Several years ago, I had been engaged in describing and discussing underground metal at length. There came a point when I sat down to write down my “definitive” views on black metal, which, for me, had come to be the epitome of underground metal, far surpassing death metal in character and content. I was lucky to get in touch with a unique talent and legend in Central American underground dark musical arts circles, and to be honored with a rarely conceded interview for this book. I was also honored with a very long and detailed interview with Brett Stevens, author of the stellar book Nihilism.
At some point in the past, I cannot even remember how, I bumped into the Dark Legions Archive (DLA), the infamous, belittled, amusing, but ultimately uncontested reference on quality underground death and black metal music. Nothing quite prepared me for Morbid Angel or Deicide, and even less for Immortal or Burzum.
As a teenager, I had had a close enounter with Immortal when a repentant Satanic acquaintance shared their music with me, with the additional warning that the devil had come through to him in the music. The album was Damned in Black (2000). Back when the heaviest music I had ever heard in my life was Iron Maiden, however, I had no idea what I was listening to, nor what it meant. Along with my older friend’s story about the devil calling out his name from the speakers playing this music, it was slightly terrifying.
Much like one jumps over the shenenigans of LaVeyan Satanism and might go directly to Valentin Scavr or Temptor Pricnegsur, so did I mostly jump over the typical “transitional bands”.
The lyrics and imagery of albums like Morbid Angel’s Blessed are the Sick were magnetic, and though my nervous system could not yet fully process the sounds thus arranged and projected, I climbed that vine, I effected that mutation.
Ultimately, it was the psychological depths and winding laberynths of early At the Gates that captured my attention the most. I came to live and breath The Red in the Sky is Ours, and I wrote an essay describing what I thought were the lessons and important points to highlight about it. Quite a few years later, we had a long video discussion about that first At the Gates album with our friends over at Hessian Firm, which you can enjoy if you are interested in this work.
I came to discover Abyssum, the Guatemalan band featured in review and interview in my book Gradus ad Phlegethon, thanks to Akherra Phasssmathanás, who had played drums with the band since 2008. Akherra also ran Ars Leprosa, his outlet as occult visual artist, contributing work to projects such as Anathema Publishing’s PILLARS, Volume I, Perichoresis Edition. As I came to experience the project beyond its then only international accolade, I came to know a corner of the artistic mind of its creator, Rex Ebvleb.
Shared in private, much of it has since come to be made available on the Internet. A music emphasizing a mystical and romantic inner knowing, solitary and ritualistic listening in dark places of emptiness, it surpassed anything I had ever heard from its American and European counterparts. These sounds, though arranged under much more humble and crude conditions, and to a rougher result, when given their proper treatment, turned the technical and material aspects of First World metal on its head.
When writing Gradus ad Phlegethon, I was beyond the point of no return. Abstract ideas had been crystallized and revised over years. No music was listened to any longer, silence was indulged in most of the time (something strange for an erstwhile metalhead), except for occasional and exclusive sessions with Abyssum or Nigromante.
The contents of the book aim at condensing as much as possible what was learned from previous thinkers on underground metal, namely Brett Stevens, and passing that through a personal discovery of the music that included the opinions and influence of many others. It was devised as a final release, a last nail on the coffin on the existential utility of music for me.
However, I wish it can be a treasure trove for those drawn to the dark corners of the world, or, as Peter Kingsley would put it, in the dark places of wisdom, those with the sensitivity to stand before a wooded hill, sensing in their skin and their bones that something calls out to the flow of their being from within the cosmos.
You can get your copy of Gradus ad Phlegethon here.