Two men and an acoustic guitar. That was the original blueprint for Graceskull. Having long felt an urge to push out the more fragile music in our hearts (having both rocked our nuts off in various bands such as Contrast, Alkalyne and Atyd) Graceskull was conceived in dark snowless last months of 2000.

Considering neither of us had really sung before and I still suck donkey ass playing guitar (especially acoustic), the blueprint's fine lines began to find themselves working surprisingly good in practice. The songs kept coming up fast and we started to get the hang of the singing-biz. Once having written a pile of songs in just a matter of a couple of months, we decided that it was time to get this shit on tape.

Since we already had our hands full in learning new skills of playing and singing, we decided to hand over the production-element to someone else. That someone else turned out to be Julius Thölix (Noitapastori, also ex-keyboardwiz of Kimi Shelter and the Avoids).

So right now we're putting some songs together at his home-studio and I can say that he has fucked our whole little concept over pretty completely. The songs remain as they were but thanks to Julius, we're breathing fresh air into them productionwise. There are strange keyboardthingies, hard-hitting beats and my guitartracks getting all erased on some songs.

So right now, I have no fucking idea where we are going with this music. And I can truly say that I love it.

Ove Ritola
March 2001