Teufel's Tomb » Interviews » An Interview With Robin Malmberg

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Mysticum

An Interview With Robin Malmberg by Teufel

Abbas: Hello.

Robin: Now it’s cool to have a talk.

I really appreciate it, man. It’s just good to hear from you guys.

Yeah, we have been gone for a long time now.

Yeah, so it’s finally good that everything’s getting back out again.

[We] Did too much much drugs. We didn’t do anything…

[misheard] You are doing things?

No, now we’ve stopped.

Yeah, actually I read that when you actually compose the music, you don’t do anything at all.

No, we can’t do it. Everything gets so fucked up that we don’t want to play. We wanna do everything else [other] than playing. That’s what we do. We can’t make music, we [something]. We want to play, but not making music on drugs.

I’ve read interviews where people say, "Yeah, it opens my mind up," things like that, and then I read yours, and I’ve always seen where you guys say, "drugs this, drugs that," and I read that, and I thought that was very, very cool.

Yeah, that’s for sure. We don’t use drugs to make music. We do drugs afterwards. [something "before"], we haven’t done anything, any shit at all. But now we have, we started in new year, something like that. We have made 4 songs, so I think we’re going to have 7 or 8 songs. And then, we had lot of new kind of shit on the computer. We had some problems with the drum machine.

Some problems?

Not technical problems, just "how to do it". How will it best, that’s what we’re working on.

Are you doing all the programming, or the other guys too?

I do all the programming, mostly. Well, I’m the only one who can use the machine, but the others have ideas of course. But I do all the drum beats, everything like that. Sounds we do together.

Hellhammer said, back when you guys were playing with him, he said you guys come up with a lot of beats that are very, very hard to play for normal drummers…

Yeah, but he could do it. He made it, that was funny.

Do you come up a lot of drum patterns and then go and put music to it after that, or do you usually have all the music, then do the drums?

It goes back and forth. Depends, the drum sound and sometimes we have drums which we don’t know where to use into anything, and then suddenly… wow, it works. Like that sometimes it can happen. But mostly we have all the music done before, all the guitars and things. We play them into the the synthesizer, we play all the music on the synthesizer, and then I have everything on the computer so I can replay all the time when I need, because we need to do that all the time. Replay, replay, and that’s very hard to tell the guitarist, "Come on, play this again, again, again, again, you know what I mean?" It’s easier to have the computer do it. And I can do it more exactly, so…that’s the way Mysticum are like. It has to be perfect or nothing.

What kind of synth is it?

It’s not a synth, I just use it as a keyboard, but I have a model [Dulong?] SC88 or whatever it is, and then I have a sampler, Akai sampler, and my computer between it.

Do you use stuff like Cakewalk and all that?

Yes. I can’t get any newer Cakewalk anymore.

Which one do you have?

I got the first one.

If you want, I’ll send you the new one, I have that.

You have that?

Yeah, my friend got it for me, I’ll send it to you.

Oh, that’s great, because we have some problems. I have some songs which I made before, and the computer got fucked up or something as the program was [locked?] and we have some songs which is made on this program, and we can’t play it on the older… typical problem. We have several things that I want to listen to, but I can’t.

Let me check… Cakewalk 8 I think is what he gave me.

Yeah, I have 7 so that’s the problem. Or 5 maybe I have.

Which one do you have?

I think I have 5 before.

Yeah I’ll send it out right away so you guys can use it.

You have my email?

Yeah, uh…

K-o-s-t?

Sorry?

K-o-s-t @…

Yeah, kost@telia…?

Yeah.

I’m gonna send it on CD cause it’s like huge. It’s like, what, 26 megabytes or something. You want Sound Forge?

What kind do you have?

I have 4.5…he gave me a bunch of stuff on here. He gave me all these, Photoshop and all this crap, too.

Oh, that’s cool. You have Illustrator?

Yeah, I got Illustrator here.

Yeah, I can get that for you.

Yeah, 8 is the one I need.

You need Photoshop 5?

I got it.

Okay. Or 3d studio or anything like that?

What?

He gave me this 3d-studio and Bryce and Lightwave and all this 3d stuff…

Yeah, that’d be cool… just make some cool things.

Okay, yeah I’ll shove it all on here for you.

You have my address?

Let me get it again…[gives me address]…Are you guys going to play Wacken, or live anytime soon?

Yeah, we’re gonna do it after the album is finished. We want to go to New York. There was a girl from Jersey called Jade, she’s selling stuff on internet, she had a shop in New York before. But now she only has internet, she’s not doing the shop. She sells jewelry and things like that, clothes, everything. So, Raven, the guitarist, he makes silver stuff, rings and everything. He’s an art man, he has been completing something for her so they’re gonna be real silver stuff there.

They make custom stuff, too?

Yeah, everything. Just contact her and she will fix it. I think it’s… ahh, I don’t remember anything. (Laughs)

That was really good seeing you. It was a while ago, but it feels like I was just there. It was such a good show, that would be great if you guys came again.

Yeah, that’d be real great. We had a great time over there, so…

Yeah, you guys should come to Chicago.

…How’s the people over there?

It’s pretty cool. There’s a lot of really, really good bands here, a lot of guys that have been doing it for a long time, but the organization is pretty bad so it’s hard to get shows in bigger clubs. Like… Gorguts, Cryptopsy and Vader just played here. It was an amazing show, but it was a small bar they played at. A few years ago they would have played in front of 1,500 – 2,000 kids almost, and now it was just maybe 100 some people. Still, they gave it 110% on their live show, it was fantastic.

And they’re good players… they’re friends of us.

Which one?

Gorgoroth…

No, no… Gorguts, I’m sorry.

Oh Gorguts? Was Gorgoroth over there, too?

No, they haven’t come here, yet. That would be one band that would be cool to see. You guys should try to do Milwaukee Metalfest sometime…

Yeah, I heard about that. Isn’t that where several bands play?

Yeah, Mayhem played last year.

Yeah, that’s the same one.

That’s where I finally met Hellhammer, so that was cool.

And Emperor, didn’t they play that show?

Emperor did, yeah.

They had some problems there, I heard?

The keyboard, they forgot the power converter so they played without keyboard. And they only played 5 songs, too. It was pretty cool but they come all the way from Norway and they only play 5 songs…

When we played in New York, we [weren't] allowed to play the last song, you remember?

Yeah, that made me mad.

That was stupid. We heard that was Immolation. They didn’t want us to play the last song because it was overtime. You know, 5 minutes more…

See, everybody has so many different stories, so I don’t really believe anything unless I find out myself, but they usually let shows go so late anyway there, so I don’t know what their problem was. I mean, the club or whatever…

You saw the people had a great time… it was stupid.

Which one was the last song you were going to play?

Oh, I don’t remember. I just remember the third (laughs), cause that was the song where we had the bass drums and snare.

Where you went and fixed the machine?

Yeah, I had to go down to fix it. It was the cable, the COM cable. It was half put in, so it would sound on something but not everything. Usually it doesn’t work at all, but this time it worked a little bit, so it was very hard to find it.

Did you have any problems when you went on the Gehenna/Marduk tour?

Yeah, we had some problem in Paris. We were playing and we didn’t get any sound, but then we didn’t have the sampler…there were no sound coming out from it. But everything showed it worked. Everything worked, but no sound out… what the fuck is happening!? And we listened to the headsets, it worked there. But not output. So, I woke up in the middle of the night after we didn’t play that day, and I said, "Ah… it’s the screw I just put too long. It was a long screw, I should just screw it into a rack to make it fit." It [would] fall off and things, and it was going all the way down to the output signal, so it was going to ground, all the signal. I short cut the whole machine. Nothing went wrong with it, but it was just no sound. And I find out 3 o’clock in the night, I just woke up, "That’s the problem." (Laughs) I was thinking about it all the time, 24 hours a day.

I’m glad nothing got damaged, at least.

We called at once and got $1,500.

What happened?

We had to get $1,500 to buy a new one because this was only the second day. First we played London, then Paris and this problem came. And the money came three days after, but then I already fixed it, so that was lucky.

Did you send the money back?

Yeah, we had to do that. We didn’t get the money, it was Osmose who got money from some guy, you know Bill Tromley?

I’m sorry, who?

Bill Tromley… we had a deal with Winterland. He just went away so we did not have any connection with him anymore. That’s good, we want to be on Fullmoon because that’s the guy. The guy who does it, he’s the guy who should do it.

I agree, he’s been very cool to me every time I call…

He knows everything, man. He’s very interesting to know, to learn new stuff about and everything. He’s a good human, to say that. You can really know that he helps.

He’s very down to earth, he doesn’t act like he’s some big guy…I mean, he obviously knows his thing, but you can talk to him, he’ll talk to you, whatever. He doesn’t sit there and put some image on and act like he’s big shit like a lot of these other people.

When we went over there, we met his grandma and granddad. We slept for 3 days.

At their house?

In Mexico, yeah. Then we stayed in Laredo with his uncles and aunts, so it was cool, we met several cool people. So we know the whole family. When we went to Florida, we met his parents, we know the whole family now, and that’s cool. [When he comes into here], he knows my family and all families in the band. It’s not just like a company any more, it’s more a friendly type of… that’s the way we wanna do it. We can’t really have some… we could do it on Osmose, but… several people asked that we are really hard on money and stuff like that, or I mean, the contract has to be good, but it was a really bad contract anyway. But, that wasn’t the reason that we said no, it was because Jon was the guy who should really do it. That was the main reason. But it was a really bad contract, really bad deal.

I think that’s awesome, put the music because you like the band, not because…well, I know Herve likes all his bands, but I’m saying…exactly, you’re right, Jon’s such the person to do it because he really believes in the band, really wants to put the band out, he knows this and that.

You met him in New York, did you?

Yeah, I met him in New York and I’ve talked to him a bunch of times, too. Some of my favorite bands, Algaion, Mysticum, Hades… that’s stuff all he’s put out. His earlier stuff is just the best stuff out there.

Some day Marduk is going to play in Oslo…

Marduk is?

Yeah, lots of people are coming over. I just talked to the old drummer in Gehenna, he just called me [about] one hour ago, and he asked if he can come over and sleep here so he could… he has no money, (Laughs)…

You mean Per, Enslaved’s drummer?

Yeah, yeah! He just called me, I haven’t talked for a year or something, and he’s coming over just to see the concert and sleep at my house.

They came in the states, I heard they did very good shows. My friend is really good friends with him, she visited him and a few other people out there…

Yeah, I think so, Bergen, yeah… no, he doesn’t live there, but…

No, Stavanger, I think.

Yeah, he lives in Stavanger. That’s where I [was] born, and my old friend, best friend from my young times, he went in [the] same class as Per. I didn’t know Per in between 10 years and 16, I think, or 17, then I met him again, then he was so fucking tall (laughs).

Yeah, that’s what I heard, he’s really tall.

Well, he’s always been big, just he looked exactly the same face as I saw him last time (laughs), that’s funny. He’s a great guy. You never met Marduk?

Not yet, no.

They’re great guys, too. They’re really good guys. True themselves, you know.

Always doing their own thing…

Yeah, they are doing their own thing, absolutely. You know this Panzerfaust and everything?

I’m sorry?

This… Panzer Division, they got all this tanks, you know? That style, that’s really cool style music, military style and things. They love that music, [they] listen to old Nazi music when they’re playing like the old stuff from 40’s and 30’s…

The Oi stuff?

No it’s not Oi, it’s not new music, it’s made by people in the 30’s.

Oh, in Germany?

Yeah, in Germany, it’s real old. Old sound, everything is cool. It’s some old albums which is made on CD and things.

The Nazi music, it was?

Yeah, I think it was Nazi. Well, it wasn’t Nazi music that time, I think it was a time when the Nazi was going on, like Germany and everything.

Yeah, if they actually called it "Nazi music" I figured they’d be banning it and all that crap, but…

Yeah, it’s really cool music, creating great music. Old music with a lot of people… what do you call it when they walk on the street and play?

Parade?

Parade, yeah, like that, big parade, "Dung, Dung". Fucking great.

Marduk should cover some of those songs maybe, then.

Yeah, that’s what they should do. Morgan, he was playing that on the tour. It was a tour with Gehenna, and he was playing that every day, all day in the upper stairs in the bus. It was really great, all the time. He was standing there, it’s like "Sieg Heil" (laughs)…

(laughing)

But just in the bus [?] carefully, though. It’s very hard if you do something like that, it gets fucked up. Especially in Germany… they really fuck you up, then.

I don’t know, to each their own. If you can joke about it, whatever, that’s fine.

Yeah it’s a joke, that’s the cool thing. Cool joke (laughs).

You’re not playing that show with Marduk, are you?

No, we’re not playing. We are not ready to play [anything] off the new album. We don’t want to play any old stuff any more. I mean, we don’t want to play any old stuff before we make something new. It’s stupid just to play and play and play the same shit all the time, never have anything new to show.

Yeah, we have that problem with our band. We take so long to write new songs so we keep playing the old ones, we’ve gotten sick of them. These new ones are the ones we want to play now, but even then it’s just…

We have to give some people that listen to the new stuff also. The new album is gonna be a little bit, it’s the same but also different kinds of songs on the whole CD now, different kind.

Like a lot of different variance?

Yeah, but they all are the same, if you know what I mean.

They flow together…

We’re gonna make the whole CD like one ‘thing’, you know?

One song?

Like one song, but it’s not gonna be one song. It’s gonna be… you can’t play the first song and then the third song, and then the fourth, and then the second. You can’t do that because it doesn’t fit with everything, you have to play 1-2-3-4-5 and up, you know, so you get the real stuff. But that’s how the first one was, too, a little bit like that, but this time we’ve worked more on it to make one whole CD.

So is it kinda like, the first song, you wrote the first song, then wrote the second song, then the third song and you record them in that order?

No, it depends on the beat. It’s gonna be faster… faster. It’s not like going to be the best song at first, because there’s nothing called the best song or the worst song, everything is best for us, everything. Otherwise, we just throw away the whole thing. You never wanna have any "ok" songs, it’s going to be perfect or nothing. That’s very important.

Well, I wonder, cause you listen to any album, you get so used to listening to everything in that order. So I wonder if people, how often do they plan that out, or they just kinda record songs…I mean, I’m sure there’s planning, but…

I don’t think it’s so much planning, I think it’s much more like, "the best song" or, "we should play the best song as second song" or something like that. The thing I noticed a few years ago, that other bands, they don’t have this connection between each other in the band. Like… they don’t stay together everywhere they are, and I think that was very funny that every band wasn’t like that, but now I know no band is like that (laughs).

I ask about that, how often people spend time together outside the band, and you get different stories. Some people are best friends, like you said, some people never… I read an interview with Abigor. Do you like Abigor?

I haven’t heard so much about it…

I think they’re one of best, at least black metal bands that are Austrian. Those two guys, mainly Peter and TT are the guys who write the music and they hardly, they don’t see each other for months, and they write some songs and come together and record, and I mean, they’re brilliant. They’re easily some of the best musicians in this music, period. They’re incredible guys. And Silenius, he’s not in the band anymore, but he was their vocalist and all he would do is come in and record vocals and leave. I’ll tape some of it for you, you should just hear it, it’s brilliant stuff. Those guys just get so inspired, go do it and finish. And that’s actually want I want to ask you about…some friends of mine do this same way, they kind of start to play, and they kind of come up with a song and then they’ll record it, and then just leave it. Maybe fix it a little later, but they don’t rehearse it for months and months, they just kind of capture the moment, record and the song is done.

Yeah, that’s stupid.

(laughs) Oh really?

Yeah, we’ve got 100% connection between each other. We are thinking the same way, but we are 3 different… we have, I’m the math guy, math & computers and stuff, and Ravyn is the art guy who paints and all that stuff, making logos and shit like that, all kinds of arts, art head (laughs), and Benny is the fucked up guy…

That’s Cerastes?

Yeah, he’s the fucked up one (laughs). But he’s a smart writer, he’s very good in writing stuff, he was very good in school and stuff like that. We are together psychic…we do all the psychic stuff together so that’s why we are the same.

So you take a long, long time fixing the songs, right?

Yeah, everything has to be correct all the time, like machines.

I don’t think necessarily one is better than the other, I just think it’s very interesting how some people go about. Cause I’ve always come up with something and I say I’ll fix it later, but then I forget it later, and sometimes my friend, the last couple of songs he wrote, he just wrote them in half an hour. Now we’re fixing them and working them, but they’re just much tighter, better songs. It works both ways…

Yeah. And [something] the same girls…

Sorry?

We fuck the same girls.

All 3 of you?

Yeah.

(Laughs)

That’s bad…

That’s horrible.

(Laughs) It is. Not every time of course, but sometimes. It’s so funny when you hear, "Oh, Benny was so good.." (Laughs) Stuff like that.

Oh gross. But you all keep it separate, right?

(Laughs) Yeah, yeah. But we have people talk to us, like when girls talk to us, they don’t say, "You are so nice", if they talk to me they don’t say "you" like for me, they talk "you guys" are great or something. They never talk to one of us, they talk to all three of us.

(laughing hard)

That’s great, you know. That’s how you should do…

I suppose. I have whole separate stories on those things, can’t even get into it.

(laughs)

What kind of instruments do you guys have?

You mean guitars and things like that?

Yeah, I saw you guys had the Flying V’s, but do you have any others?

We have an Ibanez something, and a Gibson Personal… it’s a special edition or something, with a microphone or something on it, you can sing in it. Sing through the pickups or something. I think it’s a wah-wah thing, we’ve never done it. It’s an old jazz guitar, I think, very special one. It weighs 11 kilos. It’s a really heavy one, it’s the most heavy Gibson ever, but it’s wonderful playing. We had it on… they had to fix it somewhere, and there was this famous Norwegian guitar player, fixing his own guitar, and then he was, "Wow, let me check this one. Let me buy it now, I want it!" I heard it cost 40,000 Kronors… I don’t know how much that is…?

That’s a lot, that’s something like $7,000. How’d you guys get the money for it?

No, we bought it for 6,000 Kronors!

(Laughs) Where?

I think Benny bought it from his uncle or something. He got it cheap from there, but that’s an old guitar in the family, I think.

So his parents played, too?

Yeah, I had to buy this guitar from Benny because he was using it on drugs. He was going to sell it and he told me, and I just gave him 5,000 Kronors, "Here, give me the fucking guitar." Now the mother has bought it back (laughs) so we don’t own it anymore.

Can you still use it if you want to?

Yeah, we can of course, but as long as not Benny’s using it. But he stopped doing all that stuff now, but that was before, so we had some problems and shit like that. Everyone was fucked up, you know…

Your equipment, your guitar sound, you guys do that in the studio or you have your own…?

No, we have our own. We have the Metal Zone, we have some… we can make a good song on every amplifier with those.

My friend uses that to record, amazing sound out of those things…

Yeah, I have it on the bass too. We have 3 of those…

You use 3 at the same time?

What?

You all have one each or you use 3 of them?

No, one each.

Oh, I was going to say, I thought you used 3 of them at once.

No (laughs) that’s crazy. I use this [high-vat??] Double Lead tube amplifiers, and we have another old, old stuff which weighs 25 kilos or something, amplifier, motherfucker. That we got cheap…

But you get a really good tone out of them, right?

Of course, it works really good. We got [something]. And I just bought new Carvin speakers for the drum machine. They’re really great.

My friend, he builds his own guitars, so he’ll buy the Carvin kits, he said you can buy them for $400 here, which is cheap, and he builds it and it’s a real nice guitar. Carvin speakers and guitars and everything he said were great. I don’t know enough, I could go and build one if I wanted to, but I don’t have time to screw with it now. I was gonna look into that, I would like one, one day…

I never want to do that, but it’s very expensive. Double price or something, or more than double…

Yeah, when I talked to Hellhammer I mentioned that. Someone told me the drummer from Meshuggah spent over $15,000 for his drum set, Hellhammer said his was more, and I’m just like, "Man this is insane." Over here, $5,000 – $7,000 you can get a really nice drum set, over there it’s twice that much money and it’s crazy.

I bought this, when I went over to New York, I didn’t have any bass with me. I was just gonna buy one in America. I bought it in Middletown, I bought this [2BS], then they had to call us [because they] didn’t have 4-strings so I just bought a 5-string. And it wasn’t meaning that I’m gonna have a 5 string, I haven’t used the 5th string so much yet, because that’s not the meaning when I bought it, that’s the only guitar they had so I just had to buy it. We spent about $3,000 one day buying stuff.

Did you have a limit on how much you could spend when you came over here from customs, though?

Yeah, we had like 1200 Kronors, something like that.

That’s all they let you spend?

No, I spent like 10 times more.

No, I’m saying did they make a limit, like "You can only spend this much money, unless you are staying longer…" They have some goofy things like that…

No, you can spend a million if you want to, there’s no law of that.

My friend came from Canada and they said, "If you stay less than 7 days you have to spend less than $500" or something… not that big a deal but sometimes we get careless…

No, there’s no law about that. That’s a stupid law. It’s more expensive in Norway so people use a lot of money outside anyway, so we can’t this for a law. Norway’s the second most expensive country in the world.

It’s got a very good economy though, right?

Yeah, they a got a very good economy… goes up and down. Very up now, cause of the oil, you know. I think it’s 1/3rd of the oil is coming from Norway. The biggest in the world.

Oh, that company "Total Norge" (pronounced "norg")?

What?

That oil company’s is Total Norge (pronounced "norg-eh" this time)…?

Total..?

Total Norge ("norg-eh"), Total Norway, Total Norge ("norge" like "george")?

What do you mean?

That oil company name there, it’s called "Total Norge" ("norg-eh")… I don’t know if I did a search online or what, but one of the oil companies, or gas companies in Norway is called "Total Norge" ("norg-eh"), and then just, you know, "Total Norway"…

There’s a company called "Stat Oil", we have… I don’t know really what the names are, but it is the government who owns everything. That’s how it works, that’s why we’ve got so much money. It’s not like in America, it’s not the government who owns the oil is it?

No, yeah it’s all these separate companies.

The law says if you find oil on your ground, it’s ours. That’s how the law is, so you can’t get rich on oil here, it’s impossible. We are poor people here, but it’s a rich government, that’s how it is.

And they’re christians, too…

Yeah, they’re christians, that’s terrible (laughs). But it’s not so bad, it’s mostly like in Stavanger, and between Stavanger and Bergen there’s stuff, and more north, they are more christian, they’re crazy, you know. Especially around outer Stavanger… fucking christians, they’re crazy.

That’s gross.

That’s the worst place. That’s where Preven’s parents are from.

Whose?

Preven, the guitar player. His grandmother is down there, they’re so fucking christian.

His grandparents?

No, not them, the place where they live… crazy.

I went to the [christian] schools when I was a kid and had to "leave" and stuff like that. It depends, one of the schools was very good, the other one was kind of, like you said, crazy people. It was funny because they told me to leave, and then just a couple months ago I met a bunch of kids who went there also, like after I had left, and they knew all these people there and they said it just got worse and worse. They [the school] kept telling people to leave the school for all these stupid little things, the silliest things. They said they drove you crazy, it was very hard. You got a good education, but…he [one guy I was talking to about it] said he just finished it cause he didn’t want to mess up anything with schooling, but he said they drive you nuts cause they’re so fascist.

They’re crazy… they should be illegal.

(Laughs) Yeah, I agree.

Crazy… they don’t want to support war and all that shit, but they do it… the christians, they have all the rage and stuff.

They’re the ones who start it in the first place.

That’s the whole problem…

They’re the ones who are intolerant…

They don’t understand. You have to go outside this fucking world to see it’s nothing. Out into space… who can be so stupid to think we are the only one on this little place in the big world outside? You’re really stupid if you think that.

I totally agree with you.

We never saw one, but… everything is so far away. How can those people who can go around the universe suddenly see a little, our sun… there’s so many billions out there. They have to search and search and search to find our little earth…

And they’d probably want to stay away cause there’s so many damn christians here.

That’s true. That’s what I heard from some astro-guy… he talked about that, if they found civilization on some other planet, they wouldn’t just go straight down and say hello, they would do it slow and make people know that there are something else outside, so they have to think about it. If you come, they maybe kill you or they will make you as a god or something, but they’ll misunderstand everything. That’s what they’re doing to us, maybe. Everyone talks about they met this and this and this… but maybe that’s what they do. Then we have to learn that something else is outside.

I’m kinda hoping. As soon as I see signs of it, I’m the first one out there. I wanna go travel…

That’d be great!

That’s like my dream, but it’s not gonna happen in my lifetime obviously. Or, you never know… maybe next millenium or something. I love all that stuff. The movies that do it are pretty cool, but overall I kinda got sick of them. But astronomy and stuff, I love that.

Maybe you’ll become [something]…

(light laugh) Yeah…

(laughs) Why not? We are living souls, too. Everything is [a] living soul, every great stuff. The whole earth is a living soul. When it moves, you know, we move on top of it.

Yeah, I know. I don’t think we’re gonna destroy it or anything, I mean, we have some problems, but it’s been there before we were there, it’s gonna be there afterwards.

Of course. I think it was when… like, "we don’t know how to make a computer now" but people knew that for 50 years ago, you could say…they knew how everything worked from the beginning. And when, let’s say, 200 years from now, 1,000 years from now, we don’t know how to make a computer now, because we always have it.

Yeah, the basics are forgotten…

And when there becomes a war, everything gets destroyed and just some people are still alive, but they don’t know how to do it. They don’t know how to make the wheel. Maybe that happens… and then the snow comes, and everything crushes and nothing is shown anymore, and then we are a new world again. That could happen.

Yeah, and I’m not into all this judgement day stuff and blah blah blah, whatever.

No, that’s all stupid stuff. Religion [style?].

I mean, I know why people use it, whatever. If they need to, fine, but when they force it and try to preach and put it in your throat, that’s stupid.

They need help, everyone. Everyone, which religion they are, helpless people. Think for yourself, make your brain work.

I know, I do things based on principle, not because some book tells me to do it.

Yeah, that’s cool.

But, if you get exposed to it as a kid, it’s hard to break out of it, but [I'm at work... get sidetracked there for a minute...] sorry…

Where do you work?

I just work at my dad’s company, we sell surgical instruments.

Surgical?

Like forceps and blades and scalpels…

Hospital stuff?

Yeah, operating things and things like that…

Wow, that’s cool…

Yeah, we have some pretty funny things here, I’ll send you some, you’ll see what I mean.

Yeah, I think so…yeah, that’d be pretty cool! You know, we just made a new main hospital in Norway. I used to work in a construction company, we have several companies who worked in the new main hospital. It’s like everyone goes there, they have everything. They have this X-Ray machine, and [it] was too big to get inside the room. They had to make a big hole in the wall to get it in, and it’s not finished, the hospital is not open there. And this machine, they got 2 new, and they cost 10,000,000 Kronars [approx $1,428,571 - ed.] each… and now they have put it in, and lock the wall again, and the old hospital, their one is broken, so they need to borrow one, so they can’t get in touch with the one they bought. They have to borrow one for one million Kronars each month.

That’s insane!

That’s insane, and how much do you think it costs to make a new hole in the wall? It’s nothing. They do it, it’s stupid. That’s how Norway, they spend their money.

Are you serious?

They’re fucking crazy. And when I went over there, two of the machines… no, I think they bought 4 machines… and two of them, they got water on them, and they destroyed them.

(Laugh)

That’s so funny…

That’s totally disgusting.

That’s how they do it here. They have a lot of money, but they spend too much, just a little bit too much on everything, they are so stupid like that. We don’t get any of the money, they just spend it.

Well where do you guys work now?

Now I’m going to school for web design.

Oh really?

Yeah, and I work on Friday so I worked today. I fix furniture, like special designers stuff. Very, very expensive, so I have some times which customers…which are the most richest people, so that’s cool. And I’m coming over and they look at me…, "what the fuck are you doing here…" you know…that’s funny. Just talk to them and they’re cool…

You go to their houses, though? (Laughs)

Yeah, home to them, and their office…

(laughing)

We only work for the highest [pr—-?] people in companies, on the top on the buildings..

That’s so funny…

Yeah, it’s really funny.

So, do you ever build like nice huge inverted crosses for them to hang in their office or anything?

(Laughs) No, I can’t do that. Then my job is gone.

They never ask you to?

No (laughs).

That’s too bad. If you have spare time, you should make a really nice one…

They always ask if I smoke or something like that. Some people are really cool, they like our hair style and stuff like that. I and Benny (Cerastes), I had him with me one day at work, just to help me… and this, my bosses said that…he just wanted to say that some special guy is coming on, they always say… when I work on Friday. And I went to hold to someone and they said that, "this Rasta Man, this man who looks like a troll on his head," they said, "is coming over to you and [will] give you the chair that you wanted." And then Benny came too, and he has a lot more, you know… there’s two trolls carrying, it was funny. But it was really nice, "Wow, cool hair!" they said and stuff like that. Yeah, so they’re not all… some people are really cool, even if they got a lot of money.

Do you ever meet anybody that listens to Mysticum?

Yeah, you know, Benny was… we never meet people like that, they’re too old usually. Most of them are around 50, 60 years old, that’s the ones who got the money. But, Benny had some problems, and he was caught by the police, and they thr[ew] him down on the floor, and look[ed] at him, and, "what the fuck? Aren’t you Benny, Cerastes… do you play in Mysticum?"

(Laughs) The cops did!?

Yeah, the cops! And he said, "Yeah, of course" and then, "We love Mysticum!" It was so strange, you know? Fucking crazy…

(laughing) You know what? I saw your Mysticum page on the internet, and the guy who did it, he’s a friend of yours…?

Widing?

I’m sorry?

The address is something with Widing?

Yeah, what’s his name… um…

Jorgen Widing?

Herr Widing… yeah, that’s his name. I emailed him cause he had a big page on the Transformers also, and Transformers was my favorite toy ever as a kid, I still worship them.

Yeah, that’s cool.

I emailed him, he’s like, "Yeah I’m friends with those guys, I have the ‘Piss-off’ promo and things like that…" I haven’t talked to him in a while. Do you learn stuff from him or anything?

No, I have to go school, some special school. It’s very new stuff. There are no web designers in Norway at all. I don’t think it’s in anywhere, so when I’m finished… just 4½ months from school and then I’m finished… then I can the job and I can get… there was one class before, 10 people I think, and one of them are earning 800,000 Kroners [approx. $112,000] in a year. A half year’s schooling…

Does he work on his own or a company?

For a company.

That’s totally nuts!

(Laughs) Yeah, that’s nuts. I don’t think that’s possible for everyone, of course. There were other guys who was 500,000 and 400,000, but usually it’s at least 250. That’s the lowest, but I think around 300 and 400, that’s more how it can be for me.

Then you could promote the band a lot more, too…

And I can work all over the world. That was great stuff for it, too…I can just bring my computer with me and I have this, the band has this moving stuff, so we have special case, cable and boxes for it to go around the world in planes and stuff. So I can bring my computer everywhere.

You have a lap top?

No, I have a big machine. It’s a big computer, home computer.

Is it a Mac or PC?

It’s a PC. Because of the band and stuff… and you don’t need any Macintosh anymore.

Really?

Not for web design. If you have Illustrator and Photoshop, that’s it. That’s all Mac programs usually, where it was best on Mac before, but now they are the same. Now it’s no difference to use anymore. Especially with web design, because the web pages can’t be super high quality, because then it takes a long time to get it to show on the screen. You do it very little and [tightest] as possible…

Very compact…

Yeah, very compact. So that’s a great thing, we don’t have to have the best stuff to do it.

You write all your own code too, right? All the html?

Yeah, that’s what I’m learning. I don’t want to do so much of that, I want to use some programs for it, but I have to learn anyway.

Well, the funny thing is, the programs, like PageMill and Netscape and all those, they give you really bad code. If you use a program to lay it out…

It can fuck it up…

Frontpage, yeah… I mean, they’ll make it look nice in Netscape or IE or something, but you have to fix it yourself to make the code look good in every browser, because I’ll load it up and it’ll look like shit, but it’ll look okay in your browser, or something. You have to learn all the little tweakings. If you go to a lot of pages, they have really nice graphics, but their code just sucks, so it always loads different. Too many people forget about these things it seems.

Have you heard about Dreamweaver?

The Sega thing? Oh that’s Dreamcast, never mind…

It’s a web designer program. They had it before, but 2.0, which is really good, that’s the school is going to use. Really good stuff. It has automatic making it work for Netscape and Explorer… stuff like that. That’s some problems people say, it doesn’t work on Netscape and it doesn’t work on Explorer, and this program can do it both, so that’s cool. That’s what I’m going to use, I just want to do more of the art kind of stuff, I don’t want to do all the programming.

Have you used Opera, the web browser?

Nope. The Norwegian one?

Yeah, it’s Norwegian…

I haven’t tried it…

It’s pretty cool. I like the way it works, a few different windows and stuff, but something with it, like if you have too many different font changes or things like that, it doesn’t notice it after a while so it screws up, but it’s still nice, it’s really nice they way they have it working. But, I hate Windows. As soon as I finish my ‘zine I’m going to get Windows off my damn computer. Pisses me off.

Opera’s not an operating system…?

No, it’s just a browser. But I want to get linux and put Opera on it or something.

Linux? The Finnish company… I had this newspaper that showed pictures of Bill Gates and this young Finnish guy, and it was the big guy against Bill Gates. But the difference between them is that Linux is free… (laughs) that’s the difference, so… how can’t they win?

You know what? The bigger companies like Dell and Gateway and those guys are starting to finally pick it up. I think Gateway is going to start shipping systems with Linux installed, or Dell or one of them… IBM is going to support it for their servers… so they’re taking some big steps, and I think that’s cool. Windows… it’s a nice idea, but it sucks because it crashes so much. I hate it, it works for a lot of people, but I just despise it.

I’m a DOS user, and that’s what I really used. I know what fucked up, I HATE Windows. I remember when Windows 2.8 came or something, I hated that shit program. And I hated 3.11 and now Windows 95… it was great sometimes, but then I stopped doing all the computer stuff, I just used it for music. And then I can only use Cakewalk. I’ve been long away from computer stuff. I’m starting again because of the web design.

That happened to me. I had a BBS and all this and it crashed, and then I never touched it. And then I had DOS for a while, so I just did my email and this and that, and then Windows and I never used it. And then finally, I didn’t want to but my friend said go with it, you get a lot of programs… it’s nice cause it does all this, but when it fucks up, you can’t fix it, you don’t know what the hell’s going on…

You’re not allowed to fix anything…

Yeah, and in DOS, you have to set it up. If it goes wrong, you go and fix it, you know what to do. But Windows is just…

They fucked up everything. That’s like the same as automatic program like Dreamweaver, example, same thing as Windows, makes things for you instead of you programming yourself.

But what if it fucks up, can you fix it?

Then I have to know HTML. And that’s same as I have to know to fix Windows. And sometimes you can’t do that anyway, it’s even worse.

It does more and more for you so that your brain becomes a god damn…

Because it’s so slow comparing to DOS in hardware fixing, really slow. I remember a friend of mine had this Norton Commander… on the DOS? That was really great.

Yeah, Norton DOS. Back then it was awesome.

He had it connect the two computers together a long time ago, and he had this special program to make them connect together, but it didn’t work, so he just went into Norton Commander and used the standard stuff from them… it worked! Like, this is goofed up…

Norton Commander just did it?

Yeah, no problem. Old, good programs like that… I think Norton was the new generation in DOS, their windows and stuff like that.

Did you ever see DR DOS?

DR DOS?

Digital Research DOS?

No.

It came out right around [when] DOS 5 was out. They had DR DOS 6 or DR DOS 5, it was one step ahead. It was a little bit better and had all these extra tools, and then MS DOS came later and same thing. DR DOS finally died after a little while, but it was kinda like Norton DOS, it had a lot of little extra tools, it was the next step…

Yeah, now I remember…

The shell and all that stuff…

Shell… yes, of course… now I remember. But it wasn’t that good. I think Norton was much better.

Norton had so many extra commands.

And you can use the mouse…

What’s funny, too… all these new machines, people get 128 megs of RAM, 10 gig hard drive, 16 megabytes of video… what the hell do you need all this stuff for? If you had DOS, you could use 4 megabytes and do amazing stuff.

Yeah you can. If you look at the old Commodore 64, they can do so much on that.

And Amiga, too!

Yeah, Amiga!

Fuck I never got an Amiga…

No, me neither. But I saw people… they had this limit to go to 50K, and that was all, and they did so a lot stuff on just 50k. That’s what they do it today, they just make all the programs and they use megabytes and megabytes and megabytes… and they can use just a little bit instead. And it gets filled up, they just fill it up, and the machines have to get faster and faster and faster. If the program was a real program, a real good program, like Linux [is] maybe, then everything will work good on old or the newest, they will be super fast.

Like, on Windows, if I want to make an mp3, I have to just kind of leave it, I can’t do anything else otherwise it’ll fuck up. But Linux, my friend has it, he’ll be doing an mp3 and like 5 other things and it’s no problem. No slowing down, no bullshit like that, it just works fine.

(Laughs) That’s funny…

I don’t know. Obviously they’re not going to, but they should get all these old, old computers that everyone tosses away and give them to a lot of third world nations that don’t have it, and send them Linux with it so the kids learn Linux there, early, and so they don’t have to learn Windows.

I have this teacher who is working [in] a big company who makes everything commercial on computer, everything, very professional, and he told me that America was… what do you call it, like Russia is… like poor country, and they don’t have any new stuff.

He said U.S. is like that?

Yeah, that’s what he said about U.S., comparing to Norway. You got all that we got, too, but we got all the people who live there, they got it. But in America, just a few people got it. But you are, how many, 260 million? We are 4…(laughs)

Yeah, we have 4 million people in the city of Chicago.

That says something…

It’s gross.

That’s how it is, that’s what he told me, so when we do web design, we have to think "old" again. Germany, they use 486 usually, it’s not so common to have new stuff there. They have it, but it’s not common. Norway, everyone’s got Pentium, I don’t think anyone’s got other [than] Pentium.

I haven’t upgraded in a while, but I want to get… you can get these Pentium II’s and overclock them?

Oh yeah? No, I didn’t know that.

You can get like a 350 and overclock it to 450 I’ve heard, and it works fine, so I want to get a 500…

Pentium chips [are] by Intel…?

Yeah, I’m not too big a fan of Intel, but they have the 333 MHz…

But it’s so expensive…

They’ve come down in price…the cheaper ones, the Celerons…which, I don’t really like those…

Well you know the AMD?

AMD? Yeah, that’s the one I want to get.

That’s the cheapest one. I got AMD 350 now. I just paid $100 for it, $120 or something, and it works perfectly with my computer. Everything is just perfect.

What motherboard do you have?

It’s um… I just worked with a lot of things, I should remember.

Like a Shuttle or anything like that?

Something with X… Epox? Yeah, Epox. I bought that so I can use 500 on that, change to 500, but it’s not the idea to buy the best now, I just bought a cheap 350 instead of buying expensive 450 or something. Stupid to buy the best now, wait a year, then you can buy it.

I want to get a 666 MHz. I was gonna get dual 333, but it’s not gonna run at 666, it’ll run at 333, but just do twice as much. But I want to overclock mine to 666 MHz.

Widing has that dual… something, he’s got that.

Like you said, the processor is so cheap, you can shove a dual in there and it’s like a server.

Well you know, the Pentium II, isn’t it? They have this special system on their processors… they don’t have this square kind of stuff anymore…?

Oh, the Slot 1, yeah…

They want to get rid of AMD and everyone else. They’re starting to be like Windows…

Which is disgusting. I hate that shit, cause they want to corner it…

I don’t think they’re going to win, though. Win Socket 7, that’s the thing…(laughs)

The prices went down because Cyrix and AMD and stuff, they went down so much. So now there’s companies, like there’s a company in Korea, if you go to their site, it’s e4me.com, they sell computers for like 3 or $400, and they’re like perfect. They have 3d video and audio all that shit, a little monitor and everything. They tested them, you can only run a few things at once, and they only have like two expansion ports, but they’re still perfect for people just learning. They’re totally ideal, it’s amazing considering how much prices cost now, you can’t even give away certain computers.

Yeah, that’s true. It’s just fucking crazy…(laughs)

They use that Cyrix Media GX, that integrated shit.

Oh yeah, that thing. That’s crazy. Computers are terrible sometimes. Have you ever tried to smash your computer?

Oh god, yeah. I had to change my case because I was getting… it’s all bent up and shit…

Sometimes I just… you can punch the monitor, because it doesn’t feel anything, you know? Very good thing to punch on.

Dude, I got so pissed, I knocked my monitor over off my shelf once on accident.

Oh shit…

Yeah, in high school I was typing this paper and it wouldn’t print, so I got so pissed I knocked it and it fell off the damn thing and cracked…

Oh no…

Yeah, I had to get it repaired. I was a moron…

Once I lifted the computer and I was standing, ready to throw it out a window… and, "No, I can’t do that…" but I was not far away. And I walked around the house like in 10 minutes, and after 10 minutes I smashed the door or something. (Laughs) I was so angry that long time.

What happened?

It was something wrong with the Midi card or something… I know it’s not the Midi card so I couldn’t destroy that one…

(laughs)

(laughs) …It was something with Windows. That’s the one that fucked it up, and I got this ISDN, and it was the first one made for Windows 98. When I put it in, it fucks up my sound card and Midi card, and it doesn’t work itself. It fucked up the whole fucking machine, I got so crazy! And all the time I tried to fix it, it went to way in the back and ‘blah blah blah’ all the time. You know the IRQ’s…

Yeah. It wouldn’t let you manually adjust it?

He took it from all the others! [something] just give it to him, "okay, get the [something], I have to give someone else it!" (Laughs)

Did you have to reinstall Windows and everything, too?

Yeah, I had to do that.

Fucking sick. I got a CDR drive… actually, I’m going to do a band about this. I have a project, it’s total, total hate metal, it’s called "Fuck Windows 95". There’s gonna be all these horror stories, like, I got this CDR drive. I was waiting so long because I had all this shit to back up on the damn CD’s so I could get it off my hard drive. So I got this damn drive, and I’m trying to install it, it’s taking a while and finally recognizes this bullshit, blah blah blah. I finally get it running, I had to change hard drives from different computers and all this crap, it was so fucked up. My friend bought, he bought it, put it in his computer, it works fine. So mine is screwing up, so I brought my hard drive from home to my work computer because that’s where the [CDR] drive was, and I hooked it up, and I’m copying the stuff onto the CD, and it just freezes and it breaks down. It fucks up, so I reboot and my hard drive is completely fucked up. I have NO idea what happened, but I had like two gigs of shit on there I’d been waiting to save, and while I’m doing it, it totally screwed up. So now I had to get a new hard drive, I lost all that shit.

Something I always do when I install DOS 6, or 5, I delete the double space command, at once.

Oh god, yeah.

You know what I saw today? On one of those Windows 98, it was something the same, double-something…

They do that to your hard drive?

Yeah, Windows 98! I thought they knew it was not a good idea to do it.

I can’t believe they’re still doing that!

Yeah, it’s fucking stupid! I hate double stuff… (laughs)

What the hell’s that program for DOS that did it… it was a separate one, I had that and it screwed me up so I had to get rid of it. I forgot the name of it now, it was popular [I think it was called "Stacker" - abbas].

Terrible. I remember this French guy, art guy or something, who had a computer. It was a few years ago when he had DOS. It was DOS 5, and he used the double space, and then his machine fucked up and he lost a half year’s work because of that stupid program. And this guy from IBM help ware told him, "Don’t use that fucking program." (Laughs) "Don’t do it!" That’s funny, people hate it, and they still make it. Terrible. Like a virus.

There’s so much of that shit out there, it’s just gross.

All the time. I have to go now! Sorry…

Okay. No, it’s cool… yeah, we didn’t really talk much about music.

No, it’s ok, we talked about everything though.

I’m just waiting to see the new album. I’ll mail you the CD with a bunch of stuff soon.

That’s perfect. Have fun at work, man.

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