since: 14.07.2009 / 16:30:24 ......................................................................................................................................................... Approximately two years ago, Sweden's Pär Gustafson, sole visionary behind BERGRAVEN, released his second album, and was subsequently interviewed by AGM.com. Now, his third album, Till Makabert Väsen is released, exploring even further depths and crevasses of dark metallic experimentalism. I really had no choice but to meet up with the man himself again, sitting down on the grass in a park in sunny Malmö, beer in hand, and interrogate him. Being a horrible journalist, half of what he answered fell away in the notes & in translation, but these answers have been cleared & OK'd by Pär himself.  After the release of 2006 year's Dödsvisioner, how would you say that BERGRAVEN has developed? There is a distinct movement away from common place metal, was that a concious decision? With clean vocals, acoustic/clean passages, much more dynamic and sparse.I haven't consciously decided to create a new sound, but I wanted to get away from the common tired attitude of metal riffing, you know chugging the E-string, melodies in fifths. I don't look for the same things in metal as most other listeners do, I think; the power, the force and omnipotence is of course there, but it's not what I'm after. I had this idea to create something that sounded old, eerie, uncanny - these ideas were present on Dödsvisioner as well, but other things got in the way. My idea of the old rural/agrarian society - not focusing on the misery and poverty, but the ghostly and superstitious, without necessarily sounding like a horror movie. Like the early stories by Selma Lagerlöf. I wanted to portray this not only in the lyrics, but in the music and the sound. I had to remove the distortion from the guitars - not clean though, but cracked; the Tubescreamer always sounds ghostlike. A bit macabre and eerie. So the sound was very important. The riffs developed in the same way, I wanted to compose things that were singular, combined with a unique sound. It is not perfected yet, but all comments I have received point in the right direction, they use the right words that I'm after. Evolution, yes... to something more singular, without being strange for the sake of strangeness; that is something I have never been interested in. I'm almost limiting my music to my ideas and conception of how life was in the past, I can't just throw in a Van Halen synthesizer or something similar, completely out of context, merely for the sake of it. That might have been why I added an acoustic guitar. I was also looking for more space and air in the sound as a whole. There has to be more space in the sound than you find in most metal - that's why I'm moving away from it. Metal is not the right path for me, it just became the natural mode of expression when I began composing for BERGRAVEN because of my background as a listener.  Does BERGRAVEN represent the same to you as it did when you created the band, and when we last spoke? Can it change, will it change? Is BERGRAVEN one side of your musicality, or all of it? That is, if you'd create music with different feelings than BERGRAVEN, will it fall under another banner? How is BERGRAVEN evolving at the moment? Seeing how the new album was recorded over a year ago. BERGRAVEN is a specific feeling in me; darkness is a worn term but it has a certain therapeutic function to a degree that I choose myself, without becoming self-exposing. I have my own interpretation of BERGRAVEN, but that interpretation is not for everyone. It could become more personal, but not enough to understand my person. I might reach a point where I won't need the BERGRAVEN name. It will be present in everything I create, but I think it has more become a phenomenon within me rather than a band name. It is a term that covers all the subjects. I have always considered BERGRAVEN a lump of angst that wouldn't disappear if I would start releasing music under my own name. I'm just trying to live up to my own ideas. Now I'm trying to make BERGRAVEN more organic, a sound much closer to the listener than Dödsvisioner. More intimate, almost, if there can be such a thing as intimate metal? It's a delicate problem, trying to get close to the listener but still maintain a distance. What musical input are you enjoying at the moment? I know that you are quite a keen record collector. Any recommendations? How does this massive musical input affect your own music? Any specific genres you prefer indulging in? A wide range. That is all I have to say, there is no point in name-dropping. There is no red thread going through my listening any more, anything can be interesting. I take great pleasure in a highly evolved musical consciousness; music as phenomena rather than genres, to find similarities with different styles and genres. No kind of music evolves from nothing, there has always been someone borrowing from some other style. You have to be careful in thinking a certain band does something completely new - to its genre perhaps, but many things have been done before, elsewhere. I find it interesting to move things between various different musical contexts, like superimposing a chord from J.S. Bach on a rhythm pattern from KING CRIMSON or something. I want to find new influences - musical development is dependent of musicians and listeners with wide taste and open minds. Till Makabert Väsen is a peculiar title, even for Swedish speakers/readers; "For/To Macabre Entity/Noise" would be the ambiguous direct translation. Would you care to develop the idea behind it? Is the album as thematical as Dödsvisioner? The vocals are quite theatrical, what was your thoughts behind that approach? I have two interpretations for Till Makabert Väsen, the easiest with the album being a gift to a macabre entity; an entity created by and made up of something macabre. It has a superstitious ring to it. The other interpretation would be that the album is an imperative to create macabre noise which in turn incites thinking about the themes of the album. Not to celebrate or salute things like death and destruction, but to consider them. It is important for me to deal with these things, think them through before I can go on with anything else. This has to be dealt with first. So it's not as conceptual as Dödsvisioner, which was a journey from dying to being dead; Till Makabert Väsen is rather an umbrella for the songs, a gathered thematics. Not a course of events, the songs and lyrics are separated, but within a theme. I enjoy thematic albums, variations on a specific theme or idea, rather than a collection of songs without any context. On the vocals: I can't deny that they are theatrical, much because of my dialect. Singing in that kind of Swedish gives a feeling of solemnity, like Ingmar Bergman - judgement and doom, proclamation rather than singing. I still want the words to be heard clearly, so hard core screaming wouldn't do, whereas cleanly sung vocals are too effete. Prophetical, even though I'm not a prophet. The lyrics need more proximity, someone in our world talking about death rather than on Dödsvisioner were the person singing was from the perspective of the dead. You toured Europe as a stand-in guitarist in old school death metal band NOMINON. Has this affected your musicianship in any way? Yes, it has. I want to consider like this: it's instructing and developing to perform on stage, to play with other musicians, performing other musicians' material. It's unfortunate to see the narrow-mindedness of some people; when people go see NOMINON and BENEDICTION they don't want anything but old school death metal, and that is all they get. Touring like that wasn't very inspiring, you get to see a lot of crap you don't want to be a part of. You knew what was going to happen, a lot of what you already knew about tour-life and metal audiences was confirmed.  You're keeping to your Swedish lyrics. Any recommendation for non-Swedish readers on how to get any sense from the lyrics, besides learning the language? Translations of the lyrics have been done, I will see if they can be published somewhere. I will keep to singing in Swedish, it has a lot to do with the tone you choose for the vocals. It's hard to translate from one language to another; it's not just a row of words but a feeling that I'm only able to communicate in my own language. A political band for example can sing in any language available, but for me English is an impossibility. It's hard for non-Swedish speakers to understand it completely, but you can still get a feeling of it through the emotions, and make your own interpretation of it. That might even be better, not knowing the exact meaning of the words, just listening to the emotion of the performance. You've kept to collaborating with Tore (production, Necromorbus) & Perra (drums) on this album as well. Will that be the case in the future? How have you & this album gained from their input? Perra, of NOMINON, was naturally involved in he making of this album; a lot of it was written when we recorded the second album when he was present, and he's heard all of it as it was being composed, and we played together on the tour. He's been in a few more progressive bands, so he's not just an old-school Death Metal drummer. Tore had just built his new studio, and I was familiar with him and his methods, so that was more a question of comfortability. I'm satisfied and everything has worked out well, but I can't tell for sure of the future; I'm too restless in my evolution as a musician so I can't stay with a musician or studio for too long. We'll see.  Speaking of Tore & Perra, in 2007 you recorded and released an album called Zero with the band/project NEX with them; an old-school epic doom threesome. What is the status on this group, how involved were you in the making of Zero? I think there is a plan to do at least one more album but I am up to my throat in studies. I am educating myself in many ways among them not the least the art of playing guitar properly which I still think there is A LOT to do with my sloppy amateur guitar playing, ha. I always thought that the metronome was untight but of course that's not the case, duh! NEX is a band that isn't at all for the evolution of music the way I see it, rather some kind of celebration to the old masters of doom. For my part that should be read ANATHEMA, SAINT VITUS, THE OBSESSED, (old) MY DYING BRIDE, PAUL CHAIN and PARADISE LOST. I could namedrop for hours but I won't, haha. Just want to mention two old amazing bands that I think has been unfairly forgotten. First is WINTER who released an amazing album on Nuclear Blast many years ago, such incredible power in that album. Second is WORSHIP from Germany, one of the most depressive albums to be released but still there is a way to find something of a groove there to. Night-time listening recommended! When we wrote what became the Zero album we just sat in the studio and tried different ideas and drank a lot of red wine. I can't recall who made what but the truth is that it contains a lot of strong Candlemassesque riffs here and there. Epic and slow the way it should be. For news about this band I would recommend the Myspace page. You've also introduced a clean vocalist, Eric Bartholdt, giving the album a more gothic leaning (barring misconceptions; we're quite far from velveteen romanticism here). What can you tell us about this fellow? Will he re-appear in the BERGRAVEN context? But you're still the only mind behind BERGRAVEN, correct? Eric released an amazing album with DARKLANDS in 1996; his vocals fitted perfectly with the oratory context, grandiose and poetic. He is a friend of Perra's, no problems there. If he will reappear, I cannot tell at the moment. I know many open-minded and talented musicians; for experimentation and sounding board duties I want friends involved. It's fun to involve people who can add something. I will always do the main vocals and guitars myself, and I compose everything, but it will be interesting to see what I can add for the next album. Better to do than not, invite other musicians and use their interpretations of my ideas. Doing so adds to the phenomenon as it is. They don't have to be band members; I'm not that self-absorbed, "it's all my stuff" you know, but the foundations are always mine, I am always the executive producer so to speak. You are now fully immersed in HHR world-wide. How is this working out for you, as compared to your previous labels? Everything is working out great with Hydra Head. They are open to ideas, they listen and fix stuff that needs fixing. They are interested in the music, working for their taste and not for money. The promotion and distribution is good, the music is obtainable. It's not as good in Europe as in the US, but if you're interested I think you will find it anyway. I will continue to cooperate with HHR.  Do you have any connection/communication with like-minded peers in the AGM underground, if there is any? Would you consider yourself part of any scene, global or local? No, I'm not a part of any scene; I have no-one here to compare myself with. I'm definitely not a part of the massive flow of black metal bands flowing from Sweden, and I'm not on-line on Myspace that much either. I'm not that communicative. I'd rather regard people as friends than contacts for my own sake. I feel sceptical to the idea of a bunch of bands evolving in parallel, competing with each other like the prog bands in early 1970's UK or the black metal scene of Oslo in the 90's. There is no-one to compete with for me, I create my music anyway. Don't know what is going on here locally, especially since I don't play live or have a rehearsal area. With Dödsvisioner, BERGRAVEN was subjected to a much larger audience than before. What kind of response have you received, in Sweden and abroad, medial and personal? BERGRAVEN has received surprisingly few bad reviews. Those who are interested in this kind of music appreciate it, either that or they don't like it at all. To some pure metal magazines it's too much at times, but those who enjoy too much likes it. I'm constantly getting adds at Myspace, I suppose that is how you know if you're popular or not these days! I don't really care about sales, I don't invest any money into the band anyway. When the album was announced, quite a few websites posted information, but maybe that was the promotional office doing their job, haha! I'm still surprised of the absence of bad reviews though, only one so far, by a Swede who moved to Canada because he didn't like the weather here. I won't stop making music because of that! Now Till Makabert Väsen has finally been released. What will happen in the near future of BERGRAVEN? When will the fourth album be recorded & released? Can you give us any exclusive information? Please? And since this interview has reached its end, we'll terminate it with a long-since worn out classic - any last words to the AGM.com readers? I am working hard as hell on a fourth album. The material is almost finished but the instrumentation and the tone behind it is still highly experimental. I am very fortunate to have some recording equipment to elaborate with. Ideas come and go and I am in no hurry so I can't really tell how far an album is. I talked with a person about recording drums in her studio the other day and that is one of the most concrete steps in the direction of the physical product. I am also rehearsing a lot of piano for some parts which I really want to be perfect if it should have a chance to fit in with the rest of the material. I've sent one demo-song to HydraHead and they seemed to be over their heads in liking it. "This is so unpredicted of you but yet not at all!" was the comment I got and I guess I am very satisfied with that, haha. For the agm-readers I will be as classic as you are in asking the question to say that I am happy you like my music and hope that you'll continue to support me through my albums over the coming years. In the meantime if you get bored with my music, take some time and go through the discography of the gentleman Peter Hammill, it will take some time but it is no doubt worth it!!! He is the closest to a musical genius I can think of. If someone who makes music can impress me as much as the song "A louse is not a home" from the 1974 album The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage he would receive a lifetime coverage of all BERGRAVEN releases to come! Thank you! /P. Gustafsson  http://www.myspace.com/bergraven http://www.tillmakabertvasen.com http://www.hydrahead.com/ http://www.myspace.com/nexofficial http://www.nominon.com/ - http://www.myspace.com/nominon Photo credits: Pernilla Sundh - illuminated shadow, at the door, seated in run-down cabin. Johan Dahl - with sunglasses. aVoid - with acoustic guitar. Unknown - live with Nominon. aVoid |
