HELVETETS PORT
WITCHFINDER, VIRGIN KILLER, EARTHQUAKE & O. THUNDER
Helvetets Port is a Swedish heavy metal band and one of the pioneers of the NWOTHM wave In this interview was conducted with the full band, Witchfinder, Virgin Killer, Earthquake and O. Thunder.
Could you do a brief presentation of your band!
Witchfinder:
Well, in 1999 I had a two-man band called Brute Force and back then we used to play a couple of songs which later became Helvetets Port songs and Helvetets Port, that is us, we are Helvetets Port.
The name started around 2001 and then two years later I found this man at my utmost left here, O. Thunder. During the course of several years we got more and more members all the way up until 2015 when we finally became a five-piece band thanks to this gentleman. (Virgin Killer) Then we had one member change in 2018 I think, when this man joined the group. Earthquake is his name.
As for our style we we play an old style of music. We aim for an old sound because I think that is objectively the absolute best sound. As for the songs themselves I can't say that we're trying to emulate something from the past really, because all our influences are old and I for one have hardly even heard any records from the 21st century, so it kind of naturally becomes quite an old sounding music also song wise.
What are your main influences?
O. Thunder:
Thor, Conan the Barbarian, old movies and all things heavy metal.
My main influences are... hmm... That's the hardest question I've ever heard in my entire life. It usually boils down to the classic heavy metal stuff from the late seventies and early eighties. Lots of litterature, science-fiction. I grew up towards the end of the VHS era and my parents were to poor to buy the new films so we always watched the old ones like No Retreat, No Surrender. It was an old favourite of mine.
Witchfinder:
My main influences when it comes to music are, well, bands like Gotham City and Heavy Load of course, and also bands like Kim Sixx, Tokyo Blade, the English Tyrant, both of them actually, and when it comes to lyrics I'm sometimes influenced by video games such as Dark Souls or Dungeons & Dragons games like Baldur's Gate and stuff.
Earthquake:
Iron Maiden!
Virgin Killer:
With Janick Gers.
My own definition I think would be a bit narrower than what is generally accepted. I see it as classic heavy, not thrash or speed or overt power metal. The name of this movement so to speak is the 'New wave of traditional heavy metal' and that is pretty descriptive but I would not call a band that is from the 80s traditional metal. Then I would prefer the term heavy metal or classic or regular heavy metal. Which is what I would prefer anyway.
I call us classic heavy metal. I wouldn't even if I would sound a bit narrow now, I don't think that's the case at all because I've been listening to classic heavy metal and mostly only obscure heavy metal for like twenty years now or more and I still have not barely gotten to the middle of it, I guess. When it comes to creating that music yourself we have barely scraped the surface of it. Because I think it's so multi-facetted that you at all have to think that have locked yourself into a narrow path.
Virgin Killer:
I have a bit of a problem with the word traditional because I don't understand what is so traditional about metal. Because the type of music we play obviously existed in a certain window of time but metal existed before it existed afterwards. It was only a short period of time. I don't know I just have this pet peeve about calling it traditional because there is nothing traditional about it, it's timeless.
O. Thunder:
Like blues, you don't call any blues for traditional blues.
Virgin Killer:
The New Wave of Traditional Classic Music, haha
What was your reaction when you first heard a new traditional sounding heavy metal band in the 2000's?
O. Thunder:
Inspired, I think. The 90s was a time when people didn't have any ... any sort of style at all, everything was jeans and t-shirts, potatoes and sauce. No one had any ... I think that was maybe a reaction to the extravagant styles of the 80s. Everything was over the top and now everything was dulled down to barely nothing. And I think that's why there weren't any heavy metal bands basically in the 90s. There were bands that kept going but generally no new bands evolving. And it started in the 2000s, started to emerge bands that ... I think it was people of our generation that had listened to this type of music in their teens and wanted to actually play it and yeah, I felt inspired when I first heard the first bands doing it.
Virgin Killer:
Which band was it first that you heard?
O. Thunder:
Skybreaker I think. Amazing band.
Virgin Killer:
My initial reaction is pretty ironic because the first "traditional" sounding heavy metal band was actually Helvetets Port and yeah, that was quite the experience and you have made my life so much better.
Earthquake:
Amen.
Witchfinder:
Yeah well, I don't think I had heard any new band that played traditional heavy metal until i started Helvetets Port. I'm sure there existed some; I know that there existed like a Japanese band called Magnesium, like in the mid 90s who played a really old style of music that wasn't all out heavy metal, like more kind of a, like early New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, like Mendes Prey kind of sound.
O. Thunder:
Yeah, also Gorgon at the same time I think.
Witchfinder:
Yeah so, well, I don't know exactly when, I think it took a couple of years after forming Helvetets Port until I heard anyone else doing the same thing, so ... That was back when Youtube didn't exist and you had to find such stuff on file sharing programs like Napster and stuff and I guess you weren't quite prone or likely to find any new bands playing traditional heavy metal that way, so I missed out on something I guess. 
What do you think is the main difference between bands of the 80s and the bands of the NWOTHM (New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal)?
Virgin Killer:
The main difference is sound production. Because modern production standards suck, and it's all because that the people who are effectively mastering and mixing the new records by new bands are prone to be against every type of use of production...
Earthquake:
Dynamics.
Virgin Killer:
Yeah, production dynamics, that isn't maximum two years old. So even though all the bands, they use old gear, they use everything that they used in the 80s, they play the same kind of music but they just can't ... The mixing and mastering and the production people suck ass!
Witchfinder:
Yeah I agree regarding the sound and I believe that one other key difference is that the bands in the 80s, they didn't really have any distance to what they were doing, they were like living in the moment and they had to hang on for dear life, and that also shone through in the music.
Nowadays we can kind of kick back and do whatever we want and time moves very slowly now. One year in the 80s equals maybe five or ten years now. So the eagerness is a difference.
Earthquake:
And I mean a band in the 80s didn't try to sound old. A lot of bands now try so hard to sound old. And I don't know if you should try to sound old or sound good.
O. Thunder:
And the economic situation is obviously a big difference because the audience is ... and the record sales are massively different, so the economic situation for every band ... They had much bigger budgets in the 80s, they could do much more.
Virgin Killer:
I think as well that people were, like, the sound guys like Martin Birch and stuff like that in the 80s, they tried, they experimented a lot and it was a very limited art form in a way as well, so they did the most with what little they had and, well, now it's so easy to record an album, you just sit at home in front of your computer and I mean, you can, it's perfectly possible to create an 80s sounding record with the tools that you have today. But again, nobody does it, so #### you!
Metal Strike 7'' (2006) The artwork was made by yours truly (Ruthless)
Why have you chosen to play traditional heavy metal?
Witchfinder:
At around the year 2000 regular heavy metal pretty much didn't exist like there were no current bands playing it and I felt like there was this gaping hole that just needed to be filled. I mean even if I had wasn't the best musician or vocalist in the world I just wanted to do it so badly because I couldn't understand why there were people who liked heavy metal but none of them played it themselves, they always played in black and thrash metal bands and I couldn't really understand why.
I guess it might be easier for someone who just started out to play a noisier form of music. I guess we went in the deep end straight away when I was a youngster.
Virgin Killer:
I think the thing that most of us in the band have in common is that we all come from pretty isolated areas around the country. You're not very prone to influence from the mainstream world so to speak, it's more important that you find your own little niche of things and your own hobbies and interests, and if music becomes one of them you always start to explore what's going on and I think we were lucky in that we were very, most of us were very isolated from "during the early 2000s type of music" and we always experimented a bit but it always led to the classic art form of heavy metal.
Witchfinder:
Our own little Swedish version of growing up near the pounding steel mills and rough factory areas ...
Virgin Killer:
Toilet factory areas.
Witchfinder:
I think as Swedes we got some kind of melancholy within us that comes through in the music I would say. And one thing I find funny is that ... I mentioned earlier about most people playing death or black or thrash metal like 20 years ago, maybe that's still the case, but for some reason, in the mind of the general populace, death metal is still somehow the definition of metal. When you say to someone that you play in a metal band they immediately go: "Oh, is that that
[Death metal growling sounds]
and you have to explain over and over again. And of course it could be the other way around that when you say that you play metal, someone might say "Oh, well shouldn't you be in the Melodifestivalen and the, you know the big ...
Virgin Killer:
Eurovision song contest.
Witchfinder:
... like Lordi". And so, yeah, people don't really have a grasp of what regular classic heavy metal is, and that's also a driving force to play it as truly as possible to really get the message across and show people that this is the best music in the world.
Virgin Killer:
I think there is a misconception that playing hard music is always about taking the music to it's extremes. That's not necessarily the case. Me and Earthquake over here, we actually grew up together and we used to play in bands together when we were kids and teenagers. We were very extreme but that was when we were 15-16 years old. That's one thing but when you start to develop musically. You gain generalized interests and much a bigger conception of the art form then you sort of have to narrow it down to something that really matters to you. Something that has some form of importance. Teenage aggression only lasts for about six months until you lose your virginity. Then you grow up and you feel that you need to find your heart in a place where it belongs.
O. Thunder:
I think it was harder to start a traditional metal band back then, because it was harder to find people that wanted to do that. The more bands there are, the easier it is to find other musicians that wants the same thing.
From Life... To Death (2019)
What's your opinion on the NWOTHM?
Virgin Killer:
- I think it's great really, because if you rewind the tape 15 years it was like you had literally no bands, very very few fans, it was a very male dominated type of ordeal but now, you know, it's great that it's reaching out to more people and a lot more, you get a lot of new and younger fans coming into the mix. And I know there are the type of people that think that no, I want to have my heavy metal for myself, but if you're playing in a band you're shooting yourself in the foot really, because I mean come on, it's f###ing great man.
O. Thunder:
Yeah, you want the opportunities that come with it and if you love the music then it's great.
Witchfinder:
Yeah I feel a bit sorry for like all the other styles that you have seen when you grew up: punks and, like, most other styles that are both like a music genre and a way of dressing. Most of them are kind of gone but heavy metal still stands strong and that's something I really appreciate. There is of course some kind of a glass ceiling for playing classic heavy metal but we're still like much better off than many other genres.
Virgin Killer:
And we, it feels like we are inclined to promote at least one other new band than ourselves so, Seven Sisters from the UK, f##k you!
O. Thunder:
- S##t band, no fans!
Virgin Killer:
- I miss you, Graeme.
Do you have a message to those who think that traditional metal is for elitists or that it's not relevant anymore?
O. Thunder:
To say that an art form isn't relevant - that's irrelevant.
Witchfinder:
Yeah well, and as for elitism ... well, I don't really come across it myself but then again, I might not have the interpretative prerogative as they say. But I don't think that any possible elitism would be like a barrier for people to get into this kind of music, because I think that simply discovering it and figuring out what it's all about, that should be the first step, and then they might discover some people are elitist and then they can just ignore them or do whatever, but the most important thing is to know what classic heavy metal is all about and start listening to it, damn it.
And also, as for being relevant, I mean, a few years ago or like 10 years ago when you were at a show, you might be kind of disappointed in what old bands chose to play, but I have noticed more and more over the past few years that when an old band with a varied discography plays live they kind of have figured out what really counts. So they don't play their 1987 album when they were led astray on the path of commercialism and they don't play their 1999 comeback album with the Matrix cover art ... they play their 1983 debut album!
Virgin Killer:
And to be honest, was it ever really relevant from the beginning?
O. Thunder:
- Ouff. Edgy.
Virgin Killer:
To quote Dead Kennedys:
Heavy metal elitists f##k off.
O. Thunder:
Yeah, I have a message. F##k you!
By/Ruthless
This interview was part of the New Wave of Metal documentary.
(2021)
No comments:
Post a Comment