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Interview with:

Simen Haestnass

It may be no surprise that black metal is alive up North. Maybe this is due to the long nights but a band like Dimmu Borgir always seems to be able to produce a dark atmosphere. With their last album ‘Death Cult Armageddon’ things are no different; dark, bombastic and some orchestral work here and there, but above all nice dark guitar riffs and beautiful keyboard parts. The album is the biggest sales success after their album ‘Enthrone Darkness’.
 
Before the show at Dynamo there was time for an interview with bas guitarist Simen. The band has been partying quite a bit the day before in the Netherlands and the bass player is all but talkative. His answers are short and bored, he will repeat ‘what the fuck, it’s just blackmetal’ will be used frequently by the musician the next hour.

This man seems to be preoccupied with the commercial side of music and is not embarrassed at all by this. Still he has some critical remarks about their latest album. When chocolate eggs and bottle of mayonnaise start flying across the room (the interview takes place at the mess hall) and the rest of the band withdraws to the dressing room all laughing one gets the impression the band does not behave professionally.


With this interview we try to get a grip on what is the musical kitchen of the most successful blackmetal band at present time. That this is completely successful is much due to Simen’s hangover. One thing is for certain, Simen will continue as longs as their CDs will sell.

When we want to understand the core of Dimmu Borgir we need to return to the time when metal became very important to Simen with bands like KISS and VENOM. “It’s so massive, so many things happening and I’m being bombarded with emotions. Once you’re into metal it keeps surprising you.” His roots in blackmetal become clear soon; ”It all started with kids who protested against the church together with the ‘Satanic Youth Organisation’. The first wave of old school blackmetal to me is Mayhem, Darktrone, Emporer en Imortal.”

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Death Cult Armageddon

Their last CD, released in September 2003, showed a surprising side of Dimmu Borgir. There was a real orchestra involved and new details were added to the music. There fanbase only seems to have grown since. According to Semin there’s no real message in the album; “The lyrics deal with music, landscapes and feelings. Of course emotions are the inspiration for writing the music and when I am writing I can be inspired by a good book. We just make music and hope to reach the audience with it.” The guitarist halts for a short time and then continues with his rattling English which is hard to understand: “I think that music and lyrics are fifty-fifty. When you don’t have a message your songs are less interesting. Sometimes good lyrics actually inspire me. Often this is about the hard times in life. We don’t want to influence people, but we are happy to know they like our music and that it makes them feel good, and I hope they will like our new ideas just as much.”  The new CD was released quite a while after the successful ‘Entrone Darkness’ and according to Simen much has changed about the sound of the band. The many changes in the line-up most probably have contributed to that: “Much has happened with the people that write the music, but overall the influences have remained the same. With mew member the music changes and we are working on a more professional level now too.”


Live performances

Dimmu Borgir is the only band that has played Dynamo 4 times. Still the bass player looks forward to the show: “We find the atmosphere in the Netherlands relaxed. I can walk around on the festival grounds without being harassed by people. It sort of looks like Norway the way I knew it at the beginning.” Still festivals are a ‘killer’ for the band: “there are a lot of people, there’s never a soundcheck and the sound on stage cam be horrible. Hopefully there are new people in the audiences that didn’t know us before, they are the reason why we do it.” When we start discussing performing the corpse paint is the next likely subject: “It’s easy to play blackmetal this way. You are more or less playing the character, and it makes me feel I’m going to battle. We like a dark feeling in our shows, something that’s typical blackmetal I think. We grew up with KISS and I love the idea they looked like gods but were normal people after all.”


Private life
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Artists often lead a double life. With Dimmu Borgir the difference between the two seems even bigger. On one side they have a dark atmosphere during their show and on the other hand they have to be able to let go. Simen is very relaxed about this: “There are a lot of negative emotions around blackmetal, but I think these emotions are focussed. You have to; it’s all black and white. You feel a lot of aggression when you play blackmetal yet if you listen to it these feelings subside. I can get very relaxed through it. It doesn’t make me aggressive all the time either, it hardly affects my private life, I think. Sometimes I get angry for other reason, they are not always related.”

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Blackmetal scene

Dimmu Borgir is the band that made blackmetal commercially interesting again. Still Simen is realistic about this: “We make music and it sells well so why give it any further thought? Many people say you don’t have to be original in blackmetal and all you have to do is play old school blackmetal (red. like bands of the first blackmetal wave e.g. MAYHEM) we just play it our way. It’s important to keep developing as an artist and band. Yet this is hard because you always seem to repeat bits. In our band everybody has his own way of writing and I see that we do repeat things other bands did. We are trying to play blackmetal the way we have always known it. I don’t know if we’ll repeat older successful songs, but we’ll move on even if it’s in a wheelchair on stage.”

The bass player is clearly up to speed now and rattles on. He’s enthusiastic yet critical about the new album at the same time: “With the last album we clearly show we’ve grown on our instrument skills. You can hear it in the music and that’s what you need to keep growing as a band.”  He fall silent and is clearly looking for words to translate Norwegian to English. Finally he leans forward to continue his story: “On our last album Peter is the producer, but the band is as well. This took up a lot of time because everybody has an opinion. They kept saying: I want it like this. I fit were up to me I’d not do it like this a next time. We just kept on talking and could sometimes just kill each other.”  He looks deep into my eyes and his massive body leans back again. For a moment I think he wasn’t serious, but he raises his voice: “Yes we hated each other at times, sometimes it’s a big mess with us.” Still he understands why others act like this. He too wants perfection, though not like this anymore: “I really hope next time we’ll get a better producer!”


Simen is tired and needs to leave for the dressing room to have his coprsepaint done and prepare for the show. After a faint smile he walks off, a big man but deep inside a little boy with ideals.

The Dutch version of the interview you can find on: www.muzikantenweb.nl

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