arcturus » la masquerade infernale » interviews

Aspera Hiems Symfonia

La Masquerade Infernale

Disguised Masters

The Sham Mirrors

Sideshow Symphonies

All

discography

Fresh from celebrating their Album Of The Month award, Arcturus return to these pages to discuss the work of mind-bending, eye-opening, skull-crushing art that is 'La Masquerade Infernale'. Weird isn't even the half of it, and an enraptured but bemused Gregory Whalen attempts to piece together what is a very complicated puzzle indeed.

Despite the fact that Ulver mastermind Garm takes his name from the fierce canine guardian of Hel, goddess of the underworld (kind of a Norse Cerberus if you will), today he is feeling friendly, talkative and playful. And not without reason: as one of the most prominent and prolific figures in the Norwegian extreme music scene, he has much to discuss and even more to be proud of. Arcturus' new record 'La Masquerade Infernale', for example, voted Album Of The Month in a certain magazine not so long ago.

"To date this is definitely the album that I'm personally most satisfied with having worked on," he triumphantly declares. "I've never really seen Arcturus as a side project. Others have said 'Oh, that's Garm and Hellhammer's side project,' but they are the source of that false impression, not I. I play in Ulver and I play in Arcturus, and that's it. I guess you could say that Borknagar was kind of a side project to me, but I've never seen Arcturus like that. What does Arcturus mean to me? Bleeurgh! I don't know. It's life in a world of symbols. Living with joy and enduring pain. Sunny beach versus dark forest. It's becoming a chaotic case, and it's not so easy for me to explain..."

Arcturus have come a long way in their seven-odd years of existence. Formed in the early Nineties by keyboardist and then guitarist Sverd, with Hellhammer of Mayhem on drums and a strange fellow named Marius on bass and vocals, the band recorded a 7" for one of the many French underground labels that were around at the time. To this day, the 'My Angel' EP remains a classic, underrated and obscure though it was and still is, for the simple reason that it sounded like nothing and no one else. A profoundly dark piece of vinyl, it had an aura of unearthliness about it which set it apart from what was going on elsewhere in the scene at the time. When Marius departed, however, the project went into limbo for two years. A new lease of life was breathed into the band during the period when both Hellhammer and Sverd were playing in Emperor, as Samoth joined the ranks on guitar, and Garm and Skoll from Ulver (vocals and bass respectively) were added to the line-up.

"I don't mean to brag," Garm interrupts, "but I played a prominent role in that rejuvenation along with Samoth. When we joined the band things started to happen again. If we hadn't, the band would still be rehearsing the same three or four songs. Sverd is overly fond of playing, but he's not too organised."

After recording the 'Constellation' demo with the band in 1994 and releasing it on his label Nocturnal Art as a strictly limited mini-CD (recently reissued on vinyl with various bonus tracks), Samoth was forced to bow out due to his impending imprisonment. With Hellhammer and Sverd's departure from Emperor, they were able to invest more time in Arcturus and quickly found a replacement guitarist in the form of August from Tritonius. With that line-up, the 'Aspera Hiems Symfonia' album was recorded and released to considerable acclaim via Ancient Lore Creations, a subdivision of Misanthropy. Now fully signed to the Suffolk stable, under license to Music For Nations, and with yet another new guitarist, Knut, the fourth chapter has just been unveiled in the shape of 'La Masquerade Infernale'. Both Garm and Hellhammer are extremely satisfied with the result, the singer in particular overjoyed that all the hard work he invested has paid off. "It feels f***ing awesome to finally have it out!" he beams.

"It's not that comparable really, but the foundation that it's all based on is still classical music. I guess you could draw a line down to the 'My Angel' EP as well, because 'La Masquerade' is in many ways a lot darker than 'Aspera Hiems Symfonia'. I also deem that EP from '91 to be a very dark and gloomy piece."

"No. We'll do doubt change a bit, taking the playful and diverse elements to a more extreme level, but I don't think people will see it as a wimp-out or anything like that. We might have ended up with a result that was closer to 'Cold Lake' if we had taken the stuff we did on 'Aspera...' to a different level, but we've become more difficult again with this record, and I doubt that was the Celtics' intention with 'Cold Lake'. This album needs a couple of listens in order to be fully grasped."

It certainly does. Whereas 'Aspera Hiems Symfonia' was an instant hit with almost everybody who heard it, 'La Masquerade Infernale' is a bewilderingly complex work. There are so many layers to it that it takes at least three or four sittings to even begin to understand where the band are coming from, and even then there is so much more to discover. For once, the old Prog-Rock cliché "Listen to it with headphones, man!" rings true. At times astral and unearthly, at others deeper and darker than the nethermost regions of Hell, the album soars and swoops and skips and waltzes and charges all over the place, utterly enchanting but at the same time totally disorientating. From the perversely pompous carnival music of 'The Chaos Path' and its Drum & Bass conclusion through the rousing TripHop passages that permeate 'Ad Astra' to the delightfully spaced-out closer 'Of Nails And Sinners', everything about the record screams genius, albeit very warped, very twisted genius. Exactly how is the general public going to cope, I wonder?

"I think it might offend certain narrow-minded people, and I am thus happy to be the offender," Garm chirps gleefully. "But I hope that we can gain a different respect with this album, on different premises than Black Metal. After all, I have accommodated that audience before..."

Let me put it differently. Do you think people are ready for an album like 'La Masquerade Infernale'?

"Yeah, I think so. Regarding fans, we will definitely lose some, but then again we'll gain others. The technological aspects of the music industry are showing signs of growing extremely big. I believe that in a few years' time everyone will be fanatical about stuff like Marilyn Manson and music like the Spawn soundtrack. Extreme Metal music vs. dancefloor beats, that kind of stuff. I think that is what will happen, and at present there also seems to be a growing interest in alternative sounds. So I wouldn't really say that we're ahead of our time. We're merely showing that we're into what's happening in [COULD SOMEONE PLEASE PUT THAT "IN" IN ITALICS] our time. There are musicians outside of Metal playing with the same elements as we do and doing it far better than us, but people who only listen to Hardrock obviously wouldn't know that, right?"

Right. Same old story: anything a Metalhead hasn't heard before he deems original.

"Yeah, right. We've simply done our best to enrich our sound by incorporating different elements into it, and I'm personally very content with the result. I guess we're pretty much in [ITALICS AGAIN PLEASE] our time, neither behind nor ahead."

The discussion becomes a shade more analytical as I try to establish some sort of context in which to view 'La Masquerade Infernale'. Garm quickly puts an end to my ramblings on the subject of post-Black Metal by bluntly enquiring why I feel the need to define everything I hear. It's my job, I tell him: hack explains to record buyer what a band sounds like by placing them in a certain category, record buyer knows roughly what to expect, is interested, and goes and buys the record. "I know if I like something when I hear it," the singer explains, "And that's really all that matters to me. I'll leave the defining business to you." Fine, I tell him. Arcturus play... Arcturus play...

There's no arguing with that, so rather than pursue the matter any further I feed Garm a list of names and ask him to comment on the influence that they might have had on Arcturus. Celtic Frost and Voivod are instantly dismissed, but the singer admits that even though he's not particularly fond of them himself, Pink Floyd are probably an inspiration to the other members of the band.

"I know what you mean. The carnival traits. He has with others probably inspired us indirectly in the sense that they triggered our desire to steal some of the elements which are very prominent in Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, for example, and related stuff. I'm really quite enchanted by those childish, spooky themes."

"Hmmm. He influences me maybe... I really like his second album a lot. I mean, not necessarily Tricky, but stuff like The Golden Palominos or perhaps Neotropic. All the stuff that's going down these days is part of making me aware of the direction in which I'm heading, and I'm getting profoundly into the art of technology. Actually, right now we're working on remixing the whole album. We've done one song so far, which is a Jungle interpretation of 'The Throne Of Tragedy'. I think we will release it on our own label, Jester, which will be the first step in getting an art syndicate together. If anyone from World Serpent, Mute or anything is reading this and has got the hots for distributing, please get in touch!"

Thematically 'La Masquerade Infernale' is a complex beast, but the original title for the album, 'The Satanist', does shed some light on the overall concept. Garm's voice has taken on a very prominent role in the band's sound, and thus it can be assumed that his lyrics are an integral part of Arcturus. I ask him whether this is why he chose to abandon his harsher vocals in favour of his now characteristic soul-souring style.

"No. As I said earlier, it's just a sign of the course things are taking. Route 666, so to say. I'm listening to so much different music these days and it impels me to do new things. It's not that I deliberately chose to quit, it came naturally. However, I have to admit that sometimes when I think about myself standing in front of the mike screaming my entrails out, I can't help but think how pathetic it really is. I simply enjoy singing more than I enjoy screaming. It's a completely different realm of expression. I also think it sounds darker if done properly. Screaming is more furious, more Punk, and therefore a more immature form of expression."

"Ummm... In certain ways, I guess, but that's probably unavoidable. The four lyrics I have written all deal with different subjects. One of them, which actually runs through two songs on the album, is the classic theme of Lucifer addressing God. That's not my autobiography, but there is a symbolic sense of identifying with the protagonist. It's how I view my place in society. Both lyrics, one written by me, another by a close friend of mine, share an underlying quality. They are both written in a kind of wretched or humble fashion. We are not so cocksure of ourselves now and have taken things to a more contemplative, reflective level."

"You betcha! The reckless Faustian urge for discovery, knowledge and recognition is the thread that has run through Arcturus since I took over the aesthetics in the band. With this album we take on the role of Faust, plain and simple."

So does the album contain any particular message? Is there a moral to the story?

"Hahaha. No, not really. I've never been a sucker for the game of directing others. I have a certain need to express myself and hope that through this I can learn more about myself and consequently hasten my own evolution. If this separates me from the swineherd, as it were, of especially Black Metal Satanists, fine. Because that's the kind of Satanism that I've grown out of. It's Heavy Metal culture versus satanic philosophy, which really is a completely different spectrum. I believe the time is ripe to portray Satanism in more sophisticated forms and also hope to find an audience better qualified to understand the philosophy behind my work. If the lyrics influence people, that's okay too."

'My Angel' EP 1991 [Putrefaction]
'Constellation' MCD 1994 [Nocturnal Art]
'Aspera Hiems Symfonia' 1996 [Ancient Lore/Misanthropy]
'Aspera Hiems Symfonia' picture disc LP 1996 [Misanthropy]
'Constellation' LP 1997 [Nocturnal Art]
'La Masquerade Infernale' [Misanthropy/Music For Nations]