Hey there guys, congratulations on the release of your latest LP “MACHINE DESTROY” and thank you for taking the time to answer some of my questions!
To get things started, I wanted to ask about your band name.
Did you already know you would be going for this strong conceptual identity revolving around winter/cold or did that come later?
What ultimately made you want to pick Frostbitt as your band name?
In 2012 after we split up our former band we knew we wanted to pursue the more groove oriented style of "djent" and try to do something new and fresh in the early stages of this movement.
After doing some song writing and experimenting with different sounds, we landed on doing a lot of lead guitars with a chorus effect on top of syncopated low tuned grooves.
This lead to more of a hybrid thing as we were bouncing between the low notes and the high pitched chorus effect and that's when we found the foundation of our sound which we have tried to chisel into perfection to this day.
A couple of months after this discovery Steffen (drums) came in with the name Frostbitt which we felt described the music pretty well.
It also checked off the criteria that the name should make sense in both English and Norwegian.
How did you end up settling on this new theme centered around biomechanical dehumanization and futuristic dystopia for the new album and what made you want to explore that idea with your music?
The first track we completed for the album was “MACHINE DESTROY” -we had probably like 20 different demo versions of the song before we ended up on this one- and the most important thing we figured out was that some riffs sounds better in certain registers especially considering the bass.
So when we pitch shifted the guitars even lower and played in unison with the bass, the robotic almost dubsteppy vibe was so apparent that it just motivated us to take it all the way.
It's also complimentary that Ivan (vocals) and Kevin (bass/vocals) are big sci-fi nerds.
There seems to be a bit of a narrative strewn throughout the record, from the embracing of this new mechanized life-form to its discarding (Bionic Scrapyard).
From your perspective, how does the story of “MACHINE DESTROY” play out?
In our speculation on the distant future of mankind we talk about a few different topics but they all share one common theme throughout the record which is consciousness.
We are talking about how we might be able to breed consciousness into different objects or transfer them directly into a place like the internet or how it can develop from AI sort of like the sci-fi movie I, robot.
I think it mostly comes off as dystopian because of the Terminator inspired track "MACHINE DESTROY", because we kind of view it as a logical evolution of mankind although everything comes with a price.
“Bionic Scrapyard” is the song which covers the result of having an immortal consciousness and the possible torment of living forever.
The corrupted and broken will come to end their days at the scrapyard.
The track “Cancel Culture” seems to stand out from the rest of the album thematically speaking; what was your thought process in including it within this narrative and what is the message you are trying to convey with it?
You are correct, “Cancel” was made alongside “MACHINE DESTROY”, but it took a while for that song to be complete so “Cancel” was technically the first song we finished and therefore we hadn't really established the theme for the lyrics when we wrote them.
The thought process was that it's such a groovy banger, that we just had to include it on the album, but we also feel like that concept is not excluded from a futuristic robotic society.
We are trying to say that it's a good thing to stand up for yourself, but take your issues out of the internet and aim them directly at the source or into court.
Some people will always abuse these kinds of things for their own benefit.
Has this shift in thematical concept and the addition of a new member changed your approach to songwriting? If so, could you tell us more about it?
One of the awesome things about having a solo guitarist is that we could start to repeat sections of the song and use them as solo backings.
Already back when we released ‘Solbrent’ we knew we wanted to make songs with more of a structure and less of the "riff salad" so it was in the cards way back then, but it was hard to tweak the self-titled remake songs that way so we knew it had to wait for this album!
Without revealing the recipe to your secret sauce, could you tell us more about how you approach the process of creating all these crazy sounding guitar effects that give you this instantly recognizable sound?
The guitar sounds are all based on the initial concept of the chorus effect we used way back. With the self-titled remake and this one we tried to push the Axe Fx Ultra to its limits with the parameter changes and effect usage shaping our guitar riffs!
We found all the effects had different uses, Phaser worked best for the upper registers, Flanger worked best for the lower and Chorus worked as more of a mellower lead type of effect.
Not only are you guys self-published but also self-produced; could you tell us more about what it’s like being a fully DIY band in today’s uncertain and difficult to navigate landscape in a post-covid music industry as an underground band?
We are still learning and discovering new things and new ways to promote and publish our material.
The best thing about doing it yourself is all the power you have over the entire outcome of things, although not everyone is able to do every process like we do by themselves and make it awesome.
We all have our respective fields in which we have our strengths that we push each other even further in.
Who does what exactly in the band (outside of their respective instrumental duties) and how are you able to sustain this model ?
So, for general songwriting and overall vision it's vocalist Ivan Hansen doing most of the work.
The production is usually tied between Emil (guitar) and Ivan and Emil Reitan does all the mixing and mastering of the music.
Then you have Kevin Solheim (bass) who makes the images, artwork and most of the things regarding social media along with Andreas Knutsen (guitar).
Steffen Nielsen (drums) is usually taking charge dealing with business meetings and stuff like that.
If you had one piece of advice to give to aspiring DIY bands, what would it be?
There are so many small things that are important to do, but first off you want to know who does what in the band.
If you improve yourselves in the different areas it makes it all much more manageable down the line.
Speaking of post-covid; I’m still so sad about that “Mordial” European tour getting canceled right as the pandemic reared its ugly head and I can’t even imagine how big of a blow it must have been to you guys.
Do you have any plans for trying to tour Europe again in the near future?
Yeah man, it really sucked to cut it short, but all things considered we came out of it pretty nicely, since we got most our money back in the Euro value drop.
It also gave us this insane motivation to bring something much more unique to the table and at that point we had all the time in the world to actually just do it.
Ideally, what would be your dream line-up to go on tour with?
Dream tour would probably be Car Bomb and Vildhjarta musically!
Meshuggah and KoRn would be pretty clean too. Many possible dream outcomes for us!
There’s been a recent surge of excellent modern metal bands from Scandinavia, including yourselves, that all share a similar kind of style (Atlas, Allt, Grayscale Season…) inspired by Vildhjarta.
Could you tell us what the scene is like in Norway for this niche of heavy music?
The djent/math scene in Norway is extremely small right now with us being the biggest one and then you have like Yawn, thefalls and Benea Reach (inactive).
There is a handful of smaller stuff as well but, there's really no scene here for this kind of music.
Some of your main influences are fairly easy to pick up on (Car Bomb, Vildhjarta, KoЯn), but are there any other bands or pieces of media (movies, games, books) you are influenced by that would come as a surprise to people?
Primus, Dir En Grey, black metal, video game music like Jazz Jackrabbit (1994), Earthbound/Mother 1 & 2 and a lot of other Nintendo stuff is a pretty big influence on our sound.
Now that “MACHINE DESTROY” is out in the world, what’s next for Frostbitt?
We want to go out and tour the world with this new music and play some festivals as we venture into ideas and directions to take on writing for the new album.
We already have some wild ones going on so it's gonna be interesting although we're not rushing anything yet!
Lastly, to close things off, are there any album releases you’re looking forward to this year?
New Car Bomb for sure! New Avenged Sevenfold might be interesting too.
Thanks again so much for taking the time to answer these, hopefully I get to catch you guys live some day but in the meantime, I wish you all the best and congratulations again on the release of your new album!
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You can find Frostbitt's catalogue on Bandcamp : https://frostbitt.bandcamp.com/
And you can watch their live set for the release party of "MACHINE DESTROY" here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WliPbAU468
