Gig report: Trondheim – Prog Fest
This weekend, the band went up to the norwegian city of Trondheim, to play alongside with Circus Maximus and Tellus Requiem at Zone’s “Prog Fest pt. 2 – Metal”. Late friday night, we packed our bags and hoped for glory.
After a refreshing hour of sleep, the band boarded the train to much annoyance to the other passengers. At this point, the band humor (which now was made up of observational humor and bad jokes) reached an all-time low, where it would stay for the rest of the trip.
The gig opened fine, we started off with “The Tunguska Incident”, including some improvisation that would even have turned John McLaughlin’s head. From there unfortunately, it was all downhill. We had a lot of strange problems, and when one of my guitar strings broke in the last song, we had to call it a night.
Luckily, beer and 90 minutes of Circus Maximus saved the night, and the party ended up, once again, in our hotel room. (To the left you can see Espen and Nicolay with the Circus Maximus-gang.)
It should also be noted that the band account was charged so hard during this trip (”band expenses”), that the band is considering to put choruses into the new songs to make ends meet.
The long bus trip home consisted of a band tournament in “Holmenkollen Ski Jump” lasting for hours. The longest jump of the day belonged to Espen, at 160.5 meters. The band all-time record is held by yours truly, at 166 meters.
Download: “Sierra Day”
Sierra Day is now avaliable free of charge, press here for direct download. This track is from our latest album Warring Factions, released by Nocturnal Art Productions / Candlelight Records.
Enjoy!
Download: “Demo 2004″
One dark and stormy christmas night in 2003, three young and aspiring gentlemen at age 14 decided to play black metal. After a couple of sit-downs with Espen, former bass player Aslak and myself, we thought we were ready to record a demo.
The guitars were recorded with an out-of-date Zoom-pedal to get the ugliest distortion possible, the vocals went through a tube preamp, and the drum machine was played manually (by hand), without a metronome. The result was “Demo 2004″, or “Carved in Flesh” as it later was renamed.
The first batch of printed demos (more like printed out) counted 50x, with six cassette versions made by Aslak, and somehow one of these copys found its way to South Korea. Nerbilous Production worked their asses off and quickly sold out 200 copies.
On the picture, you can see drummer Glenn Ferguson proudly presenting a copy of the Nerbilous-edition. He did not play on the demo, and maybe that’s why he’s proud.
A german label called Irminsul also released 100 copies on cassette, printed on silver paper, with a Ansur logo-sticker.
Anyway, here it is:
Ansur at Prog Fest
Ansur will be joining Circus Maximus at Prog Fest part 2 at Trondheim Scene, Trondheim saturday 28/4. With Tellus Requiem as support.
Cc 200 NOK. 18 years downstairs and 20 years on the gallery. The show starts at 22.00 pm and ends at 02.00 am.
Tickets can be bought here.
5 ideas for the next album
1. Faster, Harder, Ansur
Some people are guessing that we’re turning into an avant-garde jazzrock-band or something, but the fact is that the next album is going to be harder, more intense and energic than the previous two. It’s going to be big and dramatic, with a lot of feel. I hope we can do some rehearsal takes where we jam over the new themes and put it here, so you can hear where we’re going.
2. Complex vs. simple – more balance
Warring Factions was complex in many different ways, but the last year I’ve found myself drifting towards a more simplistic type of musicality. Not THAT simple though, minimalism is not exactly the word the reviews will be using. But rather taking something complex, and presenting it as simple, that is an idea that I like a lot. But all in all I guess there’s not a matter of how complex or how simple things are, it’s how you balance those two ends of the scale.
3. The importance of themes
This is something we decided really early on, that the new album would not be “a bunch of riffs” put together, but instead trying to have musical themes that can be played over and over and over, with variations to it, without it getting boring. Let the themes be one of the most important things to identify the songs, unlike Warring Factions (to some degree) or Axiom, where some of the really good parts weren’t “exploited” to the max. Luckily, we can do some make changes when we play it live.
4. Skipping the clichés
We aren’t the band to use a lot of cliches, but everyone is guilty to a certain extent. We have avoided most metal cliches, even progressive metal cliches. 70’s rock cliches are probably the stuff we need to watch out for most. But I’m not saying that we can’t be inspired by a style or a certain sound. Like I said, everybody does it to a certain extent, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing.
5. Improved musicianship
I think that one of the most inspiring things to do is to listen to “Dark Side Of The Moon” in a headset, and really hear how brilliant musicianship can be. The playing styles of Mason, Wright, Gilmour and Waters are really admirable, and together they are at the peak of their sound.
Everybody loves a good sound, and that’s perhaps one of the things that our albums have missed, that real band sound. Espen and Glenn have taken big leaps as musicians, developing their own styles and being creative about everything, and that goes for the band as a whole as well. One of the key ingridients to the third album will be successfully merging our individual styles to a sound that really will shine through the production.
Welcome…
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Enjoy!
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