1.
Vulture Industries is a Norwegian Avant-garde Metal band known for its theatrical performances and genre-blending sound. Emerging in 2003 from the ashes of the gothic band Dead Rose Garden, they quickly evolved into a powerful force in the progressive metal scene. Their music fuses elements of Black, Doom, Industrial, and Progressive rock. Over the years, they've toured extensively across Europe, Japan, and Russia, captivating audiences with their unique aesthetic and dynamic shows. With critically acclaimed albums like The Tower and Ghosts from the Past, Vulture Industries continues to push musical boundaries.
1. Vulture Industries has always had a distinctive and theatrical approach to metal, carving out a singular niche in the music world. Was that artistic vision present from the start, or did it evolve over time?
I think the urge to go in a different direction if something became too popular was always a strong force as a teenager. And I think this was a shared feeling between us in the early days of the band.
Still, this was at no point an agreed upon goal or philosophy. It was more about trusting our instincts, seeing where they would take us, and bringing the baggage we had.
2. Your sound draws from a variety of genres, including progressive metal, dark rock, and beyond. How do you go about balancing these different influences when writing new material?
You load up the mule with exactly the correct amounts of each element. 19,3 % progressive metal, 31,5% dark rock, 16% post punk, 9,4 % black metal, 1% classical music, 9,2 % spaghetti western and 6,3 % of Nordic Noire. Then you kick it in the leg, so that it starts limping a little. Or we can go with the honest explanation which is, this is how it feels. This is who we are…. It is a completely intuitive approach to making music. We don’t try to be or sound like anything or anyone in particular. We have found a niche which we can identify as our own. Like with all things, nothing comes out of nothing. An attentive listener can still spot our influences from time to time. Still, I believe what we do is different and clearly distinguishable as Vulture Industries from the general line of suspects.
3. Norway is famous for its extreme metal scene, yet Vulture Industries has always taken a more experimental path. Has the Norwegian scene influenced your music in any way?
The drift towards experimentation was strong in the Norwegian scene in the nineties when we were growing up. Even though most of the bands at the time were doing stuff very different from what Vulture Industries are doing these days, the early Norwegian black- and extreme-metal scene had lots of bands and characters with original ideas and approaches to music. I grew up in a small town called Bryne, close to Stavanger. The local scene had some acts I found really fascinating, like the somewhat forgotten Wunderkammer, which were mixing rock and jazz with gypsy and Balkan influences. They are a mix of electric and acoustic instrumentation that really appealed to me. Mixing traditional rock instruments with trumpet, violin and double bass. This musical impression combined with the aesthetics of a 1920s smoke filled, jazz club, made a profound impression on me.
Of course what was getting more attention internationally at the time, also had its effects on us who were young adults at the time. Looking at the more extreme side of Norwegian music I would credit bands like Emperor, Arcturus, Kovenant as fairly influential as to how we sounded when we started out, even though time has taken us far in a different direction since then.
4. What inspired you to reissue The Tower? What role does this album play in the evolution of Vulture Industries as a band?
The vinyl version of the album has been sold out for years and lots of fans have been asking for it. We just celebrated the 10th anniversary for the release of the album with a special show here in Bergen. Seeing that people travelled in from far and wide to experience the album in full, a new vinyl edition seemed overdue. As it turns out, I don’t own the album on vinyl myself. I would say that “The Tower” was the album which defined our sound and properly differentiated us from the rest of the contemporary Norwegian scene. With our two first albums being a search to find our place, “The Tower” was the culmination of this search and the album which set the path for where we would go from there.
5. Looking back at the creation of The Tower, is there anything you would do differently today? Are there elements you’ve grown away from over time?
Our approach to composition has changed a bit since “The Tower”, and the album is denser compared to where we currently are. That said, I don’t consider the album of any less musical value than our later ones, not the other way around. I think we made the best album we could at the time. There are always elements that in hindsight you would want to change, but I consider every album a document of its time. A statement of who we were at the time the album was made. Looking to change that in retrospect doesn’t make much sense. We’d rather celebrate what was, then move along. Change is natural…stagnation is death.
6. The reissue also offers a chance to bring some of your older material back to the stage. Do you have a personal favorite from The Tower when it comes to performing live?
I consider “Lost Among Liars” to be one of our best songs, and it is also a track I really enjoy performing live. “The Hound” is also a live favourite, and I always enjoyed taking the show into the audience on that one. But these tracks have mostly been regulars in our live set since the album came out. On the other hand, we performed “A Knife Between Us”, live for the first time on our anniversary show. It was delightful to, in some ways, rediscover that song and see how it resonated between the band and audience 10 years after the album release.
7. You’re playing both club shows and major festivals this year, including Hellfest. Do you prefer the intimacy of smaller venues or the energy of a big festival crowd?
Yes, thank you, a bit of both please! The two formats are very different from each other, and I love both. Performing music in front of a live audience is part of what gives life meaning. Each concert is an organism in its own right. Each is different from the next. The magic happens in the shared experience between band and audience, and this dynamic is different on big stage festivals and club shows. Commanding a large festival audience in a grand megalomaniac spectacle is probably the ultimate recognition one can experience as a live artist. Still, it can never match the tense intimacy one can experience at small venues.
8. After the anniversary run for The Tower, what’s next for Vulture Industries? Are you already working on new material or exploring other creative avenues?
We have some different projects in the oven. Firstly, we have a video recording from our anniversary show which is turning our real nice. Actually, it was supposed to have turned out real nice a couple of years ago already, but time can sometimes move in mysterious ways in the Vulture nest. One day it moves forwards, then suddenly it stops, or even goes back. Anyway… With AI taking over, and the world turning insane, in a less likable way than before, I feel a strong pull towards physical formats and objects that can be verified as real these days, so maybe we will release it as a VHS, or as a flipbook animation and wax cylinders. We will soon see.
We are also working on material for the next Vulture Industries full length album, which we aim to have ready next year. But… we have a fairly predictable pattern of missing our own deadlines. Not that we are lazy. It is more that we progress with a jittery motion. We can be productive as hell in periods. A bit like the seven dwarves, with spells of amnesia, so half the time just stand around not knowing what, where or why. But when we work, we work!
Meanwhile, Øyvind (our guitar player) has been getting into this gothic gardening thing. It’s a bit like traditional gardening with plants, trees, bushes and flowers. Only difference is that everything has to be dead.
9. And finally, for those just discovering Vulture Industries – how would you describe your music in a single sentence?
It’s a bit like Alice Cooper riding a self-playing piano down a hillside chased by Roky Ericson, Peter Steele, Pumpkin Jack, Tom Waits, Ziggy Stardust, Ennio Morricone and Ian Ashbury.
Thank you!
Thomas G. Wunder
