







Interview with Quorthon from Power Metal Magazine (1987) Interview with Quorthon from Metal Forces (1987) Interview with Quorthon from Metal Hammer #7, Vol. 2 (November 1987) Assault and Bathory



As most of you will be aware, Under One Flag is a thrash offshoot of the Music for Nations label. They've released plenty of products lately, notable albums from Holy Terror and Death Angel.

They're also extremely on the ball at securing licensing deals for LPs that have been out on other labels. And so it came to pass that Under One Flag have been responsible for unleashing not one, not two, but three albums from Swedish thrashers Bathory ...all within weeks of each other.

The band's leader is called Quorthon, a character with a voice like the devil himself. And he recently paid a flying visit to the UK to discuss their third album, 'Under The Sign Of The Black Mark'. He also talked about his intention to slay a lamb onstage, and how he'd take some convincing to buy one of his albums!



The character of Quorthon exudes mystery, or so he would like to think. Clad from head to toe in black leather, and eyes hidden behind an impenetrable pair of shades, the Swede talks slowly and at great length, with great sincerity. He's of indeterminate age and seems amiable, but continue to contradict himself throughout our conversation. Interviews, it seems aren't commonplace and I get the impression that he finds them to be a bit of a trial. Nevertheless he acquits himself admirably in a foreign tongue.



"I'm over here for a second lot of press interviews", he says as we attract glances in a posh Lancaster Gate hotel. "Now we have to release a bit of the image and the reputation, show our faces and what we look like. For the first couple of years we didn't put out any pictures or do any interviews. We like to keep our distance."



"The image is as important as the music I think. But you can't play the image on the radio, so the image is for magazines."



For those unaware of Bathory's reputation, let me explain. They were formed in 1983, when they had two tracks included on a Swedish compilation album. Motorhead influences abounded, and the band played loud and fast, with more than a passing nod to Venom and other black metal luminaries. These two tracks led to a debut album (called just 'Bathory'), and a disappointing second (The Warning), with mass underground appeal. (Am I the only one who has never heard of a Bathory album called "The Warning"? /Twilight Ed)



"What we do onstage corresponds with the visual thing" Quorthon explains. "In our biography you might have read that we intended to slay a lamb onstage. It was an idea I had a few years ago, but now I realise that you can't do that.



" In Britain the RSPCA would have gone bananas if they got wind of such a plan. I wonder if Bathory could get away with it back home? There is no doubting the fact that such blatant opportunism would secure him a reputation in Fleet Street. And it would certainly tie in with the Satanic theme.



"We are not Satanists", says Quorthon somewhat surprisingly. "I was into all that two or three years ago, but then you grow away from it. All that religious stuff is just bullshit. You've got to know both sides. Once you get to know one side - whether it's the dark side or the light side - you realise that our music doesn't have anything to do with religion at all. This is just metal. I make fiction stories with my mind and it turns out to be Bathory. Nowadays I have nothing to do with that at all. But I don't make any apologies for having been a part of it in the past.



"Even so there is a very dark and ominous feel to the third album. "I think I only mention Satan once on it. That's on '13 candles' wich is a very old song", he says. "Satan hasn't got anything to do with Bathory. We're just kids from Stockholm and we don't have anything to do with religion or politics. But we have a very close relationship with our fans, the people that buy the records. They have a very clear perspective of what they want from us. If they tell us to go faster or slower, or touch certain topics, we do."



Quarthon goes on to explain that Bathory don't consider them- selves speed metal, death metal or black metal. Instead he insists that most of his inspiration derived from the radio, and time changes are altered to make them more acceptable. He's hardly a fan of your stereotyped European metal band either.



"I don't listen to speed metal or death metal because most of it's just crap. What we play is just metal. The German invasion of speed metal is crap. Bleeeuurrgghh", he says with a look as though he's swallowed a bar of soap. Does Quorthon take himself any more seriously three albums into his career?



"I don't even take the band seriously", he says. "Onstage I'm Quorthon the almighty, the Evil One. On the streets of Stockholm I'm just anybody. You have to draw a very thick line between what you do onstage and privately. Interview with Quorthon from Loud Zine #18 (1988)

Cecil Polanski interviews Quorthon.

The man himself, Quorthon of Bathory - Scandinavian king of total death metal. A daunting prospect awaited as I braved all pre-conceptions and tookup the 'phone (in between power cuts at MFN tsk, tsk!) and found myself talking to a very pleasant, vegetarian, Kate Bush fan - no, not me..but that blood-sucking over-sexed Swede.



Quorthon is a bit of a different name from Cecil or Reginald, thinks I. What's in it then?



-Nothing really. I just wanted to break away from all the other Swedish bands who were following the US and taking on that kind of name (like 'Joey Tempest' I suppose - Cecil). I wanted something that was different from anything, so we took our names from a list of demons. In Swedish it was supposed to translate so that it means 'a good fuck', but it didn't quite work. It's more fun really.



A fun Satanist? Surely not, though recent press has been over-emphatic of stating that you're not really a Satanist.



-I've always liked Motörhead, good sex and Power Metal, so it was obvious we'd have an image of Satanism. Back in '83 when we had the first backing band together, people would say that we needed to have an approach that was serious and dedicated, which I was...but not the rest of the band, so I kicked them out.



So the stories of you wanting to sacrifice a lamb onstage are not true?



-It was just something that was said a long time ago which was over-exaggerated. I mean. I'm a vegetarian!



Good on yer Quorth! Bathory has been documented as a joke which became serious. Is this true and why take it to such an extent?



-There has ALWAYS been a band with Bathory. It's just that, until '86, we had no stable line-up which we could take pictures of or name. The band must have total commitment, like me, because I don't want anyone coming to a rehearsal who is more bothered about a sick girlfriend. So there was only me to put on the record sleeves and promo pictures. It was the press who thought that it was a joke, but I've always been serious, totally.



You now have a stable band who you are proud of. Does this mean we'll now get to see you live?



-Everything has been done before that you could possibly imagine, so we could do nothing new. Music is so unimportant live. We want to do something different, not what the fans have already seen, so we decided to do a big video which will cost a lot of money and have everything that we want in it, exactly how we want it!



What songs will you use?



-We've sent letters to all the members of the fan-club, The Bathory Hordes, and asked them to choose their 5 favourite tracks. The most popular ones will do.



A noble gesture. What effects are being planned?



-There'll be a huge stageshow, for all the fans to see the songs the way they want. We'll have bombs...they've been done before, but ours will go 30 feet. We'll have big mountains as a backdrop and horses, naked women...everything.



And nuclear weapons, as you seem to mention nuclear war somewhere on each album. Are you criticising or praising?



-There are a few missiles in the world, and they don't do much. They are boring. I like the way wars were fought a hundred years ago, but not now.



I see Boss helped out on production this LP. Is he still heavily involved with Bathory even now you've left his label, Tyfon Grammofon?



-He's still part of the team. We're with his management still. It's just that Under One Flag can help with distribution better. There was no need to change as it's perfect. There's the 3 guys in the studio and the one behind the space desk who are totally committed.



Personally, I find the production a little too sharp (too much tone, which makes it hissy). Are you happy with it?



-Yes, I'm happy, although I see what you mean, but when you spend 3 months in a studio recording 25 songs, you don't get much time to compare it to anything. That's what happened.



25 songs! What's going on?



-We recorded out LP's together. The next one, "Blood On Ice" is finished as well, and will be out in Spring '89 on Under One Flag.



And to round this off, I have to ask about influences, as Venom immediately spring to mind. But there's also the classic "Odin's Ride Over Nordland",which lies in a more classical vein.



-Well, I listened to Motorhead and Venom. Venom call us dickheads you know, but that doesn't bother us, 'cos we're bigger. The comparison comes from the fact that there are 3 of us, 2 have black hair and one is blond, and we wear leather and chains. But that's because we want to. Anyway, we can't wear jeans and satin shirts and look American. I listen to things that are unlike Bathory. Classical, yes, like Wagner etc. A lot of that stuff is so similar to Heavy Metal really. But my favourite record is Kate Bush's "Hounds Of Love". I told everyone this was brilliant when it came out. Then, because I play it 20 times a day, all these other bands started saying they liked it too.



Well, thanks to Quorthon for a very informative interview. A very well spoken and polite chap, too. I must say that I also think "Hounds Of Love" is the best LP ever, and it wasn't JUST because he likes it! (I never even knew that). So get "Blood Fire Death" now. The new LP "Blood On Ice" should be out about the time you're reading this - the same time as Kate Bush's new LP. Thanx to Mimi for prompting this interview and all the background stuff. Interview with Quorthon from Morbid Mag Vol. 3 No. 4 (1988) Interview with Quorthon from Evoker Magazine (Aug. 1989) Interview with Quorthon from Kerrang! (1990)

No More Mr. Black Metal Bad Guy

by Paul Miller



"I am not a Viking-Satanist thug nor am I a bloodsucking vampire. I have never eaten a small child, although I admit I was once very close to becoming a teenage alcoholic." Shock quotes a-go-go from Quorthon, mainman with Swedish Doomsters Bathory. Paul Miller discovers a 'sensitive artist' beneath all the Black Metal bluster...



Quorthon Seth, blond, six feet tall and the sole visual proof of the existence of primeval Swedish Black Metal act Bathory, is a man trapped by his track record. As the fire-breathing, leather-studded, jock-strapped Neanderthal with an unhealthy interest in Satan and the Black Arts he single-handedly established Bathory as the final word in Black Metal.



But now, seven years after the 'band' spluttered painfully to life on the long-deleted 'Scandinavian Metal Attack' sampler, Quorthon wants to be taken a little more seriously.

Now aged 24, the portrait of Quorthon as the sensitive artist is not one that's easy to stomach. Andit's difficult to shrug off a fire-breathing past when you're fighting against a record company who still market him as some Viking-Satanist thug, a bevy of press photographers who want him to breathe fire for their cameras and a gaggle of writers who desperately want him to make another crack about slaying lambs onstage for their copy.



Yet five albums into his career Quorthon cuts a more relaxed pose. Whereas up until 1988's 'Blood Fire Death' he felt the need to be involved in every aspect of the Bathory organisation - from album sleeve design to approving biographies to handling the fan mail - he's now content to merely go with the flow.



"Before I wanted complete control, " he explains. "Now I don't care anymore. Five years ago I wanted this thing to be big, to stand there smoking fire onstage in leather and chains and studs, playing Heavy Metal. Nowadays it's not important anymore.



"People have this image of me as some sort of blood-sucking vampire living in a satanic cave in Sweden," he sighs wearily. "I don't spend six months of the year playing guitar, trying to write good lyrics and then having to answer questions like, 'When did you last kill a child ?'."



But aren't you your own worst enemy? Your press releases have always played on the Satanic angle and last time we spoke you boasted of how drunk you were when you recorded the second album, 'The Return'.



"That was very sad. 1985 was a really bad year. I was very close to becoming a teenage alcoholic. I didn't realise until after the recording. There were so many mistakes because of our drinking habits and the bass player was taking drugs at the time too. That was the album I wish we never recorded."



Do you get embarrassed about some of the things you've done in the past?



"Not embarrassed, but I wish I had done them in a more tongue-in-cheek way. With Bathory you could very easily get the idea that we actually were serious, that we in fact did eat children."

1990 is very much a fresh start for Bathory. They have a new label (Noise) and a new album to plug. Entitled 'Hammerheart', it's their sixth offering to date and is further proof of Quorthon's new found calm.



'Hammerheart' builds on the slower, epic feel of one or two of the songs from 'Blood Fire Death', their previous album, coming over like the bastard offspring of Manowar's 'Into Glory Ride' and Hellhammer's 'Apocalyptic Raids'.



"I'm really pleased with it," says Quorthon.



"We knew when we recorded 'Blood Fire Death' that it would be the last LP with a major Speed contribution. 90 per cent of the fans wanted us to go a lot heavier and slower."



Quorthon's faith in the new direction looks to be paying off. Noise have recently revised their estimated sales figure to between 150,000 and 200,000 ('Blood Fire Death' sold around 60,000).



Whilst 'Hammerheart' isn't a concept album in the truest sense, much of the lyrics are about, as Quorthon puts it, "comparing the Viking society with modern society".



"'Baptised In Fire And Blood', for instance, is about a Viking just about to light his father's funeral pyre, thanking him for all the things he has taught him," he explains.



"'Home Of Once Brave' is about Sweden from when the country rose up from the ice age until the day when we gave our country away, politically, ideologically, financially. I'm sure the Swedes had a much better life before Christianity came along".



Bathory have come a long way. Is Quorthon surprised to have gotten this far?



"I am surprised because we have all the odds against us. We are Swedes, we haven't done any world tours, we aren't the prettiest band around, we aren't the best musicians, our LP's don't sound the best and we're not on the biggest record company in the world".



"I would be very surprised if I can make my dream come true and put out a Bathory 10 year commemorative record in three years". Interview with Quorthon from Backstage #6 (1990) Interview with Quorthon from Heavy Metal Magazine #3 (Nov. 1994)

QUORTHON=BATHORY



With the supprt of the Black Mark label I've got the permission to make an interview with one of the legendary characters of world rock-QUORTHON-exclusively for the readers of Heavy Metal Magazine.



LENTI CHIRIAC: It is said that Bathory is the first death metal band in the world. Let me agree with that but I would also like your opinion on it.



QUORTHON: Yes, that's right.That's because in those times (1983) we were playing a type of metal that later got the name of Death Metal. All the other bands playing at the same time with us were Black Metal bands, so we can be regarded as the pioners of Death Metal.



L.C.: Considering the fact that you were the first, the beginning doesn't seem to have been too easy.



Q.: The beginning was quite modest. Three unexperienced youngsters formed the band in February 1983 in Stockholm if I'm not mistaken. Even from the start we were confused because at that time we didn't know exactly what we wanted, except for the fact that we wanted to make a lot of noise and play as fast as possible. It seems that because of this we didn't stick together for long, so after we recorded two tracks for a compilation (January '84) I parted with the drummer and the bass player and went on by myself.



L.C.: Would it be too annoying for you to go over the entire Bathory discography?



Q.: The first record of the band was called simply "Bathory", it was released in June '84, however, as I said before, our first recordings were the two tracks included in Jan.´84 on the "Scandinavian Metal Attack" vol.1 compilation. The debut album was record and mixed in 56 hours, so in a quite short time, but still it sold very well and it was considered the first Death Metal record. The second record, "The Return", was recorded in February '85. This time I was influenced by satanism so no wonder that the most record reviews made it clear that this was the most satanic record of all times. The third record ,"Under The Sign Of The Black Mark", was recorded in Sept.'86. On this record I tried to mix speed and heavy parts, so I think it come out very well this also being the first record for which I worked with great attention as meanwhile I had been listening to a lot of classical music and so I noticed that the musical arrangements were not so simple. At those times all the bands had the same sound so my objective was to do something different. The fourth album, "Blood Fire Death", was recorded in Feb.'88. Then again I tried to give the band a different contenance so as a result I orchestrated the tracks with even more attention, I introduced more accoustic guitars, keyboards and all sorts of special effects. Because of this the tracks became longer but in the same time more elaborate. This time the Viking mythology was the main subject. Then came the album "Twilight Of The Gods", which we recorded in April '91. I wanted to record an album which would give the impression that the end of the world and religion had come, the end of the end. After this product we released two compilations "Jubileum 1" and "Jubileum 2". They were both released in' 92 and they had to commemorate ten years since Bathory had been formed. Shortly after the release of the second volume a lot of people asked me why wouldn't I try to make a solo album. One day I asked myself that question too, and I reached the conclusion that I should try to compose a series of tracks totally different from what Bathory was playing. So in Jan. '94 I recorded my first solo album simply entitled "Album". However, it's release created a state of confusion because of the interviews that I gave to the radio, television and press. Everyone had understood that this was the end of Bathory which was not true. So I had to start work all over again writing and recording a series of new Bathory-influenced tracks. To be honest, I didn't work more than a few weeks for the new Bathory album. I recorded these tracks in June '94, which will soon be included on "Requiem". I also worked a bit on the mixing and on the cover but it will be released this month anyway.



L.C.: Could you point out the important events in the whole history of Bathory?



Q.:Between '83-'85 we took up Death Metal. Between '86-'87 we passed to Gothic and Doom Metal and between '88-'90 we were influenced by the Viking mythology. My solo album contains in my opinion, only rock and grunge parts. Referring to the last record, "Requiem", I can say that it is a Death Metal record, brutal Death Metal.



L.C.: Can you give some arguments why so many bands are chainging their musical orientation?



Q.: My opinion is that an artist can afford more than that, he has to experience new things. Just as you don't want to eat the same food everyday, a musician doesn't want to make the same music every day.



L.C.: Which is the best "Bathory" record in your opinion?



Q.: I couldn't say exactly which record can be considered the best and I am not the person to do that because they are all my compositions. The fans are the ones to do that.



L.C.: From what stage did you compose "Requiem" and what is it's level comparing to the others?



Q.: From a superior stage, as better musicians, naturally. I've made a great progress in the last twelve years and I got enough experience in order to put things the way I want.



L.C.: From a conceptual point of view, how can this be record be classified?



Q.: Well, this time the album doesn't have a precise direction. So it has nothing to do with satanism, mythology, death or anything else. It's simply a 100% Death Metal album. There are nine tracks on "Requiem".



L.C.: From what you told me, you've also worked on your solo album.



Q.: Well, I can reveal you that secret, too. I've had quite busy periodlately. I composed twenty tracks for my second solo record but that's not the priority, yet. I still have a bit more to do for it and if things are going as they should it will be ready this year. You might not believe me but besides the twenty tracks I composed five more for a different album which will be released in 1995. I haven't find a name for it yet, but it will certainly be released in May.



L.C.: Do you think that Bathory has influenced any other bands with the time?



Q.: All these years I heard many voices saying that Bathory has opened the way for many Death and Speed Metal bands. It's hard to say at the moment which was and is Bathory's contribution to metal. For me, Bathory means a lot and I could say it means everything. Anyway, from what I noticed, Bathory is a cult for hundreds and thousands of musicians and fans all over the world.



Favourite bands: Unfortunately, I can't tell you which my favorite bands are as I am a great admirer of classical music. However, I think that The Beatles is my favourite band.



Favourite albums: Alive ('75)-Kiss; Beatles (all); "Hounds of love"-Kate Bush; "Ace of spades"-Motorhead.



Favourite musicians: Chris Cornell (Soundgarden); Neil Peart (Rush); Paul McCartney; Ace Frehley (ex Kiss); Leslie West (ex Mountain).



Favourite drinks: Coca Cola, Black Velvet (whisky), Absolut Vodka, water.



Favorite movies: Alien; Back to the future, Battle for Britain; Madworld.



Hobbies: Collecting military outfits. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a Romanian outfit yet. Interview with Quorthon from Backstage #24 (1994)

Lennart Larsson interviews Quorthon.



BATHORY

More brutal and fast than ever before



In connection with the release of the first solo album Quorthon told me, in #22, that there would probably not be any more Bathory albums. It didn´t take many weeks after our chat before the rumours about a new album started circulating. Now, about half a year later, "Requiem" is in the shops. A real back-to-basics album!



Quorthon starts by trying to explain why an album was made at all.



-When I released the Quorthon-album I went around and talked to a lot of people - old fans and journalists - and I met many who complained, and was afraid, that there would be no more Bathory albums. They talked about the good old days and what it meant to them so I thought maybe I shouldn´t disapoint them but try again instead.



-The reason I didn´t want to do anything, or felt that it was no use rather, was that I doubted myself, that I couldn´t make real Metal again. We had painted ourselves into a corner, pretty good, with the Viking stuff, but I guess everyone have to make a "The Elder" album at some point. Two weeks after I got home I had written basically everything for the new album so it went fast - in two ways.



New/old title



After Bathory released "Hammerheart" they went into the studio again and recorded a relly brutal album, which was never released. It was entitled "Requiem", but the only thing it has in common with the new album is the title, which Quorthon felt was established. He explains that nothing of the new material is from that session. Everything is new, written and recorded.



-We went into Montezuma the first week in June and did bass, drums, guitar and solos in three days. Then we had to wait, partly because of vacations, partly because I only had finished half of the lyrics. I spent most of the summer finishing them. The first week in August we went in and did the vocals, and after that we started mixing.



With we Quorthon means, except himself, the drummer that has played on all Bathory albums since "Under The Sign Of The Black Mark" or "Blood Fire Death" (I´m not sure which one).



-The hardest things Vvornth listens to is Johnny Thunders or maybe David Bowie. But he played Punk in the early ´80s and still has the beat in his body. We are old friends.



-When I did the solo album and told people I did everything on it they were really surprised as they for ten years though that that was the case with Bathory all the time.



Quorthon wasn´t really pleased with the sound on the solo album, which in his mind contained too many echoes. He promised that the next album would sound like if they were standing in a phone booth. Does the new album sound as if it was sponsored by the telecommunications administration?



-When we went in and recorded this album we said that there must not be one second of echoes, anywhere, and I don´t think it is either. It´s practically recorded live, as much live as it can be when you are two. No effects or frills.



More brutal than ever



Musically, "Requiem" is a step back to the early albums, even though the sound is quite different. It´s fast, fast as fuck.



-No song is slower than the fastest we´ve done before, Quorthon says. We want people to react, they can´t know where they have us. We played as fast as we can. But it´s not speed for the sake of speed. When I explain to people I compare it to "The Return...", but 100% better played, combined with "Reign In Blood", so that they have a clue what it´s about. There are as much doubles as possible and sometimes I scream in a little plastic box, to gain a funny sound.



The vocals are a step back to the old things too. There are a lot of primal screams.



-I never liked that harmonizer thing, when bands use a lot of harmonizer on the vocals to sound like an underground monster or something like that. It might be funny as an effect but not throughout an entire album.



When me and Quorthon talked at the end of ´92 (I think) he said that even if he wrote 300 speed songs it wouldn´t give him anything musically.



-It gives nothing musically because a speed song, if you´re talking about speed itself, is very limited. I was very surprised that we could play so tight and so fast, and still sound so good. But it gives me nothing musically compared with writing a string quartet for example. I write a lot of music which isn´t anywhere near Bathory. It´s AOR-Rock like Foreigner, early Kiss, The Beatles and even classical music.



Money not important



I can´t help thinking that a big reason to the step back is that Quorthon saw an opportunity to make money. At the same time there´s a big risk that many might not be able to take them seriously when they after so many years went back to the style that made them successful, and gave them cult status. Quorthon doesn´t agree:



-How much the album sells doesn´t mean a thing because we don´t do it for a commersial reason because we don´t sell that much. We sell 120000-150000 at the most (that´s not very much - ironic Ed.), without tours, without videos and things like that. The production expences are incredibly low. We´re beneath 15000 SKR with this album and the cover costed a couple of thousands at the most.



-Money was never imortant. If so, would have bothered to push the right buttons to make money. We would have done videos and even toured but that´s not our thing.



-The step back to the fast, brutal and a hell of a lot Death Metal doesn´t mean we´re ashamed of the last years, or that we´re trying to go back to gain fans. OK, it´s fast and brutal but it has nothing to do with the early albums because it´s incredibly better played. Listen to the early Bathory albums, it´s so terribly played that it´s regrettable.



But he doesn´t really manage to convince me that the new album was recorded more with the heart than the wallet.



The lyrics on "Requiem" have partly gone in a new direction too. Quorthon tells me that they deal with death in different forms but it´s not a theme album. I wonder where he got inspiration?



Caused big reactions



The hardrock magazine Metal Zone, now unfortunately departed, had a big article about Bathory in connection with the solo album. The interview caused strong reactions because it clearly showed that he´s not a Satanist, something old Backstage readers already knew. Quorthon is very surprised when he learns what kind of reactions the article caused. At the same time he comments on it he reveals something which came as a complete surprise to me.



-If I am a Satanist or not is completely unimportant, it has no importance whatsoever. When I did interviews in ´85-´86 a lot of Americans reacted because I was a vegetarian, which I actually was for seven-eight years. That´s not important either.



He tells me that on exactly the same day as "Twilight Of The Gods" was mixed he started eating meat again.



-I had been bodybuilding for some time, and during boxing workout broken a bone in my left wrist so I couldn´t lift weights for a while. When I was about to start again I needed proteins so it was a completely natural explanation... There was no ideology behind the fact that I was a vegetarian.



-When it comes to the Satanist thing it´s completely bizarre that someone at all cares about it. No matter what religion or political opinions, what football- or hockey team you cheer on, like brunettes or blondes it shouldn´t matter. You wonder what kind of people are reacting. Do they have an altar at home?



-I had between ´82-´85 but I wouldn´t call myself a Satanist but antichristian. My whole being is antichristian. My way of thinking, my view of life is based on hatred towards Christianity. The sooner that religion disappears the better, and it will, but not during my life time, because it´s a weak religion - compared to Islam for example.



Participates in a new book



All of a sudden Quorthon tells me that he will participate in a book, which should be released - at least in England - when you read this, which deals with the subject.



-The past winter I talked with an English writer named Kevin Bedley (?). In his book there will be a chapter about Death and Black Metal, and I explain that it above all strive after effect, trying to be rebellious.



-There are those who have a more ideological look upon it and study it a lot and thinks Christianity is a big lie. Then there are those who are into it because they think it´s cool with Satan and Hell, or thinks it suits them better than witchcraft and things like that.



-I came to the point where I realised that Christianity is shit. Satanism is a product of Christianity. It´s not something Satanists made up, it´s something the church made up to convert people from the evil to the good. It´s a product of the Christians so you cannot call yourself something which is a result of Christianity, if you oppose it.



Refuse to be on stage



When we come to the live part Quorthon is as steadfast as ever. He says they will never play live, at least not as long as he is in the band.



-There are still a lot of people who insists that I should get together with the guys and go out in Europe for 10-15 shows. When they can´t pursuade me with the artistic talk they talk about the financial part. That we could become almost millionares, but that´s not important. I can´t get anything out of going to conserts, I think it´s terribly boring. I´ve been to five shows the last ten years. I´m a headphone kind of person, who likes listening to music with headphones where I can analyse sounds. Playing live to me is just as interesting as it would be hosting a talk show.



He promise there will be more Bathory albums though!



-I have written ten new songs so we´ll hopefully enter the studio sometime in January-February and record a new album, and it will be even more brutal.



If there will be more Quorthon albums is more uncertain. Quorthon has 30 finished songs but since the first album didn´t do as well as it should have - it only sold 90000 (!) - it´s put on ice.

It´s more likely that he will realise the plans on a Bathory book. A book which will contain history, discography, lyrics, photos and facts from the recordings. I´m looking forward to that! Interview with Quorthon (1994)

Satanism? Sword and sorcery? Vikings? Things that go bump in the night? Not this time around for Bathory´s Quorthon. Now he just wants to... rock´n´roll. BRAD SIMS grabs a few words on this and other mysteries from the land of the midnight sun.



Quorthon has to be one of the most respected figures in heavy metal. His place in the evolutionary steps of Nordic metal has been made all the more lagendary for his constant ability to stay a step ahead of the game, shifting his focus from the black, Satanic, excruciating, ear-piercing howl of the early Bathory albums to the huge, sweeping Viking grandeour of Hammerheart and Twilight Of The Gods. With Bathory inactive for the past three years, main man Quorthon has walked free of the band´s shadow and released his first solo album, catching many fans unaware.



The first Quorthon album will probably be received in much the same way Hammerheart was back in 1990, with many Bathory purists finding themselves alienated by Quorthon´s change of direction. Nonetheless, most of the people who initially disliked the change in style, eventually embraced the evocative Nordic atmosphere of Hammerheart and hailed it as a classic. Therefore, the prediction is the same for this album.



Quorthon´s career has been phoenix-like, as he periodically dies in flames and rises from the ashes of his past with an entirely new creation. So Album has no Satanism or Vikings etc. Quorthon has emerged from myth into reality, and created a new sound so atmospheric it´s almost ethereal. There lies the quality of Quorthon, who´s always able to surprise and create something entirely new and devastating beyond the realms of tried and tested formulae.



Quorthon´s an odd name, isn´t it? What does it mean and where does it come from?



"When we formed Bathory, everybody was into having stage names. When I realised KISS, Ozzy Osbourne, Nikki Sixx and even Lemmy, had stage names, we thought, "Why shouldn´t we come up with something in the same manner?" Only we wanted to make a joke out of it, so we picked names that were more or less unpronounceable. Also, stage names were meant to have a double meaning, so we picked three names from the Satanic bible. Quorthon is one of Satan´s seven sons, Quorthon is the son of Satan who will fight the Messiah on the day of judgement, so that goes to show how heavily involved in all that Satanic stuff we were."



Did you actually perform any of the black arts?



I have an upside down cross burnt into the skin of my left arm. I was extremely involved in that kind of stuff during ´83 to ´85, but when you come to the conclusion that Christianity is a bluff, then you must also be fair and say that Satanism is a bluff, because that´s a product of Christianity."



What were your influences when you started playing, and why did you adopt Satanic lyrics initially?



"The reason why we picked those kind of topics up in our lyrics in the first place was because of all these big bands that we were listening to, like Motörhead and Saxon. They were all singing about taking drugs, drinking a lot of alcohol, fucking women and going by motorcycle. We were 13, 14, 15 years old when we started Bathory back in ´83, and we didn´t have any experience with motorcycles, drugs and women, but we had a keen teenager´s interest in Satanic art and black magic, that´s why we started writing that kind of stuff in our lyrics.



Then I realised, after reading a lot about Christianity and Satanism, that it had to be a bluff. That´s why we picked up this Viking stuff, because we wanted to do something nobody else was doing. That´s one of the greatest things with Bathory, we touched upon every kind of image and topic; Satanism, Vikings, sword and sorcery, the dark side of life, everything. We always try to be at least two or three years ahead - arranging music, incorporating a lot of sound effects and stuff like that. With the solo album it´s more or less just everyday type of lyrics, what you see on the TV, what you read in the paper, relationships and people etcetera. Sort of like a diary - all I´ve taken away are the most personal entries."



After years of playing with Bathory, why are you going under the banner of Quorthon now?



"Because it´s a solo album. People have these preconcieved notions of what Bathory is all about, they think that it´s not a group and it´s just me making everything, which is not the case. If I had told them that Bathory for 50 per cent of their career was just a drummer and me playing guitar and bass, they would have been really disapointed. So we just played right along with all this mysticism that was surrounding the group, because we felt that people were more interested in hearing the band when there was a lot of mystique around it. Now I´m making a solo album and people are really confused about why I´m changing the name. It´s actually being the vocalist, guitarist, bass player and drummer making a solo record."



Are there any surprises on the new album?



"There are probably a million surprises because there is no Satanism, no speed, no special effects. There is everyday kind of lyrics, just rock´n´roll."



How did this change come about?



"I used to listen to a lot of stuff nobody into death metal today would know anything about, Humble Pie and Mountain. This stuff has been re-released on CD today, so after having listened to classical music for eight years, closing myself away from the street beat, not being able to rock´n´roll anymore, I needed to buy this stuff when it was re-released on CD to get a rock´n´roll feeling all over again. It was very difficult to be able to play rock´n´roll again."



What about the real person behind the name Quorthon, what is your real name and how do you spend your time when you´re not playing music?



"My name (laughs). I´m not quite prepared to give all the mystery away, just by not playing epic kind of metal anymore. Of course, people want to know, but it´s like me telling you that Santa Claus is actually your father, or KISS with their makeup off, so if you keep that little bit of suspence, it keeps fresh and interesting. I´m an addictive hockey fan, of course, being Swedish. I don´t spend any money at all going to movies, hiring videos, going to concerts or going out having dinner or anything like that. I´m the kind of guy sitting at home playing acoustic guitar, listening to classical music and reading books. I certainly don´t like fiction. I enjoy documentaries and real life. I´m a very boring person, more or less, I live a very, very slow kind of life."



Have you heard any Australian bands?



"Oh no, apart from AC/DC, no. There´s actually very little stuff from that continent over here in Europe, the only thing we know about is you wanting to get rid of the fucking Queen, and I really think you should go ahead and do it. Actually, in ´77 - I was 10 or 11 years old - I was about to move to Perth with my parents."



What countries does your music sell best in?



"Bathory has sold best in England, Germany, South America, Australia and Japan. The USA has a big problem with European sounds and influences, because they really don´t want to recognise that everything they do is an influence from Europe, so whenever they hear a sound or a beat or anything like that, they sort of distort it in a McDonald´s kind of way, and they produce all kinds of shit. That´s really why black metal died out in the first run during ´85/´86, when US thrash metal came around."



Quorthon´s Album stands out in a sea of stagnant, trendy releases. Don´t expect the main man of Bathory to be afraid of change, as it appears that groundbreaking is becoming a Quorthon trademark. Expect instead a truly significant release, deviod of plagiarism and routine formula. Quorthon´s personal isolation and disregard for metal´s various popular movements has resulted in greatness and a history of musical inspiration for over a decade. With his first steps into a solo career, Quorthon continues to mark the path other shall follow in the future. Interview with Quorthon from G.A.S.P. Mag Vol. 2 No. 6 (Autumn 1994)

"BATHORY's QUORTHON"

by Mike Baronas



Shrouded in mystery, the classic Swedish death/speed/gloom/epic metal band Bathory has used it´s media-given enigma to build what many have come to know as the most evil band on the planet. The group´s brainchild, Quorthon, has strayed from that devil-may-care path with his newly released solo venture, simply titled Album.

Upon giving it the once through, it´s easy to see that the big Q is not the bizarre half-man/half-demon the press made him out to be in the 1980´s. Thus, I found him to be an easy-going, articulate, and likable individual who, in fact, happens to be an animal lover (we chatted at length about his 2 cats and the rat that he dedicated Hammerheart to).

Appropriately taking place at the witching hour from Sweden´s Black Mark offices (it turns out the 28 year-old is an insomniac), Quorthon shared the following tales in the midst of mixing a now completed 7th Bathory studio album.



G.A.S.P.: Many people, myself included, thought that the Jubileum compilations marked the end of Bathory when, in fact, this is far from the truth.



Quorthon: I thought that way too for a while. Having painted ourselves into a corner musically and lyrically with the satanic topics for a couple of years and then the Viking mythology, we sort of became musical introverts. So, by the time we recorded Twilight Of The Gods, we realized that this was probably about it. Having no ideas or anything, and realizing that we were celebrating 10 years as a band, we put those two Jubileum albums out to keep the name hot for a while until we came up with some better ideas for the future. I wasn´t sure whether we deserved to go on because I thought that musically and lyrically we weren´t what we used to be. So, not having any fresh ideas, I said, "Let´s take a long vacation", and that´s how the solo thing came about. When that solo album was released in May of this year, I went on a promotional trip around Europe talking to a lot of people, and everywhere I went, no matter who you were talking to, everybody was like, "Hey, when is the new Bathory album going to be out?" Everybody was very emotional telling me how much the band meant and it lit my fuse, so to speak. So when I got back home at the end of May/beginning of June, I sat down and started writing the most brutal music that´s ever been written before! It was just heaven for me, or hell if you want [laughs]. We went in this summer and just blasted in the studio; it´s going to be released in a couple of weeks.



G.A.S.P.: Wow! I wonder how long we´ll have to wait for it in the States because the solo album was just released here.



Q: Actually, I have a funny story about delays and things not being released simultaneously in Europe and the US/Canada: at the time when we released Blood Fire Death in Europe, we went to Los Angeles. We had a deal with New Renaissance Records and they were just about putting out our third album Under The Sign Of The Black Mark. It was quite funny because I kept on having to do promotion for the third album, whereas I just left a promotion tour in Europe for the fourth album.



G.A.S.P.: Could you tell me a little more about the new Bathory material?



Q: Well, to begin with, I didn´t have any lyrics for the songs, so we just went in and recorded all the music. Then we had a break until I came up with the lyrics - it seems to be the way for me to work nowadays. We have 9 tracks and I´ve been retitling the songs a million times over so I don´t really remember the titles, but some that still stand are "Apocalypse", "Blood And Soil", "Requiem", which is the title track of the album, "Distinguished To Kill", and a bunch of others. Like I said, the music on the album is the most brutal thing that has ever been written before. It´s just what I think people would really want from us after having released a couple of albums that sound just like...shit. If you thought Reign In Blood was fast, go fuck yourself. As soon as I started recording the basic tracks for Requiem, I actually started writing tracks for the next album which has the working title Bathory `95. It´s about 4 times as fast. I don´t know if the speed is the point really, but we just go full force.



G.A.S.P.: Are there concepts behind any of the songs?



Q: No, they just mainly focus on death. There is no mythology on there and there´s no God, Satan, or anything like that. Of course, there are a couple of anti-Christian songs rather than anti-Christ songs, but there are no real statements made religiously or politically. There´s just a lot of death in it.



G.A.S.P.: Yes, back to the brutality!



Q: But now we´re better musicians. I mean, when we recorded the first 2 or 3 albums I could hardly play guitar. We reached a cult status and I wasn´t even able to play good guitar. Now we´re so much better, or I am, I should say, as well as Paul the drummer who´s been with the group since 1986. Of course, me playing the bass ever since, as well. We´re tighter, we´re faster, more technical and everything.



G.A.S.P.: You mentioned a "Paul" as being your drummer. He must be the infamous "Vvornth", right?



Q: Yeah [laughs]. For him, Bathory´ just a hobby and not a band situation, so I said it was okay for him to use his real name. I´ve been friends with him for ages.



G.A.S.P.: Will Bathory continue as a non-touring outfit?



Q: Honestly, we´ve gone this long without touring that it would kind of ruin the magic if we did. Actually, the main reason is that I´m not really a performer and I hate concerts. The only time that I ever enjoyed going to concerts was when I was a teenager and when I was completely drunk. Bad music becomes good music when you´re drunk. A good looking girl was always an ugly girl before you got drunk. Being drunk usually means you can´t play very well, so it´s not a very good combination. I don´t get my kicks out of concerts. I´m more into sitting at home, writing the songs, going into the studio and recording. Writing the songs is like foreplay and the studio´s like an orgasm, so what´s after that? Lying down and kissing the girl on the cheek and saying, "I love you"? That´s not my kind of stuff.



G.A.S.P.: Now, the solo release, Album, is a radical departure from your work with Bathory. How did it come about? Was it something you needed to get off your chest?



Q: Basically, everything that I ever wrote during the `80´s and the beginning of the `90´s had to fit in under a certain musical umbrella, so to speak. It had to fit in with the Bathory sound. You didn´t have that kind of artistic freedom like a Bruce Springsteen or Madonna because you´re aware of the certain image that you may have. Certainly, with a lot of people who have only seen a couple of black & white pictures and have these preconceived notions about you being a blood-drinking vampire somewhere in a cave in Sweden, you´re bound to keep on having to write music that suits that kind of image. It was sort of like a prison. For a couple of albums it´s okay to stand up there and play at 365 beats per minute and scream "Satan!" at the top of your lungs, but after a while it gets boring.

As early on as the third album we started to arrange our music - longer songs, acoustic and synthesized guitars, harmony vocals, sound effects - trying to develop our own style. That was a time when a lot of bands like Possessed, Celtic Frost, and everybody else was trying to find their own image. Many bands perished and the only reason we were able to make it was because we had this cult status.



G.A.S.P.: With Album are you trying to show a lighter side of yourself?



Q: Well, I´m the kind of guy that grew up with Mountain, Humble Pie, the early Kiss stuff, Beatles, and Led Zeppelin, and not a lot of these groups´ music can be found in the early Bathory records, or any Bathory record. So, I wrote the songs, recorded, and mixed the album for myself only, and then if anybody else would enjoy it in the least I would be very happy, but that was not my main goal. I wanted to see if I still enjoyed playing rock `n roll. It was like a turning point in my life. I wasn´t enjoying playing guitar anymore and, just out of coincidence, a week before I went into the studio I happened to walk into a music shop and I saw this Gibson Les Paul Black Top from 1957. I always dreamed of owning one of those legendary guitars because of Ace Frehley, of course. The guitar was 11,900 Swedish crowns, which is very cheap. I mean, those guitars cost 25,000 Swedish crowns or something. Anyway, I bought it and playing that guitar in the studio made me feel like going back to the roots, not Satan and speed, but my roots. It was a way for me to come to terms with if I really wanted to continue playing.

So, it turned out a little bit soft, but so did Twilight..., so did Under The Sign Of The Black Mark, and the first album wasn´t a very good one either, but hey, we´re still here.



G.A.S.P.: There´s a line in the song "No More And Never Again" that goes, "I´ll never eat pussy again" .Why not?



Q: If you tried, you know why [laughs]! There are certain times in life where you find yourself in a situation you would not want to necessarily end up being in or you would want to travel back in time and do things differently. Not a lot of people would understand that deep, emotional thing, so the best way for a rock lyric would be to take the tongue-in-cheek way out - I´ll never eat pussy again! - which is, basically, I´ll never make a mistake again. It sounds a lot better if you say "I´ll never eat pussy again" because it raises a couple eyebrows. I don´t know if they would ever play it on the radio over there?



G.A.S.P.: No way! Not on commercial stations anyhow.



Q: [Laughs] There are a couple of songs on the new Bathory album which they certainly wouldn´t play because there´s about 20-25 "fuckings" in the lyrics.



G.A.S.P.: So you´re not really concerned about how long-time fans might react to Album?



Q: Absolutely not. That was the least of my problems. The problem was that a lot of people wouldn´t take me as a normal person. You always have that problem when you go through the normal promotion routines like in-stores and talking to journalists. No matter how hard you try, you cannot get across to these people because they think they´re talking with Satan. I just want to be an ordinary person, and in putting this record out, I knew that this was not going to be the problem this time. I sort of took off the mask a little bit.



G.A.S.P.: Would you say you´re trying to shed the mystique altogether?



Q: Actually, it´s something that we really didn´t plan - it wasn´t intentional - it just happened. Certainly because we had huge line-up problems. Stockholm in the early-`80´s wasn´t a very good place to find members if you wanted to play music like what we sounded like. In those days, in Sweden, the only thing that reigned within music was Europe - The Final Countdown and that kind of shit. And all the heavy metal guys that went around clubs in Stockholm during those years really looked like girls. All the musicians I came across when auditioning for the band didn´t want to sweat; they didn´t want to wear leather, chains, studs, blood or anything. So the only time that pictures were printed in these fanzines, they were pictures of me. I was the only original member, so I did all the interviews.

From then on came the mysteriousness. It wasn´t something that we created, it was something that the fans and fanzines created. We realized that people were drawing to the band and buying our records because of the mysteriousness, sort of like Kiss and their make-up. We just played right along with it.



G.A.S.P.: As you stated, past line-up problems have always seemed to be a focal point of Bathory. How many people over the years do you think you´ve auditioned altogether for the drummer and bassist slots?



Q: Oh shit! There´s been a lot more drummers than bass players because I realized, once in the studio, I can always play the bass.

Although, I originally started out as a drummer at the age of 9, so, actually, I´m a drummer and not a guitar player.

Drummers...I can´t give you an exact figure, but anywhere between 12-15, and bass players, probably 5-8. The longest time a line-up has been together was for 11 months, before we even recorded an album.



G.A.S.P.: Pre-Scandinavian Metal Attack?



Q: That was the Scandinavian Metal Attack. 7 days after that thing was recorded, I gave the other 2 guys the boot.



G.A.S.P.: Due to, let me guess, artistic differences?



Q: I have to tell you this: the only reason why I joined these two guys a year previously to that compilation album - we´re talking February/March 1983 - was because the bass player had a very rich family. His father owned a lot of real estate and we could rehearse in the basements of the office buildings when they closed at night for free. Also, he had a lot of equipment, so I stayed with these two guys for 11 months. During that time Frederick, the bass player, only played on one string, and you bet your ass he never changed strings once the whole time he was in the band. The drummer was only in the group because he wanted to impress girls. They never wrote any music or lyrics for the band. I almost didn´t write any songs myself up until that compilation. We only had 5 songs that we rehearsed; we played Black Sabbath and Motörhead covers. After we went into the studio and recorded that shit, they kept wanting to write Saxon and Iron Maiden kind of music because that´s what was hip in `83. I said, "Haven´t you guys realized anything? Haven´t you heard what we sound like in the studio? Don´t you know shit about what I´m writing?" Then we split up and I knew that I was able to do something on my own; experiment a lot with speed and Satanism.

One time, those guys went to London for a weekend and I used our two-track demo recorder with two of my friends - one of those guys was Paul playing drums - and we recorded 2 songs, "Die In Fire" & "You Don´t Move Me (I Don´t Give A Fuck)". Both of those tracks wound up on the Jubileum albums. They were recorded during the time when the first line-up was together, before we even recorded the compilation. So, you see, those 2 tracks are historically very important for the group.



G.A.S.P.: Now, I remember reading a lot of press way back when that your fourth album was supposed to be titled Blood On Ice and that it was going to be a double album. Why the name change and what happened to the other LP?



Q: When we recorded Under The Sign Of The Black Mark, we asked ourselves if we should continue the satanic shit for one more album. If you want to maintain respect for yourself as a musician, you should cover new grounds all the time and discover new sides of yourself. So, I came up with idea to make an album based on the Nordic mythology; not necessarily taking it word by word from books, because people in Mexico and Australia will have to be able to listen to the album not knowing everything about Swedish history and pre-Christian times. We all were pretty up about the idea because Sweden has only been Christian for about 900 years, so they say, anyway. We just sat down and wrote the songs and somehow everything turned out to be a copy of the original Howard story of Conan. Unfortunately, we realized that, first of all, people will accuse us of being very bad ex-satanic Manowar copies; second, people will probably not be able to take it to their hearts because the music would be very different; and third, we were on Music For Nations, the Under One Flag label in England, and on that label there was a British band called Onslaught who had first copied our first album cover on one of their albums. Now they found out that we had an album title Blood On Ice, so they entitled their album Blood On Ice. When we found out, we changed our whole plans for that album. In the end, they didn´t name their album Blood On Ice either.

In the meantime, we realized that putting out a double album so soon and not being very big at the box office was big risk taking. But having recorded 25 songs already, we felt a couple of these songs would really make a good album anyway, so we put out Blood Fire Death. Two of those songs from Blood On Ice actually wound up on the Hammerheart album, which, in itself, was more or less a Nordic mythology album anyway.



G.A.S.P.: Blood Fire Death is my favorite Bathory album, that´s why I was curious.



Q: Mine too.



G.A.S.P.: Really?



Q: Yeah, because it´s a good mix between speed and heaviness.



G.A.S.P.: Well, I´m glad I´m in good company. Actually, I also read that there was supposed to be a home video to coincide with the album´s release.



Q: Again, that had to do with line-up problems. I actually had a couple of American drummers calling, sending tapes, pictures and everything, and at one moment I was even toying with the idea of moving to the United States or England or wherever to get the hell out of here because here it seemed like you couldn´t get any good members for the band. But, at one time, we actually had the group together; this was the end of `85/beginning of `86. Our management here in Sweden also distributed Noise Records in Sweden. They were lining up a tour with Celtic Frost and Destruction in the US for a couple of months down the east coast and they asked us to be on the bill.



G.A.S.P.: [Orgasmic sigh!]



Q: Are you jerking off while we´re...



G.A.S.P.: Those are my 3 favorite European bands from the `80´s, if not all time. That would´ve been immense. Anyhow, sorry to interrupt.



Q: When we were just about on the verge to rehearse a stage show, it seemed like we weren´t able to keep the band together. I was never ever pleased with the people who came across playing bass and drums. So, when those 2 bands went away playing with another act, At War or something, we came across the idea of putting on a real big stage show, recording it on video, and having everybody, no matter where they may live, see us the way that we would want them to see us. In the end, we realized that this was going to cost us a lot of money and would take a rather huge organization.

The sad thing was, though, that I went out in press telling everybody about the idea. Great dreams, but it just didn´t turn out to be true.



G.A.S.P.: So nothing at all was ever recorded?



Q: No. Actually, I was contacting a lot of people into pyrotechnics and things; making big bombs for us exploding 100 feet up in the air and stuff.



G.A.S.P.: Ever the image-hound!



Q: Yeah, but if you remember the mid-`80´s, that was the thing.



G.A.S.P.: Oh, definitely. Now, speed was always a driving force behind Bathory. On your song "Pace `Til Death" there´s a line that goes, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, I´m the fastest of them all!". Why did you decide to slow down after Blood Fire Death?



Q: There are only a certain amount of ways you can play a song fast, although, who am I to sit here and release an album containing the fastest, most brutal shit I´ve ever written to say that. Anyway, it was just a love of experimenting. We were also into storytelling in those days, and it´s hard telling a story playing at 365 beats per minute. We really wanted to make 10 minute long songs, tell a story, and put a little bit of emotion into our songs and lyrics. That´s why we changed.

Actually, that line you came up with from "Pace `Til Death" was me making fun of the competition - who is the fastest of them all? Some people didn´t take it as a joke. They thought we were serious.



G.A.S.P.: Was it a dig at any band(s) in particular?



Q: It was for everybody. Everybody who was releasing records during `85, `86 & `87 was trying to break everybody else as far as speed was concerned. And once you´ve been playing as fast as you can play, you´ve already made your point. There´s only a certain speed that you can play where it´s enjoyable.



G.A.S.P.: You were the master of the atmospheric intro and outro at the beginning and end of your albums/songs. This is now commonplace on many new black/death metal albums. Would you agree that Bathory has had an overwhelming effect on a majority of these bands?



Q: During the `80´s, before we were big enough to be interviewed by Kerrang!, we had demos sent to us from all over Europe, the US, and from as far away as Australia and Japan. So we knew that there was an impact, not to the point where we were an influence to a lot of young bands, but only that we were known. We weren´t thinking in terms of, "We´re big; we´re famous; we´re gonna make money; and we´re gonna be the main pattern for a lot of groups to come for years.". We were just happy that people knew about us; we didn´t even give a shit whether they had actually bought the record or had a friend tape it. The important thing was to have your voice heard, which was the main issue in the whole underground movement.



G.A.S.P.: What about today?



Q: Although I don´t know that much about the groups, I´ve understood since a year or so ago a big thing has been going on in Norway, which has turned into a bit of perversion - burning churches and killing people. And when being asked about this in England making promotions for the Quorthon album, I was asked about this. I really didn´t know anything about what had happened except for what was in the Swedish press. Of course, it was not until I finished answering all of those questions that I read an interview with a guy who was accused for doing all this shit. He said he never did anything and there was no evidence. I felt bad about myself having answered all those questions about something that I really didn´t know anything about.

Regardless, if we were an influence to what these people were doing or the hundreds of other bands around the world making great records, who, in turn, were an influence to new bands, it´s a give and take thing. We were influenced by other acts and other acts have been influenced by us. We all will have our hangover - Venom are no more; Slayer took their make-up off sometime in `83/`84; Metallica made a few ballads; and I went off to make a solo album - so, here we are again.



G.A.S.P.: I´ve talked to many Swedish bands like Entombed and Unleashed and asked them if they had ever met or known you. They all said no. Would you consider yourself a loner amongst the scene?



Q: Oh yeah! I haven´t been to a club since 1986; I haven´t taken a drop of alcohol since I made promotion for Blood Fire Death; I went to the movies once this year; the last concert I went to see, sort of like for old times sake, was Manowar half a year ago; I never go to places where there´s a lot of people; and I´ve never taken any drugs. It doesn´t give you anything after a while. You just wind up spending a lot of money. Certainly, a hangover is great, a one night stand is great, but it doesn´t give you anything in the long run. If your flesh craves pussy and alcohol, that´s okay, but if you´re more interested in sitting at home drinking a nice cup of English tea and reading a good book, which is something that I prefer, you loose contact with reality and the street beat. I only know that there are a lot of Swedish bands out there, and even though they may not admit they were influenced by Bathory, the great thing is that we can give a lot of these bands the attention that they need because Swedish musicians aren´t very good technically, not necessarily musically. I read somewhere where this band Unleashed you mentioned said a lot of shitty things about me, and I never met any of these guys.



G.A.S.P.: What about Entombed?



Q: I cannot answer for them because I´m really cut off from reality, more or less. During the years when I went to the clubs and when I was in contact with the rock `n roll thing - fucking beautiful girls in the back of a limousine in Manhattan; drinking champagne and breathing fire in the middle of the night from the top of a skyscraper in Hollywood; making out with two beautiful girls in a swimming pool in Milan; being invited backstage at a Slayer concert in Brooklyn and everybody coming to ask me for an autograph rather than Tom Araya - I´ve seen and experienced everything that a lot of kids only dream of. Going to clubs and drinking expensive whisky doesn´t make my cock stand. It´s much more enjoyable sitting at home developing your mind reading a good book. Interview with Quorthon from Ultrakill # 2 (June/July 1994)

Malcom Dome interviews Quorthon.





As someone regarded as one of the forefathers of Black Metal, do you take any responsibility for the current violence the movement has generated?



Look, when the first Bathory line-up got together 10 years ago, we were all in our mid-teens. We didn´t see ourselves as founding a movement. It just happened around us. It was the media who began to lump together ourselves, Venom, Celtic Frost and Sodom, calling us Black Metal. All we were doing was picking up on the Satanic imagery as a way of rebelling against society, simple as that.



Wouldn´t you admit, though, that whilst early Bathory was influential, the albums were also rubbish?



Oh yes. That´s absolutely true! When we started the band we had no plans to do anything. We were happy just playing in a garage. Then we got the chance to make a demo, which was beyond our wildest expectations. And then in 1984 we had the opportunity to put out our first album, "Bathory". From there on, it seems things just exploded. But that first album was shit. I´d have to agree we were rubbish in the early days. Why then did people pick up on us? I don´t honestly know.



OK, but you would surely have to admit that the "Bathory" album ripped off Venom...



Not true at all! It was coincidence. I never really listened to Venom before we recorded our debut record.



If you speak to true Black Metal fans, they´ll cite ourselves and Venom as influences. They don´t regard Bathory as having ripped off Venom at all. We are equally as important to the scene.



There are rumours circulating that you started your musical career in a Kiss covers band! Hardly Black Metal, is it?



That story is true. The band were called Kyss (Swedish for Kiss /Twilight). We wore make-up, platform boots, the lot. Kiss were the very first Metal band I got into. The song that did it was "Cold Gin". Hearing that track made me want to join a band. I gave up on Kiss at the end of the ´70s, but I´ll buy anything relating to them from the early days - whatever the cost.



Black Mark are planning to put out a compilation album later this year, featuring all all the bands on their roster doing covers. If that comes off, I´m definitely gonna do "Cold Gin". Anyone who says Kiss were never Metal doesn´t know what they´re talking about!



You have been accused of being a "musical fascist". Is that a fair comment?



That sort of accusations have been leveled at me by former members of Bathory, who claim I wouldn´t let them contribute anything musicallyto any of the albums. That is true, but there are reasons. I have a stronger sense of what works and what doesn´t in Bathory than anybody else. I act as a natural filter for the music we produce.



I´m also very aware that people want to retain certain myths about Bathory rather than knowing the truth. Would fans really like to know that 50 per cent of the drum sounds they hear on our albums are made with drum machines? Not exactly epic, is it? Would they like to know that you can hear the sound of a lawn-mower at the beginning of the song "Valhalla" (from the band´s fifth album "Hammerbeat" (That would be "Hammerheart, right? /Twilight) )? Or that at the start of "Raise The Dead" (from "Bathory"), the reason I sound so evil is because I´d accidentally inhaled paint fumes? No, Bathory has to retain certain mystique, whatever the truth. And if I have to be a "musical fascist" to achieve this, then so be it.



So if Bathory is, to all intents and purposes, your band, why make a solo record?



Precisely because I know what should be on Bathory albums. There are occasions when we´ve done things and realised fans of the band weren´t ready for such an approach. We actually recorded two complete albums which have never been released, "Blood On Ice" in ´87 and "Requiem" a year later, for this very reason. Doing a solo album allows me to do things I wouldn´t consider for Bathory.



But does the world really need a Quorthon solo album?



I don´t care if it sells only one copy. I´ve made a record that appeals to me - and that´s what counts. But this is only a one-off release. My next project is a Bathory record. If people like it, then great. If not, then they can fuck off!



As a person no, I´m a lot more mature than previously. I´m no longer making music to gratify my ego. I been through all that Rock star shit - screwing girls in the toilets, doing every drug going and drinking myself into oblivion. These days I´m quite happy to sit at home and do absolutely nothing for weeks for end. I don´t need other people´s seal of approval to make my life complete. Interview with Quorthon from the Grimoire of Exalted Deeds #7 Interview with Quorthon from Heathendom Magazine #1 (Feb. 1996)

Petra Aho interviews Quorthon.





"The Bathory fans can be divided into four categories... those who wants this old ´80s Satan stuff, and they are more or less gone, maybe they are jerking off to the old songs. Then we have those who only wants the speed stuff, and they don´t care what we sing about. Then those who wants the Viking stuff, the heavy stuff, and then that category who likes everything we do just because it´s Bathory..."





Quorthon is not doing anything, he has no job, no occupation. He has the liberty to do anything he likes, but he doesn´t. Why, you ask?



The only times he walks out through the door are more or less when he goes down to the Black Mark office at nights to do some interviews. When this interview is being done Quorthon hasn´t even touched a guitar in two months, they are still in the studio...



But a new album in May this year is at least to be expected for all sold Bathory souls...



Revealed names is something you won´t find in this story as it is of completely no interest at all, the more interesting I find the Bathory story though, and probably more people than I do.



This journey between heaven and hell in the company of Quorthon should be interesting to all Bathory fans, no matter what category!



Hard to find Bathory



Something that irritated me to the maximum during the early years was that it was virtually impossible to find some sort of magazine where Bathory appeared, so I asked Quorthon why?



-We never did anything in Sweden. It wasn´t until the Jubileum albums we started to do some stuff, we though we should stay calm here because most people who are in this business are someone who you have a relation to in one way or another. You have to keep off in your own country so to speak.



The birth of Bathory 1983



When I ask Quorthon if he remembers the birth of Bathory, from the first rehearsal, I´m a bit astonished by this man´s memory...



-Oh, shit. Yes, I had to try to remember, because during ´95 I´ve been trying to sit in front of a computer to write a sort of a 500 page Bathory book with all the lyrics and lots of pictures from the studio and so on, almost day by day during these, what is it, 13 years? It was pretty fun, I dug out all my old diaries, which goes back to our first rehearsal. Unfortunately I never wrote down the names on all the guys who was in the band during all these years, because some of them only stayed for 4-5 days when I wasn´t particularly interested in the group, for the first album that is.



But how it all started. I had been playing in a lot of oi-punk bands, sort of like Exploited and that stuff, then moved more and more towards Motörhead. There was no metal in Sweden in those days, the only metal that existed was Saxon and Iron Maiden.



So I advertised in a music magazine where I wanted a drummer who could play double bass drums, fast, fast, fast, and I wanted it to be violent. So I met two guys at the end of February or in the beginning of March sometime. So March the 3rd in ´83 we went into the rehearsal place for the first time at Sigtunagatan by S:t Eriksplan in Stockholm. We had a place about 20x20 square meters, below ground, so we could play during the evenings too sometimes.



We stayed there until August-September something. The two guys I hung out with that first year, the only reason I did that was because one of them, or both, had very rich parents, so we never had any troubles with rehearsal place, loads of amplifiers or things like that. The only thing I had back then was a Japanese copy of a Gibson.



They grew up listening to Whitesnake and Iron Maiden and wanted to play those types of songs, and I tried, but I grew up listening to Black Sabbath and Motörhead, so it turned out a bit odd. Particulary because the bass player couldn´t play the bass, he just used the e-string, so he didn´t change strings at all during that year. The drummer played only to impress on girls and get free beer. You noticed pretty fast that it wouldn´t work. But there are some songs from that first year recorded on a cassette, two of them are out on these two Jubileum albums, "You Don´t Move Me" and "Die In Fire", one song on each album. …that´s what we sounded like in those days, a bit Motörhead-influenced before we went for the underground things.



"Scandinavian Metal Attack" 1984



Scandianavian Metal Attack is an album that I and probably a lot of other people too would like to get their hands on, but as for now I guess I have to be satisfied with the answer to how come Bathory appeared on it at all.



-In those days, late seventies, early eighties, there was something called adapted course of studies, for troublemakers like me. A couple of days a week you could quit earlier and do something else. I wanted to work with music but there wasn't one company or a studio that wanted to pick up a brat from senior level who failed all subjects but English, Music and Drawing. But I got in touch with a company called Tyfon Grammofon. At it I did anything from making coffee, photocopying, listen to cassettes, sorting books and things like that. Then I heard that they were recording a metal album, and back then there were no hard rock bands on record except for Europe. Wow I thought, I have got to be on this one. So I skipped classes at days and on the evenings I went there and was allowed to be in the studio. Then there was a Finnish band I think, that couldn´t make it, something about military services or something like that. So that band disappeared. They said, damn, we have to find another great band, and I said I had a band... so two days later we brought along our instruments.



Did they know what kind of music you played?



-No, nothing, they didn´t even know our name... well, we didn´t either. So we went in there and did "Return", only half as fast as when it ended up on album later, with doubles.



There were no doubles in Sweden in those days, and we had one meter long hair, black leather jackets, and everybody had black hair except for the bass player who had short curly hair and looked like shit. Anyway, they thought it sounded great so we were allowed to record one more song. Then it came out on record. The funny thing is that we were the only band who received mail, all the other bands were like "Oh yeah, we´re big guys!", and then we found out that the same music we did existed in Europe, in the underground movement.



So you had no idea about the underground that existed in those days?



-The only music magazine in Sweden in those days was Okej and what did they have? Carola (Swedish pop singer... /Twilight) on one page and Mötley Crüe on the other.



We had no idea there were so many bands. It was us, Sodom and Celtic Frost, previously Hellhammer. So I went to a record store were I knew a guy who worked and he said, here´s a band who sounds exactly like you, he had been with us in the rehearsal place, and he put on an album and it was Venom. I was like, what the fuck, are there other bands who play that kind of music too? So I realised that I might as well break up the band and form a new one, because I couldn´t do anything with those guys. I wanted to play more and more brutal while they wanted to play Iron Maiden-type of songs.



Bathory and Elizabeth Bathory



-I read a book called "Natural & Supernatural". There was chapter in it about vampyrism and Elizabeth Bathory who was the female version. I thought Dracula was so tedious, everybody knew about him then and he was too Hollywoodised. And if people really wanted to find out the story behind the name there was a great explanation and for people who had no idea about it it was a great neutral name. I have been interviewed about that for thirteen years and if you had named yourself Satan´s Penis you would have put a brand on yourself from the very beginning.



Then it had to be gothic and old English writing and this "th"-pronounciation that we don´t have in Sweden, that´s were we got our artist names. It was supposed to be as difficult as possible to pronounce, because it was a dig at Europe and those guys who didn´t use their real names. We decided to do the same. But in the beginning we called ourselves anything from Satan to Natas, Nosferatu and Mephisto... there was another band already named Mefisto, you know.

Which by the way were big fans of Bathory, Quorthon informs me.



But they never continued, did they?



-No, Sandro was sick I think, he had cancer since 1985 I believe. I remember, those guys came and did an interview with me on a little dirty tape recorder in 1985, so they have been around quite a long time... they were pretty interested in us, that was the first time you noticed that you influenced people around you.



But other than that you were quite alone?



-Yes, there was no way to communicate with other bands. We didn´t know what happened in for example Malmö or Göteborg or other places. So when we invited fellow musicians who played in other bands, for example A.T.C., if you remember them, and what were they called "Epicus Domicus" or something like that (Candlemass, huh? -Ed.), we were great friends anyway. And when they came to our rehearsal place and listened to a couple of our songs they just shook their heads and said you´ll never get the chance to do anything with that, you won´t get any gigs or so... and well, they were right, but anyway.



No gigs



So you did no gigs?



-We did, we played in Alvik a couple of times and in Nockeby, by Smedslätten, at a cinema.



It was a small gig, right?



-God yes, a hundred people at the most, and there were at least thirty other bands. Everybody were drunk and everybody were friends and everybody swapped girlfriends backstage. It was just for fun and it probably sounded like shit too.



There were no places in Stockholm. Hardrock Café emerged after a while, but it wasn´t a place like that. There was Studion too, and they did this black back-combed hair thing sometimes. But honestly, we couldn´t play well enough and we didn´t have enough material. Besides, we had no idea how we wanted to look or perform. And once a lot of clubs emerged we had already been playing for a couple of years and by that time our music had developed so much it was completely impossible to do it on stage. Personally, I get no kick at all going to a concert, I just sort of stand at the end of the hall with my arms crossed watching the lights and things like that.



So in other words, you wanted more of a show, not just standing there straight up and down?



-No, that´s the most honest thing to do, rather than go up on stage wearing jeans and t-shirt.

I am part of the generation who grew up with KISS, which you discovered... when was it, January ´75 sometime, and back then there weren´t a lot of people in Europe who had heard about them. But that´s the way it is, you have your dreams and say OK, let´s go up on stage, we´re going to have this and that many bombs... how much money do we have? Nothing! It was all dreams and then it´s very stupid to say in magazines that we´ll try to do a tour next year. People get tired of hearing it after a while.



The Bathory cover



You´ve heard different versions about the first album cover, I asked Quorthon about the right one.



-It was a week at the most before the cover was due to be printed, and I had no idea how it worked with covers, I thought the record company would take care of that. But they said we had to make a group photo, a nice cover, front and back, and print lyrics and stuff like that. We knew nothing about that, image and things, as I said we knew nothing at all.



Then in a book I had there was this Baphomet pentagram, but Venom had already done that on their first album, so I thought why not copy this and draw a pair of hornes to make it look a bit different. So I took a picture from a horror magazine or something like that, and put these two pictures together, very amateurish, with glue. Then we photographed it... it looked like shit. I intended to print it in gold, because gold has a special meaning when you are into black magic, but it was as expensive to print as five other colours, so it had to be done in yellow instead... and when I saw it I almost threw up, but that´s the way it is. I think there are only 900 copies of it, it´s a goddamn collector´s item today, and I don´t even have one myself, I think I have the jubileum albums and Octagon at home, you never collect that stuff.



You didn´t realise what kind of a cult band you would become either...



-We didn´t realise that until four years ago, when we did the jubileum stuff, about the time for "Twilight...". Then we realised that maybe there are others who like this.



And that you would mean the same to bands today as Motörhead did to you?



-Yes, the disadvantage, or the difference is that Motörhead did a lot of tours and never changed style, but there aren´t as much go in them today, so I think they should have quit sometime in the mid-eighties.



Labelled "Grandfather of Rock"



What do you think about being labelled "Grandfather of Rock"?



-Well, if you are in the centre of it or have connections everywhere and have seen everything from the inside you look at it from that point of view. I think I have met fans when I did these in-stores, signing albums and so on, and people who approached me couldn´t even talk. They were just standing there looking at me, then you realise that these people know nothing about the music business, that it´s just a couple of guys who are in the studio and have fun for a week or two.



It must have been a big fucking difference between the recording of the first Bathory album and today...



-Incredible differences! Today when a band enters the studio they might come straight from the rehearsal place, having existed for only six months. They are skilled musicians who can play doubles and solos three or four times faster than what we could when we started. We had no models, we had to teach ourselves. But today the musicians are grown up with this, they have this music in their backbone. So with a load of songs they enter the studio, which have all the latest techniques, most studios have it because of the competition, and it´s usually digital technique for 24 or 48 channels, it´s microphones, soundproof rooms and the lot, while we were in a garage.



Album numbers three to five are recorded in a garage with technical equipment from ´69. The mixing table had 14 channels, but since that mixing table had no effects such as stereo, choro and echo and things like that, we had to use channels on the table for effects, sort of like The Beatles did in the ´60s. Sometimes we only had 10 channels to record our instruments on. It´s enough if you are only three guys. There are people who get great sound with a 4-channel porta.



But we had no equipment... I had a crap guitar, a tiny Yamaha amplifier the size of a computer screen, and the drums we used were so poor we had to use a, not even second generation, drum machine to get a good sound. And we recorded it in 26 hours I think, including soundcheck, recording and mix. I think it cost us 2000 SKR, untaxed, so these albums have paid themselves many times.



A sound of their own



In other words, Bathory would have sounded completely different if you had had the same opportunities as today...



-Yes, oh yes. If you listen to albums like Under The Sign..." and "The Return" we use ten second reverb on a lot for example. No bands do that because everything becomes one big mess. The reason we did it is because we recorded in a garage with dirty instruments, crap table and so on, it was so cheap and bad, we had to cover all clips and things like that with a lot of echoes.



Then a lot of bands picked up on that because they thought it would sound like hell, you know deep pits and so on.



A temporary solution became a sound of our own.



Did you ever think you would sell the amount of albums you have?



-Never, never! It´s like this, when we did the two first songs for Scandinavian Metal Attack in January ´84, it was like wow, we´ve been in a studio... now we can die. Then when all these fan letters began to rush in from Europe and the U.S.A. when this album had been released I realised that the people who owned this company wanted us to make an album. But unfortunately the band had broken up just a month after we had been in the studio. Because I wanted to play more violent, more technical and more brutal, so there was no band. I said OK, I have two friends who can help me out if I enter the studio, so I sat down and wrote 10-12 songs. Then we went into the studio for 36 hours and thought that´s it, now you have done something, but then this album became cult and Kerrang started to write about us. So we did LP no 2, and that was "The Return", and that was the first time we thought wow, this is "The big one..." Unfortunately we were far too deep into these occult and dark things.



Were you really into it or was it just a cool thing?



-It´s like the punk wave. When you see an aunt who´s 63 years old with green hair, it´s not that cool anymore. You have to find out new ways to punch the society and the establishment, so you have to do something political or something else that really upset people, and this was something that was completely unknown. I mean, Black Sabbath sell just because of their name although they never said anything about Satanism, and they get lots of free publicity in magazines.

So I can not say we were into it 100 %, but we were interested. And it sort of was our thing.

It´s like I write in the booklet which comes with "Blood On Ice", that when you come straight from school and are 15-16 years old you have no experience of drinking scotch, and girls and so on.



But today it´s different...



-Yes, it´s different today. When you are approaching thirty years of age you have that experience, you have done everything. You had fun on the toilets on a Jumbo Jet when you went to the U.S.A. to do some things, appear on TV in California with a 14 million audience... you sort of get satisfied and go back to the social issues, like Octagon for example.



The fixer in the band



Seems like you were the fixer in the band.



-It just happened that way because you had new members all the time. It´s very hard, if not impossible, for a new guy to take over or become equal.

I don´t know if it´s luck or bad luck, but I never met anyone who was capable enough to write songs, it just happened that I wrote all the songs.



Occultism, magic, Satanism and aesir belief



Of course I wonder if Quorthon are interested in magic today.



-No, I write about that in the booklet which comes with "Blood On Ice", that I one day came to the turning point.



The reason we picked up on that in the first place was that it was supposed to be exciting, disgusting and full of contradictions so that people would be taken aback and feel ugh, what is this?



But when you try to form an opinion from an academic point of view on what you are really doing, and you read more and more stuff like the bible, to evaluate different opinions, I came to the conclusion that this whole Satan thing, Satan as a person and Satanism itself, is a product of Christianity. Something Christianity created to scare people, and old religions always become bad religions in a wide spectra where Christianity can pass by.



If Christianity hadn´t had the sword in one hand and the crucifix in the other it would never have had the power it has today. It wasn´t thanks to Christianity that man went to the moon and said prayers in 1969, but because of technical advance, because of the Western world and that stuff.



And all these Satanist articles...



-Yes, it would have been pretty unnecessary to do yet another album shouting about it, because I tried to go further back in history, before Christianity, and then you end up in the Viking age. Not because you are a Nazi or racist like things are today, but because you wanted to be on another cultural level and with other values, when man and woman where equal and society as a whole was better.



Christianity is not what should be closest to the hearts of us North people.



-No, it´s more a hymn to the mid East religion, and the bible is a saga of the Jewish liberation which eventually developed, but it has been censored and rewritten many times.



Because the Christian bible or the Christian writings that existed, let´s say a thousand years ago when the Vikings still believed in the Aesir gods, it´s not the same bible you read today, and the bible five years ago is censored compared to the one we read today. There are pieces that are taken away all the time. It´s the same thing with the hymn book so that it wouldn´t upset anyone or be misinterpreted. So Christianity today are just christenings, weddings and funerals, nothing more than that.



But there are still Christian fundamentalists and Satanism still scares people...



-Yes. But those who burn down churches and do this and that in Satan´s name, what they are doing is that they are doing Christianity a favour. Like when Hitler during the war, when he broke down the Jews, it´s the worst thing that could have happened to them from their point of view, and Christianity. But those who burn down churches do it as some sort of symbolical act of resistance, because they are so into this thing. But it won´t help a thing. Burning down a church is like burning down any fucking house... OK, god lives there, it´s god´s house, but there´s no use in it.



I personally think you can look upon god and the devil as different kinds of principles within us...



-Yes, that´s something incredibly abstract that we interpret and put values in. Then we try to shout at each other because we have different opinions on what´s on the other side of the moon, and when we find out that there´s nothing more than empty space, vacuum and other planets there. Christianity tries to lead us into a certain attitude towards life, death and life after death in their own way, to survive.



"Hammerheart", "Blood On Ice"



A record that touches me completely and makes me a bit sad is Hammerheart.



-Like me, I get depressed just hearing about "Twilight Of The Gods", because at that time we were all depressed, completely depressed.



With Hammerheart we had a very good feeling because we had been rehearsing the whole summer and had found a really good beat, a really good sound. Maybe you know we were doing a theme-album?



Yes, "Blood On Ice".



-Exactly, it will be released in three months.



So it is the same album?



-No, we had the idea back then, I tell the story about Blood On Ice and our development in this booklet which comes with the CD that will be released soon. So to make a long story short...



When we had decided to make this Viking thing we didn´t know if it would be very serious or if we should just play around, like Manowar. So we started out very serious, with Blood On Ice, and then it developed into a saga, very Conan-influenced, because we thought it would be easier for the Americans to accept than if we had done than. If it had been very Yggdrasil-based, which no one wants or has the energy to look into. Being such a narrow band to start with, it would maybe be to our disadvantage if we specialised too much. So it was a compromise, and that is what became Hammerheart. So it is a lot of Viking stuff, but it´s not a theme-album and the songs are not connected.



"Under The Sign Of The Black Mark"



"Under The Sign..." seems to be the album that the Bathory worshippers look upon as the best.



-There isn´t one album I hate as much as "Under The Sign...". There isn´t one second in those songs I like. The sound stinks, I sing like a crow, play solos like a pig and nothing on that album is good, absolutely nothing!



Isn´t there a little story behind the album cover?



-Yes, there´s a very funny story behind it. I called up the former Swedish bodybuilding champion and asked if he wanted to be on it. What we had in mind to do was to have a gigantic sacrificial stone, sort of like Stonehenge, and a lot of naked girls who would be sitting around it. Light would come from above, and he would have slained an angel and would have the heart in one hand, the axe in the other and wear the Bathory mask. We couldn´t do this the way I had in mind because the girls I got hold of, girlfriends of friends of mine, when they realised that this would end up on an album cover and be there forever, they backed out of it. So I tried to get hold of stones by calling the material store of the Swedish national television and from them got the advice to contact the opera. I did so and he said sure we have stuff but we use it in Carmen right now. This is many years ago, when was this album released, ´86 right? So I called them and asked if I could rent or borrow some stuff. But as I said it was impossible because they were using all of it at that moment, but I was welcome to come and take a look at it. So I went there and saw this big thing, you can only see one third of it on the album cover and it is just as much left of it upwards and to the right and to the left. So I said I want this, the whole set. So he said hey, it´s insured for about 2,5 million SKR and was made in France at the end of the 19th century.



It looked very cheap when you watched it from the side, it´s just painted flat carton pieces. But I gave him a couple of thousand. Then I called that bodybuilder and managed to get four girls and one photographer over there. He put on the Bathory mask and ran up the stairs between two acts, while the curtain is down, the whole opera is packed with dress suit-dudes, and we have about 30 seconds to take ten pictures. The stair he was standing on was designed for a little opera singer, maybe weighing 50 kilos, and he´s weighing about 125 kilos. So while he´s standing there the whole thing was almost collapsing. But we got a great picture.



"Nocturnal Obeisance"



"Under The Sign..." had another title in the beginning, right?



-It was going to be called "Nocturnal Obeisance".



But it was changed because the girls disappeared?



-Exactly. "Nocturnal Obeisance" comes from the English mythology. The four daughters of the Wind; North, South, East and West. They sell themselves to the darkness causing eternal night on Earth, disturbing all balance. The goat would symbolise the evil one, or the darkness, and illustrate the evil side. But no one would understand it anyway.



We had no album contract when we did the first album, so I made up a label called Black Mark, you know this devil sign you make with your fingers, so we thought what the hell, let´s just call it "Under The Sign Of the Black Mark".



That a company with the same name was formed is another story. They bought the name from me.



"Blood Fire Death"



Has "Blood Fire Death" got anything to do with "Blood on Ice"?



-No. We were going to give the album a name, something with ice or blood because we were really into that Viking thing, but not completely. We still had some dark songs, "The Golden Walls Of Heaven" for example, and "For All Those Who Died", was on it too...



But in those days we were on Music For Nations and they had a band called Onslaught. So when I was there in October of ´87 to do an interview I found out that their album was going to be called "Blood Upon The Ice", and would be released a month later, so we had to change the title. Their album had a completely different title when it was released but that´s another story.



But it was called "Blood Fire Death" and I got the title from an adventure in "The Savage Sword Of Conan".



So you read a lot of Conan?



-Yes, I guess so. When I was a teenager a friend of mine, his father had a shop that had Conan magazines among others. It was almost impossible to find it in Sweden in the ´70´s. It´s great that it still holds true.



The Hammerheart video



A lot of people have probably heard about it but not many have seen it. I ask Quorthon to tell the tragic story.



-Yes, we did a video for Hammerheart, back then people had been nagging us for years to record a video and I said, it´s no use, it costs too much and no one will play it anyway - back then hardly any of our songs were shorter than eight minutes. But they made got us to do a video... on which I wasted 25000 SKR of my own money to rent armour, horses, girls who would be in the video, clothes, build a Viking village and so on. We poured 50 litres of gasoline into a lake by a big cave and ran around in lots of caves...



Where were you?



-Everywhere. All over Stockholm, Lidingö, Birka, Ekerö, everywhere. I think we had 14 hours of film when we were finished. The problem was that I was going out on a two month promotion tour ten days later to do interviews in practically every magazine there is, and radio, TV in England, Super Channel, MTV, the lot.



So the video had to be finished. We gave all the material to the guy who had filmed everything. He promised he would make a 