Darkthule (GRE) Interview 2004
Hail Moros! Could you give us a short guide to Darkthule, when you started doing this thing; discography, etc.? Have you always been the sole member in Darkthule?
Hail! Two persons, Mormos on vocals, and me, Moros, on guitars, formed Darkthule in the beginning of 2002 in Northwest Hellas. We released our first demo in July of the same year with title ‘Summon Thee…’, limited to 230 copies. From then until now Darkthule has consisted solely of me, and on December of 2002 I released the second demo ‘Awakening Of The Ancient Past’. One year later, in December 2003, the third demo was released by Warhorn Records, called ‘O Erhomos Apo To Parelthon’, meaning ‘The Coming From The Past’. With the entrance of the new year, the Russian label Au-To-Dafe re-released the two first demos on one tape. On May of 2004 the debut CD was released by Battlefield Records under the title ‘Beyond The Endless Horizons’, and the following September, the same label released the split CD with Hagalaz, ‘Ethnos Timi Pepromeno’, meaning ‘Nation Honour Destiny’).
Since the song titles in the Hagalaz/ Darkthule split are all in the Greek alphabet, could you provide a translation of them for those who are interested?
I translated the title in the previous question. The tracks are: 1) ‘With The Covering Of The Fog’, 2) ‘Ivris- Ati Nemesis’ (this cannot be translated in English), 3) ‘Defenders Of Blood, Soil and Spirit’ and the last track is called 4) ‘Eternal Fire’. Well, the first track talks about feelings of melancholy, wrath and of course hope and rebirth, for something that once was and shall become again. The main idea of this track came when I was on top of the castle in the town were I live and the fog was covering everything. The second track is about the eternal circle of life and death, this balance of light and darkness; it’s about our never-ending creativity and fighting. All those of course according to Natural Laws. The third track deals mainly with the Spartan Ideals and those who continue them. The last track, an acoustic one, is about what Heracletos once said: ‘This world was not made by any god or human. The world was, is and will be as an eternal flame that lights and extinguishes with matter.’
Your primary musical influence seems to me to be Nordic-styled black metal, rather than the traditional Greek black metal sound expressed by bands like Necromantia. Is there any real reason for this? How much do you appreciate the legacy that the most famous Hellenic black metal bands have left?
It’s true that I prefer more Norse-like Black Metal. When I compose a track I’m not saying, ‘OK, now I’ll make a Norse-like track’ but this is what comes from me, this is my inspiration and of course, as always there are the influences. I like the Hellenic Black Metal style a lot, but as it was until late 1996. I like and I appreciate the old Hellenic Black Metal bands until their releases of these years.
Can you tell us something about the modern Hellenic NSBM/ pagan metal scene? Is there any real following locally or have you found out that foreign listeners appreciate this kind of music more?
I don’t think that there’s any real scene. There are some people who have heathen or NS ideals and values and incorporate them in their Black Metal music, and I can ensure you that they do it perfectly. It’s true that Hellas had from the start Black Metal bands that were involved in NS, since the early ’90s up to nowadays. I can mention some good ideological bands like The Shadow Order, Bannerwar, Der Sturmer, Wodulf, Hagalaz, Gauntlet’s Sword, Naer Mataron, Legion Of Doom, Unholy Archangel, Kawir, Wolfnacht, Agarthia and more. Of course there are people here who listen to NS/ Pagan Black Metal but they don’t count. Some come and some others leave. This happens always and everywhere. I have more contacts with people from other countries.
What do you imply with the title of your latest release, ‘Beyond The Endless Horizons’? What are these horizons, and how can one go beyond them?
As you can see on the cover, there’s an Eagle that rises behind the horizon and you can also see the Holy Sunwheel. The Eagle and the Sun are coming together, bringing the Dawn. Beyond the horizons I put the mythic fatherland of Hypervorea or Thule, call it as you like, this spiritual cradle of Aryan Wisdom and Civilization, so it’s the Dawn of Thule in a way. If you want to go beyond these horizons you need virtuousness. This ‘beyond’ is a higher, let’s say spiritual, level. To achieve this is needed a spiritual catharsis and an esoteric modification. To be able of doing it, one needs to have consciousness of his blood and spirit. The spirit is part of the soul, and the soul is the constancy of the body, as Aristotle said. So we are talking here about our Racial Soul- this means we have to forget what we are (though it’s better to say we have to forget what others want us to be) and to be what we were born for. To get out of all the polluted pseudo-ideologies and to be into the cosmotheory that has to do with us, the cosmotheory of our ancestors.
Is there any common treading ground, or any similar aspects, between Heathen beliefs and Satanic beliefs?
We can separate Satanism in different units. The first is the orthodox traditional Satanism that is nothing more than one more semitic cult, nihilistic like judaism and christianity with a strong egocentric view believing in messiahs and other shitty stuff. This form of Satanism is just the other side of the coin. This Satanism is the one who gives power to the Christian faith and the Christian faith is the one that gives power to this kind of Satanism. They belong to the same system and without one, the other cannot exist. Satan is a word of Hebrew origin, and means ‘the one who is against’, against god in our case, so if he wins this god whom will he be against? This Satan should thank god for this existence. This Satanism belongs to the cosmotheory of the monotheistic tyrant religions and it’s nothing more than this.
Another form of Satanism is the LaVey one, which mixtures different philosophies and attitudes in order to make more people follow it. In reality these Satanists are nothing more than atheists who believe only in pleasure of material goods and how to satisfy their selves with their egocentric view. In these units there’s nothing common with heathenism.
Now we can talk about the ‘Satanism’ that took place in the middle-ages in Europe and it’s nothing more than Heathen cults, many times dark cults with Chthonian gods, that christian priests named as Satanic in order to make people to turn against them. Heathenism is a cosmotheory in itself and doesn’t need any opposite for its existence. It doesn’t has the concept of ‘absolute good’ and ‘absolute evil’ like monotheistic religions do. For in Heathenism, good and evil exist in the same person like light and darkness in nature. This is the natural law, this is the harmony and the balance. In Heathenism you feel the Gods close to you as friends and not as masters. In Heathenism Gods are representing archetypes of Man and forces of nature. Heathenism is having values like pride, honour, respect, creativity and of course blood, it has an heroic view of life. Heathenism offers you the path of the eternal improving.
There are also some philosophies that are called ‘Satanism’ but they see their Satan as a new Prometheus that gave to Man the Knowledge, and they follow Aryan philosophies mostly of Nietzsche and (very frequently) of ancient Hellenic philosophers. I can understand the concept of these people but I think they use the wrong term to describe their philosophy of life.
War is perhaps one of the most controversial topics currently in the news. It is of course necessary for a civilisation to safeguard its own, yet you find pacifists on either side of the Atlantic protesting against any little scuffle which may arise from time to time. How do you look at war, and, concerning our times, how would you define George Bush’s ‘war on terrorism’?
First of all I think we have to define the term ‘war’. War isn’t just the guns and bullets on a certain battlefield or, like in previous ages, swords and shields. War is the eternal progress, life is war, creativity is war. All of our actions are war! There’s also the ‘battlefield of ideas’. This war of ideologies, I assure you, is a battlefield which is very complex to imagine.
Going to Bush and his war now. We have a saying in my land, which tells about placing a wolf to take care of the sheep. A super-terrorist is trying to break down the ‘terrorists’? For me there’s no Al-Qaeda or any other Islamic ’super-terrorist’ organization. Behind all these actions is nothing more than Israel wanting to enslave and rule all nations. Do you think that USA could attack Iraq and take its oil without the attack of 11th September? Also see what targets have been attacked by the so-called Al-Qaeda after the 11th September and tell me if this helped the USA or not. They just create reasons for attacking and making other countries to be by their side in order to fight ‘against terrorism’ as ‘all the free nations should be united’. Also, don’t forget that Bin Laden worked for some years in the CIA.
A website about American black metal (http://www24.brinkster.com/usbm/indexjoke.html) denounces Darkthule as nothing more than an American joke band pretending it’s from Greece. How did this rumour come about and what are your replies to this?
Well, this guy has a complex problem with Wulfhere, and he had sent me an e-mail saying that Wulfhere is an Arab (!!!) joke band and that if I release the split with this band, no one will take Darkthule seriously. I simply told him that he is wrong, and from then on I became a jewish joke band, not even from Hellas. Conclusions are yours.
You are an active participant in The Golden Dawn Of Hellas, can you elaborate on this movement? Does it spread propaganda solely through music or are there any other outlets for spreading its message?
The Golden Dawn is the only National Socialist movement in Hellas and it is an example of many NS organizations around world. It has two weekly newspapers, one monthly ideological magazine, and from the Youth Front they publish the musical/ ideological magazine Counter-Attack which is a very good step to approach youth through music. Also the Golden Dawn has its own publishing house named Spear, which has already released books related to ideological matters, history, philosophy etc. Spear re-pressed also the Signal magazine, that was published by the Third Reich. Apart from this propaganda, or better call it enlightenment, there are also marches and other kinds of gatherings organised.
In a great number of instances, the Golden Dawn had to fight ‘nail and tooth’ in order to protect our fatherland. We keep high the honour of our race and of our beloved fatherland. The system, both leftist and rightist, is always fighting us, and some people tried to make the organization illegal but they didn’t succeed. This is their so-called ‘democracy’. They turn their laws against you and they don’t allow you freedom of speech when they don’t like what you say. I call this ‘jewdeocracy’. Most people know about us through the media, so as you can understand, they know about us without our help! People sometimes came and told me that Golden Dawn is a terrorist group or even an anarchist one!!!
The current worldwide ‘metal’ (!) scene is replete with ‘noise-core’ and ‘metal-core’ and ‘insert-stupid-prefix-core’ bands. Why are these bands and their weak varieties of watered-down serious art so popular with today’s audience? Do you believe that music can have a value of pure entertainment only?
I don’t like this style either, but there are bands that may play good music and not have a dumb ideology, and there are such bands. These bands with their weak varieties are so popular because people are brainwashed by such ‘values’. Don’t forget that big international commercial companies are promoting such bands, because they are not afraid of them, because they are a part of the system and thus they cannot harm it, while bands that sing for ancient ancestral ideals are boycotted and are being persecuted, it happens even outside of the music scene.
Music has many roles and one of them is to entertain, but is can also amuse, it can spread propaganda, it helps you to express yourself and when you have a certain cosmotheory then this is stamped on your music and your lyrics.
What are the greatest obstacles you encounter as a musician in a NSBM band?
My ideas are the obstacles! I have received censorship but it was predictable. Magazine, label and band boycotts, and the usual ‘hate mails’. My site has been set down two times without to overcome their terms and they were saying that I had done it.
Have you ever encountered censorship or social pressure regarding Darkthule?
I can’t say that I have social pressure because of Darkthule, but whenever there may be any, it has to do with the general ideas and beliefs that I express and not only with the band. I believe that in some years, with a common European fundamental law, things will get worse and just a band will be a very good reason to send you to prison. Like what happens in Germany for example.
Thanks, I guess that’s all… please give the readers your last comments and musings, and good luck with the band!
Thanks for your support! Revolt against the modern decayed world! Preserve your heritage in this multiracial and multicultural chaos! Blood and Honour!