A Conversation with Sykofant (Part 1 of 2)

Sykofant is a progressive rock band from Oslo, Norway, but prog is perhaps too limiting a term for what they do. On their self titled debut album, the group takes listeners through a sonic and narrative journey. It’s a concept album, and they explore a wide assortment of musical styles and textures. Throughout the journey, you’ll hear nods to their musical heroes. Some are overt and others are more subtle. But at its core, Sykofant’s debut release is a stunningly original work. On one hand, it’s richly melodic and accessible, but on the other, it’s an ambitious work that holds together as a cohesive whole. I won’t be surprised if I end up naming it my favorite album of the year. It’s that good; a remarkable achievement for a new band.

Very recently, I spoke with two of the band’s four members: Sykofant’s co-founder, vocalist and guitarist Emil Moen, and drummer Melvin Treider. (The other two are bassist Sindre Haugen and guitarist/co-founder Per Semb.) The following is an edit of our conversation. – bk

Bill Kopp: The album is such an accomplished work. Do either of you or anyone in the group have experience making albums before this?

Emil Moen: Me and Per, the other guitar player played in several bands before, some more serious than others. I think between us, we made a couple, two, three albums before, but none which are of similar scope as to the Sykofant album. It has been an undertaking, and that was kind of the mission as well. When we started writing, it was to make something conceptual and something huge.

Basically, everything about the album, the writing, the playing, the arrangement, the production, even the packaging, reminds me of a major label release. But you’ve done this all on your own.

Emil: Yeah, I think we tried for a bit.

Melvin Treider: We did for a bit, yeah. At first we thought it would be nice to try to land a record deal, so we started emailing record labels, and most of them we didn’t hear back from. We did get response from a few saying, “I dig the album, but we’re not looking for prog rock in this market.” So then I guess we thought, “Why not just do it ourselves?”

Emil: I think we also kind of fell between two chairs, because some of the record labels that we contacted, the prog ones, are mostly looking for more classic neo-prog, post-Genesis types of bands. And we have a rougher edge with everything from Seattle grunge to… It’s a lot of influences on the album, as I’m sure you know. I think a lot of people were like, “Okay, this is cool, but I’m not sure if we can sell it because it’s kind of weird.”

What inspired you to make a conceptual album as opposed to merely a collection of individual songs that are not related to one another?

Emil: We wrote almost the whole album in chronological order. Le and Per both went through some personal stuff some years ago and found some consolation in just jamming together. And we made a lot of really experimental, weird stuff that we never used for anything. But after a while, we made the first song, and then “Between Air and Water,” and halfway into it, it was like, “This could actually be something good.” I started writing some lyrics, and I developed this concept, and the snowball just got bigger and bigger. And then suddenly we are here with six songs and a thought-out story and concept and packaging and all the things you mentioned.

One of the impressive characteristics about the album is the way that it moves seamlessly between different styles. I have to say that the spaghetti western and surf textures caught me completely off guard at first. Now when I listen again, I look forward to those parts coming. You keep people on their toes.

Emil: That’s the point. And I think that’s a result from endless hours of jam sessions that we’ve done. And we always had this mentality that the band is founded on: everything goes. There’s nothing that’s off the table. It just has to sound good. And we’ve spent countless hours trying weird combinations of genres. The whole surf rock western thing, because “Strangers” has a desert kind of theme, we thought that we could have this heavy prog, almost a metal kind of intro. And following the story, we needed something epic. And what is more epic than, like, Ennio Morricone kind of spaghetti western feel?

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