Norway has always been a hotbed for cutting edge and forward thinking bands. One of the finer examples of this are Bergen-based progressive/avant-garde metal outfit Vulture Industries. Their latest album, entitled The Tower (Season Of Mist), is quite a masterpiece. Ghost Cult caught up with singer Bjørnar E. Nilsen to ask him all about his remarkable band.
Congratulations on your new album The Tower. I imagine you must be very pleased with how it has turned out. What are your hopes for the album and what were you trying to achieve with it?
Thank you! We are very pleased with the outcome and proud to present it publicly. It has been a three year process and as always it feels fulfilling to let the child go. Setting it loose and see how it figures into the world. The process of creation is in itself very rewarding, but we are somewhat socially inclined, so we like to see how our babies work for other people instead of just keeping them locked up in the studio. Even though our expression is too far of the mainstream path to get a wide recognition we are steadily building an audience and with The Tower it seems to have grown further. It remains small but dedicated. Anyway… It makes more sense to me to make a profound difference in a handful of lives, than being a minor parenthesis to millions.
As a band, you’re very hard to pigeonhole (this is a good thing) flitting from rock to musical theatre to carnival to metal to Victorian music hall, with splashes of Alice Cooper, Arcturus, Nick Cave amongst others. How do you compose your songs and what are you looking to bring together when writing your music?
Writing for Vulture Industries is a crooked process with song ideas and bits of music floating around and bumping into each other. Sometimes they fix to each other, sometimes they mix and sometimes they reject each other. Sometimes one even swallows the other and they become one. Some ideas are born early and take a long way to mature. For example some song ideas that are conceived in the early stages of writing don’t reach adulthood before the final studio sessions. Some might even be subject to a late abortion, getting tossed away during the final stages of mixing. This process takes time and makes for a somewhat unpredictable workflow. Still I think this way to make music is an essential part of our musical expression, so changing the process would change the result, the result being a kind of musical reflection of our collective soul.
So, focusing on the The Tower, what are the themes of the songs? What is The Tower and what does it mean to you? Are your lyrics important or just a means to an end?
The whole album is built around the concept of the world we create, not just as a physical entity, but also subjectively. The symbolic image of The Tower is as a reflection of our society and the constructions that constitute our worlds. It is an image of a constructed system that looks crooked and bent from afar but evens out and get more and more bewitching as one is drawn into it. A central example is our hyper-consumerist society; a system driven by the fractional reserve banking system where the primary method of creating new money is through the creation of debt. Loans made up primarily of money the banks don’t have as they are only obliged to hold a reserve of a fraction of the money they actually lend out. These loans generate interest on which new loans can be created. This makes for a compound interest graph in which a larger and larger part of valuables pass onto the hands of the banking system. Meanwhile we remain trapped within a creature that eats its own tail. A creature that is both insatiable and unsustainable. A creature they only few grasp the scale of and most are just dimly aware. A creature that only cares about itself and will happily devour any resource possible to put a dollar sign on, regardless of any outside consequence. The lyrics are an integral part of our expression and important. Bland or meaningless lyrics would gravely flaw what we are trying to convey.
An obvious one, but the vocals are remarkably reminiscent of Krystoffer Rigg, especially his work with Arcturus. Are constant references to this a negative thing, or something that, as a band, you can embrace, and even play on and use to an advantage?
I have no particular wish to sound, smell, look nor feel like anyone else in particular. Still, considering the quality of the referenced work, the fact that we find ourselves in a very wide musical landscape with few reference point and the fact that most people tend to use comparisons rather than descriptive characteristics when describing music, I have made my peace with the comparison. Sometimes I have fun with calling Mr. Rygg pretending to be him. It fucks with his head.
Your style and image seems well crafted and deliberate, how integral to the band is the sense of identity and visual companionship with the music?
Rather than just having parts thrown together in a jumble we like them all to complement each other. Thus music visuals and lyrics are all closely tied together to form a creature of a higher potency than a small assortment of detached goblins.
The music itself is very theatrical. Where did this come from, and is it something you have to consciously work into the music?
I have always been fascinated by music that also manages to convey a story and paint strong images. Thus it has been natural to follow this path when writing music myself. For me it’s also about making the music come alive. Adding dimensions instead of just focusing on painting pretty pictures. By extension the theatrical side is also a way relate to the audience as more than just passive spectators.
In a time where potential fans have access to literally thousands of bands in seconds via online mediums, do you feel this theatricality is important to what Vulture Industries, or is it something to help you stand out?
I guess it makes us stand out and it is important in the sense that it is an integral part of our identity as a band. It’s not a calculated choice made to differentiate ourselves from the multitude of band though, but rather an expression of a profound collective self. We are not trying to be anything in particular, we just are.
More so than pretty much any other geographic location, Norway has an extremely progressive and experimental metal heritage, from second wave black metal and it’s latter day developments to …In The Woods, Arcturus, Ved Buens Ende and more recently Ihsahn, Leprous et al. Why do you think that is, and is there a “Norwegian” mentality to music that encourages expression, exploration and diversity?
It is a common misconception amongst fans and media alike that the progressive and experimental tendencies found among Norwegian metal bands comes from a “Norwegian” mentality that encourages this. On the contrary the “Norwegian” mentality encourages not sticking out from the crowd. Rather than searching the mentality of the nation for an explanation, the answer can be found in something as basic as diet. Norway has an extremely long coastline compared to its relative size, thus a large part of our diet is based on fish. One of the less tasty but highly nutritious kinds contains a particular protein that stimulates the creative centres of the brain. Given its awful taste this fish is one of the cheapest foodstuffs you can get in Norway, and as most people know musicians are notoriously poor. Thus Norwegian musicians are highly creative and Norwegian vagrants live in exceptionally elaborately constructed cardboard houses.
The Tower coincides with your 10 year anniversary as a band. What are the key things you’ve learned over the last decade, and would you do any of it differently if given the chance again?
I do not believe in fate. I rather believe my current situation to be a result of the billions of choices and coincidences that make up my past. The logical continuation of this is that regretting your past is regretting who you are. Even though many of the personal choices and choices as a musician of the past might seem stupid in retrospect I don’t regret them. It is of the past now. Life is a state of mind!
Steve Tovey