#may2000

OLD MAN’S CHILD

Interview with Galder by Daniel Hinds

(conducted May 2000)

Old Man's Child has been on the Norwegian black metal scene since 1993, forging an ever more brutal sound with each release.  In the early days, OMC incorporated some acoustic and folk elements into their blackened sound, but later releases began to see some death metal influences in their place.

With the recently released Revelation 666: The Curse of Damnation, the band are prepared to take the stages by storm, both in Europe and, hopefully later on, in the States.  The creative force behind OMC has always been Galder, who I had a very pleasant chat with recently…

Are you happy with the new album? Yeah, we pretty much knew how it would sound because we picked Abyss Studio and they never disappoint when it comes to the sound.  We didn't have too much time on this album so perhaps we could have been there one more week and worked a little more on the sound, but this is the album that we are most satisfied with.

Why the move from Sunlight to Abyss? I think Abyss is the best studio for black metal bands here in Scandinavia.  It has very good equipment and Peter is a very respected producer.  He always gets good sound for his bands.  That was the main reason, plus it's pretty cheap for the quality

You mentioned not having a lot of time - why was that? Ah, it was just the budget thing, you know.  Also, [the studio] is booked for over a year and stuff.

Did you have all the material written when you went in? Yeah, all the music was finished, but I think we lacked 3 lyrics or something which we wrote in the studio, but it's always like that with us.  It's small things that we've done in the studios, too, like leads and keyboards part, but the main music was ready.

Do you spend a lot of time working on the lyrics? No, we usually do the lyrics like three weeks before we go in the studio and usually a couple while we are in the studio as well.  I think we used about a month and a half on the lyrics.

What inspires you when it comes to writing lyrics? We always write about judgmental and misanthropic stuff and that's what we've always done.  I don't think there is a lot of inspiration - life sucks and that is what we write about.  Just things in my mind.  I think we're pretty destructive people and that's what we write about.

Do you get a lot of feedback from fans about your lyrics or are people more interested in just the music? Sometimes we do, but the lyrics are in second place and aren't really our strong side.  Sometimes people comment about them and sometimes they don't, but mainly they just talk about the music.

Can you explain the meaning behind the new album title, Revelation 666: The Curse of Damnation? We wanted a title that is very judgmental and we've always had that as a subject on our albums, so that is also the case with this.  We also wanted a title that walked hand-in-hand with the lyrics.  The title refers to Armageddon and the cover has this girl hanging on this cross, representing humanity, and there is a clock in the background, ticking down to destruction.

Do you think that is something that will come for humanity? I'm sure it will come someday, I'm not sure about right now.  But if you look around at the world today and what Nostradamus predicted and all the wars going on, yeah, I think it's a suitable title.

The album art is pretty cool - who did it?  Did you have input?   It's just Century Media, they always do our covers, I'm not sure which one.  I never have anything to do with the covers.  They send me some ideas, I give them the titles, so I can't tell to o much about it.

You've been with Century Media for a while now.  Are you pretty pleased with their work on behalf of the band? Yeah, they give us the opportunity to do good tours and go to good studios and that's what we want.  Everything has its ups and downs, but we've had a pretty good relationship so far.

Your bio says it took the band a while to get started due to your time in the army.  Can you tell me a bit about that? It was a…strange experience.  It's mandatory in Norway, everyone has to do it, so it's nothing special really.  If you compare that to the life we were living before that, it was totally crazy and not really our style, but it was an experience.

What exactly happened that resulted in you having to do most of Ill-natured Spiritual Invasion on your own? First thing was that I couldn't really find a drummer who could do the album, and also I didn't have a bass player at that time.  So I figured, 'what the hell,' and did a demo by myself with a drum computer, sent it to Century Media.  I asked if I could do it with a drum machine, but of course it is always better to have a drummer. They said they could ask Gene Hoglan and he wanted to do it, so I said, 'Oh, fuck the others!'  I make all the music anyway and do all the keyboards by myself, so it wasn't really that much of a problem.  That was just a one time coincidence, though, there were just too many problems at that time.

Is there a solid line-up now or not? I get that question on all my albums and every time I say 'yes,' so I don't want to say too much about it.  These are really good musicians and Jardar is definitely in the band, but it really can change.  On the tour we are dong now, I am going to have to have a new drummer, it's going to be the drummer from Emperor, so it changes all the time.  It's a good line-up, but I don't know if it is steady.  It depends on the other guys

I understand you will start a European tour next month.  Who will you be touring with and where? Yes, it is with Gorgoroth, Krisiun, Night In Gales, Soulreaper…  It starts the 4th of May and lasts about a month, all over Europe.  We want to go to the States, but..  We actually planned to go to the States to play with Satyricon and Immortal, but unfortunately we had to cancel it because we didn't have any keyboard sort of stuff like that.  So that is our main goal, to go over there, maybe later this year.

Have you ever been over here? No, never been there, so that is first priority.

Do you get a lot of feedback from fans in the US? Yeah, it seems to be very cool.  I'm not sure what we sell in the States, but it seems to get beter and better each year, so that is good.

Hammerheart recently re-issued In the Shades of Light on a split w/ Dimmu Borgir.  Did you have any say in that release? No, Hot Records just sold the rights to them and they just did it.  I actually heard it from the guys in Dimmu Borgir (laughs), so I didn't know too much about it.  I really don't mind.  It hasn't sold as much, so it is cool that it has been re-released.

Now that you have some distance, what are your feelings about the earlier albums, Born of the Flickering and The Pagan Prosperity? I think Born of the Flickering, I'm not too happy with it because of the sound.  We only did it in five days and it is really too bad, because there is a lot of good song material on there.  Pagan Prosperity was our first album that we were really satisfied with.  I'm very happy with it.  I think it is one of the most original black metal albums out there.  It's a mixture of all these different styles.

When you play live, how much old stuff do you do? We do about four songs or something.

Have you ever thought of doing a live album? Nah…

Not something you want to do? It's up to Century Media really.  If they want to do it, but I don't think so.  We haven't really thought about it.

Have you been at all surprised by how the black metal scene has grown since you first started? Yeah, of course it isn't like underground anymore and even the bands that were totally underground before are really commercial and sell lots of albums right now, but I don't see any problem with it.  Just spreading the message to more people.  It's still the same thing really, it's the same people out there and they still listen to the same music that they did.  But I don’t' think there has really been any specific scene in Norway, it has just been a lot of people who play black metal, so I don't really see a big difference.

Do you think a lot of people outside of Norway have a rather distorted view of what it is actually like? Yeah, they have a wrong view.  They think we are some kind of mafia or something.  The only thing they do is that the people gather in the same pubs (laughs), that's about all.