The story of Nidmörker is a long and complicated one but it all started with a couple of young, angry, rebellious social pariahs trying to found an outlet for their uncontrolled aggression, general hate, inner darkness and disgust for everything and music was one of the more creative ways to express everything hence the birth of Nidmörker and a whole bunch of other projects, but apparently only music didn´t really restrain ourself and got us in more trouble than usual.
Nowadays Nidmörker is generally focusing on the task to incarnate pure darkness and even the word darkness seems to tame for the concept, we´re trying to invoke it in both human sense and in a metaphysical form, it´s a concept that can be liken to demonic possession handled in different angles of perverting a human psyche and physique through our compositions, lyrics and invocation, everything is made to make the listener feel as uncomfortable as possible, or comfortable for a few ones.
2.The band has been around since 1992 how would you describe your musical progress over the years?
I (Irud Lili) wasn´t a member in 1992 but I know that the music before the name was changed to Nidmörker wasn´t really anything serious, just some amateurish Old School Black Metal mishmash that made the early Enslaved Demos sound like a musical masterpiece.
Basically there is only three stages of musical progress, around 94-96 it was a form of fast 90s Black Metal with some keyboards occasionally taking place, we we´re strongly influenced by the bands we were listening to at the time so there was not really anything groundbreaking but still pretty decent Black Metal.
In the late 90s was the time where we started to become really good at our instruments and wanted to prove it, sadly this just ended in an attempt to play as fast and technical as possible, great musicianship but all too plastic, soulless and without any depth what so ever, this is a reason why we decided to never release the demos.
And nowadays we went 180 from that part of our lives and decided to create something raw, uncomfortable and necrotic, just something slow and tortorous to listen to, something you would never play around people or at a party for example.
3.While there was music and demo's being released between 99 and 2001 you waited until 2018 to release any newer music, can you tell us what was the cause of the long delay?
The reason for this was that the founder and original composer Letalis (later Harvesp-Khoda but he changed it back to Letalis) was imprisoned for murder, well for one of the murders to be exact and I was spiraling down in a bad lane when everyone disappeared and the drugs were not available anymore and then I had to try to adapt to the world, a task that will forever be a failure, so during that time I did not have access to instruments either so I had to give up music for a while, then a lot of personal things happen which delayed the process, even though it´s one of the most excruciatingly uncomfortable and confusing times of my life I have to admit that I´m satisfied that it led up to this point.
4.What are some of the lyrical topics and subjects you have explored so far with the music?
In the beginning it was the typical forest, darkness, sorrow, winter, eternal night, death but I also added some folklore from the Swedish island I was born and grew up in, an island called Gotland aka the viking island, some lyrics was even written in the ancient tongue of Gutnamål, in the late 90's when we tried to be the greatest musicians as we possible could be the lyrics had to be the greatest they could be too in my mind, and it became some pseud ointellectual satanic jibberish filled with metaphors and poetic embarrassment, and they were written in English.
Nowadays all of that is scrapped, I`m writing in coherent Swedish (for the people that find the Swedish language coherent that is) and the topics are more inhumanely misanthropic but yet from an esoteric view that goes beyond flesh and godhood's alike, and this time the lyrics are written in Swedish and Latin.
5.Originally the band was known as 'Darkness Enthroned' before changing it to 'Gryningsvartnad' before settling on your current name, what was the cause of all of the name changes and also the meaning and inspiration behind the name 'NidMorker'?
Well Darkness Enthroned basically sucks and if we had that name when Dimmu Borgir released Enthrone Darkness Triumphant it would be even more embarrassing,
Gryningsvartnad became the steppingstone to take the band into the "Swedish territory" and write everything in Swedish but that name sucked too, it kind of translates to Dawn Blackened and was a failed attempt to make a poetic band name, Gryningsvartnad got changed after a week i think but it actually became another band because we had a cool logo, but we realized that we were doing the same musical thing so we put it rest, I still have the original logo in a drawer but I´m not going revive that project, the word nidmörker was found in a book with the old Gotlandish language and it means pitchblack or utter darkness and it was perfect for our cause and still is.
6.Can you tell us a little bit more about the artwork that was presented on the ep cover?
The cover is an odd one, and that´s perfect, people have no idea what´s going on but it looks unpleasant without shoving it in your face and reveal everything, it represent the concept of the EP, the undivine blessing of sickness both physically and mentally.
7.There is no original members left, what was the decision behind continuing the band instead of forming a new one?
Nidmörker have been a massive part of my life and I became a big part of it, handling concepts, lyrics, ideas behind it and so on where Letalis who was one of the few ones that i really felt kinship with handled 89% of the composition and we basically became 2 of the most important pillars of this band, when he was released from jail we discussed the continuation of Nidmörker, now Nidmörker have never been split-up or laid to rest, there have always been in my interest to hold the project alive and to actually make something of it one day, so when we activated it again I was in a weird position and had to solve a couple of things and in the middle of everything Letalis got involved with a MC Gang again and got in trouble with the law enforcement, so he decided to leave Sweden, went to Finland I think, he is from Finland so it wouldn´t surprise me, anyway He´s a full time hotshot in a biker gang, and I´m not talking about those trendy Black Metal Watain worshipers with leather vests, this guy is the real deal.
So now Letalis had no interest or time to focus on music and he left me in complete charge of Nidmörker, in 2017 I found Agrat Bat Mahlat and Merihem, Agrat had to leave the band for studies and Merihem became a full time member, he however does not have the same chaotic history but he definitely have the same mindset and fits perfectly for this band and I count him as a very close friend.
Btw Letalis fully appreciate and support the new development of the band and considers himself a nr 1 fan.
8.The band also has a history with murder, violence suicide, overdose, drugs, alcohol and jail, can you tell us a little bit more about it and also do you feel that most bands that pretend to be all evil would be scared to have lived the same live that the band members have lived?
Well, I can´t talk about everything seeing as some things have never been out in the open and should never be, but there was a lot of anger that was boiling with in almost all of us, Letalis was violent because he liked it and got a kick out of it and he didn't like the most people at all, I was uncontrolled and a whole bunch of anger issues because of everything I grew up with and didn't grow up with so I was easily triggered and could snap for anything which Letalis thought was fun and tried to trigger me into fights when I was a kid and wanted to be one of them, but when I finally made it to the inner circle we became like brothers and both felt a sort of freedom while being in a fight, if we went down, we went down swinging, we became so passionate about fighting that we started a fight club called Stahlwerk, whole bunch of Extreme Metal and angry guys taunting each other and fighting and then drinking beers and splashing blood everywhere, later we started a hooligan gang, we didn't
care for sport so we just ran in and started to fight with whatever gang that was in altercation for the moment, after a while we had to calm ourselves down because we started to become violent against ourselves, I think the majority of the hospital visitations was because some stunt I pulled on myself, but my goal was pretty much to die before I became 19 and take as many as I can with me, I failed on both aspects.
Well that´s where the drugs and alcohol came in, to calm our nerves, sure it worked for a while, I was more into pills than alcohol though but I took whatever I could get my hands on, obviously this behaviour also came with it´s negative effects and the bliss of that vice was just temporary, then the violence erupted again, it was actually to the point that i couldn't go to school without being on some form of drugs because I hated the people there so much that I´m sure that I would stabbed someone
just for fun, but I had a somewhat logical voice in the back of my head and I kind of locked myself in whenever I felt that my mood where starting to burst but that wasn't an option around the other guys when we met up.
I think all this was a reaction to lack of compassion, safety, love, guidance, possibilities and all that the more successful kids got so we reacted in the only way we could with the only emotions we were used to and then we took everything further and tried to erase all emotions to be a division of something inhuman, and I´m pretty sure that everyone except for Letalis was battling extreme depression and that combination made you search for death, darkness and destruction in more ways than in just music, and battling a deep depression and being involved with all of this and only having this kind of lifestyle to rely one can be devastating for some, and that´s where the suicides came in, the first fucked me up pretty good, is was Shyftanyael, we were in Fiat Noctum together and he was going to be a part of Nidmörker but he decided that he was done with his life and no one saw it coming, Volturnus was a hopeless cause and we never knew where we had him and he kept out from the violence, alcohol and sat by himself sometime, great guitarist though, we thought that he thought higher of himself than us hooligans but we didn't mess with him and as it turns out he was just deep down in depression, a trait that I share with him but I didn't want to go out that way, I would rather die on the battlefield was my mindset even though I did get myself a couple of concussions by bashing my head into things, and we´re still laughing about when I threw myself out from a window, that was the bloodiest incident yet I think.
Myrksturm was the worst one, she was Letalis girlfriend at the time too and kind of held us guys from killing each other, she took an overdose and a lot of thing unraveled that she had kept secret from us and it was really bad, and especially for Letalis who shortly after got arrested for murder, and that´s the only murder incident that I can comment on, not to sound like an edgelord but the person he killed deserved it, anyway that´s probably as deep and honest i can and want to be about this topic.
Well it´s not recommended to have a life like that but it definitely gets you an unique mindset that kind of fits with what the ideologies of this scene should be, it´s not really a life that you choose either it was a natural step for us, but I think the most people just want to be rock stars in this scene, have a safe, nice life, play a little bit with a small flame now and then by playing some trendy Black Metal and try to hype it up by boasting about how evil, misanthropic and dark their music is to impress the kids and all you can hear is a typical overproduced, mass manufactered Black Metal that goes well with a beer in a generic Rockbar, and of course the artwork usually goes in hand in hand with the trends and it´s even worse when you have a band picture when the members are in an expensive deluxe photo studio and tries to look "evil", well I don´t like the black and white pictures with clip and paste design to be tr00 to the 90's, that was done for the lack of high tech solution and it was cheap, I love the look of the old demos but nowadays it´s just stupid and amateurish.
Anyway no, I don´t think that anyone even would want to live the way we did, the most people that think that they are tr00, kvlt and grim (I never use that description more than ridiculing things in this scene btw) are macho keyboard warriors with a big ego that have no reality check and sits in their safe environment behind the screen and have to be annoyed by everything and for some reason they really have to whine about it mockingly online.
But then I don´t see ourselves as evil, we are definitely a chaos in the flesh that wish to spread but we are not even close to be in the same division as our leaders and rulers, now that´s evil and pure stupidity combined, the Devil certainly worked out those two organisations pretty well.
9.Has the band ever done any live shows?
Yes, many, only in Europe and we got in so much trouble that we couldn't even finish the sets, especially in Germany.
I remember a funny coincidence that I actually can talk about, we actually managed to burn down a church in one place, we grilled Hot Dogs over the flames until the flames started to become too high and uncontrolled so we ran away chewing on raw Hot Dogs, I don´t remember the location but I was mostly drunk or high when we had to be around people, so there´s a lot of things that have blacked out from my memory, a couple of days after we heard that it was an old abandoned church that was going to be torn down anyway so we made the state a favour and the fire didn´t have time to spread and destroy anything more either, so that kind of killed our cheering mood.
We never tried to set fire on churches at home, we were pretty cautious about raising too much hell where we live, we didn't want to end up like the Norwegians, but we wanted to be worse than them, although there was a lot of vandalizing to churches, graveyards and so on because of boredom.
10.On a worldwide level how has the reaction been to your music by fans of black metal?
I can honestly say that I have no idea, the trendy Black Metal people and the mainstream metal people (same shit nowadays) doesn't like it at all, which is a positive thing, if they like it then we have failed, there are some bands that i´m in contact with with members of who´s opinions I think highly of and they love the uncomfortable, raw, creeping feeling that Nidmörker delivers.
11.I have also heard that the band is also currently working on a full length that will be a lot more different musically than the previous ep, what can we expect once it is released?
That is true! or well we haven´t been working with it for a while now, we´re still fixing the last tracks so "HTCAAD" can be released on CD, Tapeversion is on it´s way from a Polish label, not sure what´s happening there, only time will tell.
The plans are still to release "Inhabitant" and make it worse than ever, it´s going to be very hard for some people to listen to, we actually discussed the album yesterday and we have a formula and a blueprint but i can´t say too much about it.
We will collaborate with some artists and the Death Industrial band SEKT have even provided us with discarded tracks, so this will be very interesting!
12.What is going on with 'Fiat Noctum' these days?
Fiat Noctum is a project Nidmörker have affiliations with, I started the band with Shyftanyael, and then we recruited 2 more members, I had some lyrics I made when I was 14 and we made some Darkthroneish tracks and noticed that the lyrics felt miss placed and gave them to Nidmörker and decided to focus on death worship and the English language instead, some of the songs can be find on Nidmörkers demo "Tre Gravars Sång", which is impossible to find because there is only 3 ex that survived and mine got destroyed when I was moving away from Gotland for the first time, and now those lyrics are present on Fiat Noctums "Från Forna Minnen" and they will probably never be available for the public.
Anyway, for a bout 2 weeks ago me and Ancitif was chatting about the good old times and thought that it would be fun to record some 90s Black Metal like we did when we were kids, and it all got so serious that I went into the drawer and found a whole bunch of old things with Fiat Noctum, lyrics, old pictures, logo and everything, after 2 days "Från Forna Minnen" was recorded (that took about 6 hours), the cover and re-edition of the logo was done and the whole thing was released, I kind of felt like when I was 15 and hold the first demo I was involved with, it was an overwhelming, nostalgic feeling.
Fiat Noctum will continue and only focus on raw 90s Black Metal for our nostalgia, not sure what the lyrics will be about since Nidmörker right now is a deeper deathworship than anything I've ever created, but that´s pretty much a non-issue for now or maybe it will be typical forest, darkness, sorrow, winter, eternal night, death just for the sense of irony.
13.What are some of the bands or musical styles that have had an influence on your music and also what are you listening to nowadays?
We try to divert our self from too much outside influences and just go with what we´re feeling or what we+re invoking, but of course in a subconscious way you´re always influenced by something that you've heard or seen.
Well I listen to a lot of things that appeal to me in many different genres actually, many people say that they don´t listen to that much new music when they get older, personally I´m searching and finding a lot more bands than before, sure a lot of the bands in the Black and Death Metal scene nowadays sounds like some goddamn elevator music and no one seems to dare to break ground, but if you´re going to make party music I suppose generalization is the best way to go, other genres except for Metal is Dark Ambient, Death Industrial, Folk music, some Electronic based things, Acoustic music and pretty much whatever my mood feels like or what may fit with the project I´m working on, and of course I have to check out loads of weird Japanese pop music so that I can share it to all of the super-True Metal guys i know and see their world crumble before them, it´s hilarious!
For the moment I´m listening to Funeral Mist- Hekatomb, Rostén still got it, but my favourite is still "Salvation", now I kind of wish that I was listening to something more unknown so that I can prove how underground, Trve, Kvlt and grim I am.
14.How would you describe your views on Satanism and Occultism?
I am definitely deep into the dark side of esotericism, I am not a part of organisations or sects anymore though and I´m not calling myself a Satanist to avoid being jammed up with the hipster hippies in the Church of Satan and their help yourself book for weak minded people that are nothing but desperately have to label themselves with something, personally I don´t discuss my spiritual side, rituals and everything around it, partly because if it should spread it could be a chance that it would be watered down so it could fit all like "satanism" nowadays or people with no recollection of the subjects starts using symbols and words and derives the meaning of it which happened to the
believes of The Temple of the Black Light, after Dissections "Reinkaos" it became such a trend and uneducated Black Metal tourists were running around on the internet and writing Hailz 218 or something like that regardless if the bands or persons was a part of Draconian, Germanic Heathen or Orthodox form of Occultism.
So my views on the subject is to treat it with respect, teach yourself and if you´re making business out of it or a trend then you should stay out of it.
15.Before we wrap up this interview, do you have any final words or thoughts?
Thanks for this interview, sorry if I wrote way too much but it´s Sunday and I thought that I should do like the Christians and take the day off for once.
Furthermore I can say that you should check out Nidmörker if you´re up for it and Fiat Noctum, and check out Fila Sophiae, the label we have connections to, there´s a bunch of recommendations when it comes to bands in all kinds of Metal styles and finally don´t be a trendie!
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