It should come as no surprise that I'm a bit of a Carl Skildum superfan going as far back as his work with Threadbare, Krakatoa, Seconds Before, etc.; and more recently with Inexorum, Majesties, and Antiverse. So, I was extremely excited when he recently announced Skjolden—a full-on solo project in which he handles literally everything but the visuals. The material should immediately capture any fan of Inexorum, at the very least, through its high-energy black metal loaded with incredibly taut, fast-paced riffing; near-constant melodic layering; fierce vocal sneers; and admirably tactful keyboards providing additional layers of atmosphere. It's one of the more compelling albums I've heard all year, I must say.
Skjolden's seven-song, 34-minute full-length, Insouciant Metaphysical Grandeur, will be out digitally next Friday, June 20 (pre-order now); but you can experience its second single above, and gain a bit of insight into the project below...
Skjolden came about through some downtime that you had amidst other projects, while many of your musical cohorts were busy elsewhere, but it's been just barely over two years since the Majesties album, and it's not like these are simplistic compositions. For one person to be handling literally everything but the visuals... I'm sure there were some challenges along the way, but on some level it seems like things must have come together relatively "quickly," all things considered? What was the general process like, and did you have any riffs or song fragments already stockpiled, as wildly prolific as you've been in recent years?
This project really did come together quickly. It started with a riff in my head and a comment I made to the guys in the Majesties chat about how I was going to need to make my own record while they were all doing tours or regional gigs. I started to think about just recording some new ideas and it snowballed from there. I didn't want to throw yet another project at Matt Kirkwold, who is already in all my other bands and has a backlog of work for new records for some of them. So, this just started as a challenge that I set for myself, to see how far I could take the process beyond songwriting and performance all the way to mixing and mastering. All the riffs are new. I didn't have to reach into the vaults for anything this time around!
Talk a bit about the "limited tools and knowledge" with which you put this album together. I suspect you're being modest, because everything sounds killer and is honestly damn-near perfect for the atmosphere that the material conveys. Myself being a mild hobbyist at best—and one that has always tended toward a "just plug it in and go" mentality—I find the current landscape of all the digital technology available to be incredibly daunting.
I've done plenty of tracking on my own for prior projects and session work, but the mixing and mastering was always handed off to someone else, and I realized that over the years I wasn't often in the room when that work even happened. The "plugging in and going" has long felt very straightforward for writing and recording, but that's all I had ever done previously. The finalizing phase of assembling raw tracks to actual music was a process of trial and error, lots of tutorials, and a few questions to more knowledgeable friends.
As I've stated on a number of occasions, one of the most impressive aspects of your discography over the last 30+ years is the incredible variety. Your output has definitely tended more toward the blackened side of the metal realm as of late, however, so I'm curious what it is about this niche that speaks to you and encourages this degree of creative expression?
It feels very natural to me to write music in this vein. I do get to explore escapist ideas in other bands, where I can apply more of a narrative approach that is largely untethered to reality, but I felt that it made more sense for a solo project like this to share a little bit more at a personal level. There are so many different branches on this tree, and I gravitate toward the more melodic and triumphant in my own writing. I did have to think about how to differentiate this from Inexorum, which is probably the closest sibling project to Skjolden, and the answer was to go a little darker and use keyboards more for those places where I might otherwise have used guitar leads or solos.
The song we're debuting is "Can't Kill My Love." What would you choose to share about this particular piece? It feels like one of the more aggressively direct tracks on the album, both musically and in terms of its title.
These last few years have felt like a precarious time in many ways. I've seen how everything can change in an instant, and the older I get, the more quickly time seems to pass. No matter how fast the world spins around me, I'm fortunate to have people in my life that care for me. Nothing matters more to me than my wife, my friends, and my family. This song is a reminder to myself to never let the noise of modern life dull that passion.
Now that you've achieved this fully solo endeavor—and believe me when I tell you that the results are beyond successful—will Skjolden be more than a one-off?
Thank you so much. I don't worry that I'll run out of ideas anytime soon. I'm going to have a busy year with my other bands, but I'm sure there will be more that I do under this name as well. Skjolden will return!
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Insouciant Metaphysical Grandeur will be released digitally on June 20 through Bandcamp, where you're encouraged to pre-order now...
