1) C.N.C: What conclusions have you gathered so far in your career with Peste Noire? Do you think you’ve made any mistakes, or have things in fact gone pretty much as you would have expected?
Famine: Musically there were some failures, successes, some unlistenable and average bits; but I will always be proud of having gotten stuck in with the real action, of throwing myself in the arena even if sometimes things were a bit rushed/sloppy, when many old comrades had made great compositions without the patience, the will, the pugnacity of a pack leader and the global vision of an architect that would have allowed them to go forward as a team against physical obstacles and the egocentric, pain-in-the-arse musicians that are always trying to take all the credit without understanding anything of your approach or your universe. You must find the few good people in this little pond we call Black Metal and have no qualms about cutting out the dead wood. Nothing should hinder you, not a pair of tits, not gossip, not hard times nor the bitchy reviewers who enjoy the perversion of destroying two years work with a few lines of text. After a long day’s work recording L’Ordure à l’état Pur I learnt that Saturday night that my father had died in a motorbike accident. The Sunday morning I was in the studio recording. That’s a musician. I especially made some ‘constructive errors’ and some ‘strategic errors’ mainly related to studio production, and to the point forcing myself to play with people I didn’t like and in fact wanted to strangle, but whom I needed, or with scam labels and concert organisers. I regret nothing as I did what I did with what I had and with what I was entitled to require at the time in order to make a name for myself, as they say. Today I no longer suffer from these problems due to increased recognition achieved from around the time Ballad was released. Instead I have more choices; my acolytes are handpicked according to their skills and from their common spirit. I’ll never forget that at the start when I didn’t have a dime and lived in a region where Black Metallers were as common as coppers in a French suburb, it was a tall order to find a producer. I got suckered into selling the rights of my first two albums against a Lilliputian compensation that I never saw in return for recording in a pro studio, because the producer was a sound engineer and also a false friend. I accepted that his label didn’t go through SACEM [A French professional association collecting payments of artists’ rights and distributing the rights to the original songwriters] to avoid him being unfairly taxed, and to allow him to save money I took the risk of not being protected by this organisation, in the naive confidence of the pseudo-principles of the Black Metal underground and of a verbal agreement between men. He took advantage of the situation and didn’t pay me the microscopic fee that we agreed on (0.50 EUR per CD divided by four once the first thousand units were sold) when these early albums were doing very well, telling me that he needed that dough to repress my CDs, which is what I wanted above all. Without this abusive deal I could do little with no funds, and we were stuck with the hidden defects and chicaneries of the few producers we could find during that period. Playing with a fully capitalist principle: whoever has the funds to press your CDs and the gear to record you – basically the Capital, without which you can do nothing – make them available for you and then reap the fruits of your labour. One mustn’t cry, it’s the rules, when you haven’t got a cent or someone to borrow gear from, this is the only way to start, or you have to stop your projects if you aren’t a rich kid. And when I speak of the defects of the only producers that we could find at the time, the sound of the second album Folkfuck Folie for example was literally annihilated, particularly the vocals, because the ‘sound engineer’/producer in question didn’t know what he was doing, combining two pre-amps on the vocals, which gave the impression it was recorded in a 15 miles tunnel when in fact I had the same vocal power as on the first album La Sanie de Siècles, and I had wrecked my voice for a crappy result. The main mistakes therefore: 1) working with rapacious producers and labels (the most recent example of this is my unfortunate transatlantic deal with the Canadian label Transcendental Creations/La mesnie Amérique (R.I.P 2011-2013) https://www.facebook.com/lamesnieherlequin#!/lamesnieherlequin/photos/a.283688441779625.1073741828.283675498447586/318070788341390/?type=1&theater) 2) Accepting having to make compromises with the rare musicians that were available even though they understood nothing of my world, and who (due to their overbearing egos) wanted to run the band and make it the next METALLICA; and tolerating the input of another with regard to my production which I always wanted rusty, analogue, outdated and filthy, when the studios only understand/master clean and sanitised sounds (I’m not talking about the sound engineer for L’Ordure who really earned his bread). At least I acted and released five albums despite the often unfavourable material and human circumstances that came my way. I haven’t opened my mouth or shown off on the net by sticking up loads of photos on Facebook before actually working. Too many poseurs in Black Metal today act as rock stars in Ray-Bans after having posted their GuitarPro songs on Soundcloud. They’ve got patches, t-shirts of their group before having proven themselves. Their only motivation is the illusion of fame. Their place is in the Air Guitar contests. They forget that we began as soldier-monks when nobody knew this style, when it was ultra-obscure and it didn’t attract chicks. When we ourselves were ashamed by this style, this ugly gargoyle style, and we had to hide in order to practise it, irresistibly. I never played this music as a hobby or for narcissism. I feel that the only thing that matters for these ponces today, now that BM is more popular, is to waddle on stage in front of twenty people as if they were Axl Rose. I call it the Big Brother syndrome: wanting to be famous from sitting on the sofa; posing without working. There aren’t many musicians now who really work in the shadows at their instruments or at having a distinctive playing style; these kids learn to play primitive styles like DARKTHRONE’s and BATHORY’s and stop there, whereas in my time we hurt our fingers at 13 years old on the three Ms (MAIDEN, METALLICA, MEGADETH). More worrying, there are less and less artists who think about their music before playing it, who have an experience, who experiment with new forms such as those who forged Industrial and Batcave in the 80s, less and less Black Metallers who really build an inner world such as was the case for NUIT NOIRE (two brothers who hiked a lot at night before thinking about learning to play and form a band to reflect what they felt during those sojourns), DARVULIA and CELESTIA did back in the day, groups that I started with and regardless of their quality, had their own universe and a unique thing to say. I’m talking about a time that those under 20 cannot know about. With a few exceptions, the nowadays French scene is full of clones, copycats, embittered reviewers and butthurt forum users whose main hobby is killing off the rare groups which have the balls to be at the forefront of the genre and who do not know the effort that goes into composing, creating a world, managing a group, recording and making a living from a genre that is judged and hurriedly categorised from their soft armchair. To me these useless people have the same form as those football supporters who are blobs of gelatine and insult and judge the professional players who have a supreme physical fitness when they miss a goal. You are spiritual look-alikes to French sports journalist Pierre Ménès. Look well at your soul in this fucking mirror:
[Check the clash between Joey Barton and Pierre Ménès: http://www.lephoceen.fr/infos-om/decla/tweet-clash-menes-barton-ca-continue-barton-menes-ca-envoit-du-lourd-sur-twitter-111012]
You are parasites. Impotent meatballs. And I am Usain Bolt, Alexei Yagudin. Keep a fair perspective. Or show us what you can do musically. From experience, the most vehement shit-talkers are also those who release the smelliest turds. Always ask yourself: ‘Where are you talking about? What did you do? What is your legitimacy? What are your high deeds?’ to paraphrase the horrible Arno Klarsfeld [French lawyer]. And concerning the errors that sprung from the naivety of youth that allowed labels and concert organisers to bend me over under the guise of the Underground being not a business but a free passion of love and spring water, friendship and consensual sodomy, whereas Black Metal has never been so profitable as it is today (I run my own label, so I know here what I am talking about), today I operate independently and no one, apart from the French state, will make more money from my music than myself. It also concerns the concerts we are now preparing hard for at the moment. Being exploited on the back of my own baby [KPN] is an error that I will never commit during the rest of my career. Otherwise you’ll have to deal with him:
2. CNC: What are the groups that have forged you musically? And those which you would recommend today?
I’ll talk more about albums than groups. To quote a bare minimum of those that counted most for me and that continue to haunt my dreams:
Above all others for now and for eternity:
Jedesmal Aufs Neue, Doch Ich Bin Unsterblich, Und Ich Erstehe Wieder Auf… In Einer V by SOPOR AETERNUS
Then…
Remains and Vampires of Black Imperial Blood by MÜTIILATION
Aske and Det som engang var by BURZUM
Chants d’Europe III by CHOEUR MONJOIE SAINT-DENIS
A Sorcery Written in Blood by GORGOROTH
Almanach by MALICORNE
War Funeral March by VLAD TEPES
Je sais pas trop by MANO SOLO
Everything by EVIL SKINS
Ainsi soit je… by MYLENE FARMER
In the Nightside Eclipse by EMPEROR
Everything by NEOKLASH
3. CNC: You often make reference to the Middle Ages in your lyrics and visual aesthetic. Any reason(s) why?
The Middle Ages has haunted me since I was a kid, why I couldn’t say. I always had flashes of that era. All the aesthetics (from the castles to the tapestries, from the religious buildings to the armours, from the literature – especially The Matter of Britain – to the sound of the instruments, from the code of chivalry to the racism of the chansons de geste, the heraldry, the balance between culture and nature, the omnipresent bestial nature, the art of rendering the monstrous beautiful, the hand-to-hand combat rather than drones and dropped atom bombs), everything, in this (large and varied) epoch that the historians have condensed into a single monolithic block, everything (except for the puritanical Catholicism at the end of the Middle Ages) electrifies me. Without wishing to sound like my dear Neige® [for those who don’t know Neige®: Neige® is the leader of the group ALCEST® who had visions of a past life® where faëries® and hobbits® fucked in his shrubbery® – note from Famine], I constantly have flashes of a past life amongst unspoilt nature and Medieval villages, visions that soothe me, make me euphoric, and have a calming effect on me, something I feel less with Classical Rome or the Grand Siècle [17th-century France] for example. I can’t explain it. Without directly referring to the Middle Ages but thinking about it, I talk of a ‘genetic memory’ in our forthcoming magazine to evoke this phenomenon, that a dirty and dusty Black Metal (demonstrated by the first MUTIILATION records) describes perfectly:
‘The idea of Beauty, Nobility and Grandeur, leaps to mind when BM offers flashes of regions and times past, mental ancestral heritage, genetic memory. Because what faces at least stay pure in our cavalier heads? Only those of your ancient lands, Oh Old Europe! Invulnerable and virginal, not yet mutilated by the obscene talons of the Last of Men [see Nietzsche’s ‘Last Man’]. BM is a music with integrity (from the Latin stem integer, meaning intact) – which helps us to remain intact among a dying world, amidst a decomposing people, unworthy of its Blood. Its scars and its stench, its smell of a millenary corpse, are there only to show that it is as old as the times it emanates. As a regional religion it gives us a sense of continuity in time and permanence in a place, as writes Jean Lafond in the preface to L’Astrée. A pure A.O.C. product (A.O.C. = Controlled Designation of Origin), a cheese that is white (without artificial colouring) and gamey in taste (without preservatives), that exudes the place in which it was made. With it, the past or history of a place, out of reach, returns here. ‘Art is connected to necromancy. Magie is the anagram of an image. Art is a metamorphosis. It gives life and voice to the inanimate’ wrote Jacqueline Cerquiglini. Images, lives and voices of our obscure national History, as of our local legends, BM delivers us from this century by resurrecting the Past.
And hate, terror, disorder, will arise as soon as it evokes the future, or the current world…
Through it is expressed more nausea than love, and filth rather than beauty.’
Famine, Diary of PN, in the magazine La mesnie Herlequin #1, forthcoming. (http://www.lamesnieherlequin.com/revue/de-notre-musique/black-a-o-c-par-famine/2334-2/)
The fact that I make reference to the Middle Ages in my texts or that I sing directly in Old French is because I studied literature in college and had started to specialise in Medieval literature before ending up in a psychiatric hospital.
4. C.N.C: What was the reception like for your last eponymous album, Peste Noire, in the Black Metal scene and beyond?
Overall the album was considered fine, even good, but not great. That is my feeling as well. This album was more of a synthesis, an album of atmospheres rather than a groundbreaking thing or a flagship album in the band’s discography. A little of everything PN can be found on this album, which is why it is called ‘Peste Noire’. It’s hard to renew oneself after five albums and four demos, hard to merely stay fine for PN. PN is judged against PN, not against others. We maintain a certain standard. This is the hardest thing, to make it last the distance. On the last album I think I mixed the vocals too loud, but by the end I was tired of being locked in the studio so I just released it without taking a critical objective view. I’ll mix the next one better.
5. C.N.C: Peste Noire seems to have undergone a mutation in recent years, moving away from the canons of traditional Black Metal to create your own musical and visual universe. Do you even feel part of the ‘French BM scene’, or have you exceeded this? What is you opinion on French Black Metal?
Just because we borrow from classic rock, folk, Oi! or musette [19th-century style of French popular music and dance], that does not mean that our world is no longer a Black Metal one. Our universe is dark, muddy, evokes the brothels, the sewers, village festivals ending in pogroms or in acid-soaked murderous sexual orgies such as in Pont Saint-Esprit [ed.: the village where the Black Legions’s castle was located], all kinds of dark holes and old French localities, French because my Black Metal is cinematic and because I try to translate into sound scenes, moments, places where I hung out when I was younger with my Solex or which come to me in flashes, from somewhere in France. My opinion on French Black Metal is that many of those who are involved in it are prickish hangers-on who wait for your music to become globally popular to start taking you into consideration, or even copying you in the hope of finding the winning recipe. At the time of Folkfuck Folie we were already becoming heavily slandered/ostracised because we were beginning to address this rural-Rabelaisian universe which has forged our identity, and that the pedants reduced to Joke Black Metal. It is only since L’Ordure that the die-hard fans have fully understood us and that we have left the pure traditionalists behind, however they have stopped throwing shit at us and have accepted us as we are. They now just say ‘Bah, that’s just Peste Noire!’. We are our own genre. Hated before, hyped now, and probably forgotten in five years time, but I have lost count of all the groups in the French Black Metal scene which have been accused of copying PN, thereby making it obvious that we’re still producing Black Metal, that we constitute a part of its identity, that of a local, ingrained, bawdy Black Metal. As for no longer playing traditional BM, what does ‘traditional’ mean? Something, static, preserved and pickled in a jar? Plenty of groups today think they are traditional by copying the form rather than the essence of the first Black Metal groups, which were progressive and I would even say archaeo-futurist, drawing from old communal European springs to create new forms, regenerating these wells with powerful modern tools. Those who make Black Metal that is called ‘traditional’ are merely content to rehash Slavic and Scandinavian gimmicks, which themselves were based on non-conformist experimentation, as my frater L’Atrabilaire outlines in a question during an interview on my website:
‘In the beginning Black Metal was an experimental and non-conformist style of music. When Bathory, Sarcofago or Hellhammer smashed the rules of Thrash and Punk around 25 years ago, when Burzum or Emperor integrated elements of classical music into their music, or when Mysticum or Thorns dabbled with industrial sounds, it was pure experimentation. They invented a style without knowing it. Nowadays creativity has dried up, for the past few years we’ve had reissues of anything and everything on CD, on blue vinyl, or green, yellow, goose-shit coloured, you want it you’ve got it…there’s nothing new, fresh, or interesting. Apart from a few rare pearls, for several years BM has had the creative level of the herd, as we hear the same recycled riffs invented by Burzum/Darkthrone/Mayhem/Dissection…churned out by thousands of similar groups [44 Black Metal full-lengths were released in 1993; in 2013 there were 1,744; Source: The Metal Archives] who have never been able to free themselves from imitating their influences (i.e. they limit themselves to listening solely to other Black Metal groups, unlike the former bands who had a variety of stylistic influences, an appreciation of the broader metal culture and also a real musical knowledge); basically ‘apprentice groups’ who write ‘study’ albums in ‘homage’ to their favourite ‘master’ group. In short, they aren’t paying tribute to Satan as they claim, rather they are worshipping at the altars of their favourite musicians. Like for example, when PN was born, I remember that few metropolitan BM groups dared to use French, opting instead for English, and musically everyone wanted (and still wants?) to sound Viking/Norwegian/Swedish/Finnish, American, Slavic, or something else, but never French. Few people can/will accept themselves for who they really are…We see that despite everything you have developed a uniquely personal sound, invented a ‘Pestenoirian’ style that is unmistakeable yet which changes from album to album, to the point where you now find bands copying PN! How did you do this? Is it due to some enchanting visions of a wonderful sparkly fairyland you had in your childhood? No? Perhaps you are able to inject a good dose of colour and nuances into the usual black monochrome of basic BM, and unlike the same undifferentiated emotions as those up-their-own arse clones, you have managed to express the multiplicity of man (his joy, sadness, anger…), a man who, in truth, ‘is wholly and throughout but patch and motley’ (Montaigne: Essays, Chapter XX)…like the Harlequin?’ (http://www.lamesnieherlequin.com/2013/04/interview-kpn-v-english-version/)
We are more traditional than their so-called traditional Black Metal because we draw further upon tradition. Already, on ours, on French tradition; and on later tradition, the musette, good old Rock’n’Roll and the Middle Ages.
6. C.N.C: The personality of Famine that you depict in your albums is a kind of right-wing anarchist, a punk patriot, is that your real personality or a way of spicing up your Black Metal sauce?
This is my real personality, but I am less eccentric/excessive in real life, luckily for me:
‘Don’t hit me in my face
It’ll give you warts
You’ll sink in a mushroom
You’ll eat two three four punches
And when my breath wafts over you
You’ll sleep in gutter piss, mate
Spread out like soft shit
Skin sucked by flies.
What fool, you’ve never seen a fungus
With eyes, that talks?
For you ladies tonight I spruced myself up:
A hint of Kro[nenborg] on the hair to put my mohawk up.
Glossed over with talc to enhance my pale face
I strap on my trusty eye-patch, Le Pen style,
And to pick up fat chicks
My crossbow with a sheath.
Yeah arsehole, it’s me who’s turned up roaring
Round the bend on my moped
Chucking a saucisson at you
To escape with your chick
And get down to some fun and games!
The filthy Famine von Valfunde
It’s what you can call your aggression!
And to remember it in runes
KPN engraved on your forehead
Vroom! Fart! Vroom! Fart! Vroom!
My little chick I’ll take you to see the ocean
I’ll bugger you in the sand
So that you don’t give birth to a brat
Such is my miserable secret…
Lil’ uncontrolled skid
Oops damn I snuffed your whale…
Again it will make waves
Quick I need to bury her under a bump of earth
Hey there hick! Ohhh good-looking!
Yeah you walking here by chance
You really look like a witness
Come here so I can bully you,
Relieve you of some limbs
Giving you a nasty time
Oh the sissy! The little wet pussy!
She cries because I’ve cut one of her fingers!
Fine what would it be like if it was…three?
You’ll say nothing eh?
Your forefinger I tell you
I’ll feed my mouth ulcer with it
You’ll see how it has grown
Soon we could float a boat on it
On the rivers of pus that it produces…
The dirty Famine ben Valfunde
It’s the name of your ablation!
And to remember it my arse,
Shitting on your dirty cunt face.’
(‘Sale Famine von Valfuck’; L’Ordure à l’état Pur
http://degtyarov.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/peste-noire-lyrics-in-english/)
When L-F Céline writes about himself in Mort à Crédit (Death on Credit), he turns everything into an excess, it’s what makes his autobiography into literature. I am reserved by nature IRL. PN is my id [i.e. an escape], an impulsive outburst that allows me to curb my violence. All the filth expelled through PN makes me a calm guy in daily life, as far as possible, apart from if you touch my lady, my family or my land. Catharsis. Having said that, we play this game in KPN to pretend to be the most cocky, the most irritable, the most stinking, in other words as overly French as humanly possible, so much so that an Aussie reading my words would pay 600 quids for a plane ticket, or that a 500 lbs American mouth breather would swim an ocean, both just to kill me. I cannot imagine PN other than as a bottle of piss wantonly thrown on someone.
[photo: Famine harasses a grandmother in Souvigny]
7. C.N.C: Peste Noire has long talked about France. Why this choice, during a time when many groups fantasised (and still fantasise) about Vikings and German soldiers…?
There are no words which can describe how much I love France, its landscapes, its old stones, its food, its cemeteries, the names of its villages are pure poetry in themselves… it’s not a choice to talk about it, it’s an order from below. I could have talked about German soldiers (and I have done) because I have Germanic origins, and some of my Alsatian and German ancestors fought alongside the Krauts, but who else would spew about the ancient and dark France in today’s Black Metal? DEATHSPELL OMEGA and their Hebraic Black Metal? The Parisian junkies with their anti-roots Black Metal? Just as DIAPSIQUIR takes care of contemporary urban France, I take care of the White trash, the inbred and the rural. I should point out that I am not saying that the countryside is inbred; my Black Metal however, he very much is.
8. C.N.C: How do you manage to combine your love for Eternal France with a rejection of Christianity, which is a significant historical component of the formation of France?
France is not Christian, it is Catholic. I purposely utter such a paradox, and underpin it as much as I can in another interview:
‘And if by Satanist you mean anti-Christian, then yes I am, with the proviso that I quite dig traditional Catholicism, from which I draw my entire aesthetic for PN, which is anything except Christianity: rootedness vs. Christian universalism; anti-Semitism vs. a Jewish god; a sense of hierarchy and elitism vs. new testament egalitarianism; racist crusades (one has only to read the Song of Roland to see that it would make the writings of Vacher de Lapouge seem like SOS Racism communiqués) vs. victimhood and love for one’s neighbour; love of beauty and luxury vs. the clochard-esque poverty advocated by Jesus. If white Christian art gives me a raging hard-on (typically it was made by whites for whites, on top of pagan temples….also white in origin*), the content of the New Testament makes me literally puke.
* Big boss Pierre Vial says, the Auvergne kept, in the Middle Ages, clear traces of Gaulish heritage. The squat churches carry plane sculptures in stark contrast with the round bosses typical of the Romanesque tradition. Interlacing patterns and solar motifs perpetuated an ancient symbolic grammar carved into the stone. The Auvergne artists affirmed without complexity their originality, especially in the Haute [Upper] Auvergne where, notes Bernard Craplet, triumphed in the Romanesque period ‘a popular art, full of life, racy and even bawdy, whose verve was given free rein on the corbels along the apses.’’ (http://www.lamesnieherlequin.com/2013/04/interview-kpn-v-english-version/)
So all in all, I want to be Catholic in the same way I can be Socialist: Nationally. Forgiveness, sharing, ok, but with my own kind. Of course I am talking about Ashkenazi pygmies, that way I won’t go to jail.
9. C.N.C: Do you not think that at the moment, the only religion that it is appropriate to fight is this ‘religion of Capital’ with its monetary God, priests and morality?
Yes but this religion – that of predestination and usury – stems from Protestantism (see Weber) and behind Protestantism lies the Old Testament (see Attali), and behind the Old Testament one finds the Swedes (again, so I don’t go to jail). I’m adverse to all Abrahamic totalitarianisms: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Let’s leave these religions to the camel shaggers.
10. C.N.C: In an interview on your website you talk about Méridien Zéro, and we thank you for it. What do you think about these types of initiatives?
Between the Bourgeois-Christian moraline of Radio Courtoisie and the impossible fantasies of reconciliation found in Egalité et Réconciliation – two sources of information that I respect and listen to by the way – MZ meets the expectations of the youth, especially Black Metallers: serious historical and cultural pedagogy, ethno-European vision and ribald, caustic humour. The youngest radio station (with music that is close to our hearts), the most ethnocentric and the most popular. Since many of us find an interest in the Nouvelle Droite [New Right], Terre et Peuple [Land and Folk] and the magazine Réfléchir et Agir [Think and Act], we welcome this little radio station (which serves a bit as their voice) as a blessing. I must admit also to having a soft spot for the duo Krampon/Vaudan that make me piss myself each time they come on.
11. C.N.C: In general, do you think it is necessary today to engage politically one way or another (elections, culturally, socially etc.)? How do you explain the lack of politicisation within the Black Metal community and the obvious failure of NSBM?
Although PN is ultra-politicised as I cannot make it otherwise, I don’t think that music influences opinion. Music touches the sensitivity of a person, emotion not reason. I listen to punk and I listen to MANO SOLO, who politically was my worst enemy. I listen to the rap of big strapping Blacks and North African barbarians because I am a pure ethno-differentialist and because difference pleases me AS difference and specificity, and I want these friendly people to be strong in their country, not in mine. Listening to them doesn’t make me tanned. It’s the same with politics, listening to the BERUS [Bérurier Noir – Cult French anarchist punk band from the 80s] doesn’t make you homeless and without identity papers.
Social engagement in the style of M.A.S [Mouvement d’Action Sociale] or Casapound in Italy has more impact in my opinion. The workers have no time to inform themselves and only believe what they can see. They believe what they see on TV, i.e. lies and the demonisation of our movements. But they also believe what they see on the ground. So if our movements are more present socially (with aid of all kinds) on the tarmac, the media demonisation will work less well on the masses. Without overdoing it I mean, helping with a good heart for authentic racial solidarity, not proselytising like those Jehovah’s Witnesses freaks who turn up at the slightest incident to convert everyone. Seeing as we live in a democracy of opinion where the media dictates both good and bad votes by manipulating the masses, our sincere and concrete help to our people, which only exists in the form of promises and mirages in political policies, will provide an effective contrast. And social commitment can influence electoral choices and votes. And first, it simply helps our people feel better.
As for NSBM, I personally came to Black Metal during the NS boom in France at the start of 2000, so I can talk about it. NSBM was ultimately less of a political program than a fashion. In that time any piece of shit stamped ‘88’ was being snapped up like hotcakes, including mine: Aryan Supremacy, my first demo, which was really a big piece of shite. So shit that it was limited to 14 copies. All sold in one day. NSBM disappeared for a time, then resurfaced recently. But between people of good intent, really, who really believes that NSBM is good propaganda? I consider NS Black Metal to be expressing the dark, perverse and hateful side of National Socialism. Yes, I said ‘perverse’. Because there are three schools:
i. Those who say that Evil does not exist, that it is a Judeo-Christian invention. That NS is order, beauty, nobility, health, hygiene, purity, light, power, perfection, and strength beyond Good and Evil. That there is only will-to-power.
ii. Those who are attracted by the fact that NS is demonised today, who think that NS is THE Evil by very definition, because the Trotskyites of the National educaZION taught them that at school. They were told that the Nazis cooked babies for breakfast, and because they want to be evil because Black Metal is evil, they are Nazis.
iii. Finally, those like me who prefer Italian Fascism – which the Jewess Anna Arendt herself characterised as flexible and said it made few death sentences, see Méridien Zéro’s broadcast about Fascism – rather than Nazi totalitarianism with its Germanocentrism, its marches of domesticated robots and its strong State interfering everywhere; those who accept the good and the bad sides, as well as the clean and the dirty sides of Whites. Better: use their dirty side as a central theme in their music, just as others take Order as a central theme in Martial music. For me, Black Metal is the dandyism of the Aryan bad boys, perfectly incarnated by the actor Michael Pitt in Funny Games US (2007):
I think that there is a universal taste in Man for Evil, for its own sake, in all men, in all people, whatever the form of this Evil – multidimensional in essence – throughout the ages. The love of Evil for Evil’s sake which Artaud said is often confused with sex and freedom, is not in my view exclusive to Christian taboos or a Jewish invention but is an anthropological constant. This love of Evil is called perversity: a FREE disposition, dispassionate (that’s where it borders on the sacred, therefore on Satanism), to do INTENTIONAL Evil with the resources of intelligence and imagination, to oneself or to others according to individual tastes. It’s a matter of taking pleasure in it, a combination of Eros and Thanatos, of enjoyment and the death wish, that is for me not aryan-incompatible. The Roman munera and venationes which consisted in organising duels to the death between armed slaves or throwing them to wild beasts, just for the fun and pleasure of the crowds; the fact that both plebs and nobles rushed to the sight of sophisticated public executions in France; the fact that a friend of mine pisses on his wife to make her cum, are just some examples of this phenomenon. And I would go even further: it’s the extinction of wickedness in Whites, in contrast with peoples which are still cruel or with satanic oligarchs who abuse our candour, that will cause our downfall. Black Metallers should stop wetting their panties over ancient Nordic warriors (as depicted on your typical BM covers): the barbarians of today have Kalashnikovs, djellabas and ride around in Mercs. In brief, the partisans of ‘Evil is a Jewish invention’ and of ‘Evil doesn’t exist’ say that NSBM from its hateful and noisy outlook expresses anger, war and violence; in other words defence or power, free from the idea of Evil. To this I reply that the warlike hatred, not unhealthy in itself, can also be expressed in Death Metal, Hardcore and so on, it is not specific to NSBM. What is then formally specific to NSBM? In my eyes it is perversity. If the discourses of the original NSDAP (on the left) are brought face to face with NSBM’s expression (on the right), they are in fact two exact opposites:
Order / Chaos inherent to Black Metal.
Cult of full health / Expression of disease and madness.
Beauty / Ugliness of Black Metal.
Hygiene / Disgusting production, dirty, harsh sound of the recordings.
Purity / Dirty vocals.
Sociability, NS collectivism / BM marginality, raw style, badly produced and difficult to access, reserved for a small number of wackos like us and so makes bad propaganda.
Perfection / Imperfection of amateur and negligent playing so typical of the majority of NSBM groups.
Cult of the Superman / Most Black Metallers are parasites living off social welfare.
Light, solar cult / Darkness, night, shadows, recurring themes of the moon.
Etc.
You don’t express Mother’s Day as established by Marshal Pétain, you don’t express Germanic virility with screams similar to a possessed witch as she is burnt alive. Black Metal, of European origin, expresses for me this dirty, nasty sadistic side of the White race. Black Metal attracts BECAUSE it is unhealthy, bad, destructive, as in the Middle Ages ‘you would think that the deformity and ugliness of the devils increasing as much as they intensified their misdeeds, they would have been repugnant and shied away from by spectators. Not in the least, ugliness pleases the popular masses and they never stop requesting their sight. The most admired characters in the mysteries are not as one would think Adam and Eve in their nudity, nor the saints with their gilded robes, or even the Virgin Mary, but rather Satan and his cohort of shaggy demons.’ (Gilles Néret, ‘Devils’). This is exactly why GRAVELAND and VELES, whilst unhealthy and disgusting and great in their infancy, have become so bland as soon as they started talking about blond children sitting around a fire with vocals that sound like a slaughtered pig and a polished production. This is the prime failure of NSBM: to not be accepting of itself as it is, or to be a contradiction in terms. In NS Black Metal there is the word ‘Black’, i.e. a real love not for African descendents but rather for mental darkness. Yes, I make N.S.B.M: National Satanist Black Metal. And the only version of NS that suits me is this one:
12. C.N.C: Who are your favourite authors? Those who have influenced your life philosophy and thoughts?
I stopped reading a few years ago, no time, I don’t even remember if I still know how to read so I won’t be terribly original. In literature I adored Bloy, Céline, Lautréamont, and on the margins of literature/politics Rebatet; in philosophy Nietzsche, Cioran, Bataille, and currently Jimmy le Sicilien on Youtube. Even though I don’t agree with his integrationist line and pro-Muslim stance, I find the punchliner Soral great in everything else he does.
13. C.N.C: What are the factors that led you to settle in central France?
I knew Haute-Loire well, as I came here for several days each year for the festival ‘Les fêtes du Roi de l’Oiseau’ at Puy-en-Velay, visiting the area. I love the richness and nobility of its heritage, the clean air that boosts me more than amphetamines, the fact that the Middle Ages has still a palpable presence here, the dark sombre volcanic stone, or the cold granite in my area, which gives this abbey such a warlike architecture:
