Ymir’s Corpse Interviews is a Scandinavian Aggression initiative in which Rowdy Geirsson picks the metaphorical cloud-matter of authors, artists, and other creators whose works are based on or inspired by the old lore of the North. This time around we have Kris Verwimp. Kris Verwimp is a Belgian artist whose work has been featured on the cover of albums by such internationally recognized metal bands as Arch Enemy, Marduk, and Suidakra. Beyond these, he has also developed a unique specialization of creating the cover album artwork for viking/folk metals bands, which include Fejd, Månegarm, Thyrfing, and many others. If you are a fan of viking metal, odds are you have seen his work either gracing the physical copy(ies) found in your own music collection or online in conjunction with various album streaming services.
RG: Greetings, Kris! This is a cool and exciting interview for me to do. I’ve long been aware of your artwork for viking metal bands. I think the first awareness I had of your work goes back about 20 years to Thyrfing, which was the band that for whatever reason introduced me to viking metal. Not most people’s gateway viking metal band anyway. I remember thinking the cover art was cool, and then as I got sucked further into the viking metal world, I started noticing your name more and more in conjunction with the album art among numerous bands. So to kick things off here: how did you first get involved in the whole viking metal art world?
KV: Hi Rowdy! First of all, thanks for having this interview with me. I’m glad that you’ve been enjoying my cover art so much and that it helped introduce you to viking metal. I guess my involvement in the viking metal art world happened organically from black metal art into more and more historical themed paintings when the first viking metal bands started to emerge.
RG: That seems like a pretty sensible progression. I’m thinking of certain musicians who also followed that route themselves. It’s kind of like black metal was a bit of a gateway drug to viking metal at least in its early days, and probably still is and vice versa these days. Did you have an interest in the vikings in general before you started working with the viking metal bands? Or did vikings become more of an interest after you started working with them?
KV: I’ve actually been fascinated by vikings and Norse mythology for as long as I can remember. At first, though, it was movies, books, and comics. Some of my favorite comics while growing up were Prince Valiant and Thorgal. I was also captivated by the illustrations in my father’s National Geographic books. In the 80s I truly wished for viking metal to exist, but had to wait until Bathory’s Blood Fire Death, Hammerheart, and Twilight of the Gods albums appeared. I guess if I had been a musician, I would have started playing viking metal myself!
When I first got into doing cover art for bands, it was the early 90s so most bands were playing black metal. The first viking metal bands didn’t exist yet. Slowly, bands like Einherjer started to form. I was really happy when I got the tape from Thyrfing because I would finally be able to paint some viking themed cover art.
RG: That’s really cool—and interesting to me that Thyrfing was the first band to bring you on for the viking themed cover art. I discovered them much later than you did, of course, but I kind of like the fact that band was an entry point for us both in our own respective ways. And obviously, you started doing art for many other viking metal bands after them as well. I recently read your new book of viking metal artwork, which is more art than text since it is an art book after all, but it also includes some letters from members of bands who have contacted you to create artwork for them. Were you surprised to receive these communications? At what point did you realize you had become the de facto “viking metal art guy”?
KV: I guess I was more glad than surprised because that kind of artwork interested me a bit more than the usual Satanic themed black metal art. I’ve always wanted to paint epic historical scenes, and I guess there aren’t too many artists around in metal that still create such compositions the traditional way. I’m not sure though if I ever was the ”viking metal art guy.” Plenty of other artists started doing viking metal art at the time when the genre became more popular. For me, it was not a trend, though. I still love those early viking metal albums and still listen to them regularly.
RG: So how did you get started in art in the first place? You mentioned that you’d always wanted to paint epic historical scenes but back then did you foresee at all getting involved with metal artwork when you first started down that path, or was it all more of a surprise (or fate if we want to use the language of the norns)?
KV: I guess you can blame it on fate. In my youth I mainly tried to start drawing my own comics. I listened a lot to metal, but it seemed like a distant world that was somehow unreachable. I used to buy a Dutch magazine called Aardschok and read each issue back-to-back. Some reviews and interviews were written by a Belgian guy called Wim Baelus, but I didn’t know him personally. In the early 90s I was still trying to get my Odoric comic book published, so sometimes I tried to promote it at local comic book fairs. At one of those fairs I finally met Wim Baelus, and he asked me if I would be interested in painting a cover for an LP he was going to release through his small label, Midian Creations. The album was The Diabolic Serenades by Ancient Rites. My cover art came to the attention of Osmose Records, and a while later I was asked to do a cover for Enslaved’s Frost which didn’t go through, unfortunately. But next they asked me to do a cover for Marduk’s Opus Nocturne followed by Absu’s The Sun of Tiphareth album. So that got things going.
RG: Thank you for providing that general overview. It’s always nice when one thing can lead to another, when they’re good things anyway. But to back up a little, you mentioned your Odoric comic. Can you explain a little more about what that is? I’m afraid I must admit I’m not familiar with it.
KV: Odoric can be seen on most of my early cover art, such as Absu’s The Sun of Tiphareth, Old Man’s Child’s Ill-Natured Spiritual Invasion, and Liar’s Falls of Torment.
I created Odoric in 1984 and completed three comic books in black and white between 1985 and 1991. I sort of taught myself how to draw while working on those books. They were my art school, so to speak. I met Filip Keunen in high school and as soon as we discovered our common interest in comics, movies, and music, we started collaborating on creating a “real” full color Odoric comic book. Filip wrote the script so I was able to concentrate on painting all the pages. The story is about a world with various cultures and races that are losing their own identity and way of life because of the mysterious cult of Pisces-Ra. Odoric is a mysterious Shadow Warrior from the distant Cimbric Isles. He fights to stop the advance of Pisces Ra’s hordes, but usually only appears to turn the tide when all seems lost. He’s the deus ex machina, mysterious, mythological…it’s a story about the individual against the masses and is inspired by elements from Celtic mythology, science fiction, and cosmic horror. At a local comic book convention, we were contacted by a publisher and thus The Wall of Doom was released in 1996.
Unfortunately, because of many cover art commissions, I didn’t have enough time to continue the comic. But the idea of an Odoric soundtrack started to develop in my mind, and over the years I tried working with some musicians from the Belgian bands, Axamenta and Dagorlad. Several songs were composed but nothing ever really worked out. You could call those tracks dungeon synth these days, I guess. I had already abandoned the idea when Arkadius from Suidakra asked me to come up with titles and concepts for his soundtrack compositions. After a while it became apparent that my Odoric stories would be a perfect match. So I decided to pick up the Odoric saga again and create new illustrations, inspired by the songs that Arkadius sent me. He in turn then used my illustrations for his inspiration, and so on…the Realms of Odoric project was started purely for fun, yet resulted in getting signed by MDD records and releases of three albums and an EP! The Odoric saga then also expanded into the concept albums of Suidakra as well. So now it has all become one big Odoric universe and even resulted in the release of a new comic book called Wolfbite about Odoric’s son, Alaric.
RG: A proper Gothic name for such a character if ever there was one! That’s really cool, though. I didn’t realize you had this character and plot line associated with him, much less that his story is conveyed via Suidakra’s albums which is a band I’ve heard of but never really listened to. I suppose one of my many faults is that I sometimes get tunnel-visioned on the whole viking thing and/or Nordic thing. But I am aware that many of the bands you’ve created illustrations for are neither viking metal nor coming from Scandinavia, but they’re not often from Belgium, either. How did you get connected with all these bands on such an international basis?
KV: Strangely, they all seemed to find me somehow. Some through regular mail or through their record label and later through e-mail or social media. I guess they looked at my previous works and thought that I was the right artist for their cover art. It was never the other way around, where I contacted a band myself. Although there are bands that I really wished to work for and that then actually came across my path by chance, or fate if you wish…like Vintersorg, Twin Obscenity, or Mithotyn.
RG: You’re clearly very knowledgeable about a lot of the bands out there and so I think it’d be fair and I suppose also totally obvious to say that you are a fan of metal music in a general sense. Did you ever have an inclination to play in a metal band yourself?
KV: I’ve been a metal fan ever since the early 80s, mainly because I was fascinated by the cover art and wanted to know what the music sounded like. Like many people I started with Iron Maiden, but I quickly explored as many other bands as I could. I never imagined that there would be so many albums with my own artwork on the cover one day. That still feels unreal sometimes. I did have many ideas for songs and wanted to learn how to play the guitar, but it didn’t come easy to me, and I ultimately decided that it was better to focus on becoming a good artist in stead of a bad guitarist. So I was never a musician in a band, but did manage to use some of my song ideas while writing lyrics for Suidakra and Dragonbreed.
RG: The notion of focusing on becoming a good artist leads in well to my next question. I’m curious what your process is. How do you go about creating the artwork? Both in terms of your personal method with the medium/media you use and the research/inspiration you draw on to create the details of the time period?
KV: I always try to immerse myself into the world that is created by the album concept or the lyrics and the atmosphere of the music. Sometimes I get a vision of the cover art almost immediately. The hard part is to get it on paper exactly how I envisioned it…in most cases I start doing some thumbnail sketches in pencil and then try to add the right colors with acrylics. I don’t like sending sketches to bands, though, because sometimes they are very rough and difficult to read. But usually bands trust me enough to let me do my thing. The final artwork is mainly painted with acrylics and water mixable oils on paper. In the past I also used airbrush but I moved away from this technique over the years.
I love doing research, but don’t always have enough time for it, so sometimes I rely on the bands to tell me what is right and what isn’t. But if needed, I have a whole library of books at home that I collected on the subject of viking history and mythology.
RG: In terms of the idea for each artwork—you just mentioned sometimes the vision occurs immediately—does that mean the bands usually give you carte blanche to create whatever strikes you best? Do any of the bands already have an idea for the imagery that they wish for you to use in creating the artwork? And to what degree do the music and lyrics influence the art that you create?
KV: I guess I answered part of this question in my previous answers. Bands like Månegarm always provide me with lots of detailed information for each cover or booklet illustration, so of course, that has a big influence on the outcome of my work. But some other bands just let me do whatever comes to my mind while listening to their songs. I always try to incorporate as much as I can from the lyrics and atmosphere into my artwork. My goal is always to make the cover art seem to come alive while listening to the music.
RG: Is there any album artwork that you would say was your favorite to create?
KV: This is really difficult to answer because I’ve done so many artworks over the years. But some of my very early covers are still special to me because of all the memories connected to them. The first Thyrfing cover comes to mind. More recently, being able to paint new covers for the vinyl re-releases of Mithotyn’s classic trilogy has been really amazing as well because I’ve always loved those albums so much!
RG: Oh, that’s awesome! You mentioned they were one of the bands you’ve always wanted to do artwork for, and so it finally came to pass. Really cool covers for those new versions, too. In my ignorance, I didn’t realize they were re-releases, but had seen the images before. Do you have anything in the works at the moment that you can tell us about?
KV: I recently finished painting an album cover for Dutch black metal band, Schavot, and I’m currently working on the art and layouts for the new Suidakra album that I also wrote the album concept and lyrics for. Next up, I will be completing the cover art for Ninth Sphere, and I also got some new Sear Bliss and Crom art in the works.
RG: Very cool—it sounds like Suidakra has been a really good band to collaborate with over the years beyond just the artwork itself. I’ll definitely be curious to check out that new album and the other ones, too, once that time comes. Anyway, I think we’re nearing the end of this interview, so I thought I’d ask a question just for fun. So: if you could live a day in the scene of any of the viking metal album artworks you have created, which would you choose and why?
KV: I guess I’ll have to say the first Thyrfing album again, because nothing seems more epic than standing on a rock and hailing those viking ships while the sea is raging around you. But maybe it would be more wise to feast in Valhalla like on their Valdr Galga cover…
RG: I couldn’t agree more with the epic sentiment about that first album, but I also suspect you’re onto something with the notion that the feasting and carousing would probably be more fun! Anyway, thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions!
KV: Thanks again, Rowdy, for having this interview with me and for ordering a copy of my Viking Metal Cover Art book! Thanks also to everyone who is reading this for your interest in my artworks and for still supporting physical media and handmade art!
Dear Web Prowler, since you’re here, please check out more of Kris Verwimp’s artwork in the mythologically significant nine image gallery below (which is only a small sampling from an extensive body of work; emphasis on viking metal and related albums here) and final send-off artwork from his book. Also, give Kris a follow on social media via the links:
And very, very lastly, if viking metal and its tangents are up your alley (and I must question your decision-making abilities if they aren’t), then please check out the previous interviews with Fejd’s Esko Salow (a band for which Kris Verwimp has created artwork; one example is shown above) and Wolcensmen’s Dan Capp (who created the Visigoth logo shown alongside Kris Verwimp’s artwork shown above).
Unless otherwise noted, all images associated with this interview are © Kris Verwimp and the relevant bands
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