What do you hope to achieve with Ancestral Legacy?

When my buddy Kjell-Ivar and I started the band Permafrost (pre-Ancestral Legacy) almost 10 years ago we hadn't no goals actually, we just wanted to be in a band and make songs. Now as I've been around this long my only hope still isn't much more than getting the chance to release a proper Ancestral Legacy album. And this will happen sooner or later as long as I'm still alive! After this practically everything can happen, from nothing to eternal stardom! He he...

How would you describe Ancestral Legacy's playing sound?

Hmmm, during the years the sound has changed a lot. The first years "modern" black and death metal (In 1995 that was Sacramentum, Dissection, In Flames etc.) was the inspiration, later we got a synth player in the band, and we sounded more like Dimmu, Cradle and Covenant, but when the keyboardist quitted the sound changed radically to more dark/doom/goth style. I listened a lot to (and still does!) bands like Opeth, Lacuna Coil, The Gathering, Katatonia, Novembre and Rapture, and it's no secret that these are quite an inspiration to me when I compose music. Along with these we've been compared to more "Napalm'ish" (e.g. bands released on the Austrian Napalm records label) bands like Tristania, Theatre of Tragedy and such, but I don't think we have that much in common with these bands. I guess this comparishion is due because of the "beauty & the beast vocals", ha ha. But we don't have tons of synth in our songs, I've just laid some simple chords here and there on a few songs in studio.

Will Ancestral Legacy be the band that will get your attention in years to come, or do you have something else up your sleeve?

Ancestral Legacy has been a part of my life quite long now, so I have no plans of "spend less time with it", so as far as I know it'll be my main priority for many years to come, along with V:28. But you'll never know, I might start a one man band if I get too much free time...

Your latest demo "Goodbye Reality" was pretty good. I especially liked the combination of clean female vocals/harsh male vocals. Are the new AL songs in the same direction?

As you said, the demo is pretty good, except the production isn't as heavy as it should have been. But in my opinion we haven't recorded our best songs yet (otherwise than crappy sounding demos, most without vocals). We've got more than enough songs for a debut album. The newer songs aren't too different, though the three songs on Goodbye Reality are among the "softest" we've created ever, so all in all I guess they are a bit more heavy, more like the older demo "Of magic illusions", though a step forward as well.

Any exciting Ancestral Legacy news to share with us? When do you plan to release new material?

We shot a music video last November, but it isn't until these days it is finished. It will be a double release; the Goodbye Reality demo as well as a DVD containing the music video for the track "Crash of silence", a "behind the scenes" of making the video, a little documentary from the Lost Souls festival that we played in October last year, and finally a picture gallery. It is hopefully on the streets in late May. More info on our homepage www.ancestrallegacy.com will come!

I find it odd that no labels have offered you any deals yet. I mean, juding from the latest demo and your work in V:28 it's clearly that you got what it takes to survive in this scene. How do you look upon the future for Ancestral Legacy?

To be honest we haven't been too active to promote ourselves towards record labels the past two years. I guess we'll send a bunch of the new demo/DVD-release out to some suiting labels, but this still isn't any guarantee of getting a contract. We were very close of signing to a label last autumn, but as long as the conditions in the contract sucked and it was difficult to establish some serious negotiations, we just gave a shit. We don't have to sell our asses to get out an album! But as you mentioned; there are loads of crappy sounding bands getting contract, so why shouldn't a killer band from Arendal, Norway get a deal as well!?

The near future isn't too optimistic though, not meaning that the band will split or anything (Hey, that won't happen until I call it quits anyway!). A couple of the members decided a few days ago that they need some time off from the band, I don't know how long this will be, but I guess there won't be much activity until this autumn. Personally I find this quite frustrating, as I think things have gone quite slow for a long time already, but it's not much to do with it, especially when we're situated in a small town like Arendal. Replacing band members with someone who can fill their spot is almost impossible here. I guess we'll just have to wait until everyone are back on track.

Would you like to share with the readers your top 5 Scandinavian metal albums of all-time?

I've got a bunch of scandinavian faves, so it's hard to pick the top 5, but I guess I have to go for these, in no particual order:

Opeth - My arms, Your Hearse
Emperor - Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk
Amorphis - Tales From The Thousand Lakes
Rapture - Futile
Dissection - Storm Of The Light's Bane

Ancestral Legacy website. 

[This interview was first published on the now defunct scandinavianmetal.info webzine]