
1. Hello my friend, pleasure to have you on Rotten Pages ´zine. How are you doing today? Let us set the scene first. Where do we find you right now? Please describe your surroundings.
Hi! Axel from Volkra here. It’s a pleasure to be featured in the zine. Today has been a great day. Writing this I’m sitting in my backyard overlooking a hill with birches and other trees, sipping on a decently sized glass of whisky. It’s been a very warm day but now it’s getting to a more comfortable temperature. The kids have been tucked in, it’s about 22:30 and the sun is about to set and I’m finally getting some quiet.
2. Would we start with the origin of the band, both in terms of ideologically and musically, your aims in shaping the direction of Volkra?
Musically Volkra started out with a few song ideas by Björn (vocals), which he was offered to record at a friend’s studio in the summer of ’23. His brother Jonas (guitars) got involved early on and soon thereafter John joined on drums. This trio completed the songs for the EP “Chronicles of Ancestral Dust” in in a hurry and recorded it in just a few hours. Shortly after I (Axel) joined as the second guitarist. Just prior to this me, John, and Jonas had been in another band together that sort of fizzled out. A friend of ours, Samuel, has been helping out on bass duties and has just joined the band as a permanent member.
Ideologically, we all have at least some roots in punk/hard core music as well as metal, which I think manifest itself in a strong sense of DIY ethics as well as a firm anti-fascist stance. The band is not in any way a vehicle for promoting any particular political, religious, or other ideology, so whatever views we might hold as individuals will probably never be reflected in the music or lyrics in any obvious way. I do however think that since “we’re not a political band” is way too often used as a cop out for bands to avoid taking responsibility for fascist/nazi tendencies or other similar shit, it is somewhat important to point out that we have nothing at all in common with any “right leaning” ideologies.
Our aims for the direction of Volkra are both pretty vague but also kind of specific. We want the music be somewhere in the borderlands between doom and black metal, without being to heavily lopsided either way, and at the same time give ourselves the freedom to take the music anywhere we feel like without having the songs sound too different from each other. We also have a stated aim to not spend too much time on fine-tuning things neither when writing nor recording songs, which has to be balanced out with the urge of exploring different arrangements while songwriting or nailing the right take while recording.
3. As an artist, how do you explore the balance between crafting immersive stories through your lyrics while also delivering impactful, heavy music? What role does storytelling play in your approach to doom metal?
So far the first building block of the storytelling has always been the music itself. Without putting on too much of a prog pock hat we like to write songs that feel like they are trying to tell you a story even before the lyrics are added. This musical narrative or mood is then captured and put into words by Björn. That is not say that it will always be in that order. It’s entirely possible that the order gets reversed and we instead try to interpret a written narrative into music at some point. Either way storytelling does play a big part. If we ever wrote a song with just a bunch of great riffs but that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to convey something I’m pretty sure we would throw it out.
4. Let´s talk about your EP “Chronicles of Ancestral Dust”, What can you tell us about it and how was the response from the underground media and the fans to these tracks you already released?
The recording of the EP was what sparked the forming of the band in the first place. A friend of Björn’s had recently built a recording studio, and knowing that he was sitting on some song ideas offered him a recording session for free last summer. He got together with Jonas and John and they completed the three songs on the EP in a couple of sessions, and then all the tracking was done in the studio in just a couple of hours. So everything on the EP is pretty spontaneous. It took a while for the mixing to get done but we’re all satisfied with the way it turned out it end. Since the band has only existed for about a year at this point we don’t really have a fan base to speak of and haven’t put out any physical media yet, but we’ve gotten a decent amount of streams and a couple of interviews on the back of the EP without really doing anything to promote it more than to just put it out, so we’re very happy with the response.
5. Tell us about the recording sessions, how did it go? Was it your first time in the studio? How long did it take you to finish everything?
The recording went very well given the short time frame in which everything had to come together. We feel that this comes across in the immediacy and rawness of both the songwriting and the production in a good way. We worked under the banner of “what feels right the first time is what’s going on the record”. It was a challenge but also rewarding getting it done so hastily.
We all have different musical and recording experiences, some of us quite extensive and in more or less professional circumstances, but not with Volkra as this was our first time recording together.

6. When you write, are you also thinking about how the music may translate live or perhaps how a video may be used to promote a given song? I guess the music comes first but I’m interested in how soon the visual aspects become important.
All our songs are written to be performed live so how it translates live is definitely something we take into consideration. For example a horns part might might sound cool to add to a song, but there’s no way we could pull that of live so ideas like that get scrapped pretty quickly unless it’s a minor thing that could technically be achieved in a live setting without having to use back tracks or whatever trickery. Not that there’s anything wrong with it per se but that’s not a direction that we’re interested in moving in. We strive to keep things as real as possible while recording - what you hear on a recording is what should expect to experience if you see us perform live.
The visual representation of the music comes afterwards. I’m sure we all get our own visual images while writing a song, especially after the lyrics are coming into place, but how we then interpret that into a video has more to do with what we can technically or physically achieve with our limited resources than what those original ideas would have been like.
7. Can you brief us about the writing and recording procedures of your music? Is the writing procedure a collective effort?
Yes, the writing process is very much a collective effort. We all bring song ideas to the table, it could be one or a couple of riffs, a song structure, or just a general mood. We then play around with it until the ideas have manifested in a finished song. Every member’s input is of course of equal worth, and sometimes it even feels like the song itself is making suggestions of where it needs to go, what needs to be added or changed in order for it to reach its destination. I’ve lost the word for the phenomena right now but maybe it’s that thing where when you create something collectively it sort of spawns a collective muse. It feels like there’s one more entity in the room sharing in the creation.
As described above the EP was recorded in just a few hours, but in a professional studio. Everything else we’ve recorded ourselves. Over the course of recording the four songs that are available on Bandcamp etc at the moment we’ve found a method that works well for us. We always start with doing a basic live tracking of drums and two guitars simultaneously at our practice space to put down a foundation for the recording. On principle we never use any click tracks or triggers. Then vocals are recorded and lastly guitar overdubs, solos, etc.
8. Can you briefly inform us about the overall lyrical theme of the album?
The lyrics arise from the music. We want all our songs to have a strong sense of narrative even before any words are added and the lyrics take form from bursts of inspiration while tuning in to this narrative, like imagined scenes from a movie that the song is the soundtrack to. All lyrics have a folkloric or ancient beliefs element to them. But more in the form of an envisioned first hand account that an encyclopaedia entry.
9. How does the natural environment and surroundings influence your music, both in terms of inspiration and atmosphere?
That’s actually a pretty hard question to answer. We live in a pretty small town with about 10,000 people so nature isn’t far away, and we all enjoy spending time in the great outdoors, hiking, camping, fishing, and so on. But I don’t think that we consciously take any inspiration from the natural environment when we write songs, rehearse, or record. Non the less I know for sure that it influences us, but it’s maybe more an a subconscious level.
10. How do you create and maintain the atmospheric qualities that captivate listeners, and how important is it for you to evoke a specific mood or feeling through your music?
It’s very important, I’d dare even say that to evoke a certain mood or felling is the single most important thing with our music. If that is a singular very specific mood or a changing mixture of moods depends on the song. How to capture that feeling is a trick that you have to figure out every time you write a new song I guess. Ideally every single sound you hear while listening to a particular song is one small piece of a ship taking you for a voyage on the sea of emotions in just the direction that we intended too. But at the same time we have a policy of not spending too much time fine tuning everything. I used to live in Japan and I really do think there is something to the concept of “wabisabi” - that the imperfections of something is sometimes what makes it really great.
11. Björn, in doom metal, there are often dark and brooding vocal styles. How did you develop your own unique vocal style, and how does it contribute to the overall atmosphere and narrative of the album?
Björn: I’m not a trained vocalist in any way and using my limited vocal technique and doing as few retakes as possible when recording I try to get a raw “live" sound that conveys the emotions I get while performing/channeling the music. I think it brings a dynamic and an unpredictability to the songs. The core of it is to not try to live up to any genre expectations, just pure emotional storytelling.
12. How do you feel the metal scene has evolved in Sweden over recent years, particularly in your own genre doom metal?
We find the Swedish metal scene to be in good health. Labeling music by genre is always a risky business and I wouldn’t put ourselves squarely in the doom sub-genre but more in a more general blend of various metal genres. Without caring genre boundaries we've seen the arrival of many strong newer bands these last few years (Eternal Evil for example), and many of the more established band are also putting out great stuff ( the recent album by Hellbutcher is a great example of this). There seems to be a growing fanbase as well including people from all walks of life. Extreme metal is still very much an underground phenomena however, which we see as a positive.
13. What changes — good and bad — have you witnessed or experienced as a unit in the local and underground scene?
As a band we haven’t really existed long enough to experience any changes, but as individuals we have to different degrees been active in the local scene for about two decades. Historically there haven’t been that many local bands in the black or doom metal scene, and it’s about the same nowadays. Neither a decrease or an increase I’d say. The fanbase for this type of music does seem to be growing slowly though. Live shows took a down turn during the pandemic but are pretty much back to the same level as before now.
14. With what you cannot make compromise – in your music and in your life?
We’re all working full time jobs and have families so a lot of compromises naturally need to be made on a daily basis. We’re all firm believers in solidarity however, so we wouldn’t make compromises in that regard in our lives. And we have zero tolerance for any right wing bullshit. Musically I think we all agree that there has to be something that feels a little bit askew or crooked to make a piece of music truly great. We want to refrain from polishing stuff too much and would never use triggered drums for example. We’d also never make any compromises on volume or on the size of John’s drum kit.
With the risk of going on a bit of a personal crusade here I’d also never compromise in using a full on AI generated image for album artwork or a T-shirt design etc. I completely understand that this is a very tempting way to go for many bands or labels. AI generated images do have their use and I know that there are many artists out there utilising the technology to create amazing works of art, but that’s not what I’m talking about. If you invest as much as you can of your soul and talent in creating something musically, why would you accept to have that represented visually by a totally mindless AI generated image? I’d much rather have the peanut butter stains that my 2-year old kid smeared on the wall as an album cover than something “created” through an AI prompt. At least my kid put some emotion into what he was doing.
15. We have reached the end of our conversation, is there something that you want to say still?
Thank’s a lot for both the attention and the conversation! We’re really looking forward to seeing what other bands end up the comp and our music reaching new ears that haven’t heard it before. To every one reading this, stay true to whatever you think is meaningful and rock hard and ride free!
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