KING SATAN: “for many of the people the world is very black and white place”

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Photo by Joonas Juntunen

For us it is always a great honor to welcome artists who return to talk to our readers. King Satan is a band we have already interviewed and that will release (and probably will have released when this interview is published) the sensational Occult Spiritual Anarchy.

Then, could you tell us what people can expect from Occult Spiritual Anarchy? I listened to the album and I found it amazing because it is more than I expected in terms of variety and creativity.
Hello again! I think “Occult Spiritual Anarchy” is the heaviest and the darkest King Satan album to the date, but also the most melancholic as well even the absurdism and carnivalesque sides are still there strongly presented. I think it is also a very strong step towards more metal oriented sound if you compare it to our earlier works. Even we have strong roots with EBM/Electro-industrial, we started to incorporate more human elements in our stage shows step by step ever since the release of the debut album. The crucial point towards our new sound was when the drummer Pete Hellraiser joined the band in 2019 which took our live shows to the next level. With “Occult Spiritual Anarchy” we wanted to sound on record the same we do on stage. This meant that drum machines and computers were replaced by humans and instruments on studio too and we worked much more strongly together as a band than before.

And thematically the album is kind of the end of an trilogy we started already in 2017 with our debut, which gathers philosophical and psychological topics of Satanism, Occultism, Existentialism, Absurdism, Blasphemy, Black Comedy etc. under the roof concept to which I started refering as Spiritual Anarchy. And “Occult Spiritual Anarchy” is a culmination of this theme from our side.

I have read you will be touring Europe as supporting band for DIE KRUPPS (one of my favorite bands). How did the invitation to join them happen?

A: Yeah, we indeed looked forward to it very, very much. DIE KRUPPS are the godfathers of industrial metal and true pioneers, so it would’ve been so great honor to tour with them as support act and to promote our new album ”Occult Spiritual Anarchy” simultaneously. Alas, sadly the tour just got cancelled right before it was supposed to happen last week, because of Covid-19 security planning uncertainties were still affecting the parts of Germany and they didn’t want to do the tour without German dates. This tour was actually supposed to happen for first time already in 2020, but it didn’t even get announced when Covid-19 erupted for the first time. So this May 2022 was second tryout of this, and we all thought these restrictions and such would be over by now, but not yet it seems. It is really frustrating, but it is what it is. The reason we were part of the tour was of course the booking agency who was behind the tour and DIE KRUPPS concert bookings, and who also became later our European booking agent too. So, the agency invited us there after we were in the talks with them about possible co-operation in European territory.

I remember you had told me in the other interview about humor being a serious business and in this release I can notice that it has a sort of dark and sarcastic humors and, in the same time, it is extremely serious. How have people been reacting to this proposal?

King Aleister: You remember right, and this is correct. Surprisingly many people gets it these days actually, compared to the past. But of course as one can expect, majority of people are very confused about us and these things, and the levels of confusion we encounter range all the way from praising awe to irrational hatred, cognitive dissonance and everything in between.

I reckon it is because for many of the people the world is very black and white place. I anyway like to play with contrasts and combine things which are often thought to be polar opposites of each other, both in music and in themes. This approach, the use of dark and sarcastic humor and being extremely serious about philosophical things at the same time, are not contradicting each others. Hell, they can even amplify each other when combined!

Just look at those myths, tales and folklores where the mythological Devil has been posing as a joker or a jester in order to ridicule and expose the stillborn conformity, vain moralism or useless conventions. Just like for instance Socrates or Diogenes the Cynic did in the ancient Greek times as well. Both of which are great source of inspiration for me. Dark humour, blasphemy and absurdism shatters the expectations of how reality should be perceived, and it is in a way of rebellion towards the status quo and conformity. I don’t think there are any innocent jokes really, as even with the lighter jokes too, they always represent the world view, perceived structures and the core values of the joker through some kind of caricaturized mirror which fades their usual filters of conformity. The irony is that most people don’t realize that when they are joking, they are revealing more honest version of their genuine thoughts and emotions because they appear without the filters that are often put on in so called “serious discussion”.

And how it is related to us? I simply cannot leave this answer without a quote from fantastic “The Brothers Karamazov” by Dostovjeski which has inspired also a lot our jester-narrative.

“There are people who feel very deeply, but are somehow downtrodden. The jester-like approaching in them is some kind of hateful irony against the ones to who they cannot or dare not to say the truth directly to their faces” - The Brothers Karamazov (Fjodor Dostovjeski)

I was reading the lyrics of Occult Spiritual Anarchy (and I always enjoy it when an artist sends us the lyrics so we can get to know more than just the music) and there I noticed a quote from Baudelaire, which comes from the poem Le Joueur généreux and even appears in a very nice movie. I really wanted to know how much literature plays an important role for you and the composition of your lyrics.

I’m glad you asked this, since literature plays very important part when it comes to the influences of my lyrics but also to the themes and aesthetics in general. I read a lot, it is one of my dearest hobbies and ways to cope with reality, and in a way all my lyrics are one kind of dialogue between me and the topics I encounter with my reality, where literature and other arts (especially movies) plays very important role together with my encounters with the world and the people around me. Philosophy, mythologies, religions, science, psychology, history, occultism are my biggest interest of literature, but I enjoy a lot of novels too (mostly the ones with strong philosophical undertone, like the works of Dostovyeski and J.R.R. Tolkien). But of course movies are almost as important source of inspiration, both lyrics and aesthetics which should not be overlooked. I think without the movies like Fight Club, The Matrix, Apocalypse Now, Scarface, Aki Kaurismäki, Beetlejuice, Seventh Seal, Pi The Movie, Fear and Loathe In Las Vegas, Kill Bills, The Holy Mountain or anything by Stanley Kubrick, Tarkovski, David Lynch and without forgetting the Batman movies or things related to Alan Moore etc. and etc. King Satan would be totally different band.

Also talking about the lyrics of the new album, I am impressed by how well they are written, especially since, in general, the newer industrial metal bands invest little in style and depth. Is there a writer or something that influences you in the way you write this material?

– Thank you! There are so many who has influenced me when it comes to my lyrics, but I think my biggest influences for my lyrical content from outside writers might be authors like Friedrich Nietzsche, Aleister Crowley, Dante Alighieri, C.G. Jung, Michael Bertiaux, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Fjodor Dostovjeski, Mihail Bulgakov, Anton LaVey, Chuck Palahniuk, G.I. Gurdieff, Hunter S. Thompson, Baruch Spinoza, Plato, Peter J. Carroll, Colin Wilson, Carlos Castaneda, Diogenes the Cynic, to name a “few” at least. They all have left a serious mark in me and my thoughts and therefore to my lyrics.

And this only when talking about the content alone, as they are not really rock lyrics by their form you know (except some of the works of Crowley and Dostovjeski maybe!). But stylistically I think have been influenced a lot more by the styles of poets and lyricists, such as Charles Baudelaire, William Blake, Eino Leino, Maynard James Keenan (Tool) A.W. Yrjänä (CMX), Jim Morrison (The Doors), Jon Nödtveidt (Dissection), Anthony Kiedis (Red Hot Chili Peppers), King Diamond, Dani Filth, Kahlil Gibran, Tom Waits, William Shakespeare, Dexter Holland (The Offspring), Hank Von Helvete (Turbonegro) and actually Eminem (who I listened a lot as a kid, and gave me the first ignition actually to start to write lyrics in the first place, and whose influence on my verbal acrobatics and style of rhytmics in some of the King Satan’s songs are to me kind of obvious, despite I vocalize in extreme metal style. “Fuck The World” lyrics in our second album might be the clearest example of this.). Damn, this is why I refuse to begin the name dropping, as the list will be endless and I always feel that “if I mention this, I need to mention this too” and so on, hahah!

All this said, of course I’d like to think I have developed my own style over the years with my lyrics which you can read of course not only with King Satan but with my other projects, like Saturnian Mist and Henget (to be announced this one though.). At the end of the day, I am just a restless satanic poet who likes prosaic and extreme music.

Thank you very much for this interview. Now send that message to our readers.

Thank you again for a pleasant interview! Check out our new album “Occult Spiritual Anarchy” and let’s keep our fingers crossed that we could someday perform at your backyard, as it seems more and more listeners are arising from Brazil these days! Fuck the rest!

KING SATAN: “for many of the people the world is very black and white place”

6 min

Posted by Fabio