Interview

ICS VORTEX

Jeudi 15 novembre 2012

How are you doing ?

ICS Vortex : Good, absolutely ! Feels good to be up in northern ice cold Norway and first gig in Norway ever for ICS Vortex

ICS Vortex

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. I'm looking forward to these concerts. It's gonna be good, getting excited.

© John Gallardo

Can we come back a bit on your musical background ? You formed Lamented Souls in 1991. What brought you to it ? Have you done anything else before ?

ICS Vortex : Before that, not much ! I played drums in a glam rock band called Penthouse Petz. The vocalist had the cutest ass. (laughter) We were something, for sure. I was fourteen-fifteen or something. They were all in their twenties so I felt really important. It was nice. Before that, it was not much.

You've been playing music for more than twenty years. How come you started your solo project only last year ?

ICS Vortex : That project has been in the back of my mind for many years. There are songs on the album that I wrote when I was eighteen or so. There's always songs that didn't fit in any other projects. With the Dimmu Borgir

Dimmu Borgir

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situation, all of a sudden I had a lot of time on my hands to do what I'd been wanting for a long time. The Storm Seeker album is the result.
And now there's Arcturus

Arcturus

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. I'm really happy that Arcturus

Arcturus

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is on its feet again as well. I just called Steinar the other day and he's writing four new songs now. I'm pretty excited about that stuff too. So we'll see that happens in 2013. I think it's gonna be a good year for music.

© John Gallardo

When you launched your solo project, did you have an actual band around you like nowadays ?

ICS Vortex : No, not really. It was me and Asgeir did the drums. When I asked him to join, all the material was already written but he was very good help. He did some producing. He was very good to help in the process of recording the album, even though the pre-production was pretty much done. He of course also added his flavour to the whole drumming thing and we're really happy with what he did. Musicians are never super happy about the sound but it turns out I like it, I can listen to it. I can't listen to the Sideshow Symphonies album but I can listen to this one. I don't need to be drunk to listen to it.

Are the live members gonna be composing music in the future ?

ICS Vortex : I don't think so. That's what I wanted. For the photo session I did, I had some friends in the band, but they had some problems, they didn't have time and such with all things colliding. I just like the situation I have now. I have a very good studio at home. It's very relaxing to be in total control. So it's just gonna be me, me, me for the whole thing.
I want to do something with Mustis as well but that's probably gonna be another project together.

Dimmu Borgir

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situation, you came back to Arcturus

Arcturus

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and Borknagar

Borknagar

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, bands you were a member of before. Why ?

ICS Vortex : With Borknagar

Borknagar

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, they just asked me for the session thing. We've been friends ever since we broke up. It was just time to do it I guess. I just tried out one song at start on the Universal album because that song (My Domain) had been laying about since I was in the band. I heard it and I really wanted to do vocals on it back then. Øystein remembered this so he called me and asked me if I wanted to do the vocals. So that's how it started and we just evolved a little from there. Now it is what it is. Hopefully there will be time to do some more gigs as well with Borknagar

Borknagar

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. Brutal Assault is coming up and probably a few more festivals in the summer 2013.

And what about Lamented Souls ? I read somewhere that it was coming back.

ICS Vortex : In 2010, that's the last time we said something about it. I talked to Einar, the drummer, just last week and we still want to do it. He just needs to do his tour with Virus first and I do this in December. So maybe in January we can start working on the pre-production for the drums. Everything is basically ready and we just need some lyrics and just some final tuning on some of the arranging. But everything is there. There's a lot of old good material that needs to be released, in our opinion anyway. So it will be done but there's all these bands and Lamented Souls usually gets tucked away in the back since there's no record deal. There's no pressure for anybody but ourselves. I don't feel a pressure about time with Lamented Souls because it's just a hobby band. We'll release the stuff when it's finished. The sonner the better now. I hope really soon.
Long answer it was !

A new Arcturus

Arcturus

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album is in preparation. When can we expect to hear it ?

ICS Vortex : November or December 2013. That's the plan.

Is there anything we haven't talked about ? Any other projects ?

ICS Vortex : There's God of Atheists, don't you know ? It's Asgeir Mickelson's project. I'm just on the pre-production and Carl August Tidemann does the guitar work. And I don't know if this is a big secret but Ihsahn

Ihsahn

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does the keyboards and Trym is the drummer. So it's a lot of old sweet names from the classic era of Norwegian black metal. I'm looking forward to nail that.

Anything else to say ?

ICS Vortex : Nah !