First of all I must congratulate you with the excellent Discipline! You must be satisfied with the response?
Yes it was good to be back in with some cutting edge metal once again.

The first opus 'Hallucinating Anxiety' was released on Necrosis, a sub-division of Earache. It was in its time managed by members of Carcass. How did you get in touch with the them?
I sent a letter as a fan to Jeff from Carcass and established contact with them back in 1989. He sent me a tape with the Reek of Putrefaction demo and Peel sessions. He wanted to hear my band and I sent the rehearsal we did that week and he wanted to sign us Immediately. It was kind of strange as Peaceville also wanted us at the time, but we choose with the heart and went for Necrosis.

The lyrics on 'HA' deal with medical issues, firmly rooted in the Carcass tradition. The artwork is also extremely gory. How important was Carcass as an inspirational source back then?
They meant a lot to our lyrical direction in 1989, but not as much to the music, at least not in retrospect.
We had Morbid Angel, Celtic Frost, Kreator, Voivod and Slayer as our biggest influence musically at the "Hallucinating" period.

The extreme metal-scene in Norway was substantially smaller back then, but a lot of interesting bands seemed to appear from the Fredrikstad-area. What was your relationship with Equinox like? Didn't Espen Sollum play with them?
They we're our friends and "uncles". Espen didn't play with them. They had their own thing and didn't involve guest stars. The drummer became Ole Bjerkebakkes brother in law too and sold him his drum kit. I bought a guitar from Grim, so you can say we recorded the first stuff with Equinox left over gear.

I was never able to catch you live, but how did your gigs work out when your drummer was also the singer?
Too bad for you I guess. He had a mic strapped on like you see boybands and dance acts have on TV now. It was not a good idea in between songs as he always commented he's playing being bad through the PA. I guess we could have reached out to a wider audience with an old fashion frontman, but we had such a strange lineup so people remember the gigs still.

Despite the excellent 'In Pains' Cadaver went on a break up until 1999. What happened with the band after this release?
We had a manager (my name mate) Anders Oddsberg who tried to get us on tour in Europe straight after the release, but it failed. We gigged in Norway a lot and had our biggest gig with Ian Gillian and Go Go Gorilla in Hammerfest sports hall with 3000 people (!)
Just before we gave up the whole touring thing we got a UK tour together with Red Harvest and Osiris in the spring of 1993.
This was a journey from hell that shaped us all and made us realize how hard touring can be. We had an early Cradle of Filth supporting us on 4 gigs and met a lot of famous people to come like Nick Barker - Dimmu. He was drumtech for the band Cancer on tour then, and of course Dani Filth who came with Norwegian newspapers he wanted translated about the church fires etc. We had the last Cadaver gig at Sentrum Scene in June 1993.

Cadaver has had a lot of changes in the line-up through the years, but seem to have settled on a stable one. Are you still in touch with old bandmates, what are they up to?
Yes/No. Ole Bjerkebakke is still active as in music, now with a band called Peru U. He started Ricochets in 1999, which had a huge impact on Norwegian Rock for a few years. I see him now and then, but we're not in touch on a regular basis. Eilert Solstad have been in other bands too like Lost Luggage, a street punk band in Oslo. I don't see him very much, but we talk every time we meet.

What made you reform the band? How did you get in touch with the new members? (A skilled bunch of musicians indeed!)
I was asked to join Satyricon for the recording of Rebel Extravanza in 1998/99 and saw it as an opportunity to re-vitalize my guitarwork back to metal. We had many rehearsals with just Frost and me and we used to just jam to warm up before Satyr came along. This gave me time to work out a lot of old and new ideas I had going and I soon found out that I had many songs in me. This led to a pub round where LJ Balvaz and I talked about starting a new metalband. He was my first choice on bass in 1990 too, but this was before Eilert came along. Czral had a lot of time off since none of his band was doing anything, so the three of us just joined for some rehearsals in Dimmu Borgirs reh room for fun and there it's came clear to me, This is CADAVER!

Whats with the Inc.?
The Inc. part came after a lot of discussions (I wish I win them now), and we found out it would keep the name with us and mean something new at the same time. I was never very comfortable with it, but it led to the most spectacular internet hoaxes ever with cadaverinc.com That's another story

How did the tour following the release of Discipline go?
This time the touring was great. We did what I wanted in 1992, tour with Morbid Angel, and we toured with Extreme Noise Terror. The band we have now have an amount of gigs behind it that the old Cadaver would have dreamed of. It feels like it's all coming into place now especially with the next record too.

What caused the end of your relationship with Earache? Have you signed any new deals?
This will have to be a secret until I want it to come out, but we left them in good faith. We have not signed a new deal as we're recording to own the master and get it licensed out. We have about 6-7 interested labels already, and that's before they even hear the record. The process of choosing a new label will go faster as soon as the album is ready.

How far have you come in the process of making the new album?
(As we speak, 21. July 2003) we're finished with all the drums and will start working guitars tomorrow. It's done in a totally different way than Discipline, and will sound more original. We have 9 strong songs and the lyrics are much more in focus as well. We're going to surprise a lot of people with this record and I can't wait to hear it ready.

When can we expect this release?
I hope it's out in oktober/november. We'll play with Enslaved at John Dee the 29th of November so it better be out then.

Questions answered by e-mail July 2003