Vimur: Black metal from the cosmos

Ask any headbanger — Who rules Atlanta’s metal scene harder than anyone else around? — and there’s no question about it: Vimur. The group is an unholy alliance made up of members Kiehül, Aetheos, and C.S. performing under the tutelage of founding member and songwriter Vaedis. Their respective instrumentation: “seismic subterranean vibrations,” “battery,” “astral oscillations,” and “vociferations and arcane melodies.” Vaedis insists that their Earth-bound identities should not be revealed here because they are not the same people when the take the stage. In December, Vimur unveiled its first CD, Traversing the Ethereal Current, a nine-song opus that was nearly eight years in the making. On the eve of the group’s newest release, a live cassette tape titled Southern Aurora, Vaedis sat down for a conversation about black metal, elitism, and waiting eight years to find the perfect drummer.

Who painted the cover art for Traversing the Ethereal Current?

It’s an artist who goes by the name, the Nothing. It’s all hand-painted and it’s different from most black metal covers. It’s pretty colorful.

What does the art depict?

This is Vimur: A river of menstrual blood and urine. There’s a tale in Norse mythology where Thor goes off to kill a giant. The giant knows this and sends his daughter to stop Thor. She stands atop the river and tries to drown him by creating a torrent of menstrual blood and urine. Thor is in danger of being overwhelmed so he takes a boulder and damns it at the source.

As far as the Norse stuff goes, that’s not our theme. We don’t sing about Odin and Thor, but I venerate that culture of ancient traditions and myths.

Where does your stage name, Vaedis, come from?

It’s a rearrangement of letters of my last name and it has to do with our lyrical concepts: Dying and still being yourself but a different entity.

Is there a difference between who you are in your daily life and Vaedis?

In my personal life I’m dictated by my thoughts, emotions, and environment. Vaedis is pure energy — leaving all the worldly bullshit behind. I go into a trancelike state.

Is this why you don’t reveal your real names?

Yes. We aren’t the same people when we’re on stage.

Do you go through a process to become Vaedis?

We set up, leave the stage and go to put on our paint, and focus. We’ll say a few words, get into the mind-set, sometimes smoke, but it’s all business from there.

Do you consider Vimur’s music to be black metal?

We are 100 percent black metal, but we aren’t the archetype of what a black metal band sounds like. We don’t have the fuzzy guitars. Black metal is super varied. You have bands like Graveland who are very minimalistic. The drums are so sloppy. It’s terrible, but the spirit is true so the music is amazing. Then there are bands like Emperor, the musicianship is through the roof — playing almost as if they’re classical composers. It’s Wagnerian. That’s more of our influence; bands that transcend thought and space, and don’t focus on earthly issues. We take influences from doom metal, death metal, and some thrash — really fast and ripping, some melody but also evil at times.

The beautiful thing about black metal is that it can be anything it wants to be if the spirit is pure. There are really slow black metal bands that are pure, some really fast, some that sound like fire, and some like ice, but it’s still black metal. That’s what I like about playing in Vimur and Hellgoat — fire and ice. With Hellgoat it’s violence, chaos, and it has a red aura. With Vimur it’s concentration, meditation, levitation, and a blue aura. Both are extremely ripping, and both encompass what I want to hear in black metal.

The lyrics on Traversing the Ethereal Current were written when I was 17 or 18 years old. I recorded the album, but realized I wasn’t a good enough musician to pull off my ideas, so I scrapped it entirely. I joined Hellgoat to become the drummer I needed to be for Vimur. I re-recorded the album in 2009. Then I got Dan Klein in Chicago to do a fresh mix and master to make it sound the way it’s supposed to sound, and released it in December 2014.

I waited so long to release it because I didn’t want a solo black metal project from Georgia that I couldn’t promote. It would get swept under the rug. It took eight years to get a live lineup together. I was searching the entire time; I tried out several people that didn’t make the cut because the level of musicianship you have to be at is really high. The drumming is nonstop; very fast. Two years ago I met the drummer Aetheos at the Highlander. I’d seen him play a couple years back and thought, “This guy has to play in Vimur.” But he moved to New York, so I was shit out of luck.

They always come back.

Yes! I saw him at the Highlander a while later and said, “Hey dude, you don’t know me but you have to join my band. I’ve seen you play drums and you’re the only person in the city who can do it.” He was skeptical at first, but we jammed. He was all about it. He’s a fucking beast of a drummer. Now I have exactly what I want with the lineup.

You hold the other members of the group to a pretty high standard.

You have to. There’s so much mediocre shit out there. It makes us sound like dicks but elitism is the highest order: Why would you not strive to be the best you can possibly be? That is integral with Vimur’s music. We try to write elite black metal that will transcend your consciousness. When you see us live, you’re just gone. You don’t think about anything else. Nothing else matters — you forget about earth. We want people to listen to us and, in their mind, traverse the ethereal current.

Is this Vimur’s only recording so far?

We released a demo in 2010 — limited to 30 or 40 copies, distributed only in France. We put out a demo last year that has two songs from the CD and three live tracks. On February 6 we’re releasing a live tape on Ritual Ugliness. It’s definitely lo-fi, but who’s going to complain about lo-fi production in black metal? Not me.

I wrote about the live Hellgoat tape on Ritual Ugliness. When the band starts up you hear a woman in the audience unleash a blood-curdling scream, and it really adds a lot to that recording.

There are a lot of great screams on the Hellgoat tape. The Vimur tape sounds even better. The guitars really come through, probably because we have two guitars in Vimur and just one in Hellgoat. Aetheos is an insane drummer! The bell on the ride cymbal really comes out: There are times when he’s doing a bell blast and it just pounds your forehead.

His hands are perfect. He is the only drummer I want. Ever. It was worth waiting eight years to get him in the band. I would’ve waited eight more, too, rather than settle for something less. He gets it conceptually. A lot of drummers you have to give direction. Since I write everything, I have a drum beat in my mind. I’ll say, “OK dude, that has to be a double bass thrash beat on the ride cymbal.” He’ll make it his own and develop it so well. He makes it so much better.