GRIMFIST (OLE)

HEY, HOW ARE? WHAT ARE YOU DOING AT THE MOMENT? Hey, good to hear from you guys again!! The sun is shining in Bergen and I should’ve been up in the mountains but instead I’m stucked with a bunch of interviews..hehe.. Oh well, could’ve been worse. It’s all good!! “10 STEPS TO HELL” IS OUT AND VERY IMPRESSIVE. HOW SATISFIED ARE YOU WITH THE RESULT? Thank you very much!! We are very satisfied with the results indeed. It was a very hectic period of recording, lots of loose ends at the time. But the album fucking slays, and we´re ready to kick ass once again!! SEVERAL MONTHS AGO HORGH LEFT THE BAND. HOW DID YOU DEAL WITH HIS DEPARTURE AND HOW EASY/ DIFFICULT WAS IT TO FIND THE RIGHT NEW MAN FOR THIS JOB? As for Horghs departure that was something we agreed on, we didn’t wanna sit on the fence waiting for him to have some spare time to push GRIMFIST, although he wanted to push both bands. It wasn’t exactly easy to find a replacement for that’s for sure. Horgh’s definitely in the top league of extreme metal drumming. But we got hold of another monster!! This guy’s pretty much capable of playing whatever man. That suits us perfectly; this new album is more diverse than GOG, with all kinds of different elements to it. ALSO YOU DID NOT RECORD WITH PETER TÄGTGREN. IS THERE MAYBE A CONNECTION WITH HORGH’S DEPARTURE? The reason we recorded with Peter in the first place, was Horghs idea. We honestly didn’t know what to expect when travelled over to Abyss. But everything went great and we had a blast working with him for sure. We just wanted to do something different this time, no specific reason. Actually the album was recorded in Oslo, and mixed in Fredman WAS IT KIND OF AN EASIER WORK NOW, CAUSE YOU CAN’T BE LABELED AS “THE BAND INCL. THE FORMER IMMORTAL-DRUMMER” ANYMORE? GRIMFIST had nothing to with what Horgh had done earlier with IMMORTAL, although there seemed to be some that had those expectations. Personally I can’t stand albums with stickers printed former this, former that.. fuck it. This is now, forget the past. Other than that, we don’t feel any pressure than from ourselves really. ON THE NEW ALBUM YOU KEEP THE STRONG MUSICAL DIRECTION FROM “GHOULS”. HOW WAS THE SONGWRITING? WERE THERE ANY THOUGHTS TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT? Me and Frediablo wrote the whole fucker together. Like the first one, I’m the one that comes up with the basic song-structure, and then we entered Freds GodFed studio and did the pre-production. Yes, we wanted to bring along the brutality we created on Ghouls, also we didn’t wanna be repetitive and do a GOGII if you understand what I´m saying. 10 Steps To Hell is for us a natural progression. More and darker atmospheric parts, more melodic, yet groovy and aggressive sounding, in true GRIMFIST style!! WAS CHRISTIAN ABLE TO BRING IN SOME FRESH IDEAS? Actually the whole album was written an arranged with programmed drums before he joined the band. But of course he puts his style and signature on the music. He’s a very talented guy, he had about 2 weeks of listening on the pre-prod. and then recorded the whole goddamn album in 3 days!! I HOPE THERE WON’T BE THE SAME PROBLEMS (TOURING) CAUSE OF HIS OTHER BAND TSJUDER… No that won’t be a problem, TSJUDER doesn’t tour that much either. It’s impossible to find great drummers that are dedicated to one band nowadays.. everybody’s doing about 10 bands ..HAHA.. It’s not like it was in the 70´s and 80´s that’s for sure. THE NEW SONGS ON “10 STEPS” ARE AGAIN VERY HEAVY, BUT ALSO VERY MELODIC AND KIND OF GROOVY, WHAT FITS VERY WELL. HOW IMPORTANT IS IT FOR YOU TO KEEP THIS BALANCE? Yes that was what we wanted to achieve with this one, without loosing the GRIMFIST sound. There won’t be a GRIMFIST album without speed and aggression, that’s the key signature for our sound. But other than that, there’s no limitations to what one can do; mix and explore, that’s what it’s all about. YOU ALSO CREATED SOME DARK ATMOSPHERIC SOUND WITH KEYBOARDS. WASN’T IT DANGEROUS THAT THE SONGS WOULD BE TOO… YOU KNOW… WIMPY… Well actually there’s only ONE keyboard note on the whole album..hehe.. the fade out on “Reap The Fire”. No worries man, GRIMFIST will never end up as one of those synth metal bands. AND WHY NO KLAUS MEINE SHOUTS THIS TIME? (YOU REMEMBER?…) HAHA.. Good old Klaus!! Sorry, tried to get Frediablo to do a a Klaus kinda tribute on the album.. HAHA.. but he simply resisted for some reason.. Frediablo likes to experiment a lot with his vocals, he doesn’t like to feel stucked. We´ll see.. maybe on the next one. Featuring Klaus Meine !! HEHE OF COURSE THIS QUESTION IS A MUST 😉 : PLEASE LIST YOUR 10 STEPS TO HELL  : Here are some hellish points for ya. In NO specific order btw. 1 Modern R ’n’ B 2 Politics 3 Refurnishing (actually refurnishing the bathroom these days.. that´s HELL!!) 4 Being away from my guitar for days 5 Bills and more bills 6 Being stranded on an island with Paris Hilton 7 Watching weekend “entertainment” on the telly 8 Big city life (No not The Scorpions track) 9 Being heavily hung over from a bottle of whiskey and can´t remember any details 10 Religion I KNOW THAT YOU GUYS ARE VERY MUCH INTO 80IES METAL. AND I CAN HEAR IN YOUR SONGS THAT THIS INFLUENCE IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR YOUR SONGS. WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT THIS PERIOD? Well I´m into that stuff, Frediablo and Chris aren´t that much into it actually. I really like the HM genre from the 70´s up ´till 85-86, lots of cool stuff happened back then and kinda set the standard for the bands to come afterwards I think. Although we had some great stuff happening in the 90´s but for the most part the history in Metal was written during the 70´s and 80´s. I’m into SABBATH, PRIEST, MAIDEN, OZZY, SLAYER ++ Although I’m influenced by these artists, I think it’s important to try to come up with something original as a whole, and somehow try to find your sound, your key signature. DO YOU THINK ARTISTS LIKE OZZY OR PRIEST SHOULD HAVE RETIRED IN THERE BEST TIMES? OR ARE THEY IN YOUR OPINION STILL AS STRONG AS THEY WERE 15 – 20 YEARS AGO? Personally I think Ozzy has ended up more as a parody for the last 10 years… Rob Halford has released some really cool albums with his band HALFORD, but I wasn’t overally impressed by the new PRIEST album.. As for the whole retirement thing… I think if the guys are still into it, and not just for the money, why not? Have fun and raise Hell!! ARE YOU PLANNING TO DO SOME COVER-SONGS? No concrete plans yet. We have been talking about doing something just for the hell of it We’ll see. ARE THERE ANY YOUNG BANDS THAT CAUGHT YOUR ATTENTION RECENTLY? OR DON’T YOU FOLLOW THE SCENE NOWADAYS? Honestly, I’m not too updated on what’s going on. I’m not at all stucked in the 80´s by any means, I listen to all kinds of stuff really, not just heavy music. But I´m currently listening to some old THE HAUNTED albums that I´m into.. although not a new… Also some of the LAMB OF GOD, OPETH, DEVILDRIVER stuff etc. YOU RECENTLY DID SOME VIDEOS? WHAT CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE AND WHERE CAN WE SEE IT? Really looking forward to seeing them myself too actually!! I think we’ll receive them in a couple of days. We’ll put them up on our website for you to download, also we’ll be pushing them for airing on different TV-broadcastings. OF COURSE I HOPE TO SEE YOU GUYS LIVE SOON, NOW YOU HAVE A NEW MEMBER AND A NEW ALBUM Ooh yeah!! We will definitely tour with this fucker of an album for sure. No concrete details yet though, we’re working on it. It’s really important to do the right tours I think… WAS IT REALLY NECESSARY TO PUT THE STRANGE FADING COPY PROTECTION ON THE PROMO COPIES? IT REALLY DESTROYS THE FLOW. HAVE YOU BEEN ASKED ABOUT THIS? The fade outs wasn’t our idea, this was something our label came up with to prevent downloading the music on the net. Yes, I understand it can be a bit irritating and yes we get a lot of questions about this. Hopefully people will buy the album, and lets just say the promos works as more of a taste of the album. MY FAVOURITE QUESTION AT THE END: LET’S SAY, YOU WOULD HAVE THE CHANCE TO WORK/ PERFORM WITH ANY ARTIST (DEAD/ALIVE, ANY GENRE) YOU COULD DREAM OF. WHO WOULD IT BE? (OTHER MUSICIANS MENTIONED ARTISTS LIKE SILVERCHAIR OR CHRISTINA AGUILERA) Don’t know if he’s dead or alive actually… hehe… but Ozzy an myself could and should write something together… And of course I would’ve loved to work with Dimebag RIP. Other than that.. I’m good with my compadres in GRIMFIST. OK, THE LAST WORDS ARE YOURS FOR YOUR GERMAN FANS! To all our friends and fans out there!! Please check out our new album “10 Steps To Hell” out NOW!!! Hope to see you guys on tour sometime in the nearest. Cheers to you all!! THANX FOR YOUR TIME AGAIN AND HOPE TO SEE NORWAY WINNING THE FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS PLAYOFFS! Lets hope so Fafnir!! Thank you so much for spreading the GRIMFIST plague!! All the best, Ole