interview by: Joshua

1. Red Harvest: A superb word combination charged with contradictory meaning and ambiguity.

2. Red Harvest: Dashiell Hammett’s proto-noir crime novel that set the blueprint for hardboiled crime fiction.

3. Red Harvest: Norwegian killing machine that few bands can ever hope to match in terms of power, vision and musical devastation.

If you can’t appreciate the linguistic coupling of the two words, you have some onerous language issues to work out. Haven’t taken a gander at the Hammett novel? Grab a copy pronto. Never heard the glorious strains of this quintet? Shame on you. For more than a decade they’ve produced a string of albums that are complex yet immediate, destructive yet sparsely beautiful, soundtracks to visions of churning machinery or the emptiness of a nuclear winter.

Speaking with guitarist Ketil Eggum was an illuminating experience: down to earth, informative and generous with his answers. His sense of humor still intact after experiencing some of the more unpleasant aspects of the music business, he’s quick to laugh, remaining optimistic and determined for the future endeavors of the band. Read on.

Maelstrom: I’ve got a question I’ve always been really curious about. During the winter you get a period of with very little to no sunlight. What’s that like?

Ketil Eggum: Very little sunlight. In the very northern part of Norway it’s total darkness four or five months; here in Oslo it’s about five or six hours of daylight. It gets light at 9:00 in the morning and dark again at 3:00 in the afternoon but it’s not really light! It’s really weird but it’s even weirder up north and then in the summer there will be 24 hours of sun, the complete opposite.

Maelstrom: Neat, we don’t exactly get that kind of thing in California.

Ketil Eggum: You don’t? No, I guess not!

Maelstrom: Your nickname, TurboNatas. Where did that come from? It’s such a great nickname.

Ketil Eggum: There was a project with Jimmy (vocals, guitar) and Lars (programmer / keyboard player / sampler) from Red Harvest in the early 90’s called Dunkelheit. They needed a guitarist so I called them and all the guys had nicknames. This is a bit weird but I totally react to sugar. The first time I ever met their singer (Jimmy) I had eaten three bars of chocolate and I was pretty speeded up. They must have thought I was a mental case or something but they started calling me Turbo and then we wanted to add some satanic texture it so we added Natas which of course is Satan backwards. I also did all the fast guitar parts so it worked out in a funny sort of way.

Maelstrom: I like the name because it seems kind of tough but also kind of silly, like you’re taking the piss out of black metal names.

Ketil Eggum: Actually we weren’t making a joke out of it in one way but it’s still more like taking it to the far side of everything.

Maelstrom: Good, that’s what I was hoping you would say. Let’s talk about the latest album (Internal Punishment Programs). What I’ve noticed from Cold Dark Matter to Sick Transit Gloria Mundi to this one is that you’ve been tightening and honing everything; the sound is razor sharp now.

Ketil Eggum: Yea, you’re right, it’s probably due a bit more to the production and of course that we’ve been around for quite a long time. On this album we decided that we had to do something different or it would be boring to listen to so we decided to have someone other than ourselves mix it. We took it out of Norway to Sweden to have Fredrik Nordstrom mix it so I think that has something to do with the sharpness.

Musically, the riffs are a bit more complex than before. You have to challenge yourself sometimes just to keep moving. Actually, I just bought myself an iPod and loaded in some old CDs and I found that there’s this really cool vibe to Cold Dark Matter, too: it’s got this really rotten, disturbed thing about it that I kind of like in a way, but it’s not hi-fi in the way Internal Punishment Programs is. The guitars are a bit more in front than on the previous albums.

Maelstrom: I think you’re right but at the same time what I’m saying is that yes, the production is certainly sharper, but the whole song writing and the structure has gotten more precise. The album just leaps out at you and grabs you by the throat and there’s nothing you can do but sit back and take it.

Ketil Eggum: Thanks.

Maelstrom: Another thing, kind of in the same vein, Red Harvest seems like a complete package, there’s a vision: music, imagery, album covers, lyrical content. Very apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic, industrial wastelands. Was this very thought out to begin with or something that evolved with the band? Something that you’re drawn to and comes out in the music?

Ketil Eggum: More or less most of what you hear is actually for real in way. The samples on the album are not sounds that you can find everywhere. It’s actually from real factories. When you hear metal colliding it’s actually metal colliding. We’ll go out there and tape everything and then put it into the system and play with it and screw it up a bit. That’s one thing.

And the five of us have a big fascination for factories and abandoned areas and wastelands. Strangely enough, we find peace there too. I love to go to these old factories and just sit there and relax. Lately Jimmy has been reading about these weird death cults, which goes to back to what we did back in the 90’s and in 1996 on HyBreed. We were really into the whole UFO thing. So while all the other guys were burning churches and going to prison we went up to the mountains and did drugs! It’s kind of payback time and we can feel it’s coming back to us in a good way because you have to suffer for getting it as real as possible.

Maelstrom: You guys don’t seem clichéd or obvious. Like the image on the cover of Internal Punishment Programs, it’s so stark and powerful but kind of lonely at the same time.

Ketil Eggum: That was taken about five minutes walk from where I live. There’s this big abandoned place at the harbor and I just came across it one day and there’s this crane with this pile of twisted metal and this big claw. It was in the summer so the sky was red and it made perfect sense. So I’m running back home to grab the digital camera and get the shot. We also wanted to a small tribute to this movie called “Hardware,” a low budget movie from the 90’s, very cyber oriented. We wanted to make the cover a bit “Hardwarish” and still something that belongs to us, something Norwegian and of Oslo.

Maelstrom: It definitely comes across. To my mind there’s really no one out there like Red Harvest what with the combination of the music and imagery.

Ketil Eggum: I appreciate that. Pardon my French but there are a lot of bands out there who call themselves “industrial” that are rather sissy. We are industrial because that’s what we work with. Some of us, we work in factories and we actually push tons of metal everyday. So we’re industrial for real! Jimmy works in a factory. I don’t have to do that and I’m happy. Erik, our drummer, works in a factory. Our bass player Thomas used to work in a factory but right now drives a car. We still have to do the day time jobs of course. That’s life.

Maelstrom: Do you think there will be a point for the band where you won’t have to have outside jobs?

Ketil Eggum: I’m not sure. I really don’t know lot of people making a living from music. In that case you have to do something like running a label besides playing. The guitarist in Mayhem is the only guy I know who actually makes a living from music. He has to live in Portugal because that’s the only place he can afford. I mean Fenriz is still working at the post office as well as running his label. You just can’t live on music itself here, it’s impossible.

Maelstrom: It’s hard to imagine Fenriz working at the post office.

Ketil Eggum: He just sorts the letters. He likes it because it’s so shitty.

Maelstrom: Inspires him to be angry for the next Darkthrone album.

Ketil Eggum: Exactly. Works out the frustration.

Maelstrom: I noticed that when you joined the band the focus of the sound changed. How much did that have to do with you?

Ketil Eggum: At that time I just played the guitar. It took a while before I did more than that. At that time also, Jimmy had total control of the songwriting and everything more or less. It was probably on HyBreed that I could do a few creative things other than just playing but I didn’t get really involved in the songwriting until Cold Dark Matter. That’s basically the work of me and Jimmy [as it was] on Sick Transit Gloria Mundi.

The cool thing about the latest album is that Thomas also got involved in making the music. Some people like total control but I think it’s better that more people with ideas get involved and do stuff because then it’s easier to move forward and do new things. So that was a really cool experience on this album.

Maelstrom: I’d like to talk about the HyBreed album. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite but it definitely stands out.

Ketil Eggum: It’s a really cool album in its own way; it’s so different because it has this really dark vibe underneath.

Maelstrom: It’s an album you really need to listen to all at once, as if it’s one long piece and one of the reasons is because of the really long dark ambient passages.

Ketil Eggum: Yea, there’s some weird stuff in there. Some people really hate it. Some people find the album too long.

Maelstrom: Is there a reason you shifted away from that towards the direction where you are now? Why didn’t you continue in that vein?

Ketil Eggum: We’ve always followed our hearts. On HyBreed, maybe foolishly, we did that. At the time in Norway there was so much black metal and the like that we just wanted to do something completely different and it was natural for us to do that. We spent a lot of time up in the mountains, went there every week to relax and walk around, trying to catch that feeling. I think we managed very well on that album, wastelands with a sense of big feeling.

But what happened after that, I’m so tired of talking about it because I don’t want to sound like a bitter man, the label we were on that time (Voices of Wonder), they didn’t do much work for us and it was really frustrating to be there. But we never thought about quitting, we just wanted to keep the band alive. So it was just a natural thing that it became more aggressive and more brutal in a way because we were so pissed. And we also had to have a discussion within the band. I was one of the people who wanted to go towards a more metal oriented style; I just wasn’t totally comfortable with the direction that band had taken with HyBreed.

Jimmy wanted to make anything we did into Red Harvest music but we just had to sit down and decide that Red Harvest music maybe should be in this direction, and if you feel like doing something more ambient and things like that, feel free to do it, but don’t call it Red Harvest. That’s what we had to do. Even though I like to listen to it I don’t feel that it’s me. Also our drummer had just quit and we had to start all over again with the new drummer and it just felt natural that all of us should go in the same direction or there would be no reason that we should continue. It wasn’t a big fight or anything; some things had to be settled. When you put your finger on it, Red Harvest is a metal band. We then did an EP to finish out our contract with Voices of Wonder and I guess it was a shock because it made Nocturnal Art want to have us.

Maelstrom: Do you guys enjoy touring?

Ketil Eggum: Yes and no. Of course we love to play live. In a way Red Harvest is probably better live than on album because you can also see a few things while we play. I think people are surprised that we can do these things live without using tapes. It’s just the five of us playing. But it’s also being on the road, small buses, small cars for many weeks and you come to all these shitty places. That’s something I don’t like.

I’m not into luxury but there are so many stupid bookers and clubs out there and they look surprised when you show up. I don’t really understand why they wanted you come and play because they obviously didn’t read the riders and technical stuff. We have this thing that as long as there is a place we want to go to, we’ll play. We get requests from clubs that want us to come, so we tell them that we get beds to sleep on, not the floor, some food and something to drink and we’re playing. If we get some money too it’s cool. We’re more into doing one off shows or couple week tours but we don’t feel like we want to do long tours or have to. It would be interesting to try and play over in the States, we’ve never done that. I guess that’s pretty tough from what I hear.

Maelstrom: Is there much of a production as far as lighting and multimedia given that the music is so evocative?

Ketil Eggum: We have opinions when it comes to the lights and everything. But we like to think that the five of us up there is enough. Especially with Jimmy, he’s our very special front character. He’s really big and looks fucking scary up there. It’s a very aggressive atmosphere. We like to keep the lighting very dark with just one color at a time, greens and dark reds especially

Maelstrom: Your profile here in the US is pretty small, which is a bit shocking. Other than not being able to tour here, for financial reasons I assume, why do you think that’s so? What’s it like in Europe and the rest of the world?

Ketil Eggum: In Norway, our home country, and a few countries in Europe – Italy, the Netherlands – we’re doing pretty well. Strange but true, in Great Britain, which is really hard for bands outside of Britain and the States to do something, they’ve welcomed us with open arms, which is pretty cool. But, for example, we’ve never been successful in Germany where others are big. I still have to blame our old label (Voices of Wonder) because they never lifted a finger for us as far as printing promos or other promotion. It’s tough being a European band on a small label like Nocturnal Art because there’s no control over promotion in the States. That’s why we had that licensing agreement with Relapse, which we thought would work out better than it did. There were some changes in their office and all of a sudden we didn’t have this dedicated guy anymore. And they couldn’t guarantee us priority anymore, which of course I understand when you’ve got bands like Nile or Mastodon and High on Fire on your own label.

Maelstrom: Is your relationship with them still ok?

Ketil Eggum: Yea, yea. I’m not bitter but I would have hoped we had had a bit more impact. I have so much respect for Relapse and the music they have on their label. I understand what happened but it’s still a bit sad. Hopefully it will get better with the next album or this album maybe. But that’s how it goes when you’re a small band in the States. We’re going to keep going for at least another two albums. As long we find it interesting to hang out and make music together we’ll stick around forever. As long as we feel like we’re making progress than it’s cool. Money’s never been the issue for us; it’s what we are when we’re together.

Maelstrom: It sounds like you’re coming from a point of purity, that it’s truly about the music.

Ketil Eggum: Yea. It’s stupid not to believe us otherwise we should have given up in 1996! I live pretty close to Fenriz so we hang out sometimes and we’re just laughing because we’ve never quit, the same as with Darkthrone. We never give up; we just play and play until it comes to a point where it’s cool again when you never quit. But not all bands. Like Kiss, they should have called it a day like thirty-five years ago.

Maelstrom: Yea, I’ve been a fan of Kiss since I was a kid. They did their farewell tour about five years ago. So I’m thinking, yea farewell tour, I’ll go and see that and then six months later it’s like, ok, it’s our… after-farewell tour. You’re thinking, “Gene, how much money do you need?”

Ketil Eggum: Oh, god, fucking terrible. He’s become this cheesy old rocking guy.

Maelstrom: Yea, enough about Kiss. What music are you listening to lately?

Ketil Eggum: My taste in music these days is little strange but also mainstream I guess. I really like the new High on Fire, Isis, Cult of Luna, Lamb of God and this Swedish band that translates as “Total Fucking Darkness,” which is pretty cool, hardcore. I also have some soft music just to equal it out things a bit like DJ Shadow.

Maelstrom: Anything else like that? I’m always curious what metal musicians are into other than metal.

Ketil Eggum: Laibach, although some people think they’re kind of metal. Radiohead, right now it’s the Kid A album. Boards of Canada. Two bands from Iceland, Mum and Sigur Rós. I also like a Norwegian jazz musician named Nils Petter Molvaer, he plays trumpet but he has a really heavy band. It’s an album called Khmer and probably the best album he ever did.

Maelstrom: When you’re not immersed in Red Harvest what are you up to?

Ketil Eggum: I do some design work. I’ve done the covers and everything for our albums. I do some other bands now and then. I did the latest Mayhem album (Chimera). I live my life to the max on both ends. I like to be in the forest or industrial places, just hang out and walk around, listen to music. Through the years I’ve also become the one to deal with Red Harvest issues like merchandise, contracts, concerts, money issues. Other than that, just reading books, watching movies and enjoying what I’m into.

Maelstrom: What sort of movies and books are you into? Any particular genres?

Ketil Eggum: I hope I don’t offend anyone but I’m not into Hollywood blockbusters. I like weird, strange French movies, Spanish and South American movies. There are a lot of great movies from the States like (David) Lynch. With books right now I’m into crime novels, scary stuff, people being kidnapped. Right now I’m reading Harlan Coben. I also try to read some philosophy, more intellectual stuff. There’s a Finnish / Swedish philosopher that is giving me a lot of inspiration for the next album. His name is Georg Henrik von Wright. He made a lot of statements back in the 80’s, asking whether the progress that humankind is making is really progress after all. It’s pretty interesting and I’ve been trying to read up a lot on it.

Maelstrom: Were his views controversial?

Ketil Eggum: Yes. He was also dealing with the whole man / machine thing that Red Harvest deals with. I picked up his book a few months ago and it was like meeting yourself in a doorway. I’m certainly no great philosopher but he has a lot of cool points about things that I‘m interested in.

Maelstrom: Anything else going on?

Ketil Eggum: We’re actually starting some work on new material. We’ve finished our contract with Nocturnal Art and are in talks with a few labels. Maybe, maybe we can come to the States after all. It’s not up to us, depends on the economy and stuff like that.

Maelstrom: Sure.

Ketil Eggum: I’m not saying things are shitty in the States but I’ve heard a lot of weird stuff about people playing in laundries and garden parties. What’s that?!?!

Maelstrom: Ah, I think it just depends on the band.

Ketil Eggum: We’ll probably end up playing those places!

Maelstrom: Yea, I don’t think Red Harvest is really garden music!

Ketil Eggum: Garden music! Barbeque songs!

Maelstrom: Sandwiches with the crusts cut off and iced tea.

Ketil Eggum: Mmmm. Also if we come to the States it would have to be good for both us and the fans. Our tours in Europe in the last years have been rather good. Once again, I don’t need luxury, just proper equipment and promoters that pay attention to the riders. For example, we did a show in France some years ago. We need at least eighteen channels to do a fair gig for our fans and this venue had an eight or twelve channel set up. It’s not cool for people who pay money to see us to get the shitty version of Red Harvest because someone didn’t read the technical stuff in the rider. Why’d they even bother? It’s not fair to anyone. I just want things to be good for all of us then everyone enjoys things a bit more.