Getting to Know… Aspherium | Interview 🎤

For 45^th interview in the Getting to Know… series, The Musical Hype gets the scoop from Norwegian progressive death metal band, Aspherium.

Progressive death metal.  Conceptual albums. Long, epic songs.  …Brimming with awesome riffs.  Sigh, these are just few characteristics of Aspherium, the Norwegian band that is the subject of the 45^th edition of The Musical Hype’s Getting to Know… interview series.  Aspherium is comprised of four members: Marius Skarsem Pedersen (guitars/vocals), Bjørn Tore Erlandsen (drums), Torgeir Lyby Pettersen (bass), and Morten Nielsen (guitars).  For the interview, it was guitarist and vocalist Marius Pederson that gave us the scoop on the collective.  Without further ado, her is Getting to Know… Aspherium – Interview #45. 

Brent Faulkner, The Musical Hype (BF): Let’s get this started off right. For those who may not be familiar with Aspherium, what would you say makes your band distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

Marius Skarsem Pedersen (Aspherium): Hey! Marius from Aspherium here. We are a progressive death metal band from Norway. We mix all of our favorite styles of metal together and structure our songs to take the listener on a journey. We make concept albums, and have a lot of long, epic songs. We incorporate a lot of mellow sections and we work hard on having everything flow together as one cohesive musical journey. And it is brimming with awesome riffs!

BF: “Brimming with awesome riffs” – #Rock On. Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did Aspherium form and what were some of the goals or the visions you had as a band early on?

Marius: We formed after a previous band didn’t go anywhere. The goal was to be able to play the music that we really wanted to, without being held back by lack of skill or members that didn’t want to invest blood, sweat and tears. One of the early realistic goals was to release an album, and we got that one done in 2011.

BF: Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

Marius: They have certainly become more realistic. In the beginning we were pretty naive and had all these grand ideas of how amazing everything would be. And when we got really great feedback and reviews on our first demo, and then our album as well as our live shows, we really thought we could get pretty big. That really didn’t happen, though. We’ve slowly and steadily been growing over the years, but we realized that this would not be easy, even when we continued to get so much amazing feedback from people about our music. Any rock star aspirations are gone, but we do hope to be able to do this on a higher level, and being able to do the band full time would be the ultimate goal now. We want to grow the band and play to more people, and travel to more places we haven’t been. While continuing to release great music.

BF: Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

Marius: Our music is such a mix of different styles of metal, it’s just what comes naturally when we write. But there’s a bunch of different bands that are behind that. We don’t try to sound like these bands, but they were really important to us, and helped shape the music we like and how we think about songs and playing our instruments. Some bands are Opeth, Metallica, Emperor, Machine Head, Tool, Dream Theater, Nile, Meshuggah [and] Fear Factory.

BF Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.  

Marius: When we were traveling over a mountain in Norway on our way to Bergen for a festival, there was a blizzard and were stuck in our car for several hours on the top of this mountain. When we eventually arrived at the venue, which was a small boat, we were so late that we had to go right on stage and play when we arrived. It ended up being a pretty good gig, but we were exhausted with no sleep and not having had anything to eat or drink.

BF: Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

Marius: My favorite song is “Until the Embers Fade” from our new album The Embers of Eternity. It’s the last song on the album, and it is big and epic and goes through a lot of different moods. We still haven’t played that one live, though. It will be awesome when we do! This song includes a keyboard solo, which is a first for us, so we will have to do live keyboard for the first time will be fun!

BF: Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

Marius: We played on a children’s TV show in Norway! Which was a lot of fun!

BF: Closing this thing out, what is Aspherium currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure. 

Marius: We recently released a new album, The Embers of Eternity! It’s a concept album about a future where humanity [is] unable to save the earth. Would love of people would check it out on Spotify or their preferred place to listen to music. We have CD and vinyl as well, just head to our website. Also check out our two new music videos!

BF: Thank you so much for sharing taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward.   

Marius: We appreciate it so much, thanks for having us on! Thanks for reading, everyone! –Marius, Aspherium

Aspherium socials: Website • Facebook • Twitter • Instagram • YouTube • Spotify

Photo Credits: Brent Faulkner, The Musical Hype, Aspherium