Band photo by Terje Visnes

It’s been eight years since I first interviewed Bent Sæther, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist in the Norwegian act Motorpsycho. I remember being obsessed with rusbank.net their then-new album, Behind the Sun and wanting to find out more about the music, the band, their mindset and what not. Luckily, he answered many of my curiosities and shed some light upon their creative process as well. Since 2014, the group has been just as prolific as before, releasing a string of excellent albums that have become some of my favorites in their discography. Earlier this year, Ancient Astronauts was announced without much detail around it, so I reached out to Bent for another interview and I am happy he found the time to offer some updates on their latest records, including this brand new sonic journey out on August 19.

You entered this, let’s say in a broad term, progressive rock phase with 2010’s Heavy Metal Fruit. How do you feel Motorpsycho’s direction shifted since then, or if it’s easier, in the past 5 years, since we first listened to The Tower?

Oh, we’ve been called everything under the sun since always, but the ‘prog’ one was always there. I think we might even have called ourselves that way back in the earliest of days since it was so unhip in 1989!
While I like the idea of progressiveness in music, this labeling in reality just makes it easier to not really listen to music properly. ‘Oh, it’s metal?’ – I will have a bunch of parameters dialed in and a bunch of prejudices good to go, and I won’t have to engage with the music as much. Which is a bummer, cuz I will miss out!
With ‘prog’ that goes double, because most stuff called prog today is just the formulaic boring shite punk was invented to kill, and in our minds we are as punk as we are metal or prog and this label is obviously wrong: expecting us to sound like Marillion is as wrong as expecting us to sound like … well, anyone! Then again, the most inspired rock-adjacent music ever made was made by underground or progressive bands in the early 70s, and we are hugely inspired by their ambitions and reach, and if that is what is meant, we’re flattered!
Anyway, we spent years in the 2000s neglecting our heavier side on record, and it might have been around Heavy Metal Fruit that we opened that door again, sure. These days we still enjoy a good epic rockout more than the pop format verse/chorus thing, but I have no idea whether this will continue or the focus will shift.
We’ve never had a plan and we won’t start now!

Do you follow a certain sonic route from one album to another or just do what comes naturally at that point?

No master plan, no plot, just music and whatever feels most important to do in the moment. Different studios/engineers/producers to make the process feel fresh, but no endgame as such, other than making good shit!

A large portion of the bands that cross the 30-year milestone enter the “legacy mode”, where they often maintain a familiar output and play a familiar set live to please as many fans as possible. However, you guys are constantly exploring and performing massive gigs that span your entire catalog. What keeps you motivated and forward looking?

This is the simple answer: we are shit when we are coasting, and need a certain nervousness or unsettledness to be any good.
This notion we serve by having an as big as possible repertoire at any time so we won’t have to play any song we don’t feel like playing, and can keep it as fresh as possible all the time.
Old songs are not a problem, but the same old songs over and over again is. It’s all about focus and how to maintain it. That’s why we like long songs too: we get to stay in the musical bubble for longer!
New music is untested and unsettled and fresh, so we keep writing to stay interested. This is the only way we can hope to be relevant after all these years.

The Gullvåg trilogy (The Tower, The Crucible & The All Is One) was one very impressive string of records, how do you feel about these three records now that the dust has settled so to speak?

I think they are great, and I would’ve loved to be a fan of this band! Tomas joining opened up a lot of possibilities for us, and we are just beginning to stretch, but these first three with him are inspired, ambitious and weird – like they should be – and got us off to a great start!

Where does Kingdom of Oblivion fall in relation to the trilogy? If memory serves me right, some of the songs were recorded or at least composed during The All Is One sessions.

As with anything, things get stale after a while, and while we loved what Håkon Gullvåg brought to our thing, any more than 3 would’ve been too many. We didn’t want to establish a Snaggletooth/Eddie the ‘ead thing!
KofO was the next project and needed to look and feel different. The abundancy of more metal-ish material was one thing, all the small acoustic things another, and the art a third, but it was not a major step away from the first three at all, more of a refocus. It is my favorite so far (excluding Ancient Astronauts, which is too new to judge) since it has such a great balance and flow to it.
Some people seemed to view it as some in-betweenie album since it wasn’t all recorded in one place at one time, but hardly any of our albums ever were so this is a misunderstanding and a misconception: KofO it is a full-on album, probably the best of the ones with Tomas so far to my ears.

Moving on to the latest album, Ancient Astronauts, what prompted you to use this title? Is there a recurring theme throughout the LP?

The title was one of several possible ones for this movie project we’re working on, and we just stayed with that. Total pseudoscientific horseshit perhaps, but also a lovely notion: sometimes we feel like were just rediscovering ancient knowledge left here for us to find by previous generations (standing on the shoulders of giants so to speak), but sometimes you feel like you’re the one depositing material for future artists to hopefully be inspired by too. Chicken/egg thing, you know?
No concept album this either (none of them are, except Death Defying Unicorn), but it all relates to itself and feels pretty homogenous to me – in other words it’s An Album.

The last two epics here, “Mona Lisa/Azrael” and “Chariot of the Sun”, together with “N.O.X.” from The All Is One were soundtracks to the Rite of Spring-inspired dance performance by Homan Sharifi and Impure Dance Company. How much did the two songs mutate until recorded for Ancient Astronauts?

A lot! We had three or four periods of performances, and the music changed between every period. Working the music out in front of an audience was really helpful. “Chariot of the Sun”, for example, would probably have had words if we hadn’t done it like that. So yeah – they mutated a lot!

What about “The Ladder” & “The Flower of Awareness”? What’s their story?

“Flower of Awareness” is an improvisation by Deathprod and Tomas. Extremely moody and perfectly setting the stage for “ML/A”.
“The Ladder” is of the same vintage as the other two written ones, but was never a part of the dance project. As such you might call it a standalone, but then again probably the perfect opener for what follows, and hence as complementary as can be!
You have to understand that a band (or any kind of artist) never has a plan that they decide on beforehand and then execute in a studio (or whatever) – these things are in a constant state of flux and one makes it up as one proceeds. If you see it like this, notions like those in your question don’t make sense. An album is not a jigsaw puzzle to be solved.
Well…. it is (!), but it’s one with an uncertain number of pieces and an ever-changing picture/motif that you’ve never seen before and that has no perfect solution!
The art is knowing what belongs together and when to stop adding to it!

You mentioned recording Ancient Astronauts as a three piece for the first time in years. How was the recording process? How much did things shift due to Reine Fiske not being present in the studio?

We did live takes in the studio, all three of us on the floor, playing until we had a take we all (incl. Deathprod) liked.
Since Reine wasn’t a part of the dance performances, this music was arranged for a three-piece, so for one pair of hands less! I was doublenecking all the way and basspedaling along like a good ‘un, and he never even heard this music until it was mixed.
He would’ve had an influence if he’d been there I’m sure, but it’s impossible to say what exactly would’ve been different. Playing these with him going forward will probably supply the answer!
Deathprod played some Buchla synth (“Flower of Awareness” most obviously), but not a lot of other stuff, that was all the band double-/tripletasking.

Perhaps a ubiquitous question these days, but here it goes: how did the two pandemic years affect you on a personal level and Motorpsycho’s activity as well? Despite the setback, you remained prolific with the album releases and lucky to have managed to play a fair number of shows mainly in Norway throughout 2020 and 2021. Were the latter a breath of fresh air for you?

Well, we doubled down and got on with it, actually. Wrote a bunch of tunes and recorded them, and tried to keep busy.
The few gigs we did were heaven sent even if the sitting, limited audiences were weird at first, but in many ways it felt good to get off the bus for a bit to refocus and recharge too. It went on for far too long of course, but actually did us some good I think.
Personally, I got fat and learned to appreciate this whole thing more. Not bad!

You guys have finished a European tour this spring. How severe was the pandemic’s impact on the venues and promoters? Do you believe things have slowly started to return to normal in the music business?

It was the ‘pre-post-covid tour’ for sure! Too early for Germany and Italy, but 2nd half much better than 1st and it seemed like it was getting back to ‘normal’ by the end. It’s still too early to tell, but I hope we won’t see a permanent reduction in concert going activities – that would be another nail in the coffin for clubs, crew, ‘the biz’ as well as for marginal artists like us, so it’s all in the balance. Fingers crossed.

What are your plans post album release? Where and when can we see you playing in the near future??

We’ll be doing a few festivals in Europe this summer/fall, and some gigs in Norway as well, but it’s too early to do another big European tour. We are working on more releases and will hopefully add more gigs in the calendar as we go along though, so we won’t go away just yet!

I will ask this because I am 99% sure you guys are already planning the next move. What is next for Motorpsycho?

That is for me to know and you to find out! It might involve music though… 😉

Motorpsycho’s official website: http://motorpsycho.no/

Official webstore: https://motorpsycho.squarespace.com/

Sputnik’s Ancient Astronauts review: https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/85367/Motorpsycho-Ancient-Astronauts//