STORRSSON’s Celtic Legends Volume 1 caught me unawares – an epic metal monument from my own land, striding through the mire of online media with seemingly no fanfare. Deftly crafted, richly layered, it ushered me in at once, and I was surprised to discover that the project is the work of just one man – its namesake Alex Storrsson. Soon afterwards I learned we were (briefly) residents of the same town, and over a few beers we found common musical ground ranging from MANILLA ROAD to SUMMONING. But here is Alex himself to guide us through the mystical world of STORRSSON. So fill your glass and press play on this unique album, as we embark upon a Celtic legend...
Greetings Alex, and welcome to Cimmerian Shadows. Please kick us off with an overview of how and why STORRSSON came into being, and what your goals were with this project, distinct from your previous band HUNDRED.
Greetings, and thanks for the welcome!
Storrsson was born out of a desire to do my own music my own way - I'd been working with Hundred for six or seven years by that point, and had a lot of material left over that I wanted to finish up and put out on its own. I also wanted to explore more styles than would fit Hundred, since Hundred was very much a folk/prog/heavy metal project, and I had a lot of leanings towards more extreme styles. So far all Storrsson material fits reasonably well with Hundred, but there's a lot in the pipeline that is closer to Bathory, Summoning, some parts of Graveland and so on. Overall I want to produce music in all of the genres of metal, albeit with my own take - no cookie cutter stuff! It will always have the "Storrsson feel", which you can hear in Hundred, but will branch out in terms of style, technique, thematic content and so on.
The Celtic Legends Volume 1 album is an impressive personal feat in that you not only performed the whole thing, but also recorded it all yourself. What is your musical background in terms of becoming accomplished at these many roles? Are you self-taught in each area? Please also shed some light on what your recording setup was like for this album, and anything you would like to do differently in the future.
I started recording music in '08, working mostly on black metal projects. It took a long while to get acquainted with the recording process, but I gradually taught myself how to get the kinds of sounds that I wanted (though it was still very "raw", as black metal requires). Originally I started with a drum machine, but I got a kit in late '09 since I wanted to get a more organic sound. Recording drums is a whole other world - much more complicated than guitars and vocals! It took a while to get that up to scratch, but it was worth it. I branched out into heavy/power/doom metal in '10/'11, mostly recording demos for Hundred, which led to the development of the "layered" guitar sound, triple-guitar attack, and so on. I also had to refine the production, since the "anything goes" school of raw black metal doesn't quite work in a trad metal context. This led to the more washy, reverb-laden "forest" feeling you get on early Hundred releases.
The recording process for Celtic Legends was a bit of a mess, in all honesty, since I was moving around the country at the time and didn't have access to the same kinds of equipment that I'd had in the past. I used a Focusrite 2i2 to record through, a Blackstar HT-MT1 for the guitars, an AKG D5 for vocals, and had to resort to a drum machine again since I didn't have anywhere to set my kit up. The tracks were built up bit by bit over a year and a half, while I worked on some other projects at the same time. Specifically for this album and other Storrsson releases, I used cobalt strings, giving the guitars a thicker, heavier sound.
In the future I'd rather use a real kit, a proper amp, and a different microphone - to say this was a "budget album" would be an understatement! I'd also prefer recording onto analogue media, since I've got better sounds out of it in the past. But I'm satisfied with digital for now, since I can get it to sound more-or-less how I want it to sound.
From my own experience, pursuing a musical project which lacks a full line-up comes with pros and cons. More members can mean more potential songwriting ideas and of course the option to play live, but it can also make logistics difficult and potentially dilute the artistic vision. What would you say on the matter? Do you aspire to see STORRSSON become a fully fledged band in the future, or do you enjoy the autonomy of a solo project?
There are definitely pros and cons to the situation. Part of the fun of Hundred was coming up with songs that the other members would then "add their stamp" to - Adamo's solo style or Tom's drumming were essential parts of the Hundred sound. But there's also a lot of creative freedom in doing things on my own, since I don't have to restrict myself to the context of a band - hence a song like King of the Blade, which has upwards of 30 tracks playing at the same time (most of them guitars...). My background is in one-man black metal, so I'm quite comfortable working as a "solo artist". But it would also be good to work with other musicians, as you say, to come up with new ideas and get a live show on the road.
As for live playing, I'd definitely like to play Storrsson stuff live one day, but that will probably be well into the future - for one, half of the songs on Celtic Legends require at least five guitarists, which is not the easiest to accrue/teach the songs to, and to have everyone on the same level as well. For the choral parts, I'd need backing singers, and I could probably do with an extra bassist as well - it would be a big production if we did it, probably something that I'd reserve for a festival appearance or something where we can get a big enough stage, a wall of amps, lights/video display and so on. It's definitely on the cards, but there'll be a good few albums out before I even think of recruiting personnel!
The Celtic Legends album is subtitled ‘ Volume 1’ – presumably you have a thematic plan that extends into the future. Is there an overarching narrative? Please give us an overview of the themes present on each track, and how they slot into the wider work.
Track by track:
Cyflywiniad (Introduction) - this is the Bard, the soothsayer, prophesying in the darkness of crippled Albion: he foretells of a golden era to come, reigned over by princes of high calibre, when the oppression of foreign powers is swept from the land. The words are taken from "Armes Prydein Fawr", the Greater Prophecy of Britain, sung by Taliesin, one of the more famous Cumbric bards. I think it's a pertinent verse for our times, since we are all ruled over by "foreign" (international) powers that use commerce and "the magic of money" to control and oppress the people.
For God and Glory - extolling the virtue of the valiant warrior, his destiny to die on the field, and to enter into the ranks of the eternal, to fight again at the end of days. This is actually a reworking of the Valhalla myth, which is usually associated with Norse and Germanic sources. But if one looks both into Celtic mythology, and the archaeology of north Europe as a whole, it becomes clear that the distinction between "Germanic" and "Celtic" in these socio-religious contexts is more an 18th century invention than it was a living reality in ancient times. Many of these myths are shared, albeit with cultural/linguistic differences, and the prevailing image of the eternal warrior, who spends his death in a hallowed place before returning to fight again, is common to all "pre-civilised" Europeans.
Ages of Darkness - I spent a lot of time investigating Hindu and other Indian belief systems. There are a lot of links between the cultures of Europe and those of Asia. This song is about traveling to the East to regain the "Lost Wisdom" that was once present in European Paganism ("to the Sun we will ride at last/to reveal our past..."). The aim is to be able to rebuild after the inevitable fall of Babylon - the consumer society that has taken over the world in the past few centuries. The "Ages of Darkness" are those which we suffer through now, but every age of "darkness" must be followed by an age of "light"...
I Annwn (To Annwn) - this is an interlude, where we're going further into the "core" of the album. Annwn is the Celtic Otherworld, the land of those who are not currently incarnated (i.e. the Dead, the Gods, the Sidhe, and other spirits that interact with our world). It's also the world of myth, where the myths are eternally lived: the collective unconscious, the Dreamtime. This song sort of presents a boundary between the more "traditional metal" side of the record, which is slightly more rooted in the modern world, and the increasingly "mythological" side of the record, which delves deeper into the ancient world and the Celtic feeling.
King of the Blade - this is the Arthurian cycle, albeit a heavily redacted version of it. The classic story of the discovery of the King, his consolidation of the Kingdom, his wounding at the hands of <insert mythological device here>, the Grail Quest, the Recovery, and the final battle between the forces of light and darkness. Though good triumphs, the King is lost - so it's something of a lament, as much as a song of triumph (a very Celtic thing...). I based my version of this story on the oldest sources we have, which are predominantly Welsh and Breton, and omitted a lot of the later "Grail mythos" that sprang up in the early Medieval period (though I still have the Grail quest in there, which is told through the acoustic passage in the middle). So there's no Lancelot, and not necessarily a Gwynevere, but there is a Merlin, a Morrigan, and a Mordred. Mostly I was trying to get to the core of what Arthur represents, which is the "Once and Future King" ideal - basically the British version of the Christ idea.
A lot of my music uses music itself to explore the themes, rather than relying exclusively on lyrics - so the main melody line from Ages of Darkness gets a reprieve here, during the acoustic passage (the Grail Quest). The Wounding of Arthur represents a dark period in a golden age, so it immediately sprang up as a fitting reference to put in during this song. The main riff picks up again afterwards, renewed and reinvigorated, and we get the line "the Earth remembers brighter days" - a sign of things to come, as if the sacrifice of Arthur on the battlefield inspires the Earth itself to usher in an age of glory. This then leads onto the latter half of the album, which is firmly established in the "Golden Era" and the Otherworld, where the myths are made real and life revolves around a consistent natural harmony. The album is sort of like a spell in that regard, intending to draw the listener from the point of "contemporary thinking" through the transformative process of myth into the realm of magic and mystery, which is far more real in the long run than the day-to-day quibblings over politics and economics we call "news" and "history".
Ynys Prydein (the Isle of Britain) - this is, I think as the liner notes say, a love-song for Britain, which is where I was raised and where I've lived all my life. I think it's pretty standard that people love the land they come from, and have a particular relationship with that land that other people can maybe appreciate, but can't necessarily feel for themselves (though there are exceptions to this rule...). I think the way that Britons appreciate Britain is a particularly good example of this, as is the Irish love for Ireland: there's something about one's native landscapes and forests that trumps any other natural wonder in the world, no matter how splendid it might be. This whole song came out of the little riff at the beginning, which is a very fleeting, light-footed, almost whimsical thing, but builds into a rather deep-rooted and heartfelt exploration of the sonic texture of the British Isles. Listening back, the melodies are quite "hill-like", and people who've been here will know that the Celtic parts of the island are especially hilly - Wales, the Scottish Highlands, Cumbria, Devon and Cornwall. So this is an attempt at expressing a landscape, and a people's relationship with the landscape, through music.
Cath (Battle) - a bit of a throwaway one, thematically, this is just about the kind of combat that used to happen in the old days. Before the development of standing armies and hired militias, warfare was a hereditary pursuit - people were born and bred for martial function, and it showed in the kinds of warfare they engaged in. Fixed battles between armies were far less common than single combat between heroes, and a lot of the myths and legends of Britain and Ireland paint this picture of an honourable world where causes are championed by individuals of high worth - the origin of the Knightly Tournaments and the "Chivalric Ideal". There are also many instances where single warriors fight against literal hordes of enemies, and come out victorious - Cu Chullain and Lugh of the Long Arm come to mind. This song again uses music to express the theme, while the lyrics tend to just give the outer context, as war cries punctuate the clamour of battle. The crescendo of solos at the end are intended to represent a duel, with the parrying/riposting of techniques and melodic elements mirroring swordplay and shieldwork. Right near the end, a replying guitar slips into obscure noise, which always gave me the image of a warrior slipping in the rain before being cut down by his adversary. The main riff comes back in again, to suggest "battle is eternal".
Rites of the Wolf - this is a conflation of numerous myths, basically presenting a "Beowulf" story in a Celtic context. A "Dane" (not a Dane from Denmark, but a member of the obscure race of the Tuatha De Danann) arrives at a town that is troubled by some malicious entity from the wilds, and he sets out with his compatriots to hunt it down. A Druid gives him clues and encouragement on his journey, until he descends into the depths of the monster's lair to fight it to the death. It's not certain whether or not the Dane survives... But his story definitely does, since we can hear it now.
Mabinogi I.i: Pwyll Pendefig Dyfed (Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed) - this is the first part of the first book of the Mabinogi, the Welsh mythological cycle. In this story, Pwyll, the Prince of Dyfed (south west Wales) comes upon the hunting hounds of Arawn, the King of Annwn, that have taken down a white deer (a magical creature of great worth). Pwyll sets his own dogs on the catch, seeing no hunter in the vicinity. Arawn arrives shortly, and berates Pwyll for having claimed another's catch. Pwyll apologises, and asks how he might repay Arawn for the slight. Arawn says that in his country, he is beset by a warrior that he cannot kill: Grawl, who cannot fail to heal from any wound, having been struck twice. Arawn promises Pwyll his forgiveness if Pwyll will trade places with him, taking on the affairs of his country for a year, at the end of which he will face Grawl in single combat, and must slay him in a single stroke. In return, Arawn will govern Pwyll's Kingdom in his absence, and see that all is well. Pwyll accepts the deal, and Arawn uses his magic to transform each into the other, such that Pwyll appears as Arawn, Arawn as Pwyll. Arawn takes Pwyll through a magical boundary that separates Dyfed from Annwn, the Otherworld, before departing to Pwyll's own Kingdom to rule there. Pwyll discovers that Annwn is the finest and most splendid country in the universe, with good people, good food, good animals, and so on. Despite being offered Arawn's wife to sleep with, Pwyll refuses wordlessly, maintaining everyone's honour. In time, the day of combat arrives, and Pwyll faces Grawl on the field: in one strike he mortally wounds his opponent, and though Grawl requests another blow to finish him off, Pwyll refuses, knowing that the next wound would see Grawl healed and the year wasted. Grawl is carried off by his retainers to die in his own lands, and Pwyll meets with Arawn, who is glad of his success and of the good rule he has kept over Annwn during the year. Pwyll returns to Dyfed, and is impressed to see how well Arawn has managed his Kingdom: an advisor says of the year, that never have they been ruled so well, so fortunately, and with such great gifts from the King (who in truth was Arawn in disguise). Pwyll tells the truth about the situation, and promises to maintain the level of rulership that Arawn exercised over the Kingdom.
This is only a bare smattering of Celtic mythology, of course - the subject is far too broad to cover in one album's worth of material, hence the subtitle "Part 1". There will definitely be future installments in this series, and there will be other series devoted to Norse mythology, English folklore, and some lesser known aspects of our prehistory in Europe.
Beyond the themes of the album, what impact (if any) has the ritual landscape of Britain had on you, and does STORRSSON aim to comment on this in any way?
Well I'll give a little personal anecdote here, and I hope your readers will forgive a bit of "UPE" (unverifiable personal experience).
Right before I started recording the album, I visited one of the ancient burial mounds near where I was living at the time, in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire. There are a lot of these mounds in the area - the entire ridge of the Cotswolds, facing the Severn and the Severn estuary, is littered with them, many of them over 4,000 years old. It's one of the more identifiable ritual landscapes of Britain, alongside e.g. Avebury and Stonehenge (albeit less well known). In fact, I'd randomly found myself living right in the centre of one of the largest and most diverse collections of ancient sites in the country…
The particular mound I visited is almost completely undisturbed, sitting where it has done for thousands of years. I'd been there before, but never for long, and only as a "tourist". I'll skip the initial details and simply say that I ended up lying down in the mound, as people of old supposedly did, and entered into a peculiar state, where I can only say there was some kind of "communication" going on. I'll leave that at that. There was definitely the sense of a deep ancestral connection, of being "received [back] into the family". Far from the sense of a stony church or some other kind of grim, stern setting, it actually felt like I'd stepped into my Grandmother's tea room, and was sitting down for a chat and a bit of chocolate. Very warm, very relaxing, very homely - only it was dark, damp, and there were spiders everywhere. But otherwise, incredibly comfortable, very uplifting, and very inspiring. My other half was with me, and she had a similar experience, completely independently of me - we confirmed after we'd left that we'd had the same experience, where some kind of "spirit" (for want of a better word) had been interested in helping us with various psycho-physiological issues. That was the point at which I decided that I was going to do a Celtic album, and the record came about from then on.
I've visited a lot of the old sites in Britain, some of them basically unknown today. A lot of them are quite genuine holy sites: there's a marked atmosphere in those places, much like when one enters certain churches or cathedrals. Equally, some of the sites that are claimed to be ancient have no such atmosphere at all. Whether that's through decades of tourism, or because these places are actually more recent constructions, I can't say, but it's surprising the degree to which an unknown site can overshadow a perfectly well known site, in terms of its effect on the psyche. The ritual landscape of Britain certainly has an effect on Storrsson, in that it has an effect on me - whether Storrsson will comment on these structures in any way other than through the direct reference of having been inspired by their presence, I can't say! I can certainly see a song coming out of that, "In the Shadow of the Mounds"... Personally I’m wary of names like ‘ Volume 1’, as there’s perhaps a danger of cornering oneself or leaving things incomplete. Unfortunately this proved the case in your previous band HUNDRED, which came to an end before the ‘Forest Kingdom: Part 1’ release enjoyed a follow-up. But then again, if you have a wealth of ideas and a strong release plan, why not shoot for the stars!
Haha, it's funny that you should bring up Forest Kingdom - part 2 is pretty much written, and has been for a long time, as well as some tracks for what would be the follow up album to that. But for various reasons, we never got round to finishing it off and recording it as a five piece. There's a demo of half of part 2 floating around somewhere (everyone in Hundred has it, a few others here and there). If Hundred fans are interested, and if the band agrees, I'll put it up somewhere for people to listen. It's a bit of a shame, since I think it took the Hundred sound into a new world, somewhere in its own little realm of prog-folk-metal. But I'd never say no to a reunion with Hundred, pending it makes sense for everyone involved. That's part of why the band's not going at the moment, it's too much of a hack for me to get over to London to play with them. But David and Adamo are still playing together last I heard, and I hope that they get something recorded when they're ready - there's a lot of music in those guys that ought to come out.
As for Storrsson, it's something of a similar situation, in that part of Celtic Legends Vol. 2 is already written, as are large parts of other releases - so far there's at least two releases more than 50% done, and another coming up at about 40%. I don't spend much time not doing music, so there's always a lot of material going about! So far, Celtic Legends Vol. 2 is going to build on the last track of the first album: we're going to do an entire album devoted to the Mabinogi, the Welsh mythological cycle, starting with Pwyll Pendefig Dyfed (a reworked version of the same track on the first album), and going through some 11 or 12 songs, many of them pushing the 8-9 minute mark... It's a bit of a hell to organise, but the source material is all there, ready to have some music written for it. It might take a couple of years, probably longer, since it's a bit of a massive undertaking, but there'll be other Storrsson releases in the interim, in different styles.
I have to ask about your links with Adapt Records, who you worked with in HUNDRED and until recently with STORRSSON. Would you describe this as a ‘band-manager’ relationship, and how did you find the experience? Why did it end? Are there aspects of playing in heavy metal projects that you would rather delegate, and would look to do as much again?
ADAPT Metal Records was set up by Barrington Hatchet pretty much exclusively for Hundred - it was an offshoot of his work with Hatchet & Pike Promotions, which was the banner he used to arrange gigs under a few years back. Baz is a great guy, and was incredibly helpful with Hundred, both getting us our first real exposure, and drumming us into shape for gigs, recording and so on. He helped ferry gear and personnel to and from the shows, he basically arranged everything that was going down with the band. So yes, it was definitely a band-manager relationship as far as Hundred was concerned. We wouldn't be nearly as well known without Baz's involvement, and we probably wouldn't have got as much done, especially in the way of gigging.
When I started Storrsson up in '16, I talked to Baz to gauge his interest in doing something similar with this project, albeit perhaps a bit more on-the-level than Hundred, where he arguably went overboard arranging everything and pulled far more weight than he should have had to. Baz was happy to be part of the project, since he liked the material I was showing him right at the beginning (which is markedly different from what's come out so far as Storrsson - you'll see what I mean in the future). Come Summer of '17 when the Ages of Darkness single was ready to go out, I was very happy to put it out on ADAPT, since we'd had a good response to the Forest Kingdom EP a few years prior, and the Charge Into Glory single had just come out (as far as I can remember - both singles were done at the same time, more or less).
It was Summer of '18 that I started to reconsider the arrangement with ADAPT, for various reasons. The biggest one was that by then it had been 6 or 7 years since I'd last run my own stuff, and I actually really missed being the behind-the-scenes guy (I used to run a label/distro in '09/'10, but gave it up in part to focus on Hundred). I also noticed that my productivity was directly related to my engagement on that behind-the-scenes level, and that I pumped out way more music when I was directly involved in the business and marketing side of things. I find it motivating to have direct contact with fans and other bands/labels. So I put it forward to Baz that I was happy with the work that we'd done so far, that I was happy to have Celtic Legends out on ADAPT, but that I'd like to fly solo from then on - this was just after the album was released, say August 2018. Needless to say he wasn't particularly happy with it, so we had a back-and-forth for a while trying to sort out both the personal and professional sides. It's that difficult bit where someone's not just a business partner, but also a friend, and it can get a bit hard to tease those two things apart. But in the end it was quite an amicable split. I wouldn't be averse to working with Baz on something in the future - far from it - I just knew that I had to take Storrsson into my own hands at that point if I wanted to go in the direction I wanted to.
As for whether there are parts of playing in metal projects that I'd rather delegate - in the end, absolutely not. I think I might be a bit of a tyrant when it comes to these things, at least where my own projects are concerned. Maybe people should be wary if they want to work with me... If it's someone else's band, I'll play what they want me to play for as long as I enjoy it - no problems, no questions asked. But if it's my project, then I have a way I want to do things, and I'd rather not have to go through any level of management to get that done. It's easier for me in the long run for me to run my own label, do the music, get it pressed, and send it out by myself, than to delegate any of those responsibilities to someone else. But again, I might be a bit of a weird one on that front. I can definitely see that on paper it's easier to have people running around after you... ;)
Having said all that, I have received some rather interesting offers for distribution deals recently. That's something I can definitely get behind. If I want this project to get beyond a certain level, I'm probably going to have to outsource distribution. So long as executive decisions are all in my court, I'm ok with things like that. We'll see what the future holds on that front!
One aspect of Adapt Records activities which must have divided opinion is the format of your releases with them – I understand that they pressed your works on CD-R, which for many people has connotations of poor quality. Do you have any strong views or preferences regarding musical releases as physical artefacts, or are you just glad to reach listeners in whatever way is most expedient?
Personally I'd rather see everything pressed to analogue formats - I'd rather be recording to magnetic tape at that rate - but not everyone has a tape or record player, so I'm happy to settle with CDs, especially since the music is currently being recorded digitally. But yes, that was one of the things, albeit a minor one, about the split with ADAPT - chalk it up to me always being late in responding to anyone about anything, but Baz went ahead with a CD-R press before I'd confirmed that I wanted the CDs replicated, since we both knew there were people who were specifically asking for replicates. I've heard replicates and duplicates of the same CD before, and I couldn't notice any real difference (I had to be told that they were different - maybe I wasn't paying attention). But I definitely get if people want the superior, more reliable sound, and I would always tend towards quality over quantity or price considerations. New releases and re-presses of Storrsson material will always go out on CD, not CD-R. And I'm looking forward to getting some of this material out on vinyl in the future...
Fittingly for its name, there is a strong Celtic current to the melodies on Celtic Legends that transcends the tropes many superficially ‘pagan’ bands rely on. How do you go about channeling this feeling? Have you delved into Celtic music in other ways? While on this point, feel free to elaborate on other musical styles – metal or otherwise – that have informed your songwriting but are perhaps less apparent to the listener.
Maybe I've got to buck the trend here and be a bit disparaging of my fellow musicians - there's a lot of people who are into the "pagan" image and idea, but don't have the feeling. I think it's a LARPing thing, people who don't fit into this world in one way assume that they'll fit in another way; they then try to fit other ways of living into their own worldview, and present themselves as being "neo-pagan" or "Viking" or whatever the fad is. This goes as much for non-musicians as it does for musicians. Of course there are those who honestly and authentically channel this spirit as well, because they are "einherjar", so to speak - reborn warriors - but a lot of people seem more to be playing at pageantry than living their lives. For me, I have this music in my heart - I can't stop it, I hear this stuff in my head while I sleep. So I just put out what's already here in my blood. I've listened to a lot of "folk" music from the past 300 years, and it's equally banal and obnoxious compared to a lot of this pseudo-"pagan" stuff you get in the metal community - it's pop pap, lowest common denominator. Then I hear a song that was written 500 years ago, and there's some spark - the melodies are different, the moods are different. I gel with this darker, more real music, that's fuller for bearing the weight of experience. It sounds more like the land it's written in. My ancestors have soaked in this music for longer.
I think it's a process that some people go through, other people don't have to go through it - but there's a "paganisation" in my life, as much as there was an attempt from the outside world to Christianise my mindset and morality, even from the safety of self-proclaimed "secularism". Living in England we have a lot of "CoE" schools that, though nominally secular, teach Anglicanism as a worldview. A lot of British people grow up with this Anglican mindset, which lends itself to the "Imperial" mode, as I like to call it - good old Blightey, tea and crumpets and whatnot. Cricket on the lawn. Comfortable trifles for civilised citizens... Of course, "civilisation" is another word for "domestication", and some animals can't be domesticated - perhaps the wolves amongst us just shirk such things, and don't conform to that pressure, no matter how hard it might be placed on us. I know a number of such people, who will never bend to outside pressure if it is against their direct interest. Then there are those who don't wish to conform, but maybe aren't quite wolves - goats or deer, equally honourable animals in many ways. But a goat in wolf's clothing is still a goat, and won't bark or howl in the same way. Maybe that's a way to explain my answer to your question: lots of goats playing wolf music. And I'd appreciate it if they played goat music - I fucking love goat music - but as you say, much of their output becomes "superficial", relying on these tired clichés born out of Hollywood sensationalism and cookie cutter pastiches of our ancient culture. It's because they don't feel what they're singing about, but can only think it through - so it's become an image of an image, rather than the real thing.
Other music styles that inform my composition are maybe a bit surprising to some... Old school prog, '60s/early '70s stuff - mostly Yes, actually. Yes were an integral part of my development beyond black metal structures and riff styles. Anyone who hasn't discovered these gems yet, give Close to the Edge a listen - possibly one of the heaviest albums of the early '70s. I used to listen to a lot of "classic rock", often the darker stuff - Doors featured heavily at one point, though that probably doesn't come through as much in the music. Then there's video game soundtracks from the '90s, especially Secret of Mana, Terranigma, Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (otherwise known as "Mystic Quest Legend"). I quite like Chrono Trigger as well, and I'm a fan of PC soundtracks like Age of Wonders, Morrowind and Guild Wars. But a lot of the inspiration for my music isn't musical - I take inspiration from trees, landscapes, old stories, and a lot of it from my "internal world", whatever you want to call it - my vision of things that have come and will come to be. I think "spiritual work" is maybe the greatest font of inspiration, but then, there's nothing to say about that... Everyone has to make of what they have.
Your music features lots of guitar layers, and your previous band HUNDRED also utilised three guitarists in its lineup.What lies behind this approach? Does it hint at influences from other genres such as black metal? What bearing will this have on your ability to perform STORRSSON material live, do you think the songs would work with two guitars live or would something be lost? Or perhaps you intend for STORRSSON to remain a studio project only?
This is one of those things that doesn't seem to have an origin - I mean, with Hundred, it just made sense because we had two guitarists already, I could also play guitar, and I'd written the first little bit of "Twilight in the Forest Kingdom" with three guitars. I was just the vocalist at that point, but I picked up a guitar from then on. March of the Grand Host, Charge Into Glory, and The Riders are Coming also featured three guitars, so it was fixed from then on.
I don't think I've heard any other bands doing what I'm wanting to do with the guitar layering thing, except perhaps Queen (to an extent), who I didn't really listen all that much to until recently. Maybe Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits) plays with a lighter version of it, I'm not sure. And there are aspects of Manilla Road "Mark of the Beast" that come close to some of what I'm wanting to do, but by no means the full spread. I've had this thing about "guitar choirs" for a while now, since 2011 when I was working on a project called Baeldaeg - the aim was to create some kind of "solar metal", a logical counterpoint to black metal. Unfortunately all my recording equipment failed before I'd got three songs into the process. So I was left with a couple of more-or-less black metal tracks that nonetheless had these wonderful passages of multiple guitar work, and I think that kind of sat in the background for a while until Storrsson reared its head. I think the sonic texture of black metal definitely inspired this idea to a point, but I also want to refine that "wall of sound" effect, to bring a bit of melody into the chaos - so the guitar parts are all in harmony, often playing whole chords through the lead parts, giving it more of a sense of "symphony" I suppose.
As for live... I try to wrap my head around this every now and again. King of the Blade has more than 30 individual guitar tracks playing at certain points - there's no way I'm getting 30 guitarists on one stage! However, luckily, a lot of those tracks are doubled up, or are playing octaves - so there's three "rhythm" sections, and maybe four or five "lead" sections going over the top at most. I could probably do it with about five or six guitarists. But again, who's heard of a band with six guitarists??? Even three was a pain to sort out at smaller venues.
Of course, another solution is to write material that has fewer guitar tracks, without sacrificing that sense of expanse - some of the stuff I'm working on at the moment is in that vein, and could be comfortably played by three guitarists. At that point it'd be easier to take a show on the road, and while we'd have to omit maybe most of Celtic Legends (we could play Cath, Ages of Darkness and For God and Glory, all of which were originally written for three guitars), we'd still be able to bring some good material to the table.
The STORRSSON releases to date have featured a variety of old, pre-existing paintings as their cover art – presumably works outside copyright or used with permission. What pieces have you chosen to use so far, and why? Do you foresee this practice continuing, or would you consider commissioning bespoke cover art in the future?
Well spotted - yes, all of the cover art is copyright free! That's a mixture of cheapskatedness on my part and wanting to avoid some more "clichéd" art styles in metal albums, incl. overly digital looking art (which a lot of recent trad metal has suffered from, in my eyes) and overly sparse art in some black metal. So far I've used "Vercingetorix Throws Down His Arms At The Feet Of Julius Caesar" by Lionel Royer, "Harold's Last Stand" by Henry Payne, and "Ossian Playing His Harp" by François Gérard.
The first was for the Ages of Darkness single, since the overthrow of the Gauls by the Romans is surely one of the beginnings of our own particular "age of darkness" in northern Europe; the second was used for the Freedom We Claim single/EP, since Freedom We Claim is about the English taking back their sovereignty from "the powers that be" - which in my view go back to the Norman invasion, and the overthrow of locally elected English leaders and monarchs in the early Norman period (including the harrying of the north, the subsequent assaults on Wales and Ireland, etc.).
The Ossian piece is the cover of Celtic Legends Vol 1. Ossian was, depending on which myth you read, either a son or a reincarnation of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, a legendary Irish figure who was the leader of the Fianna, the wild warriors of the weald. Different versions of the story have different things happening, but the painting is reflecting Ossian as an old man playing his harp and singing the songs of Fionn, while the Tuatha De Danann - once ancestors, now Gods and Goddesses of Ireland - look on in melancholic contemplation of the tides that have befallen Ireland since their golden reigns on earth. I did a fair bit of photo manipulation for that cover, since the original painting is quite faded - I wanted the cover to be deeper and richer in hue, so I worked on the palette, increased the contrast, accentuated different patches of colour to give it more of a "mystical" feeling, and catch the eye more.
In the future, I'd definitely want to get more in the way of bespoke art. I've already talked about it with a few people. But of course, I would like to be able to pay someone for their time and work, and that requires capital, which requires sales - so I'm good with the old paintings for now, and a few other things here and there. So long as people buy the records, the art doesn't matter - yet. It's not all old paintings, either - I've got one little thing in the works, the cover of which is just a faded greyscale image of me. But that's more of a thrash/speed record, so the sleeve reflects the music.
What place does literature and poetry have in regard to your creative thinking? Are there any written works which have had a particularly formative influence on you or left their mark on your music?
I think the one set of written works that has had the deepest impact on me, overall, has been Conan the Barbarian. Simply because, many of the threads that I had collected from various literary avenues over the years were at once woven into a single character, a single world, a wealth of stories. Conan was something of a liberation for me, literarily, since it was true brutality expressed in words. Not some fake horror/gore nonsense, but a "realistic" portrayal of barbarian excellence in a dangerous world. Before that, I'd gone through some of the classics in fantasy - obviously Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Ursula Le Guin, Terry Pratchett (another miraculous author), Robert Jordan, Robin Hobb, quite a lot of the cream of the crop of 20th century fantasy. But Howard was, as I have already said, a revelation. Conan will stay with me till I die, no doubt. The film is pretty good too. (What's that? Destroyer? Never heard of it...)
Poetry is another matter. I actually find it hard to like most poetry, since - especially recently - a lot of it seems forced. I tend to gravitate towards those poets that "buck the trend" a little bit, whether it be the Graveyard poets (who were, at the very least, a little better than many others of the time), the Romantic poets of the following century, or someone like Shakespeare, many of whose works can hardly have been considered "standard" back in his day. Poetry for me is a very precise thing, and not something constructible - it has to flow from the heart, as they say. And with a language like English, that can be exceedingly difficult, crippled as we are by a millennium of nonsense foreign words (again, bloody Normans!). I do like a lot of ancient poetry, especially epic poetry - less for the meaning, more for the sound. People had an exceptional ear for sound in older times, so it's enjoyable to read these passages for their own merit without having to know what they mean. By far the best of these are Vedic and Gathic poems - some of the lines that come out of these are utterly sublime. I also like Old English poetry, for their sense of rhythm and alliteration.
As far as my creative thinking goes - my creative thinking isn't a very verbal thing, so I don't know how much literature informs it. I think literature maybe informs more my quest for inspiration - i.e. the degree to which I look for things, and what kinds of things I look into. Then if I get photos, video, music, or I can actually go to a place/see a thing, that tends to inform the creative process more. I think! I'm not entirely sure, I don't really look into it all that much. My subconscious is a mess of fantasy films, ancient mythology, and 2004 memes - somewhere in there there's a music factory, and it tends to eat forests more than it does texts or ideas. I think I'll have more inspiration (and energy) to write a song after a couple of hours in the woods than after a couple of hours reading literature.
You are now involved with DARK FOREST on bass – how did that come about? It seems like a great fit for what you’re doing in STORRSSON.
This is one of those weird stories - it was May Day last year (2018), and I'd just got back from a night of mead, mushrooms, and Morris dancing at May Hill in Gloucestershire (the oldest continued "religious" celebration in Britain, as far as I'm aware). I checked Facebook (yes, I actually checked communications back then), and the first thing I saw was a post from Dark Forest - "hello everyone, happy May Day; by the way, can anyone play bass for us?" I'm paraphrasing of course, but it was odd to see this post immediately after returning from a rather mental night out, during which a lot of other auspicious stuff had happened. So I sent along an email, explaining who I was, my history with Hundred, a couple of clips of my bass playing and so on, and got talking with Christian (Horton, guitar/main songwriter). Within a month or two it was all sorted. We got together for a rehearsal up in Dudley, went out for a pint and a prattle afterwards - it's worked out pretty well, I have to say! They're a mature bunch of guys, they all have a good musical sense, and the music and lyrics are more on point than any other band doing this kind of stuff. It's a pleasure to play with them!
As far as it works out with Storrsson, yes, it is a rather good fit! Christian and I have explored many of the same avenues when it comes to this land's history, though I think he may trump me on the folklore side, and I him on the mythology. We have our specialities! But I think between Storrsson and Dark Forest, we could probably cover the entirety of this land's history, both real and legendary. They're both projects which come out of a love for the land, its peoples and its traditions, so it stands to reason that there are some similarities. But I think we also have different targets in terms of what we're aiming for - maybe this is something difficult to get across in words, but Christian's music is much better rooted than mine, I tend towards flight and fancy a lot more. Well, for Dark Forest you want to hear what's going on - for Storrsson… Hopefully the wash of harmonic noise is enough!
That’s all from me – please add any closing remarks and leave us with some hints of what the future holds for STORRSSON!
Many thanks to you, oh mighty Shadows, for the great interview - definitely one of the best I've been part of. Much appreciated! And to your readers - many thanks for keeping the spirit of metal (and dark literature) alive! Mad hails to the Maniacs…
As for Storrsson… there is material in the works. The cogs are turning, the wheels are rolling - there may be something big on the horizon. We'll have to see. Oh, and if you're wise, you might look for things other than Storrsson on the horizon... very near, in fact...
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