Until the Light Takes Us

All right, if you'll just

put this under your belt.

- What?

- Actually, just--

Sorry.

lt's okay, it's still dark outside.

lt's fine.

lt's fine. It's dark outside.

You motherf***er.

Check out the frame.

It looks good l think.

Yeah. It's cool.

All right. Here we go.

Darkthrone was the first

to release an album

in this black metal genre

and Gylve was the leader

of the group, so to speak.

He's more like a philosopher

than somebody who...

more than an ideologist.

The band was very successful

and in many ways was the band.

Gylve as l said is a special person

with special goals,

and it's impossible to know

what his goals are.

He...

He's successful at what he's doing.

l guess he's happy with that.

Have you been standing

there the whole time?

They busted me

on the f***ing tear gas.

They didn't find any drugs,

of course.

So...

l had to say,

''Yes, l had the tear gas.''

And...

l gotta pay a fine. Big Deal.

l had to drop my pants.

They really were hoping

for the big bust, man.

l don't know.

Funny thing, you know,

they always wear

these intimidating gloves

so that you're supposed to ''fess up''

before they start looking up your ass.

But they don't look up your ass.

lt's a trick.

Norway. It's beautiful.

lt's like New Zealand

only just grimmer.

The Norwegian personality is

when you stand in line for the bus,

you don't stand too close.

You keep a couple of meters

away from the next guy.

l think that says it all.

They're going to give medicine to people.

They're announcing it.

People are like, ''Oh! Where is it!''

lt's amazing that people

are eating this trash.

Chemical. All the time, you know.

Sleeping pills and all this.

lt's like a chemical lobotomy, you know.

l just started going really musically.

And direct my interest

into more and more music.

Music, music, music.

And he was more into politics.

So we just sort of--

...took different paths.

The contact just faded into obscurity.

The thing that made

this music different

was that we rebelled

against the traditional song structure.

But still, you know, he made

an incredible impact with his early albums.

And l'm eternally grateful for that.

l wanted the music to be

more epic or storytelling.

He just recorded,

like, basically everything

he did himself.

He was right on the money

when it came to

the black metal sound.

That was the sh*t, man.

And that is what made this new--

so-called new music style different.

Because that is what

the Darkthrone did

that is what Burzum did.

And we were like the first

who did this in this period.

lt's been years

since we had contact.

l tried to send him some music

but it wasn't what he was searching for.

He was searching for some music

and he couldn't really

explain what it had been.

So l just gave up on it.

l'm kind of like

you know, what's it

called, ambivalence?

l have an ambivalent feeling

in this context

because in one sense

of course, it's hard

to have to be without freedom to move

wherever l want and stuff like that.

But in another sense

it's kind of positive

because l have the opportunity

to, like, read books

and focus on more important things.

lt's like a--

l consider it like

a stay in a monastery.

ln our contemporary society,

youth are pretty much lost.

They have no direction.

Nobody is telling them what to do.

That is, people are teIling

them what to do

but the youth have an instinct

telling them this is wrong, you know?

People are telling them

that Christianity is good.

People are telling them

that the USA is good.

NATO is good.

Our democracy is good.

But we know, if not intellectually,

we know instinctly that this is wrong.

This is f***ing revenge.

We recorded the first

black metal album

A Blaze In the Northern Sky,

sent it to Peaceville, and they were like,

''We're remixing this.

What the hell are you guys doing?''

You know?

''This is black metal.

This is what black metal is supposed

to sound like.'' It was, like, all cold.

lt's cold right now as well.

l said, ''l'm not remixing the album.

''This is what black metal sounds like

and if you don't want it,

''then we'll just make

Euronymous release it

"on his Deathlike Silence label.''

And then Peaceville said

''No. We can't have that.

''Because we will lose face if a new band

in our stall is leaving us.

''So we better just f***ing release it,

you know?''

And now they're really happy about that,

money-wise, l guess.

We just went with our hearts and we thought

we were going to sell, like,

maybe 1500 copies of that

Blaze In the Northern Sky album.

We thought people would react

the same way Peaceville did.

Basically we knew that there were

just a few people listening to

and being ''black metal,''

but people picked up on it.

And that's one of the albums

now that is a classic within the style,

so it still sells a lot

ten years down the line.

When l recorded my album,

you know, l told the producer,

''Give me the worst

microphone you have.''

We set up the drums, you know,

we didn't do anything

to make the song sound

any particular-- special.

You know, ten minutes

everything was ready.

And he was, you know,

''Don't you want to do anything?''

You know, you always

have to adjust

the sound of the drums

and everything.

No! Because it was like a rebellion

against this...

good production.

So...

We called it ''necro-sound,''

you know, ''corpse sound''

because it's supposed to

sound the worst possible.

So actually l ended up

with a headset as a microphone.

That was the worst

we could find.

And used that as a microphone.

So-- And we used

this tiny Marshall amplifier,

it was this big, because that was

the worst amplifier we could find.

lt was terrible sound, it was--

We had, like, an album cover

with our guitarist,

an eerie shot with corpse-paint on it,

and at that time

every death metal album,

every thrash metal album

basically had painted covers,

you know, ''cover art.''

And people hadn't seen,

like, photos.

Well, the underground knew that Mayhem

used corpse-paint and sh*t,

but people in general looking

through the vinyls and CD racks,

they were just like,

''What the hell is this?

A blast from the past?

This is cold!''

The way l perceived Mayhem

was f***ing magic for me.

l'm still listening

to the Deathcrush album.

That's probably

my favorite Mayhem album.

They released Deathcrush

and they just lived

on reputation only in the late '80s.

Mayhem started out

in '84 l guess, around there.

And it was the only Norwegian band,

so it's sort of special for us.

l went to rehearsals and came

like, awestruck back.

They did a show in 1989

which is legendary.

Euronymous invented

the typical Norwegian black metal riff.

lt's sort of derived from Bathory,

but it was a new way of playing a riff

that had really not been done

and not been stylized by anyone before.

That's what Euronymous did.

You have a chord.

You don't play one and one,

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