Despite that no one would dare to call you a young act, I believe that most of our readers know nothing of your band's past days… at least, I am not acquainted with your bio at all, while this interview seems to be a good chance to reform this dereliction, don't you think?

T. Reaper: Well the band actually started back in 1991 with me on guitars and vocals and Brynjulv on drums. We were later joined by Kenneth Korsvold on bass which we did the ”In The Realm Of Flames” demo (1993) and the ”Tårnet” debut album (1995). Through out the years we’ve had quite a lot of line-up changes, today we concist of Me vocals, Brynjulv drums, keyboards and programming, Tom Stien guitars (joined for the ”Far Beneath The Sun” album in early 1997), Arve Isdal guitars (joined for the ”Alarm” album late 1998). We’ve also released a mini-cd called ”20th Century Beast” in 1998.

You have two albums behind you as well as a mini-CD. Tell us anything you feel you need to in order to give us a picture portraying their essense and contents… And of course, present us the fourth one, a newest album by MALIGNANT ETERNAL, since I believe that it was released not so long ago…

T. Reaper: Allright let’s start with ”Tårnet”, to put it short ”Tårnet” is kind of a typical Norwegian black metal release for '94 / 95. Lots of keyboards and dramatic atmospheres, fast and slow parts. You might say it isn’t anything we would have done today, but then again I can stand fully behind it! It was our first album and we were very young at that moment. I also think that we had some quite original ideas already back then. ”Far Beneath The Sun” is a lot more mature album, you can hear that we have grown quite a bit. It is also far more complex and progressive. It’s a combination of all kinds of metal, thrash, heavy and black, very diverse. I feel there’s a lot of spirit in this album and I’m very proud of it! ”20th Century Beast” is more a collection of stuff we couldn’t record for a normal full-lenght. A re-recording of a ”Tårnet” track, a new one, a cover of IRON MAIDEN’s ”Number Of The Beast” and a remastered version of ”Glory” from ”Far Beneath…” When it comes to ”Alarm” it’s a collection of 9 smashing songs. ”Alarm” is very difficult to describe with words, you have to hear it really! It’s very varied. We’ve used lots of electronic stuff, it’s very cachy and the production is extremely powerful with loads of heavy guitars and pounding drums!

Can you recall the very first song you ever composed being in MALIGNANT ETERNAL? Were you pleased with the result? Which one was it?

T. Reaper: The first song we ever wrote was called ”Darknesss” (very original), this was back in 1991, it had no lyrics though. Back then we thought it was awsome! We still have some rehearsal recordings of it. It is quite amusing to listen to it today. Maybe if we sell millions of records we’ll put it out on a rarieties album or something like that (laughs…)

I bet, you've got at least few negative reviews… What about commenting the worst of them?

T. Reaper: We’ve been pretty lucky with the reviews, most of them are very good! One sticks to my mind though, I think it was a Dutch magazine, though I’m not quite sure. The reviewer hated the ”Alarm” album so much that he said he would go down in the cellar and burry it under the floor. He could probably not handle the industrial elements of it.

What sort of behavior differs MALIGNANT ETERNAL members from others? Moreover, what kind of behaviour you consider to be inadmissible for you?

T. Reaper: Well all of us are pretty exentric to put it that way. Mostly we do what we feel like, not everyone is always very happy about that!

What is the 'lack of talent' to you? This question goes mostly for music and anything pertinent to it…

T. Reaper: To me it has nothing to do with how good you are handeling your instrument. To me talent is the ability to think for your self, come up with your own ideas, be strong, not letting other people push you around. A band can be as good as they ever whish when it comes to playing, but that doesn’t help’em very much if they only go around copying shit that tons of other bands has done before them.

Any thoughts concerning TV? Isn't it some kind of a modern mental disease?

T. Reaper: TV can certainly be very apathising if you stare at the box all day long. I enjoy watching TV if there’s anything interessting on, such as Australian soap operas for instance :)

Do you know anything regarding Russia? Any Russian metal bands you've heard lately? What about coming with few gigs over here?

T. Reaper: I don’t know much about the Russian scene, we’ve done some interviews with a couple of Russian mags earlier on. I heard that Borris Jeltsin has retired :). If the possibilites opens up I would love to do gigs in Russia, it would have been great fun!

And here comes the final question, this time a bit unserious one: do you remember how you've lost your virginity, huh? ;)

T. Reaper: Yeah! I remember it, but I don’t think you would like to know (laughs…)
Cheers to all the metalheads in Russia, hope we’ll be able to play for you some day! Take care…

MALIGNANT ETERNAL contact –
Email: malignantmetal80@hotmail.com