EXTOL'S Return to Glory - an interview with Peter Espevoll

In 1993, a group of young Norwegians banded together over a shared love of heavy music. Teenagers at the time – founding members David Husvik (drums) and Christer Espevoll (guitar) both aged 16 and Espevoll’s 14-year-old brother, Peter – EXTOL spent their earliest years exploring the vastness and diversity that is the metal universe. With a fondness for the progressive approach to extreme metal and the adventurous spirit that resonated throughout the European metal community at the time and sparked many a movement that have since become cornerstones of the genre, EXTOL began to turn heads in and around Norway’s burgeoning metal scene. At a time when many metal bands tended to rely on shock value and imagery to get over, EXTOL’s primary focus was on musicianship and expanding the known boundaries of death metal. 

Breaking the stereotypes of the day that equated metal with evil and wanting no part of the corpse-paint and hell-fire crowd that their Norwegian brethren in IMMORTAL and DARKTHRONE were busy turning into a kvlt phenomenon, EXTOL took the ‘higher’ road, so to speak. Though the band didn’t possess the sonic attributes to be a part of the "unblack metal" sect that played a yen to black metal’s unholy yang, EXTOL’s remarkable display of forward-thinking melodic death made them one of the most well-known and influential Christian metal bands of the day. Their reach extended well beyond faith-based fan-bases thanks in part to tours with the likes of MASTODON and OPETH. Despite a surge in popularity and the widespread dropping of jaws in response to 2005’s "The Blueprint Dives," personal issues led to EXTOL going on hiatus in 2007. “I wanted to take a break from everything,” said vocalist Peter Espevoll. “It wasn’t an easy decision but a very necessary one for me.”

Time, as they say, heals all wounds and it wasn’t long before the core members of EXTOL began to feel that familiar rumbling in their bellies. In 2012, it was announced that the trio of Espevoll, co-founder and drummer David Husvik and longtime guitarist Ole Børud had reunited and new material was on the way. While Christian, the elder Espevoll and band’s founding guitarist, was part of the initial reformation, outside obligations prevented him from fully committing and the band forged on as a trio with Børud handling all guitar and bass duties. As work began on what would become EXTOL’s self-titled return to glory, the trio realized that their time off had done more than just give them a chance to take shake off the wear and tear of the road. “We´re all older and (hopefully) more mature, so coming together now has been mostly just very fun and the three of us have a better way of understanding each other now,” Espevoll said. “I also think we were really hungry for doing a new EXTOL album, and that resulted in a good creativity boost and a good flow during the whole process.”

That process was unhindered by the outside pressures placed on the band during their first run and the trio was able to focus on what matters most – the music. “Since no one even knew that we were writing new EXTOL material, and we didn’t have any labels on our back with deadlines or pressure of any kind, we could use all the time we needed for a result that the three of us were extremely happy with," Espevoll said. "We basically just wanted to take the time we felt we needed to make a really good and unique death metal album. In some ways we wanted to go little bit back to our roots and find some inspiration in the moods of our previous releases. But also, we wanted the songwriting to be more mature and ‘thought-through’ than earlier [albums] and with a better and more modern sound than we´ve had before.”

           As news does in this era of social media in which we live, word of EXTOL’s return and the summer release of their self-titled masterpiece on Facedown Records soon spread like wildfire among the legions of die-hard fans who had spent the last several years pining for more prog-death majesty. To sweeten the deal, EXTOL is currently at work on a retrospective documentary chronicling the band’s career and comeback. For the time being, however, EXTOL-ites seem perfectly content whipping themselves into frenzy over the new jams. The outpouring of excitement had left quite the impression on the band. “To us the reaction was quite overwhelming," Espevoll said. "We got so many people telling us how much EXTOL has meant to them over the years and how excited they are about us coming back together. When you´ve been away from the scene for many years, it´s really inspiring that people still get excited about what you do and want to hear new music!”