In their latest album “Viking War Trance“, Eihwar takes us on an electrifying journey, seamlessly blending traditional Nordic sounds with cutting-edge electronic elements. The result? A unique, festive, and beautifully chaotic soundscape that pushes boundaries and redefines genres. Join us as we dive deep into the creative process, inspirations, and stories behind this groundbreaking release together with Asrunn and Mark in this exclusive interview
Welcoming Eihwar
Hi Asrunn & Mark, welcome to Femme Metal Webzine. How are you? And how is life treating you?
Asrunn: Hi Miriam, Thank you so much for allowing us to express ourselves in Femme Metal, two words that are never put together enough in this music world. We’re doing fine! And even though we need a break, we’re delighted with what life has brought us since the start of this adventure.
Eihwar and Youtube
Given the rapid pace of change over the past few years, what has been the most surprising development for the band since releasing your first YouTube video?
Asrunn: Well, to be perfectly fair, every week since Eihwar‘s birth has brought its share of incredible surprises. It’s all getting a bit crazy! Honestly, I couldn’t pick out a single breakthrough, so much so that we feel like we’re in a longship on a stormy sea! All the stages we’ve walked on, all the people we’ve met, all the opportunities we’ve had, all the wonderful memories we’ve already accumulated, are so many steps in this group’s frantic race!
Back to the beginning
Let’s take a step back to the very beginning. Can you walk us through Eihwar’s inception? How did Mark and Asrunn’s artistic journeys evolve and intertwine to create the band’s unique dynamic?
Asrunn: The project was a dazzling artistic burst. Mark composed “The Forge” in 3 hours, put headphones on my ears and asked me to sing along. He pressed “record”, I went into a trance discovering these tribal rhythms, and we recorded everything in one shot. We posted it on YouTube that evening, and Eihwar was born.
Of course, this was only made possible by all the years of work (vocals and arranging for me, instruments and composition for Mark, among others) that we’ve been putting in tirelessly, doggedly, and passionately for many years. We won’t reveal the past projects of our human hosts to preserve their anonymity, but the meeting of these two humans could only result in such an artistic explosion.
What I can say with humor, and which we often repeat with Mark, is that he likes “cold white” music whereas I like “warm black” music, which is what has given Eihwar‘s unique sound in my opinion, an unlikely cross between a indus-dark folk boy, and a wannabe Jessica Rabbit who likes jazz and 50s divas but who unfortunately has more the profile of Xena the Warrior Princess, hahaha!
Season of Mist and the debut “Viking War Trance”
Then, back in September the debut “Viking War Trance” was released via Season of Mist. How has signing this deal impacted Eihwar’s journey so far?
Asrunn: Signing with Season of Mist was a big change for the humans behind Eihwar, who have always done everything on their own with no help from anyone. It meant embarking on a novel experiment: getting help from a team instead of carrying the whole load on their shoulders. It also meant faster opportunities and a network that grew from the size of a city to that of an empire. That’s got to help. But it wasn’t an easy choice; it also meant accepting that they no longer owned their music.
“Viking War Trance”‘s singles
In effect, “Viking War Trance”, your debut album, brings together all the singles you’ve released. How have these songs evolved from their original versions to the reworked ones featured on the album?
Asrunn: Allow me to correct you: the singles bundle released under the title “Ragnarök” on December 4, 2023, to announce our signing was indeed a compilation of all our previously released singles, which were only available on YouTube. “Viking War Trance,” on the other hand, is a true debut album, with 6 brand-new tracks and 3 reworked ones. Indeed we couldn’t exclude from this debut album the songs that our audience appreciated the most, namely “Berserkr”, “Fenrir”, and “Ragnarök”.
Mark: Absolutely, and as we had composed new songs with new creative processes, with a more airy, more dynamic sound, perhaps more “sharpness”, it seemed important to us to reforge these old demos to give them more dynamics. “Berserkr” and “Ragnarök” remained relatively faithful to the original demos, but we wanted to give a much more techno side to “Fenrir”.
Simply being Eihwar
If Heilung and Wardruna have created and defined a musical genre where history and ancient Norse elements are inseparably intertwined, where do Eihwar’s main themes and inspirations lie?
Asrunn: Unlike the bands you mention, Eihwar has no historical pretensions. We are much more inspired by Nordic legends and myths, as well as the values attributed to the Vikings, whether concrete or imagined, such as bravery, courage, adaptability, unwavering faith in fate, quick-wittedness, and acceptance of death…
We are also deeply driven by our inner children, their desire to be superheroes, to transform the gray and sad adult world into a video game where anything is possible. Eihwar, for the humans behind it, is truly an act of sublimation in the Freudian sense of the term.
The video of Viking War Trance
I love how intricate and well-crafted the Viking War Trance music video is. Could you share some insights into the behind-the-scenes process of creating it?
Asrunn: “Viking War Trance” is the daughter of our song “Berserkr”. We wanted to recapture the peachiness and fury of Berserkr that we would have initially wanted to achieve if we’d had more means to make this first video (which, I remind you, was filmed by just the two of us + our best friend who had never held a camera in his life for the final fight scene…). So we said to ourselves: “Dance, rage, brutality, sex appeal and sacrilege!”. It turned out this way in the talented hands of our beloved director Samuel Maurin!
The state of mind about Viking War Trance
About the single “Viking War Trance”, Eihwar stated, “We are heavy drops of rain announcing lightning. May Viking War Trance be the pagan primal cry that unleashes your inner beast”. What’s the tale behind it?
Asrunn: More than a story, it’s a state of mind. The two humans behind Eihwar created the project at a time in their lives when they had been abandoned by almost all their friends. They felt banished because they had become uncomfortable, too bright, or unacceptable to those around them. It’s a kind of call to vengeance for all those who have been banished, all those who have been disturbed by simply being what they were, all those who don’t fit the mold, the rejected, the fallen, the outcasts.
Mark: I remember a rather surprising anecdote. When we were shooting my ritual scene at night, in the smoke, the weather was calm. And only during the 5 minutes of filming, a small storm arose, which gave these quite astonishing movements of smoke. So there are no special effects.
The first European headline tour
In December, Eihwar will embark on a European tour, including two Dutch dates in Utrecht and Tilburg. What can listeners expect from your live performances?
Asrunn: We hope to bring joy, energy, permission to dance, to let go, to live the moment with the body and soul rather than the mind, and also trance. We hope to bring a parenthesis of wild madness into this sanitized, rinsed, squeezed like a lemon world. To rediscover a moment of sharing and humanity, but also of animality, that famous cry of rage that’s so good to let out from time to time.
Mark: More concretely, we are planning a set short but -we hope intense-, with most of the tracks from the album, but also some old ones. We will also present our new light show created by our new light designer.
Plans for the future
After this European tour, what lies ahead of Eihwar? What are your next plans?
Asrunn: By Odin, so many things! We’d like to start some new songs, imagine the new music videos, new live sets also, but before everything: rest! We need it. Deeply.
So, Asrunn & Mark, we’re almost at the end. Please be free to say hi to your fans and readers. Thank you so much for this interview.
Asrunn: thank you so much for reading, and I hope to meet many of you along the way! Many thanks to the Eihwar Clan around the world who make it all possible.
Mark: We hope that we will be able to drink some beers with you during the concerts in the coming days!