First of all: how are you doing today?
I’m fine. I haven’t done much today. I’ve only seen this street [the street of the venue] of one of the biggest cities of America but, it’s ok.

You guys are touring with Watain and Tribulation [October 2013 – North America]. Last year you were also here with Watain plus The Devil’s Blood and Behemoth. I was fortunate enough to catch both tours and I have the impression that this one is a bit more “intimate” than the last one. Would you agree?
On the last tour, all of us were opening acts in a way and now we are sort of celebrating the release of Watain’s album, as well as ours. So, it feels a bit more like a celebration we’ve been doing personally between the bands for a long time, so it feels special. And it is more intimate because these are smaller places [venues]. All of the crew are good friends as well, but we still miss The Devil’s Blood.

You guys just released a new album, Watain released a new album and both of you are touring here. You are starting the tours in the US. Why?
I’m not sure why but it felt like … I think we have a special sort of crowd here. We think we really planted a seed here the last time and it felt good to return. I think it was just that we had the opportunity to do it now, together with Watain, and we took that chance because it was too good to just say no to. We would’ve never said no to it.

You have posted on your Facebook page this announcement that you would need some help from your fans to continue the tour. You asked for this certain amount of money and you ended up collecting a lot more than asked. How do you feel about this?
I don’t know anything about it actually. I’m not too informed about it. Yeah… I mean, we basically can’t tour so sometimes you need to find ways to get by, I guess. But, I know too little to talk about it. Basically our managemen

t is trying to help us.

You guys just released a new album, “Sister”. First of all: why this title? Does it mean something special?
Humm…came very intuitively when we were making that song and that word just sort of stuck with everybody in a strange way. Felt [like a] very special and intricate title and it has very strong associations with everybody. And also leads to a lot of things, new revelations all of the time of what that name can mean. There was something urgent about that word that just stuck with us that we felt appropriate at the time.

This album has been very, very, VERY well reviewed so far. Being your third full-length album, did you expect anything different than this reaction?
I’m not sure if we thought too much on those terms, of what the reactions would be. But for us it felt very natural that it was the strongest piece of music we have ever made. It felt like we’ve finally found our “tone” or our way of doing things. Felt very natural and logical to us.

Yeah, but I’m not surprised either that people like it but there are people that don’t get it as well, which is a good thing too… a balance of strong reactions. Whether they are bad or not, they are strong reactions.

Talking about your music: always, in every review, in anything done about you, everybody has to mention Mercyful Fate. What do you think about that?
Well… I think it is an easy reference, I guess, for playing hard rock music. And you have this sort of aesthetics that we do. It’s kind of easy to pin point it as something in the same vein as Mercyful Fate or whatever. I’ve always felt that if you listen more closely to it, you actually realize that it comes from other places. Those sorts of aesthetics are older than our grandparent’s grandparents, if you understand what I mean.

If you listen to the first album, obviously there are some Mercyful Fate influences but there were also other

bands to us that were equally or bigger influences like early Metallica and stuff like that. I understand that reference… sure. But if you listen to “Sister” I’m not sure you are going to find much traces of that [anymore]. I don’t at least.

So, is this something that bothers you in any way? That people keep talking about that all the time?
Yeah. It’s not about the Mercyful Fate [thing]. It’s this constant thing about, in order to get foothold, you have to put things in a cultural context, in order to grasp it.

There was an attitude to music that sort of disappeared with the 90’s or whatever, where it was just music and you didn’t think too much about it. I guess that comes with underground culture, where things get very trapped in corners. You need to have an idea about what things are in order to understand it.

I just think people should listen to it very open mindedly and ask themselves what that music can do to them.

So, after this tour, what are the plans for the rest of the year and 2014?
Tour Europe, as much as possible. Hopefully come back here again… I would hope… at some point. Just try to tour as much as possible. Having our own headlining tour is something we’ve been thinking about a lot, which will probably happen eventually, in Europe.

In Europe… so here, no plans for that yet?
Here would be interesting too. I mean, I wouldn’t mind playing really small clubs, sleeping on floors and driving a van, which, if we were headlining it would probably be that sort of thing. But, yeah… we will just play as much as possible. We are just starting so we feel like we have to go on.

Last question: do you have any messages for the Spirit of Metal readers?
Listen very closely to “Sister”. We have a lot of interesting things to talk about with all the people out there, urgent things in their hearts.