GMA Interview Interrogation: Sarke (Sarke)

"Here in Norway, I think most people separate the murders, the church burnings and the music, because it's a few individual people who does it"

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GMA caught up with Sarke, front-man and multi-instrument player of Sarke from Norway. Speaking to him about We selected 7 of the questions with the best answers, but you can hear the entire interview by clicking the audio button above. (finish after typing up intie)

You've recently released or going to release in the next couple of days your third album, could you explain the concept behind the album title?

Yeah, well it itself is a made up word as are the previous two albums, I wanted to... the meaning of the word is a kind of door into the darkness, halfway into a darker side, so for me it's a door that is halfway.


Now Norway, since Black Metal started in Norway it has gone through a first wave and a second wave, is Sarke part of a third wave would you say?

I don't see Sarke as a Black Metal band, I don't think Sarke is hard enough or dark enough to be a real Black Metal band and I think people think that way because it's from a cold and awesome tone of Darkthrone and Satyricon, that it is easy to put Sarke into the Black Metal genre but I think that Sarke is much more than just a Black Metal band, it's more of a dark rock, heavy music I think, I don't feel that we are a Black Metal band.


Comparing the upcoming album "Aruagint" to the second album "Oldarhian", what has changed in between the two albums?

Cyrus is not in the band anymore, it's not a big thing, he took up parts with other bands and also Nocturnal to do some guitars, but otherwise it's the same band and music-wise we haven't just continued the Sarke sound, we've added some new elements and we've kept a lot of it, so for me maybe the picking between the first two albums, I feel.


The Norwegian Metal scene has not always been in positive light, especially when you have people like Varg Vikernes (who did the church burnings) and most recently the Norwegian extremist Anders Behring Breivik who took ideologies from Vikernese, so do you think that Black Metal is not looked upon in a positive way in Norway because of these atrocities?

Here in Norway, I think most people separate the murders, the church burnings and the music, because it's a few individual people who does it and it doesn't seem like it affects the music and the popularity of it, so it's not as positive as speaking about the Black Metal because of Dimmu Borgir, and Enslaved; although it's not a Black Metal band it always talked about, but these bands are very popular here and when we are on TV they speak well and they speak in a positive way, also Satyricon is popular and so it's been very accepted here and usually the peoples who burns things and are doing bad stuff, it's a smaller band who is not popular usually so it doesn't, it goes more on the person themselves rather than the music. Of course it was a bit different in the start in the beginning of the 1990's because then Black Metal was not so well known in the world so then when people who did something, it's Black Metal, but that's a long time ago, so I guess in the last 15 years it has found a positive way.


Does the Norwegian government offer any incentive for youth to learn how to play musical instruments, is there some sort of encouragement?

Yes in Norway it's like they support the music and they also give money to bands to tour and to record albums, but it's not just Black Metal it's all genres, so Black Metal gets money and so does Jazz and Pop, but they also have some rehearsal places so we can say that for the Government, they don't care if it's pop music or Black Metal, they just want to export and distribute it.


When you went into the studio and sat down and decided on what music you wanted to play, what lyrics you wanted for certain songs, where there any songs that you felt did not fit onto this album?

I usually throw away the song before it's done if I'm not going to have it on the album, so I usually finish only the songs I'm going to have on the album and I made 'Strange Pungent Odyssey', it's a special song, but I wasn't sure if the band would accept it but they all liked the song so we had it on the album, so that was one of the songs that we were unsure about. But I showed them the song before we went into the studio, but that was maybe a song I was not sure that the song was going to be on the album, I also do the lyrics at the same time as I do the music so I don't finish a song before the lyrics are finished, so I don't write a lot of lyrics and then write the songs I just add the lyrics to the songs as they are done together.


Finally are there any hello's, thank you's, greeting you wish to express to friends, family, band-members, colleagues, etc?

Of course our management, Gunnar is a very good man and also Lars-Erik vestry(?) who produced the album with me, he knows the sound I want and his work is very good so those are the main two people, but also the people involved with Sarke and of course all the bands. But I guess it would have to be those two.


'Aruagint' is out now via Indie Recordings

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