Yusaf Parvez (a.k.a. VICOTNIK) needs no further introduction to the Black Metal audience. His unconventional ideas have molded into some of the most thought-provoking musical experiences of the last 25 years. As the climactic VED BUENS ENDE concert is fresh in our memories, we approached him in order to shed some light to the dark caverns of his musical outlets…

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– Hello Yusaf! It is a great pleasure talking to you. On behalf of THEGALLERY.GR greetings from Athens, Greece and thank you for your time. How are you and how are things in Norway with the Covid-19 crisis? Has the so called normality been restored?

Vicotnik: Hello George!! Nice meeting you…Greetings from the outskirts of Oslo as well. I think that we are probably one of the countries with the most modest outcome until now..We do not have a lot of deaths. We acted properly, I guess there is a trust in the Norwegian people when sometimes it is best to do what you are told and stay at home and have respect for each other. We are slowly opening up the society again. My kid is back in school as a matter of fact. Other than that, you know it has been a strange couple of months being locked inside with all the shows of the bands being cancelled. I had to figure out something to do so it was an opportunity to make some music.

– How the general lockdown has affected you, mostly as an artist in terms of inspiration? What’s your most listened music during that time? Book? Movies? 

Vicotnik: I have not listened to a lot of music but I have been making a lot music. So you know when you sit down and spend everything from a couple of hours to maybe 8-10 hours a day in the studio doing pre-production and staff like that you do not really wantto listen to much music after all that music. I am trying to relax mostly but i have picked up a lot of things over the last few years. Things like AGNES OBEL (Danish indie folk/chamber pop musician and singer), which has a different wooden and pastoral atmosphere but still fits quite well into the general Black Metal vibe, a lot of piano music, classical music and most recently a lot of the 90’s Black Metal albums to get in touch with the roots or better the resonating atmosphere. It seems there was a hidden genius in not knowing what you were doing and i tried to connect with that feeling again. That has been my research and it has come to quite a good use now in the lockdown. I have been enjoying using things in my own set up but after all the cancellations of the shows I tried to shift my focus so in the studio working mostly.

– Last year an unexpected but most welcomed reunion happened. VED BUENS ENDE….. announced a mini-tour of four appearances in some European summer festivals and two appearances in Greece, in early March. I gave my presence in two of them. Brutal Assault and the gig in Athens, which in fact was the last one I have attended and will attend for the foreseeable future. I was truly bewildered by its resonance. It echoed unwavered greatness. How do you assess these six appearances? Was it as rewarding as your smiles of ecstasy in Athens’s concert?

Vicotnik: It has been great. We tried starting VED BUENS ENDE again in 2005…What we did wrong then is that we just started making new material. Now we did it the right way by going back, re-listening all of our old songs, learning them and performing them live again… We really got reconnected with what VED BUENS ENDE was all about…and the shows have been really fantastic. I was a bit bewildered actually in Athens because everybody was so quiet but our sound guy is Greek and he told me that you were just amazed because you thought that concert would never take place. (p.s.laughs!!) It was a really good experience, meeting everybody again as i have many friends in Greece. It was also my last concert and my last travel abroad. I was in quarantine a week later because of my trip to Greece but it was really worth it.

– By comparing the two concerts, I got to tell you that although I was in awe by watching you for the very first time in Brutal Assault, in Athens the concert and the whole performance was far more ecstatic! You played all your songs and it had a more theatrical, transcendental vibe that was definitely augmented by Carl-Michael Eide’s energy, despite his injury.

Vicotnik: Thank you for your words. In Brutal Assault, we are just a small (???!!!) band in a big festival. We got a 40 minute set so there is limited time. We have a few fans around and they have been like the most loyal fans ever. It is nice and much rewarding after 25 years to go at last back on stage and play for you guys. It’s cool not to leave out any songs and just play it all.

  – I took notice of VED BUENS ENDE participation in next year’s Inferno and Ascension festival. Is this a reunion for live purposes only or are there any plans to release some new material? If that is the case, is it going to be something like the “Half Visible Presence” unreleased material or something totally new?

Vicotnik: To begin with, the plan was just to do a birthday show. A friend of ours she got 40 years old (p.s. I think,smiles) and she asked us if we could play 4-5 songs in her birthday party as we were her favorite band and we did it. It was such a great feeling getting to play with the guys again and then we decided to do a few more shows. We initially signed for five shows and after experiencing how rewarding it was, we considered making the new material. That’s the tricky bit you know. I always say when people ask about our main inspiration this time that it has to be VED BUENS ENDE. Otherwise, it will go wrong. It has to be related to what we made the first time around. That is the continuation. We can’t continue as parts of artists of our current bands. We can’t start another VIRUS, DØDHEIMSGARD etc… It has to go down on VED BUENS ENDE roots and try to draw inspiration by them, so that there is a natural transition from “Written in Waters” to our next album. Even though it has been 25 years, the gap shouldn’t be mirrored in the album.

  – VED BUENS ENDE material is nothing sort of mesmerizing. It is regarded by many as the cradle for Avant Garde (Black) Metal. During the time that everything in Norway was intense and everyone craved for the old school sound and evilness, what laid the foundations at such a young age to create such a groundbreaking release, both lyrically and musically? Was it just purely instinct or was there a clearer compositional vision? I would appreciate your insight in the songwriting process.

Vicotnik: We did not really think much about it and that was the key. You also have to remember the background. Even though it was recorded 1994-1995 we came into the metal scene at an earlier age… Carl and also I listened to thrash in the late 80’s so we have been around years before releasing any material. But sitting down we never planned to be avant-garde, we just used to listen to a lot of stuff. Everything from DARKTHRONE to DIAMANDA GALAS to COIL and even to Rock music. It was just a natural influence of everything. The biggest hurdle for a lot of bands back in the mid 90’s was that they tried to focus on one thing like speed and brutality or they wanted to sound like some band they drew inspiration from… We never had just one band as an inspiration. We just amassed music in general and tried to interpret that to our abilities. We were more than one person making the music. I made music, Carl made music and also Hugh made music in the sense that he recorded all the bass lines and these are a big part of our sound design. This multifaceted contribution to music gives you automatic diverseness.

– As things became polarizing in the Norwegian Black Metal scene and generally in Scandinavia, did you face any problems due to your half-Indian decent?

Vicotnik: In the mid 90’s, like 1995-1996, it has calmed down a bit. I moved in Oslo in 1993 coming from a small town 50 km out of Oslo. So it was not that far from here. Coming into the scene back then i noticed that there was a lot of flirtation with national socialism and it was looking like those things were starting to be connected and intertwined forming some sort of brotherhood but still we live in a quite multicultural city and there not really a lot of problems here, so that faded away eventually. For my personally, I always take pride in my heritage and I never tried to hide it. If some people with national socialist beliefs came into a bar and presented themselves for the Black Metal scene, I always presented myself with my full name so that they would be no bones about it. Those people, who made these moves, are a lot of misguided young people and I guess a lot of them are not in the scene anymore. It’s almost 25-30 years later. Children like to find outlets and communities where they can stand and feel different so sometimes it is probable that either left wing or right wing beliefs are going to try and take you. It just depends on who is going to take you first. What I mean is that 95% of that people are not really that extreme so they did not really care if I said Yusaf Parvez. There was also an element I thought was quite significant back then. When this kind of imagery stopped being an integral part of their music, that ended the third wave of influences of that kind of bands. For me personally, I played with the boss. Fenriz was in DØDHEIMSGARD back then and he was the real deal. Him playing with someone of immigrational background changed moods all around as people would not expect that prior to him joining the band.

-What was just hinted in the “Satanic Art” EP, was totally glorified in “666 International”. A record of holy rage, divine madness and hallucinational awe. I consider these two releases to be the closest thing to a black metal version of a David Lynch film. You added a couple of dimensions to the staticness of extreme music. How does it resonate to you after almost 20 years since its release?

Vicotnik: You know, I have not even seen the re-release from Peaceville (for “666 International”). I guess “Satanic Art” is 23 years old now. I remember every time when we met up with the guys for VED BUENS ENDE and share between us ideas, that it was never good enough. We set the bar a bit high it seems. As less and less was happening, Carl focused on AURA NOIR and I shifted focus on DØDHEIMSGARD. So i still had a place to incorporate avant-gardish ideas and develop them, but in a more kind of fixed black metal setting where it has a little bit of speed and brutality but also embraces the craziness. Speed and brutality highlights something that is distorted or disoriented so it is an easy kind of tool to portray something that should appear crazy or out of place. With DØDHEIMSGARD, it has been a long long travel in the sense of getting it right because mostly we have been a studio band even though we did a a lot of concerts through the last years. It’s more of a band that sits in the studio and is comfortable in that environment. I never was comfortable with the live environment for DØDHEIMSGARD, not in the sense of nervousness but that it always felt a bit of lacklustre product in relation to the studio version where there are so many ideas that push the envelope. I never felt that we made that transition well so I consider us a more interesting studio than stage band. We kind of nailed it in our last tour this winter. We got the visuals, the song structure right and put a good amount of practice on how to present the music in a proper way. Do a show, NOT a concert. It’s been five years already since our last album so time is running by (laughs) As a matter of fact, just before you called I was doing the finishing touches on a new song (track number 4) for the next album. I need a couple of more and we are ready to go.

– After the line-up’s shake up, you were left alone and in 2007, releasing “Supervillain Outcast”, your most direct and ferocious release from my point of view. Everything, from the buzzing guitars to the superhuman drumming and the almost “schizophrenic” vocal expressions, oozed dementia and an assault to all senses. You quoted that this release was a personal triumph. What fueled that ferocity? What did this personal triumph relate to back then?

Vicotnik: Wow!!! I do not remember exactly what I meant back then. It’s been a few years. I really enjoy that album as part of my discography although it is the most unpopular DØDHEIMSGARD’s release. There is always a difficult hill to climb when you are changing vocalists and you are doing something unexpected. You are swimming towards to the current instead of swimming with it… Most people expected a continuation of “666 International” so that is what I probably meant with personal triumph in the sense of not adhering to any expectations. I just wanted to make an album that can stand on its own, with its personal fingerprint and sound signature. I remember the mindset back then was to try and dedicate more time in a band, rehearsing four times a week than being hooked up on 20 different projects and seeing people whenever. In that direction, I tried to make my ideas more presentable and followed a more traditional path in terms of songwriting in the sense that it has more repetition, verses and choruses etc. It basically was made to embody the live representation of DØDHEIMSGARD. All the songs were made for the stage and to this day, these are the songs that work best in a live setting because they are so straight to the point.

– I consider your 2008’s gig to be the best by far and I also enjoyed the second cd of the “Supervillain Outcast” re-release. A lot of quality unfinished material that never ceases to surprise.

Vicotnik: I have a lot of leftover songs from every era. I was thinking that it would be interesting to release an album of leftovers from 1994-2015. As DØDHEIMSGARD progresses ahead, it would be nice to look back and have a collection of songs of different eras and emotions that are going to fulfil the wishes of some of our fans.  Me and Khvost talk about making something like a follow up to “Supervillain Outcast” on a loose basis  but I guess it will never happen.

– I consider “A Umbra Omega” as your most sophisticated work. Its looming darkness is suffocating at times. I have not been able to digest it fully. It still spins as it demands patient listenings throughout.  What was the creative process of the album? Would you consider it as your most dense material?

Vicotnik: It is an album that transcends music because a lot of my personal life was put into there, hidden in the lyrics and a lot of my emotions “baked” in the music. I was very particular on how I wanted to be. I cannot shut out the outside world but i really did not care that we were a band. I just wanted to release that album. I will not enclose too many details, but I was in a quite low point in my life. I had to make something that could express that, and I never talked about it to anyone prior to its release. I am really satisfied when people talk about it and use words that I want them to use without me ever telling them to use. Like you did in you intro, the suffocation that feels like trapped into a nightmare. It is cool getting that feedback because it means that I nailed it, I got it right in terms of conveying my emotions. I wanted on an artistic level to shift focus and make this MY story, MY music…but I also wanted it to fade away into the listener’s emotions and mindset. Whoever was willing to invest his time, it would eventually become his own story.

–  Between your last three releases, there is a refinement period of about 8 years. Is it going to be a continuation of the darkness of “A Umbra Omega” or something totally different?

Vicotnik: It is going to be a continuation of “A Umbra Omega”, especially the darkness part. The embodiment of psychological and emotional darkness and not a mythological one. It has nothing to do with mythology or literature or any kind of religious sense. I will stay there because it is basically the most interesting aspect of the human being for me personally. If I am happy, I want to experience it so I go out and do happy things. Being miserable or crazy and all those darker aspects, it is never easy and it cannot be easily sorted out. If you act upon it, it can go really wrong. So it is nice to have an artistic outlet to explore the darker side of the human psyche and I am going to follow a similar path in the new album with some tweaks and turns around the corner. It has to be a natural progression from the sound of “A Umbra Omega”. The song that sticks out the most from this album is “Architect of Darkness”, it’s the best song comparing to the others so it is going to be a benchmark for the new material.

– Now that Aldrahn has left again in 2016, are you going to take over the vocal duties completely on the new material? Is it possible for Khvost (Mat McNerney) or Aldrahn (Bjørn Dencker Gjerde) to return again? What are the main differences of their vocal style on DØDHEIMSGARD’s material?

Vicotnik: I think I will do it myself this time. I wanted to do it myself as well in “Umbra et Omega” because the lyrics and the songs are so personal but Aldrahn really wanted to come back and I felt that I owed it to him in the sense that we created DØDHEIMSGARD together. I wouldn’t want to give him a locked door and he was allowed to enter and participate. We gave it a shot, now he is out again so the stage is cleared for me to do this full length. As an artist, you picture the vocals and the lyrics in a different way than working separately. Both approaches have their qualities. Working with people separately and combining to get music, it is always a thrill because you do not know what to expect from the guys. On the other hand, there is always a longing to make something from scratch and to define the product, creating something that emanates from the core of your heart. No detractors.

To answer to your second part of the question, Aldrahn is a very emotional singer with a very strong ability to channel the emotion of the music and make the vocals just perfect for each individual part. That is where his diversity comes from in a way. He cannot really sing and he is still diverse with his grunting and screaming, but in a quite impressive vocal range. He takes the core emotion of the parts and let’s it zip through him and that is his interpretation. He is really good at it. Khvost is probably more of a brainy singer because he works on things for a long time and also has a bigger vocal range than Bjørn. He also does vocalizations, not just extreme vocals, but he can also perform beautiful vocals, layered vocals, choirs etc. He has a different tool case and uses it more like an architect that builds his performance where Aldrahn is more like painter who adds a bit of color here and there and that is his magnificent work. In total I think they are as good as each other, just different in their approaches. Aldrahn is better at what he does and the same applies to Khvost. I have to say that i am impressed with him as he has probably ten years less than us and has built such a legacy already with all his work.

– In September, an EP by DOLD VORDE ENS NAVN was released. I got to say it was the most typical and straightforward Black Metal release you have featured since “Monumental Possession” in 1996. A beautiful 20-minute sample of melancholic Nordic Atmosphere along with your torturing voice. How did this new band come to life? Are you going to release something new in this year?

Vicotnik: Yes, we are working on an album now! I am actually doing vocals as we speak. Now I have a break with you and when we finish, I will go back and record the vocals for the next album. The drums are recorded, the vocals will be finished shortly so it is just a matter of when will the other guys do their parts. How it started?? Håvard (Jørgensen, member of ULVER, early SATYRICON) was away for around 15 years not touching a guitar or anything and he made an acoustic song called “Food Recovery” that was his way back into music. One-night Håvard and Kai (S. Halvorsen), who was a bass player in DØDHEIMSGARD’s “Satanic Art”, fooled around and made a track. After that, they asked for some lyrics that were atypical to myself, so I wrote something else and asked them if they wanted them and that morphed into me doing the vocals as well. Give it a try at least. I did one song, they liked it and I ended up doing it all. You know the drummer also plays in all my bands, so it was a natural evolution eventually.

– Good luck to your new release. I really enjoyed it. It had a beautiful feeling of nostalgia that was totally unexpected by myself. It was not promoted a lot though..

Vicotnik: No it was not. We have changed labels since then and we consider this release as a demo not an EP. A lot of labels were interested in releasing these tracks and we said let’s just release it as an EP but call it our presentation to the scene. They are really old by now as they were probably written in 2015 or something like that. When I approached the material, it gave me that old nostalgic feeling but in a genuine and unforced way, not like just trying to recreate it and I decided to embody that feeling in the Norwegian lyrics. The new album though is a bit different. It is not so full-on all the time like the EP but it is a recognizable step from its sound.

– I consider you an advocate of experimentation and very underappreciated as a composer in the Black Metal scenery in general. What is your opinion for the evolution of the Black Metal sound in the last 20 years? Which bands made you the best impression during the last decade?

Bands have a way of making themselves significant and then insignificant because of their significance. I will try to explain a bit further and more general in terms of experimentation. MUSE for example had a very interesting approach and made their peak at the early 2000’s. After that and I speak on my own behalf, it seems that the magic is gone by reproducing the same formula again, concentrating on their live performances and in the end having no real place to go. Some bands approach significance and then they are destroyed by the same significance. It is kind of easy to keep interest in bands for a couple of albums and then lose that interest. That does not mean I am not interested in their older releases because they will stay relevant. It seems sometimes people are lost in their own recipes. Minded, this is only my opinion.

A lot of good bands actually, I just can’t remember any now (short pause). MGLA have a very interesting approach to melody and how they sort out their rhythmic sense. SHINING have done some outstanding records with “V – Halmstad” being the culmination of their vision. WATAIN have a really good run and probably there are a lot of underground acts around. OBLITERATION from Norway are a really good band and OUTRE’s last release is quite good. I have not listened to their old discography but I revisit this release here and there. Mostly, I can only listen to a few new Black Metal records at a time as there is so much else music to listen to as well. I guess I am not the most up to date person around.

– Last year I encountered a very interesting and demanding release by the French act DREAMS OF THE DROWNED, masterminded by Camille Giraudeau. Avant-Garde Black Metal in the veins of VED BUENDS ENDE and DØDHEIMSGARD (to a smaller extent) with a wall of post punk/shoegaze noiseness. Has it caught your attention? What is your opinion of his approach?

Vicotnik: I really liked it. I have not listened to the album enough so as to talk extensively about it but I guess Camille is one of those bedroom guys that has a lot of ideas and also has the opportunity and the technical insight to make those ideas come to life. I guess he is probably like me. A recluse, somebody sitting on his own in the dark rooms just making music. We bonded on that level as well. It is not only recognizable in music but also in the musical approach itself and how we are as people. Camille also did a show with DØDHEIMSGARD in Paris where he learned the whole set and as I did not play the guitar in that show he pretty much did the whole thing himself. It was a cool experiment.  We also invited a few guitarists on the road (two of them) and one vocalist in Warsaw’s show that sang with us. It was a pretty interesting approach to live music making it really live music. You can also include friends or people who respect your work and share it on stage with them, so I think I will do that more in the next tour.

– Which bands do you single out from the Hellenic Black Metal scene?

Vicotnik: The band that made the biggest impression on me was NECROMANTIA. I do not know even if they exist anymore. I still listen to the demo and it is really poorly produced and executed but what an atmosphere. When I am performing DJ-ing duties I play it. Really “shitty” sound but I just love it. I guess ROTTING CHRIST have done really well for themselves by embracing professionality in a respectful manner. It seems to me that they have not gone compromised on who they are and nothing feels forced or cheesy. It feels like ROTTING CHRIST.

-Which bands and albums are your favorites from the Black Metal scene in the 90’s?

Vicotnik: Hard question. There are so many good albums. I will probably mention a lot of things that everybody mentions because they are so good. “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas” for sure. There is no way outside that album. It really showed to everyone that you can approach this musical genre in a different way. It does not have to be Death Metal but it also does not have to be that Bluesy-rock primitive Black Metal either. It can be a mixture of the two with its deep chords and overall deep sound. A few musical characters here attest that this is the Alpha and Omega of what Black Metal has become in our country at least. Øystein Aarseth with Mayhem, Snorre Ruch at THORNS, Fenriz and Nocturno Culto representing DARKTHRONE and then the last piece is Varg Vikernes. I strongly believe that this bunch of people have made probably the best Black Metal to this day with their older albums.

-Which would you cite as your main influences on your own-personal brainstorming as an artist?

Vicotnik: Musically it has been a lot. I remember when I was listening to IRON MAIDEN and METALLICA back im my pre-teens. I also listened to NWA and PUBLIC ENEMY as being a metal fan in Norway back then it was widely accepted because Rap music was also underground music. It came from the streets like Metal has done. But for me there is no way I can say I had nothing to do with IRON MAIDEN and METALLICA, there lies in the mother milk. It was also my first awakening to what a front figure is and to this day I consider James Hetfield as the best front figure in Metal and probably one of the best songwriters because he makes them like a story. It is not just a combination of riffs as he possesses a great sense of how to portray emotions and make them a song. Not every song is very good but when he nails it, you almost listen to his songs like watching a movie both audial and visual. Then coming into Black Metal BURZUM, MAYHEM, DARKTHRONE and THORNS are as I pre-mentioned the main influences. After “Krone Til Konge” and “Monumental Possesion” we had paid our duties to where we come from in Metal and it was time to start something on our own. Then your life kind of becomes your main influence and main focus of the outlet of your music. Then it can be anything. An experience, a smell, a taste, walking by a machine that makes a funny noise, a book. A lot of books and movies have influenced me just as music has in the end of the day.

– It is a period of increased activity on your behalf and I wish you all the best to all your all musical endeavors. It was a profound pleasure talking to you. May inspiration be your second nature. I leave the last words to you Yusaf.

Vicotnik: Thank you very much for the interview. It’s been great talking to you. I consider Greece to be almost like a second home because I spend so much time there. I am also looking forward to coming back with DØDHEIMSGARD. I am not really happy with our last few shows there, so I want to do something special for you guys. Hope to see you there when the time comes. My regards to all the readers..

Interview: George Kolivanos
Cover Artwork: Chrysa Antoniadi
Design & Editing: Nikos Manousis
Date: November 1st, 2020
External Links: DODHEIMSGARD – Facebook Page
VED BUENS ENDE – Facebook Page
DOLD VORDE ENS NAVN – Facebook Page
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