Interview IOTUNN

IOTUNN’s latest release, Kinship, blends mythological themes with atmospheric heavy metal. In this interview, Jesper Gräs answers questions about their journey, creative processes, and inspiration.

1. Congratulations on the release of “Iridescent Way”! This acoustic track stands out in contrast to your heavier material. What inspired you to include such a song on Kinship?

Thank you very much and thank you for reaching out!

This song has a lot of roots. It is a result of a huge dream for me to create a song for IOTUNN which had a classical guitar duet at its core. My brother and I have been playing classical guitar since childhood and have always had this passion together. We also learned music pieces together as children and played in a classical guitar orchestra together. This song is a fulfillment of this history of my brother and I. Also, classical music, folk tradition and so on are a huge inspiration for us so all in all it was meant to be that Iridescent Way happened. Actually, the intro/outro part came to me in a dream and I managed to play it on the guitar right after I woke up so that must be a huge sign as well

2. You mentioned that the intro and outro of “Iridescent Way” came to you in a dream. Can you share more about how this dream shaped the final track?

It was the fundamental guitar piece in the intro and outro. I´ve composed music in dreams 4 or five times but only once I´ve managed to actually play it when I woke up. I think the dreamy sound Iridescent Way has is connected with this.

3. How did your classical guitar backgrounds and the influence of Northern and Western folk traditions inform the acoustic direction of this song?

I think it is present all over in this song. Everything from all the many works of classical guitar I´ve learned throughout the years, the love for classical music, the love for acoustic music in heavy music and my love for artists such as Ennio Morricone is in there somewhere. I absolutely love dreamy and atmospheric acoustic music whether that be the amazing acoustic parts throughout Metallicas discography, whether that be Kveldssanger or Haavard and so on. 

4. Kinship seems to delve into deeply mythological and philosophical themes. Could you elaborate on the story of the tribesman and how it mirrors human nature and the dichotomies we face?

I think everything is about choices and in these choices creation and destruction is great forces which define how our lives will be. So, in this way I would say that human choices can be connected to the great forces of this in mythology and so on. This relates to surroundings which influence everyone in a million ways. It is all about the ground overall conditions everything unfolds itself in. The massive forces of creation and destruction are all around us. It´s cosmic, it´s natural and it is human. As humans we are set in these conditions, and we have the responsibility to make the right choices in the conditions and to really feel what is right. The tribesman fleets his home, his tribe, because his brother is mentally disconnected from one day to the other. It is the tribe who has made a ritual on the brother so that they have total control over him. The main character fleets into the wilderness and is confronted with lots and lots of scenarios of revelation, wisdom, doubt and so on in all these wondrous worlds in the wilderness of nature. Eventually his wish for belonging and connection with his tribe is too strong and he let himself get caught. The tribe does the same ritual on the main character as they did on his brother which divides the body and soul. The tribesman shudders upon seeing his kin so coldly and religiously arrange his demise; entirely convinced of their virtue. He is put through a harrowing ordeal, slowly pulling his consciousness out from his body, out from the physical realm, and into incomprensible spaces. Unconnected to the physical realm, the tribesman finds himself conscious nonetheless and still able to observe the physical realm yet not interact with it. He senses other beings, communicative thoughts, but at the same time seems completely alone. With an apparent ability to both hear and unhear, see and unsee, there is control; but only of himself. Movement is unlimited, and soon he drifts, glides, glitches through an eternal space inhabited sparsely by the visible. Emotions are distant and unspecific. But at the core of his being is a steady and unaltered stream of loss, longing and loneliness. With access to every corner of existence, any sliver of hope still left in him will be channeled towards finding what was lost.

In this way the tribesman’s story is connected to the fundamental conditions of human life and society I think. It is connected to the daring of breaking up with our roots and to the curiosity of what it takes to find your true self. It is connected to the enormous force of the wish to belong within yourself but also with your relational surroundings and how you can find true wisdom if you open your heart to nature and the cosmos, I think. It unfolds a story of good and evil as these energies are floating around the spheres of the mind and feelings, and the societies we live in, and it tells the horrors of letting go and choosing to be absorbed in an unhealthy context. So, in this way I think Kinship is a manifest for putting in your best effort to find true wisdom in connection with your true self and the world we live in, and I think everyone needs to do this as single beings as well as on a more overall level and in all this the word Kinship breathes.

5. The album touches on contrasts like light and dark, body and mind, nature and culture. How do you balance these themes musically, especially given the vast range of emotions and styles in your sound?

I think what characterizes the IOTUNN sound is that it is created somewhere in between dichotomies. When you want your sound to have everything in it, to reflect all the feelings and wonders of life, it is in there between the poles that the energies are most at stake, and I think that is where our sound is created from. In those floating energies.

6. As you’ve said, Kinship is your most expansive work to date. What were the biggest challenges you faced while creating this album, both musically and lyrically?

To be honest I don´t think we have had big challenges regarding creating the music and lyrics. It has been an enormous amount of work which is crazy to think about and this really hard work made us tired and somehow worn out at times, but these challenges I find natural and they never had anything to do with the creation of the lyrics and music.

7. Bjørn Wind Andersen mentioned that Kinship feels like a grand heavy metal work of art. What elements of this album make it the band’s proudest achievement so far?

I think everything about Kinship is what makes it that achievement. I am eternally proud of how much love and effort all five of us have put into creating this album during four-ish years. We all have adult lives with all the responsibilities that comes with that so to have been able to work without compromising in any way throughout these years and to always having this passion and motivation in everything we´ve done with the album makes me so proud. I think we are at the best place we´ve been as musicians and composers, and I think we have grown together as a band, and this reflects in each note throughout the album and makes it a grand heavy metal work of art as Bjørn says.

8. Jacob Hansen has worked with some iconic metal bands. How did his mixing and mastering at Hansen Studios enhance the final sound of Kinship?

It enhanced the sound just like we wished for. The whole journey regarding the mix and mastering thoughts has been one which we have put a lot of time and thought into. We wished to land a more organic sounding album than Access All Worlds which we felt the music and lyrics called for. So with Jacob we landed that sound that was what we dreamed of. A sound which has everything to it in some way. A sound in there between poles just like where our music comes from.

9. The album artwork by Saprophial is stunning. Can you tell us how the visuals reflect the themes of the album, and how important visual art is to your music?

The visuals are very important to us and to our works. With this artwork which is both front and back and art pieces for each song we wished to encounter all the things this album us about lyrically and musically, and we had some amazing meetings with Saprophial. She is just and amazing person and artist, so we talked and at the end of all the talking she was free to create the amazing art she did. This art reflects and enhance everything Kinship is about.

10. Looking back at your debut album Access All Worlds and now with Kinship, how do you feel the band has evolved musically and conceptually?

I think we have matured. I think we are evolving on being composers and instrumentalists. We are wiser in our way of creating as a band which means that we see things clearer when we contribute to the overall composing of a song. We are more focused on everything and in all this we have become braver, I think. We dare to go even further into our sound. To go deeper and higher and wider to explore new spheres of our soundscape but with a stronger gravity holding it all together at the same time I think.

11. With live shows coming up in Denmark, what can fans expect from IOTUNN’s live performances, especially with the new material from Kinship?

They can expect the shows to be bigger and with us playing lots of new songs.

12. For those who are just discovering IOTUNN, what message or feeling do you hope they take away from listening to Kinship?

I hope they are moved in their very own way by the album and feel a connection with the music, words and art.

/Jesper

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