Interview: Black Birch

Post-black metal with a tinge of hardcore punk for added flavor? Yes, please! Black Birch out of Sweden is a fascinating project that came onto the scene in January of this year with their first single, “Weak”. Since then, it has been a torrential outpouring of new music, which has increasingly caught the attention of new listeners (myself included). Their brand of post-black metal has such a unique vibe that blends elements of both heartbreak and hopefulness in a distinct and mysterious way.

As someone who stumbled upon them earlier this year, I was immediately interested in picking their brain to learn more about the project. Graciously, Ulf and Gina of Black Birch agreed to share their thoughts with the Blacforje community, including an inside glimpse of who they are outside of the music. Read and enjoy.

First off, thanks so much for taking time to do an interview with Blacforje! I’ve really enjoyed your music that I’ve heard thus far, so it’s a pleasure to connect with you all.

To start off, you are based in Sweden, right? What part?

Yes! We often say we’re from Malmö since that’s the place most people know of, and we lived there for many years. But since about two years back we live in a small house in the countryside, just outside of Skurup, which is about 30 min from Malmö.

You just released your first EP on September 1st. Congrats!

Yes, this will be our first physical release, and it’s a self-titled 12” vinyl with music on one side and screen print on the other.

If even possible, can you tell us what listeners can expect from the EP sonically and lyrically? Is this a compilation of your singles, or are these all-new songs?

The EP is sort of a story starting at the beginning of the end. It walks you through the stages of death and life and the connection in-between. I’d say that there’s a lot of emotions involved here. Feelings of desperation, hopelessness and guilt combined with rage and frustration of what’s not possible to control. Beauty combined with sadness and disgust. At least that’s what we try to convey. We wanted to keep the music rather uncomplicated so the listener can perceive the harmonies but to also have passages of pure rage to cut off the softness.

On the EP there will be 4 songs of totally 22-minutes of music. Two of the songs are released since before – “Fallen” and “Soil”. Then there are two songs that were released one week before the EP came out on September 1st, which is “Death” and finally “Birth”, which will be released about a month after the vinyl release on September 29th.

If you had to pick a favorite track off the EP, which one would you say you take the most satisfaction in?

Gina - For me, I have to say “Death” simply because there’s so much emotion for me in this song. It reflects many different layers of how I look on and feel about death which I, and we, really tried to convey in this song both through the vocals and lyrics but also with the music.

Ulf - It’s so hard to answer this. It changes depending on what mood I’m in. But I tend to really like “Fallen”. It was the second song we released, and for me it was kind of an eye opener of what our “sound” would be, so I still have a certain connection to that one.

When we first connected, one of the things I learned that we have in common is our mutual stance against suicide and self-harm. You told me that you addressed this in one of your songs, as well. Which song were you referring to, and what drove you to write it?

So, maybe not so surprisingly I was referring to the song “Death”. But I really didn’t want it to focus solely on self-harm but rather about the surreal feeling of losing someone in whatever way there may be. For me, it was to self-harm, but for someone else it could have been something else, and I don’t think the feelings are that different however you lose someone. So musically, what we’re trying to convey, is the devastating feeling of losing someone, even though we all know this is the cycle of life.

Having too many people around me choosing this path, it was quite hard for me writing “Death”. Not only because of the pain and memories it brought back, both beautiful and sad, but also how to write about suicide and loss, in this genre, without it being some sort of incentive. So, I think “Death” is more a way of trying to find comfort and acceptance in losing someone.

Black metal as a genre is often unjustly associated with darkness, evil, and destruction. Personally, I find there to be a lot of artists and bands out there who are quite uplifting to the human spirit within the black metal genre. Whether we’re talking about artists who celebrate their love of nature, their personal spiritual journey, or their love of fantasy, I believe black metal is much more diverse than people realize. Have you seen the same thing from an artist’s perspective? It’s totally cool if you disagree with my conclusion. But I’m just curious: do you think black metal is evolving beyond the stereotypes?

I totally agree that black metal has and still is evolving. I think overall, the view of black metal has shifted a lot since its younger days, which is, of course, an effect of the genre expanding where not only darkness and despair is the main soul. For me, a big part of black metal is the feeling conveyed and that it often is very intense. Whether it’s of devastation or joy, it still gives you this overwhelming sensation. So, it most definitely doesn’t have to be depressive or heavy at heart. I, for example, really like Lustre and Agriculture who both have sounds that may not be the most typical of black metal. They go more towards the ecstatic and beautiful in their soundscape.

We also try to bring some of that into our music combining our feeling of hopelessness and angst with what is beautiful and joyful. For example, our song “Wry” is 100% a love song, covering how me and Ulf met, and how lucky we were to find one another. “Wry” is also a tribute to indie rock band MEW who celebrate 20 years since the release of their album Frengers this year - an album we both listened to a lot when we first met 12 years ago. So maybe not what you’d say is the typically portrayed image of black metal. But I think this typical image is maybe more for those not into the genre rather than those who are.

I know a lot about your band’s ethos, but for readers who are not that familiar with Black Birch, how would you describe the philosophical and spiritual aesthetic to your music?

When starting Black Birch, we didn’t decide on any specific topic or way to go with the music except for the genre and some thoughts on sound. We wanted to keep it quite open to see what would come out. So, what the songs are about, lyric-wise, is not planned in any way. That’s just what came out and is more an expression of our beliefs, I guess. And since we are vegan, anti-fascist, leftists, feminist, pro-choice, and overall pro being whoever you'd like to be without anyone giving the slightest fuck…that’s a lot of what the music is about, both what we want to communicate through the music as well as lyrics.

Were you in a black metal band before starting Black Birch?

No, we haven’t played black metal until now, but we have played in other bands and still do. Even though we have listened to black metal both when we were a lot younger and have found it again a few years back, we are more from the punk and hardcore scene. Gina is currently active in all female hardcore/riot grrrl band GASP, and Ulf has played in Grace Will Fall, Trophies, and Palmess, amongst others.

What bands and artists inspire the work you do with Black Birch?

It’s straight up impossible to mention specific bands here. I’d say that if we would have started a band 10 years ago, it would have been something totally different. Now, we have the experiences that we have, we’ve listened to a lot of different types of music that has made an imprint, and that combined is what led to Black Birch. It’s bands from all kinds of genres like 70s-80s rock, 2000s metal, crust, post metal, punk, hardcore, and of course, black metal, but also a lot of ambient and instrumental music.

I know we tackled the philosophical and spiritual side of Black Birch, but what are you comfortable sharing with readers about you as individuals outside of music? What are your hobbies? Who are you other than musicians?

So, as I think we clarified earlier, me and Ulf live together and have been since almost 12 years. We are both working for ourselves, Ulf as a sound engineer/music producer (Hoborec Studio) and me as a graphic/product designer. We’re both leaning more towards the creative side of things, so we tend to overlap each other in a lot of things we do, which is very fortunate, I have to say.

We quite often find ourselves taking on new projects of any sort. Working for money has never really driven us, so despite providing for ourselves with creative work that we love, we often tend to fill our time with projects that don't bring an income. We have tried to not make work run our lives, which is something we often talk about being really grateful about.

We’ve spent a lot of our time together renovating, so I guess this is a quite big part of what we do. We do everything ourselves, so it takes some time, but we’ve figured that we'd rather do it like that than doing paid work to hire someone else to do it. Right now, we are renovating our rural house from around the late 1800s, and we try to use as much second-hand stuff as possible, both due to the cost but also resources. Now with Black Birch being the bigger priority, it’s a bit chaotic where we live, but we’ve spent so much time focusing on renovation that we felt it could have a break for a while focusing on something else.

We love going to gigs, festivals, travel, and visiting friends, which we often do going around in our 2-seat camp-car that’s transformed into a “transportation vehicle for renovation crap” during the winter.

Other than that, we have a dog named Bobo who is our baby of 9 years. He’s the best and has the worst temper when tired, but we love him to death!

Any chance you’ll be playing live in North America anytime soon?

We will not be doing any live performances during 2023, but hopefully we will next year, and then we’d be more than happy to go to North America.

Last question: If you were ever to start another project outside of Black Birch, what genre would it be? Why?

Gina - I’m divided by having a straight up crust band like From Ashes Rise or an electronic/black gaze/synth project.

Ulf - I’ve had some sort of progressive post-metal project in my head for years, but time will tell if that ever becomes reality. [laughs]

You can follow Black Birch on Bandcamp, Instagram, and Facebook.

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