Tyr
Hammer Of Gods

26.05.2012

The Faroe Islands are a tiny half-independent nation, a few islands lost somewhere between Scotland and Iceland, under the sovereignty of Denmark. Due to its small size, isolated and remote location, it is the place that still preserves a lot of Viking traditions, the Faroe language is one of the most archaic ones among Scandinavian languages, and local folk music is intricate and original.
It’s no wonder that such a striking and unique band as Tyr comes from the Faroe Islands. Now and again we praise some band as “saviors of metal” and “future legends”, but people forget about them yet before they close the page. The guys from the town of Torshavn are not of that kind, over 10 years of its existence the band has only gained momentum. Maybe it’s because they have ancient traditions of Scandinavian folklore behind their backs...
We met Tyr shortly before their show in Moscow in the midst of winter, when a true snowstorm was raging outside the club. The dressing room was warm and cosy, and the entire band gathered to answer our questions. The band’s master mind, singer and guitarist Heri Joensen, played the lead, and the rest of the guys (punky looking guitarist Terji Skibenaes, heavyweight bassist Gunnar Thomsen, pragmatic drummer Kari Streymoy) mostly complemented his answers with a few short sentences.

As far as I understand this is not your first visit in Russia and you played in St. Petersburg in 2002. So can you compare your impressions about our country and crowd nine years ago and these days?

Gunnar: We’ve actually been here twice before. From last time to now, I don’t know. I actually don’t see a big difference. We’ve only been to the venue and on the train.
Heri: And this is actually our first time in Moscow. We’ve only been to Petrozavodsk and St. Petersburg before. St. Petersburg looked much the same, I think. Except for the Christmas decorations.

How did you like your show in St. Petersburg? What can you say about the Russian crowd?

Terji: Fantastic, really energetic! We loved that!

Let’s speak for a while about your latest album “The Lay Of Thrym”. It is pronounced [trju:m], right?

Heri: Yes, [trju:m].

You worked on it once again with Jacob Hansen. What can you say about his way of producing?

Gunnar: He does not produce at all, he’s not our producer. He’s just a technician, if you want.
Terji: He’s actually only pushing the “Record” button. And then he’s mixing and mastering after it’s all done. And his mixing and mastering are very good, it gets better and better.

Then why did you decide to produce this album by yourselves?

Gunnar: We’ve produced everything ourselves. We’ve never thought of having a producer.

One of the most notable and controversial songs on the new album is “Shadow Of Swastika”. It’s a kind of your answer to those who consider Tyr as a nazi or fascist band. Have you ever had any problem with promoters or authorities who consider your music this way?

Gunnar: Yes, we had a problem in Berlin, that’s the only city so far.
Terji: It was Paganfest in Berlin in 2008, I think. There were so called anti-fa…
Heri: There wasn’t even a group, there was one guy who was trying to be popular or something. He tried to stop the concerts, and he had actually stopped other concerts in the past by threatening to make demonstrations and stuff like that. He was not successful in stopping that show, but we got a lot of negative media attention because of that Nazi thing.

Isn’t it strange that nowadays people still consider pagan and folk bands to be Nazi bands?

Heri: It’s almost only in Germany. They have this tendency of over-compensation, I think. They saw World War II as children, and as they grew older, they became over-sensitive to some subjects. And that becomes a different problem.

Don’t you think that it could be a better idea to distance yourselves from that kind of symbolism?

All together: No! It’s none of their business in Germany.
Heri: It’s just the fact that we’re not Nazis. The problem is not what we’re doing, all these runes and way of writing and symbols existed long before Hitler was born.

Yes, swastika is a solar symbol.

Kari: Hitler was a designer. (somebody laughs) No, really! He made all those uniforms himself, and he liked to use those symbols. Basically he misused them.
A different thing is that we’ve met much more people who are extremely anti-Nazi to the degree where it’s just stupid than we have met Nazis. There are many more extreme left-wingers than right-wingers among those that we have met. It’s a much bigger problem, I think.

The album “The Lay Of Thrym” has the underlying theme of tyranny and fighting against tyranny, and your latest tour with Moonsorrow was called “Dead Tyrants”. What makes this theme so special for you?

Heri: We see the world situation today, with all those revolutions going on in the Middle East and North Africa and also in other places in the world, the “Occupy” movement against, first of all, dictators, and then some sort of financial dictators, too. The subject of the stealing the hammer of gods is very much used as a synonym for fighting against tyranny. Thor goes to get his hammer back and kills the tyrants – it’s a parallel between history and our contemporary time.

You also used to tour with the band Amon Amarth. I know that their singer, Johann Hegh, isn’t a pagan believer himself. And what about you? Do you take all these myths and beliefs seriously?

All together: No!
Heri: I just have great respect for the Nordic tradition and history. But it is all it is. I think that people who believe that all that exists have a problem, “cuckoo”, a bit more than the people who believe that god exists.

“The Lay Of Thrym” has a lot of catchy choruses, big hooks and more elements of traditional metal. Did you intentionally try to gain a bigger audience with this album?

Heri: Yeah, it is more straight-forward, more power metal, it’s like folk and power metal combined. It is less cryptic, less progressive, definitely yes.

“The Lay Of Thrym” is your fourth album for Napalm Records, and over this time you have made a big progress in terms of success. Would you like to sign with a bigger label?

Terji: It’s in the works, we can’t say more about that now. (everybody laughs)

Now a few questions about the history of the band. As far as I know, you are all from Faroe Islands, but you met and started the band in Copenhagen. How did it happen? Don’t you think that it was kind of fate to meet in such a big city when you’re all from a small country?

Heri: No, I don’t believe in fate. It just happened that I was going to school in Copenhagen. Most of the Faroese people who go to Copenhagen to study meet in Copenhagen. I wouldn’t call it coincidence, it would have happened anyway sooner or later. Faroese people go to the same places, they tend to stick together. We were playing in the same band before Tyr, that’s how we got to know each other.

Was it the band Cruiser?

Terji: Yeah, and then Wolfgang. You really dig deep in this! (laughs)

Did you at that time already have a musical vision of how the band should sound, what kind of mix between folk and metal it would be?

Kari: It was purely coincidental. We made some songs that were based on Faroese traditional stuff, and that’s how our sound was born. And we had no idea about other people, I had never heard about doom metal, pagan metal or Viking metal before, and our label as that time had no idea what it was.
Heri: In the beginning we called it “progressive ethno metal”, and the label said, “Never say ethno again. Ethno are gay guys sitting with their grandmothers drinking tea”. (everybody laughs) Then everybody started calling us Viking metal, pagan metal or folk metal, but we really had no idea about that when we started, we didn’t know such bands as Amon Amarth.
Terji: And we don’t want to be called Viking metal or pagan metal, not even folk metal.

Was it something like, “Let’s play a folk tune on a heavy guitar and see what happens”?

Heri: Yeah. I had the idea to combine Faroese folk music with metal when we were playing with Wolfgang, but they didn’t want to do it. So when we made Tyr, we did it.

It is also known that you were into Dream Theater at that time. The problem with most of Dream Theater fans is that they try to reconstruct a small Dream Theater in their home town, but it’s usually just a copy of the big Dream Theater. But you somehow escaped that…

Gunnar: We were influenced by different bands, and Dream Theater is just one of them. We never tried to copy what they’re doing, we just used influences to expand our sound. We never had a problem that we would sound too much like anybody else.

You use many Faroese folk melodies in your music. Do you feel a kind of responsibility to demonstrate the culture of your country to the rest of the world?  

Heri: It wasn’t the idea to begin with, but as it is now, yes, I do, it is like that. It’s a very honorable feeling to represent your country for the people who have never heard about it before. For them it’s their very first impression. A lot of people tell us that they never knew that Faroe Islands existed before they heard us. (smiles) For us it’s a very nice bonus.

Yeah, in Russia many people know Faroe Islands by your football team. They say that once the Russian team was playing with the Faroese team, and our player hit the ball so hard that it flew not only out of the field, but also out of the island!

(everybody laughs) Yeah, that’s right!

How do you select folk tunes for working on them? Is it something that everyone knows from their childhood, or do you research into some books?

Heri: The Faroese ones I know from childhood, most of them. I did look some up in books or compilation CDs. But the ones which are not Faroese – Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic – I looked up on the CDs that I get from people from those countries. I look some up on the Internet as well, I look for original melodies that I can find.

One of my favorite songs by Tyr… How do I pronounce it – [tjuэ] or [tiэ]?

Heri: [tjuiэ]... No one says it the same in any country. How do they usually say it in Russia? [tjuэ]? Then just say [tjuэ].

OK, this song, “The Wheels Of Time”, starts with the intro with another unpronounceable name - "Grímur á Miðalnesi". This is a recording by Faroese folk singers, and then it jumps into a full-on rock song while keeping the original melody. Can you say a few words about how this song came about?

Heri: I got a CD from the owner of the Tutl company, they released this compilation of old Faroese tunes. It was recorded in the 1970s on southernmost one of the Faroese Islands, and it’s performed by two very good folk singers, Albert and Martin. I think they’re both dead now. This recording was put on the album to demonstrate the original melody put into the song, and also to compare how the original melody sounds and how it sounds when we put into a metal song. It’s an extremely good melody, I don’t actually remember how I decided to use that, but I guess the song started from that melody.

Apart from heavy arrangement of the initial melody, the song also contains your own original part. When you were working on that new part, did you try to make it a continuation of the original, or to counterbalance the original somehow?

Heri: It’s just an incorporation of precious melodies, Dream Theater-ish riffing, a bit doomy slower riffing, some music theory, and – there you have it!

The original melody is so strange that I have a hard time understanding the timing…

Heri: It changes all the time.

First there’s a long verse, then there’s a shorter verse, then a longer one again.

Heri: Traditional music changes its timing all the time, that’s what makes it sound very progressive. When you hear the original tradition, it doesn’t sound very progressive, it just sounds very strange. But when you put it into metal, play it with drums and everything, it sounds extremely progressive. We didn’t intend to make it progressive, it’s just like that.

And what scale is that?

Heri: Dorian minor. It’s very common in Faroese traditional music.

So if we summarize the peculiarities of Faroese traditional music, it’s Dorian scale…

Heri: It’s not the only one, but I think Dorian scale is the most common one. And as to odd timing, I don’t think you’ll find one tradition that is not in odd time.

What bands from Faroe Islands would you recommend us to listen?

Heri Joensen: Hamfero.

And what about your solo project Heljareyga?

Heri Joensen: Don’t listen to that, it’s too progressive. Listen to Hamfero, it’s doom metal. There’s also Synarchy, but they’re kind of baby metal. They’ve just had a new album out, it’s modern thrash or whatever.

I’ve seen a YouTube video of a female ethno singer, who was singing to a drum. It was very impressive!

This is Eivør Pálsdóttir. She’s a good singer. (A dispute arises.) Well, she looks nice, but the music is so-so. (laughing)

Our final question is not serious at all. A friend of mine saw your show in St. Petersburg yesterday, and she said that you kissed each other onstage. Is that true?

Eh? (laughs)
Gunnar Thomsen: We talk a lot. Maybe it looks like we’re kissing. (laughs)
Terji Skibenaes: But we’re not kissing on stage. Only after the show. But now it’s time for us to go onstage.
Heri Joensen: (looking at a table with food) By the way, would you like apples or a banana? (While asking this question, Heri put a banana and apples together in a kind of construction that looked а lot like a male sexual organ, therefore, nobody expressed the desire to try this dish.)

Tyr on the Internet: http://www.tyr.fo/

Special thanks to Eugene Silin (Alive Concerts) for arranging this interview

Interview by Konstantin “Hirax” Chilikin, Vladimir Impaler
Photos by Natalie “Nuts” Reshetnikova
December 18, 2011
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