Good old Kim Sølve (Manimalism, Taarenes Vaar, Swarms, Trine + Kim Design Studio, etc) does it again. Another Blitzkrieg Baby mini album on tape, again released by Thomas Ekelund's label Beläten. This scandalous, interracial Norwegian/Swedish collaboration already bore a couple of awesome fruits in the past (the equally awesome "Kids' World" and "Cannibal Commando" tapes) so apparently this became a regular thing. I'm glad these guys found each other.
Kim was kind enough to share the tracks of "War Gods" with Heathen Harvest before the release date, and I'm very happy to give you once again a glimpse into the grey, decayed, bleak, perverted world of Blitzkrieg Baby.
All the classic elements of this project are still there: powerful, crystal clear old school industrial synths, catchy yet brutal melodies, awesome vocals, careful composition and a less than flattering insight of the human condition.
Maybe even more than in the past, all the tracks are apparently pretty simple. In the end it's just a few synth lines, a basic and incessant rhythm (never too slow, never too fast), perfectly treated vocals delivering nasty lyrics ("He's a good boy. Daddy's boy. He doesn't give a shit. He's all about the pain. He's a worshipper of death." - Fuck yes!), right? Well, yes, but something about mr. Sølve's way of arranging, layering and counterpointing his sounds makes every Blitzkrieg Baby track a little jewel. Even more, they're a fucking lesson in composing and production. I dread, and at the same time long for, the day Timbaland or Pharrell will stumble upon a Blitzkrieg Baby tape and give it a few spins. I'm sure this guy spends a lot of time trying to get just the right sound out of his synthesizers, and tweaking Mr. B's vocals until they're exactly how he wants them. I'm also quite sure he doesn't own a gun, so I don't think we'll hear Phil Spector-style stories about him anytime soon.
Kim Sølve's vision of the world hasn't changed a bit. Maybe it's just worse. Dead bodies piling in the streets, humiliation, complete squalor and ruin dominate his lyrics, with the nice addition of sexual perversion in my favorite track of the EP, "Pig Boy", which sound like something that could come out of Zeigenbock Kopf, Plack Blague or Intrinsic Action.
"War Gods" is Blitzkrieg Baby at its stripped down, minimal best. I appreciated the noisier inserts, especially the almost Merzbowesque static loops of "They All Died With Spit In Their Faces" and the omnipresent pumped-up low frequencies that made my floor rumble. The synths are always pristine, domineering and
absolutely fist-pump inducing. It's impossible not to get caught in the rhythm and pretty much all the tracks are instant earworms. Some of the melodies remind me of the most minimal branches of 90s black metal, crossed with weird english 80s synth pop (try the bells on closing track "Sicko" and tell me you don't get the same feeling), which is of course a nice touch. Kim's experience in dark ambient shows off in the lower frequency, subtle tones used as cement that keep together the flow of the tracks. They would probably work very well even by themselves as ambient tracks.
In conclusion, everything about "War Gods" immediately identifies it as a Blitzkrieg Baby work. Don't expect anything new, but prepare for a fucking awesome (yet too short! A full length album would be much appreciated at this point) ride.
Highly recommended for whoever wants to hear the sound of being alive in 2018.
Track list:
01) War Gods In The Flesh
02) They All Died With Spit In Their Faces
03) Pig Boy
04) Bolt Hammer Kiss
05) Sicko
INTERVIEW WITH BLITZKRIEG BABY, STARTED 04/01/2016 AND FINISHED 22/10/2020
Without knowing it I've been a fan of Kim Sølve's design work for a pretty long time but i criminally ignored his music output. It turns out his music is one of the best things I discovered in the last ten years or so. I'm really honored and happy that I got to chat with a fucking great artist. We were supposed to release this interview on Heathen Harvest but I guess we have been a tad bit too slow for that. Here's an interview that took almost five years. Enjoy.
1. Hi Kim, and thanks for accepting to do this interview! We'll start right away with the mandatory introductionary question: can you tell us a bit about the origins of your project Blitzkrieg Baby? If I'm not mistaken it's your most recent musical output, right?
Blitzkrieg Baby began many years ago, initially born from my infatuation with Industrial music from the 80’s and early-to-mid 90’s. I kept Blitzkrieg Baby to myself for more than a decade before I eventually started releasing the music in 2012. Thematically, it is a continuation of themes I was obsessed with as a kid paired with an overload of current existential despair. This has given Blitzkrieg Baby a purpose for me that goes beyond what I had imagined when I first started out.
2. Indeed the themes of Blitzkrieg Baby speak pretty loud and clear: child soldiers, perpetual war, mutilation, basic human instincts taking over, etc. The most interesting thing in my opinion is that you channel a very intense and pitch black aura of hopeless violence in a quite “accessible” and subtle way. I was positively surprised by the catchy nature of the tracks on your latest EP, where you're taking this aspect of your music even further than on the previous tape, “Kids' World”. Cooking up a decent mix of “pop” sensibility and abrasive industrial noise is not easy at all, and very few people even dared to try it in the last 35-40 years. Where does this necessity to be somewhat accessible while still producing one of the least accessible kinds of music come from? Are you trying to corrupt the young, unaware, distracted minds of today? Is it a way to make a heavy, disgusting pill easier to swallow?
The aesthetics of sound, the thrill and even transcendence of realtime sound experimentation, and the power of violent sounds can all be wonderful in and of themselves. But, to me, sound that is organised in specific ways that make the composition rewarding, and even catchy gives it another aspect that I also enjoy. When it comes to melody and tonality, again, there are aspects that in of themselves are rewarding even when isolated from the sound or production. Then there’s the lyrics, the aesthetics of words and how they are combined together, and whatever themes I obsess over. When all of this is put together, it combines all my ways of working into one, which is reason in itself to work this way. It all comes together very instinctively and unforced. The work has its own logic and I do my best to go where it takes me. There are no outer considerations that influence the process, it has nothing to do with winning someone over, or becoming popular or unpopular with this or that audience. I simply stay true to my own muse and obsessions. I want it to be music that I would like to return to for repeated listens. I am not much of a genre purist. I never have been. I see and acknowledge art from a perspective where genre is less relevant. Most of the artists I have enjoyed are either pioneers of a genre, or are somewhat outside or in between strict genre boundaries. A genre has its importance, but it is not to be worn like a straitjacket. What matters to me is personal expression, ideas, individuality, quality and if possible, idiosyncrasy. Orthodox genre purism at all costs tends to be laws upheld by people that bore me to no end. Joining the ranks of faceless soldiers who limit their own creative output to blend in among other genre exercisers is meaningless to me. I consider Blitzkrieg Baby to be part of the post-industrial lineage, but in no way do I feel any need to limit my ideas to fit into some kind of genre police mentality.
3. This one might be a stupid question but I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff. I'm very curious about the technical/production side of Blitzkrieg Baby. Can you explain more or less the sketching/recording process you usually go through while assembling a track? Do you meticulously plan albums and EPs as a whole or do you "collect" tracks, if that makes sense?
I do work with sound experiments from my studio, and also go to specific places to record improvisations, such as percussion sessions with Bjeima in abandoned buildings. I often work from these recordings and carve out and reprocess sounds until it pans out and becomes a track. Earlier, I used to steal bits and pieces that I wanted to use, for example, from orchestral music. I still do that on occasion, but mostly if they have some symbolic value to them or I have a conceptual idea that really benefits from that specific sound source. As certain lyrical themes reappear, they often evolve into a concept over time, and I work on tracks, lyrics and visuals according to that theme. I collect sentences and words that I come up with as well as sketches and ideas for tracks all the time. It is an ongoing, ceaseless process.
4. I understand that while you're the mastermind behind the project, you're not alone in the making of Blitzkrieg Baby, you have people helping you with vocals for example and from what I remember from our past talks there's a few interesting things about them. Why/how did you choose your collaborators?
First and foremost, Blitzkrieg Baby is me. When I work alone, I can go ninety-five percent of the way on my own, and a lot of the time I have done exactly that. However, I need to and enjoy bringing my sketches and lyrics to close allies to finish together. Bjeima is a multi-instrumentalist that, like me, spent his teens in the Black Metal scene here in Oslo in the early nineties. Our partnership began in 2004 and has since expanded into a profound and lifelong brotherhood that supports me in almost all of my projects: Swarms, Manimalism, Blitzkrieg Baby, and other projects yet to be announced. Together, we elaborate on my tracks or try out ideas that I bring to his studio. His involvement in Blitzkrieg Baby has increased in the past few years to a point where working without him seems unthinkable. He also mixes everything Blitzkrieg Baby does. With a view on life that is very much aligned with mine despite our wildly different backgrounds, The Right Reverend Mr. B, an Italian-American, is my go-to guy regarding lyrics. Running my lyrics by him always takes them up a notch. He also records vocals on many tracks, like Kids’ World, Filth Load, Boys Will Be Boys, and many others. The Right Reverend Mr. B lives on a farm outside of Oslo where he has founded his own religion and practices body suspension in a religious context. Never a dull moment when we hang out. Anders B. has always been in the Blitzkrieg Baby circle. Our friendship goes back almost 30 years and he has produced solid material for Blitzkrieg Baby. I have also contributed to his long-standing projects, Mind & Flesh and Babyflesh, released through Slaughter Productions, Nuit Et Brouillard and Cloister Recordings. He is also an integral part of Blitzkrieg Baby’s live performance. Aymeric Thomas from France is also a multi-instrumentalist, highly imaginative, efficient and a prominent collaborator on several Blitzkrieg Baby recordings, such as the recently released Genocidal Sextasy album. Per Åhlund is from Sweden and the latest accomplice. So far, he has performed live vocals and recorded vocals on some recent, soon-to-be-released recordings, and is proving to be a force to be reckoned with. I would also like to emphasise the importance of my life partner, Trine, who is very much an integral part of Blitzkrieg Baby and collaborates with me on the visual aspect. It is a bit of a “Current 93”situation: I am Blitzkrieg Baby, but when present the others are part of Blitzkrieg Baby.
5. So it's an international band! You never performed live with Blitzkrieg Baby, right? I can imagine it would be complicated, given the nature of the project. Do you have an idea on how a live show would work, and do you have any interest or plans to do it?
The nature of the project has made it difficult, despite the ironic fact that a live performance can be whatever I choose it to be. Our very first live mass was in Stockholm at Dominion of Flesh: 5 Years of Cloister Recordings on November 1, 2019. For that special occasion, we tried out one of the many ways and forms that Blitzkrieg Baby could perform live and it worked well. We were hoping to do more shows this year, but Covid-19 arrived and ruined those plans.
6. Let's go back to the studio for a bit. Your last three tapes were released by Thomas Martin Ekelund's label Beläten. Knowing his work as Trepaneringsritualen (which might fit your musical taste from what you wrote earlier) the fact that you guys worked together is not surprising, but I'm curious about how this collaboration started. Will we get another Blitzkrieg Baby release on Beläten? Isn't it shameful to work with Swedes?
Thomas and I have been in touch for a decade now. He started Beläten pretty much at the same time that Blitzkrieg Baby crawled out from hiding, and it obviously made sense to work together as we both had the idea independent of each other. Lately, we have worked on several tracks together, and I contributed some vocals and did the photography for Trepaneringsritualen’s masterpiece, “Kainskult” from 2017. The fourth full length album from Blitzkrieg Baby will be released through Beläten. It is getting mastered as we speak.
7. I can't wait to listen to whatever you guys are planning! Let's hop to the visual side of Blitzkrieg Baby. All your releases, from “Porcus Norvegicus” to “Cannibal Commando” look great, and the images perfectly match with the sounds. Did you have complete totalitarian control over the artworks or did you leave some things to the labels? Are you trying to follow a specific aesthetic to create a recognisable “Blitzkrieg Baby-look”? Especially the last two tapes with their gritty black and white pictures, look like they're intentionally similar, at least in atmosphere and palette of greys.
Regarding the visual side of any music project I am involved with, I don’t leave anything up to anyone aside from Trine. Together with Trine, the debut, Porcus Norvegicus, was made according to that album’s intention, using a decapitated pigs head. However, on the three Beläten releases, Thomas needed a single photo for the front and the rest of it is the uniformed, graphic template that has been the same for all Beläten releases since the beginning. This meant I had to express everything I wanted through a single image as I could not use typography or any graphic ideas at all. The template Thomas uses for his label works nicely; it is stark, informative, and fits perfectly with his label’s profile. For Blitzkrieg Baby releases on other labels, like Homo Sapiens Parasitus (2019) and Genocidal Sextasy (2020), I am doing all the design, illustration, photos, and other visual elements, together with Trine, as usual.
8. You've been doing great graphic design with Trine for many years now, and lots of people, even without noticing it, appreciate and own some of your work. I think every self-respecting extreme metal fan has at least one or two albums with your design. If not, there are some problems with his or her collection. It's a big part of your artistic output I guess, and also, as mentioned before, I think your graphic style goes hand in hand with your music. You did cover artworks for Darkthrone, Shining, Solefald and even for books about Norwegian beer or teenage vampires. Do you want to explain a bit the genesis of this collaboration?
Trine and I met in 1999 and quickly became a couple, both artistically and personally. We both came from art school backgrounds and were, at that point, expanding on our backgrounds by educating ourselves in graphic design. During that decade, I was in the Black Metal scene and was playing in Manimalism/Taarenes Vaar, and Swarms. Friends soon began asking me to make artwork for their albums, so Trine and I began taking on the challenge together and, from that point, it grew into a full time job for us both. We have been working with theatres and the performing arts, publishing houses, magazines, and artists like Mayhem, Darkthrone, Ved Buens Ende, Ulver, Virus, Ihsahn, Arcturus, Solefald, Dødheimsgard/DHG, Enslaved, Manes, Shining (NO), Shining (SE), Sivert Høyem, The Wretched End with Samoth, Pål Waaktar from A-Ha, and many more.
9. I really like that most of the times you can immediately tell from afar that a cover is made by you guys. Even when the style is completely different, you definitely leave your personal mark on your work. It's a stupid question maybe, but do you have any design from your portfolio that you're extremely fond of? Did you enjoy collaborating with anybody in particular during the years? Or anybody that was particularly awful to deal with? Please feel free to share gossip and anecdotes, our readers are hungry.
After having worked with commissioned artwork for 20 years, there are countless stories to tell, that’s for sure. If Trine and I release a new book at some point, some of the stories might end up there. There’s not enough space here though for that. Both Trine and I are highly critical of our own work and neither one of us looks back too much: we tend to focus on what could have been better with any given work, and then move on. So, I’d say our best work is yet to come.
10. We already talked about this privately but I think it's worth to share: serious, focused industrial/noise music in Norway these days seems to be limited to you and a handful of other people. I’m thinking about stuff with a coherent aesthetic, proper attention to detail, sincere semi-fetishistic passion and some sort of purpose/agenda, made by people who know what they’re doing. Be it pure noise, power electronics or something with a more musical structure like the things you do, there seems to be a lack of projects in this area. I think I can count them on two hands. Do you have any idea why? Has it always been this way? Does it bother you or are you proud to be a lone wolf?
I don’t know why Industrial is so under-represented in Norway. For some reason people work in other fields of music. Genres are not that important though; what I like is people who have a genuine passion for something and who have the talent to make it special, and the stamina to see it through no matter what. In other words, people who create something because of a need.
11. I kind of agree with you, the flourishing of subcultures is extremely ridiculous at this point. Especially the clothing part kills me. Call me ignorant but I only recently found that skinheads wear different colors of shoe laces if they're left wing or right wing. Jesus Christ. But not everything is grey and worthless fortunately. You mentioned the the metal scene, which in Norway is quite big as far as I know. Or at least, gigs by important bands are held in big venues and cost a good amount of kroner. One thing that I noticed while living in Oslo is that it's not uncommon for metal and extreme or weird electronics to go together, also in live settings. I think this week Arcturus are being supported by Sturmgeist & The Fall Of Rome for example, and I played a small festival headlined by Deathammer a couple of years ago. I guess this marriage dates back at least to Conrad Schnitzler's intro for the “Deathcrush” EP. Frankly I didn't see this anywhere else, not this commonly anyway. Especially not in my country, except very few odd examples. I think it's a really good thing that's valid for other genres of difficult music (free jazz, the improvisation scene, etc), and also it's a mixture that blends in your Blitzkrieg Baby material quite extensively, maybe not much for the sounds per se but for the attitude and atmosphere. Do you think there's a special openness in this regard in Norway, or am I wrong?
There was a brief period, in the very beginning of the nineties, where the rising Norwegian Black Metal scene had this consensus that if you wanted to play in a band, you had to be original - you had to have your own thing. Creative identity and a certain level of uniqueness was required, and to simply draw within the lines was not enough. All the releases that came out sounded different from each other, taking in inspirations from different sorts of esoteric or unexpected music, even though all the releases were regarded as Black Metal. I loved that, and it aligned perfectly with where I was coming from in my early teens. I still cling to that and find this aspect of it more interesting than completely bland genre exercises that have no personality whatsoever. Perhaps this phenomenon comes from the same place as the openness you talk about, or perhaps this brief period of adventure might have left a trace in the scene that still exists today.
12. I do have the impression that lots of things in Norway have to fall into a certain “standard” or orthodoxy as you say, both in black metal or heavy electronics and in life in general. Do you think the Janteloven spirit of conformity extends to art and music as well? Extreme metal especially, unfortunately, seems like a pre-packaged product most of the times. The few people that do stand out from the mass though do very interesting things, pushing to the limit and all the way over the top. That’s what I like. You Norwegians have the ability to really go fucking crazy with your music. Even in bands I don’t particularly like (to cite some you worked with: Solefald, Ulver or Shining) I appreciate the utmost originality and the will/urge to merge, mix and destroy influences, to actually create something new. Which is kind of what you’re doing with BB too. And it’s a quite rare thing. Maybe it’s supposed to be a rare gift?
We are all slaves to our nature, right? My nature, upbringing and life experiences compel me to do exactly what I want artistically. Whatever I do in Blitzkrieg Baby is what feels natural to me. I never force it to become something it is not, but I put in the effort it needs to become what it can be. In general, people are desperate for a banner to march beneath, a herd to belong to—with dress codes, ready-made lifestyles and musical templates to adapt to. Underground scenes are no different than anything else; it is just a template for a lifestyle that serves as a substitute for having thoughts of your own. At the same time, there needs to be some kind of constructive dialog between something more traditional and something more unique to make a result that excites and engages me.
13. Talking about your lyrics for Blitzkrieg Baby, they’re a quite big part of the project’s charm. It sounds like they’re very carefully composed, and they’re ironic and bleak at the same time. Also, more often than not they’re catchy as hell. It’s also clear they follow a personal, coherent vision. Can you explain what they ’re about, more or less? You do have recurring themes, right? What’s your inspiration and do you have a standard writing process of sorts?
Lately, the inspiration has increasingly been about the downside of mankind’s existence; put simply, being born a mammal, living on planet earth, and having to deal with humankind as an egoistic, vulgar, brutal, dominant, tyrannical entity that is part of the animal kingdom. Of course, I am no exception from this, and I judge myself accordingly. My mind has always been very receptive, taking in whatever is around me and, so, I need to get it all out of my system by putting it into whatever I create. That’s when Blitzkrieg Baby serves a function. I guess this would also go some way to explain the recurring themes, such as my childhood fear-based obsession with war, which I give free rein in Blitzkrieg Baby. The lyrics are often collages of words and sentences written down over long periods that I piece together according to subject matter and intention, to create a complete image. It sometimes feels more like I arrange the words to be presented as visual pieces, than any kind of lyric. I get obsessive about the aesthetics, the visual associations of the words, and how pure I can keep it.
14. Blitzkrieg Baby is not your only musical output of course. You’ve been active since the 90s, dabbling in avantgarde black metal, ambient, everything in between and more. For example last year demos from your band Manimalism / Taarenes Vaar were reissued on vinyl and cd and you scored a dance performance with your collective Swarms. I know this would probably take the length of a whole other interview but do you want to talk a bit about these two projects?
Swarms was founded in 1999 and we released our debut album, “The Silver Hour” in 2008. The second Swarms album, “Vault of Apparitions” was released under the name K100 in 2010, due to an inner turmoil. We have made a lot of commissioned music over the past twenty years, mainly for the performing arts. In 2015, we composed a feature length ballet performance that was premiered at The Norwegian National Opera. We are now composing our second soundtrack for an art film. Since the start, I have always had a conceptual approach that we still use today. The upcoming Swarms album will be released by Cyclic Law, along with the reissues of our first two albums. I founded Manimalism under the name Taarenes Vaar back in 1992. We started out as Black Metal but even back then, like today, we saw that movement as something else other than musical conservatism and have continued to expand on that. We released one demo tape in 1996 and one in 1997. We began recording our debut album in 1999 but did not release it until 2014, when Adversum released it on vinyl before the label folded. In 2015, the greek label, Kyrck reissued our two demos on vinyl and CD. The CD version also includes the abandoned first recording session for our debut album from 1999. All the tracks can be purchased from our Bandcamp. We are now in the process of recording our second album.
15. War Gods: is it my impression or you went even more minimal than in the past this time? If so, Is it intentional or it just happened?
I think this has to do with me becoming more confident in my own choices and developing a better understanding of what Blitzkrieg Baby is.
16. I know you're partial to "Sicko" but my favourite track on the new EP is "Pig Boy", which could easily become a Blitzkrieg Baby anthem. I'm a sucker for gay BDSM aesthetics in noisy music. Anything you'd like to share about the lyrics of "War Gods" in general?
"War Gods" was made to follow “Kids World” (2014) and “Cannibal Commando” (2015) back in 2016, but, due to Beläten taking a much needed break, it did not surface until spring 2018. In general, with all new material, I want to shed away the excess and get closer to the core of what I'm doing, which, for me, is something that has gradually revealed itself. Like any art project, for the lack of a better term, Blitzkrieg Baby is searching for its perfect expression, and, at the same time, is always shifting.
19. You have a great new full length out now, “Homo Sapiens Parasitus” (first Blitzkrieg Baby released on vinyl if I'm not mistaken?). The intents are pretty clear even just from the title but I think this work is even more dark and bleak than the others, while still being intoxicatingly catchy. What was the genesis of this album? And how the fuck did you come up with one of my favourite choruses ever: “Pre-cum of the Apocalypse”?
Homo Sapiens Parasitus is the second full length album, and the first one on vinyl. Although the material spans two decades, like all other Blitzkrieg Baby material released so far, much of it was assembled and arranged alongside the Beläten EP’s. I recently reread an interview I did for Noise Receptor in 2013 or 2014, and realised Homo Sapiens Parasitus was pretty close to being finished at the time of that interview. So, the amount of time spent not being able to wrap it up was perverse. In fact, in the midst of that struggle, I actually finished the third album, Genocidal Sextasy. The track “Pre-cum of the Apocalypse” pretty much made itself, with choirs from Bjeima.
18. So we've been trying to complete this interview on and off for almost five years now. I think we deserve a prize. Or a hundred lashes. Which could very well be a prize. Obviously many things changed and happened to us, to the world and to your art in the meantime. Do you care for a recap of your latest activities, or just add anything you find important?
I have recently released the third full length album, “Genocidal Sextasy” through Cloister Recordings, along with a vinyl reissue of the debut “Porcus Norvegicus”, from 2012. Aufnahme + Wiedergabe has released a 12 inch with remixes of Blitzkrieg Baby tracks by Ancient Methods, Antoni Maiovvi, Espen T. Hangård, and Luciano Lamanna.
19. So, we’re almost done! The mandatory final question to every interview: what’s next for Blitzkrieg Baby.
Coming soon is a lathe cut single for Mustard Relics with “Violence”, perhaps the most poppy tune yet. I am working with Malignant Records to release “Nurture Nothing, Destroy Everything, The International Blitzkrieg Coalition Document I”, where Blitzkrieg Baby collaborates with artists Thomas Ekelund of Trepaneringsritualen, Armour Group, Vær Hos Mig Når Mitt Timeglass Utrinder, Zweizz, Theologian, Corrugator Supercilii, Arkhe, M77 and others. Also, the fourth full length is done, and is awaiting release through Beläten. Besides that, I am working on a couple of shorter releases and material intended for future full lengths.
20. Anything else you want to leave to HH readers? Feel free to go wild.
I think this 5 year chat has covered it all. Thanks, Nicola!
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