LMH 2014 Reforms

L.M.H. will rearrange itself completely to reopen in a few months around May. New Year, new formula:

As French taxation becomes increasingly vampiric, LMH will produce nothing else other than PESTE NOIRE or possible future projects affiliated with Famine, because continuing to produce smaller groups will in the end only result in financially sinking the entire LMH galleon, KPN included. What’s more, my side-activity as a producer requires too much time, personal investment and carves out the money normally dedicated to PN. So from now on, LMH = Famine and Famine = LMH. Otherwise the label would file for bankruptcy.

Although they are already recorded, the next ZEPULKR and SALE FREUX albums will therefore not be unleashed via LMH. I do however invite you to support these two most excellent projects.

I am also stopping the all-underground policy. After 14 years of underground activism, of good and loyal service, I’ve only been repaid by being buggered time and time again. So I have no choice but to note that the BM underground is even more populated by crooks, opportunists, usurpers, haters, losers and wankers than the so-called commercial and mainstream milieu, with this additional obscenity that it never evolves nor grows, that it doesn’t dare anything, and that it is essentially dictated by little shits living off the pocket money from their parents who do not understand the material constraints of fieldwork. The means are as poor as the forms of expression, ideas and music. The principles are nothing more than words: with the groups, an ennoblement of their own social inferiority/mediocrity/sclerosis; with the labels and distributors, an excuse to fuck you (no contracts, bootlegs and so on).

Factually elitist and aristocratic in its infancy, I say that with this sickly resentment and growing butthurt towards quality and success (of others), The Underground has become the Communism of Black Metal. If PN has become hyped and sells more over time, it is not that we have regressed or betrayed BM, it is because we are better than you, you filthy bunch of pissed off lapdogs.

And this paragraph of my future Manifesto remains as relevant as ever:

‘The Underground, let’s face it, is also the too-practical refuge for mongs, the ham-fisted, and deaf idiots who yearn for a more glamorous epithet than ‘bad’. Because there is ‘bad’ and then there is ‘bad’. My Black Metal is ‘bad’ in the sense of being nasty; theirs is simply ‘bad’ in the sense of poorly made. The hash that they cook up for us, with budget ingredients, these publicists herald it as ‘underground’, ‘true’ or ‘cult’ – it depends. And the difficulty they have in using their own hands to produce a work of art and generating a minimal amount of cash from the quality of their work, as PN has done without any promotion [ed.; this text was written before the creation of LMH’s website in 2011. PN was created in 2000], makes them hate the following equally:

1. The technical virtuosity of a real musician,

2. Money, which they logically do not receive from the (lack of) sales of their own cruel failure, and finally:

3. Quality productions – I did not say clean – which are only obtained with money (that they have not earned, as in point 2).

Therefore, they proclaim themselves as anti-technique, anti-commercial and anti-mainstream. One can really read this as: ‘my physical and intellectual handicap does not allow me to sign with a major label, so I have released a CDR limited to 10 copies (recorded with Fruity Loops) and I deny the worthiness of anything that has not been moulded under the same conditions.’ ’

(Diary of PN; in La mesnie Herlequin zine # 1, forthcoming)

As Despo Rutti once said: ‘Stop bullshitting you poof, you’re not better because you sell fewer CDs.’

In short now I will focus on quality without denying myself other means of advertising or finances. I want to make real video clips of Art, big scripted concerts, filmed interviews, reality TV. I want my CDs stacked in Lidl. I want to pose nude on a calendar of ‘The Gods of Black Metal’. I want to drive a black Porsche Cayenne 4 x 4 with silver rims in the form of black suns, and lower the electric window to spit on you when I run the red light while you’re walking on the pedestrian crossing.

Starting with saving work/time: LMH will stop the system of direct sales from producer to consumer. We will sell our products wholesale to labels and distros that will then be in charge of resale. You did nothing for me. As children, we did not sing ‘Inspector Gadget’ together. You have never saved me from drowning in my vomit. You did not find me a job. You’re not my mother, so please stop persecuting me in asking me if you can be the ‘official distributors’ of Peste Noire in France or abroad. I have NO interest in not selling my items to your fucking competitors. I do not know you and I’m not working for you.

Concerning the LMH shop, it will only open for the sale of rare and exceptional editions that distros or labels will not have.

And since in any case anonymous people will always allow themselves to run PN Facebook pages without the permission of the group by posting on it what they want without being aware of the actual future projects of the band, an official FB page for La Mesnie Herlequin, where you will find everything about Peste Noire without foreign elements, misappropriation or wild distortions, was created by us:

https://www.facebook.com/lamesnieherlequin

Finally, it has been three years since I get three requests daily for concerts from all four corners of the globe. We are currently working hard with a line-up of seven people to be ready to get back on stage around mid-2014. Because of the very bad conditions offered that made us miss concerts in the past, because of the work and travelling expenses of the musicians who need to get paid and who aren’t fourteen years old anymore, and knowing that there will be people willing to see us play, this time around we will play according to OUR conditions (financial and material) meticulously adhered to, with the aim of offering our fans concerts that live up to their support for us and are worth the price of their ticket, and no longer for vulture organisers who don’t really give a shit, ultimately, about the quality of the show.

Lists, labels, organisers: I’m at work, so leave me in peace and do not write me any e-mails before May 2014.

4/february/2014, Famine