Formed in 2021, Hekseblad have used their first few years to flesh out and further perfect their musical formula of melodic and even symphonic Black Metal. While perhaps not all initial recordings have turned out equally well, it is clear that the twosome behind this band had a clear goal in mind and listening throughout their discography, it feels like a journey towards musical maturity with the debut album ‘Kaer Morhen’, recently released via Portugal’s Hypnotic Dirge Records, as a provisional highlight. ‘Kaer Morhen’ is brimming with fresh ideas, adventurous songwriting and clearly infectious energy that come together to sound both recognisable and invigorating. In my review for the album, I drew parallels with Dissection, Emperor and Moonlight Sorcery, about this and the band’s musical maturation process I spoke to this young American duo…
Greetings Hekseblad, thanks for accepting my interview request and granting us a glimpse in the magical world of your band. I have been following the band more or less since its start and I am pleased to hear and see that your potential is increasingly showing. I ended my review with saying that, regarding to your musical growth, there is no end in sight. Or is there?
I don’t see an end to Hekseblad or our creative output any time soon, if there are people out there willing to listen to the records we put out then we’ll keep writing and pushing ourselves to the very limit of creativity.
You have contacted us because you wanted to set something straight. In my review for ‘Kaer Morhen’ I mentioned that the production is a bit muffled, especially compared to some of your compatriots. You wrote that this was a deliberate choice in order not to stray too far from your more raw roots. So, I guess this was exactly the sound you had envisioned?
Yes exactly. We started off being a very lo-fi sounding band, and we didn’t want to alienate any of the fans of our past work by hopping onto a label and immediately sounding polished and professional. We tried really hard to let the mix retain its edge and its grit while allowing the musicianship on the record to still be clear and audible for the listener.
Besides the somewhat muffled sound, which is not bothering me by the way, I think ‘Kaer Morhen’ has become a significant step up from your previous recordings. The melodicism has strengthened, the dynamics deepened… What would you say is the main difference between these the earlier recordings and this newest album?
I think the main difference between our earlier material and what we have on ‘Kaer Morhen’ is that we went into the new album knowing exactly what we wanted it to sound like, from a compositional standpoint anyway. It feels like with every new band that just forms everyone falls into the same trappings of “we like this band, so let’s sound like them” but you pull from too many influences and the sound can come off disjointed and unorganised. On ‘Kaer Morhen’ we knew exactly what sound we were going for and what influences to pull from, we weren’t just throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick like we did on our previous material. We knew we wanted to focus on melody and letting the guitars carry the recordings.
As a whole, how would you describe the creative process surrounding the writing and recording of ‘Kaer Morhen’? And how do you think your musical vision translates to the music that ended up on the album?
The creative process for the album itself was unorthodox I’d say. Both of us are in different bands so we end up writing a lot for our own private ventures, but every few weeks Frosk would contact me and say “hey I can’t write for this other band, I have writers block, whenever I pick up my guitar I just end up writing Black Metal, I just wrote three new Hekseblad demos because it’s all I can focus on”. Creatively I think our vision translated to the final release very well, I remember first hearing the rough demo of the ‘School of the Wolf’ two years ago and thinking “wow this is so different than our debut EP, this sounds like a band who knows what they’re supposed to sound like now, I think we finally know our identity”.
To me ‘Kaer Morhen’ was a great projection of older and classic records such as the ones from Emperor and Dissection with a rejuvenating energy and refreshing new musical vision. In the review I compared you to Finland’s Moonlight Sorcery, as they seemed to have come from a similar musical point of view. Can you relate to such a statement?
I appreciate the comparisons to Emperor, Dissection, and Moonlight Sorcery a lot actually. We were both very big fans of ‘Piercing Through the Frozen Eternity’ when it came out. We kind of took that record and ‘Tales of Othertime’ from Stormkeep and said “this is where we should aim, we need to try to be on this level”. Moonlight Sorcery has been a huge inspiration for us, watching them grow and evolve from their initial EP’s up to their full-length has been incredible.
In the short conversation we had before this interview you mentioned that you appreciated my point of mild criticism. I said that the album was a tad long and that a song like ‘The Fall Of The Northern Realms’ did break a bit of the natural flow of the album. In general, is there anything that you would do any different now that you have the final product in your hands? What lessons are you taking with you to the album’s follow-up?
When we were in the studio finishing the album we both agreed that ‘Fall of the Northern Realms’ was a complete and total momentum killer, but we felt that having a track like that was important to give the listener some time to relax during the album’s run (especially with how breakneck the following track ‘Sodden’ is). I’ve always been an album guy as opposed to a singles guy, I pull up an album and I press “play” on track one and I don’t stop until it’s over, so I’ve always appreciated when a band can say “hey we just played you eight songs of speed and brutality, here’s a slower one so you can catch your breath”. As for what we might have done differently, maybe cutting the interlude track out, but as I said before, I’m someone who listens to full albums front to back, I like interludes, especially on a vinyl LP, because they tell you “hey, Side A is over, Side B is about to start, you better get up and flip the record”. Unfortunately when it came time to get this album pressed to vinyl we ended up having to alter the tracklist because of the run time of each side being different lengths, so purely from a vinyl production based standing our album couldn’t fit on a single LP, so we ended up shifting the interlude and the title track around, so what should have been the start of Side B is now the ending of Side A. Going forward working with labels we’ll be mindful to keep both sides of the LP at a consistent length that way the manufacturing process is easier for everyone involved.
I understood that the lyrical and visual aspect of Hekseblad is (almost) equally as important as the music itself. Can you take us into your world of drives you to write anything for the band? I am aware that a lot, or even most, is based on The Witcher series and I can see you value the classic corpse paint and swords imagery, but I am quite sure there is more to tell…
We’ve always seen the visual aspect of music to be important. Growing up I was listening to bands like Emperor and Cradle of Filth and seeing just how much effort they put into visuals, and now you see it with bands like Worm, there’s a cohesive and deliberate attention to details. The visuals work almost as an extension of the music itself and sort of helps transport you to the same world as the music.
The album has been released on all three most relevant physical formats, with the vinyl version already sold out. One could argue that 200 copies might have been a bit of a small quantity, but you can also state that the band at least struck something of an increased interest. Of course it is evident that the musical quality is the most important in this matter, did you expect anything of this success for ‘Kaer Morhen’?
From the time of writing this interview our label actually added a third vinyl variant to their web store and that one is almost sold out as well. We had a lot of messages from people saying they missed out on the initial run, so it was a no-brainer to press more. We expected to sell out of our batch, but we never expected the initial run would sell out the day of release, that was what convinced the label to give us the go-ahead on the third variant. The people that like us like us a lot, I recognize a lot of names on Bandcamp no matter what we end up selling, I wasn’t surprised that our tapes did as well as they did but what has been a pretty big shock is the fact that at the time of my response we’re almost sold out of CD’s as well, and in my experience people don’t really buy CD’s anymore. At the end of the day all I want to get across is that If the demand is there for our music we’re gonna do what we can to fulfill it and get the people what they want.
We already discussed this a little and I understood that there is something in the talks, but, is there any chance of getting a few more copies pressed of the vinyl album for those who were too slow to pick up one off of the first press?
I just hope the people who missed out can grab the third variant we have online now.
And while we’re at it, you have released quite a few recordings prior your debut album, some of these recordings have seen a re-release already. Are there any plans to reissue them as well or do you think these recordings have served their purpose already?
We occasionally get asked if we’ll ever repress ‘The Fall of Cintra’ on vinyl, for the time being we don’t have any plans for that, but that’s more or less because we’re looking at our current record and the future of the band. Maybe in a few years we’ll put out a compilation box of all the song from our EPs/Demos/Splits, but that’s something we’ll discuss when the time comes. I think for now the time isn’t right for that, the last thing we want to do is wear out our welcome. There’s a fine balance with reissues, you need to strike when the time is right.
These days there is an evident new and prolific generation of musicians that give fresh blood to the Black Metal genre. Some of them are rigorously different from the genre defining artists such as Bathory and Darkthrone, keeping high completely different or even opposing values. Lots of these artists are actually coming from the USA and seem to bind together in certain circles. Would you consider yourself a part of that movement too?
The thing with US based Black Metal is that there isn’t really a nationwide “scene” or “movement”. It’s all scattered across various regions and there isn’t much communication between those little scenes. We’ve definitely found ourselves interacting and working with quite a few US based artists though, in a kind of brotherhood. We aren’t some new version of the Black Circle or anything, but we watch out for each other, promote each other, and just generally support each other’s ventures.
Speaking of scenes, are there any bands or artists that you are close to that we should consider checking out as well? I am quite sure you’ll be able to give us a hint or two…
As for what artists we’re close with that I think are worth checking out, I need to mention Winter Lantern and Sanguine Wounds, both acts are fantastically evil, absolutely punishing Black Metal, and they both have new music on the horizon that I’ve been allowed to hear early, on top of that there’s also some collaborations in the works that I can’t give away too much information on, but a few of us have formed smaller projects to indulge in other aspects of our sounds and influences that we can’t necessarily explore in our main projects.
You both have a few different other bands and do run a label/recording facility, how do you take all that experience with you to your music that you create together? And, vice versa perhaps as well?
Being in other projects actually helps the creativity of Hekseblad a lot. We both like a lot of different kinds of music, so when you have one band you want to incorporate all those ideas into that band, so being in different projects where you can explore your other musical interests can help you express that creativity and flex those muscles without letting those sounds and ideas bleed into your main work. Frosk is in a lot of Death Metal projects, and I’m in a more doomy and Atmospheric Black Metal band with my friend Eric (from the AtmoBlack band Morke), and if we were to indulge those sounds with Hekseblad it would end up being very disjointed. We definitely see Hekseblad as our main band where we have to be serious, and then our side projects are where we get to have fun and try new things that don’t necessarily fit into the way we envision Hekseblad.
Slowly starting to round things off, but I am always curious to hear what is currently on your turntable and what records you have recently purchased? Any highlights to share?
Recently on my turntable I’ve been listening to a lot of Odium’s ‘The Sad Realm of the Stars’. It’s probably my favorite Symphonic Black Metal record of all time, and Osmose just did an absolutely killer reissue of it. We’ve also both been spinning Peaceville’s 2023 reissue of Fimbulwinter’s ‘Servants of Sorcery’ demo. There have also been some Limbonic Art represses coming out that I haven’t pulled the trigger on yet, but I’ll probably be adding them to my collection soon. I also want to throw a nod to the album ‘Imperial Dragoon Kommando’ by a band called Moonlight Sword, I’ve got their whole discography on cassette but ‘Dragoon Kommando’ is absolutely crushing.
One of the more standard questions, but of course something a lot of people are curious about: what is there to expect from Hekseblad in the remaining months of the year?
Hekseblad is going to have a pretty quiet ending to this year, all things considered. The journey from finishing the album last summer to finding the right label was very long and tiresome, not to say that we aren’t pleased with what’s happened, we couldn’t be more excited to work with Hypnotic Dirge, but for now we’re both focusing on working behind the scenes. We have the physical copies in production and we’re currently selling some new shirts on our Bandcamp so working on new music isn’t really a concern, we’re sort of enjoying the Victory Lap of a job well done. I think we’re going to focus on side projects and other bands for the remainder of the year because 2025 should be pretty busy. We don’t have anything set in stone yet, but we’ve been talking to some people about it and we could potentially see Hekseblad taking to the live stage very soon, which I’m excited for, assuming it works out. Even if that doesn’t end up working out we’ll be moving forward next year with the early stages of our next full length. We’re already bouncing some ideas around.
Alright, that was it, thanks a lot for your time. I am giving you the last words to finish off the interview…
To close out I just want to thank you again for the opportunity you gave us to speak about our record, and I want to thank everyone who’s gone out of their way to listen to it or pick up a copy for their own collections. This is only the beginning.
