INTERVIEW: Sturla Viðar – Svartidauði
Black metal has enjoyed a purple patch in recent years, with the scene enjoying a bout of bands that are pushing the creative soundscapes to dark and truly exciting places. At the heart of this creative boom lies Iceland. Despite having a population under 500,000 people, the small Nordic nation has developed into one of the best exports of black metal. Leading the pack is SVARTIDAUÐI, whose brand of visceral black metal has struck a chord with people across the globe. Now, 16 years after they formed, comes second full-length record Revelations of the Red Sword (read our review here). We spoke with vocalist/bassist Sturla Viðar to talk about their latest record, including the creative process and its themes, alongside discussing the Icelandic scene and how they plot for world domination.
So, your brand new record, Revelations of the Red Sword, is out now! For those who may not familiar with your work, how would you best describe the new record?
Sturla: Honestly? I wouldn’t describe it at all as I think it’s quite futile to try and translate music into words, but if you’d hold a gun to my head and tell me to describe it to the person standing next to us, I’d turn off the lights and shake said person violently while shouting into their ears. I believe that would be an accurate description.
The new album arrives after a six year wait since the release of 2012’s Flesh Cathedral. Why did it take you so long to release this new album?
Sturla: SVARTIDAUÐI has never been a band that rushes into things blindly, our strange brews need time to ferment and mutate. But, since Flesh Cathedral was released we’ve done three EPs with a total playtime of an hour, toured Europe I don’t know how many times and performed at countless festivals, on top of that we’ve had line up changes and our own dysfunctional personal lives to attend to. Now, while I wouldn’t recommend bands to wait six years between albums, I’d certainly suggest that more bands should practice more restraint and not release every uninspired piece of shit they come up with in order to stroke their fragile rockstar egos.
Of course, in the wait between records you released several EPs. Was this to keep your creativity flowing and to tide people over until the release of the new album?
Sturla: The creativity is flowing constantly in our camp, we’ve got a literal shit-ton of unreleased music just waiting to be recorded and released, but when it comes to the EPs there have been moments when we are working on songs and we just feel “This sounds like an EP” or “This sounds like it should be song number XYZ on an album” There is no logical or intellectual way to explain this decision making process, of what goes where, as it’s born purely from intuition and feeling. Then there are also the magical formulas we work with, for example before we had decided on a single note on Revelations we had decided it had to be six songs as six is the number classically attributed to the Sun, the sephira of Tiphareth and the qlipha of Thagirion. Similarly with Synthesis of Whore and Beast had to be two songs, I mean it says so right in the title of the EP, both as a symbolic merger of polar opposites of energies, the male and female intertwined to conceive a new world and also because traditionally the number two corresponds to the sephira of Yesod, the moon, the gateway to higher realities. Which brings us back to Flesh Cathedral and the four songs it contains, corresponding to the four corners of the Earth and the four elements that make up the building blocks of physical reality in the eyes of the ancients.
It seems that, as a band, you spend as much time as it takes to refine your craft. For example, Flesh Cathedral had come out years after your formed. Would you agree with that and what are the benefits of working this way?
Sturla: I certainly agree with that statement, but I’m in no position to speak of the benefits of this kind of work ethic except that I truly hope that our music and art speaks for itself in that regard.
The new album has been released through Ván Records, a notable label for extreme music. How does it feel to have signed with them?
Sturla: Ván feels like home, they already released many of my favourite albums in the past decade or so, and it doesn’t hurt that that many of Ván‘s artists are among my favourite people in the world. But first and foremost it is the spirit and mentality of that label that attracted us to them in the first place. We had offers from some of the biggest metal labels in the world before we decided to go to Ván, but none of them felt right to us, too long and complicated contracts with legal restrictions and all kinds of other sorts of grown-up paperwork bullshit that we simply felt was counter-productive to our creativity and art. Meanwhile with Ván, we have all the freedom we want with great support and in complete brotherhood. What more could we ask for?
With the fact Revelations of the Red Sword has taken six years to come out, can you describe the writing and recording process for the album?
Sturla: Be it on Revelations of the Red Sword or whatever else we might decide to do, all of SVARTIDAUÐI‘s music follows a similar path of conception. It starts with an idea, a riff or a motif that we build and build upon, twist it, turn it and let it mutate in SVARTIDAUÐI‘s digestive system until it’s vile fumes fucks up our neurochemistry and get’s us higher than a mountain.
Can you elaborate on the themes and concepts you address on this record?
Sturla: Revelations of the Red Sword is a celebration of both the creative and destructive aspects of fire and the Sun. A glorification of the Solar-Phallic Consciousness, the force of action, the active principle of the universe. It promises a path out of modernity, monotheism and materialism, a path that lies outside of the demiurgic reality of the socially-constructed matrix. To be a magician means to create, to see your will manifested in the external world and Revelations of the Red Sword should be viewed as an invitation to do just that.
In particular, the title of this new album and the artwork is rather striking. Can you explain the symbolism behind it?
Sturla: The titular Red Sword refers to the rays of both a rising and a setting Sun. While the title is a reference to Marinetti‘s Futurist Manifesto, that is only half of the story and should not be seen as an endorsement of his politics. This happened around the time that Flesh Cathedral was released, I was working as a filmmaker on location, it was in a church on the south coast of Iceland, Strandarkirkja, which was constructed in honour of those who had been lost at sea in that area. I had arrived before dawn and had a few hours to kill before we started working, so I sat down in the church alone with this book of the manifestos and commentaries of the main avant garde art movements of 20th century Europe. And it just so happened that I was at the part where the futurists were discussed and soon as I read the following passage:
“Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We must break down the gates of life to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is they very first sunrise on earth! Nothing equals the splendour of its red sword which strikes for the first time in our millennial darkness.”
The sun rose and this church was filled with this surreal golden light and I felt something very strong inside my heart, neither exactly positive nor negative, but something new and powerful, it was quite magical and I just knew that this was a sign for things to come. When the universe speaks you must listen. The cover itself is an anthropomorphic representation of the monstrous beauty that lies at the core of the Sun, it can also be seen as characterisation of the Thagirion qlipha or the doghead of Sirius, the Sun behind the Sun.
Across the album, you incorporate several twists and turns which shows your expansive song-writing capabilities. So, when you were writing and recording the record, was this something you always intended to incorporate into the record or did it come naturally?
Sturla: SVARTIDAUÐI‘s intent is always to make great music that gets us high and amplifies our personal magick and everything else just follows naturally one way or another.
Now that Revelations of the Red Sword is finally released, what do you hope to achieve with this new record?
Sturla: World domination
The Icelandic black metal scene has exploded in popularity in recent years with numerous bands alongside yourselves breaking through. Aside from just Iceland, how do you see the current black metal scene, do you see it in good health?
Sturla: I don’t like to focus on any geographical trends in general, but I feel like the past few years have seen a way greater quantity of quality albums than we have seen for a long, long time. That has, of course, also delivered a lot more of mediocre and utterly horrible music, but such is the price we pay for better, cheaper and more accessible recording gear. As it is with physical health, it is each individual’s own responsibility to not poison oneself with crap devoid of any nutritional value and I choose not to indulge in the empty calories of musical mediocrity, so from where I’m standing, I’d say underground extreme metal is in great shape.
Now that the new album has been released, I imagine the focus will turn to touring. Can you shed some light onto your touring plans for the near future?
Sturla: There are no details ready to be declassified at this moment, but next year holds promises of great conquests.
To close, we’ll offer you the chance to say a few words to our readers. Do you have any closing comments to the readers of Distorted Sound?
Sturla: Thank you for your time and attention, may you attain your true will. SVARTIDAUÐI is very much looking forward to spilling blood on British soil again. Let’s party like it’s 793 and make Lindisfarne bloody again.
Revelations of the Red Sword is out now via Ván Records.
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