Interview with Simon Bergseth and Martin Utby from AVKRVST

Interview with Simon Bergseth and Martin Utby from AVKRVST

by lookmagpt Junho 18, 2025 958 Views

Hailing from Norway, AVKRVST are a progressive rock revelation whose atmospheric soundscapes and emotional depth have been capturing the attention of audiences across Europe. Founded by longtime friends Simon Bergseth and Martin Utby, the project blends melancholic melodies, intricate arrangements and a cinematic sense of storytelling that resonates far beyond genre boundaries.

With their two albuns are already turning heads and live performances gaining momentum, we sat down with Simon and Martin to talk about their creative process, musical influences, and the journey that led them to shape AVKRVST’s unique sonic identity.

The band is one of the names to be present at the 2025 edition of Comendatio Music Fest.

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Vindos da Noruega, os AVKRVST são uma revelação no universo do rock progressivo, conquistando ouvintes por toda a Europa com paisagens sonoras atmosféricas e uma profundidade emocional marcante. Fundado por dois amigos de longa data, Simon Bergseth e Martin Utby, o projecto destaca-se pela fusão de melodias melancólicas, arranjos intrincados e uma abordagem quase cinematográfica à composição musical.

Com dois álbuns de estreia que já despertaram a atenção da crítica e atuações ao vivo cada vez mais impactantes, conversámos com Simon e Martin sobre o processo criativo da banda, as suas influências e o percurso que os levou a construir a identidade sonora única dos AVKRVST.

A banda é um dos nomes a marcar presença na edição 2025 do Comendatio Music Fest.

Mais conversas para ver aqui.

Through Void apresentam novo álbum “Forsaken” em Vila Nova de Famalicão

Na próxima sexta-feira, 27 de março, os fãs de Metal têm encontro marcado na Casa do Artista Amador, em Vila Nova de Famalicão, para uma noite dedicada ao Death e Doom Metal. A banda Through Void sobe ao palco para apresentar o seu mais recente álbum, “Forsaken”, numa celebração que promete intensidade e riffs pesados do início ao fim. A festa não fica por aqui: o cartaz inclui ainda Destroyers of All (Death/Thrash Metal), Azzaya (Death/Black Metal) e Nonservant (Black Metal), formando um alinhamento de luxo que promete satisfazer os apreciadores de Metal extremo. O evento é uma oportunidade imperdível para ouvir Through Void ao vivo, conhecer o novo material de “Forsaken” e partilhar a energia com outras bandas que representam a força da cena nacional. Mais informações e bilhetes estão disponíveis na página do evento no Facebook: Evento no Facebook
“Visual storytelling is very important for Necro”, Necronomicon Ex Mortis

With their latest EP, Zombie Blood Nightmare, Necronomicon Ex Mortis fuses the ferocity of 90s death metal, the shredding flair of 80s guitar heroes, and the campy horror of classic B-movies into a chaotic, thrilling experience. From gory homages to Evil Dead and Dawn of the Dead to technically demanding riffs and multiple guest solos, the EP balances brutality with tongue-in-cheek humor and cinematic storytelling. By Sandra Pinto In this interview, the band discusses the creative process behind the six-track release, the influence of horror cinema on songwriting, collaborations with guitar legends, and how meticulous production and vivid visuals bring their horror-soaked vision to life. Zombie Blood Nightmare blends 90s death metal, 80s shred, and B-movie horror. How did you decide on this mix for the EP? This mix defines the whole band! It’s a combination of all my favorite things at once. This particular EP leans a bit more on the 90s riffs than the 80s influences; not for any specific reason, the formula is just being shaken up a bit. The EP is steeped in classic horror films like The Evil Dead and Demons. How do these cinematic influences shape your songwriting? Well, they certainly inspire an atmosphere. While watching horror movies I’m usually practicing guitar or writing a song. At this point, horror and metal seem so inseparable that it feels weird NOT to picture them together. How did you approach the concept of zombies, gore, and horror in a way that still serves the music and not just the theme? I’m not sure how successful I am at that, but in general sense I try to think about writing lyrics like telling a campfire story; leading with the gore and intensity is a bad idea. You need build up, suspense, intrigue, etc. It’s the same with song writing. The listener needs to be taken on a journey. Opening with your most savage riff or intense moment gives away the magic too early. Why did you choose six tracks for this EP, and how did you structure them to maximize impact and narrative flow? To put it bluntly, a few of these songs were written YEARS ago and I just wanted them to come out. The other songs (which comprise the second half of the EP) were written just to experiment. “Lumbering, Blood Sucking Freaks” was to experiment with subtle tempo fluxes. “Hungry For Brains” was written to see if I could make a satisfying thrash tune entirely from the symmetrical diminished scale. “Demons” was written to see if I could take my love of early brutal death metal and slap it together with obnoxious math-y ideas in music. For example, that opening riff keeps dropping an 8 th note every time it comes around. Left To Die features a guest solo from Jeff Young of MEGADETH. What was it like working with him, and how did his solo shape the track? Jeff was very easy to work with. We played him the track and just let him go for it. He definitely brought those classic 80s vibes to the song. Those 80s guitar heroes just had some extra mojo in their fingers. No More Room In Hell is a riff-driven homage to Dawn of the Dead. How do you balance technical aggression with storytelling in your songs? Well, lyrics are always written last. Once the music for a song is complete, I start writing lyrics. When retelling the basic plot of a movie, I pick out the key scenes that advance the plot (or at least caught my eye for one reason or another). I then take those scenes and arrange them (in order, hopefully) to the riffs; usually getting lucky when the climax of the story meets the climax of the song. Chopped Up And Burned and Hungry For Brains feature multiple guest solos. How do collaborations with other guitarists influence your sound? Well Matt Mills is an AMAZING guitar teacher that helped me reshaped my technique in my mid 20s. I genuinely feel like I owe him the world for helping me change my technique, and in many ways, the way I look at music and guitar as a whole. James Norton, the guest in Hungry For Brains, is an old college buddy. We lived together and had the best time watching movies and nerding out about guitar every day. Démoni is your most technically demanding track, with shifts in time signatures and brutal passages. How do you write and rehearse such complex material? I approached that song as an experiment more than anything else. I wrote a fairly standard death metal riff in 4/4, and then (almost) arbitrarily began shortening/growing things. There was a lot of trial and error in order to make something sound that both that crazy but also still grounded enough to be listenable. As for rehearsing; it’s like anything else. Grab the metronome and cancel your weekend plans. Produced and recorded by Charlie Waymire, mixed and mastered by Ernesto Homeyer—how did the production team help bring the EP’s chaotic vision to life? At this point, both of them are official un-official members of the band. They really understand the sound Necro is going for, and Charlie is fantastic about pulling the best performances out of the musicians in his studio. Your cover art by Genoicide Artworks is vividly gory. How important is visual storytelling in complementing your music? Visual storytelling is very important for Necro. I’m deeply inspired by old comic book styles, horror movie posters, etc. The visuals set the stage. They’re the sizzle that comes with the steak. The EP combines humor and horror with technical death-thrash. How do you maintain the balance between brutality and tongue-in-cheek fun? Truthfully, it’s never something I think about. I just want the music to sound like “me” and all the ups/downs that come with a statement like that. My sense of humor is fairly strange, and sometimes that works itself into the songs. It’s worth noting that I love …
“The more we play live, the less technical our music has become”, Atavistia

With Old Gods Awaken, Atavistia delivers the first chapter of an ambitious two-album concept, blending melodic death metal, black metal, and Scandinavian folk into a sweeping narrative of history, heritage, and human connection. Drawing inspiration from Norse culture, European ancestry, and the natural landscapes of Vancouver and the North, the album explores themes of identity, memory, and the stories that bind generations. By Sandra Pinto In this interview, Mattias Sippola walks us through the creative process behind the sprawling title track, the multilingual lyrics, and the ways in which folk elements, orchestration, and dynamic contrast bring the epic concept to life—setting the stage for a dark and equally intense second installment. Old Gods Awaken is the first half of a two-album concept. Can you explain the overarching theme and story behind this project? Sure! The overall concept of this double album is about remembering who we are and where we came from. For too long have we now been lost in a sea of digital noise with no real sense of direction or purpose. We fight with strangers online, break friendships, and have lost Important skills and stories which have passed through generations. To reconnect with nature is to reconnect with history. The title track runs over eleven minutes with choirs, epic solos, and folk elements. How did you approach writing such a sprawling, cinematic piece? To be honest, it came as a wild wave of inspiration. I was going through a tough time in my personal life but also had a lot of free time to myself. The album was written in its track list order (except the intro) and one can possibly hear where I was during each song’s creation. You mix English, Swedish, and Finnish lyrics throughout the album. How do you decide which language fits a particular song or mood? It comes down to finding the right lyrics to fit certain parts. During the lyric writing process, I found certain sections didn’t work the way I wanted them to in English. My second language is Swedish and I found it just fit the vibe. For “I skogens djup” it was a no-brainer for me to have the entire song written in Swedish. It’s definitely our closest Finntroll-inspired track so why not go all the way? (smile) As for the Finnish parts on “Old Gods Awaken”, I originally composed the lyrics in Old Norse but like English, they didn’t quite fit what I was going for. Although I have Finnish heritage, I unfortunately do not speak the language so I contacted some friends in Finland to help me out with the translations. The album blends melodic death metal, black metal, and Scandinavian folk. How do you balance these diverse influences without losing cohesion? I’ve always felt all three of those genres blend flawlessly together but not a lot of bands seem comfortable to experiment with multiple genres like that. We are, even if it hurts our viewership and fanbase. The last thing we as Atavistia want is to be locked into a particular genre. “I skogens djup” is written entirely in Swedish. How did Mattias Sippola’s ancestry influence the song’s melodies and structure? The aggressiveness, speed, and song structure was the foundation of the Swedish lyrics. My ancestry is all over the place in Europe but I feel a deep connection with my Nordic history. My mind fully goes to that region when composing songs like that. Tracks like “Mystic Tavern” and “Raise All Thy Horns” carry both technical ferocity and folk spirit. How do you combine technical metal with narrative-driven folk themes? Aside from the bridge section being in 6/4 time signature, I wouldn’t say Mystic Tavern is particularly technical at all. It does kind of go all over the place in structure but the main narrative of the song is the story and folk elements. “Goddess of My Dreams” is more intimate and acoustic. How important is dynamic contrast in your songwriting for storytelling? Very important. Even death and black metal albums have slower songs to add a sense of dynamics to their albums. Dynamics are in my opinion, the most important element of composing. without it, listening becomes fatiguing. Percussion, choirs, and folk instrumentation feature heavily throughout the album. How do you arrange these elements to serve the emotion of each song? Half of the time, I’ll compose the orchestrations while figuring out the guitar parts in my head simultaneously. Sometimes however, I’ll write an entire song on guitar and drums. Usually, those songs have less orchestrations. In many cases, I’ll simply scrap entire orchestrated sections because they either take away from the song or blend the vibe too much. In the case of this album, the traditional elements were composed lastly to add that final touch of folk-inspired instrumentation. The album was written in less than six months. Can you describe your creative process during that intense period? Like I’ve stated on the first question, I was going through a tough time in my personal life but also had a lot of time to myself. Creatively, this is where I thrive. I have little to no motivation when I’m constantly on the go with life. Time is an essential component in my songwriting process. When I have it, I can’t stop. Nature, seasons, and Norse culture are recurring themes. How do the landscapes of Vancouver and the European North inspire your music and lyrics? It’s easy, they’re both in cold, dark, and wet climates. For thousands of years these regions have a long history of storytelling. It’s very simple to draw inspiration from such histories. You’ve toured with bands like SKÁLMÖLD, METSATÖLL, and SEVEN SPIRES. How have live experiences shaped the way you compose and perform? Quite a bit. The more we play live, the less technical our music has become. For Atavistia, we don’t want to show off on our instruments, we want to put on a show people will remember for the vibe, not the technicality of the instruments. As the first half of a …
“The most important aspect of songwriting to us is just crafting an impactful piece of music”, Dissentience

When it comes to Dissentience, each release is an intense and meticulously crafted sonic journey. But with their latest EP, Kaiju, the band takes things to the next level, delivering their most conceptually ambitious work yet. Inspired by Japanese giant monster films and Lovecraftian horror, Kaiju is not just about destruction and chaos—it’s an exploration of humanity in the face of the unimaginable. By Sandra Pinto In this interview, the band members reveal how a joke between friends evolved into an apocalyptic narrative, the careful construction of riffs and lyrics, and the vision behind every musical and visual element of the EP. Kaiju is described as your most conceptually ambitious release to date. What inspired the idea of centering an EP around a colossal, apocalyptic monster? Initially, the idea was sort of a joke between Nick and I after having a few beers watching Godzilla Versus Mechagodzilla at a drive-in. There’s a lot of bands named after giant monsters that don’t live up to their namesake so we wanted to start a Kaiju-themed side project that did. That idea fell by the wayside but when it came time to write new Dissentience music, Jimmy brought it up as a possibility and it all fell into place. Between our love for concept records and my lifelong love of giant monster flicks, we agreed that Kaiju was the way to go, mapped out the concept, and hit the jam room. The record draws from Japanese monster films and Lovecraftian horror. How did these influences shape both the narrative and the music? The narrative was really formed by watching a ton of Japanese monster movies and trying to boil the stories down to their essential parts. Watching all these movies, we started to notice that the ones that really stood out to us were less about the special effects or the monsters and more about humanity once you got past the surface level. We really took this to heart in writing Kaiju because we didn’t just want to make a B-Movie level concept, we really wanted to make something timeless. As for Lovecraft, his whole brand of horror depends on the use of unreliable narrators and giving the reader just enough detail to imagine their own individual horror. We didn’t want this record to focus too much on the monster itself but rather the horror of the destruction and chaos so we tried to employ the same “less is more” tactic in the lyrics for this one. You chose not to name the monster or the city in the EP. How does this decision affect the listener’s experience and the universality of the story? Going along with the Lovecraft influence, not naming the monster or the city allows the listener to use their imagination and envision their own narrative within the boundaries we set with the lyrical structure. Not being explicit with every detail also let us focus more on the overarching effects of the destruction and the feelings of the people within the city which lends to a more metaphorical reading of the lyrics. The best monster movies are never really about the monster anyway, they address and explore some aspect of humanity. The special effects, the blood and guts, the guys in suits…that’s all just the icing on the cake. The EP is only four tracks long but very intense. How did you approach pacing and narrative flow across these tracks? Before really any of the songs were written, Jimmy and I watched some Kaiju movies and tried to boil the plots down to four beats, one for each song. We found with a couple of the tracks on Empire Anatomy that having a concept in mind helped us avoid any writer’s block and also made the lyrics and music mesh together really well. The process for Kaiju was kind of just a natural extension of that process applied across the whole EP. Having the themes and lyrical concept laid out ahead of time made for very little wasted time in the jam room. Obsidian Tomb begins with a somber acoustic intro before unleashing thrash and groove-heavy sections. How did you design the track to build tension and horror? The driving force behind the writing sessions for Kaiju was ultimately to match the music to the lyrical concept for each song. With each track, we started establishing the vibe we wanted to achieve and then wrote and refined the riffs from there. With Obsidian Tomb, we wanted a good mix of epic and destructive to convey the first appearance of our monster as well as the fear and awe inflicted on the people. The acoustic intro was actually a last minute addition once we got into the studio but I think it does a great job of setting the tone for not just Obsidian but the whole EP. Chaos Absolute focuses on social and political collapse after the monster attack. How do you translate complex ideas like panic and futility into musical elements? Going into Chaos Absolute, we wanted to capture the tension of all the “world leaders arguing around the table” scenes from classic monster movies or films like Dr. Strangelove. The song constantly teeters back and forth between syncopation and chaos, pushing and pulling the listener before ultimately ending where it all started. Some of that was intentional but honestly a lot of it just came out naturally in the jam room keeping the themes of the song in mind. The title track Kaiju is a relentless sonic assault. How do you ensure that technicality and brutality serve the narrative rather than overwhelm it? In the case of the title track, the theme of the song demanded an unrelenting approach. Every riff had to pummel the listener with the same level of destruction and intensity our monster was bringing to the city below. We usually try to have more sonic variety in each song but keeping this one musically interesting while maintaining a constant intensity from start to finish …
O thrash metal invade Loulé com cartaz internacional de peso

A cidade de Loulé vai receber, no próximo dia 7 de maio de 2026, uma noite dedicada ao Thrash Metal de alto impacto, organizada pela A3 – Associação Algarve Alternativo. O palco do Bafo de Baco vai acolher bandas internacionais e nacionais que prometem acelerar corações e riffs. Encabeçam o cartaz os indianos Chaos, veteranos da cena Thrash de Trivandrum com quase duas décadas de carreira. Reconhecidos pelo som cru e agressivo, bem como pelas letras de cunho sociopolítico, trazem uma energia única que promete incendiar o público algarvio. Os alemães Nuclear Warfare, oriundos de Estugarda e fundados em 2001, também marcam presença. A banda chega a Portugal na sequência do lançamento do seu mais recente álbum, All Hail To The Liberator, previsto para março de 2026, trazendo a sua marca de Thrash Metal contundente e técnico. A abertura ficará a cargo dos portugueses Shadowmare, representantes da cena nacional de Technical Thrash Metal. Com riffs rápidos e precisos, completam um alinhamento pensado para os fãs que apreciam velocidade e intensidade sonora. 7 de maio de 2026 (quinta-feira) Bafo de Baco, Loulé Horários: Portas abrem às 21h00 | Início dos concertos às 21h30 Entrada: 12€ (geral) | 10€ (sócios A3) Informações e bilheteira: algarvealternativo@gmail.com Para os fãs de Thrash Metal, esta será uma oportunidade única de ver três gerações do estilo a partilhar o mesmo palco, numa noite que promete velocidade, agressividade e muito metal.

Interview with Simon Bergseth and Martin Utby from AVKRVST

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