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 motherfucker.

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 fucking 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 shit, 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 shit,

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 fucking 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,

you play one and one up and down

and you have the notes cling together

so that you have the fucking eerie notes

and they all string together

creating this incredible, eerie sound.

lt sends fucking chills down your spine.

l started in Mayhem in March 1988.

When l first met Euronymous, l gave him, like,

a demo tape of me playing the drums.

He listened to it maybe five minutes

and he heard it was like double bass

and blast beats in t,here and it was like

''Yeah, okay. You're in the band.''

The next day l actually moved to their location

which was, like 30 minutes outside of! Oslo.

l met the other guys.

l met Necrobutcher.

And of course, l met Dead which was a Swedish guy.

l never had the chance to see Mayhem with Dead,

but Demonaz did so he can say something about it.

Yeah. l saw Mayhem in Oslo with Dead.

And he had make-up.

That was the first show l saw ever with make-up.

And didn't they

carry Dead in in a coffin?

No, they didn't. They were supposed to do that.

They were supposed to do that, yeah.

So we were really waiting for that but it didn't happen.

But he had this sacrifice knife

which he was cutting himself with.

lt was a good show.

When it's cold

and when it's dark