“I am that serpent-haunted cave
Whose navel breeds the fates of men.
All wisdom issues from a hole in the earth;
The gods form in my darkness, and dissolve again.”
―Kathleen Raine, “The Pythoness”

For almost two decades now, Saturnalia Temple has been forging its own kind of alloy, mixing old school doom and extreme metal with psychedelism and esotericism. The result is hypnotic and meditative, both crushing and elevating. Its last album, Paradigm Call, was released about a year ago and was the last piece of a first cycle. Its mastermind, voice, and composer, Tommie Eriksson, invited the brothers Gottfrid and Pelle Åhman to join in on stage in the meantime, and this collaboration resulted in some potent chemistry, fertile soil and widened horizon at once. The time was due to get some perspective on what has been achieved so far, and what awaits the band for the future.

That’s what I got the chance to talk about with the three musicians before their concert as headliners of the Eindhoven Metal Meeting warm-up evening last December, where ten years ago almost to the day, Gottfrid and Pelle had played their last set as In Solitude. Fittingly, cycles closing and opening are what this long conversation is about―patterns emerging, past and future, and the flow of creativity. But first and foremost, it is about music: its content, its nature, its power.

This interview took place in December 2024 and was first published on Radio Metal.

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