Hear Kvelertak Fuse Black Metal, Cock Rock on Eclectic New Album

Kvelertak are the rare metal band that seem to succeed at trusting their intuition. The Norwegian group goes freeform where more traditional headbangers often question and belabor even the most inconsequential guitar pick scrape. Whether it’s juggling black-metal blast beats and Eighties-influenced power-rock riffs or indulging three-guitar Iron Maiden-esque prog-rock tapestries, everything they do sounds effortless.

As a result, their third album, Nattesferd – which is streaming below and officially comes out Friday – can sound raucous, introspective, gleeful and bloodthirsty depending on the song. It’s an album that reflects Kvelertak’s history of gloriously unpredictable dissociative identities, from the mix of black metal, hardcore and rock & roll of their 2010 self-titled debut to the rollicking, overwhelming everythingness of 2013’s Meir (Rolling Stone’s choice for second-best metal album that year). They’ve won over notable fans from Dave Grohl to Metallica to Norwegian royalty in that time, and with songs about the Illuminati and people who get sexually aroused by plant life on Nattesferd, they’ll likely soon attract a few more.

Here, frontman Erlend Hjelvik and guitarist-pianist Vidar Landa explain the meanings behind each song on Nattesferd, which is available for preorder, as well as why so many songs are their favorites and how they feel about fans who judged the whole record based on the poppy first single “1985.”

“Dendrofil for Yggdrasil”
Erlend Hjelvik: “Dendrofil,” I think that word almost translates itself. I’m not sure what the English word for Dendrofil is, but it’s a sexual orientation where you’re really into plants and trees. And the “Yggdrasil” is the Tree of Life in Norse mythology. So that’s what the title means. It’s the first song on the album and one of the first ones we wrote for the album.

Vidar Landa: It’s the first one from this album that we started playing live on the last tour we did. It’s just a long song with almost blast beats all the way through. We also put in a little horn section and a tuba and trombone on it.

“1985” 
Hjelvik: It’s the first single on the album and also one of the first songs we wrote. It has a super Eighties vibe to it. I don’t think it’s actually too different from “Kvelertak,” the last song on the second album, when it comes to vibe. I think it does a lot of the same stuff.

Landa: There’s no overdubs at all on that song when we recorded it, except from the vocals we did afterwards. All the solos and everything that’s going on is just the way we recorded it live, which is pretty cool.

Hjelvik: It’s been funny how controversial the song has been with our fans, but I love that people have a reaction to it and can’t ignore it. To me that’s a good sign, even if it’s probably the least representative of the album

“Nattesferd”
Landa: There’s a lot of three way guitar harmonies. It’s just a fast rock song.