DIAVOLA

“We try to never let our ego get in the way.”

“We always try to serve the song, not our egos.”

“We hope for bigger tours, bigger stages, bigger productions, and still keep the same ambition that we have today.”

“We want to remove as many barriers between us and the crowd as possible.”

“We don’t mind a few mistakes in the recordings, because that’s what sounds authentic to us.”

“We don’t wish to use a click track live, tracks or triggered drums.”

“They expect it. No, we don’t care.”

“If you don’t want to spend all of your time with the band, that’s absolutely fine, but then Diavola is not the band for you.”

“If you have to downtune to be heavy, then you are not heavy, not sorry to say it.”

“If we get our heads stuck in our asses, we hope someone comes to us.”

Norwegian groove metal outfit Diavola may still be a young band, but there is little hesitation behind their ambitions.
Formed in early 2024, the five piece quickly moved from rehearsals and early songwriting to festival stages, while developing an approach built around authenticity, instinct, and the physical connection between band and audience.
Rather than chasing perfection or conforming to expectations surrounding modern metal, Diavola deliberately embrace the imperfections that make music feel human.
In this interview by Fok ‘bs‘, vocalist Gustav Dimmen talks about the band’s uncompromising beginnings, leaving egos outside the rehearsal room, refusing modern production conventions, writing riffs for movement, memorable encounters with audiences, and why Diavola have little interest in sounding the way a Norwegian metal band is expected to sound.
Diavola was formed in January 2024, and only a few months later you were already releasing ‘Dawn‘ and playing live.
Looking back now, what was happening behind the scenes during those first months that nobody outside the band knew about?
“We spent a lot of time just hanging out together to get to know each other, playing both cover songs and original. We also spent a lot of time getting to know other musicians and going to concerts, to get to know the venues in the area. Most of the beginning was spent talking about our ambitions, where we want to see the band go, how far we want to go and what we are willing to sacrifice for it. Some of us even quit other bands to pursue Diavola as our main band. A quote that we used to say a lot is ‘if you don’t want to spend all of your time with the band, that’s absolutely fine, but then Diavola is not the band for you’.”
Your music combines several styles that have already been around for decades.
What is something you deliberately do NOT want Diavola to sound like, even if it would probably make things easier to market?
“Our goal with our sound is to not sound ‘perfect’. We don’t wish to use a click track live, tracks or triggered drums, to name a few examples. In the studio, we don’t mind that the drums aren’t perfect to the grid, nor do we mind a few ‘mistakes’ in the recordings, because that’s what sounds authentic to us. There is nothing wrong with bands doing that, but that is not what our sound is. We want to remove as many barriers between us and the crowd as possible, both live and in the studio, to make it feel like the crowd is part of our show, not just standing there and attending our performance.”
There are five of you, and you come from different musical backgrounds.
Has there ever been a song where the band was split almost 50/50 over how it should sound, and how did you eventually settle the argument?
“We still haven’t had a big discussion about a song. Usually the discussions happens with the small details, not about the whole song or a part. We have become good at making arguments for why we like an idea, but we try to never let our ego get in the way. When we started the band, we did discuss how we were going to go about song writing, and one of the things we agreed upon was that we leave the ego at the door, and to try our best to always serve the song, not our egos.”
A great groove can make people move before they have even realised what is happening.
When you write a riff, do you ever physically test it, for example by seeing whether it makes you move, or is that completely instinctive?
“Yes, it’s very instinctive. We try to imagine how it feels from the audience perspective, how we would like it to be while listening to a song. When we have rehearsal, we usually stand while playing, to try to get a feel for what the song wants us to do; is it a headbanging song, a mosh song, a wall of death song or a circle pit song? Sometimes we also add elements to help the feel that we want the song to have.”
‘Without Judgement‘ is a very interesting title for a metal album.
If you had to explain the title without talking about the lyrics, what does ‘without judgement‘ mean to each of you personally?
“It’s inspired from a Death song, but we also just felt that it was a cool title that fit the sound and songs of the album. To be honest, there is not much of a deep meaning behind the title, it’s more of an homage to one of our favourite bands.”
You have already played several Norwegian festivals.
Is there a particular moment on stage so far where you suddenly thought, ‘Okay, this is exactly why we started Diavola‘?
“There’s two that comes to mind, one is the Spetakkel Festival in Larvik, and the other is Grøttefestivalen in Lier. At the Spetakkel Festival, we were the band opening the festival, and we were the only band of the whole festival to get a wall of death from the crowd. We also heard after the festival that there has never been so many people coming to watch the first band. Grøttefestivalen was also special for us, as it was the first festival the we ever headlined, which was a very special feeling for us, as we didn’t feel ready for it at the time, headlining and being the last band that people remember is a huge responsibility, so we did feel quite the pressure to do our best. Another thing that was awesome was that there was a lot of young people in the crowd, for some it was probably their first metal concert, so to be a part of that was a true honor.”
Norway is internationally associated with metal, but that can also be a strange burden for a young Norwegian band.
Do people expect you to sound ‘Norwegian‘ in some way, and do you actually care about that expectation?
“Yes, they expect it, no, we don’t care.”
Imagine you could remove one rule from modern metal songwriting.
What would you get rid of first?
“If you have to downtune to be heavy, then you are not heavy, not sorry to say it.”
Every band has that one song which was much harder to write than it sounds.
Does Diavola have one, and what made that particular song such a problem?
“‘Vengeance’, it just took ages from writing the riff to getting the form down and being happy with the song in itself. A lot of the song was written already during the summer of 2024, but the song wasn’t played live until February of 2025, and it got recorded in March 2025. Another song that comes to mind is ‘Legacy Falls’. For a long time it consisted of a lot of riff-salads, but to get it to flow well together to where we wanted it to go took a really long time and a lot of trial and error.”
Your two guitarists give you the possibility to make the riffs much bigger, but sometimes the strongest riff is the one you leave completely naked.
How do you decide when a song needs more and when adding something would actually make it weaker?
“It’s instinctive a lot of the time. It really comes down to what we feel when listening to the song. What we usually do is to record the demo, then listen to it and just see what we feel is missing. We usually try to keep the other songs in mind, how they sound, and how we want this one to contrast the other songs we already have. This is also something we keep in mind inside the song itself, how the different parts contrast each other.”
What is the most ridiculous or unexpected thing that has happened to Diavola at a show so far?
“One of the most unexpected things to happen was when we played a venue that’s basically the size of a dive bar, where we got a mosh pit before we started playing, and there were a lot of crowd surfers, which we have never seen before at this venue. Some people even ended up on the stage, while our guitarist was in the middle of a circle pit with the crowd, that was pretty bonkers and awesome!”
You are still at the beginning of the Diavola story.
If we interview you again in five years, what would you hope has changed about the band, and what would you be disappointed if it had changed?
“We hope for bigger tours, bigger stages, bigger productions, a larger friend group, and still keep the same ambition that we have today. We hope we don’t loose our groundedness. If we get our heads stuck in our asses, we hope someone comes to us.”
For a band formed only in 2024, Diavola already seem remarkably clear about what they want and, perhaps more importantly, what they do not want.
Bigger stages, tours, and productions remain ambitions for the future, but not at the expense of the rawness, friendship, and grounded attitude that brought the five musicians together in the first place.
Whether instinct leads them toward groove, aggression, or something entirely unexpected, Diavola appear determined to follow it on their own terms.
The stages may become bigger, but if Gustav and his bandmates have their way, the distance between Diavola and the people standing in front of them never will.
by Fok ‘bs’