Hey Hey! FENRIZ Is Still Ready to Metal

"Hey hey, it's Fenriz! Are you having a great Friday?" a slight young man with long brown hair and a black cutoff T-shirt says into a telephone receiver, an impish grin spreading across his face. He's sitting in a cluttered office, surrounded by binders and boxes. His visible tattoos and the posters on the walls hint that there may be something more interesting going on than a typical day at the office, but overall, it's a wholly pleasant, even endearing snapshot of a typical day in Gylve Nagell's life back in 2008.

But Nagell—better known to the metal world as Fenriz—has never been a typical anything. The video clip in question is taken from the 2008 documentary Until The Light Takes Us, which chronicles the early Norwegian black metal scene through the eyes of those who survived it. Darkthrone, the band Fenriz and his friend Nocturno Culto (or Ted Skjellum, depending on your level of familiarity with his stoic blond counterpart) started in 1987, was a crucial player in the genre's bloodstained early days, and the pair bore witness to some of its ugliest moments. They emerged from that era mostly unscathed, though, and Darkthrone remains active and relevant in a way that most of its contemporaries have not. The band's new album, It Beckons Us All... drops later this week, and will probably be more fun than any band's 21st full-length has any right to be.

Fenriz himself has evolved into a beloved elder statesman of the scene at large, and kept himself extremely busy with a variety of non-Darkthrone endeavors over the years, from podcasting and radio to forays into music journalism and a growing stable of side projects. His knowledge of heavy metal and rock music in general is beyond encyclopedic, and his easy-going, quirky persona has endeared him to subsequent generations of metalheads alienated by the self-seriousness of his peers.

For example, the video clip I mentioned above has become a meme, and has its very own Twitter account with nearly two thousand followers. It reveals that he's in the old Moonfog Productions office in Oslo, Norway, speaking to a journalist from Legacy Magazine, a long-running German heavy metal rag. Fenriz being Fenriz, he spends most of the interview talking about techno, then going off on a tangent about how much he dislikes when metal bands try to incorporate other genres into their music. This was, of course, right around the time Darkthrone themselves began experimenting a bit with their sound and began drawing more heavily on their longstanding thrashy, punky, NWOBHM influences to inject a little more crusty rock'n'roll into their previously grim aesthetic. The man contains multitudes (and that's without even getting into his soccer obsession, or his brief foray into local politics).

When I initially reached out to Fenriz for this interview, I was mostly interested in his latest project, Coffin Storm, which is much more on the doom-inflected classic heavy metal side of things (Candlemass and Kreator are massive influence). His old friends Apollyon from Aura Noir and Infernö's Bestial Tormentor had previously played together in a doom band, Lamented Souls, and decided to take another crack at the slow stuff with a new project. They asked Fenriz to join on vocals, and the result is pure catnip for every old-school hesher with a Cathedral backpatch.

But, after I'd sent him my initial clutch of questions, the news hit that Darkthrone would also be releasing a new album soon (much like the current generation of pop megastars, they love a surprise album drop). I hurriedly sent over a couple of additional queries, and he was kind enough to indulge me. The end result is a delightful journey into the metal mind of someone who has unapologetically ordered his entire life around rock music and is still as obsessed with it as the day he got his first Uriah Heep album as a kid in the 1970s.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and grammar (though I left most of his stylings intact, because, well, it's Fenriz). Enjoy the following conversation—I sure did.

SALVO: What made you decide to get involved in Coffin Storm? What happened during those first few recording sessions - did it start out as a favor to some old friends, or did you immediately know it was the right project for you as soon as you heard the material?

FENRIZ: Hiya! Well, I always wanted to sing more epic heavy metal style, I only did it on my "The Light" track from 1989 and a handful of tracks that ended up as Isengard eventually in the early '90s and then a handful of Darkthrone tracks in the late '00s and early '10s. Anyway I kinda knew that Olav and Ole was rehearsing on a project since I hang with them now and again, so it was exciting when they asked me to sing for it back in 2021 and sent me three songs. I mean I knew these guys for 30 years so we know each other's metal taste more or less and I have been supporting their old band Lamented Souls for, what, 30 years now, so it was a bit like a no-brainer for me. I did excellent castrato-vocals back in the early '90s but now I ain't got the voice or the balls to do it anymore so I focus more on making original vocal lines instead, haha. But back to your two-pronged question: it was really both, both assumptions you had were right

Coffin Storm really seems to hit the sweet spot for you - old school heavy metal, doom, and thrash, created by lifers in the Kolbotn scene who have spent decades honing their craft. What do you hope listeners will get out of these six songs? 

I just hope the listeners dig Ole and Olav's FEELING and then I try to add additional soulfulness on top of that. I really like Ole's way of production values, the way he records drums and makes them sound, for instance. This is far from the compressed click track autotune world, hehe. 

Have you thought about where you want the future of the band to go - is there a longer album (or even live shows) on the horizon?

It's not like I took the reigns and have any control of eventual future of coffin storm, I am constantly working on Darkthrone material and especially lyrics are tricky now after 40 years of writing them....difficult to find new words and new scenarios...so lyrics are my biggest problem, can't keep up with all the music being made/received for Darkthrone (riffs just pop into my head while watching sports) and so I was never really expecting Coffin Storm to be more than a one-off... But I think the guys are rehearsing more stuff actually.

I guess I took the reins only when it came to the lyrics cuz I figured they had lyrics and then it was a challenge when they didn't. To make it more spontaneous, I sort of have to come up with lyrics on the spot right before singing in Coffin Storm, while Darkthrone lyrics are at this point constant work. I went back to the patchwork technique I used in the period of 2002-2004 mainly. I am sort of quilting a hell, haha!

Live shows, very funny. I spent 40 years building a comfort zone here! Can't see what would drag me out of the fortress. 

With Darkthrone, it's always been just you and Ted working together to bring your visions to life, and you've had a lot of practice working together. What was it like working with the guys in Coffin Storm? How different was the process from the way you work on Darkthrone albums? How did you find time to do both albums?

I am always working on new Darkthrone albums. That is a constant. Ted picks up the guitar 3 months before every album studio booking and goes to work hard. Two completely different ways of working. With Coffin Storm, I had a session in autumn 2021 and then again 2022 when it was way outside of Darkthrone’s recording schedule. I mean Ted worked on a SARKE album too at the time. I haven't really JUST sung on an album before, the first time this happened was when I did vocals for a project back in 1990 or something called OPERA (coincidentally with Sarke drummer and good guy Thomas Berglie) when they showed up and I did vocals for their demo that was prog metal. Anyway it was much the same here although on another level still. 

I know it's just a coincidence since Apollyon and Bestial Tormentor were already working on the music before you got involved, but it's neat to see you in another band with Storm in the name since I'm a huge fan of Nordavind. Do you think you'll ever record anything in that frosty, folky vein again, or have you gotten folk black metal out of your system entirely by now?

It is entirely your right to hear Storm the way you want. It started out in '93/'94 just doing covers of old traditional Norwegian songs. I can't even remember most of it now as I  didn't listen to that album for 30 year almost - I prefer folk ROCK compared to folk metal. As long as it's slower stuff and not very jumpy, folk metal CAN work but it's not in my interest zone. It was out of my system the moment it was done. Anyway, the band name Coffin Storm was unrelated, I'll send you the piece of Possessed lyric that I misheard from 1986 (bought Beyond the Gates when it came out) and until 2021 when Ole and Olav needed a band name and I had always thought a band needed to be called what I THOUGHT Jeff Beccera was singing. I went to show them the lyrics and I was like "..BUT....he DOES NOT sing coffin storm! It was coffin's door all along! NOOOOOO!"- But we kept it. Good story anyway. 

There are a number of touchpoints for Coffin Storm's sound, from Exodus to Agent Steel to Cathedral and so on. What are a few of the albums you all really wanted to channel while recording this record?

Well, I guess the other dudes are basically influenced by big faves of the '80s in the slow thrash, heavy, and doom styles. Who can really pinpoint influences, everything we hear go through the metal brain and is sorted into do's and don't's categories anyway. I have presented a long list of possible influences for my vocals but mainly when I do vox for a project like this, it is so so so clear that it will be Agent Steel's third release, UNSTOPPABLE FORCE, for me from back in '87, and when you are influenced by John Cyriis, then you are also influenced–whether you like it or not—by Geoff Tate on the first two Queensryche vinyls but he was the best metal vocalist in the world at that point so it is impossible to try to reach his sun. But it doesn't hurt to be inspired by it. I should have had a list of albums from the other guys so I would be prepared for the interview but you see, a lot of metal players don't think like us journalists do with all the coathangers we need to define music. You are doing a helluva job though, Kim! So you don't need a list.

Anyway I am so inspired by the first Candlemass and Jonah Quizz's singing on that one that it is impossible to shake, that was one of the albums that spellbound me since '86 and also made me try out singing a bit in that style in '89 when I made my "The Light" song for the Pilgrim Sands project that as so many other tiny projects went into the giant sack (if that's allowed to say) of Isengard. But I mean we are all major thrashers. The thing is that we could name a lot of classic albums, only that we are mostly inspired by the slower parts on them. This goes for Coffin Storm when it comes to Ole and Olav, and for Darkthrone when it comes to me, I reckon.

You've been involved in the heavy metal world for your entire life, and have lived through several different eras, from tape trading to a vinyl resurgence to the domination of streaming music platforms. It used to take hard work to find out anything at all about underground metal bands, and now, almost all the information a new fan could ever want is right there in front of them online. How do you think this ease of accessibility has changed the genre?

I was really busy on Myspace, it was like a mix of social media and Bandcamp. Sad when it started falling apart. Anyway, metal was headed into dismal territories in the '90s and then nu-metal in early 2000s, but at the same time came a force of enthusiasts around the world bringing back the old through Youtube, and so a new resurgence of old took place. Also in the late '90s a handful of festivals were hailing the old. I am realizing the metal world needs to expand in all directions to keep it alive, as expanding the metal territory means adding always a number of gateways. But at a point there, old metal was starting to get lost, so I think since 2004 things have just been better than ever with room and breathing space for most genres and also a barrage of old fans with money are releasing almost every single metal recording that was "lost" in the '80s and this was possible due to something just a few of us did in the '80s: MAIL ORDER.

I knew I was right. But it took soo long before everyone started ordering online constantly. It was fucked up the way it was with cool albums almost only sold in large cities, so rural people had to travel to get stuff like Metallica even (like in Norway in 1986). And now you can order the entire Witchtower catalogue and CRIONIC demo re-release on vinyl online. THAT was a sweet revolution. So now if you happen to grow up in the boondocks, you find your interest easy online instead of having to suffer. OK I paint a rosy red picture of it here now, everything has pros and cons but consarn it, I was RIGHT about mail ordering in the '80s and that this was a good idea. Every possible subgenre and classic genre seems to be brimming now. 

Now that you can learn the entire history of metal without ever leaving your bedroom, I have to wonder: is the idea of the "poser" dead? If so, do you think that is a good thing or a bad thing for the metal world?

Bah, hell no, poser is always on the table! hahahaha! NOBODY PUTS POSER (the expression) IN THE CORNER!!

But hey, it's now new generations that can choose what they want. Back when I was a kid you were either synth or metal or pop, it is nostalgic to think about but really limited and musically stupid. Follow your bliss I say (B-52s reference).

Your podcast, Fenriz Metal Pact, sees you going through tons and tons of new and old music, and you're well known for your ravenous listening habits (even if you'd really just rather listen to your 80s vinyls at the end of the day!). All that new music can get overwhelming, though, so if you could take a day off everything, what are a few classic albums you'd want to dive back into? 

You interviewed me over the phone back in 2013 I think. Since then I wanted to see what the music journalists were faced with. So I agreed to take on all of the promos that Deaf Forever Magazine was being sent. 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, I went through 600-800 releases a year. And after that it was a burnout. This coincided with me realizing no matter if I lived till I was 90, I would never again be able to listen to all the stuff that I'd heard and liked up to that point EVER AGAIN. Sad, devastating thought. So since 2017, I have listened less and less, and also more to podcasts. Until now when days can be completely music free. Never happened before.

So I've been through a revolution. I want to hear AGAIN stuff I have already heard and like. So I went off social media completely for 5 years now. Ted has had a strong wish for decades to only let the music do the talking, so it will be more albums from us hopefully but less interviews, and then perhaps in the future very little communication except for albums. We even have economic planning for this to be sustainable but as we see with Morbid Angel's alphabet album-idea: the gods laugh when man makes plans. 

Ok so I didn't just do the FENRIZ METAL PACT, before that I had 50 episodes of Radio Fenriz since 2014 on Soundcloud. Then a year break before I started Radio Fenriz IN NORWEGIAN on Spotify about metal history which is also the theme for FMP but I always end up playing a mix of old and new interesting stuff I currently dig. So I am shutting down the Norwegian podcast as I am doing 4 TIMES more podding than is natural for me. Anyway, I did around 110 episodes of the Norwegian one and soon 80 episodes of FMP so it is getting to be a considerable amount. So since we did that phone interview, I have been through a period of listening EVEN MORE to metal than before and then a period of very little listening compared to before. Very very littler haha! Let's say I had 11 hours a day before at most, now it's 1. So eleven times less. My brain kinda got full eventually. 

But I have a bunch of beloved vinyls from back in '84-'87 that I like to revisit. My Spotify Wrapped said last year I was one of those in the world that listened most to CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER's Convicted album. Also the two CRUMBSUCKERS albums I really really really love, and Spreading the Disease by Anthrax. But also new stuff like FLIGHT's album from last year, Voyeur by WITCHTOWER I am really into now, and several tracks off the brand new ARMAGH album. But these new are always pushed out by even newer discoveries. I also got into The Unknown album by ATTACKER  (not the first two tracks though) to give an example of a metal period you'D think I wouldn't dig. Attacker is a killer band no matter what. Be proud of them! Can't get Apollyon into them, though! Haha!

A day off everything would be nice. Unfortunately they made emails on phones so that they can't be shut down and I am a very dutiful person. I have completely lost times of days that I was just gonna sit and listen to oldies and chill with beer that has been leveled by EMAILS. So now you understand more about Darkthrone's future plans....

Sunscreen, shades, ZZ Top's Degüello album and beer is INCOMPATIBLE to emails! Natural adversaries!

I know you're a big news hound, at least in terms of what's happening in Norway, and I'm curious: how have you seen public and government support for metal (black metal and otherwise) change throughout the years? The government used to support young bands by offering resources, practice spaces, and so on; how have things changed? How do the current crop of politicians feel about Norway's metal exports?

AGAIN, things have happened! I tried last year to cut out news reading as I could spend 4-6 hours a day on it. I got hooked, it was starting to diminish my life. Had my first news detox last spring, but then came watering restrictions (been doing a lot of gardening since 2014, ten years in, I'm getting good at it). I had to follow the news cuz of situations around watering restrictions, and I was hooked again. Then two months ago I started another milder news detox where I just read very local news. Works so far. 

Politicians I am guessing REALLY do not care much about culture, I think most people think mostly of themselves regardless of what they do so THANK YOU Kim for caring enough to do this. But ok, so politicians probably just glanced at black metal in the side mirror in the '90s and thought NOT GOOD NOT SUPPORT and then since the 2000s they saw THEY CREATE GOOD BUZZ OK SUPPORT IT, I really think that's the gist of it. To us in Darkthrone it has little to say financially. For the big festivals and some bands that play them, it is beneficial but again, it comes down to EXPANDING THE METAL WORLD to create more ways into the heart of metal.

You've been very clear that you're happy to not be involved in politics yourself anymore after your city council election, but are there any specific issues or causes you follow, globally or locally? How does someone whose entire life is metal find an escape when needed?

What happened was that they, against the people's consensus, decided to merge Kolbotn (Oppegård) with Ski. Darkthrone country with Mayhem country, so to speak. But this meant they needed fewer representatives and also why would I be a local politician for an area to the south I care nothing about? I opted out, as many others did. There is a lot of dismay still about this merger. I think Kolbotn (Oppegård) should just have merged with Oslo instead, if they needed to merge. 90% of the Kolbotn population of the working force already work there, so. 

How? Outdoor work or hiking. Lots to do on the "estate." Since I was a kid I always loved the screen so I have a pretty wide palate of what I watch. From art movies on MUBI o good times series like COMMUNITY on Netflix so to speak. Seldom riffs come falling down in my mind watching these things. But SPORTS! Oh my, and especially soccer. Anyway, I am enclosing a photo of the winter sports I watch every season. I included alpine this season which led to overload. 30-40 hours a week. and mostly weekends. So beer drinking is not really happening November-January.

While I was writing up these questions for you, I got an email announcing the new Darkthrone album, It Beckons Us All—you guys really love to surprise us, huh? What can we expect from this new album?

It should be no surprise, as I am constantly working on new Darkthrone albums. We could do two a year now if it wasn't for all the emails and things AROUND the music. Also not strategically smart to overfill the Darkthrone market. But since we don't tour, we should be making an album every two or three years at this point (others in this stage of their career make typically one album every FIVE years but they tour). It's just that we've been busier than that since 2019. Anyway I have a really good feeling about this album, Ted is so sure that we did great. But I will not lay all my eggs in the 'IT BECKONS US ALL' basket, I must continue to work. I'M READY TO METAL!!

It's silly, but I have to ask since I know you know your way around social media: are you aware of the Fenriz Friday meme about you? How do you feel about it?

I THIIIINK I caught eye of it before exiting SOME back in 2018?... but now that you brought it up it's nothing I would go check out, this is just excess noise for the brain for me of course, like reviews and feedback and all of that. I think it's like pillow TV, embarrassing with attention and since '87-'88 when I always got fanzines back after doing interviews, I found I was always embarrassed at my answers and everything, like I always hated my 3 month younger self. I am most comfortable about making metal and making trees grow and defend the trees from the deer type we have here,

Any last words this time? Thanks so much for making time for my little zine!

TREAT ANIMALS RIGHT! But that feels weird to say now that I just had to ignore both hungry magpies and cat because of this interview. Feeding routine early mornings are devastated every time we release an album. I can go hungry, it doesn't affect my mind, but hungry animals affect my mind.

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Coffin Storm's Arcana Rising is out now via Peaceville Records, and Darktheone's It Beckons Us All... drops April 26th. Keep an eye out for both, and subscribe to Salvo for more!