Conversation with Valgrinder on behalf of the Finnish Black Metal band, Förgjord

How would you like to influence your audience through your music, what kind of impact you'd like to give?

Förgjord wants to present Finnish culture as it really is, in it cruelest form. Although you can see beautiful paintings of Akseli Gallen-Kallela or go to Lapland to see untouched nature, there is lots of darkness and misery under that pretty surface. We don't see sun a a lot and are isolated people. Finnish people are simple, depressed, full of pride and some of us cant handle alcohol. Here is even a term called "rähinäviina" ("anger booze") and it present when some people take spirits, they lost their control like a berzerker. When usually normal people pass out at that time, Finnish man wakes from cell covered in blood and without any traces of memories. It has said we have this gene that makes blood sugar-level go down when drinking and that's why many lost their control. It has always said that Perkele, the devil, takes the control. And that Perkele has a big part of Förgjord.

What is your personal credo? Do you follow a religious, moral or theoretical code?

I'm quite strict to myself because everything is connected to everything, body-mind-soul. If something ain't in balance, things start to happen. And my credo is also connected to it. I believe in higher being. One can call it destiny or universe or even an almighty, but it's a same thing, just a different name. But it ain't any "god" or "satan" but something above them. Something much more bigger. For it there ain't "good" or "bad" if you look the bigger picture. Everything has it meaning and everything that happens, happens in a reason.

What is the main motivation that drives you to create music?

I want to reflect something that lives inside me, but there ain't any other way to present as through Förgjord. Be it in its musick, lyrics, visual side or even soundscape. One has to remember that I have carried Förgjord in my heart way over half of my life. So there is no way to separate us. Even I cant tell where Förgjord starts and where my personal life ends. Just like Burzum. I cant think it as a "band" not even "one mans project". It's something bigger, like an institute and would be it even without musick. For me creating Förgjord stuff is like meditation. I see this blink vision that I start to follow. And I just work with it without knowing where its gonna take me. Work guides itself and I feel myself just a tool. And after a while I have created something I didn't even knew I could do.

What are the answers that only black metal can provide to the recent life we live in?

Black metal creates this counterforce to many people. It questions many moral codes and hopefully it is a a gateway to break through from brainwashed society. It supports individualism and also tribalism. It supports strength and higher beings (be it satan, universe or even man itself) and so on. But still, even if black metal might be gateway to this world too many, it still is just one way to express it. Not the main thing. There have to be meaning, the purpose, the inner flame, that you present through black metal. Not the other way around, you can't do black metal for long without that true meaning.

What is the recent status of your local black metal community?

Finland is a small country (we have like six million people or so) so everyone know someone that know someone. So of course circles are small. Here ain't any "levels of elitism" in that circle, but more like there is people who have earned their status or who are better to explain their visions and have gathered comrades and followers around them. But it's only good thing that circles are small. I remember few decades ago when there were lots of backstabbing and talking shit behind ones back. But it didn't take a long when those talks came to others knowledge and so on. And in this day of social media and other message systems, it might be just matter of hours when whole community know what has happened. So our circles are that's why quite transparent. Of course you don't have to stand with every person, but if you're gonna stand against them, make sure you can handle it.

As we are a Hungarian crew, we'd like to ask that what do you know about Hungary? Have you ever been here, what kind of experiences you gain here during your visit. What do you know about the Hungarian Black Metal underground?

Have to confess that I know nothing about Hungary. But would be great to see old town and architecture of Budapest for example and see the countryside. About black metal know only Tormentor.