Interview with Grima (Vilhelm)
With 10 years of scene-stealing experience behind them, looming stars of Siberian atmospheric black metal, GRIMA, released their sixth album and Napalm Records debut, Nightside, on February 28, 2025. After several shows accross Europe (one with highly-uprising german death metal force Kanonenfieber), the band is set to honor the spirit of the Siberian Forest, Taiga, with their impending next chapter. The two driving forces behind the band’s unique sound, Vilhelm and Morbius, both deliver different aspects of the band’s impactful, massive guitar riffs, leads and melodies, while Vilhelm also soars as vocalist. Guest musicians Vlad (drums) and Serpentum (guitars) also join the fold both in studio and on stage. In addition to their unforgettable sound, the band’s eerie, piercing look – towering like living trees with intimidating carved wooden masks and branched fingers – adds another haunting element to their brutal yet beautiful output. With their mysterious visual aura and intriguing sound, on Nightside, GRIMA continues to prove themselves as an unmissable band to watch within the genre. Let’s read what Vilhelm told us and let us be eternally haunted by Siberian darkness!
What is your personal assessment of the first decade of Grima’s existence, your first five albums, and your live performances?
V: The past ten years have been filled with hard work. You can trace how the band has evolved over this time—we have improved as musicians and developed the idea of Grima into a full-fledged lore, filling our music with its own mythology and mystical energy. We weren’t a live band from the very beginning. Up until our fourth album, Rotten Garden, we were still a studio project. But as our audience grew, we started playing our first shows—not to empty venues, but to people who already knew and appreciated our music. Our touring life quickly gained momentum, and now we’re frequently on the road. For us, a band from Siberia, making a name for ourselves wasn’t easy. Now, we’re happy to see that our hard work—both in the studio and on stage—is paying off.
How did the collaboration with the legendary Napalm Records come about? Are you satisfied with their work in launching your sixth album?
V: We received an offer from Napalm at the beginning of last year. By that time, we already had a home recording of the album, so we were able to arrange its release. Getting such an offer was a great honor for us. Not many bands from Russia work with major international labels. We feel that we received solid support in terms of media exposure for the album, and the reaction to our singles has been quite positive. We’re optimistic about the future of our partnership.
Nightside will be released in multiple physical formats. How do you interpret these formats in this digital era?
V: We’re big fans of vinyl and CDs ourselves. The artwork, the booklet—these are the finishing touches that complete an album. These days, physical formats don’t have the massive print runs they did 20 or 30 years ago, but vinyl and CDs are still very popular. I personally enjoy adding every new vinyl release to my collection. Spotify doesn’t give you that same sense of reverence toward music — it’s something only a physical format can offer.
Tell us about the genesis and evolution of Nightside: from composition to the album’s production with Vladimir Lehtinen.
V: We’ve been working on our sound together with Vladimir since the third album. We’ve built a strong creative partnership. We try to achieve high-quality sound right at the recording stage. Usually, I handle the recording engineering for our albums, and we take care of the sound design ourselves. After that, the material goes to Vladimir for mixing. He always understands what we’re trying to express in our recordings and highlights the strongest aspects of our sound.
Which topics did you explore in the album’s lyrics?
V: We depict the nighttime forest as a mystical concept of impenetrable darkness. Nightside is a concept album — it tells the story of an endless journey, of cursed souls wandering along tangled paths, never to see the light of the sun.
Your look is quite unique: what message do you aim to convey visually speaking?
V: We embody entities that reflect the core imagery of our lore—ancient forest spirits, the manifestations of Grima. In this form, our music takes on a ritualistic nature, and our performances become more like ceremonies. It’s a powerful visual element that helps us create magic.
You come from a truly unique part of the world: how does this influence your approach to composing music?
V: We are far from everything. But we’ve never been isolated from global pop culture. At the same time, in our country, there were never any bands that could serve as pioneers of the genre. Learning to play in a band and developing it was always difficult. In our case, there was no one to ask for advice or to learn from directly. The internet provided a wealth of information on studio work, but it couldn’t teach us how to promote a band in a country without a heavy music industry. That builds character. We travel a lot. Around our hometown of Krasnoyarsk, there are endless stretches of taiga and mighty red mountains. These are our places of power — they give us energy.
You are about to embark on a major tour, reminiscent of the glorious ’90s! What can fans expect from your live performances?
V: We are eagerly anticipating the start of the tour in support of the new album, Nightside. We have our visas, and we’re confident that all the shows will go well. We will do our best to give a great performance—we can’t wait to play the new album live, but we won’t forget about our older hits either. A big, exciting setlist is in the works.
Who are your main sources of inspiration in terms of bands, musicians, composers, and so on?
V: We love metal albums from the ‘90s and early 2000s. Metal has gone through many crises but has always found ways to evolve. That era saw the release of many albums that are significant to us. Immortal, Satyricon, Mayhem, King Diamond, Cradle of Filth, Summoning, Death, Deafheaven, Korn — we’ve been listening to these bands since school, learning to play their riffs, and watching recordings of their concerts. They shaped our perception of heavy music. Beyond that, we’ve always been inspired by soundtracks from old horror films. Composers like Fabio Frizzi and John Carpenter created atmospheric, narrative-driven musical landscapes, and we often draw from that compositional style. It’s interesting to incorporate non-traditional arrangements into metal and use alternative structures in songwriting.
A final message and greeting for your Italian fans? Do you have any personal memories related to Italy?
V: Listen to good music and support the underground—stay connected!
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