Pic courtesy of: Månegarm "What’s our music is all about…….I guess it’s about having fun, to get together with the rest of the bastards and just Rock n’ Roll!!!"

CR: Your latest album Vredens Tid means “the age of wrath” why? And what does Månegarm means?
Erik Grawsiö: As it’s written in the album; “Vredens Tid” is a pure dedication to the wrath that lives in every man and woman’s heart, born under the pale light of the North Star.
Månegarm comes from the Norse mythology. Månegarm is the name of a wolf that lived in a dark and terrible forest called the Iron forest. He feasted on blood from dying people and during Ragnarök he hunted the moon which caused an eclipse of the moon. He also caused an eclipse of the sun as he spitted blood among him that blackened the sun…..

CR: Just to get over the basic questions. What is your music all about?
Erik Grawsiö: What’s our music is all about…….I guess it’s about having fun, to get together with the rest of the bastards and just Rock n’ Roll!!!

CR: Many categorize Månegarm as Viking metal, are they totally correct, or is that label too small for you guys?
Erik Grawsiö: I don’t know really. Our music has been put in a lot of different genres during the years. Viking metal works fine for us. We let the listeners and the press decide what to call our music.

CR: Getting into this latest work, why in track 1 (Vid hargen) there is some sort of crow and like a burning house, why do you think intro tracks are necessary?
Erik Grawsiö: “Vid Hargen” is an intro to “Sigrblot”. You can hear burning fires and people who approach the ceremonial place where to “blot” (ceremony to Oden for victory in battle) will take place.

CR: Vredens Tid, has many pieces of just sounds, like battle sounds, wolfs, horses running, birds flying by, it definitely helps create some sort of an atmosphere you guys even have just one track of “atmospheric sounds” Preludium, what were you guys trying to achieve with this?
Erik Grawsiö: As you say, these samples are there to create atmosphere and feelings. “Preludium” is a single track but also an intro to the title track; “Vredens Tid”. The battle represents the beginning of the time of wrath, the first battle in a new era.

CR: I really like the song Vredens Tid, every aspect of it is great, but I was wondering how did you get Umer Mossige-Norheim to sing the female vocals on that, do you arrange all those parts or you let Umer decide what to do?
Erik Grawsiö: It is me, who has arranged the female vocals on the album. Umer got the songs, melodies and lyrics in advance so she knew what to do. She was with us for a day in the studio and she did a great job!!

CR: This new album goes from totally metal, to folk and back to metal with some atmospheric sounds placed in between, it is definitely a very well though and planed piece of work, how long did this album took you guys to compose, arrange, record and finally produced and shipped out to sale?
Erik Grawsiö: We started working; composing, arranging and rehearsing, on the album in the beginning of 2004. We recorded it in Studio Underground for just two weeks in October 2004……Yes, it was very hectic. We had to work day and night to make it in time.
The late release, 28th of September 2005, was caused by a lot of different problems…..Voice problems (my voice crashed during the recording and we had to finish the vocals several weeks later), label problems, lay-out delays etc, etc.
So, from the first day to the last, I guess it took about 1, 5 year.

CR: There are only two really long songs on Vredens Tid, “Kologa Troltand” and “Hemfard”, why is that? Any special reasons why some songs are just longer than others?
Erik Grawsiö: These songs just turned out longer, no particular reason. I must say that these two songs are extremely long. A normal Månegarm song is usually about 3 to 5 minutes.

CR: The last song of the album Segervisa, it’s very….its nice, very joyful, a great fit with the entire subject of your lyrics and atmosphere, how do you though of it?
Erik Grawsiö: I wrote it at home with my acoustic guitar. I wanted it to be a song that was powerful but also calm and atmospheric at the same time. Pierre’s lyrics worked perfect with the music and the song fits well as the albums last one, it sums up the album in a good way.

	Pic courtesy of: Månegarm "We increased our popularity a lot with this album I think. On this album we had slowed down the pace a little bit and we had made our music more “folky” since the violin was used much, much more"

CR: The album cover is based on the song Kologa Trolltand, why did you guys picked that special song to illustrate your album?
Erik Grawsiö: Pierre and Jonas came up with the idea and we all thought that it would be a great motive to have as a cover. I’m sure that Kris Verwimp should have illustrated other songs just as good but this one also worked well with the album title and all.

CR: Do you guys have any commercial goal with this album; I mean do you guys want to sale some specific number of copies? How involved are you guys in the whole promotion aspect of the record?
Erik Grawsiö: We haven’t set up a goal concerning the record sales, but of course we want to sell as many copies as possible. The record label takes care of much of the promotion but we try to do as much as we can our selves; on the webpage, gigs, interviews etc, etc.
Nothing comes for free, you got to promote your band in every way if you want to succeed……..

CR: Can you remember how many different instruments, other than the traditional ones (guitars, bass, drums...etc.) you used for this production, can you remember their names?
Erik Grawsiö: Besides from the traditional instruments we have used violin, flute, horn, jew-sharp and some percussion.

CR: Vredens Tid was chosen as the best album of 2005 in the Spanish webzine Friedhof Magazine, what does this mean to you guys? Were you expecting such a big recognition from the press?(a few weeks after the interview Vredens Tid became also our #1 album of the year)
Erik Grawsiö: That’s really fantastic!!! We hoped, as always, for good reactions and good reviews of course but I don’t think that anyone of us had expected this. Feels great!!!!!

CR: You guys will soon be playing along side Skyforger and Goddess of Desire, what can you tell us about this tour, and about these bands you are playing with?
Erik Grawsiö: It’s going to be really cool to do this tour with these guys. I haven’t listened to Skyforger, just heard one or two songs maybe, but we played with Goddess of Desire at Kaltenbach Open Air in Austria last summer. I remember that they played some good, old metal and had a cool live show.

CR: From your previous productions, people seem to remember very well Dodsfard, what can you tell us about that special album?
Erik Grawsiö: We increased our popularity a lot with this album I think. On this album we had slowed down the pace a little bit and we had made our music more “folky” since the violin was used much, much more. I think that the songs are really good and catchy and maybe that is why people liked it. The negative thing with it is just that we made it a little bit too short, only 32-33 minutes. We got some complaints about that which is understandable.

CR: You guys have evolved a lot since your record Havets Vargar, back them its was a bit more black metal influence, what can you tell us about you development, do you know why you guys got to the point were you are right now, musically speaking?
Erik Grawsiö: The development of our music has come naturally, I can’t really think of anything special that has put us where we are today. After “Havets Vargar”, an album which was much more black metal influenced, we had a short break before we started working on the next album, “Dödsfärd”. The songs we came up with turned out much more folky and catchy and we also slowed down that pace a bit. This development was something that everybody in the band welcomed, it felt right to do it a bit different after two rather fast “black metal” albums. On “Vredens Tid” we’ve continued on the “Dödsfärd” track. We have just included more heavy metal and I guess you can say that we’ve taken the whole Månegarm package one step further.

CR: Of all your records, which one do you remember the dearest?
Erik Grawsiö: I don’t know really……….It’s hard to pick out a favorite of your own albums. If I have to choose I think I’ll pick “Vredens Tid”, because I think that this is our strongest album so far with better songs and better arrangements.

CR: Is it true that your next album is going to be a concept-album? Any clues about or previews about it?
Erik Grawsiö: Not really our next album…....Our next album will be a mini-CD with 6 songs and this album will be something really special, can’t tell you more about it right now. It will probably be released before summer.
Our next full length album will be a concept album, that’s right. We will start recording it in October 2006. If you want a hint, read the lyrics to “Frekastein”. This one is the epilog to the upcoming concept album.

	Pic courtesy of: Månegarm "I think that the metal scene will stay strong for many, many years to come. Rock N’ Roll has been played since way back and I think it will stay that way"

CR: Do you guys have “day jobs” or is it music your profession?
Erik Grawsiö: We all have regular daytime jobs except for Janne who live by his music. He does a lot of other musical stuff besides Månegarm.

CR: What do you think of people, bands to be more specific that write music based in old European legends and beliefs but that they, the band members are Latin or Indian or African themselves, any thoughts on that?
Erik Grawsiö: Everybody’s free to write about what they want. If people/bands write about a subject that they’re familiar, interested and fascinated of and they do it good, then I think it’s OK.

CR: How important is for you guys playing live, if you could would you play live all year long?
Erik Grawsiö: Playing live is important in a promotional way, but most of all its really fun!! It’s fun for us and its fun for the audience.
I don’t want to tour the whole year though; I have my girlfriend and our 5 month old daughter to think about.

CR: Any particular release of 2005 (other than Vredens Tid) that you would recommend to our readers, or that you just happened to like?
Erik Grawsiö: Rammstein – Rosenrot (great car-driving album)

CR: How do you see the metal movement these days? Do you think it is growing or just an illusion created by the record companies to sell more?
Erik Grawsiö: I think that the metal scene will stay strong for many, many years to come. Rock N’ Roll has been played since way back and I think it will stay that way.

CR: What are the future plans of Månegarm?
Erik Grawsiö: First we have the European mini tour in March and then we will go to Holland in May for a metal fest. Before the summer we’ll hopefully release the mini-CD and in October we’ll start recording our next full length album. We also hope to do some festivals this summer but nothing’s booked yet.

CR: Finally who will win in a fist fight, Ozzy or Rob Halford, Lemmy or God, Sharon Osbourne or you?
Erik Grawsiö: Ha, ha, tricky question!!!! Alright, here we go;
Ozzy VS Rob The Prince of Parkinson VS a gay in leather, hahaha!!!, I guess no one will make a hit there - DRAW
Lemmy vs. God Easy as hell, there will be no fight – Lemmy IS God
Sharon vs. me She seems to have a hell of a temper so she’d probably kick my ass.

CR: Thank you for the time, hope you can someday come to play in Costa Rica it will be really cool to see you live; if you will like to add something please do.
Erik Grawsiö: Thanks to you too. We also hope to come to Costa Rica some day, would be really cool!!!
Buy our album “Vredens Tid” and remember to check out our webpage for the latest news about Månegarm.

Rock N’ Roll!!! // Erik – Månegarm