Interview mit Aðalbjörn Tryggvason von Sólstafir

Thank you very much for taking time. How are you doing?
I’m busy as you can see [turns the webcam towards some guitar pedals on the floor of the room], preparing for tour. I’m doing some guitar pedal bullshit. It used to be like one delay pedal from Boss and one reverb pedal from Boss, Now it’s like fucking computers and fucking hell!

So you switched to a digital effect board?
Yes, I have a Quad Cortex here. It’s easier for a lot of noise, then traveling with old tube amplifiers that always break down. I’m trying this … not to be an old dog. Touring with a 70-year-old design with tubes all over the world, with microphones and radio frequencies, is just … So I’m trying this … It’s working out okay.

Great! The first thing I wanted to talk about or rather wanted to say is: Congratulations – SÓLSTAFIR is turning 30 years next year. Would you have ever dreamed that this band would last that long and take you that far?
No. We started this band in my dad’s garage, in the ceiling of my dad’s garage. It was like four square meters. We wrote the first ten songs in that garage. Time just flies, it sort of becomes connected to life. And all of a sudden it’s 30 years ago, it’s crazy.

You have archived a lot with the band … you have toured the world, you played special shows with strings and piano and everything in between. Is there something left you really want to do at some point in your upcoming career?
I think we haven’t reached our destination. I don’t think the whole idea is just about writing songs and making albums. I think it’s always like this imaginary golden castle up there, up on the hill. And we’re trying to find it, but there’s so much fog in the hill, in the mountains. So there’s always some destination, making this perfect song or album. I think we have to do even bigger string tours and there are more grand production things that we want to do. And music-wise, I would love to do a little bit more heavy stuff with strings. We’ve never tried that. We’ve tried the soft stuff with strings. That’s something that I want to try. We’ve done the whole soft stuff with strings. Now, maybe we just need to make a grindcore album with violins. The top goal is doing a grindcore album with lots of violins, and then we can quit.

I’m really looking forward to hearing that. Many metal bands are playing shows with a full orchestra at some point of their career. Would that be something that you would be into, a SÓLSTAFIR show with a full orchestra?
A lot of bands have done this, even in Iceland. I think some bands are made for this, some bands are not made for this. Some bands who are not made for this are doing it, just because of doing it. I’m just going to name any band here … I don’t think I would want to see Kreator – I mean, I love Kreator, I’m a big fucking Kreator fan – but I don’t think I would want to see Kreator with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Munich. Because maybe Mille disagrees, and he’s going to do it. (laughs) All the respect in the world to Mille, I love Mille and Kreator, but it’s just that example towards … Anathema. I think Anathema is more on the spectrum of, oh, play with the Liverpool Symphony, yeah, great! I think we are more on the side, and I think most people would agree, that we are kind of made for this, because we have long songs with lots of reverb, and big spaces in the music, and epic stuff. So I think we could easily do that. Let’s see what we do.

For now, the reason why we’re talking is that you have a new album coming out in a few days, and for the first time since your album „Köld“, your fans had to wait four years for a new album. Did you take more time to work on the music, or did you just start later?
So, today is October still, right? October 2024. This album is recorded in May 2023, that means we started working on it in May 2022. Let’s say February 2022, we started working on it, we had like 15 months to write it. And then, of course, we had to change drummers, Hallgrímur had to go away, so we had to rehearse a new drummer. And then the summer festivals came up, and then this came up, and this came up. And then, of course, we changed labels, and they say, well, the album is coming out in 11 months from now, or something like that, and that’s just totally natural. So it’s just the way it was, no one was slacking off for a year, waiting to do nothing, no one said, oh no, let’s wait four years now! No, that wasn’t like that. We weren’t in a hurry. You’re right, the last albums have been three years in between. This just felt like three years, because we recorded the album over a year ago.

You just mentioned that you changed labels, which is a big step. Can you already overlook what has changed for you in the day-to-day business, or also in how the album was promoted? And what were the reasons why you left Season of Mist and signed with Century Media?
Well, on the day-to-day basis, nothing dramatic changes. I’m not in touch with 52 people in Germany now, that’s not the situation here. We have our contact person from the label, and everything is working perfectly, they do whatever they say they’re going to do, and even more. We were with Season of Mist for like 12 years, I think. We did four albums with them. It was a very successful journey with them. Everything is still very friendly, so it’s almost like it was too much of a comfort zone, to be in the same footsteps. It’s healthy to move along, and it’s even more healthy when it can be in a friendly way. It’s just more, you know, let’s try different things. That’s very natural in this environment to try new things, and we wanted to try new things.

And what drove your decision to go with Century Media?
We only went on two dates. We didn’t see that many people, we were not flirting with eight labels for two years. This was almost like the choice, Century Media. We had known some people that worked for Century Media for years, we almost signed with Century Media many years ago. It just didn’t happen, and now we did, so it was a totally natural thing. Not to go into a geography thing, but Germany has always been our main market, ever since we started touring. So it kind of feels home to be on a German label, even though the world is getting smaller, everybody has offices in countries. I mean, Season of Mist had offices in America and France, Century Media has as well offices in America and Germany. But then again, of course, Century Media is a part of something bigger, so I assume that means some more doors to peek through.

Do you expect that this change will lead to some extra growth for SÓLSTAFIR as well, or do you think, are you already at the ceiling of how big a band like SÓLSTAFIR, a band playing this kind of music, can get?
I think if we were young and horny with no kids and no day jobs, you can do stuff, but we are not very young and horny. We have little kids, we have day jobs, we’ve been in this for 30 years, we’re very comfortable where we are. We basically do what we’re told, within certain limits. If a label says, hey, how about we try this? We say, fine, let’s try this, because we are willing to grow naturally as we can grow.

This band has always been growing very slowly – very slowly. I think that has sort of been good for us. We never became famous over one month or one album. It’s just always been growing a little bit bigger with every year, and it’s been a long journey, so I’ve not yet seen any decline. Maybe when that decline starts, maybe it will feel weird, because we haven’t felt that yet. Shows are getting bigger, and we’re playing longer shows, and we have nicer vehicles to tour in. The music world has changed a little bit as well, because extreme bands can go big now, it’s kind of weird. We have bands like Behemoth, going places that I guess no one thought you could. I guess the same was said about Metallica back in the day, but they of course broke through with their soft stuff. Behemoth hasn’t done that with their soft stuff. But we are just very comfortable in this heavy metal land that we live in. We do the festivals, we do the albums, we’re not spending thousands of hours every year on this band collectively, just because we get so much money from it. We all have jobs.

That’s disappointing news … I really thought that at least SÓLSTAFIR is at a level where you don’t have to have day-jobs beside your job as a musician anymore …
That’s the thing: If we would tour four or six months a year, I could easily live on this band, easily. But that’s not my reality. We have other responsibilities, such as little children and stuff like that. So I couldn’t tour six months a year, because then you come home and you don’t get any money for that the other months. We did 200 shows max, when we did the most … 200 shows in one year. If I’d do 200 shows in a year these days, yes, I could be living on this band. But that’s not my reality anymore. It’s not. Life changes, and now I have a four-year-old kid and I have responsibilities, and it makes you look at things differently. I used to only have the band and was like I would live and die for the band. (laughs) And now it would never be a question, are you going to choose raising your child or be on the road somewhere in a club in Munich tonight and the next 300 days in a row be in a club in Munich. So my reality is different now. I mean, don’t get me wrong: When I go to the bus and I play a club in Munich, I fucking love it – because it’s more appreciated. I don’t take it for granted that I can go on a bus with my friends and play heavy metal at a club in Munich tonight. Because it’s very far away from my normal reality. So I appreciate it even more than if I would be doing it all the time.

So talk about the music: I’m really impressed how different the album sounds, in comparison to the last one or two albums, to be honest. „Hin Helga Kvol“ for example, is maybe the hardest one you wrote in many, many years. Let’s start at this end of the scale: So what brought you back to writing such a harsh, in-your-face song for SÓLSTAFIR? It reminded me a bit of your Project BASTARÐUR. Had that project an influence on SÓLSTAFIR as well?
Well, yes and no. So, a little bit what influenced this is when we did a 10^th anniversary tour of the „Köld“ album in 2019. So we would go on the road and play the whole „Köld“ album, which is a little bit heavier than „Ótta“ or „Svartir Sandar“, or „Berdreyminn“ … because we had to step away a little bit from heavier stuff, just to do new things. It’s always been about doing new things, not repeat yourself. So we stepped a little bit away from heavy stuff, we started doing „Ótta“ and „Svartir Sandar“.

And then we did this anniversary tour in 2019, and we were playing the whole „Köld“ album. It was very fresh to us to play that stuff. I’m bored with saying “rediscovered”, “reconnected” this boring as well … but it felt differently playing it now. We were not tired of it – it felt fresh. It was more fun to play this heavy stuff. After that, we kept „Pale Rider“ in the set – which is basically the only song you could refer as black metal stuff on the „Köld“ album. So „Pale Rider“ was on the setlist for some years. And then the idea came up if we would write this kind of music today – I mean „Pale Rider“ is very different from „Fjara“ – so, if we would write that music today, how would it sound like? For two reasons: Because firstly, we are older, and you change through years. We become a little bit of different people. And secondly, we have a different lineup, so the chemistry is different. It was interesting to see: How would this sound like today, if we would write music like this. So I was just too curious, I felt like: I need to find it out.

And then it comes to the other thing, like you said, with the BASTARÐUR album. I wrote the BASTARÐUR album totally on my own, doing it in a different technique … I demoed the album with some programmed drums and then got a real drummer. And I wrote it sitting in front of a desk with stuff. So, I basically wrote that song [„Hin Helga Kvol“] like that. I demoed it over just a few months. Sometimes I was thinking: Really? Am I really going to do this? It’s kind of weird. But then it’s interesting … when I have to ask myself, really is this it? It was the same when we did the „Köld“ songs with clean vocals, we did „Fjara“ with clean vocals, we did all this weird, different stuff. Always when this question comes: Really? Wow, can we do this? – Then the answer is always: You have to do this! There’s a certain riff in the song, which is a very typical metal riff. And that’s sort of stuff that I’ve been avoiding since day one. I think there’s some of this stuff maybe on „Til Valhallar“ from 1996 … these power chord riffs! Because I’m like, this does not belong in our band. But then this riff came to me, and I’m like: I have to use it. Because everything said no, no, no, it became interesting: How can I put this riff in SÓLSTAFIR? Well, let’s try it. And then it just sticks. So yeah, even in the studio, we were like: Really? Are we really doing this? (laughs) And then we started playing it live, and it was like, oh, shit, it’s kind of cool! So yeah, we basically had to satisfy this question with getting an answer with this curiosity. How would it sound today? And there you have it. It sounds like this today.

Just a short side note, talking about BASTARÐUR: Will there be another album from this project, or was it just this one album?
Yeah! After I did the album, we did like three or four shows in Reykjavík as a band. I have a couple of old metal legends in the band. So basically now we are a five-piece band. We’re not a band that shows up to rehearsals, but there’s a live lineup. And we’ve talked about doing another album. So yeah, there will be another album.

Amazing. That’s good news! Back to SÓLSTAFIR: On the end of the scale, there is the track „Kuml“ which reminds me a lot of a band from Germany – not sure if you know it? – named Bohren & The Club Of Gore. What inspired you to write this very different song, and why did you pick a saxophone for the atmosphere?
Well, like you said, it’s very different. We like very different. We like ideas that are ridiculous. This wasn’t really a ridiculous idea. The main part of the song was written in a soundcheck somewhere on tour, and recorded it on my phone. I record a lot of stuff from soundchecks. That opened up that idea. And we had used saxophone before: We used saxophone on „Svartir Sandar“ in a song called „Melrakkablús“. And we got a guy some years ago to play live with us. And we even got another guy in Finland and another guy in the Netherlands. So we’ve used saxophone live a few times. But we only used it in a rock and roll environment. How would it be to use it in a soft environment? We’ve never done that before! But of course, we are very well aware of Bohren & The Club Of Gore. I would be lying to you if I’d say that Bohren & The Club Of Gore wouldn’t have influenced us when we wrote „Fjara“. That influence comes from Bohren & The Club Of Gore. That’s the honest truth. So, we’ve always looked in that direction, even though we wouldn’t maybe been able to tell.

And then, of course, Svavar [Austmann, bass player in SÓLSTAFIR] and I, we’re big Guns N‘ Roses fans. There’s a lot of Guns N‘ Roses that ends up in SÓLSTAFIR songs. (laughs) So Svavar was playing this part from Soundcheck on bass, and he was putting some chorus on his bass – Duff McKagan from Guns N‘ Roses sometimes a chorus on his bass, you can hear it in „You Could Be Mine“ and different songs. So we were fooling around, making Svava sound a little bit more like Duff McKagan … to the point where Duff McKagan sounded like he was playing the Twin Peaks song. So there we have Duff McKagan playing the Twin Peaks songs with a saxophone solo. And then we thought, now it’s starting to sound ridiculous. Now it sounds great! And then we were doing even more … I was working the whole choir stuff with Sæþór Maríus Sæþórsson [Sæþór Sæþórsson, guitarist in SÓLSTAFIR]. Sæþór is a pretty good singer, actually, even though he doesn’t show it. But so I would be telling him, try this, try this, try this. And he would be doing some vocal harmonies. Trust me, he did not believe in it. He was like, what is this, fucking „Bohemian Rhapsody“ or some crap? So, we were just doing demos and working on it. And then this whole vocal part thing came in, and I knew I had to get some … the guy that sings the main vocals is from a very legendary band in Iceland called Ham. It’s a very famous band here. So I got a guest singer to sing this sort of church-wise. And then … I love this song. (laughs) I think it’s a great song! It’s very different. I have no idea how we’re going to do this live, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

Despite his wide stylistic range, „Hin Helga Kvöl“ is the shortest album you have ever written: It’s only 48 minutes, whilst all your other albums were over 50 minutes long. Was that something intentional, or did it just turned out that way?
Yeah, I mean, not album-wise. But because we’ve been going on for 30 years, we have a lot of songs, and most of them are seven or eleven minutes. We do a lot of touring and festivals, and there are some songs that we can’t or don’t want to skip. I mean, we do „Fjara“ nearly every time, we do „Ótta“ nearly every time … those are fan favorites, and they work out very well live. So we kind of please the audience with them. And we still like them. But that gives us problems when we can maybe get 55 minutes on a festival, we can only play like five songs. So this idea has often been brought up: Wouldn’t it be nice to have a few shorter songs? It would be nice, because all these fucking 11 or 15 minute songs, they sometimes get in the way of having more songs played. And then, of course, we thought also creatively, it’s an interesting thing. Can we write a decent song in our hearts, that does not have a four-minute intro, or a six-minute end part? We’ve done that very much in the past, and that’s easy for us. I mean, it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun, the whole being in trance and the space thing. We love it. But doing a song that’s shorter for the sake of being able to play more songs. And again, it’s more challenging. We like doing challenging things, fresh and new. So yeah, there’s a few seven minute songs there. It’s not like this is a fucking radio album, they’re just not all 10 minutes. (laughs)

Let’s head over to the overall concept of the album. It’s quite boring to talk about it, because you get asked this every time, I guess …
I’m so glad that you said this! (laughs)

But anyhow, to have ticked it off: Could you sum it up at in one or two sentences?
You know, I think in Icelandic, so my world is pretty much in Icelandic. And I sometimes forget that there’s only like 300,000 people in the world that can read these lyrics, when we have six billion people living in the world. So I get it that a nice German person that wants to understand something would ask. I totally get it. But we usually sing about personal stuff, because I like it more for the delivery of expression. I don’t want to sing, I don’t want to be, I don’t want SÓLSTAFIR to be Rage Against The Machine. I love Rage Against The Machine, but I’m not there. I’m not in Cannibal Corpse. I love Cannibal Corpse, but I’m not George Corpsegrinder, singing about being fucked with a knife. So, you know, we do personal stuff. So most of this is just very personal stuff, we’ve all gone through, not all, but as a band, we’ve gone through … rehabs and drug addiction, depression, anxiety, deaths in families, you name it … lots of stuff. And we were kind of open about this as a unity. So we just write about it.

On the last album, Hallgrímur [Jón Hallgrímsson, drummer of SÓLSTAFIR] wrote like 80% of the lyrics. This time I wrote like 80% of the lyrics. I can give you three examples here, four. One song is basically about someone that’s very dear to me, and it’s basically like writing an obituary about a person that’s gone due to mental illness or drug addiction. Just seeing a ghost of a person that you loved. Another song is about my father. My dad had some difficult stuff when he was growing up, but he would never, never write about it, hardly talk about it. So I put myself in his steps as if I was him writing it. He doesn’t understand German, so he’s not going to know this. Then I wrote a song about my great-grandmother. She was called Margaret Hassler, she was German, from Dresden. She moved from Germany around 1900. So she moved from there – you can imagine how Dresden was around 1900, it was beautiful! – to New York. She met my great-grandfather in New York, and then they sailed to Iceland, they moved to Iceland around the First World War, because they were going to draft him. In Iceland, they live in Ísafjörður, a small fishing village in the north of Iceland, where they’re running a bakery, this great-grandfather of mine and my great-grandmother. Then in the Second World War, every German living in Iceland, and I’m pretty sure everywhere else, but at least in Iceland, every German was automatically accused of being a Nazi spy by the Brits, because the Brits came to Iceland and the Brits didn’t like the Germans. So the Brits sailed to Ísafjörður, this small fishing village, woke up my great-grandparents with machine guns – old people, they were like in their 60s, 70s – woke them up with machine guns, put them in a military ship, and sailed with them to England to put them in military prison. Iceland wasn’t really affected by the war like the rest of the world, especially Europe. There were no bombings here, or no one was being killed here. So when my grandmother died, like 10–15 years ago, my dad found these handwritten letters from Brixton prison, that my great-grandfather had written to Iceland, telling about that he had been in the prison. So I kind of knew I had to write a lyric about this … so that’s personal stuff. (laughs) Yeah, so there’s depression and good stuff.

Thanks for this deep dive into the lyrics. Unfortunately, we must slowly come to the end – lets finish this up with a short brainstorming session. Let’s go …
Bathory: Manowar.
Manowar: Guinness World Records in noise.
Donald Trump: A fucking moron.
The Slayer reunion. It’s lovely.
SÓLSTAFIR in 10 years. Talking to you about the new album.

Let’s hope for it. I would be into it! So thank you very much. That’s it from my side. Thanks for taking time and all the best, see you on tour!
Thanks Moritz!

Mit dem Laden des Videos akzeptieren Sie die Datenschutzerklärung von YouTube.
Mehr erfahren

Video laden

YouTube immer entsperren

Publiziert am 9. November 2024 von Moritz Grütz

Fotos von: Afra Gethöffer-Grütz