Interview:	ARKHON INFAUSTUS
Title:	Satanic addiction

In the year 1997 came the idea of forming Arkhon Infaustus to DK. Deviant's mind. The French guitarist and vocalist needed to express his personal conceptions through a more brutal and bestial kind of music and image. He was soon joined by four-stringer and throat-rape-vocalist 666 Torturer.

So was born this really extreme Black Metal bunch which wasn't based on a part time role played by its members – but on their everyday life philosophy.

At the beginning of 1998, a dedicated forged rehearsal demo was quickly after put on CD by British Mordgrimm Records – released as the rare Mini CD „In Sperma Infernum“ and limited to 666 copies. The band entered studio in December 2000 to record their crushing debut album „Hell Injection“, including nine brutal and bestial Death Black Metal compositions.

Arkhon Infaustus, these French shockers, performed live many times in 2000 with bands from all over the world including Immortal, Impiety, Enthroned, Triumphator, Watain, Antaeus, Gospel Of The Horns, Abigail, Adorior, etc. Even before the debut album was released, the band's shows were very appreciated. Many reactions were observed during their live performances, for instance during a Black Metal festival, some spectators did even leave the concert hall being too shocked by the show's sexual character.

Now DK. Deviant, 666 Torturer, six-string-rapist Toxik H and drum-devastator A. ZK6 attacking again with a new bizarre album manifest called „Filth Catalyst“. My questions were answered by 666 Torturer.

„Filth Catalyst“ sounds very aggressive, partly with truly amazing guitar-work! And much more filled with hate as the album before. Do you agree?

„Thanx for your support! We hope to see you soon when we play in Germany! To your question: yes! We have gone deeper into our catharsis since `Hell Injection`. We have also completed our line-up now, and it allows us to release even more than what we ever did! `Filth Catalyst` has been the work of almost two years, with a tour experience and three great drummers played with us. Now A.ZK6 is the final drummer of Arkhon Infaustus. We have now a better intelligence of music, of our music. The arrival of Toxik in the band just after the release of `Hell Injection` has driven our guitar sound even further than before, adding some solo kind parts. For the guitars we did a mix between old school and modern sounds. This is what we are now, experienced from the past but stepped into the future.”

Does exist to your mind a more or lesser change on the new release to the previous album „Hell Injection“?

„`Hell Injection` was our first strike. It was more a primeval and direct blasphemy. This step was very important: we needed this energy to go further into our feelings. Our music has now become malignant. The dark side is almost dormant, lying beneath, but thus it is stronger. This time, the album cannot be perceived in once. There are lots of elements that can’t be heard before several listenings, riffs and structures are more diversified and yet more precise, and words don’t combine easily and need reflection for a full understanding. `Filth Catalyst` can be listened in normal conditions but also alone with the lyrics in hand, and thinking about the message and every single detail in the music.”

What has „Filth Catalyst“ to mean, the title of your new album?

„It is our own vision of Arkhon Infaustus 2003. The evil that attracts all evil. The pied piper, revealer of sickness, gathering rats to become the new lords of this ruined world. We have chosen this chemical word, because Arkhon Infaustus was created in full completion: the perfect melt of music, image and ideas. We are the spark that brings the burst.”

Stands another sick concept behind these new album, and if yes, which?

„The concept will never change. Satan. But what makes it different with Arkhon Infaustus, is that we have a deep comprehension of it. We are not raging a pseudo war against any book of laws in particular. Evil is much more than the typical Black Metal imagery. It is the very core of history and philosophy. It is a total and ever changing concept. There is no stable evil: throughout centuries and societies, it will be expressed in different manners, but in the end it’s still the same concept. Even the word Satan is just a vector of this total and perfect concept, and yet our time has made this word real to all. This is why we act now for Satan. But Satan is even more than that; since creation there is destruction. There will always be this need of the forbidden. Men in great number creates rules that doesn’t fit with our real selves, and being the ones ever against bring power and pleasure. Some are born to serve in great numbers, living what they were told, out from their blinding acquired morality. This is not the destiny of all.”

Which were (and still are) the inspirations for your music?

„The world outside and the worlds inside. Our own fall, our own rise. Arkhon Infaustus is a prism, and whatever the light that goes inside, it comes out in our own way and colour. Thus anything can lead to a song or a text.”

Your Black Metal style: how has it developed?

„We are not playing pure Black Metal. We do not feel jailed to one or another style of music. As long as it leads to the Left Hand. Most of Black Metal bands have lost the real reason of their anger, loosing time to know who’s true or not, or who hates more christianity; while Death Metal is too often associated with fun. We now show that all this is vain. We make our own music, not trying to be the fastest band around nor the more technical. Arkhon Infaustus comes from our own theology and practice of perversity and bestiality, and people feel when a band lie or give them truth.”

Who wrote most of the new material?

„Arkhon Infaustus, under the chemical influence of Satan.”

Which were your early idols out of the Metal scene? And which ones have influenced you?

„We had varied influences earlier in the bands including bands like Blasphemy, Incantation, Bolt Thrower or Mysticum, but the greatest influence for Filth Catalyst is actually `Hell Injection`. It may sound strange but Arkhon Infaustus has its own life now, incubating in our rehearsal room by every day.”

To which bands do you listen nowadays?

„We feel an attraction toward all arts and music dedicated to Satan directly or indirectly, and it’s not always explicit even for the artist itself. But now it’s true that we listen mostly to Black metal stuff, both modern and old.”

Which imaginative pictures do you see, when you listen to your own music with closed eyes?

„We always try to put on paper what we express in our music. Ideas to music, music to words and words to images. Covers are always done with our directions. We do not take some already made artwork. We work personnaly on it. Our pictures and covers are really the visual of our music. I think that with reflection and attention, the listener can get all the keys to our world. But there are feelings also that we cannot `show` on pictures. There is a feeling of inner violence and hate growing inside. And some musical landscape of religious visions as on `Nox Microcosmica` or the revelations in `The Fifth Inquisitor`.”

Please describe yourself with a few words as a person!

„I would say that just with our names u can have a description of ourselves. We don’t care that much about the names we were given by the wombs who gave us life. The image we give is our own. There are masks, no play. And that is an important part of our music: we are not cheating the listener.”

What is your definite goal with the music of Arkhon Infaustus?

„To achieve the music that we want to listen to. To never bend to any; nor jealousy, nor censorship… We will go on delivering our message, His message. We are the Filth Catalyst. There is another morality, an underworld. We bring real violence, real sickness.”

Have you been felt already during your childhood, that you longing to do something special and dark when you´re older?

„Exactly. We know that we have been chosen from the very beginning. All has been set so that we act this way today. The path is clear to us, and we have no fear, nor doubts.”

Has something mentally changed in your psyche, since you´ve begun in Arkhon Infaustus?

„Arkhon Infaustus has been the progression of our inner selves, as much as the band has evolved us. We have been faster than ever on our path. By setting down our music and ideas, we have been able to go further. To set other steps of understanding, in our life, our religion and our philosophy. The sickness will always be there, unpredictable, but morphing faster and faster. The new and definitive line-up, is stronger than ever. We are multitude and legion at the same time.”

Do you reach deep inner satisfaction through playing your music?

„Our songs represent a lot to us. Every time we play, we feel again the pulse that we had at the creation. Especially on stage, when the congregation unites with us.”

What does the band name mean at all?

„Arkhon comes from the Greek and means prince, and Infaustus comes from the Latin and means, sinister / dark / sad… The name is alike anything else in Arkhon Infaustus: you can perceive it in the easiest way of understanding: it means Satan. But for the one with higher understanding, it refers to the bible. When their god divided men through language because we could reach him directly, creating thus several languages from that primeval and single one. Arkhon Infaustus comes from different ancient languages and stands as the symbol of the reunification of the words meant to speak like those of the original sin, so that we can strike again at the face of their god. It is both violent truth and metaphorical evil.”

Who painted the new frontcover – Jean-Pascal Fournier once more?

„We try to make very different covers every time. This time we worked with a french photographer who made the picture we wanted. Then an Italian designer modified it as we asked. This great combination of work has brought this as our vision of nativity of Christ.”

Do you like Fournier´s work for your last record?

„Fournier was also one of the people we asked for `Filth Catalyst` as we like very much the work on `Hell Injection`. But as works got closer we were more and more into the picture and so we decided to keep that one. Maybe we’ll work again with Fournier some day.”

Got some massive problems anywhere with the censorship about the explicit frontcover artwork of „Hell Injection“?

„Many countries sent back the CDs and LPs to Osmose because of the artwork. We were very surprised because for us there was nothing provocative there. It’s all about what side you are of their morality. You get more problems with these image of blasphemy than Christian priests here in France being pedophiles. But who cares censorship? Hell addicted people have been able to find the album and we will bring it to the others in a way or another. We do not try to be censored to gain some kind of popularity. It is just that what we are may derange some people. But most censors are more frustrated because they feel like us and would like to do it too. Dictators have always had the need of the world to fall apart with them, and so do they. If they can’t live their envies, so won’t any one.”

Be so kind and explain the lyrics of a few songs out of your new album with your own words!

„Well all songs are based on different sides of the concept. `Criminal Deities` is based on the vision of time and evil I was speaking about above. You have many messages in Arkhon Infaustus and in many ways: in this song the chorus is `Sorrow bore whore` which reversed makes Ouroboros. Humanity creates its own misery and frustration, set through time. Every single second gets wasted, every single act becomes dust in the course of history, yet evil remains: it is a cancer, changing every time, adapting and overtaking. This is the curse that liberates. The concept of time has brought religion, with the understanding of an end. Without time, there is no god. Men cannot control time, so they change their vision of the world to try to feel a control upon it, and thus they pretend they forget their fear about death. This is what we describe as the sin of time that blinds the need for hell. This vain try to grasp eternity is a frein to taste the apple. While we, the criminal deities, are of no time, and thus belong to all centuries. `Words Of Flesh` is the second concept I was talking about. It’s about languages and the biblical metaphora of division. We have chosen the story of a Dutch priest who wanted to preserve his daughter from all actual perversed languages and thus he kept her in a closet all her childhood. He believed that without any contact to the world laid wrong by Eve, she would speak again the pseudo-natural language of god: the tongue of Eden spoken before the knowledge that all men could reach god. The song is turned around the duality of the `procreator` and the `progenitor`.”

Which are the deeper dark philosophies behind Arkhon Infaustus?

„You already had some parts of our visions above, because it would be very hard to describe it as a whole, as they are slightly different between the four members. These are fragments, whose puzzle in the end is Him. But they are all manifestation of the same spirit. I would say it’s a gathering between philosophy, theology, and practice. We have a total disgust for morality.”

What you´re doing in your free time?

„Music and religion mostly. And different processes of fall.”

What do you hate and love mostly on this earth?

„The multiple and perverse links between flesh and mind. To hurt and please the body. What a pervert mind can create is infinite. Hate is a feeling that we spread upon the world in our songs, and the prey of our hate are far too numerous to be set down with letters.”

Live gigs: do you like it to act on stage?

„To play live is a very important aspect of music. All the songs take a different aspect than on album. I like an album sound and work of all details but I really enjoy the violent side of live music. We have had a great comunion with congregation all over Europe, and we are planning to tour very soon for `Filth Catalyst`, with a growing impatience. But we are preparing to offer the grand vision of Arkhon Infaustus 2003!”

And what happens at a live show of Arkhon Infaustus?

„Our shows are always different. We don’t want people to come to see one particular side of Arkhon Infaustus. Whatever the kind of show we will make, it will be real bestial and perverse. We have done shows including extreme sex on stage to shows of pure brutality. We are preparing our tour 2003 so I can’t tell more for now… Be prepared for the worst!”

By the way, in which city are you guys located?

„We all come from the Paris area.”

Plans in your life for the future?

„Arkhon Infaustus is our main goal. We put everything in the band. Some people don’t really see the work that is done on such an album and tours, but it takes almost all our time. We are preparing the coming tour which should be with Vader in April 2003 and the first songs of our next opus.”

Any special misanthropic message to the fans?

„The Lord is coming in glory, and his name is Satan. Support Satanic addiction.”

© Markus Eck, 04.01.2003

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