Biography from Last.fm
Windir ('Primal Warrior' in English) were a black metal band from Sogndal, Norway. The band combined black metal with folk music and mythology. The band was formed in 1994 and released its debut album in 1997. Windir was a project of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Terje "Valfar" Bakken. Windir produced four albums in their almost ten years of existence, each more complex and successful than the last. The band broke up when Valfar died of hypothermia. Many of Windir's lyrics are written in Sognamål. Read more on Last.fm
Didn’t you hear? We all just survived Ragnarok. The latest instalment in the long line of ancient-cultures-predicting-the-end-of-the-world trend passed everyone by on Saturday night, and at no point did Fenrir eat the world, or Odin get into an almighty ruck with the Midgard Serpent. Ho hum.
And what better way to celebrate this ridiculous non-event than by listening to a load of Viking Metal? EXACTLY.
The world needs yet another book about black metal as much as Varg Vikernes needs to buy another gunrack, right? Well, Dayal Patterson doesn’t agree (about the book part, at any rate). A regular writer and photographer to Metal Hammer (as well as an occasional contributor to Record Collector and The Quietus), Dayal has penned Black Metal: Evolution Of The Cult, a mammoth 600+ page book on “the progress of the genre, from its infancy in the early eighties through to its resurrection in the nineties and onwards to the fascinating scene we see today” (cheers, for that, PR blurb). Blimey.
With all that in mind, we gave Dayal a buzz to ask him our usual mix of awkward, annoying, and ever-so-slightly insightful questions about his book, the musicians he interviewed in order to write it, and just why British black metal bands look so silly in corpse paint.