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Dwelling in Obcurity: My Insignificant Music Projects
by Noctir (Jan. 2026)
For several years, I was involved in a handful of music projects, though few would know it. None of them ever became remotely known. But for anyone with morbid curiosity or just stricken by boredom, I’m going to give my thoughts on a few of them here.
I figured I should start by writing about my main project, even if it wasn’t technically the first. The band was formed at the beginning of 2006. The original plan was to resurrect Nocturnal Abyss. I went to set up a Myspace page for the project, intending to upload old tracks and maybe find new musicians, but discovered that someone else was now using the name. It turned out to be some meaningless bedroom project that never released anything but that point, I decided to start fresh and chose a new name.
To be honest, I don’t even remember exactly why I chose it. I vaguely recall reading some Norse mythology books at the time, maybe some Tolkien as well, so it could have come from either of those influences. Whatever the case, I went with it. Looking back, I wish I’d picked something else. It doesn’t roll off the tongue, and anytime someone would ask, I’d have to repeat it, then spell it out. Who knows if they ever found the music online because of how complicated the name was. Honestly, I came to regret it within a few years but felt stuck.
The logo was done by Christophe Szpajdel. While he’s done good work for many bands, I think this one missed the mark. His style is a bit overused, and back then he’d make logos for free as long as you sent him copies of any releases or merch. My original logo was crude and unusable, so I was just grateful to have anything well-drawn, even if it didn’t exactly capture the atmosphere I had in mind. Given the absurd band name, he did the best he could.
It took a while to find members, with a handful of false starts. By early 2007, I came into contact with a guitarist who seemed eager to work on something. That turned out to be the most stable partnership the band ever saw. We worked on material for a few months and recorded the Morbid Night of Melancholy demo that summer. From the moment the project was conceptualized, the goal was to create old school black metal in the vein of Bathory, Tormentor, early Darkthrone, etc. In the end, only one of the songs really captured that feeling. The others were more typical ’90s black metal. My bandmate would send me rough tracks, and I’d give feedback, but I had a difficult time saying no, even if something didn’t quite fit. I just wanted to create and was already used to people bailing on me, so I didn’t want to push back too much on anything. The recording itself sounded rough, but I liked the guitar tone. I remember screaming my vocals in a garage behind his house and then seeing neighbors outside afterward, probably wondering what the hell was going on. The end result was decent enough and we were rather satisfied with it.
In early 2008, we started working on new material again. Winter seemed to be the most inspiring season for this. I tried steering things back toward the old Bathory vibe, especially The Return…, and that’s where “Winds of Transilvania” came from. There was another song as well, with several working titles, aiming for a Celtic Frost sort of feeling. But like many bands that try to imitate that sound, we found it wasn’t so easy to pull off without sounding boring. What it lacked was the physical movement in the playing, the slight shaking of the strings that gives those riffs their tension. Without that, the song felt flat and one-dimensional. Overall, the Fimbulvetr demo wasn’t too terrible, but I only bothered to send it to a handful of people.
The plan was to record an album that year, but that didn’t materialize. We recorded the Winds of Transilvania demo in September or October 2008. It was chaotic and rushed, as my health had collapsed and I was about to become homeless. I used one of the spare studios at the radio station where I hosted The Abyss weekly. I would put on long tracks during the show, run into the other studio, and record vocals, resulting in the whole thing feeling like a blur. We re-recorded all of the previous songs in addition to a couple new ones, one of which was fine enough but the other was rather incomplete and useless. The recording was atrocious and unusable. It was mostly my fault; the vocal levels were all over the place, and the mix was a mess. I think I handed out maybe five copies and trashed the rest. I did upload one song to Myspace, but that was about it. I don’t know how many copies my bandmate might have given out. The whole thing was quite disappointing.
Since that turned out to be such a total failure, I was determined to get back to work as soon as it was possible and to will something into existence. In the autumn of 2009, we began working on what was supposed to be our debut album, Vinterblod. It felt important and gave me a sense of purpose, stupid as that might sound now. I’ve always felt more alive during the creative process. The direction was rather primitive, just cold and minimalist black metal inspired by early Darkthrone. We recorded songs as they were written, which meant the album came together over four months. That’s why the vocals on the first track sound noticeably different, for example, as I hadn’t figured out the right reverb or settings yet, and the songs were recorded in separate sessions.
Around that time, a small label contacted us about doing a split. We contributed two original songs and a cover of Darkthrone’s “The Dance of Eternal Shadows”. Once we sent that off, things slowed down. My bandmate had a lot going on with school, so there was a break. I regret bothering with the cover; they rarely do justice to the originals, but it is what it is. This was also when I started recording solo material for a side project, mostly as a way to come up with potential ideas for my main band. This is how “Under the Cold Moon” was born, which was the last song that I ever wrote and recorded entirely by myself before having to quit playing guitar. Years later, it dawned on me that I subconsciously used the title of a Moonblood track, unintentionally.
We resumed recording sometime in February 2010. I was eager and, for some reason, had set a release date in my mind, even though we were doing it ourselves. I felt a deadline would keep things from dragging on. As far as the songwriting went, it was basically me giving direction and explaining how things were supposed to sound. My bandmate came up with riffs, and I offered suggestions when needed. By that point, I had already stopped playing guitar because of nerve pain and other injuries. It had become too painful, and I could no longer contribute riffs. I even sold my guitar some months later. I could still dictate what I wanted the music to sound like, but I couldn’t play the instruments myself. That made the process frustrating at times, but I was determined to finish what I had started. He contributed a lot of good material, as well as improving on my song, so I didn’t have to make many changes. I was more comfortable telling him what worked and what didn’t compared to our previous efforts. Similarly, he offered some useful feedback for some of the rough vocals I sent.
Recording went fine for the most part. That said, one of the songs that I’d brought back from my side project, “The Return of the Winter Frost”, didn’t make it onto the album. For one reason or another, my guitarist couldn’t figure out how to play it correctly, which was disappointing as I’d intended for it to be the final track. To keep the record from being only 29 minutes, we added another track, “The Dark Awakening”, based on one of my initial riffs. It wasn’t how I envisioned it, but with my self-imposed deadline approaching and knowing my bandmate would soon be busy, we used it anyway. I didn’t like it then and I like it even less now. It just doesn’t work. Between losing the song I really wanted and including one I didn’t, there’s always felt like an asterisk next to this album.
The mix and sound were entirely my responsibility. People have said you can barely hear the drums, and that’s my fault. I’ve never liked drum programming (or even real drums that sound fake), so I buried it under the guitars and vocals to make it more tolerable, without thinking about anyone else. I’ve always believed the guitars and riffs are the most important part, with drums just keeping pace. In this case, I probably went too far. Despite the flaws, creating the album was meaningful. It was the first full-length I had ever been part of after several years of trying. Nothing’s perfect, but we did the best we could. For quite some time, “Frozen Ritual” became my go-to when introducing people to my music.
When my friend David Parland listened to the album, he told me the material itself was good but that the sound quality was terrible. He offered to re-record the music and provide a better mic so that I could achieve a more professional sound for the vocals. He even did one entire song just to show me how it would sound, and made it seem effortless. There was no doubt in my mind that he would have had no difficulty with “The Return of the Winter Frost”, as well. It was tempting, but the idea of recapturing performances I was already satisfied with was discouraging and the drums would have overpowered the riffs, ruining the necro, lo-fi atmosphere I wanted. It also wouldn’t have felt fair to my bandmate, who wrote most of the material, to redo everything without him. In the end, we left it as it was. Despite my hopes, we never followed up on Vinterblod and parted ways a year or two after its release. He was busy with uni and having a real life, meanwhile my health continued to worsen following a severe car accident, constant instability and homelessness.
By the end of 2012, I decided to put an end to my various musical projects. However, after nearly a year, I found myself annoyed with how Nattsvargr ended. Not only did Vinterblod leave room for improvement, but the plans for a second album went unfulfilled. I preferred to end things in a proper manner, on my own terms. I tried finding people to work with in the Stockholm scene but my vision wasn’t trendy enough, so no one seemed interested. A couple of guys came along but then flaked out for one reason or another.
Eventually, I worked with a kid who seemed willing to give it a shot, at least at first. He sent me a song I thought had potential, so we decided to continue. He sent two more, one which didn’t match the same quality and one that was completely different, more influenced by early Burzum which wasn’t the direction for this project. He was apologetic and a nice enough guy, but it didn’t click, and we ended the collaboration. By that winter, I’d relocated to Paukarlahti, Finland. It was a very desolate existence and, whether as a creative outlet or just to busy myself, I decided to record vocals for those other tracks and released the three of them as an E.P., spending a lot of time alone in the forest. I felt inspired and creative, so I put vocals on the songs myself and released them as the I djupaste skogen av hat E.P.
Afterward, the project was basically dead. Once again, I compromised quality for the sake of creating and was thus still unable to finish things in the way that I saw fit. I briefly worked with a Swedish guy sometime in 2014, during which time we came up with a couple of old school black/thrash tracks, but it never went anywhere. Meanwhile, there was a nagging regret about some of the earliest material, and I still wanted re-record the old songs from ‘07/’08 that never made it to an album. As well, I figured that since I couldn’t find anyone with which to create the sort of music that I wanted, maybe it would be easier to find someone willing to work with stuff that was already written.
Eventually, through mutual acquaintances, I was introduced to a Swedish guitarist who had her own drummer. We discussed the project and, finally, someone was interested in helping bring this to life. In the spring and summer of 2016, we recorded the second full-length album, Winds of Transilvania. The album was mostly made up of those early demos, plus two newer tracks that had been demoed a couple of years earlier. As well, the intro is a guitar version of the Subspecies theme and the outro is the result of the guitarist being inspired after I’d shown her the Russian band, Branikald. Other than some aspects of the drumming, I was mostly satisfied with how it turned out (and even that could have come from trying to translate the drum programming of the originals to real drums. Around that time, I connected with an artist in Slovenia. I already had the cover in my head and made a very primitive sketch, which I sent to several artists. She captured the feeling I wanted perfectly. She also did the back cover, and it turned out great. I worked with her on a few more projects afterward.
A year or so later, I decided to finish Nattsvargr once and for all. I had always had a vision for how I wanted it to end and had been working toward that for over five years. I wanted to be satisfied with it, not just settle for an E.P. or re-recordings of old material. Eventually, I came into contact with another Swedish guy who just got it. He understood exactly what I was aiming for, and I was very pleased with everything he sent me. He followed directions very well, and there weren’t many changes necessary because he was clearly on the same page.
The arrangements were mostly already figured out in my head. There was one song where I ended up cutting the first half because the latter part worked on its own. Vocally, I wanted to do something different from before. In the past, my focus had been on conveying a mournful, tortured feeling, or something colder and more clinical, but this time I wanted a much more hateful, forceful approach to the performance. Lyrically, I included some older material I had written in the late ‘90s, which had a more aggressive, evil vibe. Knowing this would be the band’s final album, it was almost like coming full circle to use some of my earliest lyrics.
The recording process itself was brutal. It took place in the middle of winter, and I had a throat infection, but I was determined to push through and finish it on time. I drank endless tea, hot coffee and honey straight from the bottle, even eating ice cream to numb my throat. But despite the challenges, it turned out to be the most satisfying recording I’ve ever been part of. I wanted to go out on a ‘high note’, and I felt that I had achieved what I’d been trying to do for years and finally brought this vision to life. Once the material was finished, I sent it to a bandmate I was working with on my other main project to do the final mixing. For the artwork, I used an image of Radu from Subspecies (who is also referenced in some of the lyrics) and the Slovenian artist assisted me in the editing of the cover and also drew some art for the back cover. Some months after the initial release, a label in Germany wanted to release it and I was able to also design a full booklet for the first time ever, including in it lyrics and some of my photography.
So, when we released Night of the Crimson Thirst in early 2018, I felt like the band was finally done. If I listen to it now, I can probably still pick things apart and complain about a few aspects, but I’m not going to. I did what I set out to do, and other than not having that four-track analog Transilvanian Hunger sound, I really can’t complain about any of it. It felt like the perfect time to stop.
My other main project and oldest band is Nocturnal Abyss, which I started back in 1999. That period was really the only time when the band felt like it actually existed. It was the days of finishing high school and working jobs, spending almost everything on music and horror movies. The guitarist and I would get together and just jam. We would make all kinds of songs for the hell of it and sometimes just hang out and watch horror movies. After work, we would pick up the guitar and mess around with riffs.
At that point, I could only play very primitively. I was never any good, but I could at least play fast and shred solos I would never be able to repeat. We decided I would do the vocals and he would come up with the riffs. I would throw out ideas sometimes, but mostly he was in charge. When we rehearsed, I would play the drums in the simplest way possible while he experimented with different riffs.
It was a short period, but eventually we decided to record some of this material, which became the At One With Evil demo. It was rough-sounding, just ‘80s-inspired black thrash, sloppy for the most part. I also added some stupid little intro and outro tracks with his keyboard, which was the only time keyboards were ever involved. Another friend ended up being the drummer, but he also lacked any real skill.
At some point we were planning to record more, but the guitarist disappeared. He had personal problems, being maybe seven or eight years older than us, and just vanished for months. When he returned, we tried to pick up where we left off, even doing some live gigs. I learned something important, I absolutely hate being on stage, one thousand percent hate it. After a few months he moved away again and everything fizzled. It was just a hobby that came and went.
For a while I had ideas about making music again, but life was brutalizing me. Eventually, in 2003 I found someone to work with and we wrote a couple of songs, a mixture of Darkthrone, Mütiilation, and other raw ‘90s black metal. It was a very gratifying experience, though extremely brief. He showed me a few things on guitar, and I was able to come up with a few ideas. I was supposed to do vocals and write the lyrics, but it did not last long. We had a falling out and lost contact, I was completely on my own.
I decided to record the music myself, regardless of how awful it would sound. I just needed to create. I never knew chords or theory, I only knew how to make the sounds I wanted. That is partly why the project shifted from its original ‘80s black/thrash direction toward the raw, minimalist ‘90s black metal style influenced by Darkthrone and Mütiilation. I recorded the riffs first, then played that cassette over a stereo while using another tape and a boombox with a built-in mic to record my terrible drums. I had to figure out the exact distance from the amp so it would not be too loud and position myself so my vocals would not make everything fade out every time I screamed. The Freezing Darkness was a rough-sounding demo. The end result was horrible but the process itself was cathartic.
I briefly worked with some kids the following year, rehearsing a few times and even recording one song, but it didn’t work out and I left the country soon after. Some time later, a friend of mine converted some of the demo material to digital and burned it onto a CD so that I could post samples online to help with my search for musicians. I uploaded songs to a Myspace page before soon realizing someone else was using the name and so Nocturnal Abyss was seemingly dead.
By the end of 2012, I had given up on all of it: the bands, the side projects, even the radio show. That decision didn’t last long. A few months later, I felt compelled to make one final statement through music, then put an end to myself. It took a matter of months to work on the material. The goal was to create something in the vein of Mütiilation, especially Remains of a Ruined, Dead, Cursed Soul, with some Moonblood influence. It felt like a natural continuation of where I had left off with Nocturnal Abyss, so I decided to resurrect the project almost a decade after it had died. The recording began in February 2013.
Around that time, I was talking with my friend David about doing a split release, pairing a couple of the new Nocturnal Abyss songs with some old Blackmoon material he had recorded back in 1994. I’d been encouraging him for years to do something with those songs, but he was never sure and kept talking about re-recording them. I told him they sounded perfect just as they were. The split felt like a chance for us to finally do something together after years of failed attempts. We always had different visions for what we wanted to do musically, and those differences had gotten in the way before, but this time it felt like it could actually work. Eventually, he agreed, and even talked about releasing the split himself after finishing the re-release of the Bathory tribute compilation he was working on.
He passed away in March. We were nearing completion of the Nocturnal Abyss album, which was when I had planned to end my life. His suicide intervened, and I postponed my own death. One might assume that losing my brother that way would have pushed me in the same direction, but it had the opposite effect. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, I felt a responsibility to keep his memory alive in the only way I knew how. I took it upon myself to move forward with releasing the split. My resources weren’t the same, so it wasn’t how it should have been. Without the master files or the liner notes we had planned, it fell short of what we’d envisioned. Still, it was better than nothing. At least his songs wouldn’t just be forgotten. I released Beyond the Nothingness at the end of March and pushed back the full-length a few weeks.
As for From the Depths of Mörkvod, it didn’t come out the way I intended. The first song we worked on, “Winds of Funera”, was probably the closest to capturing the atmosphere I was aiming for. It became clear early on that my bandmate wasn’t fully on the same page. I explained what I wanted, sent examples, even pointed out specific riffs, but it wasn’t registering, and he just didn’t hear the same thing I did. Because of that, the album drifted from the original idea. One track in particular, “Approaching the Tomb World”, ended up basically being a knock-off of a Moonblood song. I sent him a track hoping he would absorb it and develop melodies in the same vein. What I got was about as close as you could get to the original without it being a cover.
Even so, I was still pleased on some level, though not with everything. Parts didn’t hit the mark, but I pushed through. Between health problems, homelessness and everything else going on, I knew that if I delayed too long, he might walk away and leave me with yet another unfinished project. What emerged wasn’t my vision realized. It was a collaboration shaped by his interpretation and his own musical background, which came from a different place than mine.
I nitpick it because of the gap between what I initially had in mind and what it became, but taken for what it is, it isn’t a bad album. For a few years, I would often share “Death’s Cold Embrace” when people asked about my music. There are some good riffs throughout, but I don’t think the sound has a sharp enough edge to it. From what I remember, it felt kind of flat. Once again, I tried burying the drum programming beneath the guitars, similar to what I did with Vinterblod. Still, it was cathartic, and I poured myself into it. I honestly don’t even know how I managed to finish. We still had a song or two left to record after my friend’s death, so the album is tied very closely to that period of my life. Despite everything, it still holds significance for me. The outro is actually just the intro to “The Nocturnal Silence” slowed down and repeated, meant as a small nod to him.
Some time after the release, I managed to get the album available through a couple of online distros, and it was also stocked at Sound Pollution in Stockholm. While in Oslo for a bit, a friend who worked at Neseblod introduced me to the owner, who agreed to carry copies of the album as well as Nattsvargr’s Vinterblod. For someone who has always considered self-promotion poisonous and never had the stomach for it, it was pretty cool to see some of my releases available from legitimate sources for a while.
There was never supposed to be another Nocturnal Abyss album, because I wasn’t supposed to persist beyond the release of that one. But since I did, we came together the following year and worked on some new material. It just wasn’t shaping up the way I wanted, so I put it on ice and focused on other things.
As time went on, I decided to make an official end to both of my main bands around the same time. I came into contact with another guy who had a much better grasp of what Nocturnal Abyss was supposed to sound like. While recording vocals for Night of the Crimson Thirst, I was also working on this project on the side, with my bandmate sending me songs to get my thoughts. I was figuring out which lyrics would fit which songs and how everything would come together, so I could start recording as soon as I finished with Nattsvargr.
There was almost no break between finishing the vocals for one album and starting the next, in the early months of 2018. My throat was still nearly destroyed from a throat infection, and recording an entire album on top of that only made it worse. I had to do it all over again, which was brutal. In some ways, it worked to our advantage. I can’t say much of this album really stands out. Maybe the first song, which I still tend to share, but overall it’s hard to remember. At the time, I was exhausted, facing impending homelessness, and about to move countries again, trying to finish it while I still had a place to record. With everything going on, I’m not sure how I feel about it now. It served its purpose and was exactly what I wanted at the time, but looking back, little really stands out. I haven’t listened to it in years. I don’t typically listen to my own music. Occasionally, I’ll play a few albums for nostalgia, but I usually end up annoyed and picking things apart. There’s also plenty of better music to listen to.
I did make the decision to include the Necrophobic cover of my friend’s song, “Black Moon Rising”. It doesn’t really fit with the rest of the material, but it was something I wanted to do. I don’t know how I feel about cover songs in general; I think they should usually be avoided, myself included. I mostly regret every cover I’ve done. You’re never going to top the original, and the original didn’t need to be redone. Either way, I chose to do it. In this case it was about the connection, even though I’m fairly sure he would have hated it. If I’d thought longer, maybe I wouldn’t have done it, but it felt right in the moment.
The artwork was done by the same girl who helped out with a couple of albums from my other band. Like with the musicians I worked with, I gave some direction and a general idea of what I wanted, and what she came up with suited the atmosphere of the music. She also designed the new logo for the band. I was never satisfied with the original one; it was another case of just wanting anything that wasn’t in an Old English font. The new logo wasn’t perfect, but it was much better and had those classic horror elements I wanted.
With Among the Cold Graves, I put the project to rest for good, just as I had planned from the start. I was satisfied and grateful to finish the two albums so close together. On both, I finally got as close as I was ever going to get to what I’d been trying to do all those years, and it felt like the right time to walk away.
Bloodfrost was just a small side project that was never meant to become anything serious. I don’t even clearly remember the original idea. It took a long time before I finally recorded anything, and when I did, at the end of 2009, it was mostly doing it for the hell of it. I borrowed David’s Line 6 Pod and started putting a few ideas together.
At the time, my main band was on a break from the album, so I tried to write as much material as I could, in case any of it ended up being useful. That effort became the demo Awaiting the Black Winter Gods, recorded in December 2009. Honestly, it was pretty rough and only one song survived the process: “Under the Cold Moon”, which eventually appeared on Nattsvargr’s Vinterblod. After that, I didn’t have much reason to continue with Bloodfrost and went back to focusing on my main band.
When that wrapped up, I still had the urge to create. Around the same time, it became clear I couldn’t really play guitar anymore because of a nerve injury. It just hurt too much, and I was never that great at it anyway, so it was no loss to the musical world. I got in touch with someone who shared similar tastes and wanted to make music. Somehow we decided to work together despite living on different continents while sending recordings back and forth. Bloodfrost remained a creative outlet, and I genuinely enjoyed it.
We recorded several demos in a short period. Every time I was ready to release one, my bandmate would send more material, so I kept putting things off. A few weeks after Vinterblod came out, I finally pulled some tracks together and released The Return of the Winter Frost demo. I loved the guitar tone on that one. Even though the recordings were digital and the files were sent to me, the guitar wasn’t direct input. It was played through a real amp across the room, giving it a raw, blown-out sound. Some people thought it was too distorted, but I still think it might be the best guitar tone I’ve ever worked with. The songs had a strong old-school vibe, like Bathory, Tormentor, Sabbat, and Törr, but the standout was the title track. I had explained exactly what I wanted, and my guitarist delivered. It remains one of my favorite songs I’ve worked on. I even asked if I could use it as a closing track for my main band, but it couldn’t be made to work. In hindsight, maybe that was for the best, since polishing it would have taken away its rawness.
I thought we were done, but then she came back with more material and said she wanted to make a full-length album. I never planned for Bloodfrost to go that far, but I enjoyed working with her and agreed. We reworked some older songs, and in several cases she completely improved them. The opener, in particular, was transformed when she added another melody on top of the main riff, making it far better than it had begun. I was always amazed when a skilled musician could take my primitive trash and make it sound like real music.
The biggest problem was the programmed drums. They sounded fake and stuck out sharply against the raw guitars. Because of that, I never connected with Possessed by Eternal Shadows as much as I might have, even though I liked the songs themselves. I was honestly surprised when a label later wanted to re-release it on cassette. Even so, the creative process mattered more than anything. Bloodfrost ended up being the last thing I worked on for two or three years. Neither of us were in great health, so we never followed it up. Later, I took the two best songs and re-released them as The Return of the Winter Frost, an E.P. that best representated the project. It was at this point that a Dutch artist I knew drew a proper logo, around the same time that she created logo for this very site.
At any rate, this isn’t everything I’ve worked on, just the stuff that mattered enough to write about. That brings an end to the pointless years of this music hobby. I’ve been asked to contribute vocals for other projects, but I’m done settling just to create. I don’t have the energy to try to explain things to people who just don’t get it. I might make music again if circumstances were perfect, but that’s unlikely. As I’ve said elsewhere, at this point, it’s all cosplay. The classics still exist. Black metal doesn’t need copycat projects, even mine. Those old records didn’t disappear, and people are better off listening to them.
I figured I should start by writing about my main project, even if it wasn’t technically the first. The band was formed at the beginning of 2006. The original plan was to resurrect Nocturnal Abyss. I went to set up a Myspace page for the project, intending to upload old tracks and maybe find new musicians, but discovered that someone else was now using the name. It turned out to be some meaningless bedroom project that never released anything but that point, I decided to start fresh and chose a new name.
To be honest, I don’t even remember exactly why I chose it. I vaguely recall reading some Norse mythology books at the time, maybe some Tolkien as well, so it could have come from either of those influences. Whatever the case, I went with it. Looking back, I wish I’d picked something else. It doesn’t roll off the tongue, and anytime someone would ask, I’d have to repeat it, then spell it out. Who knows if they ever found the music online because of how complicated the name was. Honestly, I came to regret it within a few years but felt stuck.
The logo was done by Christophe Szpajdel. While he’s done good work for many bands, I think this one missed the mark. His style is a bit overused, and back then he’d make logos for free as long as you sent him copies of any releases or merch. My original logo was crude and unusable, so I was just grateful to have anything well-drawn, even if it didn’t exactly capture the atmosphere I had in mind. Given the absurd band name, he did the best he could.
It took a while to find members, with a handful of false starts. By early 2007, I came into contact with a guitarist who seemed eager to work on something. That turned out to be the most stable partnership the band ever saw. We worked on material for a few months and recorded the Morbid Night of Melancholy demo that summer. From the moment the project was conceptualized, the goal was to create old school black metal in the vein of Bathory, Tormentor, early Darkthrone, etc. In the end, only one of the songs really captured that feeling. The others were more typical ’90s black metal. My bandmate would send me rough tracks, and I’d give feedback, but I had a difficult time saying no, even if something didn’t quite fit. I just wanted to create and was already used to people bailing on me, so I didn’t want to push back too much on anything. The recording itself sounded rough, but I liked the guitar tone. I remember screaming my vocals in a garage behind his house and then seeing neighbors outside afterward, probably wondering what the hell was going on. The end result was decent enough and we were rather satisfied with it.
In early 2008, we started working on new material again. Winter seemed to be the most inspiring season for this. I tried steering things back toward the old Bathory vibe, especially The Return…, and that’s where “Winds of Transilvania” came from. There was another song as well, with several working titles, aiming for a Celtic Frost sort of feeling. But like many bands that try to imitate that sound, we found it wasn’t so easy to pull off without sounding boring. What it lacked was the physical movement in the playing, the slight shaking of the strings that gives those riffs their tension. Without that, the song felt flat and one-dimensional. Overall, the Fimbulvetr demo wasn’t too terrible, but I only bothered to send it to a handful of people.
The plan was to record an album that year, but that didn’t materialize. We recorded the Winds of Transilvania demo in September or October 2008. It was chaotic and rushed, as my health had collapsed and I was about to become homeless. I used one of the spare studios at the radio station where I hosted The Abyss weekly. I would put on long tracks during the show, run into the other studio, and record vocals, resulting in the whole thing feeling like a blur. We re-recorded all of the previous songs in addition to a couple new ones, one of which was fine enough but the other was rather incomplete and useless. The recording was atrocious and unusable. It was mostly my fault; the vocal levels were all over the place, and the mix was a mess. I think I handed out maybe five copies and trashed the rest. I did upload one song to Myspace, but that was about it. I don’t know how many copies my bandmate might have given out. The whole thing was quite disappointing.
Since that turned out to be such a total failure, I was determined to get back to work as soon as it was possible and to will something into existence. In the autumn of 2009, we began working on what was supposed to be our debut album, Vinterblod. It felt important and gave me a sense of purpose, stupid as that might sound now. I’ve always felt more alive during the creative process. The direction was rather primitive, just cold and minimalist black metal inspired by early Darkthrone. We recorded songs as they were written, which meant the album came together over four months. That’s why the vocals on the first track sound noticeably different, for example, as I hadn’t figured out the right reverb or settings yet, and the songs were recorded in separate sessions.
Around that time, a small label contacted us about doing a split. We contributed two original songs and a cover of Darkthrone’s “The Dance of Eternal Shadows”. Once we sent that off, things slowed down. My bandmate had a lot going on with school, so there was a break. I regret bothering with the cover; they rarely do justice to the originals, but it is what it is. This was also when I started recording solo material for a side project, mostly as a way to come up with potential ideas for my main band. This is how “Under the Cold Moon” was born, which was the last song that I ever wrote and recorded entirely by myself before having to quit playing guitar. Years later, it dawned on me that I subconsciously used the title of a Moonblood track, unintentionally.
We resumed recording sometime in February 2010. I was eager and, for some reason, had set a release date in my mind, even though we were doing it ourselves. I felt a deadline would keep things from dragging on. As far as the songwriting went, it was basically me giving direction and explaining how things were supposed to sound. My bandmate came up with riffs, and I offered suggestions when needed. By that point, I had already stopped playing guitar because of nerve pain and other injuries. It had become too painful, and I could no longer contribute riffs. I even sold my guitar some months later. I could still dictate what I wanted the music to sound like, but I couldn’t play the instruments myself. That made the process frustrating at times, but I was determined to finish what I had started. He contributed a lot of good material, as well as improving on my song, so I didn’t have to make many changes. I was more comfortable telling him what worked and what didn’t compared to our previous efforts. Similarly, he offered some useful feedback for some of the rough vocals I sent.
Recording went fine for the most part. That said, one of the songs that I’d brought back from my side project, “The Return of the Winter Frost”, didn’t make it onto the album. For one reason or another, my guitarist couldn’t figure out how to play it correctly, which was disappointing as I’d intended for it to be the final track. To keep the record from being only 29 minutes, we added another track, “The Dark Awakening”, based on one of my initial riffs. It wasn’t how I envisioned it, but with my self-imposed deadline approaching and knowing my bandmate would soon be busy, we used it anyway. I didn’t like it then and I like it even less now. It just doesn’t work. Between losing the song I really wanted and including one I didn’t, there’s always felt like an asterisk next to this album.
The mix and sound were entirely my responsibility. People have said you can barely hear the drums, and that’s my fault. I’ve never liked drum programming (or even real drums that sound fake), so I buried it under the guitars and vocals to make it more tolerable, without thinking about anyone else. I’ve always believed the guitars and riffs are the most important part, with drums just keeping pace. In this case, I probably went too far. Despite the flaws, creating the album was meaningful. It was the first full-length I had ever been part of after several years of trying. Nothing’s perfect, but we did the best we could. For quite some time, “Frozen Ritual” became my go-to when introducing people to my music.
When my friend David Parland listened to the album, he told me the material itself was good but that the sound quality was terrible. He offered to re-record the music and provide a better mic so that I could achieve a more professional sound for the vocals. He even did one entire song just to show me how it would sound, and made it seem effortless. There was no doubt in my mind that he would have had no difficulty with “The Return of the Winter Frost”, as well. It was tempting, but the idea of recapturing performances I was already satisfied with was discouraging and the drums would have overpowered the riffs, ruining the necro, lo-fi atmosphere I wanted. It also wouldn’t have felt fair to my bandmate, who wrote most of the material, to redo everything without him. In the end, we left it as it was. Despite my hopes, we never followed up on Vinterblod and parted ways a year or two after its release. He was busy with uni and having a real life, meanwhile my health continued to worsen following a severe car accident, constant instability and homelessness.
By the end of 2012, I decided to put an end to my various musical projects. However, after nearly a year, I found myself annoyed with how Nattsvargr ended. Not only did Vinterblod leave room for improvement, but the plans for a second album went unfulfilled. I preferred to end things in a proper manner, on my own terms. I tried finding people to work with in the Stockholm scene but my vision wasn’t trendy enough, so no one seemed interested. A couple of guys came along but then flaked out for one reason or another.
Eventually, I worked with a kid who seemed willing to give it a shot, at least at first. He sent me a song I thought had potential, so we decided to continue. He sent two more, one which didn’t match the same quality and one that was completely different, more influenced by early Burzum which wasn’t the direction for this project. He was apologetic and a nice enough guy, but it didn’t click, and we ended the collaboration. By that winter, I’d relocated to Paukarlahti, Finland. It was a very desolate existence and, whether as a creative outlet or just to busy myself, I decided to record vocals for those other tracks and released the three of them as an E.P., spending a lot of time alone in the forest. I felt inspired and creative, so I put vocals on the songs myself and released them as the I djupaste skogen av hat E.P.
Afterward, the project was basically dead. Once again, I compromised quality for the sake of creating and was thus still unable to finish things in the way that I saw fit. I briefly worked with a Swedish guy sometime in 2014, during which time we came up with a couple of old school black/thrash tracks, but it never went anywhere. Meanwhile, there was a nagging regret about some of the earliest material, and I still wanted re-record the old songs from ‘07/’08 that never made it to an album. As well, I figured that since I couldn’t find anyone with which to create the sort of music that I wanted, maybe it would be easier to find someone willing to work with stuff that was already written.
Eventually, through mutual acquaintances, I was introduced to a Swedish guitarist who had her own drummer. We discussed the project and, finally, someone was interested in helping bring this to life. In the spring and summer of 2016, we recorded the second full-length album, Winds of Transilvania. The album was mostly made up of those early demos, plus two newer tracks that had been demoed a couple of years earlier. As well, the intro is a guitar version of the Subspecies theme and the outro is the result of the guitarist being inspired after I’d shown her the Russian band, Branikald. Other than some aspects of the drumming, I was mostly satisfied with how it turned out (and even that could have come from trying to translate the drum programming of the originals to real drums. Around that time, I connected with an artist in Slovenia. I already had the cover in my head and made a very primitive sketch, which I sent to several artists. She captured the feeling I wanted perfectly. She also did the back cover, and it turned out great. I worked with her on a few more projects afterward.
A year or so later, I decided to finish Nattsvargr once and for all. I had always had a vision for how I wanted it to end and had been working toward that for over five years. I wanted to be satisfied with it, not just settle for an E.P. or re-recordings of old material. Eventually, I came into contact with another Swedish guy who just got it. He understood exactly what I was aiming for, and I was very pleased with everything he sent me. He followed directions very well, and there weren’t many changes necessary because he was clearly on the same page.
The arrangements were mostly already figured out in my head. There was one song where I ended up cutting the first half because the latter part worked on its own. Vocally, I wanted to do something different from before. In the past, my focus had been on conveying a mournful, tortured feeling, or something colder and more clinical, but this time I wanted a much more hateful, forceful approach to the performance. Lyrically, I included some older material I had written in the late ‘90s, which had a more aggressive, evil vibe. Knowing this would be the band’s final album, it was almost like coming full circle to use some of my earliest lyrics.
The recording process itself was brutal. It took place in the middle of winter, and I had a throat infection, but I was determined to push through and finish it on time. I drank endless tea, hot coffee and honey straight from the bottle, even eating ice cream to numb my throat. But despite the challenges, it turned out to be the most satisfying recording I’ve ever been part of. I wanted to go out on a ‘high note’, and I felt that I had achieved what I’d been trying to do for years and finally brought this vision to life. Once the material was finished, I sent it to a bandmate I was working with on my other main project to do the final mixing. For the artwork, I used an image of Radu from Subspecies (who is also referenced in some of the lyrics) and the Slovenian artist assisted me in the editing of the cover and also drew some art for the back cover. Some months after the initial release, a label in Germany wanted to release it and I was able to also design a full booklet for the first time ever, including in it lyrics and some of my photography.
So, when we released Night of the Crimson Thirst in early 2018, I felt like the band was finally done. If I listen to it now, I can probably still pick things apart and complain about a few aspects, but I’m not going to. I did what I set out to do, and other than not having that four-track analog Transilvanian Hunger sound, I really can’t complain about any of it. It felt like the perfect time to stop.
My other main project and oldest band is Nocturnal Abyss, which I started back in 1999. That period was really the only time when the band felt like it actually existed. It was the days of finishing high school and working jobs, spending almost everything on music and horror movies. The guitarist and I would get together and just jam. We would make all kinds of songs for the hell of it and sometimes just hang out and watch horror movies. After work, we would pick up the guitar and mess around with riffs.
At that point, I could only play very primitively. I was never any good, but I could at least play fast and shred solos I would never be able to repeat. We decided I would do the vocals and he would come up with the riffs. I would throw out ideas sometimes, but mostly he was in charge. When we rehearsed, I would play the drums in the simplest way possible while he experimented with different riffs.
It was a short period, but eventually we decided to record some of this material, which became the At One With Evil demo. It was rough-sounding, just ‘80s-inspired black thrash, sloppy for the most part. I also added some stupid little intro and outro tracks with his keyboard, which was the only time keyboards were ever involved. Another friend ended up being the drummer, but he also lacked any real skill.
At some point we were planning to record more, but the guitarist disappeared. He had personal problems, being maybe seven or eight years older than us, and just vanished for months. When he returned, we tried to pick up where we left off, even doing some live gigs. I learned something important, I absolutely hate being on stage, one thousand percent hate it. After a few months he moved away again and everything fizzled. It was just a hobby that came and went.
For a while I had ideas about making music again, but life was brutalizing me. Eventually, in 2003 I found someone to work with and we wrote a couple of songs, a mixture of Darkthrone, Mütiilation, and other raw ‘90s black metal. It was a very gratifying experience, though extremely brief. He showed me a few things on guitar, and I was able to come up with a few ideas. I was supposed to do vocals and write the lyrics, but it did not last long. We had a falling out and lost contact, I was completely on my own.
I decided to record the music myself, regardless of how awful it would sound. I just needed to create. I never knew chords or theory, I only knew how to make the sounds I wanted. That is partly why the project shifted from its original ‘80s black/thrash direction toward the raw, minimalist ‘90s black metal style influenced by Darkthrone and Mütiilation. I recorded the riffs first, then played that cassette over a stereo while using another tape and a boombox with a built-in mic to record my terrible drums. I had to figure out the exact distance from the amp so it would not be too loud and position myself so my vocals would not make everything fade out every time I screamed. The Freezing Darkness was a rough-sounding demo. The end result was horrible but the process itself was cathartic.
I briefly worked with some kids the following year, rehearsing a few times and even recording one song, but it didn’t work out and I left the country soon after. Some time later, a friend of mine converted some of the demo material to digital and burned it onto a CD so that I could post samples online to help with my search for musicians. I uploaded songs to a Myspace page before soon realizing someone else was using the name and so Nocturnal Abyss was seemingly dead.
By the end of 2012, I had given up on all of it: the bands, the side projects, even the radio show. That decision didn’t last long. A few months later, I felt compelled to make one final statement through music, then put an end to myself. It took a matter of months to work on the material. The goal was to create something in the vein of Mütiilation, especially Remains of a Ruined, Dead, Cursed Soul, with some Moonblood influence. It felt like a natural continuation of where I had left off with Nocturnal Abyss, so I decided to resurrect the project almost a decade after it had died. The recording began in February 2013.
Around that time, I was talking with my friend David about doing a split release, pairing a couple of the new Nocturnal Abyss songs with some old Blackmoon material he had recorded back in 1994. I’d been encouraging him for years to do something with those songs, but he was never sure and kept talking about re-recording them. I told him they sounded perfect just as they were. The split felt like a chance for us to finally do something together after years of failed attempts. We always had different visions for what we wanted to do musically, and those differences had gotten in the way before, but this time it felt like it could actually work. Eventually, he agreed, and even talked about releasing the split himself after finishing the re-release of the Bathory tribute compilation he was working on.
He passed away in March. We were nearing completion of the Nocturnal Abyss album, which was when I had planned to end my life. His suicide intervened, and I postponed my own death. One might assume that losing my brother that way would have pushed me in the same direction, but it had the opposite effect. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, I felt a responsibility to keep his memory alive in the only way I knew how. I took it upon myself to move forward with releasing the split. My resources weren’t the same, so it wasn’t how it should have been. Without the master files or the liner notes we had planned, it fell short of what we’d envisioned. Still, it was better than nothing. At least his songs wouldn’t just be forgotten. I released Beyond the Nothingness at the end of March and pushed back the full-length a few weeks.
As for From the Depths of Mörkvod, it didn’t come out the way I intended. The first song we worked on, “Winds of Funera”, was probably the closest to capturing the atmosphere I was aiming for. It became clear early on that my bandmate wasn’t fully on the same page. I explained what I wanted, sent examples, even pointed out specific riffs, but it wasn’t registering, and he just didn’t hear the same thing I did. Because of that, the album drifted from the original idea. One track in particular, “Approaching the Tomb World”, ended up basically being a knock-off of a Moonblood song. I sent him a track hoping he would absorb it and develop melodies in the same vein. What I got was about as close as you could get to the original without it being a cover.
Even so, I was still pleased on some level, though not with everything. Parts didn’t hit the mark, but I pushed through. Between health problems, homelessness and everything else going on, I knew that if I delayed too long, he might walk away and leave me with yet another unfinished project. What emerged wasn’t my vision realized. It was a collaboration shaped by his interpretation and his own musical background, which came from a different place than mine.
I nitpick it because of the gap between what I initially had in mind and what it became, but taken for what it is, it isn’t a bad album. For a few years, I would often share “Death’s Cold Embrace” when people asked about my music. There are some good riffs throughout, but I don’t think the sound has a sharp enough edge to it. From what I remember, it felt kind of flat. Once again, I tried burying the drum programming beneath the guitars, similar to what I did with Vinterblod. Still, it was cathartic, and I poured myself into it. I honestly don’t even know how I managed to finish. We still had a song or two left to record after my friend’s death, so the album is tied very closely to that period of my life. Despite everything, it still holds significance for me. The outro is actually just the intro to “The Nocturnal Silence” slowed down and repeated, meant as a small nod to him.
Some time after the release, I managed to get the album available through a couple of online distros, and it was also stocked at Sound Pollution in Stockholm. While in Oslo for a bit, a friend who worked at Neseblod introduced me to the owner, who agreed to carry copies of the album as well as Nattsvargr’s Vinterblod. For someone who has always considered self-promotion poisonous and never had the stomach for it, it was pretty cool to see some of my releases available from legitimate sources for a while.
There was never supposed to be another Nocturnal Abyss album, because I wasn’t supposed to persist beyond the release of that one. But since I did, we came together the following year and worked on some new material. It just wasn’t shaping up the way I wanted, so I put it on ice and focused on other things.
As time went on, I decided to make an official end to both of my main bands around the same time. I came into contact with another guy who had a much better grasp of what Nocturnal Abyss was supposed to sound like. While recording vocals for Night of the Crimson Thirst, I was also working on this project on the side, with my bandmate sending me songs to get my thoughts. I was figuring out which lyrics would fit which songs and how everything would come together, so I could start recording as soon as I finished with Nattsvargr.
There was almost no break between finishing the vocals for one album and starting the next, in the early months of 2018. My throat was still nearly destroyed from a throat infection, and recording an entire album on top of that only made it worse. I had to do it all over again, which was brutal. In some ways, it worked to our advantage. I can’t say much of this album really stands out. Maybe the first song, which I still tend to share, but overall it’s hard to remember. At the time, I was exhausted, facing impending homelessness, and about to move countries again, trying to finish it while I still had a place to record. With everything going on, I’m not sure how I feel about it now. It served its purpose and was exactly what I wanted at the time, but looking back, little really stands out. I haven’t listened to it in years. I don’t typically listen to my own music. Occasionally, I’ll play a few albums for nostalgia, but I usually end up annoyed and picking things apart. There’s also plenty of better music to listen to.
I did make the decision to include the Necrophobic cover of my friend’s song, “Black Moon Rising”. It doesn’t really fit with the rest of the material, but it was something I wanted to do. I don’t know how I feel about cover songs in general; I think they should usually be avoided, myself included. I mostly regret every cover I’ve done. You’re never going to top the original, and the original didn’t need to be redone. Either way, I chose to do it. In this case it was about the connection, even though I’m fairly sure he would have hated it. If I’d thought longer, maybe I wouldn’t have done it, but it felt right in the moment.
The artwork was done by the same girl who helped out with a couple of albums from my other band. Like with the musicians I worked with, I gave some direction and a general idea of what I wanted, and what she came up with suited the atmosphere of the music. She also designed the new logo for the band. I was never satisfied with the original one; it was another case of just wanting anything that wasn’t in an Old English font. The new logo wasn’t perfect, but it was much better and had those classic horror elements I wanted.
With Among the Cold Graves, I put the project to rest for good, just as I had planned from the start. I was satisfied and grateful to finish the two albums so close together. On both, I finally got as close as I was ever going to get to what I’d been trying to do all those years, and it felt like the right time to walk away.
Bloodfrost was just a small side project that was never meant to become anything serious. I don’t even clearly remember the original idea. It took a long time before I finally recorded anything, and when I did, at the end of 2009, it was mostly doing it for the hell of it. I borrowed David’s Line 6 Pod and started putting a few ideas together.
At the time, my main band was on a break from the album, so I tried to write as much material as I could, in case any of it ended up being useful. That effort became the demo Awaiting the Black Winter Gods, recorded in December 2009. Honestly, it was pretty rough and only one song survived the process: “Under the Cold Moon”, which eventually appeared on Nattsvargr’s Vinterblod. After that, I didn’t have much reason to continue with Bloodfrost and went back to focusing on my main band.
When that wrapped up, I still had the urge to create. Around the same time, it became clear I couldn’t really play guitar anymore because of a nerve injury. It just hurt too much, and I was never that great at it anyway, so it was no loss to the musical world. I got in touch with someone who shared similar tastes and wanted to make music. Somehow we decided to work together despite living on different continents while sending recordings back and forth. Bloodfrost remained a creative outlet, and I genuinely enjoyed it.
We recorded several demos in a short period. Every time I was ready to release one, my bandmate would send more material, so I kept putting things off. A few weeks after Vinterblod came out, I finally pulled some tracks together and released The Return of the Winter Frost demo. I loved the guitar tone on that one. Even though the recordings were digital and the files were sent to me, the guitar wasn’t direct input. It was played through a real amp across the room, giving it a raw, blown-out sound. Some people thought it was too distorted, but I still think it might be the best guitar tone I’ve ever worked with. The songs had a strong old-school vibe, like Bathory, Tormentor, Sabbat, and Törr, but the standout was the title track. I had explained exactly what I wanted, and my guitarist delivered. It remains one of my favorite songs I’ve worked on. I even asked if I could use it as a closing track for my main band, but it couldn’t be made to work. In hindsight, maybe that was for the best, since polishing it would have taken away its rawness.
I thought we were done, but then she came back with more material and said she wanted to make a full-length album. I never planned for Bloodfrost to go that far, but I enjoyed working with her and agreed. We reworked some older songs, and in several cases she completely improved them. The opener, in particular, was transformed when she added another melody on top of the main riff, making it far better than it had begun. I was always amazed when a skilled musician could take my primitive trash and make it sound like real music.
The biggest problem was the programmed drums. They sounded fake and stuck out sharply against the raw guitars. Because of that, I never connected with Possessed by Eternal Shadows as much as I might have, even though I liked the songs themselves. I was honestly surprised when a label later wanted to re-release it on cassette. Even so, the creative process mattered more than anything. Bloodfrost ended up being the last thing I worked on for two or three years. Neither of us were in great health, so we never followed it up. Later, I took the two best songs and re-released them as The Return of the Winter Frost, an E.P. that best representated the project. It was at this point that a Dutch artist I knew drew a proper logo, around the same time that she created logo for this very site.
At any rate, this isn’t everything I’ve worked on, just the stuff that mattered enough to write about. That brings an end to the pointless years of this music hobby. I’ve been asked to contribute vocals for other projects, but I’m done settling just to create. I don’t have the energy to try to explain things to people who just don’t get it. I might make music again if circumstances were perfect, but that’s unlikely. As I’ve said elsewhere, at this point, it’s all cosplay. The classics still exist. Black metal doesn’t need copycat projects, even mine. Those old records didn’t disappear, and people are better off listening to them.
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