WATAIN INTERVIEW
(ONLINE EXCERPT)
This interview excerpt is by Roy Kristensen and is part of a much larger three-part feature included in the fanzine Imhotep #12 (available from Cult Never Dies)
…The obvious point with the new album title is of course fast, aggressive track and slower, more profound tracks. But knowing you, there is (probably) more than meets the ear. Could you elaborate a bit about The Agony & Ecstasy Of Watain, the title and why it ended up like this?
“Well, it began with the word ecstasy. That’s been in my mind in connection with Watain for a very long time. We also had the track ‘Ecstasies in Night Infinite’ already done. But you know me, I’m a sucker for big, epic titles. C’mon, Trident Wolf Eclipse, Lawless Darkness, The Wild Hunt…, I guess that’s just my language when it comes to album titles. I love big titles like The Passion Of The Christ, which is the greatest title that I know of. I also like The Possession Of Emily Rose, The Ecstasy Of Saint Teresa and titles that refer to an actual entity. Then I started to toy around with this idea and what if, for example, Sodom had released an album called The Agony & Ecstasy Of Sodom? Or, you know, The Agony & Ecstasy Of Morbid Angel? That would’ve been albums that I would really like to hear. What would they mean by those titles? I would be interested in a title that refers to something outside of a band instead of a title that reveals exactly what is on the album. In the end, I think it becomes a very personal and bold title for a band to use, and I will say a bit about the two words ecstasy and agony. They can be regarded as the twofoldedness of Watain. You know, the logo of Watain is…, I only drew half of the logo. The W and the A and half of the T, and then I mirrored it and then it became the logo. These two halves meet at the cross in the centre. So, there’s always been this symmetry, the twofoldedness of Watain and the band name is divided into two sections, WAT and AIN. WAT is Thai for temple, and AIN which is Hebrew for the primordial nothingness that existed before existence. I wanted to have this twofoldedness in the title. Agony and ecstasy can represent the emotional duality of sorts. Maybe agony is the existential darkness of humankind, the struggle and suffering of existence, while ecstasy on the other hand is this euphoric state of transcendence, if you will. Both are like emotional anomalies, they’re like altered states of consciousness. They’re not normal states of consciousness, they’re extreme in that sense. They are brought on by intense experience, some sort of trauma maybe, or a climax. They belong to each spectre of emotions in Watain, they are opposites, you know? I boil it down to that maybe agony is the blood and ecstasy is the fire of Watain…”
It would be strange if you called it Agony & Ecstasy only.
“Exactly. I mean, I wasn’t sure about how the title would come across, but the more I’ve lived with it, the more content I have become. It is very representative in many ways about what this album is about, in terms of honesty as well.”
It would’ve been… I mean, I think it would’ve been out of place if it only dealt with the fast and slower tracks, to put it like that.
“Yeah, exactly, but it’s funny how you put it because for me the agony side of the music would probably be the slower and darker parts, while the ecstasy side would be the fiery, fast and rampant parts. This is something I love about this title; it’s kind of brute, but it still opens up for interpretations on a quite wide scale.”
One thing that I notice is how you kind of keep the tracks within a frame, yet they are quite varied when I listen closely. How much does the whole, yet keeping the identity of each track mean to you?
“The word you use, frame, is very important here. I think my songwriting eventually comes into this framing approach. I touched upon the subject when I was talking about Trident…, about how the limitations you set for yourself also can be beneficial for the power of the outcome. If you have a thousand colours and a thousand brushes, sure you can paint anything. But if you have two colours and one brush, then you better start delivering, you know? This is kind of what this framing does to me, it narrows down. I do actually look at our songs as paintings, framed paintings, in the sense that I know quite early on what will work and what won’t, and I know where I want to go. I try to communicate with what I believe is the spirit of the song and the spirit of my idea. With the risk of sounding a bit hocus pocus, I believe these things are alive, organic and can be communicated with. You can communicate with the inner essence of a song or a vision that you’re striving for, and if you do I think there’s a bigger chance of receiving and getting there! I look at our songs as living entities, framed visions that I put a lot of effort into, into finalizing. What you hear is the essence of my passion for writing music. I enjoy it even more now that I master the tools a bit better than I used to.”
The first two tracks on the album are fast beasts and then ‘Serimosa’ comes as the third one. This may sound a bit abstract, since sound is kind of abstract, but it can also be physical. When you write a song like ‘Serimosa’, do you know that this is a song that will stick more to the mind, having the melodies in mind, than for instance ‘The Howling’?
“I see where you’re heading. But no, I don’t think in those terms. I make sure that I work with things that I feel very strongly for. When I arrive at that point, when I realize that we’ve written something that sticks to the mind, but it still goes beyond the melody itself, it has something in there, there’s something in there that wants to get out, it wants to take my mind, to put it like that… That is not to say that I don’t ponder at all about how it will be received. I love thinking about that, but it comes later in the process. This can spur further ideas later on. When the various ideas are established and put together, then I can perhaps think about how this will resonate with others. But in the initial approach, I never consider anything else than my own physical and psychical reaction to what I’m doing, and that’s where I keep my focus.”
My favourite track on the album is ‘Before The Cataclysm’, which is like a train moving slowly, yet not possible to stop, despite the short, calm middle section. It is also the track that brings my memory the most back to ‘Lawless Darkness’. When you write a track, like this, do you always think about what the track needs, no matter if it can be compared to this or that, or is reminiscent of another track or album? Are eventual similarities just a part of the game, since you have written seven albums by now?
“It is a part of the game, yes. As we’ve talked about earlier, I have realized that I have my musical language and I’m quite proud of that. I don’t see it being stolen or photocopied by others, at least not in a very striking way. I’m happy that Watain have these things that become like… hopefully not repetitive, but showing signs that you’re listening to the band and that you can draw direct lines inbetween the songs. I must add that I try to look at things on a larger scale and I want to go for things that I feel strongly for, that means something, that doesn’t just sound cool… I wish that bands could just do that because that’s how you write music. You take the things that you feel strongly for, that makes you sweat a little bit when you have the guitar in your hand, when you start to feel that something is really happening here. You shouldn’t do it any other way, because it won’t be any good. You should always stick to the things that make you feel strong, regardless of whether it sounds a bit similar to other things you’ve done or not. That’s beside the point, since the point is to make something that really feels powerful to yourself.”
There always has to be some lawless darkness there…
“Yeah… Lawless Darkness is the album where we found the Watain sound, or at least where it was fully developed for the first time. I would never aim to redo what we did back then, but I’m not surprised that it comes back every now and then because it established our form that we’re working with still today.”
Yes, as I said, there were songs and parts of songs where my mind drifted back to Lawless Darkness.
“There’s an abyss of time between these two albums. But it’s cool to think about this, to think about the past and to realize that there’s so little time between those albums as well.”
We will not go into the lyrics this time, because I think people should get the opportunity to read them for themselves instead of us giving away too much. However, we need to speak about the booklet, at least the booklet for the special LP version. The booklet is truly a piece of very dark art. I’m curious, but how much time and effort does it take to make your visions come through? The one for ‘Black Cunt’ is really something else… the two pages for ‘We Remain’ is also amazing, just like the spirit of the whole thing. I probably sound like a teenager fan now, but such art is why I love vinyl and also what you do with Watain.
“I am so much about the visual side of Watain and the visual side of metal and black metal, it’s a big, big passion of mine. I just take advantage of that when we get to release an album. It hasn’t happened that many times, but when we do, I just want to go all in, and fucking do it properly! So, what you see in this booklet is material that I’ve been working on and off for years, and eventually finalized for this booklet. I also have a lot of material that didn’t make it to the booklet. I thought about making an actual artbook that accompanied the vinyl, but I realized that I wanted to live a few more years without living in a wheelchair. You know, it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to make something like this, but every now and then I need to embrace myself a little bit. The main difference this time was that we didn’t have Timo Ketola with us, a man I have been coming to for every single Watain release we’ve ever done. I have asked for his opinions, his valuable criticism, and there’s never been anybody else that has had this role in Watain except Timo. On the other hand, he did give me 25 years of education of the hard and harsh work it is to make artwork for this kind of music. I guess I have learnt something. But it was very different to do this without this older, wise, monk-like mentor that could guide me in what to proceed with and what to remove. But yeah, it is what it is.”
Speaking of which, in the booklet, the lyrics for the final track ‘Septentrion’ are followed by a page with a tribute to the late Timo. It made me wonder if ‘Septentrion’ itself is a nod to Timo?
“No, but still I’d say that ‘Septentrion’ has a certain ring to it. Many songs deal with death on this album, and in that sense they are, in one way or another, tributes to Timo and everyone in our vicinity of Watain, personalities who have contributed to our band, but that is not here anymore. There are a few of those by now. His passing overshadowed the whole process of the album. I mean, not only a negative extent. I hope you understand what I mean when I say inspiring…”
Yes. Even though he is not there anymore, you still don’t want to disappoint him.
“Not only that. The whole thing become more intensified, vivid, and strong and it spurs the artistic relationship I had with Timo, besides being a close friend. It does strange things to creativity and in this case not only bad things.”
