Interview with V'gandr (Helheim)
Questions compiled by Andrey Tolkowiec and Georgius
Hail V'gandr, welcome to Archangel’s Lantern. What’s latest news around you? Did you start to work with new album? What should we know about it?
- Hello there. We’ve booked Solslottet with Iver as producer for our next album. We felt that we needed another approach this time as we’ve been working with Bjørnar E. Nilsen in Conclave since 2006. Bjørnar understood our decision and also felt it was about time we changed studio. We’ll enter the studio in the fall of this year. I don’t want to reveal too much about the album as of now as it’s a bit early to do so.
In my Hungarian review I’ve marked 10 your latest masterpiece called “WoduridaR”. Tell us in detail about the creation of your latest album. What was the process of creating the songs and how long did it take?
- Thanks a lot for giving us a 10. That really warms my heart. It’s been a while since we wrote those songs, so a bit hard to remember exactly how it went down, but one thing is for sure and that is that we basically did it the same way as always: coming up with the songs at home and then putting the final touches and lead guitars in the rehearsal room. We started creating the songs basically at the end of the Rignir writing process. Some melodies stem back from 2014 or so. We always have some old riffs laying around that for some reason didn’t make it through to the initial album as it didn’t fit the atmosphere we wanted to create.
We know that is a bit hard question but would you be so kind to tell us in short track by track about “WoduridaR”? As a bonus one, there is a cover-song of Hazard. Whose idea was to record it?
Vilje av stål- we wanted a really brutal opener but were the song kind of calms down a bit. It’s a song that has both the raw black metal style, but also the atmospheric clean voice parts. One of the first songs I wrote for the album.
Forrang for fiende- a short piece written by H’grimnir. We felt that a music video suited this song quite well. It’s not a very typical Helheim song as it is very short for being us.
WoduridaR- The chorus is the first I wrote for this album. I was visiting Australia at that time as I had an Australian girlfriend, and one morning I had a shower and started humming this melody. The rest of the song was created around this chorus line. As the title of the album were already set, we knew that the title track had to be grandiose.
Åndsfilosofen- Another track by H’grimnir. A really cool song, but also what I consider “in the middle of the album” song.
Ni s solu sot- H’grimnir’s masterpiece on the album if you as me. A song that we often play live as it has the groove, the extremity, and the chilling atmosphere. One of my favourites.
Litil vis madr- The most extreme song on the album, I guess. I just wanted to write a very cool and down right BM song with no other intentions.
Tankesmed- another one from H’grimnir. A pretty cool song that wraps up the whole album in many ways, before we end it with…
Det kommer i bølger- a Bathory inspired song where the whole intro part stems back to 2014. This was by far the hardest song to produce as it was hard to summon the right atmosphere. I don’t know if we succeeded, but it is what it is. I’m pretty satisfied with the first half at least.
Hazard- It was my idea to have this as a bonus track. All of us like the song a lot, and we wanted to do a very non-typical cover song. We draw inspiration from Sixteen horsepower to set the mood for the song that we foresaw. It was mixed in Solslottet, and we were so happy about the result that we there and then decided to record our next album there.
Share with us your experiences about Helheim’s 30th anniversary show in Østre, Bergen, what happened on the 25th of November in 2022.
- That was a really nice celebration with loads of people. We played a song from every album we’ve done, and people seemed to enjoy it. Afterwards we had one hell of a party. The rest is history.
Helheim is very active with live concerts last; we saw a lot of awesome photos from Finland. How did you feel yourself in Suomi?
- That was one hell of a nice festival. I love Finland and the Finnish people. The audience was awesome, and it seemed like they really had a good time watching us. I didn’t know that we had that many people that liked us in Finland. Still amazing after all these years.
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