AFARGANG – interview

As previously announced – https://eternal-terror.com/2025/03/21/afargang-announces-new-album-and-releases-single/ -Afargang,  the brainchild of Olav L. Mjelva and Norway’s most renowded fiddler, recently signed to By Norse, released a first single and announced a new album, ‘Andvake’, set for worldwide release on June 13. 

At the heart of Afargang is Olav Luksengård Mjelva, the band’s architect and guiding force. A musician whose soul resonates with the echoes of Norway’s past, his mastery of folk music and particularly the Hardanger fiddle, injects a spectral quality into the band’s sonic framework. But Afargang is no exercise in nostalgia. Instead, it is a collision of forces—where the weight of tradition meets the unbridled power of black metal. Mjelva’s voice, raw and commanding, channels something ancient and untamed.

Olav explains, “As a folk musician, I feel that Norway’s ancient music and culture are a part of my heritage. I use the fiddle to create soundscapes, rather than as the leading melody. There are a lot of folk metal bands that really don’t really understand folk music. They write melodies that sound folkish, played with heavy guitars, but I don’t think that works very well. I wanted to use the Nordic elements as a soundscape to go along with the very heavy music.”

Reading the rest of the presentation and comments regarding the first single and upcoming album, plus Olav’s background, we took up on the chance to ask some questions and present you with the replies we have received. Hope to make you curious about this intriguing upcoming release and to follow mor eof this talented musician’s work:

What I read in your biography is that you have started playing the fiddle at he age of seven and then few years later, the Hardangerfiddle. What the bio doesn’t really say is how did you end up, along the years, forming all the interesting projects you are a member of. “founding member of both the Norwegian – Swedish ensemble SVER, The Nordic Fiddlers Bloc, a trio specialising in Norwegian, Swedish and Shetland fiddle music and also the Rydvall/Mjelva duo alongside Swedish Nyckelharpa player Erik Rydvall”. How did you find other people with similar interests, how did you find the resources to actually found such projects and keep them alive?

Ooooh, that´s a complicated question. And those projects are just a selection of them, but The Nordic Fiddlers, SVER, Rydvall/Mjelva and Lodestar Trio have been my main projects the last years. I did not intend to do music full time, but during my studies at the Ole Bull Academy I met several of the people involved in these projects. We started both SVER and The Nordic Fiddlers around the same time and started playing some gigs here and there. After a while we started touring, and it was no way back.

I met Erik Rydvall in some festivals later, and I had never heard the Hardanger Fiddle and the Nyckelharpa together. So I asked him if he wanted to try to make some music together. Now we have 3 albums as a duo, and we later formed Lodestar Trio together with the English violinist Max Baillie, and the trio has been playing more and more the last 5 years.

I think the short answer is that there have been a lot of coincidenses, and I have met the right people at the right time. I have also had a drive myself to get these projects working, of course.

Do you feel like you still ‘learn’ the fiddle or is it more that you try to push its known limits when you create music?

The fiddle is incredibly versatile and difficult and I will never feel that I have learnt everything. And that is a really good thing. I try to find new ways to push the instrument´s limits, but also I try to find new settings and soundscapes where the instrument will work (or not).

And speaking of creating music, what’s your process. Do you always have ideas that you records here and there and put them together once there’s enough ideas or do you sit down and compose something on purpose?

Sometimes I get a few bars of music in my head and I have to sing them into my phone. Those ideas usually evolve to something that will be used later. My challenge is that I really like to have time when I´m composing. I find it hard to sit down one day between tours and create something. I work best when I can have several days in a row.
In 2024 I had most of January and February to compose, and I made most of the Afargang album then. It was a great creative process, and I had no idea if it was good music or not, haha.

What instrument do you use when composing, at first at least?

It´s always the fiddle for my instrumental projects.
For Afargang, most of it started with the guitar. A riff or some chords. Then I usually add some really bad drums from Easy Drummer and continue to build the song from there. Sometimes I would hear the vocal melody straight away, and it could be a verse, a bridge or a chorus. I love that process. And it´s incredibly fun to go from super bad demos to actually recording for real! 

What unexpected things have you learned when making the ‘”Andvake” album?

The process of making that album has really opened parts of my creative brain I didn´t know I had before I started.
I have always loved text, but haven´t written so many lyrics before this album. It´s something I really want to explore more. It´s also the first album I sing on. I have been doing backing vocals on other albums, but have never been in front. In the beginning I was very unsure if I should do the vocals myself, but now I am very glad I did it!
It is a cliche, but everything is possible when you just decide to do it!

What has inspired the texts of the album and who wrote them?

I wrote all the lyrics myself, with a little help from my friend Jo Bjørner Haugom in the beginning (for Mot Verda and Leva).
I don´t know where it all came from, to be honest, but I really loved the process.
Someone has said to me that this is a really melancholic album, and when I look back, I have to agree. I don´t want to decide what people think the lyrics are about, but I have a feeling it is a lot about physical unhealth, and “Andvake”, an unresting soul.

How did the black metal or extreme parts of the album come to life? Is this kind of music something you have always listened to or is it something more recent? What artists inspire you there?

I have listened a lot to heavy metal and rock all my life, but the black metal part has come later. I have been searching for some darker and more aggressive music the last years, without knowing really why. Maybe as a counter weight to all the nice folk music I have been playing, haha. I´ve been trying to find the darkest of the darkest. I saw Taake live in Oslo this winter. What a live band! God Seed is also a favorite, and I was super happy when Stian Kårstad who played guitar with them said yes to join me on this album! At first I couldn´t believe it, but he is the nicest guy ever, and he played a huge part in the creative sound of the Afargang album.

 
Have you heard Ihsahn’s “Hardingrock”? What do you think about it?

I hadn´t, but I had to listen now! I like it! I really have huge respect for Ishahn as a musician and performer. And Knut Buen is great too. He´s a real legend! This will definitely give me some new ideas!

Have you thought about performing this music live? How complicated would it be to arrange the songs for live performances?

Yes. I really want to play live! It´s no problem arranging the songs for live concerts, but there is a process in finding the right people to work with. And I want it to be really good when it goes live, so there is also of course a matter of time and costs for production and rehearsals. Then there is, of course, the job of booking tours and festivals.
But it will go live, hopefully next year!

Would you like to make more of this kind of albums or go into other directions in the future?

I´m starting to work on the second Afargang album soon!

Do you teach music? I’m wondering if there’s any interest among younger people for fiddle at all?

There is a big folk music wave now, actually. And a lot of younger people are interested in playing and dancing. I don´t teach that much, but I have started The Folk Music Academy, a quite big online site where you can learn to play many folk instruments from the best folk musicians in the world! We actually have more than 40 courses and 600 video lessons now, and new courses are coming!

How do you view the changes brought in the music field by the AI? Do you use it yourself for anything?

Complex question. Many plugins for production are AI driven, so I can´t say that I won´t use that part of it at all. But I don´t have any respect for music and songs that are 100% AI created. It can be a fun party thing, but it´s not the real deal.
I believe that AI probably can create “hits”, but I also think that the big hits are hits because people can connect them to an artist.

Thank you for your time!

 Thank you!