Hi! This is Cosmocrator conducting the wordmagic - words sprung out a late Thursday evening. Earlier this evening MindGrinder got together feasting on a pizza and then making sure our live set was fit for fight having a gig coming up in about a weeks time. We were allso working on some new material by the way! Anyway, now it’s time to, hopefully, please some readers…. Cheers!<InterviewIt would be nice to introduce your band.

MindGrinder has existed since 96 but it took us some time to get going for real. The band has always been brutalised by Titan (Guitar) Nitrous (Gutar) and me, Cosmo, handeling the vox and bass duties. We released two 3 track demos, (Demolition 2001 and Bless the Imbeciles) which were well welcomed. Then we got a deal and we recorded the MindTech album late 2002. Due to our labels financial problems at that point, we had to postpone the albums release for a while. The whole thing ended when we decided to buy the album ourselves and terminate our cooperation with the label. After a short while we got a deal with Nocturnal Art. At the same time we added a new member to the band, namely the extremely talented drummer Dan. Concerning Source of Tide; the band still excists, but they are currently missing some members and keeping a low profile working on new material. Well, about sideprojects.. Titan, Nitrous and I have a 80’s metal cover (Kiss, Dio, Ozzy, Motörhead etc) band called Spider which we do some shows with from time to time, it’s great fun! Titan allso works with a project called Evilizer. Dan works from time to time with his old band Psycopathus. There might be some new projects in the future.

So introduce also your music….

We have always been going for a combination of groove and aggessiveness, what ever genre we work in aren’t really of any great concern to us, it’s just metal basicly. I don’t know what you mean by "strange”, but there are certain songs that might be pointed out as abit different than the others, for example Starspawned Vision which evenhas some clean vox. The "not easy to consume” part will mostly be up to the listener to deal with. If you spin the album in your CD player form time to time it could posably get more consumable maybe?

And what about the lyrics?

Oh, the lyrics are of the brand "angry with humanity and its residents” lyrics, he he. The lyrics are not the most important element to us, but they keep a certain standard which suits us fine. There is no concept idea behind the lyrics, they all stand as individual texts, some dealing with the same issues.

Although you are mindgrinding since eight years there’s nothing about touring, or?

We are doing some local festivals and supporting Testament at Rockefeller Hall, Oslo the 10th of June. Later on in September we wil join in on a "farewell to Windir and Valfar ” gig, allso at Rockefeller Hall. Appart from theese gigs I don’t see any tour coming up untill the Fall, which will be a busy time for us as we plan to record the next album there. We haven’t been doing any touring with MG yet, this is right.

But in fact, you like festivals?

Festivals are cool, but they tend to not give the artist the time and space they usually need to do their best. Anyway we will coop fine with this I guess, we are an easy going band mind(grind)ing our own business. The best ever festival I attended was the "Mygg und Presenning Festivalen”.

Let’s talk a bit about Norway.

Norway is known for all the good (and some not so good) BM bands. Still there is a lot more going on here; thrash, death, industrial/metal etc, bands with character and great creativity. Here at Notodden we have some bands representing different styles but still many of them are the offspring of the late great Emperor. Norway is a great country to live in, we have whatever we need here. We invented the mighty cheeseslicer ("Ostehövel”) and the even mightier clip-on ("Binders”) and we are extremely proud of it and talk about it on a dayly basis while having some zips of our homemade mooshine. People tend to ask us if there are polarbears in the streets; yes there is, but they are now Black (Metal) Bears because of all the oil flowing in the streets, which is also the reason for Norwegian Black (oil) Metal!! Come to Norway and see all the Danish tourists sking and the Americans wondering when the "Hardangerfjorden” opens, it’s fantastic!

Back to music: What about favourite bands and influences?

Back to music, yes! ;) I have different favourites from time to time, but in general we are talking about the usual stuff like Slayer, Carcass, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond, Morbid Angel, Metallica, Obituary, Testament, Kreator, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla…

Your are also able to tell us something about the famous Akkerhaugen.

Yes, We recorded the album at well known Akkerhaugen Studio (Emperor, Myrkskog, Zyklon, Source of Tide, Windir) with Toby Akkerhaugen as our engineer. It took us about 2 weeks to record and mix it, but then again we had allready done some stuff at my studio prior to the Akkehaugen Studio session. For the most part the most interesting that happened there was the fact that the MindGrinder debut album MindTech was given birth!! ;)

And what about the normal life of a mindgrinder?

All of us have to work with regular jobs to get by and some of us go to schoola and universities having to get big loans to finance this. We are normal slaves to routine society, ha!! Concerning hobbies we have different tastes; some like weapons, some war history, some like cars, boats etc, but in genreal most of our "speartime” goes to music.

Something sad at the end: Valfar, mastermind of the great Windir, died. Cosmo sang at Windir. Can you tell me something about his death…? And try to describe, what the metal scene has lost….

I will not go in to details about Valfars death, but he froze to death, that’s a fact. More information about this tragedy will be revealed by the Windir clan themselves if they feel like it. What I will tell you is that the Norwegian Metal Society lost an important person which amused and meant a lot to many people. He lives on in his work. RIP.