Some
may be familiar with the name Matron Thorn, as he is the mastermind
behind renowned
bands such
as
Benighted in Sodom,
Ævangelist and
Death Fetishist among others.
In the interview below, we get to
cover some of the history
behind the music, as well as an insight into some of the ideas and
influences that led to it.
Please
shed some light on some of your current projects, as well as notable
outputs of the past.
Benighted in Sodom is my oldest most serious project which started almost 20 years ago now. Ævangelist might be my most known within metal, and that came somewhat later. These are still active and lately people can also discover my work in Præternatura, Oblivion Gate, Death Fetishist, Ragnarökkur, Cathaaria, and more in regards to anything related to metal. Non-metal music I make goes even farther from here with Rust-Colored Glasses (trip hop/soundtrack/ambient) and solo released works (new age/darkwave).
Tell us about your first experience with extreme metal and how your taste evolved over time.
Before I made music of my own, I was much more open to discovery of new music where metal was concerned. I bought CDs back then, and it was a time when being in a band and putting out a CD seemed like an achievement that not everyone deserved, so to me, if it existed on some format that meant there was something special about it. I miss feeling that way about new bands. I ordered much of what became long term favorites at the bookstore in town, things like Tenth Sub-Level of Suicide and Fas - Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum and De Profundis Mors vas Consumet to name a few, having done that because local music stores in South Florida were pretty clueless about anything besides the most basic of choices. But mostly, I downloaded music and I don't feel bad about this whatsoever. I did even try to start a "record collection" at one point, but when I moved away to Oregon, a family member threw all my records in the trash, including a first edition of Behemoth's The Return of the Northern Moon demo, first edition of Shining - III - Angst, a rare version of Nocturnal Poisoning by Xasthur, and several others. I never placed much value in material possessions but it was hard to get over that. My collection of downloaded music has survived through years, though. New music has been added to this archive since I was sixteen, and transferred into new external hard drives periodically over the years. When I have actually have free time to listen to music that isn't mine, instead of looking for new bands I plug in the external hard drive and take a trip down memory lane. The archive is vast and diverse, because at the time I didn't really discriminate against any bands as long as there was something to appreciate. There's music in there that I ripped from my browser from old random myspace black metal bands whose music was never destined for success but still had some quality that I wanted to revisit. Other weird selections no one else but myself seems to appreciate are classics like Garm's seemingly forgotten rock n roll outing, Head Control System, a live rip of Ondskapt's first ever performance, all kinds of Century Black releases (Century Media's old imprint for Black Metal), various Dark Ambient music from bands like Kammarheit and Inade, Folkearth and music from that guy from Nae'blis, and the list goes on almost 2 Terabytes deep.
You are constantly crafting and releasing new music. What keeps you motivated? And where do you find the inspiration?
Above all things, I make music that I enjoy listening to. I refined my formula, my signature, my "special sauce", to be completely self sufficient, to know how to create the sounds I need to hear and reformat and recontextualize them into new shapes. I used music to cope with hard times and I believe this is part of why so many people have told me that they've used my music to do the same. But the truth for me is that I rarely listen to anything new anymore, because what I need from music has already been refined in either my own work or in something I've found already. I create new music to mainly satisfy my need to consume something that I feel a real connection to, and in order to feel a real connection to it I must find it to be somehow relatable, and that almost never happens anymore because I can't relate to anything lately. To relate to something doesn't exactly have to mean that it's the subject matter that I connect with, it could be musically or artistically relatable.
A much more concise way to say all that is that I can create the perfect soundtrack to my life on my own, so I don't really need anything else. Of course I listen to music that isn't mine, it's just an impossibly specific selection of things. There's songs from albums that I've listened to for years and never once even bothered to check out the other tracks on those albums. Those specific songs gave me what I was looking for, so why bother?
Fields of my inspiration are fertile for harvesting music and art, because their soil is soaked with blood and dead skin shed in the past; pain and suffering enriched my dreams with clarity, music became the window through which the past, and thereby the future, are seen.
Most people familiar with USBM will know you from Benighted in Sodom. Would it be safe to say that this was your first serious musical undertaking? How would you sum up its ethos?
Benighted in Sodom was the first real black metal project, and really my only project for a long time until I started Ævangelist several years later. Midwinter Storm was the very first project of any kind but in over 25 full albums it leaps all over the place stylistically. I was very depressed when the early albums were recorded, which was also a formative time for me as a recording musician. Crude recording methods were used, but the modesty of those means appropriately reflects both the state of my life and my mind at the time. What people laugh about now, the lo-fi production I and countless others used to create some of the best of what black metal used to have, was endearing back then because it didn't represent laziness, it represented passion. It was painful, desperate art created by any means necessary. It wasn't exactly made that way intentionally, or at least this is how I perceived it back then. The point was simply to create the art, to manifest these emotions to their fullest with whatever you had. If you were poor, inexperienced, terminally depressed and a drug addict or mentally ill, you weren't waiting for the latest version of ProTools and considering the proper gear, you were at the edge of your life knowing that tomorrow was not promised to you and this art could truly be your last goodbye or your last fuck you to a world that created so much misery, or because you weren't just pretending to seek real darkness and managed to catch a glimpse of it during some clandestine and tormented, violent recording sessions. I did Benighted in Sodom to live out these ideas, because that's how I felt. I had nothing, and I wanted to make something genuine which symbolized exactly that. I wasn't thinking about paying tribute to Darkthrone or any hero worship, I wanted to make something pure that came from my own murk within. This has never changed, and that ethos of seeking purity and authenticity is alive in every project I have now. I've tried many, many times to explain this to others, even others whose art or music has found success, and woefully few really understand. Others dismiss everything I say about art as pretentious and to them I feel immense pity, because their appreciation of things in life is so limited by this futile perception of everything, they can't fathom that they actually live in a world where someone might actually believe in something, believe in what they say and create. They tear apart the very words I say because even the sincerity in how I speak is threatening to the triviality of their lives. I take it as a compliment these days, the ones too mundane to deserve art continually reveal themselves to be so. If I sound pretentious, then that just means you are still sane, because in fact, I do feel tremendous pride in the scale and grandeur of my enigmatic muse's spiritual might and beauty which has been revealed to me within and emanates in all that I create. My art and vision need only make sense to me, that's all that matters. The grandest monuments stand just as tall whether seen or unseen by anyone at all. May unbelievers feel free to put distance between myself and them, I welcome it, because they aren't like me and I'm not like them. I guess I understand though, because when you're numbed by the creations made only by those who think similarly in this way, you can't believe. When you've become accustomed to life being full of fleeting surface-level things, anything more seems wholly impossible.
Have
you ever considered doing film soundtracks? And if so, what kind of
films would you be interested in working on? I think you would do
well.
That's nice of you to say. The plan right now is to create a film and score it myself. Some things are in development but that's all I can say on that for the moment. I have done some visual experiments that can be seen on my YouTube channel, they'll sort of demonstrate where my creative direction is going in regards to that. No one could replace Angelo Badalamenti but I would love to work with David Lynch. His music, art, and films all informed the realm of my earliest influences. If we're talking about a bigger budget, then I would love to score a film by David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott.
I believe there are (or were) two versions of Ævangelist, and that there was some kind of conflict within the band. What exactly happened and what is the current status of the project?
No, there's only one. I formed the band, then recruited the original vocalist. They later made some outrageous claims about me to sway public opinion favorably in their direction when later they would go on to claim that the band that I created and offered them a position in is somehow no longer mine. I don't care that they wish to explain the one aspect that they did contribute, their lyrics, but their insistence that these were somehow crucial or even fundamental is objectively untrue. Song titles, album titles, anything with text you could read were all created by me alone, so whatever meaning they assign to the title "Enthrall to the Void of Bliss" is purely on them and totally inconsequential to their lyrics which were never printed, a decision we had made together back then precisely to preserve the mystery and not do exactly what they have been doing by trying to captivate everyone with some "revelations" about their meaning. I don't give a shit, though. Let them do it if it makes them happy.
But
returning to this dumb story, naturally I fired them for
participating in this campaign to destroy my reputation, which to
save face they later twisted to people as them "cutting ties
with me", yet not seeing the inherent contradiction in hijacking
a social media page I made, of a band I made, that they were fired
from, to speak about bizarre personal stuff related to themselves and
post selfies. How about the inherent hypocrisy in naming me a
"manipulative abuser" then inventing a huge lie about
"sexual assault" to manipulate the sympathies of our
audience just enough to get their approval when you tell others
you've decided that the band should be yours because of your hurt
feelings?
How about this example:
Gorgoroth was started by Infernus. Later, King and Gaahl joined. I think the best Gorgoroth albums were made with the three of them. But my -feelings- don't matter. What's -true-, what courts determined to be true, is that Gorgoroth belongs to Infernus. Gaahl and King contributed -entire albums- of actual material, not just vocals, and yet still that doesn't mean the band is theirs whatsoever. Let that sink in.
When Legion left Marduk, and was replaced by Arioch from Funeral Mist, does this mean there is now suddenly TWO Marduks? This isn't politics, this isn't some asinine public controversy. I don't owe anyone a fucking thing, let alone the former members any sort of "say" in this. Ævangelist exists because I created it, they distanced themselves from me by their own admission, ergo, they made their own choice, and no amount of bullshit pandering they spoon feed these fake shitheads that strive to acclaim ownership over everyone's art on account of their "feelings" can change that.
Whatever has been said against me was apparently so flimsy, so weak, that later discussions they had were even peppered with accusations of Nazism, and then even outright disparaging of the music and material that they helped to form with vocals after the fact but still had the luxury of attaching their illusion of equal status to. I had to practically beg them to record their parts at times. For how much they have claimed to "know" about me, we can also be clear on the fact that they have spent, cumulatively, in our entire lives, maybe a little over a month's time with me in person. We never met to record, we only met days before a short run of shows or a festival gig. They have never seen where I live, met my family, and we'd often even go weeks or months without really talking. These are facts ignored or obfuscated by their legion of sycophants who are just like them, and these are the very "fans" we lost. They only succeeded in culling away from our audience those who I wouldn't want to keep around anyway, those are the phonies that care about things like band "drama" and listen to this music for fashion, superficial reasons. Our real fans who came for the art and don't give a shit about any of this stupid crap have stayed and still listen to the albums and buy the music if they want.
Most of all, they spread this narrative because, Jimmy, they think YOU are stupid. They think our fans are stupid assholes like they are and will do what stupid assholes do and believe anything they read on the internet as long as the latest self-enthroned celebrity victim has claimed it to be true. None of this is about anything they said I did. It's about keeping bullshit alive, because when you're made of bullshit you have to try to fill the world with as much bullshit as possible so no one notices how badly you stink. The moral of this story? Do yourself a favor and get cancelled. It's the new black. Take a chance on people hating you and don't stop doing what matters to you because pathetic losers are starving for validation.
But
if anyone is really interested in seeing this for themselves, if
people need "proof", by all means, visit the original
Facebook page or Google any of their interviews, then brace yourself
for an underwhelming fall into the epic cringe-void that is the
Ævangelist band drama. If you do this, sorry in advance for the loss
of precious moments of your life you'll never get back, time probably
better spent on crucial life tasks, such as counting all the grains
of sand in the fucking ocean.
But
have a look at the hilariously inconsistent forms this story has
taken on, with the former vocalist's fans sprinkling in entirely new,
made-up details for the hell of it. Then notice how my story has
never changed. Not one fucking word.
Curiously,
how does one wish for their participation in something to be honored
by totally destroying the image of it, by only embarrassing
themselves with their vanity and lack of self awareness, by outright
exaggerating their importance to the point of delusion? Does this
sound like the actions of someone who gives a single fuck about you
or the music? Decide for yourself, at least I'm giving you that
choice.
This is all an appropriate metaphor for the times we're living in.
Ævangelist,
in my opinion, has released some pretty amazing and eerie work that
pushed the boundaries in terms of darkness and heaviness. Is there a
difference between the old and the new material? And what inspired
the creative process?
Contrary to what previous members have claimed, the deeper meaning behind Ævangelist isn't about Satanism or directly referencing things that should be elaborated. I could give you a detailed explanation about what it means to me, but it's irrelevant. The potency of Ævangelist is that you never really knew and that enabled you to make it your own, to invent the narrative that scared you. Whatever it is, Jim, that you find to be eerie or dark or heavy has been dragged from the abysscape of your own mind and made real through the music.
How important is it not to stagnate musically? And what do you think of bands who keep the same style from album to album?
It depends less about how something exists and matters far more why something exists. If a band exists to deliver a certain message, the band can evolve if the delivery of that message doesn't depend on how the message is packaged. If the message being delivered is inherently related to the unchanging nature of the music, then the band could replicate themselves continually. Ultimately, the spectrum of music and creation is too vast for me to say what should and should be in regards to myself, let alone someone else's art.
What’s
10 of your favorite movies?
Lord of Illusions, Mulholland Drive, Trick r' Treat, John Carpenter's Vampires, Event Horizon, Alien³, Se7en, Hackers, Disturbing Behavior, Black Circle Boys. That list is at least composed of what films I'm willing to watch almost any time. Not sure though if that means it's a favorite film or just ones that are very comforting to watch, still figuring that out.
What do you think are some of the biggest problems people are facing in society today? Do you feel there is always some kind of social pressure to belong? What does it mean to be free?
Feeling pressure to belong to society at all might be pretty high on that list, as far as I can tell. Pressure to belong seems like something you'd outgrow after high school, but in most cases it actually worsens. I think the formation of all these groups and scenes around these positions of moral uprightness and every new ideology invented on the internet is destructive. Pressure to belong feels like you feel alienated by merely thinking for yourself. People aren't robots. Everyone has "problematic" views, people are complicated and people don't say the right things all the time. People aren't clever and witty all the time. People like things that are awful or stupid. All these things are okay and that's the thing that should be "normalized". Normalize not normalizing things. Let people be abnormal and gross. Accept that the planet is so massive, so vast, and people are not the same everywhere; the spectrum of human experience is not limited to what's happening in your neighborhood or even in your country. In the scope of all time and space, these trends and ideas happening now are transient and meaningless, accept this truth to unlock the places that ignorance has hidden from your view. Stop dwelling on all the superficial aesthetic things about yourself. Challenge yourself to learn about the people you hate instead of talking shit about them simply just to, and here's that word again, "belong". Accept that belonging is actually in reality pretty empty unless you have organically acquired a tribe of your own, and accept that in reality, it will probably be very small if you do. Accept that this is okay and probably for the best. Accept that social media does exactly the opposite of what it claims; instead of bringing people together in any positive way, it brings to you closer to people better left far, far away. It makes the world seem small and empty, because all it exposes you to are the smallest, emptiest ideas, and thus you feel small and empty. Accept that life is long, that people and opinions change, so it's best to not make huge drastic choices based on temporary currents in society just to feel like you "belong". Listen to whatever music you want, stop being so hard on each other for spiritual weaknesses. Stop being so hard on yourselves, you're not as bad as you think you are, but go out and do something of meaning and for fucks sake, stop telling people about it. Accept that no one is inspired by seeing you gloat about helping some lady across the street, you're lying to yourself, that Facebook post is actually just for your glory and you know it and I know it and it's making both of us dead inside to see that the only value in being a decent person is in gaining likes and follows online. Accept that the only real good deeds are done in secret. Sacrifice glory for humility. I'd probably start by saying something like that.
Who we all are is a reaction to the lives we have lived, what has happened to us, and what we desire most.
Your thoughts on the following:
*
Bethlehem
Jürgen is a talented guy, and a friend since a long time. He's led a very interesting life and the stories behind their music are the stuff of legends, some of the very last we genuinely have.
* Alice In Chains
Jerry Cantrell is my favorite guitar player. I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida but I lived in the Pacific Northwest for several years, in what, to me, seemed to be the last years it was great and you could really feel that heavy artistic melancholy of the rainy heroin soaked streets and epic picturesque landscapes. Whenever I listen to Alice in Chains, I'm taken back to Portland and I lose myself in that eerie nostalgia for times past, both good and bad.
*
Portal
I like Portal, but I don't listen to them especially often. I'm grateful they exist, though. It's a proper antidote to music when music becomes mundane.
*
Lords of Chaos
I think Dead is the only interesting person involved in all this. The lore of Norway's black metal origins is a good story that gets retold in increasingly absurd ways, but if anything, that absurdity tells you that it meant something.
*
Reincarnation
Do we ever truly die, though?
Are there any bands as of late that have grabbed your attention? What are you currently listening to?
Lately, I'm listening to nothing "new". Besides stuff I'm working on, I usually have a vague playlist of random songs. Lots of pop and alternative music from the late 90s / early 2000s. Adina Howard, Pete Droge, Savage Garden, Hozier, Dishwalla, Goo Goo Dolls, Mr. Mister, Steve Winwood, Martin Page, Enya, LL Cool J, Michael Jackson. At the gym, Funeral Mist, Static-X, Acid Bath, Aosoth, Deströyer 666, Craft, Angantyr, Vonlaus, Clandestine Blaze.
So what’s next for you and your bands/projects? Thanks for your time!
Visit my new official platforms, preview of my official site is online now, grand opening is on new years eve, to include new full length albums from several projects, old and new.
Thanks for the interview. You be careful out there in the shadows, Jimmy.