Be warned…….there is a band of trolls coming to tear your head off with some amazing new music. Sweden’s Bergatagen have just issued their debut album “Bärsärkatoner” and it will definitely screw you up. Filled with classic troll black metal and some folky touches, it is definitely a contender for debut of the year for me. Two of the trolls, Svartgrimme and Huggsint answered some questions for us lowly humans regarding the name, the music and the possibility of mangling the crowd if they ever played live…check it out…..

Major congrats on your epic debut album “Bärsärkatoner”….what has been the reaction to it so far?
Svartgrimme: “Greetings human and thanks! Extremely positive so far, I didn’t even need to force people to say good things about us, and I see that as a great sign! “
Huggsint: “Svartgrimme explained it perfectly.”

Troll-history

Could you give us a little history of the band and the meaning behind Bergatagen and why you decided on that as the name?
Svartgrimme: “There isn´t that much history about the band to be honest, 3 massive forest trolls that got bored of hunting human trespassers from our woods and decided to start a band and a couple of days after an album was released, on the plus side, the loud noise scares off everything living that dares to tread our path. Bergatagen is a spellbinding used by trolls and some other supernatural entities mostly dwelling in the forest or lakes, mainly used to entice and trick humans to do their bidding, and it fitted for the band, we didn’t want a name that started with the word Troll anyway.”
Huggsint: “Arrrrgggggggg!!!!”

“Bärsärkatoner” I have heard as translated as something along the lines of “Berserker Tones”….is this accurate and if so, why did you decide to name the album that?
Svartgrimme: “Correct! It just popped up after looking at the cover, it´s the perfect music to demolish a town, drink mead, terrorize humans and other edible creatures alike, hence Bärsärkatoner!”

Trollish Art

I love the “old school” vibe of the album cover….could you give us the artist info and how this came to be the cover?
Svartgrimme: “Tim Nordstedt” is the artist that made the cover and the logo, he came up with the idea and made it and it was a perfect match, it´s kind of a mix between the old outline works of the 90 s Black Metal but a little more detailed and then added with some 80s-90s Old School Trash-Speed Metal coloring and feel to it, we knew immediately that this would get some reactions of different kinds, only those that just like black and white pictures of forests and panda paint have been complaining so far.”

From a description point of view, I want to say you are black metal with folk instrumentation…….is that a pretty decent description or do you have another way of describing your sound?
Svartgrimme: “The Folk description is under debate, but we will let it pass, we just call our music Troll-metal and that´s it.”
Huggsint: “We couldn’t really do anything else than Troll Black Metal.”

Trollspiration

I am a huge fan of “Troll Music” and haven’t heard a lot recently…. what inspired you to pursue this sound and hopefully resurrect it?
Svartgrimme: “Well there are a bunch of them out there, most of them are having a little more Party Folk vibe with accordions and whatnot, now i´m not throwing shit on that, it might happen that we´ll  add a couple of odd instruments in the future but it will still be faithful to the 90s Black Metal era, basically we just wanted to take back the trollishness to the time of early Troll, Arckanum and Gorgoroth (well to my knowledge they have 2 songs about trolls on Antichrist, one is actually an intro so one) for example.”
Huggsint: “I think only a troll can make true troll metal. There aren’t many out there. Many fakes probably, but we are the real deal. Search no more than Bergatagen. I am not very concerned about other bands.”

Did you discuss whether or not to have lyrics in English vs. your native Swedish? Are there some things that just wouldn’t translate as well?
Svartgrimme: “No, we’re Swedish Trolls, and our mythology stems from Scandinavia so it was just natural to scream about our violent shenanigans in Swedish.”

In Front of Humans

How does your songwriting work as a 3 piece unit…. does one member write and the others contribute? Do you all bring ideas?
Svartgrimme: “Mostly me and Blodsagg sit on our asses discussing what herbs goes well with a roasted priest while Huggsint goes full improvised berserk with mead, spikeclubs and guitars and then we add our parts in a rageful haze, the written parts are mostly my ramblings during the influence of too much fly agarics.”
Huggsint: “Yeah we balance it out like that, pretty much.”

Will you ever be at a position to perform live or is this not something you are interested in?
Svartgrimme: “We will never be in position or have any interest to play live!”
Huggsint: “I don’t understand the question. Why would we want to play live in front of humans? How would we be able not to destroy them all?”

Troll…. something

Seeing the music on Bandcamp was how I found you…. how has your experience been so far with releasing the music in this way?
Svartgrimme: “It´s the easiest way to be seen nowadays, record something, put it out on Bandcamp and Youtube, if you’re lucky you might get noticed by a couple of people, if you´re extremely lucky someone with a functional brain wants to release it on physical format, and if you´re unbelievably lucky you’ll even get some coins for your effort.”
Huggsint: “We are kind of hoping that we’ll get a physical release out soon. People keep writing us about it all the time so there is certainly a demand for it.”

Any music from 2019 you are most looking forward to?
Svartgrimme: “Probably, I haven’t done any research, but there are always way too many albums that are released nowadays and I usually find the interesting ones a couple of days before they’re released.”
Huggsint: “I just browse around a little every now and then in the hope to discover something unique. I don’t have any particular albums I look forward too except the next Bergatagen of course.”

Closing thoughts?
Svartgrimme/Huggsint: “DEATH TO FALSE TROLLS! SUPPORT THE TRUE SCANDINAVIAN TROLLHORDE!”

By: Jeff