After early instability, Swedish black metal band Dark Funeral’s lineup has been steady for the past six years. Credit: Courtesy Photo / Dark Funeral

When you’re a black metal dude, you’re probably used to charting your own dark path.

But when you’re a black metal dude from Sweden, where death metal — at least circa 1991 — was the preferred extreme metal genre, you’re definitely going to encounter resistance. Such was the situation when guitarist Lord Ahriman started Dark Funeral nearly three decades ago.

The band encountered a Sisyphean uphill climb, from difficulty finding band members to getting others in the music community to take them seriously.

But despite the early resistance, Dark Funeral — who are in the middle slot of a bill that includes costumed metal madmen GWAR and Squid Pisser at Vibes Event Center on Saturday, Nov. 16 — got the music going, then dialed in the look with corpse paint: the death-like makeup that’s a trademark of the genre.

“When we started Dark Funeral … we had used a little bit of just black around the eyes and stuff,” Ahriman told the Current via Zoom from his home in Sweden. “But I guess it wasn’t until maybe ’94 when we felt like, OK, we’re gonna go all the way.”

Ahriman has soldiered on for decades as Dark Funeral’s leader, enduring ups, downs and plenty of personnel shakeups. The band’s most recent release is 2022’s We Are The Apocalypse.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What makes Dark Funeral a good match with GWAR?

Because they are crazy in their own way, and we are absolutely crazy in our way. In combination, we bring something even more crazy to the crowd. I always love those unexpected bills. Maybe everybody doesn’t like everything they hear, but at least maybe they open up their world a little bit more. I’m not sure if the GWAR crowd is going to like us, and vice versa, who knows. But I think it’s still metal.

For that person who loves GWAR but doesn’t know Dark Funeral, what can they expect?

Well, what fans usually say about us, when you talk to them, is that they are met by an extreme wall of sound but still in a good balance. We always have very melodic songs, lots of melodies in all this crazy, fast-paced and aggressive stuff. We kind of managed to combine everything and find a good balance. It’s very thick, epic music we play. And I think if you’re not used to it, your first experience might be a shock. But hopefully, the crowd who never experienced us before are open minded and try to see through that wall of sound and see what’s actually happening in the songs. And I know, as a first-time listener to this type of music, it’s difficult because it’s just a fucking wall of sound. But at the same time, that’s the beauty of it too. I know that people have said that once they get through that, they discover a whole new world.

Often, Sweden is associated with death metal and Norway with black metal. This is especially true of the origins of the scene. Were you pushing against the grain in the early days?

That was very much the case. I come from the north part of Sweden. And when I moved to Stockholm in ’91, I came right into all the bands that were big at that time, you know, Entombed, Dismember, Unleashed. And, I mean, I still like death metal. But it’s not through death metal that I’m trying to find where I want to be as a songwriter and what I want to express with my music. So in ’91, when I started asking around all these guys, like, “Do you know some guys who want to start an extreme black metal band with me?” Everybody was like, “Let him be, you know, the fuck’s going on?” Everybody was like, “Well, let Ahriman be and do his thing.” When we finally got the band together, we decided not to tell anybody until the day we released our mini-CD. Nobody knew about us, basically, before that. Not our closest friends. “We’re just playing a little bit,” we said. I know, in the early years, there was a lot of talk going on behind my back, like, “Yeah, you know, fuck him, he’s doing black metal.” They didn’t like it. But then everybody saw that I was, you know, dead serious with what I was doing. So, I got the respect they felt I deserved, but I was never really looking for it. I just felt like this is what I have to do. And I’m not going to do it like everybody else.

You’ve had a consistent lineup for the past six years. Before, it was up and down. What makes it hard to keep a lineup going?

Well, during the early years, when I grew up, everybody found their own new things, became a father, found a girlfriend or whatever. They change focus in life. But I always said, this is what I’ve got to do. No matter what. For this kind of life, you have to sacrifice a lot. And with this type of music, you don’t become rich. So, sometimes, you know, it’s a real struggle to be able to pay the bills. But for me, I always felt like the freedom is more important than money: the freedom to write, the freedom to create, the freedom to do what I want to do.

$34-$36, 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 16, Vibes Event Center, 1223 E. Houston St., (210)

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This article appears in Nov 13-26, 2024.