Episode 12 of Focus On Metal features an interview with Samoth of EMPEROR and ZYKLON fame. He discusses his current musical project, THE WRETCHED END. Photographer / author Bill Hale is featured on the same podcast. Check it out via the player below.

Focus On Metal - Samoth

Following is Robert Gray's recent interview with Samoth for BW&BK.;

The Norwegian black metal scene has its fair share of distinct figures, and Tomas (Samoth) Haugen is certainly one of those; four EMPEROR albums issued between 1994 and 2001 bear his guitar work, and so do three ZYKLON albums released between 2001 and 2006. On top of that, Samoth has performed on material by BURZUM, SATYRICON, GORGOROTH, and THOU SHALT SUFFER among others. Haugen teamed up with fellow ex-SCUM bandmate and bassist “Cosmocrator” (Mindgrinder) in 2008 to form extreme metal outfit THE WRETCHED END. Most of the material for debut full-length Ominous was penned that year, with pre-production being completed by spring 2009. Swede Nils Fjellström (DARK FUNERAL, IN BATTLE, AEON) was confirmed as drummer during the summer, who cut his parts at Strand Studio, Oslo in September 2009, and the whole album was completed by early 2010.

“I grew up with classic metal,” Samoth exclaims in describing Ominous. “I love thrash metal, I love death metal, and I love black metal. I love metal; I’m a metalhead at heart, and that will always be the driving force when I write music. I like a lot of the classic metal stuff, so there’ll be a lot of influences – even indirect influences – from metal bands I listened to as a young kid basically, and those classic bands like METALLICA, SLAYER, SEPULTURA, TESTAMENT and so on. That’s just timeless music for me. There’s no specific band that has influenced The Wretched End. Our influences come from different places; you can hear both elements of death metal, thrash metal and black metal in Ominous. For me, it’s not really that important how people label the album. I basically play the music I feel and the music I like, and that’s for me.”

Current BLOOD TSUNAMI and former Emperor drummer wrote several lyrics for Ominous, with even Samoth’s wife actually writing one set of lyrics. Samoth himself composed the majority of the lyrics for the outing, however. “Conceptually, Ominous is very Doomsday oriented,” Samoth confesses. “It has this really end of days feel to it I think, and that was the whole idea when I started writing the lyrics. They went in a different direction, somewhat. It has kind of that post-apocalyptic feel to it, that atmosphere – like we’ve driven earth into total chaos, basically.”

Samoth’s previous collaboration with Cosmo – Scum – only spawned one record, the 2005 deathpunk affair Gospels For The Sick. However, Samoth believes that The Wretched End has more long-term prospects. “The Wretched End is more my thing whereas Scum wasn’t something I started” he explains. “The Wretched End is definitely something that I feel a lot more emotional about. We’ve already started pre-production for the next album, and this project has quite a good creative flow. Actually, this new material has taken on a slightly different direction. It’s interesting when you think you know where you’re going, but all of a sudden, I’m heading in a slightly different direction. One of the songs we’ve made for the next album is the quickest track we’ve ever written, but at the same time, two other songs we’re working on are the slowest songs we’ve ever written. The fast song has a little bit more black metal, whereas the slower songs are more grinding, industrial sounding. We’ll see where it goes – it’s still in its early stages.”

Debut full-length Ominous was released on October 25th through Samoth’s own imprint label, Nocturnal Art Productions, and marketed and distributed worldwide by Candlelight Records.