Through unholy sacrifice and hellish Norwegian winters, for 20 years years, Tsjuder were blessed by Anti-Christian. But when the band’s heretical drummer bowed out ahead of their first album in eight years, founding members Nag and Draugluin needed another maniacal player to take their drum throne.
As willed by the Lords of Metal, iron beast Jon Rice ensured that Helvegr held hard and fast to the band’s eternally uncompromising spirit. Now, as they prepare to burn through Inferno and other European festivals, Tsjuder have officially announced their new permanent drummer.
“We are proud to announce Emil Wiksten as our permanent drummer”, says Nag and Draugluin. “We have been in contact with Emil for quite a few years and have been rehearsing and playing together live for some time now.
Watch Emil pump out “Gods of Black Blood”:
“A huge thanks goes to Jon Rice for playing on Helvegr and Scandinavian Black Metal Attack, as well as a bunch of our gigs”, they continue. “We would also like to give the same huge thanks to Eivin Bryre for performing on all our European gigs over the last four years”.
This isn’t the first time that Emil Wiksten has joined an esteemed band like Tsjuder. Not only has the Swedish native drummed for Blood Red Throne, Aeon and the legendary Abbath. He also helped arrange several songs on Helvegr, including the album’s fist-pumping lead single “Gods of Black Blood”.
Helvegr is out on Season of Mist.
Order the limited-edition box set of Helvegr and get two genuine leather Tsjuder coasters, a two-clutch metal band pin and a bonus CD that pays tribute to Bathory.
Tsjuder’s Tribute to Bathory Scandinavian Black Metal Attack (featuring Frederick Melander)
1. The Return of Darkness and Evil (4:53)
2. Satan My Master (2:02)
3. Born for Burning (5:11)
4. Reaper (2:33)
5. Raise the Dead (3:53)
Track-list:
1. Iron Beast (3:37) [WATCH]
2. Prestehammeren (4:01) [WATCH]
3. Surtr (6:59)
4. Gamle-Erik (3:46)
5. Chaos Fiend (4:02)
6. Gods of Black Blood (5:19) [WATCH]
7. Helvegr (7:36) [WATCH]
8. Faenskap og Død (3:08)
9. Hvit Død (2:52)
Since their inception in 1993, Oslo’s TSJUDER have been responsible for some of the most hate-filled ferocity perpetrated under the banner of TRUE NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL.
The band’s unholy fire was initially lit when founding members NAG (vocals/bass), BERSERK (guitar) and DRAUGLUIN (guitar) grew weary of playing death metal and sought out engorged levels of extremity to sate their increasingly profane ambitions. The time was ripe to inaugurate a ceaseless campaign committed to an uncompromising strain of brutally raw black metal, influenced by the primal thrash blasts of Sodom, Kreator, Destruction, Sarcófago and early Sepultura; black metal first wave trailblazers such as Bathory and Hellhammer; and, most vitally, Mayhem’s seminal Deathcrush, and Darkthrone’s game-changer, A Blaze in the Northern Sky.
Assuming the TSJUDER name, a moniker plundered from a mythical, murderous Northern tribe, various embryonic line-ups gathered around the all-conquering core of Nag and Draugluin, laying the fearsome foundations for what was to follow with two demos – Ved Ferdens Ende and Possessed – recorded between 1995-96. But it was with 1997’s EP, Throne of the Goat, that the black metal underground really began to sit up and take notice, the release establishing TSJUDER’s reputation as a blasphemous bulldozer hellbent on crushing the insipid and nostalgic in relentless blizzards of sub-zero riffage, punitive blast beats and blood-curdling screams.
Recordings for an inaugural full-length in 1999 were lost to a computer virus, but from the scavenged remnants of these sessions would emerge the Atum Nocturnem demo, an obnoxious foretaste of the group’s debut album, Kill For Satan, an international breakthrough slathered in slime-encrusted sacrilege. That damnable release saw the aptly-named ANTI-CHRISTIAN open his TSJUDER account, the drummer blasting a succession of gateways though the underworld, pulverising a punitive march to the band’s malevolent maelstroms.
Demonic Possession (2002) and Desert Northern Hell (2004) sustained the band’s focus on death, devils and destruction, while ratcheting up the production levels on a barbaric brace of flesh-strippers conjuring a landscape of frost-bitten wastes and foul abyssal realms. With the music press busy dishing out plaudits, the band’s burgeoning confederacy of fanatics were becoming desperate for some TSJUDER live action. Heeding the clarion, the band embarked on a full European tour with fellow countrymen Carpathian Forest. They also recorded a pair of gloriously powerful live performances in 2005, in Norway, which would subsequently be documented on the group’s NorwegianApocalypse DVD.
TSJUDER would take a deserved hiatus in 2006, with members finding other musical outlets for their creativity; Nag launching heretical black metal outfit KRYPT; Draugluin and Anti-Christian doing time with the thrashier TYRANN.
But it wouldn’t be long before the irresistible call of TSJUDER would exert itself once more. The band reconvened, reenergised and eager to make up for lost time, returning to live performances in 2010 before finally unleashing the mighty Legion Helvete (2011), a typically uncompromising comeback interspersed with pronounced Motörhead influences on punkish hyper-blasters such as ‘Slakt’.
It would be another four years before TSJUDER issued the merciless Antiliv (2015), a snarling lycanthropic howl of a record, heavy-loaded with vindictive black’n’roll swagger and lashings of buzzsaw guitar.
TSJUDER quickly set about creating the follow-up to Antiliv, but musical differences and protracted disputes led to a parting of the ways, with Anti-Christian bowing out after an impressive 20-year tenure with the group. Undaunted, Nag and Draughluin enlisted doyen tub-thumper JON RICE to provide the requisite drum artillery and continued to work on new recordings – fine-tuning guitar tones and sharpening mixes.
Then COVID-19 struck, the pandemic further stymieing the album’s release as the world tumbled from its fragile axis. But humanity is now benignly settling into its most chronic phase of perpetual abnormality and TSJUDER are steeled again to hoist their inverted cross above the barricades of conciliation. Their latest opus, Helvegr, is a devastatingly savage offering, one which fully adheres to the band’s eternal credo of “NO FUCKING COMPROMISE”.
Line-up:
Nag – Bass & Vocals
Draugluin – Guitars & Vocals
Emil Wiksten – Drums
Guest musicians:
Guitar solo on ‘Gamle Erik’ by Pål Emanuelsen
Guest vocals on ‘Gods of Black Blood’ by Seidemann (1349)
Mixing + Mastering: North Waves Studios by Pål Emanuelsen
Artwork: Jonas Svensson and Laura Nardelli
Biography: Spencer Grady
Follow Tsjuder
https://www.facebook.com/tsjuderofficial
https://www.instagram.com/officialtsjuder
Click image to watch the video
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