The first songs for Maelifell – or, more precisely, for what was to become Maelifell – were written and recorded around 1994-1995, when we were 14-15 years old.

Xavier and I were still in middle school, listening to heavy metal, cold wave and Dead Can Dance, which we thought was unique in its genre (and indeed, it's not entirely untrue). I knew about black metal, but had never listened to it.

At the same time, I was also recording alone, for a band I called Hesperides Garden, which had a maximum of... two members. Two guitarists, no bass, no drums, no keyboard; it was still far from my dream. But sometimes I rented keyboards from the local music store and recorded songs on my own. Some were released under the name Hesperides Garden, others ended up on the first Maelifell demo.

What I'm trying to say through these anecdotes is that even if Maelifell (I have no intention of denying this or rewriting history) was carried along, encouraged, uninhibited by our discovery of black metal and bands like Mortiis, fundamentally, we already existed before we knew them, we had our own aesthetic, our own themes, and our background comes as much from post-punk and its mutations as from the mutations of metal (the "dungeon synth").

Maelifell intersected with the history of dungeon synth (just as it later intersected with the neoclassical/darkwave milieu), but neither belongs to it nor was it determined by it.