Kvelertak guitarist Vidar Landa with his Nik Huber Krautster II - "[The] simplicity really works for me"
FROM THE TIME THEY FORMED IN Stavanger, Norway, in 2007, Kvelertak have widely been regarded as a proggy black-and-roll band. But while the band’s three guitarists all enjoy heavy music, they didn’t start out as metalheads. Primary songwriter Bjarte Lund Rolland considers Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham and Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler to be two of his greatest influences. Rhythm guitarist Vidar Landa was more a fan of alternative and indie rock and lead guitarist Maciek Ofstad grew up with hardcore before discovering extreme metal.
“We weren’t supposed to be a metal band when we started,” Rolland says over the phone. “We wanted to be more like a rock band that has metal influences here and there. Of course, we all like Metallica and grew up in Norway with the whole black metal thing. But there’s so much other stuffthat we like that has influenced us.”