Fraukje van Burg | In the Shadow of the Living

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Dutch black metal band Doodswens went through a lot in a few years: inception, gaining momentum, releasing a first album, Lichtvrees, on Svart Records, touring, and eventually, massive changes in the line-up. Fraukje van Burg interviewed here left the band, but Doodswens lives on: I. is still on drums, and S. on guitar and N. on vocals and bass joined forces. I haven’t changed a word of the following interview; it is a candid snapshot of an emerging artist that is just as sincere and compelling as it was when I first wrote it.

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In more ways than one, the first demo of Doodswens is a blaze in the Northern—well, Dutch—sky. Icy and incandescent, the music from Fraukje van Burg (vocals, guitar) and Inge van der Zon (drums) isn’t straight up Scandinavian second wave of black metal worship, but it channels its energy, raw, fiery, and visceral. These first songs scored them a spot at the iconic Roadburn Festival and hold a lot of promises. We chatted with Fraukje about the past, present, and future of the band.

This interview took place the 29th of November 2020 and was first published in Stryga, a fanzine published by the enchanting Lia of Absaintes. It’s a stunning thing and you should definitely buy it here.

© Aldwin Lehr – edit Fraukje van Burg
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Chat Pile | Real American Horror Story

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The Covid-19 pandemic has been a hard blow for most musicians, but for Chat Pile, it ended up being a catalyst. The band’s music, a brooding mix of Big Black-style guitars, heaviness hinting to Korn or Godflesh, raw, disillusioned Americana, and sludge, turned out to be the ideal soundtrack to the ambient claustrophobia and anxiety—as they say themselves, “the sound of your world collapsing.” Inventive, sarcastic, and confrontational, Chat Pile is a breath of fresh air: the buzz created in just a few EPs landed them a deal with The Flenser, and it’s on this prestigious label that their first album, the aptly named God’s Country was released.

I jumped on the opportunity to chat about these explosive beginnings with the band during the 2023 edition of Roadburn, before their first gig in Europe. Friendly, relaxed, and obviously very happy to be there, Luther Manhole (guitar), Stin (bass), self-professed jokester Raygun Busch (vocals), and the discreet Cap’n Ron (drums) talked about the genesis of God’s Country and life in Oklahoma, whose stifling religiosity and industrial past (chat piles included, obviously) permeate the songs.

This interview took place in April 2023 and was first published on Radio Metal.

© Bayley Hanes
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Ted “Nocturno Culto” Skjellum | Against the Grain

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In Dennis Wheatley’s infamous novel The Devil Rides Out, the main character wards off evil by building a magic circle made of a pentacle, holy water, and dried mandrake, among other things. It is described as an “astral fortress.” Darkthrone’s Astral Fortress, on the other hand, is made of doomy riffs, a touch of cosmic keyboards, and decades of mastery. It conjures snowy landscapes, vast expanses of cold, and something I can’t help but describe as cozy: tried-and-tested recipes, old metal. The devil does ride out; the (black) magic is still there, fluttering and intact.

I got the chance to talk about it with Ted “Nocturno Culto” Skjellum, the discreet and iconic voice of the band, and this twentieth album turned out to be a pretext to revisit Darkthrone’s whole, stellar catalogue: Darkthrone has its own temporality, whether the rhythm slows down or accelerates, with its loops, echoes, and almost-anachronisms. Humble, with a no-nonsense attitude and a deadpan sense of humor, the musician mused on the threads running throughout their career: punk ethics, a sincere love for metal, and a strong partnership with his accomplice of old Fenriz. And first and foremost, an unwavering way to stay true to themselves, and go against the grain.

This interview took place in November 2022 and was first published on Radio Metal.

© Jørn Steen
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Earth | The Colour of Poison

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In June 2022, Earth played Le Botanique in Brussels, a venue set in an old botanical garden. Wolfsbane was in bloom. It felt like the perfect setting for their last album, Full Upon Her Burning Lips, with its organic 70s vibe and allusions to poisonous plants. In keeping with the theme, a couple of days later, Dylan Carlson, the founder and guitar player of the band, gave a solo show in a sculpture garden in Antwerp. That’s where we had agreed to do an interview.

Earth doesn’t need any introduction: from the cornerstones of drone metal to Carlson’s 90s tribulations and the band’s resurrection in the early 00s, its impact on contemporary music in general and the metal scene in particular has proven deep and lasting. This cult status never distracted Carlson from his path, though: he always remained dedicated to minimalism and slowness, to the riff. Drummer Adrienne Davies joined in—yes, they did play Earth songs too that evening—and we talked about the latest developments of the band and its history. During the conversation, the two partners in crime chat, joke, contradict each other, finish each other’s sentences: they don’t just describe, they embody the flow of Earth’s music.

This interview took place in June 2022 and was first published on Radio Metal.

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Alexander von Meilenwald | Inner Landscapes

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In 15 years of existence, The Ruins Of Beverast managed to define an immediately recognizable style—a blend of the aggression and occult atmospheres of black metal, the animality of death metal, and the epic slowness of doom delivered in long, sprawling songs—and to push it in different directions with every album, through shrines, rain, blood vaults, and mass graves. With the last one, The Thule Grimoires, we’re heading north: Alexander von Meilenwald, the project’s mastermind, paints a threatening, hostile world in seven songs that sound like frozen barren landscapes, icy mists, and endless nights only illuminated by the magical, psychedelic colors of Northern lights and the flames of rituals performed by shamans wrapped in furs.

In keeping with his black metal roots, Meilenwald expresses himself in a precise, controlled way: the following interview has been done by email. It was made for the release of The Thule Grimoires and touches its creation, but I couldn’t resist bringing up Meilenwald’s unique path to get an insight into his creative process, his inspirations, and his views on a world that is both opaque and inhospitable.

This interview took place in February 2021 and was first published on Radio Metal.

TROB_6

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Farida Lemouchi | Catharsis

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We’ve never known much about Farida Lemouchi. Even though she was the voice of The Devil’s Blood, the center of the attention on stage, off stage, she was mute; the composition, lyrics, and declarations of the band were all handled by the mastermind and guitar player of the band, her brother Selim Lemouchi. After his death in 2014 and a deeply emotional performance on the stage of the Roadburn Festival a month later, Farida took a step back. For years, we only heard her in a couple of collaborations, including a memorable cover of Aphrodite’s Child’s “Four Horsemen” with Griftegård.

And then in 2019, with three bandmates from The Devil’s Blood (Job van de Zande, Oeds Beydals, and Ron van Herpen) and a couple of new associates (Marcel van de Vondervoort for a while, and then Bob Hogenelst and Matthijs Stronks), she came back on the same stage for the 2019 edition of the Roadburn Festival as Molassess. After a first EP, Mourning Haze / Drops Of Sunlight, the album Through The Hollow was released seven years after the last creations on which Lemouchi, Beydals, van de Zande, and van Herpen were all involved: III: Tabula Rasa or Death and the Seven Pillars, the last – and aborted – album of The Devil’s Blood, and Earth Air Spirit Water Fire by Selim Lemouchi & His Enemies.

But Molassess isn’t a headless version of The Devil’s Blood: it doesn’t aim to reproduce formulas that were proven successful, nor to resurrect what has been put in the ground years before. It doesn’t try to leave everything behind either: the band sounds like it’s actively digesting its past, constantly negotiating with the ghostly presence of Selim. Despite its sophistication and the beauty of its arrangements, Through The Hollow feels pared-down, authentic, at times brutally so. Brave and vulnerable, meticulous and imperfect, deeply alive, it tells the detailed, sometimes grueling story of a grieving process, and the story a rebirth, too: it looks like emancipation – Farida is finally singing her own words, the musicians play their own music – but goes with its own brand of suffering as well. Death takes but gives, too; it’s the source of the brightest creations; it transforms, metamorphoses: Selim may rest in peace, the ones he left behind obviously heard his message.

Through The Hollow was the perfect opportunity to finally listen to what Farida, who was once called “the Mouth of Satan”, has to say. Here are her musings on art, life, death, and everything in between.

This interview took place in November 2020 and was first published on Radio Metal.

© Esther van Waalwijk

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Tom G. Warrior | Only Death Is Real

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“Tomorrow, my career may be ruined. Can you imagine that?”: the day before the Requiem performance at this year’s edition of the Roadburn Festival, metal legend Tom G. Warrior was tense, and understandably so. The expectations were high, to say the least: a unique event, the concert was to be the grand outcome of a project he started thirty-three years ago when Celtic Frost was at its heights. Entitled Requiem, the piece, composed of “Rex Irae”, from 1987’s infamous Into The Pandemonium, “Winter”, the closer of 2006’s Monotheist, and a central part composed for the occasion, had never been played live before. The performance promised to be historical, involving Warrior’s band Triptykon and an orchestra, the Metropole Orkest,  and without a safety net.

This interview took place the following day, just a few hours after the Requiem was completed and hailed by a packed venue. Still in the heat of the moment, Tom went back on the genesis of this long-term undertaking. Majestic, rife with emotion, a musical marriage of heaven and hell, the Requiem is more than a music piece. It’s a distillation of a more than three-decades-long career that forged contemporary metal and a chiaroscuro take on death. Literally, on the death of several of Tom’s colleagues and friends, including Celtic Frost’s Martin Ain. And figuratively, on death as the inexhaustible muse, always tightly weaved into Warrior’s creative process: the Requiem is creation and destruction, life and death made one. We also talked about his numerous other projects: the Requiem might have been taken to an end, but Tom G. Warrior still has a lot to offer…

This interview took place in April 2019 and was first published on Radio Metal.

Tom G Warrior-Shelley Jambresic

© Shelley Jambresic

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Jonathan Hultén | Dreaming the Dark

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“Of bodies chang’d to various forms, I sing”
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I, lines 1-2

The last twelve months have been busy for Jonathan Hultén. The Swedish musician released his first EP as a solo artist, The Dark Night of the Soul, a couple of months later, the album Down Below with his band Tribulation, and toured extensively in the meantime. Chants from Another Place sounding as delicate and minimalistic than Tribulation sounds wide and heavy, Hultén proves that his talent is multifaceted and that his creativity knows no boundaries.

To get some kind of counterpoint to the interview I had with Adam Zaars, his fellow guitar player in Tribulation, I reached out to Jonathan to have his own approach to Down Below. It has also been the occasion to talk about Chants from Another Place, its common features and its contrasts with Tribulation’s ambitious death metal. At the roots of both of these projects, Jonathan Hultén turns out to be an artist that creates as he breathes, looking for exploration, transformation, and ultimately, metamorphosis. Thoughtful and generous, he talked about life and darkness, doubts and convictions, creation of course, and introspection.

This interview took place in August 2018 and was first published on Radio Metal.

Jonathan-Hulten

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Jarboe | Truth and Consequences

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Jarboe doesn’t need to be introduced: core member of Swans along with Michael Gira until 1997, ever since then, she keeps on singing, creating, shape-shifting, and growing, working with artists as different as Neurosis, A Perfect Circle, Phil Anselmo, Justin Broadrick, and In Solitude, in the process. Ubiquitous and discreet, appealing and eerie, muse and mentor: she knows no boundaries and follows her path in the shadows, where experimental music, extreme metal, rock, and contemporary art meet.

Thanks to a lot of luck and a bit of nerve, I managed to meet her somewhat against all odds after her show with Father Murphy at Roadburn, a couple of months ago. The interview was short, but when Jarboe talks, sharp and generous, time stands still. It’s like a whole part of the history of contemporary music coming to life. Off the record, anecdotes abound: she recalls a visit of Budapest with Attila Csihar as a guide, gently mocks the members of some Swedish black metal bands, “charming when they’re alone, insufferable when they’re together…” Under the pretext of talking about her haunting collaboration with Italian occult psychedelic duo Father Murphy, she evoked seminal episodes from her childhood, her relationship to spirituality as a musician, and some memorable live performances, outlining her own approach to art, unique and visceral, humble and uncompromising, sensitive and quietly stubborn.

This interview took place in April 2018 and was first published on Radio Metal.

jarboee

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Juho “Jun-His” Vanhanen | Enter the Void

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Two weeks ago, Oranssi Pazuzu teamed with another band from Tampere, Dark Buddha Rising, for a unique performance named Waste of Space Orchestra at Roadburn. The Finns were playing at the festival for the third year in a row. In 2017, I caught Juho “Jun-His” Vanhanen, guitarist and vocalist of the band, a few hours after their set on the Mainstage of the festival, to know more about the inception of the psychedelic trip into the unknown that is Värähtelijä, their last record. Wild, daring, swirling together krautrock, black metal, and much more, the album left listeners terrified, bewildered, and more often than not, amazed.

Unwrapping the twists and turns of the music but never unveiling its mystery, Jun-His talked about the elaboration of Värähtelijä, his aims as an artist, his views on his own art. “Everything is there and still, you can’t figure the reason behind it, behind existence,” he explained: instead of looking for answers and not afraid to stare into the void, Oranssi Pazuzu chose to embrace the unknown.

This interview took place in April 2017 and was first published on Radio Metal.

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© Samuli Huttunen

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