By Carl Begai
Norwegian Viking metal pioneers Einherjer have a career spanning close to 30 years, boasting nine studio albums, three EPs, history with four record labels, and an odd break-up between 2004 and 2008 when they reformed as the thrash act Battered for one album before putting Einherjer back together. Through all of this their sound has remained constant, with any major discernable changes between the early days and latter years coming from changing production values rather than musical focus. This chat with frontman Frode Glesnes began by addressing the head-scratching Wikipedia entry claiming “some of the band’s albums are heavily folk influenced, while others have a more traditional symphonic black metal sound.” Everyone knows that Wikipedia descriptions can be painfully inaccurate for the artists in question, but in Einherjer’s case Glesnes can only smirk and suggest the person who posted the information mixed them up with another band.
“Honestly, I don’t care about the labels we get, but sometime I wonder ‘What the fuck are people thinking?'” Glesnes laughs. “Since the start we’ve had this Viking metal stamp and that’s okay because in the beginning it was something fresh and new. We felt it was very fitting for the stuff we were doing at the time, and as time went on other bands began using the Viking metal label as well. Many of those bands were quite different from us because we are basically a heavy metal band; we were the old school and they were the new school. In the later years we haven’t actively avoided the term Viking metal, but these days we’re just using the term Norse heavy metal. It’s what we do, and we add our spice to it. There is a small amount of influence in our sound from Norwegian folk music and Norwegian composers like Edvard Grieg, but we are basically a heavy metal band.”
Continue reading BraveWords Interview: EINHERJER – Tales From The Norse West