Triumph of the Will...

Michael Moynihan began recording violent electronic music in 1984 as COUP DE GRACE, and during the 80s he worked with several influential noise/industrial artists including SLEEP CHAMBER, and the infamous NON. At the beginning of the 90s his music took a radically new direction under the name BLOOD AXIS, a direction that culminated in the release of the incredible Gospel of Inhumanity album in 1996. He also runs Storm, a record label and publishing house dedicated to the revivification of European culture, a culture that is under increasing threat of extinction from the forces of materialism and internationalism. In 1995, Michael travelled to Norway to interview the surviving participants in the crimes that brought such sharp attention to the Black Metal scene in 92-93. The resulting book, Lords of Chaos, written in collaboration with Norwegian journalist Didrik Søderlind, has recently been published by Feral House. It is currently enjoying widespread popularity in the U.S., with no less a personage than the notorious Bible-thumping TV and radio preacher Bob Larson endorsing the book! Shortly before it's publication I sent Michael some questions about his musical and literary pursuits...

Your book will be published in a couple of months under the title Lords of Chaos, although originally it was to be called Blood and Ashes... what do you want this stronger sounding title to convey?

I agree, as you point out, the new title is stronger! The connotations of the first one were good, but it's too vague--it could have been a romance novel after all. "Lords of Chaos" is actually a reference to something talked about in the book; a group of kids in Florida who went on a rampage and tried to terrorize their whole city, blowing up buildings, burning a church, kidnapping, and committing a murder. They called themselves the "Lords Of Chaos". There were a number of similarities in the story to the whole dynamic of what happened in Norway. But to answer the question, I think "Lords of Chaos" has the right feel to it--many of the people I talk about saw themselves as empowered and even aristocratic, yet a lot of what they spawned comes across as chaos and confusion.

Black Metal (and related styles), both the music itself and the various ways of thought behind it, seems to me to have a much greater historical and artistic significance than almost anyone realizes, even those closely involved with it. You, also, seem to think along these lines--was it this line of thought that drove you to write the book? What is/are the main angle(s) you have taken in chronicling this "movement"?

The book got quite out of hand, as I wanted it to be a thorough examination from a lot of perspectives (both literal and metaphysical/philosophical) and not some typical hack-job. So it starts off providing a history of Black Metal, but this is traced even further back through to Heavy Metal and Rock and Roll in general. However, that was not what initially inspired me to look into the whole scenario. It was admittedly after reading articles in magazines like Kerrang!, and being quite amazed to find out about this seething (yet very underground) musical genre which (at least superficially) was a nexus of a number of things I've been interested in for years: crime, the occult, heathenism, neo-fascism, and so on. The more I investigated it, the clearer it became that a book-length treatment of the subject was worthwhile, and Feral House was interested in publishing it right from the start, which provided further impetus.

How widely read do you expect it to be, and what sort of audience(s) are you aiming at? Are you aiming to attract mainstream interest? Do you think the reason Black Metal has remained so pure and innovative is because of it's lack of widespread exposure? Also, it is quite funny that more mainstream Death Metal groups like Cannibal Corpse and Autopsy often find their lyrics and artwork censored (at least here in Australia), yet many Black Metal bands have openly endorsed genocide, the killing of Christians and Jews, the burning of churches, etc.--yet because of it's more underground status has thankfully remained (so far) untouched by the "moral majority" types.

I think the book, to its credit, will be of great interest to a number of very diverse audiences. Obviously the kids into Black Metal itself will take note of it. I hope there will be a much wider readership beyond that, however--those who are fans of music in general, aficionados of true crime literature, people interested in Satanism and the occult, not to mention sociologists and psychologists, theologians, and on and on. Anyone with a curious mind should find it a fascinating bit of history, and a revealing look at how the dynamics of an insular youth culture can manifest in a genuinely unexpected way.

What is your own attitude towards the burning of the stavechurches in Norway? Do you think it actually achieved anything? Some musicians (eg. In The Woods...) have pointed out that even though the churches were made for christian worship, they were built in the style of the heathen temples they replaced (some even displaying Thor's hammer above the Christian cross) and are therefore worth preserving. Your thoughts?

I'm not in favor of burning stave churches, simply for some of the reasons you point out above and the fact that I personally think their appearance is impressive. There are very few left in the world (only 31) and I think they should be preserved. It really doesn't move me one way or the other if people burn down modern churches, and since they are often built in such an ugly manner, maybe we're better off without them. But personally I was not raised a Christian so the obsession that the Black Metalers have with that religion is hard to identify with for me. But I can imagine that being forced to grow up in some kind of stifling Christian household might cause one to dream about burning down churches and killing priests, and I can't blame someone for feeling that way, although maybe rashly acting on such impulses isn't a particularly wise way to go about ending Christianity. However, such reactions among kids seem like a simple case of cause and effect.

A new musical paradigm seems to have been developing over the last few years - a steady growth of strength, willpower and pride, as opposed to music that glorifies weakness, humility and being a loser, like the self-indulgent grunge, "punk" etc. which has dominated the mainstream through the nineties. Do you think we will see these new themes continue to grow in strength and popularity?

When the population as a whole is exemplified by whining and endless extolling of victimization and lack of responsibility, I doubt they are suddenly going to embrace their antithesis. Still, there are growing numbers of sensible people who realize that there must be something more than what's typically spewed at them from the mainstream.

In the same way, do you have any realistic hope for young people to turn their backs on television and the plastic postmodern "culture" that is pushed down our throats by all those effete, politically correct mainstream pundits and personalities? Any hope for a large-scale rediscovery of native spiritual tradition amongst Europeans in a world where people are told they are "nazis" if they show an interest in their ancestors' beliefs?

I don't think most people really want to turn their backs on things like television. People have simply reached a point where they don't care. If your only concerns are making money, buying your dream home, and having an exotic tropical vacation for 2 weeks out of the year, then why on earth would you turn back on these pettier daily diversions that accompany such a fate? If your only interests are sports teams composed of morons who chase inflated balls back and forth from one end of a patch of grass to the other in daily ritualized spectacles, or feel-good movies where you can collectively share an identical emotional response with every other twit in the theater, or reading the latest 600 page Stephen King formula novel you bought at the mall and digesting it like a Big Mac--if you are satisfied with all this, then why on earth would you care one whit for the cultural traditions you left behind? (But WHY are people satisfied with this??? I don't understand - Paul)

In an interview with NO LONGER A FANzine, you stated that "'America' as an idea has played itself out". Have you ever considered yourself an American in any deeper sense, or do you think of yourself purely as a Northern European? Would you compare America to the Roman empire, and if so, how long do you think it will be until it "falls"?

What deeper sense? All I see is people who are inherently lazy, slothful, stupid, and easily sated with a few chintzy rewards and just enough "leisure time" to let them feel like they still have control over their lives. Sadly, I think this is endemic to most of the Europeans too, just as it is to any other race. I'd like to believe otherwise, but I'm a realist. Modern day civilization, especially of the American variety, plays on all the worst elements of human nature in the above regard, and thus society languishes in the endless torpor we see before us. I think it could limp along like this for a very long time indeed. But I have no interest in altruistically trying to be someone else's saviour, when they have no desire to be saved from their fate anyhow.
None of this is anything new, either, which just convinces me that it is inherent to the human condition. I was re-reading one of my favorite of philosophers, Heraclitus, who stated as a noble Greek thinker in the 6th century BC, "The best of men choose one thing in preference to all else, immortal glory in preference to mortal goods; Whereas the masses simply glut themselves like cattle".
Obviously the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Let's turn to your musical project, Blood Axis. Your first full-length release, The Gospel of Inhumanity, has been out for a couple of years now... what are your thoughts looking back on it? Are you still satisfied with it?

Actually the record has just been re-released on the UK label Misanthropy, and even re-mastered so I think it sounds a bit stronger in dynamics from the original edition. I'm definitely proud of it and satisfied. I think for a first album, completely self-produced, it packed a pretty good-sized punch on all levels.

On The Gospel of Inhumanity you have managed to mix the most seemingly disparate elements to create a harmonious whole, an amalgamation of past and future. Do you think half the problem in modern times is that people can't identify with the past? They see history almost as an amusement, like a TV show or something, and can't seem to realise that the people in the history books are the same as us. We are taught in school to believe that we are somehow superior to our ancestors and that liberalism and capitalism are the highest developments of humanity, yet this is completely hypocritical as, firstly, other ideologies in the past have taught the same thing (eg. Catholic church, Soviet Communist regime etc.), and, secondly, this society is actually destroying the planet by pollution, ozone depletion, destroying huge areas of forest to graze cattle, not to mention overpopulation caused by christians keeping starving people alive, banning abortion, euthanasia etc. In other words our educators and legislators have no understanding of the past and no respect for the future, yet they consider themselves superior to our heathen ancestors, which is a fucking joke. Is one of your goals with Blood Axis to delineate this disregarded past/future axis of history? What are your thoughts on this?

You pretty much answered your own question here, and quite well at that! I think one of the aims of Blood Axis is to unite the archaic and the futurist, and shed light on both.

Charles Manson is the guest vocalist on "Herr, nun laß in Frieden". What is your opinion on Manson and the ATWA concept, and what do you think of his music, eg. the Lie album?

Most of Manson's ideas about the environment seem totally sensible to me, as are his words in the story used in the Blood Axis track you mention. There is some good material on "Lie", but other recordings are much more powerful--like the "Family Jams" tapes, and Manson's more recent recordings such as the prison material on "Commemoration".

Why do you think Manson was demonized so excessively (and effectively - I always thought he was a serial killer when I was a child) by the media? You yourself have been visited by the U.S. secret service just for associating with him. Do you see any similarities (other than superficial ones) between the case of Manson and that of Varg Vikernes?

Manson's demonization would seem to me to stem from a combination of two things: one is his uncanny ability to point out the hypocrisies of the System which prosecuted and imprisoned him (and by extension his ability to draw attention to the follies of society and civilization as a whole) and then there is his connection to violence, by way of the actions of his present and former associates. That, to most people, is a truly threatening nexus of thought and action, as I suppose it should be really. There are some similarities between the ideas of Manson and Vikernes, and actually these are pointed out during the conversations with Vikernes in my book.

Another "contributor" to the lyrics of The Gospel of Inhumanity is Friedrich Nietzsche, and you also published an illustrated edition of Der Antichrist in 1988 (the centenary of it's original publication). Has Nietzsche had a major influence on your world view, and in what ways?

Nietzsche has impressed me more than any other writer and thinker, I would have to say. I first read his books when I was fourteen or fifteen, and I still often refer back to them that many years later. Nietzsche's analyses cut like a scalpel through the glory and utter folly of modern man. He diagnosed it all correctly, but people don't seem ready to take the medicine.

What are your future plans for Blood Axis? What directions do you see your music heading in? What can you tell us about a split CD with Austria's Allerseelen, and about the forthcoming vinyl box-set?

Blood Axis is working, slowly but surely, on a follow-up to the "Gospel", titled "Ultimacy". The music is becoming more "folkish" I would say, but by that I don't mean "folk". There will always be a combination of modern and very old elements to it. We have recently recorded two tracks which will appear on forthcoming compilation CDs-- one on a tribute to Julius Evola, the other on a release a friend of ours has put together called "The Nitha Fields". For the former we performed a long mantra to Othinn called "Herjafather", based on a Shivaite melody. On the "Nitha Fields" compilation we've done a cover of a very powerful folkish song from the '70s called "The Hangman and the Papist", which may also appear on the new full-length album in a completely different version.
We recently went over to Sweden and played a rare live concert there, which was also recorded digitally and should come out on the Cold Meat Industry label in the spring of 1998, probably under the title "Blot i Sverige" ("Sacrifice in Sweden"). This record will hopefully satisfy some of the people who've been awaiting new material from us, and we think the music comes across quite powerfully on it, not to mention the songs have a lot of varied elements from the studio versions.
The boxset has been delayed for ages but it's still possible this will come out one of these days. The split CD with Allerseelen was something planned a long time ago and both bands decided that we would prefer to use our material for our own albums (which come out so few and far between anyway) than do the split release. However, there will be some contributions by Allerseelen of voices and sounds to the next Blood Axis CD, likewise from Ulver and other friends of ours.

You own/run a book and record label called Storm, based in Portland, Oregon. Are you happy with how it has expanded so far? What are some of the new releases you have coming out?

Storm has expanded slowly but steadily, which is good. I run everything by myself on very limited time, but its possible I may devote more to it in the future. Still I think I've managed to get out a number of really unique releases and they are always presented in a solidly aesthetic manner. In short, they are special things you would find nowhere else! The most recent CDs have been by Changes and Allerseelen, two very different types of music. Changes is eerie vintage folk from the late '60s, very diametrical in outlook to anything "hippy". Allerseelen is evocative electronic music from Austria, sometimes quite harsh and brutal, but at other points very somber and beautiful. Both bands could be said to have thoroughly "heathen" outlooks. Later this year we will be releasing a retrospective of music by Factrix, an incredible and unsung early industrial band from America. They released a few rare albums and a single about 15 years ago before splitting up, but their music often still sounds ahead of its time now. We will putting out another album called Sovereign by Book and Sword, an American electronic group from the South. The man behind it unfortunately recently committed suicide, and thus the CD will be an epitaph of sorts.
Other projects we are working on include an English edition of Baron Julius Evola's book Men Among the Ruins. There are many other book publications we plan for the future, spanning subjects such as mysticism, occultism, decadent literature, and mythology.

You published some translated works of the Austrian poet Karl-Maria Wiligut, who was one of the "ariosophists", as well as being a spiritual advisor to the notorious Heinrich Himmler. Could you tell us a bit more about the ariosophists, and what you think they might be able to teach the men and women of today?

There is quite a vast range of personalities and viewpoints that you could classify under the banner of "ariosophy", which translates to "knowledge of the Aryans" in a metaphysical or theosophical sense. Many of the figures from the fascinating "Völkisch" period in Germany and Austria, before the Third Reich, were involved in these sorts of things. It is a union of culture, philosophy, metaphysics and mythology, the likes of which you would probably never see in today's world. Of course there were a lot of crackpot ideas floating around in the midst of it as well, but it sparked vast amounts of valuable research and inspired writings too. These were some of the last people who truly viewed their own lives in a mythical way, which is positive from my perspective.

Are you influenced by the runes? Do you practice magic at all?

I'm "influenced" by runes as much as I am by any expression of archaic European civilization, and they are just one part of a much bigger whole.
If you accept magic as Crowley's definition of "the art and science of causing change in accordance with the will" then I have been practicing magic(k) ever since I gained consciousness. Blood Axis itself is magick in theory and practice.

What, if anything, does the following artists' work mean to you:

a) J.S.Bach: A conduit for the loftiest of heights and the depths of the unconscious.

b) Ludwig van Beethoven: In the final assessment, the most powerful harnesser of sound that will ever have lived.
(It should be known that Primitive Future agrees COMPLETELY with this assessment! - Paul)

c) Richard Wagner: An inspired soul who will continue to likewise inspire those who come into contact with his mesmeric expressions.

d) J.R.R.Tolkien: I distinctly recall enjoying it immensely when my father read the "Lord of the Rings" to my sister and I as young children, but there was no particularly influence beyond that.

e) William S.Burroughs: I quite like Burroughs, who often tread onto brilliant ground with his interests and adventures. I've read many of his novels, but these are less interesting than reading interviews with the man himself. His cut-up technique (actually "invented" by his friend Brion Gysin, another fascinating fellow) is something that can be utilized to great effect in the right hands.

f) Leni Riefenstahl: A noble example for women everywhere. Certainly one of a lost breed.

Are there any obscure new artists (not necessarily musicians) that you'd like to recommend to us?

Some music groups of late that impressed me: Ulver (I recently wrote liner notes for a boxset of their albums that's just been released in Europe), Arcana, The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud, but I guess none of these are that obscure. Factrix, who I will release a retrospective CD by, are an amazing obscure band who very few people ever heard, but hopefully that may change soon. Monte Cazzaza is another one, both in music and other art mediums as well. A lesser known composer I am a great admirer of is Carl Nielsen. In the visual arts I have always found (sur)realism much more powerful than anything abstract, and have a weak spot for anything of a somewhat perversely demented but extremely well-executed nature. Along those lines I would recommend Trevor Brown and Beth Love.

Finally, back to your Black Metal book, when is it finally published and where will we be able to obtain it from?

"Lords of Chaos" should be in good bookstores by the middle of March, 1998. It has distribution in Europe through Turnaround in London, and Marginal in Canada. I don't know if there is any official distribution to Australia/NZ, but I would hope some copies will show up there. Individuals can always order it directly from me for the cover price ($15.95) plus $3 postage in the USA or Canada, $12 airmail to the rest of the world, or $5 surface.

Thanks for your time Michael, anything else to add?

Never settle for a lower standard, even if it means creating a higher standard yourself.