Völva
Angry, old and unclean;
The three piece Black-Metal unit Völva are ready to unleash their ravishing grimness once again, and Hinsides managed to get the full coverage before all hell breaks loose...
Meet a focused band on a mission to make some noise and tear down the walls of patriarchy while at it!
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The Völvas; Jonna: bass & vocals/ Joss: Drums/ Åsa: Guitar & backup vocals
So, let´s start from the beginning, shall we? When, how, and more importantly; why did the idea behind Völva emerge? Was it the band that brought you together or did you already know each other from before?
Jonna; It was me and Joss drinking and talking about starting a band (as one tends to do under the influence), but for once it actually became something from those drunk plans. We both come from the punk scene but it was clear right from the start it was black metal in some form we wanted to do. At first it was me, Joss and a guy named Svante for a brief moment, but he mysteriously disappeared and instead we dug up Åsa from the metal trenches of the internet and we could not have been happier about that!
If you were to explain the concept of Völva to someone completely unaware of what kind of music you make and what kind of message you send, what would you say?
Åsa; We don’t have an explicit concept, besides from writing and playing aggressive music where we can channel our feelings towards ALL empires based on abrahamic religions that have placed its dihcotomic lies about what we are and who we should be, for thousand years and still going strong.
It seems like it´s the Black-Metal tag that you´re aiming at genre wise even though there´s a lot of poorly hidden punk ingredients there as well in your musical blender. Was it clear to you from start that Völva was to be considered as a Black-Metal act? Is the genre definition important to you, and if so; on what grounds?
Åsa; Well…we knew from the start that we wanted to make extreme and hateful music inspired by pure black metal bands, so it was clear to us that this had to be an epithet. The punk in Völva is more of who we are, i.e. three adult cis-women with chronic middle fingers towards the feminine norm and patriarchy.
Joss; And not to forget the inheritance of the prestigelessness in the punk mindset - we are doing it because we think it is fun and if it’s fun it’s good enough.
Live at Truckstop Alaska/Gbg
What other bands/writers/artists has been of importance to how Völva looks and sounds, and what other contemporary bands/artists do you feel connected to considering what you want to achieve under the banner of Völva?
Åsa; Believe it or not but ⅔ of us are Burzum fans in terms of music and the early albums. I get that people today would not consider looking up Burzum, but if you go back to when I first heard about them it was more like;
“ - Oh there’s a band named after ‘darkness’ in Tolkien’s Black Speech!
I really, really have to find an album with them! “
Streaming options did not exist back then so you had to order the actual album to get access to the music. And considering the political connotations; it was not as black/white as it is today. “Aske” and “Det Som Engang Var” made the foundations for my personal journey into Black-Metal, and is still with me when I write my songs today. As for other bands, Darkthrone, Gorgoroth, Thorns, Aura Noir, Dödheimsgaard, are all in my metal backbone when I write with Völva….and Driller Killer, of course. I’m not really sure if we feel connected to anything contemporary though. We enjoy playing with other bands like Illmara and Fayenne, but we are totally different from them in what we do.
Joss; Every band on every stage that ever got me pissed off also has been of importance in a way - an inspiration of what to replace them with.
Once upon a time…
Your biography tells that Völva was formed in the year of 2018 and that your only release thus far, a self released six song demo tape, was recorded and released the same year. Did you work really fast or was some of the material composed prior to the band came together? Tell us what your process of creating music together looks like:
Åsa; I have to think, but I guess we were quite eager that first year. When we are all on the same track, we work fast. Lucky for us, Hannes who has Studio Hiet, where we have recorded everything, is also easy to work with. Plug in, make noise, release.
Joss; It’s Åsa or Jonna that brings the riffs to the rehearsal space where we together build the foundation for what becomes a song. It is a process that I really like and it fits Völva to shape the outcome together.
How do you picture your ideal fan, and who would be at the other end?
Jonna; Hard question... I guess the main divider (sound wise) would be those who appreciate the raw punk vibe-black metal we do and those who don’t. I think that most people kind of know what we are about in general terms before they decide coming to a show, and those who are not into that don’t even bother to come in the first place.
Åsa; I also feel that the mainstream black metal fan will not get us. They need something that matches their holy image of a dude in corpse paint delivering clichés and stolen riffs and polished drums pressed through Cubase filters. And suddenly there we are; unclean, old, angry, unapologetic, and just playing what we want. That (i.e. not fitting into a stereotype) is enough to provoke a lot of people, but also enough to attract those born to leave the cave that offers nothing but shadows on the walls.
Joss; An ideal fan for me would be an angry teen anger getting inspired after seeing or hearing us, getting them to pick up an instrument (preferable drums, of course) and learn to play and gain confidence in what they do. To get that aggression canalized in something constructive and exploring and learning about how the patriarchal structures best can be challenged and destroyed while doing it.
You recorded some new material earlier this year, how was the recording experience in comparison to your demo recording and what can we expect from the new songs? Any progress in one or another direction worth mentioning?
Jonna; As mentioned earlier our first recording was before we had really gotten a chance to figure out how we would work together as a band, and maybe it was a bit trial and error sound wise as well since we didn’t really know what we wanted. This time around we were much more confident of how we wanted to do things, and what sound we were looking for, so the experimenting was more about how to get that sound the right way. I´m really excited about this new recording as I think it is a more refined and matured version of Völva; with a bit more metal and a bit more polished punk influnces. But still as raw as ever, though.
Demo 2019
You´ve stated before that you want your next release to go through a label. What benefit´s are you out to get from such a move and how´s it going with finding a suitable home for Völva? Are there any preferable ones that you think would fit your cause?
Åsa: Well our demo was actually released by a label later on, because Jem’s Label found us online and asked if we were interested in an US version of the tape (of course we were). We have had a few labels in mind and it looks like we´ll go for one of them any day now. (But I won’t kiss and tell just yet.)
Joss; Having (a) label(s) would reduce the amount of work needed to distribute our music, and we rather spend that time in the rehearsal space. And of course we also like the benefit of getting our music in as many fitting ears as possible.
In the previous issue of HM we talked to the Sycamore network about shitty attitudes in the metal community and we also took a look in the infamous crystal ball to see what the future looks like. What´s your idea of how music and attitudes will develop in the metal underground the coming years? What´s your best/worst case scenarios?
Jonna; I don’t really have a history in the metal community so it’s hard to see from my point of view, but I guess a general openness towards non cis male musicians in the metal scene has become stronger than it was before, and I would like to think that is something that will continue in that direction in the future as well.
Åsa; I hope that we will have a stronger heterogeneity in the metal community because only then can all energies flow freely, and who knows what beasts that will rise out of that. Today’s youth get a lot for free, of what we - who were young during the 90’s - could only dream of, so a lot is in favor of such a community. If we were lucky back then, then maybe just maybe we could find a note in a “thank you”-list in an album that we liked, about Nuclear Death, or a photo of Jo Bench in metal Hammer, and add a few names to our embarrassingly short list of women in metal. Today you can open your phone, log in to Instagram or Facebook and find out in less than 5 min that Sonia Anubis formed a new band with ex-members from Nervosa, that one of the most inspiring guitarists I’ve ever seen on stage, Vis Crom of ex-Absu, is a trans-woman, that death metallers over the globe take stand for Black Lives Matter, and much more. I wish all of that information would be accessible when I was young too, but better late than never I guess. In the worst case scenario, there will (or there already is) be a schism between those enjoying pure chaos (i.e. heterogeneity) and those pufferfishes who claim they worship chaos yet live their lives with everything placed neatly into mental boxes.
Joss; Taking the nowadays situation at hand into consideration, worst would be no more live shows unless the small limited crowd sits down several metres from the scene and each other. For me music is always best live and I cannot bear to think how a life without it would be. With that in mind, I hope to see a revival of the smaller venues. It seems most of the smaller venues putting up smaller shows with less famous bands are getting more and more rare, which I think is a crucial threat to all music I enjoy. It’s up to us of course, if we want it we need to make it happen and support the brave few that keep up towards the bigger bullying venue brothers. I fear that we only will be given chance to pay a lot of money to see “safe cards” bands that fits perfectly into the given pattern. (Old cis males with too much male complex.)
Ok then, last but not least; What will happen with Völva in the nearest future? Tell us all about it and thanx a lot for the time you took to answer those questions!
Jonna; Due to the current situation with it being the apocalypse and all we can’t really plan shows/tours as we would like to, so we try to put focus on releasing the latest recording for now.
Åsa; We usually have more ideas than time and focus, but I am sure we will end up here and there during the coming year. Thank YOU for the interview.
Joss; To get the opportunity to be in a rehearsal space making loud noise with the other two Völvas is one of the few things that keeps me going during these eventless times, and we will continue doing just that.
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