NAGLFAR Guitarist Talks About New Album, Vocalist Change

Denmark's Antenna webzine recently conducted an interview with NAGLFAR guitarist and founding member Andreas Nilsson. A couple of excerpts from the interview follow:

Antenna: Founding member and vocalist Jens Rydén decided to leave the band earlier this year. Did this come as a surprise to you?

Andreas Nilsson: "To be honest; not really because he had told us quite some time before that he was applying to this school that was located in Stockholm, which was pretty far away from us and that he wouldn't be able to focus on the band, if he got into that, so it was no surprise at all. We knew what was going on. When he got in, we knew he would leave the band."

Antenna: What made you decide upon Kristoffer as new vocalist?

Andreas Nilsson: "Basically we just wanted to keep it simple and keep it in the family. We knew that Kris had done a really good job before. He's done a lot of backing vocals in NAGLFAR on previous releases and he's been the vocalist for a really good black metal band called SETHERIAL. So we really knew he could do it and I think the new album proves that as well."

Antenna: Has Kristoffer taken over the vocals on a permanent basis or will Jens perhaps return when he's finished with his studies?

Andreas Nilsson: "Personally I feel we are stronger than ever and that Kris is really suitable for the job as a vocalist, so I have a really hard time seeing Jens being back in the band. I mean you should of course never say never, but at this point we don't think he'll be back."

Antenna: I'm a little confused, is Kristoffer handling both the vocals and bass or have you found a replacement to take over the bass?

Andreas Nilsson: "Kris is doing the bass and the vocals on the album, but we're having a session bassplayer when we play live to keep it a five-man unit on stage. That session member is called Peter Morgan. He's been a good friend of ours for many years and he's a really good musician, so it's going to work out fine I think."

Antenna: So it's only for live purposes?

Andreas Nilsson: "At this point it's only for live purposes, but you never know in the future. I mean if Morgan feels he has the time to focus on the band, and if everything feels right later on, we might consider letting him join, but that's really far away. It's really hard to come into this brotherhood, if you could call it that. Because we have known each other for so long and we know how to interact with each other when we write music and when we're just being around each other, so it would be really difficult to have a new member in the band. It would feel kind of strange I think, but Morgan is, as I said, a really good friend and he's very similar to us so you never know.

Antenna: You recently signed with Century Media after being on various small labels. How did that come about?

Andreas Nilsson: "'Sheol' was distributed by Century Media actually. It was licensed to them from our old label, so they were really helpful with that album. Booking us on a lot of festivals, shows and stuff, so when the contract expired with the old label they contacted us and offered us a good deal and we know a lot of people in their office is very into NAGLFAR and believe strongly in the band, so we thought it would be a wise choice to sign with them."

Antenna: Do any of you currently have any side-projects going?

Andreas Nilsson: "Personally I have one project that I call SCITHE and it's basically somewhere I can put all my riffs that I think are good, but not NAGLFAR material, so I don't know what I'm going to do with it. If I'm going to release it on the internet or something in the future, but time will tell, I guess. The other guys of course have bands, but I wouldn't call them projects because they are fully functional bands. Kris and Marcus have BEWITCHED and Marcus also has two other bands called ANCIENT WISDOM and HAVAYOTH and all these bands have albums out or are about to release albums."

Read Andreas Nilsson's entire interview with Antenna at this location.