With their latest album days away from release, Midland’s Metalheads Radio’s Rebecca Collins had some questions for Kampfar’s Drummer and vocalist Ask Ty.

You will be releasing your album ‘Profan’ on 13 November. Am I right in saying it is your bleakest album to date? Tell us a bit about the album – what is it about?

I have issues with putting one album up against another. All I can say is that ‘Profan’ is what Kampfar sounds like in 2015, the natural expression of the members involved and our process. I wouldn’t say the album is “about” anything, but it does cover topics that can also be found in the two previous albums, ‘Mare’ and ‘Djevelmakt’. We stay in our own musical universe, and it is indeed a bleak place, but it also a powerful and vibrant place of fire and opposition.

At the moment I view this album as the culmination of the 20+ years of the inner fire that pushes Kampfar ahead. It is a demanding existence, being a band in this field of extreme music, but it is also so valuable, and that is something we express through very riff, scream and thump on ‘Profan’.

Where might Kampfar’s music go after ‘Profan’?

I have no idea and no interest in exploring that at this time. We just did two abums in less than two years, now we will do a lot of shows in the coming years, and then we will see. If we have black gold in us, then we will create something new. If we don’t, then this will stand as the peak of our years as Kampfar. We exist in the present, in this band. The past is for the nostalgic, and the future for the dreamers. We just live this, and we can only live it right now.

Kampfar have been around since 1994 – How has the world of black metal changed in that time? How has Kampfar changed?

21 years does a lot to the world, to music, and to the people of any band. The strength of Kampfar has, through all these years, been that it’s only been about what’s coming next. And that the fire in us has just grown stronger and fiercer. Some bands burn out fast, creating their good material within a short timeframe. That is what I see in the Norwegian black metal scene, and it has for a long time been other countries that have provided the strong albums. There are a few gems left among the old guard, but it is generally a pretty uninteresting world. I’d rather listen to Scott Walker’s bleakness, than the pretentious rehash of old clichés found in so much of present day black metal.

Last week you released the first ever Kampfar music video ‘Daimon’ – why did it take 21 years to release a video? Why did you choose this song?

Making a video with the expression that we had in mind is not easy, and we needed to find the right people to work with. It’s also a financial issue, we couldn’t just do a simple point and shoot video, it needed to represent the depth of our expression, which we are pleased to see happened here.

This song was maybe the hardest one to get right, it was really in the vocals that it found it’s expression. There was a lot of resistance on our way towards nailing the vibe of the song, but once we had it on tape it became clear that this song needed to get some extra attention in the form of a visual accompaniment.

It’s a really visually stunning video – are you pleased with it? Can you tell us about the making of the video?

It was recorded in it’s entirety in Krakow, Poland. Red Pig Productions jumped on our ideas and our connection to one of Poland’s great artists of all time, and took the story we had in mind to heights we couldn’t expect. These guys have done some really good videos before, but this was new ground for them, too. The combination of live action and animation yielded some powerful results and we are definitely going to do more work in this vein.

You use Polish artist Beksiński’s work for your album covers. Can you explain the similarities between his work and your music?

The man had an ability to interpret his dreams in a way I have never seen. Or he had dreams like nobody else, which is highly possible. There is so much going on in every piece of art he ever did, from his early photographs, to his sketches and paintings, and even in his later digital work, and we feel a kinship to that outlook of his. There is an immense amount of beauty in his work, and these images that we have used for Kampfar have all been “Yes!” moments, where we knew we had the right painting immediately when coming across them.

You write songs in both Norweigan and English. How do you decide what language a song should be? Which do you prefer writing in?

This is something that is just quite random, it depends on where inspiration takes you at any given time. But the history of Kampfar is that of mostly Norwegian lyrics, and Dolk especially has such a grasp of the Norwegian language and so much historical knowledge of forgotten words, that it’s a gift to write in this tongue.

I’m really looking forward to catching you live as part of the Blackfest tour with Gorgoroth and Gehenna! What can I expect from the show?

With very little humility I will say that you will see one of the strongest and most powerful live bands in extreme music today. There are some bands out there that deliver at a high level under any circumstances and we are one of them, and we really look forward to hitting the road with this package of legendary bands. We also have a pretty long set so we will present music from the last 25 years, not just the newer material.

Kampfar’s album ‘Profan’ is out Friday 13 November 2015.

Written interview by Rebecca Collins