KINGSEEKER: In the Service of a Song

By Prog Sphere on October 5, 2022

Oslo-based djent trio Kingseeker launched their latest opus entitled “Daily Reminders” back in January. We talked with singer Jan Magne Abel Opsahl about the album, its message and more.

Describe the musical frameworks your new album “Daily Reminders” explores.

It explores some facets when it comes to mental illness to varying degrees and how that affects you through addiction, loss of loved ones, growing up, and self acceptance.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced and lessons learned during the creative process for “Daily Reminders”?

From my point of view we had some serious issues while writing. Such as which direction we wanted to go with songs, how we wanted them to sound and which influences to lean on.

Aron still had a lot of ownership of the band (seeing as he started it), and kind of struggled with letting go of some creative control untill he realized we all wanted the songs to be good.

I was struggling with taking criticism and changing ways. I wrote the lyrics and vocals on some songs, and in a lot og ways still struggle with this, cause from my point of view, it’s me kinda just ripping open my head and saying “Hi, listen to what I think about all my neurosies, please like me”. Which inherrently is a lot more personal of an experience thab the rest (though i am sure the other guys feel the same about the music i write my words to).

Coincidentally i was diagnosed with anxiety and depression right around when we started recording vocals, so i was struggling a lot with that.

Emil was the rock we needed thoug. Even though he had a lot of shit on his plate he powered through with me and Aron changing things on a whim or me being an absolute cock-ass-diva-bitch. He had lost a close relative as well, and still played “band-dad” while recording us, producing and mixing us. He is a godsend.

Is there a message you try to convey with the album?

It’s okay to be fucked up. Everyone is fucked up in some shape or form, find your catharsis.

To someone who hasn’t heard “Daily Reminders,” what can he or she expect from it?

Aggressive, fast, heavy metalcore with a more hardcorey vocals and extremely catchy melodies. Bittersweet lyrics and surprisingly good production.

How has your perspective on the possibilities of song arrangement expanded over the years?

Well we’ve used a lot of time to create a “form” and a structure we use.

A lot of focus has been to craft aggressive but catchy tunes that aren’t very complicated playingwise.

What types of change do you feel this music can initiate?

I don’t think it’s anything revolutionary, but if one person listens to us, reads our lyrics or really vibes with the music, that’s all I want.

Hopefully people listen to us and think “Okay, cool, i’m not alone. It’s okay to be angry, it’s okay to be sad it’s okay to laugh amid tragedy sometimes.”

Do you tend to follow any pre-defined patterns when composing a piece?

We’re pretty open and try not to, but I’d say we follow most modern popular music patterns. Aron wants less clean singing, but keeps writing amazing soaring beautiful choruses that just scream out “please sing pretty over me”. But we try to do what services the song.

What non-musical entities and ideas have an impact on your music?

Dark Souls and FromSoft in general is a huge influence on us.

Life, death, love, hate and everything in between.

I’m really into photography, design and stuff like that, so that stuff has an impact for sure. Also tv-shows and movies.

Aron is really into gaming and id imagine that influences him alot. He lives in a city named Porsgrunn and he’s seen and experienced a lot of shit throughout his life so that influences him. Our next release “Grief” is gonna touch more on his life and such. That EP is written solely by him, the lyrocs have been edited by me, but theyre his words and his music.

From listening to Emil driving, I’d say shitty drivers are a huge inspiration for the angry stuff he writes, he keeps calling the taxi drivers in Oslo “NPC’s”.

He also has a family which you can see that he loves with all his heart. He lives with his girlfriend Helene (who did our pressphotos) and his ste-son, and at times you can see him recieving texts and such from them and he has the most amazing, heartwarming smile.

What advice or philosophy might you impart to other musicians, be it in forms of creativity, technical stuff, the business side of it, or anything else?

Philosophically: be open to inspiration from everywhere.

Creatively: Write, and keep writing, you’ll write 40 shit songs to get 20 bad songs and then write 10 ok songs to get 1 great song.

Business side: Go to local shows, talk to other bands, create a community, talk to bands in other cities. Make sure you to use every single contact you have. Never use payola services. And be patient, it takes time!

Technical: If youre self-recording: make sure everything is ok, and that every stem of every track in every song youre recording is correctly named, that the levels are okay and dont assume the person mixing can just “fix things in post”. You WILL make mistakes, and thats okay.

Daily Reminders is out now. Get it from Bandcamp.