Artist Spotlight: Jens Fredrik Ryland (Borknagar)

Artist Spotlight: Jens Fredrik Ryland (Borknagar)

Founded in 1994 in Norway, Borknagar is a black metal supergroup of sorts, with members who all come from other respected metal bands. Along with bandmate Øystein Brun, guitarist Jens Fredrik Ryland recently joined the ESP family of artists.


Jens, do you remember the first time you ever heard about ESP Guitars?
Yeah. No. (laughs) It’s been there all the time. ESP is one of the brands that always had my interest.

Okay, how about the first time you played an ESP?
Yes. I was hanging out with I.C.S. Vortex when he was in Dimmu Borgir. We went to a shop so he could get his basses adjusted. It was a big showroom that was also full of ESP, and while the tech guy was working on Simen’s basses, I was playing the ESPs. I’d been using other guitars, but right away after picking up up those ESPs, I thought, “This is high quality. This is good stuff.” It was a very positive experience.

What ESP models are you playing now?
I’ve got an LTD EC-407, which has now become my main guitar. I’ve been looking at seven strings for like a decade. Now’s the time, and it’s just what I wanted.

As a six-string player, was there an adjustment period to using a seven-string?
No, it was surprisingly easy, actually. The way our band’s material is made, I actually have good use for the seventh string, which is to fulfill a more powerful sound. It’s going to make a whole new element.

What’s important to you when you’re considering a new guitar?
I’m spoiled with low action. I need something that’s very low action, which allows me to move around on the fretboard a lot. This is one of the main features with the whole ESP line. It’s kind of weird, because if I pick up a guitar now that has high action, I simply can’t play it. It makes me sound like a beginner.

Being in a metal band, I obviously need to consider the design. ESP makes that easy for me anyway. The models you create look so good that I’ve been looking into other designs.

How about tone? What pickups are you using?
In regard to tone, I need humbuckers that have punch to play my role in the music. The EC-407 suits me nice, with punch and active humbuckers. That’s important.

They set up my guitars with EMGs. I had been using other guitar brands for awhile, and was convinced at the time that those were the high end of guitars. What happened, when we got into preproduction, was that we had the first rehearsal with new gear. Somehow, the active humbuckers in my ESPs kind of worked in a way that it levels all the tones. You can hear everything in a brighter way. During a break at one of the rehearsals, the keyboardist said, “I can now hear that guitar part,” but it was the same thing I’ve always played. The guitar and the pickups made that difference.

It’s like a snowball effect. You hear the stuff better as a player, and it comes out better in the sound, which then makes me play better.

How old were you when you started playing?
My dad didn’t let me pick up the guitar until I was 10. He told me at the time that I needed to have big enough fingers to play. In reality, he was afraid that I would mess up that guitar. I still have it, by the way. It’s a relic by now.

Before he let me play his guitar, he gave me this organ. Not a piano, but the old two-tiered kind of organ. After that, I started playing acoustic, and then got into electric guitars when I was 13.

What was the next big step for you, musically?
I had my first performance with a band when I was 14. I got in the local youth club where I’m from, which is the northern parts of Norway. We would meet once a week, and learn songs and have fun. We did gigs around the area up north, mostly doing cover songs. After that, I was in the army. Once I was done, I went to university. At that point, I was more determined to get into the music business and make a profession out of it. That’s when I moved down south to Oslo.

Did you have specific influences while learning and mastering guitar?
I learned a lot from jamming to a lot of the ‘70s and ‘80s rock. Some early influences were Jimi Hendrix and Gary Moore. Later on, it was Maiden, Twisted Sister, and Priest.

Many guitarists find that they kind of get stuck while attempting to progress as a player. If I’m a person who’s had some lessons, played along to recordings, and so on, what’s the next step?
To be in a band is the obvious trigger. If you’re able to make music with a band, you're progressing. Most people are wrong about something: you don’t need to be Steve Vai, or one of the virtuoso guitar players, just to be in a band. I don’t consider myself up there at all, but I can do my shit well enough to be in a band.

There’s also stuff I don’t get to do in Borknagar, but that doesn’t matter. You need to get motivated by the people who are really good. I never went to a concert and saw a guitar player who was so good that it made me feel like I don’t want to play guitar again. It’s motivating.

And you also need a lot of practice, of course (laughs).

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Kjetil (GRIM) Remen

I LOVEĀ Borknagar. Have all there albums. Norwegian Black metal is the best. Keep up tthe good work guys.