It is always special to do an interview for our respected magazine. You can have a chat with John and Jane Doe, but you can also try to hook the big fish or, more respectfully, the big boys. Those gentlemen or ladies who have been involved in our well-known underground for many years. You can then take a look locally or, proverbially, walk around the church tower. Or you can also broaden your horizons and go abroad. Something we also did for this interview.
After all, I (Joris Meeuwissen) had the chance to make a call to none other than Niklas Kvarforth, the man behind Shining, one of my (or I should say) my favorite black metal band in the depressive/suicidal subgenre. Mr. Kvarforth, although of Swedish origin, was staying in a hospital in the far north of Finland at the time of this interview to once again fight his inner demons. I got on the phone with an eloquent Kvarforth who focused on the essence. See, that’s what I like, just listening to the questions and answers, not too much nonsense.
I must say that I got a man on the phone who seemed to get me back on track. My medical background teaches me that gentlemen/ladies who are battling psychiatric conditions really need help and support. So let us simply bow our heads with the deepest respect and wish Mr. Kvarforth the best.
Below is the account of our conversation focused on the eleventh Shining album with the clear title Shining. The new line-up is also discussed. Here and there there is a sidestep to the past and attention is even paid to Mr. Kvarforth’s other work.
Niklas, thank you for agreeing to interview us. Tell me how are you? I hear that you are currently admitted somewhere in the north of Finland?
How are you? (laughs) A bit of a strange question in this context. I think I’ll be here for a while, but to answer your question: good. It was necessary, it was really necessary, the doctors were very formal about it. But come the new album…
The new album, number eleven already, was simply titled Shining. I think it has become a very personal album, even more so than the previous albums, is that correct?
All my albums that I release with Shining are very personal pieces of work. But perhaps this one even more so than the previous ones, you have a point there. You can even call it an extremely personal album if you know what followed. In any case, I hadn’t touched an instrument in years before recording this album. An acquaintance gave me an acoustic guitar and he encouraged me to start playing it again. Something I did. I then wrote the entire new album in less than three days on that acoustic guitar. It is true that I always start my music from the acoustic guitar. If you write a strong riff, it will also sound when you throw distortion on it. At least that’s my opinion. By doing it this way you can put even more feeling, more atmosphere into those riffs, into those songs. Just like on record five, the album Halmstad (Åttiosextusenfyrahundra), I thought there was also room for a piano intermezzo. This time we chose work by Satie (Åttahundratjugo), also performed by Palsson.
As on the other albums, the interaction, the dialogue between the different instruments, the vocals and the piano is very recognizable. How does this come to life?
Actually no, it doesn’t really come to life during the writing process. It only comes to life in the studio. We really tried to bring out a band event there, which I think we succeeded in doing. That happened quite quickly, again with the help of Andy Larocque. He now knows how I work and how to create the right sound.
As before, there are some line-up changes, the most noticeable, at least for me, being the introduction of Nick Barker on drums? How did you get to him?
Nick and I have known each other for some time. If you like, we are two people who meet their equals in many matters. Sometimes you can just see us as two “violent idiots”, but fortunately we have grown older again and we can also calm each other down. The music of Phil Collins and Genesis is another thing where we find our equal. Those drum parts are truly magical. So at some point I just asked Nick to record the parts for the new record. Everyone knows him of course for his ultra tight and very fast playing. What he brings to this album is slightly different. Both Andy and I pushed him to the right limits and the result is there.
Doesn’t working in a studio, now also on that new record, give you any stress or discomfort?
Fortunately, I’ve known Andy for years, which helps. He knows exactly what to do and what I expect. In addition, it is of course always quite a job to get the budget in order, it remains an expensive process, those recording processes and everything that follows, and it often costs more than we make. The support from Napalm Records was also very important.
In itself, making a video clip or several clips is always a difficult exercise for us. On one hand, we always have that limited budget. On the other hand, we often have long or longer songs, which is also the case on this record. I wanted to work with Claudio Marino for the song Allt För Döden. I met this guy when I made a video clip for the song A Forest together with the guys from Behemoth. I immediately felt at ease with Claudio Marino. In the clip of Allt För Döden he simply succeeded very well in shooting this clip somewhere in Stockholm on a limited budget. Gosh, we had to shift the recording dates a bit as I was held up at Helsinki airport, but come on. The story is well told. Let us say that the Italian frustration has not missed it’s mark.Oh well, with a video clip you can always add something extra, shock people, kick them in the shins, but that doesn’t keep me awake for a long time. Some people will also think the music is just rubbish, but that doesn’t matter to me either. After shooting this video clip, things really took a turn for the worse and that’s why I’m here now.
This time you opted for a collaboration with Napalm Records, several labels have already passed through in the past (Spinefarm, Avantgarde Music, Season Of Mist). How did that happen?
Indeed, many collaborations have already taken place. This time, as with the previous album, the collaboration with the label can be called a licensing deal and this from TSI (The Sinister Three, Kvarforth’s own label, ed.). Doing it this way seemed like the best plan to us. This also allowed the most suitable strategy for promotion and the like to be selected. I have known the people in Napalm Records for several years, maybe twenty years. They contacted me ten years ago, but the collaboration has only now come about.
If we dig further into Shining‘s past, one thing that strikes me is a collaboration with the Slovenian black metal band Srd. A tour (Return Of The Enemy Tour, 2019 – this tour ended in Kuurne at Thronefest) was even set up to promote that split. Still special. Musically there are similarities, how did the collaboration come about?
Man, that was a period for me. At the time it all just seemed to fail. Don’t get me wrong, the guys in Srd are very good guys, but working together again won’t happen. We then worked very closely together to promote their work, invested a lot of money in it and everything largely turned out to be a failure. For bands, often starting bands, it is not always clear what business side is involved in keeping a band. During that period, Marcus corrected many things. One of the guitarists at the time, who was a booking agent, quit a week before the tour. We have tried to bring the tour to the best possible end despite many problems. Now you won’t be able to push me into a tour like that anymore.
Will there be no live performances to promote the new record?
I don’t really feel like touring anymore, but a few live performances should certainly work out, but I don’t really know how to organize this at the moment. I’m still a bit locked up, if you can call it that, and everyone is now aware of Nick’s health condition. At the end of last year he ended up in a life-threatening condition, he became seriously ill. So you can call it a complicated situation at the moment.
On a personal musical level, you have lent your vocals to other bands in the past. I thought the most impressive one of the last year was this one in Høstsol, can you agree with that?
Oh thank you! Yes, in Shining I write everything, in Høstsol I just have to deliver the vocals. That in itself is also a special story. After all, I can still remember when I was younger (laughs) that I was sitting in a library somewhere after school listening to old Manes (Tor-Helge Skei, the founder of Manes, is also the driving force behind Høstsol, ed.) to listen. Well, now we work together indoors. The record you are talking about is the one from January 2023, Länge Leve Döden, released via Avantgarde Music, but I can tell you that Skei has so much wonderful material for many more albums. He writes with such ease.
I think we’re through… Do you have any closing words for our readers?
Oh yes, the famous last words (laughs). Thank you for the support… Especially for those who support me and Shining. The rest doesn’t interest me. You could write Kill ’em all (laughs).
And so a chat of more than thirty minutes comes to an end. A chat in which at certain moments Mr. Kvarforth looked deep into his soul and immediately made it clear how the music he created can be called so personal. Well, we already knew some of that. Special interview with a special man, that’s how I’m going to remember it for myself.
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