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Isten Fanzine "Don't Break the Ghost"

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Mikko Mattila

with Janne Sarna and Professor Black


Isten Fanzine: Don’t Break the Ghost

by Mikko Mattila with Janne Sarna and Professor Black

with vital contributions from Damhair, Kola Krauze and Dominique Poulain

Copyright © 2014 Isten Fanzine

All rights reserved

ghost@isten.net

www.isten.net

Thank you to everyone who wears the Isten imp close to their heart.

Cover by Mikko Mattila

Back cover drawing by Timo Ketola

Layout and design by Mikko Mattila with Janne Sarna

Typeset in Pentagramme, Moyenage and ABC Green by František Štorm and BlackBeard by Fonthead

Isten imp and logo mk 1987 by Jorma Mattila

Isten Fanzine logo by Mikko Mattila and Timo Ketola

All photographs presented herein not from the Isten family albums were

provided for promotional use by the bands and/or their record labels.

Svart Records

Puutarhakatu 49

20100 Turku

Finland

www.svartrecords.com

Printed and bound in Tallinna Raamatutrükikoda

ISBN 978-952-93-4496-3


This book is dedicated.



CONTENTS

FOREWORD TO OBLIVION........................................................6

IN NOMINE..................................................................................10

MEIN GOTT................................................................................. 12

Demo Issues.......................................................................... 15

UNBORN AGAIN.........................................................................22

Issue #1.................................................................................26

DEATH IN SOLITUDE................................................................ 36

Issue #2.................................................................................40

DIGGIN’ THAT GRAVE............................................................... 54

Issue #3................................................................................. 58

GLOBAL VERMIN........................................................................ 78

Issue #4.................................................................................82

DEADLY GAME............................................................................134

Issue #5.................................................................................138

THE SKULL HARP..................................................................... 228

Kalloharppu........................................................................ 230

DEATH MAY DIE........................................................................ 238

Issue #6: To Hell and Back.................................................. 242

REVERENCE.................................................................................334

Issue #7.................................................................................338

PAPERCUTS................................................................................ 396

Issue #7B: Playing with Fire.................................................400

YELLOW SNOW.........................................................................404

(The Return of the) Dark Lord...........................................408

JUICES LIKE WATER................................................................ 474

Cold Lake........................................................................... 478

DOLL PATROL........................................................................... 486

Mädchen..............................................................................490

SHE’S LOST CONTROL..............................................................532

Twin Sister...........................................................................536

HEAVY MESSAGE........................................................................600

Isten 100..............................................................................604

GRAVE NEW WORLD................................................................ 686

Hiatus.................................................................................690

LIFELIKE SILENCE.................................................................... 722

Disappointment Issues.......................................................... 726

INTO THE GHOST.....................................................................800

5 Contents


Foreword to Oblivion

by Professor Black

I proudly wore my Isten “imp” T-shirt on the second day

of Keep It True Festival in 2013. Unfortunately, nobody

noticed, because it was colder that day, and I hate being

cold, so over the T-shirt I was wearing a plain blue

hoodie. I had specifically reserved that shirt to wear that

day, and instead, I was walking around the festival in a

sweatshirt that fit like a shriveled boob. I guess in heavy

metal fashion terms, I am the working class.

By the time Angel Witch played, it was dark outside, and

the band was punishingly loud. I had not only blended

in but become invisible. In that crowd of humans I felt

truly alone. And it washed over me right then and there,

that my heavy metal was shooting out in all directions

and shooting back at me from all directions, concentric

spheres, crossing time and space in a single motion. My

heavy metal was in perfect harmony. Listening, watching,

collecting records, making records, reading fanzines,

making fanzines, the friends, the traveling... so many

chains are binding us to heavy metal. Standing there,

watching Angel Witch, I was perfectly centered above my

anchor. Zero tension, zero drift.

Like a flick of fire I sensed the smile of the imp on my

chest and remembered that although he was stretched,

worn, and smothered, he also helped carry me here. For

Isten is one of the hardest and shortest chains, and it

keeps me close.

We all know about the good old days, either because

we lived them or because there is no shortage of heavy

metal talking heads who did. And we all know a few of

the younger lot who frantically overcompensate for

having been born later, quilting together a custom

identity, seemingly reconstituted from the multitudes

overnight. But regardless of our judgments toward the

past, the more pressing matter is the future. Nobody is

born into heavy metal, but many of us will die in it. What

about you? Are you inseparable from heavy metal, or just

coasting in the tides? Let’s find out.

Look me in the eye. I hope you are prepared. You are

about to face one of heavy metal’s most exquisite

treasures, and surely one of its most complex. You

will witness diligence that borders on madness and

passion that borders on self-destruction. For despite

the deathless ghost that girds our guts and drives our

hands, we too are vulnerable, surrendering our lives to

obsession.

But for some, obsession is not an end in itself but a

pathway to enlightenment. And after ritually gorging

6 Don’t Break the Ghost


on the secret number of demo tapes, chanting a sacred

number of album reviews, bearing testimony to the exact

wisdom of the oracles, becoming dispossessed of all false

idols, and forming magical configurations of every icon,

rune and glyph along the way...

Then and only then will the heavens fall and the ground

open up and the gods come to collect your ultimate

sacrifice.

In 1999, after fifteen years of progressive ritual

obsession, Isten found the key. Isten opened the black

ark and became one with the molten ghost that is heavy

metal itself. Luckily, I discovered Isten just in time to

witness the spectacle and watch the portal open.

• • •

Isten began far less dramatically. It was 1984, and two

young cousins in Finland were listening to heavy metal,

chipping away at summer boredom by cutting out

their favorite images from heavy metal magazines and

reassembling them in new homemade layouts. It was a

time of few fanzines, and most of the inspiration (and

indeed, most of the content) for the earliest issues of

Isten came from the somewhat glossier selection of

Kerrang!, Metal Forces, and so on. This went on for a few

years, the cut-and-paste sessions resulting in a number of

“demo” issues of Isten.

One of those cousins, Mikko Mattila, soon noticed his

heavy metal obsession becoming irreversible, and so

the continued experiments with Isten followed quite

naturally. Mikko soon tapped into the mechanisms

and transactions of the underground fanzine: writing

reviews, interviewing bands by mail, typing and laying

out the pages by hand, then dealing with the printer and

(with some luck) filling orders. By 1988, he had released

three proper issues of Isten to a small readership built

mostly through classified ads and peer reviews but

which was growing quickly, thanks to the bustling mail

correspondence networks of the metal underground

where Mikko was on his way to becoming a full-time

participant.

The fourth issue (1990) was the first written in English,

and word of Isten’s excellence quickly spread outside of

Finland. Concurrent with the underground death metal

boom, the next several years would find Mikko Mattila

and his collaborators in a perpetual state of activity,

achieving exemplary results in every category. The

engaging prose, painstaking layout, letter-perfect English

and sheer bulk of Isten was the result of raw adolescent

energy not unlike that being channeled by bands in so

many garages and youth centers at the time. Perhaps

Isten’s reputation for having a professional touch is then

lightly ironic, but no less deserved. In Isten’s case, what

was sometimes mistaken for professionalism was simply

quality.

Issues #5 (1991) and #6 (1993) weighed in at nearly

100 pages each, and the effects of saturation began to

show. Gradually, the album and demo reviews appeared

to become less forgiving, with more frequent jolts of

black humor. The interviews began reaching for more

challenge—in the questions if not always the answers.

A hard-to-describe artist called Damhair began his

longstanding tenure with Isten around this time.

Damhair’s original drawings and photographs would

adorn Isten’s pages for many years to come, but his

offbeat humor and outlook had an almost immediate

impact on Isten’s tone and the nature of its curiosity.

In some ways a recovery from the overload of the

previous issues, #7, released in 1994, represented a

number of significant refinements. The pool of outside

contributors was down from eleven to a mere six.

The layout was as exact and economical as ever, but

the overall page count was less. At the same time, the

interviews became far more demanding in scope and

length, and a surprising number of bands seemed up to

the task. The reviews were richly-worded at every turn,

but now totally fearless, whether in loving celebration or

unforgiving condemnation. And there was plenty of both

on offer.

In the meantime, black metal sensationalism had already

proven far-reaching, the compact disc market was

escalating, and the smell of burning plastic was in the air.

Along with that came an increasing awareness of Isten’s

independence and the need to hone it further. Janne

Sarna, Isten’s longest-serving and most influential coauthor,

says it best: “Independence is worth fighting for,

even when it’s not in jeopardy.”

After issue #7B, a farcical send-up of the typical fanzines

of the day, Isten abandoned its numbering system and

instead titled its 1996 issue (The Return of the) Dark

Lord. While very much transitional in hindsight, Dark

Lord nevertheless offered a playful abundance of story

7 Foreword to Oblivion


and layout experiments, a creative proving ground for an

even heavier, more conceptual Isten. By this time, Janne

Sarna had become a vital organ in Isten life, now a main

conceptual contributor and sounding-board for a newlyrejuvenated

Mikko’s own surge of ideas. An energetic

international correspondent named Kola Krauze had also

joined the fold, completing what some readers might

consider Isten’s definitive lineup.

From 1997 to 1999, Isten held heavy metal fan journalism

at a sustained, volcanic climax, first with the longform

narrative Mädchen, then the cut-and-paste overdose

of Twin Sister, and finally, the signatory Isten 100.

With every paragraph of Mädchen, each heavyweight

page of Twin Sister, and every lash of 100’s cruel whip,

Isten took a step further into isolation and away from

an underground that was no longer familiar. The nowcharacteristic

chill of Mattila/Sarna prose was never

harsher nor more elegant than when delivering the final

incantation of Isten 100. This apocalyptic issue of Isten is

known for its vitriolic dismantling of Scene Metal, but it

also represents something of an existential crisis for Isten

when it asks why, for so many, it isn’t enough to just be

a fan. After all, Isten’s underground of the early 1990s

sowed the seeds from which Scene Metal sprang.

It was a black blaze of glory. Ritual suicide on the altar. A

universal collapse and big bang all at once.

Since then, Isten has existed in a dreamlike, transcendent

state, at times approaching oblivion, occasionally

chasing at bits of matter adrift in an infinite cosmos.

Fragments. Shells. Shrapnel. Far from shore in a sea of

details. Perhaps the occasional digital splurt and/or 16-

page “tease” issue has more in common with the demo

issues of 1984 than anything else, and perhaps again, the

bigger picture is just as big, just as hard to penetrate.

• • •

I discovered Isten in the late 1990s and found the tone

and style directly inspirational to my own heavy metal

journaling of the subsequent few years, which even

included a collaboration with former Isten contributor

Kola Krauze in 2002. Mikko made clear in our early

correspondence that he accepted this but did not

consider us colleagues. To be honest, I’m not even sure

we were friends at that point, or what exactly inspired

him to invite me a few years later to contribute to one of

Isten’s short-lived web editions. I was honored to accept,

of course, but I have been even more honored to accept

Mikko’s trust as colleague and as friend in the years that

have followed.

Naturally I was delighted to answer the call to work on

this anthology beginning in 2009. This happened only in

occasional fits until early 2012, when a more organized

and dedicated effort began to take shape. When we

announced the book later in 2012, the audience did

not appear on our doorstep so much as grumble faintly

to itself in the distance. At first I found it strange that

Mikko showed no interest whatsoever in shopping for a

publisher. Later I realized that without a publisher, we

had no creative meddling, no size limit and no deadline.

Total freedom.

Early in the process, Mikko, Janne and I debated the

broad decisions: what to include, how to organize it

all, and what kind of coordinated effort that might take.

Who wanted to read this book anyway? Well, we did, and

it was agreed early on that any reinvention or dramatic

repackaging of the original Isten canon would invariably

weaken it. Tempting as it may sometimes be to rerecord

the drums and bass guitar, we had no need to cut costs,

and more importantly, we are not revisionists. We also

agreed that perhaps unlike many of our favorite bands,

Isten’s best work was not its earliest. To reproduce the

early issues in their entirety would have weighed down

the finished product with superfluous content. Sure,

we considered historical value, but only as it applies to

Isten. If this were meant to be some kind of gallery of the

underground or worse, an encyclopedia, we might have

felt differently, but the subject of this book is a fanzine

called Isten, and not any other entity, movement, or

period. Period.

It was necessary for Mikko to write an introduction

for each issue, and it was my privilege to work closely

alongside him on this component of each chapter. I got

to know Mikko Mattila the Person like never before, at

times surprised by what he chose to reveal, also by what

he chose to keep private, but mostly by his extraordinary

poise and patience in approaching a project of such

all-encompassing personal magnitude. As the creator

of Isten, Mikko’s investment in this book is to a great

extent self-evident. He is Isten’s human counterpart.

What may not be self-evident are his hundreds of hours

spent single-handedly variously deconstructing and

reconstructing the individual pages that follow—pages

he had already spent thousands of hours laying out

8 Don’t Break the Ghost


several years earlier! The graphic elements of Isten may

at times have been overshadowed by the strength of the

writing, but they were no less essential to the overall

effect, and their preservation for this book has been a

labor of love in itself.

In the Ghost Notes sections that conclude each chapter,

you will find many previously-unpublished charms,

riddles, artifacts and other debris, sifted from the infinite

archives by Mikko, Janne and Damhair. You will also find

bits of testimony from some who have bonded with Isten

over the years in different ways, those we called upon to

help us lift this metallic monolith into the light, if only

for a moment. We are very grateful for the abundance

they gave, and from that we have chosen the very best.

It is natural to ask ourselves, at some later stage of the

project, whether we have succeeded in our goal and

constructed a book that is worthy of the Isten name.

I believe we have. We had the freedom to put our own

satisfaction first, so we did. We also had the patience to

allow the workflow to bend with the demands of “real

life”. A lot will happen in five years. So while the energy

may not have been continuous or always in equilibrium,

we worked only with the greatest of care and at the

highest levels of attention, and I believe our satisfaction

is unanimous.

I hope to live for many years to come, but I can say

confidently that it will always be one of the greatest

honors of my life to have earned my part of that

satisfaction and signed my name to this anthology, under

the name of the boy in Finland who would spend thirty

years writing these pages, all in the glow of the living

ghost that so illuminated his extraordinary passion and

talent.

From here, Mikko Mattila will be your guide, as the ghost

was his, into the void that is Isten.

All rise.

Professor Black is a professional heavy metal fan living in

Chicago. Photo by Caesar Cole.

9 Foreword to Oblivion


The mark of the beast. Photograph by Damhair, 1998.

10 Don’t Break the Ghost


In Nomine

I Am That I Am

Mikko Mattila is Finnish for John Smith. There was a

boy in my kindergarten group who had the exact same

name. I immediately disliked the kid, and I hated my

name. I must’ve felt—and it’s still the way I see it: if you

believe in something, love something, don’t give it a

bad name.

At 13, I picked the name Isten (Hungarian for God)

for my magazine, and for my existence, it turned out.

Isten est omen. I am not Isten and have never been, but

Isten is me. My own name made me anonymous, a

nobody, and this allowed Isten to prevail and thrive.

Interwoven with my heavy metal fanaticism, Isten

became omnipotent, in my head at least. It turned me

inside out, drained me of all substance, and filled me

up to the brim again with choicest bits of living chaos.

To some extent I must’ve understood and accepted

pretty early on that I’m pissing my life away. You’ve

got to realize that I’m saying that as matter-of-factly

as possible. No regrets, no dramatization. It’s simply a

fact. The level of dedication that I’ve maintained with

Isten is insane and utterly ridiculous. However, that

does not imply hard work, because I am and always

have been a lazy bastard. It just means, I guess, that

I could’ve had it so much better. I could’ve seized an

opportunity here or there. I could’ve had dreams and

ambitions.

I never did. A heavy metal fanzine ate me from the

inside out. Feeding on letterbox produce, I found a

perfect refuge in my underground isolation. These

elaborate constructions of ideal and escapism were

built on fanatic meaninglessnesses. I lived and

breathed Isten, there was nothing else.

Headbanging alone in the dark sounds about right, if

you need an analogy. Comparisons to the next batch of

hyperactive underground fellows are unfair, because

Isten was not born out of the underground, or in the

underground. It came to be without me knowing

anything about zines, tape-trading, or any of that stuff.

In 1987, Finland’s number one music magazine Rumba

reviewed the first issue of Isten:

(Transl.) “Isten (...) fumbles incomprehensibly, is

enthusiastic and super in this state—and scores full points

with these feats. AnthraX (sic), Warlock, Slayer, Mercyful

Fate and so on. An exceedingly life-affirming pamphlet.”

—Roo Ketvel in Rumba 17/1987

This remains the greatest review of Isten ever, and our

efforts remained in line with it in the 1990s and the

2000s and will stay in line now. That’s why I’ve been

puzzled to see Isten described over the years as too

cynical, too humorous, or too nasty. I always thought

there were more people who care about metal like I do.

Because I care a lot. Apparently my brand of caring is

too quirky for many people to understand.

Isten, you see, is deadly and serious. After years and

years with the heavy load of heavy metal as my best

friend, I can state that it’s also sad and passionate,

clandestine but not vain. Isten aims to manifest and do

justice to the wonders of heavy metal:

Such as the logo, the very name of Venom. Five letters,

five points of the pentagram.

And the voice of Troy Dixler: the final command of a

prophet in the wilderness.

Let Isten’s law be at once perplexing and absolute, like

Tom Angelripper’s bass solo in “Equinox”.

Let Isten be as heavy as Nihilist’s Only Shreds Remain,

sinking, sucking itself into its own abyss.

And like Gezol’s mask of eternal youth, let Isten

grimace in the face of death.

Let it be a psalm, a power chant, the infinite lost verse

of “Orgasmatron”.

For Isten is a uniform of arrogance, like Algy Ward’s

leather jacket. A life to cling to, no matter how

deteriorated.

11 In Nomine


12 Don’t Break the Ghost


Mein Gott

I Got Mine

Demo issue #1: the God of the Heavy-

Metal, 1984.

17 pages A4.

Photocopied.

Created by: Mikko Mattila and Rami

Vuorenmaa.

Contents: Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Ratt,

Metallica and Mötley Crue.

Demo issue #2, 1985.

20 pages A4.

Photocopied.

Created by: Mikko Mattila and Rami

Vuorenmaa.

Contents: W.A.S.P., Kiss, Manowar,

Venom, AC/DC, Twisted Sister and

Scorpions.

Demo issue #3: Metal King, 1985.

18 pages A4.

Photocopied.

Created by: Mikko Mattila and Rami

Vuorenmaa.

Contents: Mercyful Fate, Iron Maiden,

Mötley Crue, Twisted Sister, Dio, Bon Jovi,

Zero Nine, Loudness and Accept.

Demo issue #4, 1986.

Unknown number of pages A4.

Photocopied.

Created by: Mikko Mattila and Rami

Vuorenmaa.

The lost issue. Contents? No idea, but

Iron Maiden would be a good guess.

Demo issue #5, 1987.

18 pages A4.

Photocopied.

Created by: Mikko Mattila and Rami

Vuorenmaa.

Contents: Metallica, Omen, Anthrax, Juice

Leskinen, Metal Church, Nuclear Assault

and Helloween. Plus reviews.

Human sacrifice

The hand of death

From Hell it’ll rise

With hellish breath

Prophets of steel

Preaching about fate

You know I feel

Only wrath and hate

With genuine emotion I was shrieking these lyrics,

for after all, they were mine all mine. It must be

said, however, that my focus was somewhat divided

between doing the vocals and beating the hell out of

the drums—ordinary household buckets played with

spoons.

My cousin Rami couldn’t play an instrument either,

but he had an electric guitar and a homespun amp he’d

bought for peanuts and man, did it make a terrible

noise!

Rami recollects: “Quite a guitar hero, yes! A little over

the age of ten we were recording our new album at my

home—in the middle of the night, in the living room

of an apartment house. The volume was quite loud—as

loud as we could get it. Suddenly the phone rang and

the not-so-friendly voice of my upstairs neighbour

asked me when we would finish slaughtering the pig...

It was a great album though—I still have that tape

somewhere. I also have the same guitar, but the sounds

are nowadays a little bit different.”

This “band” comprising the two of us was but one of

my many attempts to fight boredom. We were called

Sorrow at first, Sacrifice the next day, then Black

Demon and Sodium Chlorate (don’t ask!). Some

13 Mein Gott


two-and-a-half years my junior, Rami was often a

rather unwilling participant in these schemes. Killing

medium-sized mammals with the geetar was quite

okay, but I was busy drawing comics most of the time

and starting up new magazines on whatever theme.

Rami never really took an interest in that stuff. Also, my

attention span was always ridiculously short, so I never

finished anything before I came up with a new idea that

devoured me whole for the next day or two, or the next

fifteen minutes.

I had read Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the first time

around 1984, and therein I discovered the words “Isten

Szek” (“God’s Seat”). I never knew for sure whether it

was the correct basic form of the Hungarian word for

“god”, but I can’t say it troubled me much at the time. I

was too busy doodling.

Isten basically started out as the summertime

equivalent of drawing band logos in school books. I

spent the rainier days of the summers of 1984 to 1986

listening to all the exciting new records (from Iron

Maiden’s Piece of Mind to W.A.S.P.’s Winged Assassins,

Mercyful Fate’s Don’t Break the Oath to Running Wild’s

Gates to Purgatory) and cutting pictures from the pages

of magazines like Sweden’s Okej and Finland’s own

Heavy Heaven. “Writing” didn’t really play a part in

it. It was all scrawled in shorthand and littered with

glorious slogans and oneliners like “Istens of Metal!”,

“Kill with Isten!” and “And we need Isten tonight”.

Rami kept me company, although he would’ve much

preferred fishing or sport or whatnot: “Yes, during the

summers we spent at the cottage in Tottijärvi I would

have sometimes preferred table tennis, swimming or

fishing over magazine-making—especially when the

sun was shining. I was quite a fast writer and I finished

my stories way faster than Mikko—and the ping-pong

match could begin...”

The finished product was photocopied in quantities

reaching up to a dozen copies or so and sold to

relatives or given away to our friends at school,

embarrassing though it was—I had yet to embrace the

maxim “Never be ashamed of anything you love”.

With demo issue #5 we were quite shrewdly trying to

cater to our target audience’s tastes a little more: it

even contained an article on Juice Leskinen, one of the

most prominent Finnish singer-songwriters of all time.

In his heyday he was heavy all right, but not metal—

despite songs like “Heavydiggarin vuorisaarna” (which

roughly translates as “Headbanger’s Sermon on the

Mount”—the lyrics portray heavy metal fans as reckless

life-loving creatures).

Any patronizing reactions stung only a little, nowhere

nearly enough to affect how I felt listening to, say,

“Revelations” by Iron Maiden. It occurred to me

much later that my exploration of heavy metal was not

unlike trying to decipher the Finnish Civil War of 1918.

Teachers in school chose their words very carefully,

and my older relatives chose to say nothing. All the

contradicting stories and eerie details invigorated

me. I was patching together a jigsaw puzzle of blood,

frost and inhuman darkness, listening for ghosts in the

chilling winds at Kalevankangas cemetery. Likewise,

it may have been the fumes of forbidden knowledge

that lured me to the shore of heavy metal’s hot lake.

In any case, my entire consciousness was becoming

embedded in its embers.

The following pages 15—19 are from the demo issues, scanned from the

photocopied product and reduced from A4 size.

14 Don’t Break the Ghost


15 Mein Gott


16 Don’t Break the Ghost


17 Mein Gott


18 Don’t Break the Ghost


19 Mein Gott


Mikko’s many magazines. My sister Sari Laaksonen remarks: “Mikko has

always made magazines! During our childhood, we got free subscriptions

to several different magazines because of our father’s work. From the

age of 7, Mikko was already editing a summer cottage magazine, an

ornithology magazine, a car magazine and so on. Later we wrote a

summer cottage diary together—it was kind of like an early version of a

blog, with comics and various attachments.”

Isten originators (left to right) Rami Vuorenmaa and Mikko Mattila,

probably aged 3 and 6 respectively. The guitar belonged to our uncle Mauri

Nurmi, the only adult relative of mine who appreciated heavy music—I

remember receiving a cassette of Thin Lizzy’s Renegade from him for

Christmas.

Ossi: Kansainvälistä liennytystä (transl. International Détente) is one of my

many comics that I doodled during classes in upper comprehensive school

because sometimes band logos just weren’t enough. The cover drawing and

some other contributions came courtesy of my classmate Jussi Halla-aho,

who years later became a nationalist politician and was found guilty of racial

agitation and disturbing religious peace by the Supreme Court of Finland in

June 2012.

Kräppä was the one-off

humour magazine by Isten’s

founders, my cousin Rami

Vuorenmaa and me, from

1986. Strongly inspired by

the legendary Tampere-based

Pahkasika.

20 Don’t Break the Ghost


Heavy Heaven, Finland’s first heavy metal

periodical, was published by Epe Helenius in

Tampere and mostly written by a furniture

(?) salesman from Helsinki called Zeus

Mattila (no relation!). They welcomed reader

submissions, so I wrote a gushing review of

Kreator’s Endless Pain. It’s probably the only

piece of writing I’ve written using an alias. The

alias was Mayhem, believe it or not.

I also took part in the discussion of metal’s

new subgenres a couple of issues later. Some

interesting lines in there—I wish Manowar had

remained a black metal band! As for the typos,

I don’t know whether they are theirs or mine.

I was busy starting up a new magazine on

whatever theme; here’s V8 Cars from 1981

co-written with Sami Kivimäki (who would

also contribute to Isten on and off in the early

years)—I have never been interested in cars, so

you see how cunningly or desperately I lured

my friends into my world of media.

Swear the oath.

Prior to designing a

new logo for Isten,

my father drew this

version of the Don’t

Break the Oath cover

for me to use. Even

he had noticed that

Mercyful Fate had

rocked my world to

its foundations. I may

have been staring

into the greyness of

suburban Tampere

but in my heart I was

bathed in the glow of

a thousand fiery pits

of Hell itself. It felt real

good.

21 Mein Gott


The two versions of issue #1. The minimalistic original and

the commercial version.

22 Don’t Break the Ghost


Unborn Again

First and Magical

Issue #1 was little more than a collection of pictures

painstakingly cut from magazines such as Metal

Forces, Kerrang!, Okej, Crash and Metal Hammer, and

yours truly translating stuff and babbling enthusiastic

nonsense about all these great bands.

I placed classified ads in Finnish music magazines

like Rumba and Soundi, and much to my amazement,

orders came flooding in. There are in fact two versions

of this issue. After I placed the ads and sent a copy for

review in Rumba’s fanzine special, I realized it needed

more depth, more content, so I did a new and improved

version. I added Bathory and Death, and a page-long

review of Celtic Frost’s Into the Pandemonium, one of

my favourite albums of all time. I absolutely fell in

love with Frost—a band too complex for its own good.

Every quirk, every last detail added to the magick and

lure of the band, and I grew up wanting and needing

every band to be like that. Too much for my own good

sometimes. I’d been scared shitless by the previous

albums, and Into the Pandemonium blew my mind. It still

makes me want to dance. And air drum. And conquer

the world.

#1, September 1987.

32 pages A4.

Photocopied.

Approximately 100 copies.

Created by: Mikko Mattila and Rami

Vuorenmaa.

Contents: Kreator, Coroner, Onslaught,

Bathory, Exodus, Death, Suicidal

Tendencies, Testament, Anthrax and

Mercyful Fate/King Diamond. Plus

reviews.

I also instantly appreciated Bathory’s ability to turn

nicely-furnished rooms into Helvete. Firestorms, the

gnashing of teeth, the grovelling dead, endless showers

of blood, vomit and napalm. “Equimanthorn” from the

album Under the Sign of the Black Mark is my favourite

song. Nothing can beat that ferocity, that Satanic call

from the garage.

After issue #1, my cousin Rami and I went our separate

ways. He never understood the heavier, thrashier stuff

that I craved. Kreator, Onslaught and Voïvod were

too much for him, but it was Reign in Blood specifically

23 Unborn Again


that he singled out. He wanted absolutely nothing to

do with anything of that ilk. Incidentally, Rami and

I haven’t had much to do with each other after that

year, although we’d been very close up until then, all

through our childhood.

Rami counters: “Metal music has always been a big

part of my life. It started with bands like Kiss and Iron

Maiden that I used to listen to with Mikko. I never got

into the darker and heavier side of metal. Since then my

taste in music has evolved into more progressive metal

and rock. Nowadays I listen to bands like Queensrÿche,

Porcupine Tree and Fates Warning.”

Prior to the experience with the debut issue, I knew

next to nothing about the underground and only

vaguely understood the concept of a fanzine, but

I quickly learned about Finnish metal fanzines like

Axe, Steel Warrior, Suicidal Metal, Metalism, Epitaph

and so on. I also learned that the punk ethic was

deeply rooted in the Finnish DIY circles. If you talked

about zines, people automatically thought about

punk zines—Laama, Ulo and others. The unwritten

rules dictated a strictly non-profit, non-commercial,

left-wing approach. You can never overestimate the

importance of punk and hardcore in Finland. Many

writers in the mainstream rock press were originally

from the punk academy as well. I didn’t have a problem

with any of this, although some early readers and

reviewers dubbed Isten as a capitalist “wannabe mag”

because we probably charged one Finnish mark more

per copy than the next zine. Amusingly enough, Isten

would later on be known as one of the most noncommercial

zines ever.

Tampere, my hometown, was hardly a hotbed for heavy

metal in the Eighties, but the climate was favourable

in other ways. The town’s rock, punk and hardcore

traditions were distinguished, and the record shops

were blooming. For a heavy metal record hunter, the

situation here was better than in Helsinki. Epe’s Music

Store had been established in 1972 already, and it

quickly became a pivotal place for Finnish rock. By

the mid-Eighties main man Kari “Epe” Helenius was at

least knee-deep in heavy metal as well. His company

Unitor Oy distributed (and sometimes even did Finnish

pressings of) albums on Music For Nations, Metal

Blade and Roadrunner. Epe’s was more or less on my

school route and I popped in at least five times a week.

And then there were more short-lived record shops

like Original Records (best cut-out bins in town!),

TNT (big on US and Canada imports, Banzai Records

and all!), various second-hand shops as well as shops

like Funking and X-Dreams that specialized in almostofficial

merchandising.

In addition to this, Anttila department store had

somehow salvaged a shitload of records from the

bankruptcy estate of the Belgian-based heavy metal

label Mausoleum Records. They were selling albums

by bands like Ostrogoth, Crossfire, Blacklace, Killer

and Warhead for a pittance (one or five Finnish marks

apiece!). Happy days!

There was too much metal for me to buy everything I

wanted, but dubbing tapes was the first-aid kit. We had

no double decks at the time, just two tape recorders—

and the built-in microphone often picked up special

effects like doors closing, dogs barking or “shh… yeah,

we’ll dub Venom’s Black Metal for you next.” I had

no other interests or hobbies, so every penny I could

scrape up went into molten metal. First cassettes,

then vinyl—my sister’s boyfriend gave me an old

record player in late 1985. I spent hours at Epe’s just

browsing albums, studying the sleeves, soaking in the

smell of vinyl, printed matter and cigarette smoke, and

leafing through copies of Kerrang! Best of all, it was

possible to listen to records prior to buying them.

24 Don’t Break the Ghost


Classified ads from Finnish music periodicals Rumba and

Soundi: (transl.) “A buy-or-die kinda package of reading for

power/speer (sic)/mosh/thrash etc. metal freaks. Incl. e.g.

Anthrax, Testament, Exodus, Onslaught etc. 10 marks (incl.

postage) via mail to...”

The following pages 26—34 are from the two versions of #1, scanned from

the few remaining originals. Celtic Frost review translated for your pleasure.

25 Unborn Again


The editorial page of the revised issue #1. (Transl.) “Isten does not compete with anyone except itself, striving for better and better issues (dunno why but that

sentence reminds me of school!)”.

26 Don’t Break the Ghost


27 Unborn Again


28 Don’t Break the Ghost


A review of Celtic Frost’s Into the Pandemonium

with a score of 97 out of 100, translated:

“Swiss Celtic Frost’s previous releases have been

slightly marred by sameness; each track has been

reminiscent of the one before it. But look, things

have changed: this doom metal threesome’s third

full-length album Into the Pandemonium contains

everything that a headbanger hopes for on a

metal platter… and an enormous amount of extra

ingredients.

And it is those extra ingredients that make the

album as interesting as it is in the end. Celtic Frost

have produced the LP by themselves, because the

cooperation with Michael Wagner (who’s produced

e.g. the new Keel album) didn’t satisfy the band

members after all. And indeed, the album includes

songs like “I Won’t Dance” and “Mexican Radio” that

in the syrupy hands of Wagner would have no doubt

been transformed into something else entirely than

what is to be expected from Celtic Frost tracks.

The ambitions of Tom G. Warrior and his cohorts

are insatiable. Opera singer Claudia-Maria Mokri

who has already appeared on previous albums, is

now accompanied by several other backing vocalists,

orchestral musicians (two violinists and a cellist) as

well as conductor Lothar Krist for the classical pieces.

…and the lyrics! Some absolutely fantastic lyrics have

shot forth mainly from Mr Warrior’s quill-pen for this

album.

Opener “Mexican Radio” was originally performed

by Wall Of Voodoo. In the hands of the Celts it

steamrollers down the listeners exactly as it’s

supposed to. Second track “Mesmerized” might be a

little too much for a devoted Frost fan, but then, T.G.

Warrior’s achievements in the singing department

have never been exactly dazzling anyway. The third

track “Inner Sanctum” is a surprisingly normal Celtic

Frost tune, but there’s a reason for it: the song is

written all the way back in December 1985. The

second to last song on side one is “Sorrows of the

Moon”, which is the only song on the album (along

with “Mexican Radio”, of course) that is not even

partially written by war marshal Warrior. The track

is penned by bass player Martin E. Ain. Side one is

finished with “Babylon Fell” that deals with the main

theme of the album.

“Caress into Oblivion” kicks off side two with its

splendours, and it’s followed by the dumbest and

most monotonous track on the album “One in Their

Pride”, all electric drums, violins and inexplicable

blabbering. Fortunately next up is possibly the

greatest song of the LP, “I Won’t Dance (The Elder’s

Orient)” – without a doubt one of brightest ideas of

Warrior, the master of ceremonies. The extraordinary

contrast of the voices of Warrior and the backing

vocalist H.C. 1922 in the pre-chorus and chorus really

makes the song stand out. Next track, “Rex Irae” is

a massive metal opera, in which Warrior plays the

role of King Wrath, and who else but Claudia-Maria

Mokri steps in as the dream voice. The glorious,

unordinary, high-flying and awe-inspiring Into the

Pandemonium is finished with the instrumental

“Oriental Masquerade”, a track of perfect length

including classical flavours.

This album is masterful all the way including its

covers. Nothing like this has ever been done before.

For Frost, Into the Pandemonium is a case of “make

it or break it” but it’s not huge sales figures they’re

expecting but acceptance from the fans. This album,

as T.G. Warrior said, perplexed the band members

themselves. It is drastically different from their

previous releases. Say what you will, I say it’s better.

DOOM METAL WILL RULE, UGH!”

29 Unborn Again


30 Don’t Break the Ghost


31 Unborn Again


32 Don’t Break the Ghost


33 Unborn Again


34 Don’t Break the Ghost


My map of Tampere in the mid- to late Eighties:

1) My upper comprehensive school, Tammerkosken

yläaste

2) Epe’s Music Store (records, magazines)

3) My bus stop

4) Original Records (records)

5) Original Records (later location)

6) TNT (records) and Funking (merchandising)

7) Anttila department store (records, magazines)

8) Daddy Cool, second-hand (records, comics)

9) Juke Boss (records, magazines)

10) Juke Boss (later location)

11) Tammer-luola, second-hand (records, comics)

12) Linja-autoaseman antikva, second-hand (records,

comics)

13) Tammelan puistokatu, second-hand (records, comics)

14) Vikkula grocery store (candy)

15) Akateeminen kirjakauppa (books and magazines)

16) Musiikki Fazer (records)

17) Stockmann department store (records)

18) Klassinen lyseo (future contributors Janne Sarna and

Sami Rouhento’s school, where I also had some classes)

Guinea pig cut-out. My

cousin’s guinea pig took

a bite out of my copy of

Whiplash’s Power and Pain

in 1986. This vintage cut-out

item (VG-/VG+, Roadrunner

pressing) remains a crown

jewel in my collection,

though I later purchased

a back-up copy (EX-/EX,

Roadracer). It’s possibly the

only metal album you’ll ever

need. A definitive statement,

a genuine masterpiece

of Zeit-powerthrashinggeist,

all winners from

start to finish. You’ll never

understand heavy metal the

way I do if this doesn’t do it

for you. And heavy metal, of

course, equals life and the

universe, the works.

35 Unborn Again


36 Don’t Break the Ghost


Death in Solitude

Emblem of the Devil

My father gave me the Isten imp logo design in late

1987. Actually that’s about all he ever gave me, apart

from hereditary weaknesses, complexes and inner

demons. He worked in advertising; logos, emblems,

typography and illustrations were his specialties. He

kept saying that I should think more commercially with

Isten (and everything else), which made me dead set to

do the exact opposite for the rest of my life. The man

himself had buried all his artistic aspirations and where

did that get him? Whoring, the rat race, the bottle. His

workaholism and alcoholism collided with unresolved

childhood issues, and I never really got to know him.

But it didn’t prevent me from hating his guts.

What made things worse was my mother avoiding

responsibility and selfishly cherishing her own

suffering (“He’s a monster, I’m a saint”), making us

a very dysfunctional family. My sister (six years my

senior) left home at 17, and from then on the situation

spiralled ever-downwards until our parents’ inevitable

divorce in 1991. My father didn’t die until 2010, having

been a complete recluse, a fragile shell of a man, for

close to 15 years. I no longer hated him then.

#2, January 1988.

32 pages A4.

Printed at Tehokopiointi Ky, Tampere.

Print run 300 copies.

Created by: Mikko Mattila, Wolle "The

Megamösher" Pylkkänen, Petsu and Jussi

"The Slayer" Kummala.

Contents: Deathrow, D.R.I, Assassin,

Sacrilege, Dies Irae, Candlemass and

Sacrifice. Plus reviews.

My sister Sari Laaksonen comments: “Everyday life in

our family always revolved around the ever-worsening

alcoholism and deceitfulness of our father. Other

members of the family had to remain as invisible

as possible. To Mikko, writing must have meant

becoming visible, not only to the family but in general.

It is a calling of some kind to Mikko I guess, and a way

to vent and to share things. His style of writing verges

on black humour, and there’s always a deeper meaning

underneath it all.”

Isten was quite a bit about rebellion, and about finding

an outlet for my creativity that my parents (and their

generation and outsiders in general) could never really

decipher or evaluate. In hindsight it’s easy to say that

37 Death in Solitude


I was probably suffering from depression already at

an early age. I was never terribly unpopular in school

albeit shy and not at all athletic, but I eventually

isolated myself from nearly everyone. I decided not to

drink (again a reaction to my father’s lifestyle choices),

and in Finnish teenage culture, that’s more or less

social suicide.

But I took pride in my abstinence, my separateness, and

therefore the solitary imp with an expression that can’t

quite be decoded was a very suitable icon. It has always

worked for me, though we’ve often found it difficult

to use the symbol on our covers. Use it small, and it’s

not powerful enough; try and do a simple design with

only the logo and the imp, and it looks like a demo tape

cover!

At 16, in 1987-88, my head was still above water. My

classmates who had previously only listened to Finnish

rock were now getting into metal as well, and they

quite liked Isten.

I gradually came to understand that I knew English

pretty well. Suddenly I was getting straight A’s. I

didn’t learn it at school; most of it boils down to heavy

metal, magazines like Kerrang! and Metal Forces, but

also television and books. When necessity became a

passion, it’s hard to say, but the metal mania fuelled my

interest in languages and writing and vice versa.

Issue #2 was already a half-serious undertaking—

typeset on an electric typewriter (wow!) and

professionally printed. The first interview I conducted

was with Jasse of the Finnish heavy metal band Dies

Irae who went on to become a punk/rocker in Hybrid

Children (still going strong). Düsseldorf’s thrash

maestros Deathrow were my first international

interview. I also wrote to Holy Terror, including two

International Reply Coupons, but the letter was

returned to me. Deathrow drummer Markus Hahn’s

reply blew my mind. The debut issue had brought me in

contact with rabid tape-traders like Wolle Megamösher

Pylkkänen from the Tampere area and Jussi Kummala

from Turku, who delivered interviews with Assassin

and D.R.I. respectively. Kummala also sent his hardcore

band’s demo in for a review, but I couldn’t be bothered

to include it.

I dropped a few lines to Lena Graaf at Candlemass’

management and wrote an article using the biography

and photos they sent me. Later I received a promo

vinyl of Ancient Dreams (which is incidentally my least

favourite Candlemass album). There was an unpleasant

tinge to receiving promo copies right from the

beginning. It didn’t feel quite right to me. I have always

hated feeling like I owe something to somebody.

38 Don’t Break the Ghost


The campaign for Phantasticus

Metallicus Magazinicus consisted of

classified ads in Rumba and Soundi

plus an advert published in Axe #4 .

The following pages 40—51 are from #2,

scanned from the printed product.

39 Death in Solitude


The editorial page of issue #2. (transl.) "Issue #1 received surprisingly (too) much positive feedback, but in my opinion it was a poor pamphlet, and therefore it’s no

longer available. (...) Apparently this issue looks quite different compared to issue #1, but it’s because there has been enough time to pay attention to the layout. (...)

Yeah, issue #3 will be much much better!"

40 Don’t Break the Ghost


41 Death in Solitude


42 Don’t Break the Ghost


43 Death in Solitude


44 Don’t Break the Ghost


45 Death in Solitude


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47 Death in Solitude


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49 Death in Solitude


50 Don’t Break the Ghost


The Zoetrope review reappeared two pages later, only now it scored 96 out of 100. A true grower.

51 Death in Solitude


My father and his mother (with me in the car) at the

summer cottage in Tottijärvi. Two generations of

alcohol-related deaths... and who knows how many

before them. A teetotaller well into my adulthood, I

vowed never to follow suit.

Blackthorn: I tape-traded with a chap

in Spain and he photocopied this

Danish zine for me. Lots of new bands

for me to check out at the time!

This is where it escalated: my father’s

kitchen in December 2005—hundreds of milk

cartons—when my sister and I finally managed

to have him hospitalized, after our several

desperate cries for help. He always let us in

but would not let us interfere.

“The writing is pedantic,

even snobbish,” wrote Pasi

Vehmasaho of Isten #2 in Axe.

I found this funny because

in those days I had to make

a conscious effort to write

(and speak!) in a less bookish

manner than what came

naturally to me.

52 Don’t Break the Ghost


Criticism from The Plague

zine: “On the minus side,

the price is outrageous and

the zine is ridden with the

writer’s own opinions.”

The Isten imp. We call him

Nuppi—which stands for

head, knob, or pin. This is the

original version, drawn by my

father in 1987.

53 Death in Solitude


54 Don’t Break the Ghost


Diggin’ That Grave

Circling of the Tyrants

The miasma of the underground was intoxicating. I was

writing to exciting new bands, ordering hot demos

and tape-trading as well—getting entangled in the

web and loving it all. The waves of speed/thrash metal

were sweeping Finland at the time. Despite people’s

varying reasons for attendance and varying depth of

involvement, it was a rush to grab a piece of the action

locally. Apart from shows at youth centres and the like,

a string of bigger concerts with the moniker “Speed

Metal Party” gathered hundreds of young metalheads.

In my arrogant opinion however, Isten was always

more than a part of the Tampere metal scene.

Jan “Örkki” Yrlund of local thrashers Prestige

testifies: “There were a lot of cool bands popping up

everywhere. I think Isten was here right from the start,

growing together with the scene. I’m sure our fans

followed Isten too. You have to remember that back

in those days there were no commercial Finnish metal

mags, and the mainstream music mags like Soundi or

Rumba only wrote about the bands after they they had

already made a name for themselves. Especially in the

early days, underground mags were the only channel

to read about other bands, and tape-trading was the

way to hear them since no radio would play that music.

There were probably only 3-4 bands in the country that

got at least some airplay.”

#3, October 1988.

32 pages A4.

Printed at Tehokopiointi Ky, Tampere.

Print run 300 copies.

Created by: Mikko Mattila, Wolle

"The Megawimp" Pylkkänen and Sami

Kivimäki.

Contents: Dream Death, Dethrone,

Vendetta, Kazjurol, Amnesty, Prestige,

Living Death, Morbid Magazine,

Necromancer, Mekong Delta, Sadus and

Soothsayer. Plus reviews.

I was thrilled to be close to a couple of bands that

got signed to Finnish labels, although they couldn’t

match the underground splendour of my international

favourites. Ronny Eide of Norway’s Morbid Magazine

introduced me to quite a few rattling bands that had

released fantastic demos: Deadly Manover, Soothsayer,

Morbid, Yog Sothots, Tribulation… I also published my

interview with Ronny in English, a first for Isten.

In western Tampere, one Sami Rouhento also picked

up a copy of the zine: “Isten was a real eye-opener

55 Diggin’ That Grave


to me; it made me understand that there was a huge

underground metal scene out there and that you didn’t

just have to be a passive consumer of music. Even if you

didn’t play in a band, you could still contribute to the

cause. I was buzzing... I wanted to be part of it.”

And some 8 kilometres south of the Isten headquarters,

Janne Sarna had a similar experience: “I bought Isten

#3 when it came out and that issue stood head and

shoulders above the other Finnish fanzines. There was

no doubt that the editor was passionate about metal

but also about what he was doing with his publication.

The layout was neat and original plus there were

foreign bands featured I hadn’t even heard about. By

this time I had also become acquainted with Sami

Rouhento at school. He had already taken a few plunges

into the international metal underground. His skills

and interest in the English language always surpassed

mine but he encouraged me to write to bands abroad as

well.”

Meanwhile, my correspondence was already getting

out of hand. Among many others I became penpals with

Uffe Cederlund of Morbid. Per Yngve Ohlin (aka Dead)

had left for Norway to join Mayhem at that point, and

Uffe wasn’t exactly proud of the second Morbid demo.

He wrote complex stories of the Stockholm scene

and its key players like Drutten (L-G Petrov), Nicke

Andersson and Johan Edlund. I presented him with

some of my drawings but, gory messes that they were,

he found them unsuitable for Shub Niggurath, the

new dark death metal project that he was trying to get

together. I’m not sure how far removed that was from

Infuriation, his other band. Then, of course, the young

man became a full-time Nihilist after original guitarist

Leif Cuzner moved to Canada.

For the most part, however, issue #3 documents the

heyday of Finnish speed/thrash metal—outside of

the Helsinki scene. Necromancer from Hyvinkää were

probably my favourite band of the lot, but the issue

also contained no less than three local bands. I got to

know the guys from Prestige, Dethrone and Amnesty

personally thanks in large part to my friend Sami

Kivimäki who was a great networker. Sami K also got

a writing credit or two, though he was definitely not a

writer kind of guy.

Memorably, Sami K got in touch with Norway’s

Impostor and when Tommy Nemo wrote back with

a copy of their Little Hitler Illusion demo, there was

insufficient postage and Nemo’s handwriting on the

envelope was so hopeless that the local post office

couldn’t decode Sami K’s address on the envelope.

However, the word Isten was legible and it already

rang a bell—such were the quantities of mail I was

receiving—so they forwarded the package to me

instead.

Fanzine-making in the old days was a gruelling process.

Everything had to be typeset on a typewriter, reduced

to approximately 70% on a photocopier, cut into

pieces and glued into the layout. Photos needed to be

screened professionally—which, incidentally, makes

reusing them in this book difficult because of the

resulting Moiré patterns. With #3, I tried to do it all in

A3, and then it was resized to A4 in the print shop.

56 Don’t Break the Ghost


“Order before nuclear war!”, a flyer for Isten #3.

The following pages 58—76 are from #3,

scanned from the printed product.

Photographs rescanned where available.

57 Diggin’ That Grave


The editorial page of issue #3. (Transl.) "For unknown reasons, 8 months have flown by since the previous issue, but here we finally are with a new instalment.

There have been quite a few complaints about the price of the zine but hopefully this time the price makes more sense considering the amount of reading on offer.

(...) From now LP reviews must fit on one page. In future issues there will be an increasing amount of demo reviews. (...) One reason why it took so long with this

issue is that foreign bands don’t appear too keen on answering their mail, for example Napalm Death, D.B.C. and Sanctuary are apparently too busy to answer all

sorts of questions."

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59 Diggin’ That Grave


60 Don’t Break the Ghost


61 Diggin’ That Grave


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63 Diggin’ That Grave


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65 Diggin’ That Grave


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75 Diggin’ That Grave


76 Don’t Break the Ghost


Speed Metal Party posters. In Finland, the term “speed metal”

was consistently used because it’s more understandable and

easier to pronounce—whenever mentioned, “thrash” was always

spelled “trash”.

Tsürps was the comic magazine of Jan “Örkki” Yrlund of Prestige

and Niko Airaksinen and Jouni “Tissi” Rinta of Dethrone. I was

asked to edit the rag at some point in 1988, but I declined. This

was the first in a long line of refusals—along the years some

bigger magazines have asked me to contribute, both Finnish and

English metal mags, and also one Swedish magazine—although

my grasp of the Swedish language is very narrow indeed!

Nuclear Ass: Mattila in 1988. There’s an advert in issue

#3 for a band merchandise shop from Lahti, Finland. In

payment for the quarter-page I got a Nuclear Assault

T-shirt—what a sweet deal!

I remember all the hand drawn-stuff that I certainly appreciate a lot. I

think the common magazine layout rules apply to zines too with the

difference that you don’t need to polish anything, if it’s underground

it may look like that too. It’s only appreciated...

—Jan “Örkki” Yrlund, Prestige

Zeus Mattila’s review in Rumba

22/1988. (Transl.) “The clearest and

most legible fanzine that I have read.

This is the third issue and the fourth

is supposed to be done in English.

Good luck, but it will be very difficult.

The working title of this issue is

Speedeathrashicus Zinecus; mainly

focusing on foreign bands, but for

some reason Tampere (3 features)

is in the limelight when it comes to

Finland. It doesn’t matter, the writing

is not bad.”

The least successful of the three

Tampere bands featured in issue #3

was Amnesty. I designed this logo for

them.

Underground currency:

International Reply Coupons

and US dollars well-hidden

in an envelope. With Isten #3

as your guide, you could’ve

spent this loot on, for example,

Deadly Manover’s Deathology

demo, Morbid’s upcoming

second tape or Kazjurol’s 7".

Decisions, decisions!

77 Diggin’ That Grave


78 Don’t Break the Ghost


Global Vermin

Speak in Tongues

I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone about this before:

I actually suggested joining forces with Ronny Eide

of Morbid Magazine back in the day (it must’ve been

in late 1988), but by the time Ronny enthusiastically

wrote back with details—he would have generously

lent me the tapes and albums for review—I had already

given up on the idea. Ronny had made a deprecating

comment about Jon “Metalion” Kristiansen and Slayer

Magazine to a member of Mayhem (Euronymous, I

think) and that smacked of an attitude too competitive

for my tastes. Then again my decision didn’t

necessarily have a whole lot to do with that; maybe I’d

just been testing my market value.

#4, January 1990.

52 pages A4.

Printed at Tehokopiointi Ky, Tampere.

Print run 500 copies.

Created by: Mikko Mattila, Luukas

Lahtinen, Wolle “the Wimp” Pylkkänen,

Jami Lahtinen and Sami Kivimäki.

Contents: Coroner, A.R.G., Carcass,

Tribulation, Sacrosanct, Obliveon,

Anacrusis, Sadus, Autopsy, Acrophet,

Sepultura, Rytmihäiriö, Groovy Aardvark,

Doomwatch, Vio-lence, Devastation,

Lord Crucifier, Lycanthrope, Inquisition,

Protected Illusion, Necrophagia,

Bloodcum, Wench, Grave, Prestige,

Leprocy, Deathrow, Nihilist, Hellwitch,

Mutilated, Disciples Of Power, Hobbs

Angel Of Death, Armoros, Aftermath and

Terrahsphere. Greek scene report by Fotis

W. “Gore and Guts” (article on splatter

films) by Marko the Mutilated Microwave

Oven. Plus reviews.

Switching to English must have felt like a big step at

that point. But it was only logical—why do interviews

in English and then tediously translate them into

Finnish for a handful of people to read? Anyway, once

the word was out that we were switching to English,

Luukas “Luxi” Lahtinen and his brother Jami were

already busy delivering tonnes of material—interviews,

promo packs for reviews and so on—for issue #4. So

the demand was there, I s’pose!

Luxi explains his metal passion: “Besides conducting

reviews and interviews for Isten, I was hugely into

trading tapes (both audio and VHS) back in those

days. It was actually very easy to increase this circle

of ‘friends’ because there seemed to be so many

like-minded people around back then that shared

a very similar passion and interest with me. I also

drew some band logos and artwork for bands like

Cadaver, Sentenced, Asphyx, Abhorrence (Fin),

Demigod, Rottrevore, Avulsed, Purtenance, Convulse,

Incantation, Cartilage, Mind Riot, Black Dawn, Lord

Diabolus and some others too. I also did quite a lot of

promotion for many Finnish underground metal bands

back in those days, by sending their releases around

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the world for some well-selected labels, radio stations,

etc.—naturally at my own cost.”

Luxi has always been a fanatical metal enthusiast whose

tireless efforts made Isten known around the world

during the three issues he was involved in. Unlike his

brother Jami, Luxi never complained about the way

I dismantled his contributions, but the truth is that

because of his awkward sentences and long, convoluted

questions, I essentially rewrote most of his reviews and

revised his interviews considerably. His tastes were

always a little less discriminating than mine as well,

so perhaps we were not a perfect match when it came

to the direction of the zine. As for Jami, he went on to

start a fanzine of his own, called Biopsy.

After he saw #4 and was impressed, Pat Ranieri of

Hellwitch regretted not having put much effort into the

interview, which was only a half-page article without

a photo. Mind you, I also scrapped my interview

with Milwaukee death metal meisters Dr Shrinker to

make room for other stuff, mainly due to not having

a photo of them, and not a word of that interview has

survived. The front and back cover drawings were done

by Niko Karppinen of Maple Cross who later played

in Sentenced for a while and formed the short-lived

Legenda with Kimmo Luttinen of Impaled Nazarene.

Elsewhere, the issue contained an unexpected number

of my gory drawings. There was also a Deathrow ad in

#4. I’d interviewed drummer Markus Hahn again and

he asked for ad rates. He paid $25 for the half-page, and

sent me the negative printing film. I had it reproduced

with a process camera—this was still well before

desktop scanners and Photoshop (Moiré? Voilà!).

My Swedish pen pal Magnus Forsberg of Tribulation

was a big influence—he introduced me to a multitude

of great bands. We corresponded and tape-traded

for several years. I force-fed him Finnish metal but

also more offbeat favourites of mine—bands like

Deep Turtle, Circle, Isebel’s Pain and Mana Mana. Mr

Forsberg educated me (and many key players of the

Swedish scene, I’ve understood) on quality death

metal, punk, hardcore, industrial and gothic rock. The

endurance of double cassette decks was put to the test!

On my home turf, speed/thrash was the norm, so I

was pleasantly surprised when I received the tapes by

Funebre and Abhorrence. Also, as I told to Qvadrivivm

zine in 2011: “Sacred Crucifix delivered a pioneering

effort with their Realms of Darkness demo in the summer

of 1989. Hindsight and history might’ve proven

otherwise, but back then it was total death of the

darkest ilk, no question.” What we wrote in the zine

is by no means the whole picture—we were frantically

spreading the gospel of Finnish death every single day.

Dozens and dozens of people first heard about the

bands mentioned above as well as the next batch—

Amorphis, Demigod, Sentenced, Convulse—through

the Isten grapevine.

I tried my hand at wholesale trades and didn’t enjoy

the experience. Zines UnLtd in England bought 100

copies, a smooth transaction but a lot more impersonal

than orders from Juha Vuorma from Pudasjärvi, Hervé

Herbaut from Beaurainville, Bård G. Eithun from

Kvikne and so on.

Fredrik at Chickenbrain Records (or CBR) in

Stockholm also received 50 copies. As the payment was

delayed, I remember writing to Uffe Cederlund, “Would

you mind mentioning this Isten business to Fredrik?”

I then refused to accept Krixhjälters CDs as payment,

so a pile of Entombed demo tapes was agreed on.

But Life Goes On was and is fantastic, but I hated this

experience. I never intended to run a distro. I placed a

classified ad and received around 50 letters containing

cash, though I only had 25 tapes. Annoying! Trades be

damned!

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Flyer for Isten #4.

The following pages 82—131 are from #4,

scanned from the printed product.

Photographs rescanned where available.

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Uffe Cederlund’s

scribbles on my copy of

Morbid’s Last Supper

demo tape. I remember

Uffe praising AC/DC in

one of his letters and I

was thunderstruck: “that

ain’t proper! It’s got to

be dark and deadly all

the way!”

Isten was one of the first underground magazines I

discovered as I got into the underground, and I know for

a fact I heard about bands like Xysma for the first time

through Isten. I remember the layout was very impressive,

the language was very professional, great English—I

remember that. I still remember the interviews were great,

there was this one with Carcass, who were my favourite

band in 1990 bar none, and they were talking about plots

in gore movies. It was sort of cool to read stuff like that

where it went a little beyond just the music itself.

—Mortiis

Correspondence from

Coroner. Their interview

answers arrived on a tape.

Drummer Marky also

included a snippet of a

new song (“D.O.A.”)

Archangel Bizarro

(1989). Previously

unpublished.

Pittsburgh metal/core:

Doomwatch interview

answers by Daniel Klasnick.

A letter from Sami Rouhento, dated August

15, 1989. (Transl.) “Hey listen up! Every time

a new issue of Rumba comes out I check out

the classifieds hoping to find a message saying

Isten #4 has been published. In your letter dated

February 17, you said that the release date

depends on different kinds of crap. There must

have been a hell of a lot of that crap as I still don’t

have Isten #4 in my hands. (...) Morbid Mag has

been of some help while waiting. It’s a quality

zine—your praises weren’t ungrounded. Anyway,

the message is: hurry up and don’t say anything

like “I’ve found God and given it up...”.” Due to

letters like this, Sami was drafted for Isten #5.

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Interview answers from Jörgen Sandström of Grave.

When it came to Scandinavian death metal, Nihilist

and Grave were in a class of all their own for me.

Heavy and brutal, with the best songs to boot! I’m

happy I managed to interview Grave at least, while

Nihilist folded before I sent Nicke Andersson my

questions.

I was a Johnny-come-lately and only got my

hands on Isten issue #4. Its reputation preceded

it and the fanzine certainly lived up to the hype.

What made Isten stand out from all the rest

was Mikko’s more-than-decent use of English

grammar and idioms, his genuine interest in

music, intelligently formulated questions and

that dry, sarcastic undertone that appealed to

me very much back in the day, and still does.

Needless to say, all of the aforementioned

are lacking in most journalism, be it fanzines

or mainstream media, so that’s what made

the damn thing special in the first place. Yes,

Isten was sizzling hot, cutting-edge, fuckin’

happening, man! But that was over two decades

ago.

—Taneli Jarva, Sentenced

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Deadly Game

Quill ‘em All

You have to realize that what made it into print—92

pages in the case of issue #5—is only the tip of the

iceberg of an extremely time-consuming process (or

non-process, as the case may be). On an average day

there could be half a dozen promo packages in the

mail, five to ten lengthy letters from regular friends, a

zine and a couple of trade requests, or begging letters,

or both.

Issue #5, March 1991.

92 pages A4.

Pprinted at Tehokopiointi Ky, Tampere.

Print run 1,000 copies.

Created by: Mikko Mattila, Luukas

Lahtinen, Damhair, Erkki Virta, Wolle “the

Wimp” Pylkkänen, John “Exithor” Cooper

and Sami Rouhento.

Contents: Darkthrone, Therion, Paradise

Lost, Xysma, Entombed, Ripped,

Disharmonic Orchestra, Disgrace,

Deceased, Maple Cross, Baphomet,

Funebre, Acheron, Asphyx, dead horse,

Menticide, Master’s Hammer, Impetigo,

Exit-13, Sacred Crucifix, Morgoth,

Order From Chaos, Metalion of Slayer

Magazine, The Hirvi, Protected Illusion,

Kaos, Invocator, Gorefest, Seraphic Decay

Records, Afflicted, Phlegethon, Sigh,

DVC, Basilisk, Devastation, Phantasm,

Vital Remains and Korsakov. Plus reviews.

Day in day out, scrawling multi-page letters to

foreign correspondents; archiving demo tapes of the

most sordid kind; ripping, cutting and pasting with

ritualistic abandon; writing, deleting... My head a

black hole full of reviews chasing one another, I was

processing deathly drivel incessantly. In no time I had

propelled myself into a state where it was impossible

to ponder whether I could be—and in all honesty,

should be—doing something else entirely. But what’s

a lifetime of scrutiny and a human sacrifice in the

grand scheme of things? Quitting is only easy for those

who should've never started. I should know, I have a

master’s degree in quitting elsewhere.

What motivates Isten is that which motivates a

headbanger, an air guitarist, a rabid fan of the greatest

music ever. It’s also similar to the rebellion of the

troubled kid in elementary school who only uses

the black crayon. I’m in my 40s and I wear heavy

metal T-shirts to work every day. Wanna talk about

motivation with me?

One aspect to consider is Isten’s complete lack of

interest in sales figures. And I do mean complete. For

instance, Isten has never been sold hand to hand, face

to face, to people at gigs or anywhere else. We have

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never carried around copies of the zine apart from a few

rare cases in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

When leaving the house with copies of Isten, the only

destination has been the post office. The exceptions

are clear in my mind even to this day: I do remember

in 1990 taking a dozen copies of #5 with me to a metal

show in Riihimäki because the boys from Menticide

(a thrash metal band from Tampere for whom I had

drawn a seven-inch cover) gave me a ride. Disgrace

were playing, so it made sense to give vocalist/

guitarist Jukka Taskinen his copy of #5 in person, as

uncharacteristic of me as it was. A most surreal spurt

of outgoingness! Amorphis were playing too, and Esa

Holopainen approached me and suggested a trade for

a brand new Amorphis T-shirt. On the road back home

I marvelled at the three T-shirts (two times Disgrace

and the Amorphis one) I had received in return—even

though I was responsible for the Disgrace shirt design,

the math made no sense! I vowed to myself to never try

this again.

I also remember receiving a second letter from Full

Circle Distribution, “We are interested in distributing

your zine—please respond!” I never did, because

calculating wholesale rates was something I simply

couldn’t be bothered to do. At the time, Isten #5 was

sold one by one via mail exclusively. It felt as though

the 500 copies of issue #4 sold out too soon, so with

issue #5 it was double up or quit. That’s financial risk

management, Isten style! Print run 1000 copies, no

wholesale orders accepted.

I didn’t mind printing an ad for Comeback Records,

because I loved the Xysma records that Teje Caldén

released. The problem is that it turned out to be four

pages. Anyway, in trade I received Paradise Lost’s

Gothic CD and Warmaster by Bolt Thrower on vinyl.

Not bad, I thought. But four pages were admittedly a

bit much, even in a zine that was 90 pages long.

In any case, #5 turned out to be the most difficult

issue to date. What with the abundance of material,

it was very time-consuming. I tried to keep the layout

simple and quick, only using excessive amounts of the

border tapes I had gotten from my sister who worked

in the graphic industry. I had also managed to get hold

of a banged-up computer, but my dot-matrix printer

was so poor I couldn’t use it except for writing letters

and so on. For reviews I used the word processor or

pen and paper, usually both, and then had to type the

final version on my typewriter. For lines and borders,

I’d use a Rapidograph or the border tapes—it was all

handicraft in those days, more like bedroom-floor

publishing than desktop publishing.

Sami Rouhento, a reader from Tampere, wrote a letter

complaining about the delay. I sent him four demos to

review. While on the subject of recruitment, art wizard

Damhair also joined the team during the making of this

volume and provided the cover art as well as several

bits and pieces. We were united via Axe Fanzine, as

Damhair explains: “At the time I screen printed and

bootlegged some T-shirts and Jaana of Axe heard about

it. I wound up doing some scribbles and doodles for

a couple of issues of Axe. When Axe folded I’d already

made the acquaintance with Mikko. Good memories

and an easy entry to underground zinedom. Regrets?

You can’t regret most of the stuff you don’t remember.

Axe is now a major anti-perspirant brand, so at least

some have been making the right moves.”

Damhair and I have never met, although he recalls:

“Hey, we were at the same Xysma gig in 1990 or

something. And maybe during the same legendary era,

gilded in metal history annals, at some other gig at the

unholy halls of Kino Sampo, where this fuzzy dude

came talking to me about something and I asked him

half-excitedly and half-abhorred: ‘Are you Mattila?’—

but he was Arto instead! Same difference!”

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The flyers with the cover illustration

were the main ones. There were

different versions of that one—even an

edition xeroxed on red paper!

The following pages 138—223 are from #5,

scanned from the printed product.

Photographs rescanned where available.

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I associate Isten with the glorious

underground era when things were

totally different from now and when

the spirit was still alive!

—Sakis Tolis, Rotting Christ

Damhair discovered an artifact dated

November 3, 1990 in his archives:

First time I actually got hold of a physical

copy of Isten Mag was Vol 5. It still looks

and feels great to me! Being a youngster

with not too much money in my wallet,

I had to be picky about what to order.

Often, it was a risk sending out the money

to someone unknown at the other side of

the world (or Europe in this case). You

never knew for sure whether the money

would arrive safely, whether the

person was reliable enough to send you

the item you ordered, whether it

would come in one piece, and last but not

least, whether it would be up to

your expectations. Looking at Volume 5

now in December 2012, I’m still happy to

say it was damn worth the money I sent

and the time I waited for it to arrive. When

I go through its pages, it still captures the

vibe as I remember/feel it, which is a damn

good sign of course: it hasn’t aged at all.

—Wannes Gubbels, Pentacle

Too black too soon? Damhair’s

original cover design: Somehow

I thought adding a family album

picture from a visit to Skansen

open-air zoo in Stockholm in

the background would make the

boxy logos look less ugly.

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Thanks list in the making: serious business!

During the making of issue #5 I also found the

time to deliver cover art for Disgrace’s Inside the

Labyrinth of Depression demo, local thrashers

Menticide’s Enforcer 7”, and the Old Funeral 7”. The

latter featured a certain Christian Vikernes on guitar.

My good friend the border

tape—taken to extremes

in the issue. Using a pen

and a ruler would have

made more sense most of

the time.

Praise from Paw Nielsen, the Danish artist extraordinaire.

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From Damhair’s portfolio.

I sent Mikko demos and flyers of my old band Violent

Solution as well as Amorphis stuff. Isten was an

important source of information during one period

of time and so very much connected with what was

happening the underground and of course metal in

general. It was the most influential zine for the Finnish

underground scene.

—Esa Holopainen, Amorphis

I was impressed with the quality of Isten compared

to other zines of that period. It definitely was the

best zine in Finland and one of the best in the whole

world. In my opinion the underground scene in Finland

respected what they did and it was an honour getting

your band in Isten.

—Esa Lindén, Demigod

Metalion also interviewed me around this time but probably lost my answers behind his radiator or something.

Locally, Jarmo Virtanen’s

small shop Juke Boss on

Rautatienkatu was on the

pulse of underground metal

(not to mention punk and

so on). They sold zines like

Morbid Magazine and demo

tapes by bands like Afflicted

Convulsion, Grave and

Sindrome.

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Two snippets of Luxi Lahtinen’s letter dated June 11, 1991—reporting feedback for issue #5 from his contacts. I give Luxi a lot of the credit for

Isten becoming known around the world. When interviewed for this book, Luxi countered: “Wow… now that came totally out of the blue to

me! I don’t feel that my input for Isten had as much of an impact on making Isten known around the world as Mikko’s overall intelligent and

entertaining way of writing. I sincerely think that’s the thing that made Isten Isten: a legendary fanzine that will always be remembered for its

unique, sometimes provocative approach.”

At the time I also wrote a

column in Kumisaapas—

the name means Rubber

Boot—a metal bulletin

run by the guys in Maple

Cross.

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The Skull Harp

Corpse on the Loose

Annoyingly enough, mere weeks after issue #5

had come out, I received answers to my interview

questions from Carcass bassist/vocalist Jeff Walker.

They were probably my favourite band at the time, so

I wanted the interview published as soon as possible.

This one-off issue written once again in Finnish, in

half-page size, was devised mainly as a vehicle for this

belated Carcass feature. Also, the Finnish language

compelled me--I may have felt like I was cheating on a

loved one, what with my budding Anglophilia.

Sami Rouhento as well as one Kingi Ruotsalainen also

contributed, and Ike Vil (later vocalist of the Babylon

Whores) conducted an interview with Dun-delion,

a hardcore band from Helsinki. But in hindsight the

only significance of Kalloharppu is that it is the first

issue to contain anything by one Janne Sarna. We lived

only a few kilometres from each other, but we handled

everything the traditional way: via mail.

Kalloharppu, September 1991.

48 pages A5.

Printed at Tehokopiointi Ky, Tampere.

Print run 200 copies.

Created by: Mikko Mattila, Sami

Rouhento, Janne Sarna, Kingi

Ruotsalainen, Ike Vil and Damhair.

Contents: Carcass, Demigod, Disgrace,

Protected Illusion, Prestige, House Of

Usher, Supuration, Dun-delion and

reviews.

Says Janne: “Sami had already contributed to Isten

#5 and I think he mentioned Mikko’s plan to make

something more laid back, and in Finnish for a

change. At this point I ventured to write to Mikko and

volunteer to provide an interview or two for whatever

he was planning to do. Much to my surprise he

welcomed my contribution.”

Perhaps I should have limited my writing in Finnish to

letters, poems and short stories. I quickly lost interest

in Kalloharppu and made absolutely no effort to sell it.

About half of the print run remains unsold to this day.

The following pages 230—232 are from Kalloharppu, scanned from the

printed product and reduced from A5 size.

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Untitled (1991, published in Slayer Mag #9).

Border Control (by Damhair, August 14, 1991).

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Kalloharppu (by Damhair 1991).

Alien (by Damhair 1991).

Through the Never (by Damhair 1991).

Cyberdyne Systems (by Damhair July 22, 1991). Death from Above (by Damhair 1991).

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In Memoriam (1991). An Enki Bilal rip-off.

Otan osaa (1991).

God Recycler (1991). Possession & Catharsis (1991, the back cover of Slayer Mag #9).

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Jeff Walker’s answers—or what’s left of them.

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Death May Die

Darkness with Teeth

I learned nothing from issue #5’s overblown death fest.

The next issue turned into another mammoth, and I

very nearly got squashed underneath its tonnage. Also,

the printers literally ran out of black ink because the

cover was so black.

People have said over the years that Isten’s longevity

is an accomplishment in itself. Regardless, it was never

an objective, because I’ve always had a hard time

believing in things, people, myself, everything. In my

life, I haven’t really found too many things that are

worth doing, so with Isten I guess I’ve been clutching

at straws. With issue #6, the wealth of material,

the number of tapes and records to review, the

correspondence, the people, the spectacle, the delay

and my frustration with all of that became almost too

much to handle.

To Hell And Back (Vol 6), March 1993.

88 pages A4.

Printed at Tehokopiointi Ky, Tampere.

Print run 500 copies.

Created by: Mikko Mattila, Luukas

Lahtinen, Sami Rouhento, Janne Sarna,

Damhair, Wolle Pylkkänen, Sami

Kivimäki, Paw Nielsen, Kari Laakso,

Kingi Ruotsalainen and Fra Deificus (The

Hammer of God).

Contents: My Dying Bride, Mayhem,

Dark Tranquillity, Godflesh, Impaled

Nazarene, God Dethroned, Morta Skuld,

God Macabre, Benediction, Desultory,

Sentenced, Tribulation, House Of Usher,

Samael, Autopsy Torment, Severance,

Sinoath, Furbowl, Tetragon, Mordicus,

Masacre, Meshuggah, God Forsaken,

Mythic, Hybrid Children. “Gates to

Purgatory” by Fra Deificus. Plus reviews.

I didn’t think I was wasting anything important—selfexiled

in metal anarchy, Isten constituted my world. I

found out that if I can’t immerse myself in something,

if I don’t believe in it one hundred percent, then I

can’t do it. I quit a study programme mere weeks from

graduation because I lost every last shred of respect

for the American guy who headed it. I have made

seemingly mindless decisions in my “professional” life,

because making money for people who are full of shit

makes me physically sick. I’d rather starve than lose

track of my principles.

Operation To Hell and Back started smoothly enough,

however. I got to know Sami Rouhento personally

during my brief visit at the university and enjoyed

his company immensely—I’d never met anyone as

civilized, as analytical, and as open-minded (musically

and otherwise) as him. A “darker death” vision of Isten

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evolved little by little. The article “Gates to Purgatory”

was written by Sami using the alias Fra Deificus. In

other words, it was a hammer of God reviewing black/

death metal from a biblical viewpoint. (Mika Luttinen

of Impaled Nazarene took it quite seriously. He used

to call me every now and then, and he called me one

night wanting to know who the writer was. I didn’t tell

him.) I got the idea of doing some round-table album

reviews, and apart from Sami, Janne, Kingi and me,

we also had a couple of Swedish musicians on board,

namely Jonas Stålhammar of God Macabre (Macabre

End) and Niklas Sundin of Dark Tranquillity.

Sami has fond memories of this period: “Once I got

to know Mikko, I gained more of an insight into how

putting a zine together really works. I began to feel like

I actually had a stake in Isten, and then, when Janne too

got involved—I knew him from school—I was feeling

comfortable. I thought we were a good, solid team.

On a personal level, I was very pleased to get to know

Mikko. Not only did this reinforce my conviction that

he’s a totally brilliant heavy metal savant, but it also

revealed him as an all-round nice guy—not that I had

expected anything else, of course. Really nice hair,

too.”

Meanwhile, my cooperation with Luxi Lahtinen was

going sour because we had different ideas on this and

that. He loved all American death metal, and he also

offered Tarot and Warmath interviews, which I didn’t

think were suitable for Isten. On the other hand, I

had at some point suggested to Luxi that he man the

editorial helm for a while, because I knew I had to do

my national service soon. He refused.

Sure enough, things got really hectic. I was leaving

town to start this non-military service of mine, and the

print shop’s owner brought me boxes of printed matter

the night before my departure. I would probably have

kept fooling around with the issue for another year or

two had it not been for this national service business.

The eerie tones of the Jilemnický Okultista demo tape,

as well as Master’s Hammer’s earlier works, provided

the soundtrack for many an hour spent working on

this monster issue. One of the last things I wanted to

feature in this issue was a Master’s Hammer interview

with Franta Storm. He promised to do it, but somehow

most of my questions dealt with the black metal “war”

(Norway versus Finland) and how the Norwegians

reportedly hailed sodomy as the greatest thing of all. I

never heard back from Mr Storm.

Master’s Hammer’s dark genius lent itself perfectly to

the proceedings as it amplified the sense of otherness

that I dwelled in most of the time. The mail was

delivered five times a week, obviously there was

no Internet, nothing on the telly... I had the music

and I had 24 hours of night every day (to put it as

melodramatically as I can). My unholy communion

of music, words and isolation rendered time quite

irrelevant. Whenever I was told, “You’re going nowhere

with your life,” I didn’t get it, because every time I

heard “Jáma pekel” or “Mezi kopci cesta je klikatá...” I

landed in a slightly different spot than before.

I borrowed books from the library compulsively—

prose, poetry, philosophy, occult, art books, you name

it—only ever reading a fraction of them. I’ve always

been a slow reader. Words mesmerize me: I tend to

get drunk on expressions, ruminating on the tiniest

detail for ever. My inspiration shoots out in all possible

directions and I get distracted for aeons from whatever

I’m supposed to be doing. Finnish writers like Samuli

Knuuti (a music critic with a poison pen), Jyrki Lehtola

(an equally venomous columnist of current affairs), and

major names in Finnish literature like Kari Hotakainen

and Jari Tervo have been very important to me over

the years. I’ve always been a print junkie—even when

my musical diet consisted of death metal more or

less exclusively, I read pop/rock magazines like New

Musical Express and Melody Maker regularly.

Worldwide correspondence required as much of

my time and energy as ever. I was only just starting

to realize that I should emphasize quality over

quantity with fewer pen friends and lengthier letters.

Some contacts were more meaningful than others.

I corresponded with Jon “Metalion” Kristiansen for

well over ten years (from 1987 or 1988 all the way

until the late Nineties), but new long-standing quillfriendships

were also being built in 1993. Kola Krauze,

the most important of these, explains how he came

across Isten in suburban London: “It was 1993, I was

18 or 19 and spent a lot of time at the house of Hans

Stiles, the bassist of Dark Heresy. Hans had a well-paid

part-time job but as he still lived with his parents he

spent literally every penny he earned on records and

zines. You name it, he had it. Hans recommended two

zines that he’d bought, both from Finland: Diarium

Autopsia and Isten (#5 or #6, or perhaps both – I don’t

remember). I remember that Diarium Autopsia was

240 Don’t Break the Ghost


written by a couple of girls which was obviously a plus

point when their passion for underground metal was as

ardent as it was, and the English was also astoundingly

good—as was Isten’s, which was clearly the more

fascinating of the two zines.”

Aubrey Beardsley’s Of a Neophyte and How

the Black Art Was Revealed Unto Him by the

Fiend Asomvel (1893) seemed like the perfect

illustration to be used in the flyers for To Hell

and Back. It spurred me on to some wild blurb

writing, too!

It is fair to say issue #6 was transitional. The critical

faculty that Isten is known for started to emerge. I

called for originality, but what I really meant and could

not express was heart, style and dignity. I mostly

listened to music with reviewing on my mind, and it

made me desperate for individual voices, for artificers

truly taking pride in their craft. Brutal death can

possibly be a perfectly nutritious breakfast, lunch,

and dinner, but if you’re expected to keep a detailed

food diary, you’ll end up either twisting the data or

modifying your diet.

The kind of fervour and spirit that is displayed in this

issue by the likes of Øystein Aarseth, Mika Luttinen

and Taneli Jarva shows what a special time this was for

underground metal. The extracurricular activities, the

mainstream coverage in magazines like Kerrang!, and

later the influence of the Internet, would soon change

metal forever—say hello to “extreme metal” (spit!)—

but there was an undeniable magick in the mist at this

point.

The Mayhem interview was conducted by one Kari

Laakso from Valkeakoski (a small town near Tampere)

who simply offered me some of his work instead of

starting a zine of his own. I never heard back from him

after I sent him his batch of copies, but that’s the usual

course of events: people come, go berserk, and then go

away. Life’s what happens after the underground, for

normal people.

The following pages 242—327 are from #6,

scanned from the originals/printed product.

Photographs rescanned where available.

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“Isten editor” by Damhair, October 1991. He

instructed me to crop this illustration, excluding

the word Isten. I complied with the direction—

until now.

I’m pretty sure it was my penpal Bill Earnshaw

from Anatomia zine that first turned me on to

Isten. He showed me issue #6, I think. I loved it

and immediately became a fan.

Isten always seemed aware of some kind of

bigger picture and was far less myopic than

most other zines at the time. The boys’ writing

was witty and stylish, with a sly sense of

humour.

Today, I guess the main thing that reminds me

of Isten is the tattoo I have on my right wrist.

—Gregory Whalen, The Crypt zine,

Terrorizer Magazine

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Burzum promo pack and

letter from Varg Vikernes

in February 1992. Sami

Rouhento was supposed

to review it, but eventually

nobody did.

My interview with My Dying

Bride came back from Aaron

along with mysterious stains and

a personal tape.

329 Death May Die


Impaled Nazarene’s original answers

in Finnish. A few of Mika Luttinen’s

swearwords were probably lost in

translation.

I’d say that Isten was an entity of its own. It really stood

out from most other underground publications in that it

was extremely initiated and informative and created by

people equipped with actual writing skills. Usually it was

either one or the other.

Just like some of the other greats like Slayer, Peardrop

and Morbid, Isten has a unique personality and sometimes

constituted a world of its own. I remembered people

borrowing the first Isten issue that I had and saying that it

really wasn’t like anything else they had read.

The layout certainly played a big role. Isten looked like

Isten and nothing else. Mikko was great at drawing and

I often wondered why he didn’t make more artwork for

bands. Most likely he had better things to do.

I first heard Darkthrone’s A Blaze in the Northern Sky on

a tape Mikko sent me, and that obviously was an album

that surprised everyone at the time. Our correspondence

was probably 99% related to metal facts, so I can’t recall

picking up anything that one wouldn’t infer from reading

the magazine itself. Tape-trading for me wasn’t that much

about getting to know people socially or exchanging

thoughts about life in general but more “You mentioned

that you like band X, so here is a cassette with bands Y

and Z.” At least that’s how I remember it. Perhaps Mikko

wrote once that he never wore metal shirts, which was

puzzling for someone from our own scene, where it was

virtually unheard of not to wear band shirts 24/7 if you

were a metalhead.

—Niklas Sundin, Dark Tranquillity

Editor David Horn of Sounds Of Death sent

a copy of his mag for a swap. I reluctantly

obliged and our dialogue wound up in the Hate

Mail section of his next issue...

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Isten set the standard that no other zine ever

met. And as artists and musicians (read: amateur

musical youth groups) it made us try harder

to meet the mark, to please the gods... so eager

to please the One God, Isten. If you happened

to get a favourable mention of your demo or

advance tape in Isten, you’d peaked. You’d

fuckin’ made it.

We were an idealistic bunch of metalhead

kids back then. We took our shit seriously.

So I suppose that’s one thing that led to our

mutual respect. I don’t remember much of the

interviews though, except that I really took

my time and great pains in giving honest and

elaborate answers (often with my Webster’s

Unabridged at hand, trying to out-anglofy

Mikko!), while most rags’ interviews I could’ve

just wiped my ass with.

—Taneli Jarva, Sentenced

Beherit in Monttu, Riihimäki, August 1992. The photos were

taken by Damhair using a cheap Russian prism lens—pretty

psyched! Spot Luxi Lahtinen videoing the events, Arto of

Crypta zine airborne, Holocaust Vengeance performing with

Kimmo Luttinen completing the duo line-up on drums… Mika

Luttinen also joined in to make an important announcement

or three.

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Back cover photo by Sami Kivimäki.

Skewerer by Damhair. This sketch dates back to

September 1992, but the illustration appeared in

its final form in our 1996 issue, (The Return of the)

Dark Lord.

My band’s first demo reviews stand out, of

course! They didn’t like every aspect of our music

but the feedback was so well-thought and wellwritten

it was easy to digest. And even learn from

it.

I only knew Luxi Lahtinen personally. But

it seemed like the guys were some sort of

perfectionists. The language was always great and

I can’t remember any typos. The whole package

was well thought-out, I can’t see any “good

enough” attitude there. Their devotion to the

metal scene and making the fanzine was so deep

that it was just amazing.

I truly miss the days when that thick fucker

was pretty much the only media to learn about

underground metal. Now it’s just short tweets

and quick shit like that. Not many people read the

sort of thorough and long articles anymore that

Isten was full of.

—Tuomo Saikkonen, Mind Riot

Answers from House Of

Usher. We always adored

Mattias "Kenno" Kennhed’s

handwriting!

332 Don’t Break the Ghost


A letter from one František Štorm of Prague. All

testament to the master typographer’s devotion,

the letterhead and handwriting called for rigorous

study. After my Master’s Hammer interview fell

through, Jilemnický Okultista didn’t even get a

mention. Not due to bitterness on my part, but

simply a case of prioritizing the tapes received for

review free of charge.

The original photos were pasted onto a sheet

and then screened and scaled to the right size

professionally at the print shop. Afterwards, I

pasted the screened pictures into the layout.

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334 Don’t Break the Ghost


Reverence

Merciless Faith

Some people who got into Isten first and then found

out about the Norwegian Slayer Magazine could

never understand why the two publications are

often mentioned in the same sentence. Of course

Slayer was always more popular and much bigger in

circulation. Isten is like a Mekong Delta to Slayer’s,

well, Slayer—the two cannot be compared, but

longevity obviously is a connecting factor. I absolutely

loved the candidness of Metalion: The Slayer Mag

Diaries (Bazillion Points, 2011) and abhorred the

commentators who criticized its downbeat tone. Jon

“Metalion” Kristiansen has said that when he looks

back on his “25 years of being a professional metal

fan,” all he sees is a void. I can identify with this. When

you monomaniacally and gratuitously dedicate your

life for a cause in this manner, there’s bound to be

some bitterness and self-pity at some point.

By the time of issue #7 the old reasons and motives

for Isten’s existence had dissolved for good. It was

clear that it was no longer about supporting the

underground, writing raves about your faves and

remaining on civil terms with the rest of the pack.

I could’ve stopped then if I could’ve stopped then.

Isten was essentially all I had. I was in too deep, and

there was precious little else in my life that kept me

going. I had dropped out from university, introverted,

antisocial, brimming with angst, and I couldn’t decide

whether I was writing a diary or a suicide note.

#7, December 1994.

56 pages A4.

Printed at Tehokopiointi Ky, Tampere.

Print run 300 copies.

Created by: Mikko Mattila, Sami

Rouhento, Janne Sarna, Wolle Pylkkänen,

Endre Begby and Damhair.

Contents: Decoryah, Beyond Dawn,

Bizarre, Divine Eve, Sabbat, Lavra,

Katatonia, The Equinox Ov The Gods,

Human Waste and Crowbar. Plus reviews.

I was, however, rather focused when it came to Isten.

I had ditched Luxi Lahtinen and wanted to streamline

the Isten team in order to get rid of meaningless metal

chit-chat with all the upcoming mind-numbingly

unoriginal acts. I never intended to accept any more

contributions from Wolle Pylkkänen either, but his

interview with Crowbar slipped in almost like an

afterthought. Wolle organized gigs locally at the

legendary I-Klubi (and later at the short-lived Sub

Club) for several years in the Nineties—without this,

we would have probably been out of touch much

sooner. These metal get-togethers were the place to be

at the time, and to see bands like Xysma, Entombed,

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Sentenced, Babylon Whores, Disgrace, Throes Of

Dawn, Pakeni, Lubricant and Inearthed (pre-Children

Of Bodom). The audience was not only comprised of

old farts from the Eighties, but also the harbingers of

the black metal scene, like this grim lad from Mänttä

with eyeliner who set out to kick all the offending

white chairs in the hall.

Some of the young Norwegian musicians who

had ordered copies of Isten earlier had reinvented

themselves as princes of darkness. Not that reinventing

oneself is necessarily wrong, and I enjoyed some of

the music and all of the gossip that I gathered from my

various contacts, but for me the new generation could

never match the black aura of Venom.

Thus, in the funeral half-light of 1994, far removed

from the glare of burning churches, we chased our own

ghosts. Janne contributed what must have been one

of the first Sabbat interviews in Europe. Isten’s first

foreign recruit Endre Begby of Norway’s Abysmal and

Carpathian Full Moon had a chat with Spanish death

metallers Human Waste. Sami Rouhento interviewed

Estonian shoegazers Bizarre while surprisingly many of

my picks had goth leanings. It was kind of coincidental,

really. We were still investigating metal, only looking

for new points of view. For example, Bizarre’s guitarist

Tristan Priimägi was, and is, a metal hound. Elsewhere,

my interview with Divine Eve from Texas was a bit of

a testament to death metal, Swedish style, and Celtic

Frost worship permeates the entire issue.

I felt there was a huge gap between what I wanted

and what most other people wanted when it came

to music and writing about music. I felt some of my

favourite bands were selling themselves short. While I

was happy that the likes of Sentenced were getting the

recognition they richly deserved, I was unsure where

that left me and Isten. There was a sense that all the

wrong things had been blown out of proportion and

what meant the world to me had been dragged through

the mud.

True envoys of the black and white arts don’t stop

when the lights go out, however. My pride of the

damned burned brighter than ever as I withdrew into

darkness, venturing further beyond mere “writing

about music”. Line after line, song after song, my

quest became one with the sonic witchcraft. I set out

to illustrate the shadows, the fevers and the ancient

alchemy, to conjure the spirits of the dead myself.

I had seen and witnessed first hand how thrash

metal challenged traditional metal only to become

overthrown by death metal a few years later. The

upsurge of black divided the underground once more,

and it was all getting a little old for me. There was a

divine current running through the best, most intense,

most profound works of metal from whence I came to

where we had gotten and I knew precisely what was

genuine and what was not. The prefixes were all wrong:

black metal—but only when it’s Satanic enough—can

cross over to the spectre of heavy metal. Death metal,

when it genuinely erupts from the bowels of the earth,

transcends the barriers.

I craved life metal. Heavy metal for life. And “heavy”,

for all you smart alecks out there, is not a prefix. Heavy

metal is not even a genre. Heavy metal is a realm. Swear

the oath. The Force is heavy metal. Mental Funeral is

heavy metal. A Blaze in the Northern Sky is heavy metal.

If it doesn’t work as heavy metal, it’s fucked, it fails, full

stop.

You commit yourself to the practise of this magic—

night after night of exaltation and ceremonial rites as

you try to decipher the coffin texts and puzzle out the

minutiae of the ceremonies. Listener or musician, it

makes very little difference. You need to be a fanatic

first and foremost.

When it came to myself, devotion and desperation

certainly walked hand in hand. I worked for twelve

months on the closed ward of a mental institution (my

non-military service). The experience was eye-opening

for reasons different to those I had expected. While I

identified with the infinite loneliness of the inmates,

I detested the attitudes of the personnel: cynical,

condescending, defined by the strict confines of their

hollow lives. I felt clocks melting as if in a Dalí painting,

and remember contemplating this whole zine insanity

long and hard. It wasn’t much, but it was better than

a dead-end job in a soon-to-be-closed small-town

hospital. It gradually dawned on me that Isten was my

canvas to paint. I was like Nosferatu doodling in his

castle.

To what extent was the underground an imaginary

world? Let’s ask instead to what extent the imaginary

substance in heavy metal is real. I’m referring to the

apparition that flickers throughout the history of this

music, in its liturgy, in its sacraments and institutions.

Is it this chimera that resonates in our chests, sets our

eyes aflame, and makes us clench our fists? Or is it, in

fact, our own merciless faith? I think they are one and

the same. Inherently interwoven, in constant upheaval,

requiring ardent practice. At least half of it is you.

If you fail, don’t blame the priest. Don’t blame the

doctor. Don’t blame the placebo.

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The flyers for #7 didn’t turn out quite as

beautiful (or intelligent!) as I had intended.

Oh well, throw in a skull for good measure!

The following pages 338—392 are from #7

scanned from the originals/printed product.

Photographs rescanned where available.

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Issue #7 contains my last illustrations. I simply quit drawing altogether because I felt I was merely a copycat—or a copyrat, actually. This picture of a girl was stolen

from a fashion feature in The Face magazine, as Timo Ketola (Dauthus) pointed out to me some time later. The drawing was also used by A.A. Nemtheanga (of

Primordial) in his fanzine Bond of Blood.

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I didn’t receive any directions from Mikko at all,

though the sense of expectation was clear enough:

write something that’s worthy of publication in

Isten! I doubt he would have asked me if he didn’t

feel I knew the zine well enough to have a sense of

what was required. I remember wondering whether

he would exercise any kind of editorial control—in

fact, I was half-hoping he would, since he was clearly

such a master of the craft. But in the end, everything

I wrote went straight to print, so I guess I did alright

after all.

—Endre Begby

During 1994-2010,

Janne was responsible

for the official Sabbat

website (welcome.to/

sabbat or isten.net/

sabbat).

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My letter to Damhair, April 15, 1994. (Transl.) “Now then, here’s a bunch of

photocopies for you. In other words, the cover concept of Isten #7 for you to

process further... With the Dracula snippet, the bit with the words “Isten szek—

God’s seat” needs to be visible. You can add new elements, the imp head can be

modified (the transparency enclosed is so worn out that I don’t know if it can be

used). Ripping and glueing and brutal ink slingin’ business?" In the end, Damhair

apparently felt that my concept was already complete.

I regularly browse old Isten issues.

Sometimes when my own inspiration

isn’t quite there, I’ve noticed that

reading Isten makes something awake

inside of me. The greatest thing of all

is that although something like Lavra

(in Isten #7) basically means nothing

to me, the pieces are so well-written

that they grab me along no matter

what.

—Mr NorthWind, The Sinister

Flame/I Came From Darkness

They obviously had a better

typewriter than I did back in 1993.

—A.A. Nemtheanga, Primordial

An unfinished sketch by Damhair, February 1994.

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Divine Eve’s Xan

"Xanthorvaar" Hammack

answered my questions

with passion. Typing out

the lengthy interviews was

exhausting—one of my least

favourite aspects of the

process.

The print shop’s receipt. The print

run was a measly 300 copies simply

because that was all that I could

afford at the time.

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Papercuts

Into the Pyre

Shortly after #7 was published, Mr Sarna appeared

on my doorstep having made the first batch of Isten

T-shirts ever (black imp on a white shirt). Janne had

already contributed to the previous three issues, but

I had only met him once or twice at local gigs. Soon

enough, however, we found ourselves scheming new

Isten atrocities together. I found it perplexing that

Janne took such an interest in this pursuit, but I’m glad

he did. I was in limbo at the time—as was Isten.

It all came about very naturally indeed. One

conversation led to another and what do you know,

all the issues that followed have been team efforts

between the two of us. I had never experienced that

before. Janne is quick and witty—the way he could

come up with a new angle or a summary of something

in a heartbeat was something I found very impressive.

When it came to writing, eventually in the late Nineties

we came up with a style of brainstorming things

together, spurring each other on, and I would usually

prune the pieces into their final form.

#7B: Playing with Fire, March 1995.

20 pages A5.

Printed at Tehokopiointi Ky, Tampere.

Print run 300 hand-numbered copies.

Created by: Mikko Mattila, Janne Sarna,

Sami Rouhento and Damhair.

Contents: clippings from F.E.T.U.,

Sepulchural Noise, Slayer Mag, Z.A.S.T.

Mag, Thrashing Holocaust, Orcustus,

Phantasmogoria, Isten, Metal Forces,

Battle of Bewitchment, Dying Terror,

Putrefaction, Silent Scream, Metal Pages,

Despot, Biopsy, Peardrop, Cascade, Mega

Mag, Hypnosia, Mortuary Mag, Zelot,

Morbid Magazine, Thanatography and

The Ruptured, plus news, logos, flyers

and more.

“From early 1991 to early 1995 I was just another

contributor for Isten,” says Janne. “Despite living

less than 10 kilometres away from each other, all

communication between Mikko and me was handled

through letters. I was more than happy with the

situation, and I never ever aspired to a bigger role

or anything. Nor did I plan a fanzine of my own. I

was definitely more interested in helping the bands

to spread the word than becoming something or

somebody within the underground myself. It goes

without saying that my (time) commitment increased

vastly in early 1995, but I didn’t mind that as doing

Isten felt much more purposeful and rewarding than

my studies at the local University of Technology.”

397 Papercuts


Janne is the antithesis of my neuroses and pathological

impracticality. He doesn’t seem to worry about things

and always cuts to the chase when I’m doing what I

do best: maintaining the maximum level of chaos and

unproductiveness. I could be gluing a small picture

onto a page, fitting it here and there in the layout,

undecided and distressed, and Janne would look at

the procedure and say, laconically but amused, “The

last eleven places were all quite alright.” Me snapping

out of my stupor, time and time again, sums up our

cooperation to a T.

The way Janne sees it, the chaos was never a problem.

“On the contrary,” he explains, “it was the essence.

I was perfectly capable of being equally chaotic. I

suppose the engineer in me kicked in when it was time

to summarize and transform the lively and lengthy

discussions into doable action points.”

Sami Rouhento somewhat half-heartedly joined Janne

and me in our first joint venture, issue #7B: Playing

with Fire. The idea was to do a tribute to underground

zines, limited edition, hand-numbered, half-sized. It’s

all fanzine cuttings with frolicsome commentary—

quick snip-snap action. Contrary to a popular

misconception, we were not on a mission to dig up

the grindcore/fun bands of black metal musicians’

murky past (they were only a couple of years away

in any case!). It was not a case of wanting to dispute

their music or their prowess in the black arts. Again,

Playing With Fire is our humble tribute to underground

fanzines, constructed in mere weeks—all heart, short

on finesse. As such, it’s a load of crap.

Janne agrees: “Spot on. Considering the spirit we

wanted to capture and understanding how the majority

of the readers experienced it, it’s only fair to say #7B is

a load of crap par excellence.”

We were bidding an affectionate farewell to a metal

underground we used to know and love—nothing

more, nothing less. We are not very proud of this, but

it was in Playing with Fire that the word “penguin”

was first used to describe black metal disciples. On

22 December 1998, Finland’s biggest newspaper

Helsingin Sanomat claimed that black metallers are

called penguins “because of the colouring”. Come

on, emperor penguins aren’t even black and white!

Isten was obviously referring to their capacity for

individualism and showmanship, their tolerance for

cold, and their appeal to documentarians and small

children. Emperor Samoth actually ordered a copy

of what he called “the piss-take issue”. We tried to

interview Emperor later (we did love the music after

all), but according to Lee Barrett at their record label

Candlelight, the Emperor Horde didn’t feel like talking

to us again.

The entire underground was in a state of black metal

upheaval, and its mentality was “either you’re for us

or you’re against us”. All in all, people didn’t know

what to make of #7B, but in retrospect it must’ve

been one hell of an advertising campaign for Isten (not

that we meant it that way). People didn’t realize that

#7B was Isten at its most amicable and brotherly—

acknowledging our roots with this little pamphlet that

we flung together. It was ridiculous that people praised

it and thought we were waging a war against certain

factions of the underground metal scene. At that

particular point we weren’t. It was eye-opening but

also made us close our shutters tighter.

My interaction with fellow metalheads was always

very limited, and I suppose I was better off that

way. I was in my own vacuum most of the time. I was

participating, but my participation was too acrid and

obscure for a community that only understood black or

white, yes or no.

Scratch the surface of a compliment and usually you

realize it’s completely misguided or uttered by a

halfwit. If I were a cynic, I would conclude that with

#7B, Isten for once catered to the attention spans of

its target audience. Thank God the Internet was right

around the corner and everyone was about to get what

they deserved.

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Rather than on the strength of this

flyer, people ordered #7B after

having heard about it through

the grapevine. We actually kept

receiving orders for a while after it

sold out and had to return people

their cash...

The following pages 400—402 are from

#7B: Playing with Fire, scanned from the

originals and reduced from A5 size.

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400 Don't Don’t Break the Ghost


401 Papercuts


402 Don’t Break the Ghost


I sure remember the “penguins”! How could one

forget those? The “black metal penguin” became

a staple in Finnish (as well as international)

pop culture for all posterity, and as such a very

defining factor in the black metal lore. I still use the

expression to this day. Also, I remember how that

weary ol’ slogan “Support the Underground” was

met with a dry remark as to why the hell should

we all be so concerned with the state of the British

subway system? Very witty indeed, sir. I don’t

know whether it was Mikko et al who originally

came up with these concepts, but they certainly

were brave enough to disseminate the ideas at a

time when death threats were flying around and

young people were actually being killed for no

reason at all.

—Taneli Jarva, Sentenced

Eloquent underground

correspondence as exhibited

in #7B: this is the entire cover

letter for US black/death

metallers Impiety’s demo

tape submission.

Foundation Against Craps: we were

flabbergasted by comparisons to

this French publication—whatever

the similarities between Playing with

Fire and FAC were supposed to be,

we certainly didn’t get it.

Yours truly in Peltolammi, Tampere,

sometime in 1995: a photo for the

Swedish zine Battle Of Bewitchment.

Editor Robert Höög interviewed

Janne and me—we basically babbled

nonsense about Twin Peaks and so on.

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Yellow Snow

Heavy Lies the Crown

(The Return of the) Dark Lord was the first issue that

was done on a computer, although still partially in cut

and paste style, using a myriad of fonts. The Xysma

interview was an exception—it had to be written on

an old typewriter for whatever reason. We also found

out that determining writing credits was becoming

troublesome: reviews in particular we often wrote

based on our discussions, and there was no way to

tell who “wrote” what. Come next issue we gave up

altogether.

Janne thinks of Dark Lord as some sort of test lab for

us: “We were experimenting with story formats, and

there was no idea too stupid to carry out. With all

the hits and misses, Dark Lord certainly was a most

liberating creative process. On some levels it was

also a new declaration of independence for Isten—

independence from the underground’s rules and

expectations.”

(The Return of the) Dark Lord, March

1996.

68 pages A4.

Printed at Tehokopiointi Ky, Tampere.

Print run 500 copies.

Created by: Mikko Mattila, Janne Sarna,

Damhair, Sami Rouhento, Kola Krauze,

Endre Begby and Istallomester.

Contents: Sentenced, Mortiis, Diaboli,

Euronymous, Empyrium, Drowned, Veil

Of Thorns/Choronzon, Darkstyle, Xysma,

Darkthrone, Kola Krauze, Beherit, Kari

Rueslåtten, Ildfrost, Rotting Christ and

Penitent. “Black Metal’s Dirty Dozen”.

“God Damnit” by Ik3 Vil. Plus reviews.

The “Black Metal—Yellow Press” slogan was born quite

late in the process. As Janne recalls: “We had most of

the stuff ready for the issue and were already starting

to design flyers. The church burnings and black metal

murders made the headlines regularly at that time,

so making a full metal tabloid was in order. We made

some screaming posters and flyers out of the material

we had, in the true yellow press fashion, and then it hit

us: ‘Black Metal—Yellow Press.’ Of course it was easy

to assume, especially for those who considered #7B a

piss-take issue, but it definitely wasn’t as if we had this

slogan in our minds from the start and then designed

the issue to live up to it.”

Dark Lord’s playfulness had a lot to do with the new

situation with Janne. This uncommon feel-good

mentality reached so far that I even felt comfortable

selling a few copies of the issue at local shops. To

tell you the truth, however, the sales effort was not

405 Yellow Snow


the main thing—it had more to do with fulfilling the

tabloid concept with headline placards.

Says Janne, “We had flyers printed perhaps in the same

amount of 500 as the magazine, plus a handful of A3

and A4-sized posters with the same material in Finnish

for the local shops. The flyer turned out pretty nice so

we decided to use it as a back cover too. Eventually we

turned the back cover upside down so it would make an

alternate cover.”

Quite frankly the final version of the front cover turned

out to be rather disappointing. As Janne explains,

“The sketches we had from Damhair almost from

the beginning of the process actually looked better,

but none of them were finished enough to be used. I

think the final version was kind of rushed. And let’s

get things straight here—I could not care less about

Star Wars. A few years ago I tried to watch one of the

original movies, but after 20 minutes I simply had to

give up. Not my turf I’m afraid, but Darth Vader is one

mean dark lord, that’s for sure.”

On the subject of dark lords, we felt we needed a

Burzum ad. I can’t remember how much Misanthropy

Records paid for that, but we also sent Tiziana some

Mana Mana, Psychoplasma and Babylon Whores

records as well as some Finnish chocolate, so who

cares? I think she sent Janne a pair of pink Scorpions

knickers, too! I also convinced her to sign Babylon

Whores although she was worried it was too far

removed from her current roster. She started up

a subsidiary label solely for this one band. Janne

suggested the name Pentagramophone, but she chose

Heroine instead.

The six-page Darkthrone extravaganza comes across

as very light-hearted. Had we done it later on in

their career, the tone would be different, but at that

time, the playfulness was in sharp contrast to how

Darkthrone were portrayed in the rest of the media

(before everybody overdosed on Fenriz). We loved

the way the band divided people’s opinions, so we

decided to look into the big question: how does one

spell the band’s name? Seriously speaking, no amount

of buffoonery (on the band’s part, or ours) will ever

rub out one single iota of the supreme Satanic majesty

of “Cromlech” and “In the Shadow of the Horns”.

The first two albums are classics—only a fool would

disagree.

We felt like joining the dots of the numerous Beherit

rumours we kept hearing from abroad. Holocaust

Vengeance returning our interview questions

unanswered, was, to us, as if he were brushing off

his metal past, saying, “Fuck off and goodbye”. The

article, as we wrote it (tongue firmly in cheek) was us

saying, “Hokay, have a nice one!” It turns out that we

gave him too much credit—but we never in a million

years imagined that he’d give a damn. We thought he

was in on the “joke”… although in hindsight there

probably wasn’t one. We heard of someone at the

Spinefarm offices throwing copies of Dark Lord in the

garbage (Ewo Meichem aka Ewo Pohjola paid for them

anyhow).

The Beherit article needs to be evaluated in the context

of Dark Lord, not separately. The issue has lots of

deliberate disinformation in it: we speak of Quorthon

in conjunction with a picture of ice-hockey player

Peter Forsberg for example! And we claim that Cold

Lake stemmed from Tom G. Warrior thinking it was

the German Poison who had hit it big in Los Angeles.

Whether it was our intention to say, “listen to the

music, pay a little less attention to all the nonsense” or

if we just wanted to add to the turmoil—it’s anyone’s

guess.

For us, Isten was all about creativity, war and

necromancy. It was frustrating to deal with bands,

labels and readers who thought we were in the business

of mutual back-patting. Our stance was: we’re not at

your service—fuck regularity, fuck conformity, fuck the

lot of you.

406 Don’t Break the Ghost


The Dark Lord flyers and headline placard for the local shops.

The following pages 408—469 are from (The Return of the) Dark Lord, scanned from

the originals/the printed product. Photographs rescanned where available.

407 Yellow Snow


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Damhair’s instructions regarding the

use of his artwork, transl. “Shit is

shit but are your readers capable of

complaining?”

The cover in the making. Says Damhair: “I had

no premonition of a new Star Wars trilogy, so

for me the choice of the cover playmate was

obvious. The shenanigans of the truest and the

darkest of the underground scene reminded

me of slapstick characters, so in all honesty

everybody should’ve bowed down to the

ultimate Dark Lord who, instead of recording

bm-fi quality albums in gloomy studios,

enslaved galaxies and destroyed civilizations.

As for why the final result differs from the sooty

sketches, I have no sane response. The pencil

draft should’ve been used on the cover instead."

One hell of a man:

Janitor of Xysma at

Tavastia, September

1995 by Damhair.

The borders of the

album review pages

were created by Janne

using an ice cream stick

and ink. We had run out

of border tape and instead

of computer-generated

lines we placed our faith in

handicraft.

Xmas card

from T. Ketola

470 Don’t Break the Ghost


Sentenced at Tavastia in 1995 with Isten

#4 cover artist Niko Karppinen on bass.

Photographed by Damhair—too bad we

didn’t have his fabulous photos at our

disposal when doing the layout for Dark

Lord’s features on Sentenced and Xysma

in particular.

Janne had a hard time stomaching the Kari Rueslåtten

spread because the layout made use of my arty

photograph of a tyre caught in mid-flight through the

air…

GoatSucker: Janne

and I got rid of some

offending demos and

other items via this

mail order catalogue of

ours. Goatsucker never

returned.

Isten became important to me around the early to

mid-Nineties, and influenced me the same way my

favorite bands would. Each issue was like getting

a new Voivod record—completely different from

the last one. A different layout, different themes,

different bands, but still Mikko’s voice. It could

be sarcastic about the scene, but it was spot on for

me. In Deceased, I wanted to make sure our records

didn’t repeat ourselves either, and I like to think

that like the mighty Isten, we accomplished that.

Isten is cult, because honestly I think it’s too smart

for the average underground scenester, and it was

often difficult to acquire! If I missed getting an issue

because it sold out, I would scour the distro world

fucking wide to track it down. But I always got it,

and the chase made it all more sweet when the zine

showed up in the mail.

—Mike Smith, Deceased

Office anno 1995: my

trusty ol’ JVC sound

system, bought in

1990 and still going

strong. The Mac

Performa was brandnew

at this point—no

more typewriters!

Kola on Kola (and Lego) in 1996.

Autkast: Kola’s one-off zine first published in

London, summer 1995. Definitely a collector's

item—there were more editions of this one than

Isten #1!

471 Yellow Snow


Gezol of Sabbat provided his comments for the

Darkthrone roundtable in his own inimitable style.

472 Don’t Break the Ghost


I used to get Isten flyers all the time through the

tape-trading scene but had never gotten hold of

it. I wasn’t much of a zine reader until I read Isten

actually. My first encounter with Isten was during a

visit to my friend Kola Krauze. I was wearing flares

and a cardigan. He said something like “Oh you’re

going for the doom look now, cool,” and then

followed with “I’m not too sure about the cardigan

though.” I think we were sitting at his place on the

rug checking out demos or albums or something

and he showed me the zine he was writing for. Now

it’s almost like a junky trying to reminisce about

his first toke on a joint. When I rolled my glazzies

around those pages it’s like a memory of a vortex

swallowing me up. I am sure that I can trace some

of my lost life back to those kind of moments. My

reaction was that this was something else. A new

kind of “yeah, this is pretty cool”.

I will always have a soft spot for (The Return of

the) Dark Lord in its entirety. That’s my favourite

issue. I still re-read it and discover new things.

The Gezol quotes are in themselves some of the

funniest things I have ever read.

—Mat McNerney, Hexvessel and Beastmilk

Out of the cellar—this is a promo (ha!)

shot of Janne taken at an abandoned

house in the Hatanpää area in Tampere.

Below, from the same session, me making

faces in front of a broken window.

It was a very tense time, in every respect. While

he did send me some trial-and-error stuff (like the

automated black metal lyrics generator kit), Mikko

never outlined to me the specific plans for [Playing

with Fire and (The Return of the) Dark Lord].

An anecdote: I remember sending him a rough

translation of a nutty interview with Gylve from

Darkthrone that had just appeared in a Norwegian

newspaper, where Gylve goes on about his favorite

cartoon characters, his new-found love for techno

music, and much else besides. I think reading that

interview was a huge relief for Mikko—finally some

bit of off-kilter humor to break the monotony. And

it certainly seemed to have inspired the absolutely

brilliant Darkthrone special in the Dark Lord issue,

one of my favorite Isten features of all time.

—Endre Begby

Overnight Elite: Janne and I devised a

special kit for aspiring lyricists. I think

Taneli Jarva promised to use it.

473 Yellow Snow


474 Don’t Break the Ghost


Juices like Water

Playing with Rhyme

“For six months the words were as one with icy waters

in the grip of Finnish winter, and then they were

rescued on June 6, 1996.”

At this point I reckon it’s safe to confess that not a

single copy of Cold Lake was fermented in icy waters

despite the promotional text in Dark Lord. But we did

drench each one in Finnish tap water for an autistic,

erm, authentic feel.

For a fanzine specializing in dark death and biblical

black it was indeed very foolish to publish a pamphlet

of poetry. #7B: Playing with Fire having sold like

hotcakes, we were probably on a backlash trip of our

own. “Expect the unexpected” was our lifeblood. First

and foremost, we needed to surprise ourselves.

Cold Lake, June 1996.

20 pages A5.

Printed at Tehokopiointi Ky, Tampere.

Print run 100 copies.

Created by: Mikko Mattila, Janne Sarna,

Sami Rouhento, Kola Krauze and Einar

Sjursjø.

Contents: The coldest words in the coldest

order.

I didn’t have the time or the guts to write for Cold

Lake myself. I was very impressed by Kola’s poetry—

obviously I was familiar with his writing prior to asking

for poetry contributions. Our correspondence was

very prolific for one thing—and has remained like that

for many many years! We share very little common

ground when it comes to musical tastes but I’m a fan

of his and will sing his praises until I die. With Einar

Sjursø, I just tried my luck and lo and behold, he had

some poetry that we could use. Discarded lyrics for

Beyond Dawn, apparently, but they were adequate for

our purposes.

Janne reveals the origins of the idea: “There we were

sitting on the train on the way to Helsinki to check out

the record shops over there. We ended up pondering

how out of proportion the reception for #7B had

gotten. It had attracted new readers who were not

familiar with any other issues but were eagerly foaming

either for or against #7B. It was quite obvious we had

475 Juices like Water


to voice our opinion on all this in our own indirect

way.”

We thought it would be a good idea to do another A5-

sized pamphlet right after Dark Lord. Only this time we

set out to disappoint, on purpose, those who thought

they had found the essence of Isten in #7B. And a

disappointment simply had to be called Cold Lake.

With that name it was obvious we’d have to drown it

in the dark waters of a frozen lake to add depth to the

marketing.

The concept really screamed for content that was as

far removed from #7B as possible. “Nothing” was

the obvious first reaction, but that would have been

too arrogant. Poetry came to mind fairly naturally. As

Janne recalls, “I think it was pretty obvious from the

start that Cold Lake would not include any writings by

us. Had neither Kola nor Einar agreed to provide the

poems we could have turned to some other people or

alternatively just pulled the plug on the whole thing.

The back door was wide open for a great escape all the

time. Any fool knows what a few months’ bath can do

to paper. It could have easily become the mythical lost

issue of Isten.”

Cold Lake was actually done after the photo session

for the blurb in Dark Lord. At that point all we had was

the cover. We made a handful of fake copies, hooked up

with Sami Rouhento after a record fair, and between

the three of us we took the photos at Lake Lahdesjärvi.

Cold Lake was the last issue for Sami (he took some of

the art photos)—the pop/rock/indie scene had already

absorbed him.

“In the early Nineties, I had felt a growing urge to

explore new types of music,” Sami states. “At the same

time, some of the developments in the world of metal

alienated me deeply. By Dark Lord, I had pretty much

turned my back on the music I’d grown up with and

sold my collection of metal albums. Well, I was young

and I needed the money. Still, in retrospect, I wish

I’d made a porno instead… or something. I had little

interest in new metal bands or releases, so I just felt

like I had nothing of relevance left to contribute. Also,

it was around this time that the Internet started to

rot my brain and gradually robbed me of my ability to

compose texts longer than a couple of sentences.”

Cold Lake was a piece of conceptual art, and we

were not only the producers, the art gallery, or the

platform—we were the idea, and the idea was the

illusion, and the illusion became the machine that made

it art. If I say so, it is so. The illusion was probably not

only the crux of the matter, it was downtown Hanoi, so

to speak.

The response to Cold Lake was puzzled more than

anything else, “What have other people said about

this?” being more or less the most expressive reaction.

476 Don’t Break the Ghost


For the Cold Lake blurb in Dark

Lord, the poem was written as

close to Kalevala metre/style as

possible by Kola.

The following pages 478—484 are selected spreads from Cold Lake, scanned from

the originals/the printed product and reduced from A5 size. Photographs rescanned where available.

477 Juices like Water


A picture of my father in

the Fifties. The location

is Pyynikki beach in

Tampere.

478 Don’t Break the Ghost


479 Juices like Water


Another picture from the

Mattila family archives.

This is Koskipuisto,

Tampere.

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481 Juices like Water


482 Don’t Break the Ghost


483 Juices like Water


Roses photographed by

Sami Rouhento.

484 Don’t Break the Ghost


485 Juices like Water


486 Don’t Break the Ghost


Doll Patrol

Streaming Vengeance

Throughout the years, we’ve considered various

different formats, the more OTT the better: an issue

in the form of huge posters, like an ancient map of

secret archways, or an issue in the form of a collection

of flyers. Those ideas were dropped not because

they were too stupid to carry through, but because

they were either too expensive or too impractical

considering the material at hand.

It was clear to us that after the mishmash of ideas that

was (The Return of the) Dark Lord, something more

coherent was in order.

“What about crafting it all into one continuous piece?”

I can’t recall either Janne or me uttering those exact

words, but suddenly, somehow, the concept was there,

and we never considered anything different. Mädchen,

as she would be called, was written as one single piece,

although she’s not a full and rounded entity as such.

Mädchen is kind of like asking “What if ‘Dead City’, the

Violent Force song, was turned into a concept album, a

thrash metal opera? What would the stage production

be like?” In other words, a combination of things that

should not be combined. An emulsion.

Mädchen, April 1997.

40 pages A4.

Offset printed at Cityoffset Oy, Tampere.

Print run 500 copies.

Created by: Mikko Mattila, Janne Sarna

and Kola Krauze.

Contents: Opeth, Thy Serpent, Tiermes,

Persophone, Yggtyrhyrkkh Hin Dystre,

Lunar Aurora, Solefald, Cultus Sanguine,

Infernö, Sigh, Embracing, Babylon

Whores, Sear Bliss, Enochian Crescent,

Night In Gales and Drowned. Plus

reviews.

It’s an exercise driven by undying heavy metal

devotion, but also an odyssey into the various mindsets

of the people selected for interview. By this point

it should have been clear to everybody that we didn’t

necessarily pick artists solely on musical merit. In

fact, we thought many of the bands interviewed for

Mädchen were crap. Even with a band like Opeth we

found the first albums impressive but weren’t entirely

sure whether we really liked the band’s style. This did

however provide sufficient friction in our extensive

exchange with Mikael Åkerfeldt.

Mädchen could be interpreted as just another

strange mutation of metal that emerged in the mid-

487 Doll Patrol


Nineties, but it’s not that simple. Obviously, the

entire enterprise reeks of pretension. The approach is

pompous and a little artsy-fartsy, but it’s also every bit

as gleeful and adventurous. At this point, one might

wonder: Is Isten defined more by its seriousness or

by its humour? These elements are inextricable from

the whole and from one another. Isten can be silly

and profound and its humour is really quite serious.

The funniest aspect of Mädchen was the way it was

assembled in all its glory on my bedroom wall. Sadly,

we have no pictures to prove it.

During the making of Mädchen, I was out of touch with

Damhair for an unusually long time, and after I sent him

a copy of the finished product, he regretted the fact

that he hadn’t been involved. He felt his photography

at the time would’ve lent itself superbly to the concept.

Thus, the next issue, Twin Sister, had Damhair’s

photography in spades.

I had become a little less introverted by this point and

even some half-hearted studying came into the picture.

I was slowly making a comeback in the real world. The

cooperation with Janne on Isten was exhilarating—it

was essentially a life-saver for me. There were hardly

any disagreements, as Janne testifies: “I never felt

any tension. There were no clashing egos, quite the

opposite really. At one point we had to appoint Alan

Smithee as the editor-in-chief as there were no other

suitable candidates around. No matter what Mikko

says, Isten is his fanzine. Isten cannot exist without

him, and from Isten’s point of view everyone else is

expendable. This is a fact I have never had any need to

challenge. Having said that, anything and everything

we were working on was open to be challenged for

improvement at any point until it was in print. We

had brainstorming sessions a couple of times a week

and that provided us an opportunity to discuss things

thoroughly from multiple angles.”

It wasn’t just a Mattila/Sarna production, however.

Kola Krauze’s input was crucial for the issue,

although he didn’t contribute to the concept. As

Kola reminisces: “I was aware at the time that

Mädchen would be full of dolls and quotes—I actually

contributed many of the latter—but I think that’s

all.” Kola was actually the first person ever to suggest

an Isten anthology, and he even sent me his “Best

of Mädchen” picks in the summer of 1997. For this

compendium, we opted for the easy way and decided to

republish the issue in its entirety.

BlackBeard, the typeface used for Mädchen and

throughout its two successors, was part of a package of

fonts I purchased from Fonthead Design, an American

type foundry. I still like BlackBeard a lot, although it

quickly became quite popular. I remember discussing

fonts with Timo Ketola of Dauthus. Ketoladog was

obviously infamous for using Fraktur in ridiculously

miniscule point sizes, and I asked him whether he

actually used such a font while writing stuff for

Dauthus, lying through my teeth that I always used

BlackBeard while writing anything for Isten.

The name Mädchen was a tribute to Twin Peaks, but

strangely enough, that’s not a picture of Mädchen

Amick on the cover, it’s none other than Iceland’s

eclectic pop/folk/rock/dance/jazz pixie Björk

Guðmundsdóttir. Our thrash metal influences came

through in the endpapers: for the collage we shredded

various promo photos, old and new, in a tribute to the

inner sleeves of old thrash records. Without this metal

mosaic, this would’ve been the first ever issue of Isten

requiring only one tube of glue!

488 Don’t Break the Ghost


The slightly pompous Mädchen flyers. This issue marks the change of printing

houses—the zine was printed at Cityoffset, the flyers at Multiprint. We could no

longer use Tehokopiointi because their black wasn’t black enough.

The following pages 490—528 are from Mädchen, scanned from the printed product. Photographs rescanned where available.

489 Doll Patrol


490 Don't Don’t Break the Ghost


491 Doll Patrol


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493 Doll Patrol


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495 Doll Patrol


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515 Doll Patrol


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519 Doll Patrol


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525 Doll Patrol


526 Don't Break the Ghost


527

Doll Patrol


Ugh hey! The back cover’s “coming up next” statement reeks of Celtic Frost, doesn’t it?

528 Don’t Break the Ghost


When I received Mädchen in the mail, it reeked of fish with

a slight hint of alcohol. It is possible it was my imagination,

and I was projecting what I wanted Isten to be onto the

paper, but somehow this seems very Finnish to me, and very

appropriate.

—Jason William Walton, Agalloch

I lost my Isten virginity relatively late. It happened in 1998

on a normal Saturday night when I was wasting my time with

friends, drinking beer and listening to music. Mädchen was

lying there somewhere and I had heard that it was supposed

to be something special. So I browsed it a little bit and I

was wondering how the fuck should I read that thing. It was

like a clever but messy essay or something. I remember that

I found the Enochian Crescent interview to be particularly

rude and hilarious. I liked Enochian Crescent and I was used

to reading zines featuring bands that I had never heard of

but which the editors loved. FAN zines, you know.

—Tommi Lind, Jumalhämärä

People are people but what does it mean? On Kola’s request, we gave

“who’s who on the endpapers” a try, but never sent him this sheet.

529 Doll Patrol


15 years later: revisiting the scene of the crime in 2012. Peltolammi, Tampere: Mr Sarna (right) spent the first years of his life at Peltolamminkatu 4, the apartment

building at the back, and during the latter part of the Nineties crafted six issues of Isten with Mr Mattila (left) at Peltolamminkatu 6, the apartment building in the

front.

Isten took what liberties it wanted with the format a zine

was expected to conform to, the authors’ genuine passion

for heavy metal shone through gloriously throughout, and

it actually made you think about metal in a way no other

publication I had read did. It wasn’t superficial rehashing

of the shallow, self-satisfied boilerplate you could find

in many other places when attempts to reflect on metal

were made; it actually asked questions, you thought, that

perhaps should be preying on your mind as much as they

clearly did on its authors. Amusingly, just after leafing

through Mädchen for the first time, and having a chat

about it with a mate who had done the same, we had a bit

of a row about what metal meant and was about, and also

about what heavy metal was and was not.

—Dominique Poulain

At its best, Isten managed to phrase the questions in a

manner which practically forced bands to articulate their

views coherently, and maybe in some cases to really think

them through for the first time. No mean feat. Some rose

to the occasion, and probably walked away with better

focus on their music.

—Antti Litmanen, Babylon Whores

I wish that they would have made more issues or been

more prolific. With certain issues like Mädchen I could

have read more and more like that. It was great how it was

almost like one giant conversation with different people

jumping in.

——Mat McNerney, Hexvessel and Beastmilk

Grim stuff: Damhair was not involved in the creation of Mädchen. Maybe this

pencil sketch of his from January 1997 portrays his mood at the time?

530 Don’t Break the Ghost


I’ve read quite a few books in my life but none of them, Nobel standard or not, have

come close to that graceful world-weary analysis of Mädchen.

—Mikko Kuronen, Qvadrivivm zine

“We are not homosexuals.” This is the first page of Mikael Åkerfeldt’s extensive answers, typewritten by the prog master himself.

For all our glueing needs,

Tammer glue (manufactured

by Kiilto Oy, a local

company) was our brand

of choice until availability

became an issue.

Kampen mot humør.

We resisted the urge

to use this picture

of Thy Serpent’s

Sami Tenetz, opting

instead for the one

without corpsepaint.

(Pic by Damhair.)

531 Doll Patrol


532 Don’t Break the Ghost


She’s Lost Control

Scraps of Life

A mere seven months after Mädchen raised a storm in

the teacup that was the zine scene (readers and fellow

editors alike), we unleashed her Twin Sister upon the

world. It was a flashier issue with more occult leanings.

Or mock-cult, what do I know?

Layout-wise we were influenced by the Finnish punk/

hardcore zine Deggial as well as David Carson’s work

in the American alternative rock-and-roll magazine Ray

Gun. The results didn’t really resemble either of the

two, however. We only used computers for the text;

all the textures for the layout were achieved by some

avant-garde use of copy machines and transparencies

combined with copious amounts of ink. There we

were—Lord Melancholic Ripper (Janne) and Herr

Atmospheric Gluecifer (me)—assembling heaps of,

well, stuff on each and every page, layer upon layer,

inventing a new 3D layout format in the process: some

of the original pages are thicker than the finished

product. The print shop had to call us and make sure

that we were serious about a certain page that was cut

in two, right through a block of text. We most certainly

were.

Twin Sister, November 1997.

60 pages A4.

Offset printed at Cityoffset Oy, Tampere.

Print run 500 copies.

Created by: Mikko Mattila, Janne Sarna,

Kola Krauze and Damhair.

Contents: Canaan, The Great Kat,

Agathodaimon, Brian Death Cobra,

Metalucifer, Costa Stoios of Tales Of The

Macabre, Rotting Christ, Bethel, Solstice,

Arch Enemy, Two Witches and Sup. Plus

reviews.

Janne still regrets the fact that we couldn’t carry out

our idea of doing this issue in the form of a giant folded

poster: “That format would have been just perfect for

Twin Sister but financially it was a sheer impossibility

at the time. Then again, dismembering such a thing for

this book now would ruin it entirely!”

Damhair’s photography added a pungent flavour to

the proceedings. There was no Photoshop involved;

the pictures were all shot on film and reproduced

straight from his 18 x 24 cm prints (as in photographic

paper prints, from the bygone aeon that predated

digital photography and digital retouching). No

533 She’s Lost Control


more drawings-—the inkwell had dried. As Damhair

explains, "I hadn’t really progressed or made an effort

to improve my drawings, so I felt perhaps I should have

some playtime with photography. Then I might have a

slight chance to tread a parallel path with the written

content, or at least present something other than the

same old ink doodles and unhinged pentagrams.”

There may be some truth to the notion that Isten

burned brightest in the late Nineties when it was

raging against the dying of the light. If people know

about Isten, they always know the scathing reviews

of the Nineties. Did Isten need bad metal to justify

its existence? No. There was never a time when we

wouldn’t have rather written about good stuff. For the

most part, we did write about the good stuff. The good

stuff was the reason we wrote at all.

I interviewed Solstice who’d appeared as a sound

bite in issue #7 but had taken significant leaps and

were only months away from releasing the greatest

epic doom album of the Nineties. Rich Walker is

quite a character and always good copy. As New Dark

Age loomed, we had to make do with vastly inferior

releases—a whole host of them.

The promotional CDs and tapes flowing in were

starting to take their toll on us. Also I’d come to

the conclusion that the whole reviewer/music

critic angle had damaged my perspective on music

to a considerable extent, and that was a horrible

realization. Whenever I listened to something, I

obsessed about owing the world my invaluable opinion

on it. It took me years to regain a peace of mind. For

Twin Sister, we came up with a ridiculous grading

system based on a quadratic equation and decided that

this would be the last issue to contain album/demo

reviews. Then again, I also realized that reviewing was

something that granted structure to the proceedings:

without that aspect, it was easier to let years go by

without publishing anything.

Somewhere in there, Dawnbringer’s debut album

didn’t get an especially good review, but it didn’t get

ignored, and that’s the first sign of Professor Black’s

mark, such as it is. Kola’s contributions to Twin Sister

were again essential, though the relationship was

quite turbulent. As Kola recalls, “Actually it was quite

turbulent between me and most people. That’s just

how I am I suppose. The first turbulence between

me and Isten was that Janne and I fell grievously and

permanently out over a mistake in an email. I regret it

I suppose. I was then fired during the making of Twin

Sister for briefly contributing to Terrorizer around the

same time. I then fired myself from Terrorizer in protest

at the shall we say rather inordinate ‘influence’ exerted

on it by Misanthropy Records and was promptly

reinstated.”

534 Don’t Break the Ghost


The Twin Sister flyers emphasized the Headwind

trilogy, of which Mädchen and Twin Sister were

parts one and two. Many people found it hard to

accept that Tormentor, the final chapter, would

not follow on the heels of the sisters. Tormentor

is our mythical Armageddon issue.

The following pages

536—593 are from Twin Sister,

scanned from the originals/

printed product. Photographs

rescanned where available.

535 She’s She's Lost Control


536 Don’t Break the Ghost


537 She’s Lost Control


538 Don’t Break the Ghost


539 She’s Lost Control


540 Don’t Break the Ghost


541 She’s Lost Control


542 Don’t Break the Ghost


543 She’s Lost Control


544 Don’t Break the Ghost


545 She’s Lost Control


546 Don’t Break the Ghost


547 She’s Lost Control


548 Don’t Break the Ghost


549 She’s Lost Control


550 Don’t Break the Ghost


551 She’s Lost Control


552 Don’t Break the Ghost


553 She’s Lost Control


554 Don’t Break the Ghost


555 She’s Lost Control


556 Don’t Break the Ghost


557 She’s Lost Control


558 Don’t Break the Ghost


559 She’s Lost Control


560 Don’t Break the Ghost


561 She’s Lost Control


562 Don’t Break the Ghost


563 She’s Lost Control


564 Don’t Break the Ghost


565 She’s Lost Control


566 Don’t Break the Ghost


567 She’s Lost Control


568 Don’t Break the Ghost


569 She’s Lost Control


570 Don’t Break the Ghost


571 She’s Lost Control


572 Don’t Break the Ghost


573 She’s Lost Control


574 Don’t Break the Ghost


575 She’s Lost Control


576 Don’t Break the Ghost


577 She’s Lost Control


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579 She’s Lost Control


580 Don’t Break the Ghost


581 She’s Lost Control


582 Don’t Break the Ghost


583 She’s Lost Control


584 Don’t Break the Ghost


585 She’s Lost Control


586 Don’t Break the Ghost


587 She’s Lost Control


588 Don’t Break the Ghost


589 She’s Lost Control


590 Don’t Break the Ghost


591 She’s Lost Control


592 Don’t Break the Ghost


Tormentor: the back cover of Twin Sister makes the mythical third instalment to the Headwind saga a little more palpable.

593 She’s Lost Control


Our Tormentor challenge

in Mädchen originally

resulted in one single

submission, a tape

from Tommi Keränen’s

Daemonstraitor project

(with Antti Litmanen

of Babylon Whores on

vocals). After the second

proclamation in Twin

Sister we received a few

more tapes. A bit of a

whimper for an end of

the world?

Twin Sister is the most beautiful paper

product I’ve ever laid my eyes on. The more

paper goes by, the more I appreciate that

incredible black and white nightmare.

—Mikko Kuronen, Qvadrivivm zine

Shurely not? A mock-up

cover demonstration to

remind us what route

not to take. “Lärvis”

refers to Jack Lärvätsalo,

Esq.—one of Damhair’s

many pseudonyms.

The cover is a gem—some highbrow quote

which I don’t understand from some

philosopher I’ve never heard of—next to

a stark image of the Great Kat. Says it all.

Genius or retarded—you decide.

—Dan Tobin, Earache Records

At some point in 1997 Janne mentioned that he should

probably concentrate on finishing his studies for a while.

He graduated but I never noticed a break. A notable

feature of his master’s thesis is that he managed to

include a graph in the form of a pentagram!

594 Don’t Break the Ghost


Is this a picture of Damhair?

Ike Vil of Babylon Whores has

said of the man: “Damhair is a

unique, austere, artful creature,

whom I can’t really compare

to anybody but have been

privileged to know. From time

to time. Insofar as anybody

can ‘know’ him.” I can only

echo Ike’s sentiments. The

correspondence with Damhair

has been a world of its own

throughout the years. Above, an

assortment of postcards from

him circa Twin Sister.

A postcard from Elm Street, Oslo. (Kola was

back in the fold by the time I received this.)

595 She’s Lost Control


Behind-the-scenes footage of Damhair’s designs

for the Twin Sister photos—along with his layout

ideas. Below, an alternate version of Damhair’s

tribute to Ray Harryhausen. About his subject

matter, the artist says: “I envy those who get to

shoot hot metal chicks wrapped in damp linen

with blood pouring from every orifice, but my

mom wouldn’t like it.”

“Dust and scratches are fairly visible in some

negative scans presented in this book,”

Damhair points out. “I didn’t bother to shop

them out as I’ve felt for some time that all sorts

of digital mastering and retouching have ruined

many good things. I prefer going analog bm-fi

in the basement with the photos here.”

596 Don’t Break the Ghost


Prior to the layout fest, Janne did a prototype using some Thy Serpent flyers as well as

Mädchen prints that were still lying on the floor.

My signature, in a

letter to Damhair.

I love Isten in the same way as I’m drawn to people who

are outcasts, different and inspiring. Isten is timeless, each

issue a runestone in the history of metal. In truth my taste

in metal is not reflected in Isten but my love and passion

for metal is. Mikko’s ability to follow a calling no matter

what, is inspiring and rare... I think it takes someone who

feels for metal to create Isten, someone very intelligent,

brave and perceptive but also elusive and almost

impossible to see in real life, like a mythological creature.

—Jorun Modén, author of Samael

Metalucifer answers. A genuine sample of Gezol and Neal Tanaka’s heavy metal English.

Printed out as usual on Gezol’s fax machine and delivered by snail mail.

Internal memo: a quick guide to Twin Sister’s grading

system, as devised by Janne in the darkest hours of 1997.

As an interviewee for a change in Inner Essence #1: The Mirror of

My Longings. During the making of Twin Sister I apparently already

had a premonition of our operational environment melting away.

597 She’s Lost Control


This is a previously unpublished interview with In The Woods… from January 1998. We didn’t receive it in time for Twin Sister due to Misanthropy Records owner

Tiziana’s oversight (for which she apologized deeply). In true fanzine style, the question sheet is long lost, but at least Jan Kenneth Transeth’s answers remain.

“The process—as when looking back upon it now,

was kind of heavy. Some of the ideas for Omnio were

already written before HEart of the Ages was even

released. Back then, we knew that we were heading

towards yet another direction—both lyrically and

musically.

“When we kicked off the Omnio rehearsals during

springtime ’95, some of the band members had a hard

time coping with the new material. Fair enough to some

extent, I would say, but these differences culminated

in quite a few disagreements. After almost a year

within this ‘vacuum’, we started to work together as

a symbiosis, just like we did it on the pre-work for the

debut album.

“Personally, I am of the opinion that Omnio carries

a lot of the tension we felt at the time. Both as a band

and individually. Most of the guys were going through

a very hard period personally. Some had a horrible

mental crisis, while others had difficulties in dealing

with life in general. Things just didn’t seem to work out

at all. During such periods, most people find it hard to

communicate on a proper level. Needless to say that this

was another drawback in the process itself.

“I guess these aspects all together formed the album

as it turned out in the end. In many ways, a positive

outcome, as I believe that human beings are able to

bring forth the best and most emotional creativity

during various forms of depression. On the other hand,

I guess it can become too heavy on us if it’s a chronic

state over a longer period of time.

“A great part of ourselves will always take place in the

music, as long as we do anything that feels right at any

point of time. We don’t listen and create—we listen and

compose, and I think there’s a great difference between

the two. As we always strive for perfection, it’s hard to

look back upon an album and feel complete satisfaction.

The same goes for Omnio. To me, the album can be

classified as ‘OK’ right now. Your definition of it suits the

album at least 90 per cent, thanx!”

“Music is a media where people were supposed to

express an inner urge. I think an ancient vibe is the

whole driving force when it comes to an end. My belief

on the matter is as simple as this: as long as this primal

urge is present and you listen to what your heart has

to tell you, you will always be able to come up with

something that differs from what other people have

done before. This difference may be small on some

occasions, while in other, grand. It all depends on

various aspects. Basically, we would never have formed

In The Woods... if we had not known music as the

media it has become today. We are a product of that

media as a basic fundament. What I mentioned above

is the spice that makes us a little different. The modern,

commercial music business is all about recycling and

profit—with some exceptions—and the major intention

is to entertain. Entertainment is OK, as long as it has

something to offer mentally. If it hasn’t, it’s mentally

dead as far as I’m concerned, and therefore not worth

my attention. And to conclude: what is the point of

“composing” and releasing albums if it’s just a pale copy

of someone else’s genuine inner world?”

“Very interesting! Especially because I’ve always felt

that there’s a lack of entirety on that album. HEart of

the Ages was kind of a compilation to sum up what we

had done so far with In The Woods... That’s probably

an important thing to notice. I think most of the songs

on that album are quite OK individually, but they may

sound strange when put together. After that album, we

started to think of an album as a symbiosis. Say if you

have ten songs and two of them don’t fit in because they

will most probably ruin the harmony between the other

eight. Then we take the two away, so that we can focus

on the quality of the others. This way of working with an

album was rather present on Omnio, and I believe it will

be even more important on coming releases.

“An album for me is somehow a document of my

life during the period it was written/recorded. Maybe

that’s why we’re more concerned about this kind of

thing right now. However, as we were speaking of the

debut, my advice would be to listen to the compositions

individually. That’s just the kind of album it is.”

“Sincerely I believe that everything we do throughout

our lives should be done a hundred per cent. It’s

obvious that this is impossible to some extent, speaking

of some matters that simply cannot comprehend this

598 Don’t Break the Ghost


way of thinking. An author once wrote: ‘We find

pleasure in any kind of work as long as we do our

best, and we feel uncomfortable if not.’ Anyway,

when you do something in a best possible way, it

will always mean a great deal to you, in one way

or another. Also the fact that we touch rather

personal vibes may affect that we put just a little

more effort into it.

“Yes, the passion is essential. When the passion of

two people is gone—be it emotional, sexual or on a

friendship level—they often get divorced. When this

happens between me and music, I will probably

find another media to express myself. That is

speaking for the other “clan members” as well…”

“I think it’s a very difficult topic to discuss. Mostly

because I am of the opinion that all kinds of “art”

(I’m normally not into this description/term, but

I find it hard to come up with a substitute for the

word) is something so completely individual. An

example; when you’ve read a really sensitive and

emotional book that makes sense—and that has

the power to spellbound and enthral you—it is

often very destructive for the vibe and atmosphere

you have created, to discuss the contents with

other people. A work of art is a very personal

thing—speaking only ‘bout works that hold a total

manifestation of the artist’s world (the moment

the work is lifted above anything ‘usual’ that has

been done a dozen times before). What makes the

experience of e.g. a book so personal is that all the

individuals who read it do it from their very own

point of view, which is genuine. We all draw our

own conclusions. We all draw our own parallels.

“I’ve had several weird experiences with our

music. In the rehearsal room, at home, in a studio

and maybe especially in different live situations. It

can be explained as some sort of meditation. When

time and place become something so abstract

that they end up being ‘déjà-vu-strangers’ to you.

Like you recognize some of “their” presence even

though ‘they’ represent something completely new

to you. Like waking up in the middle of a dream,

with one foot still in it, while the rest of yourself is a

part of reality. All these happenings are impossible

for me to explain. However, the thing is that I don’t

have the urge to explain either. Humanity has this

rather bad habit of explaining this and explaining

that. I see this as one of the main reasons why

we’ve become so distanced from nature—in the

western world especially. You sit in a classroom

with sweaty hands. It’s far too hot in there,

because the ventilation is out of function. You’re

loaded with facts about this and that; standards,

norms, measures and god knows what… You’re

being stuffed with information about the fine,

balanced harmony in nature which is so sensitive

and unique. Mankind explains everything they

can get their hands on, to death, and in the end

we forget that the wind in our hair, the soil in our

hands and the sun on our faces are experiences so

undefinable that no available words are able to do

justice to any of them.

“Therefore, it doesn’t feel right for me to know

about this. The feelings of these happenings are a

thousand times more worth for me than any kind

of labelling or explanation. Hope that didn’t ruin

your plans of undressing me. After all, I think we’re

better off with this situation, he he…”

“Doubtlessly the fact that we totally overlook other

people’s opinion on what we’re doing. For us,

it’s not about glamorous celebrity or high album

sales. As long as we deal with this on our own

premises, it’s impossible for us to go commercial—or

whatever—in one way or another. While working

on Omnio, we knew for some reason that it would

probably sell less copies than the debut. We could

have done HEart of the Ages part II, but that didn’t

feel right. We’ll never do the same thing twice.

A reasoning human being will—throughout his/

her whole lifetime—change constantly. You either

expand mentally, or the opposite—depending on the

situation(s). As a lot of our selves are braided into

the compositions, it is obvious that natural changes

will show in the outcome as well. As long as we

agree on what we’re doing, and continue to do so,

this “talent” will be our most important ‘weapon’.”

“For some, I guess it’s one way or the other, while

others might ‘deal’ with music as a combination of

the two. I often think that lyrics should be about

personal exposure. Only then, you are fully able to

add a touch of nerve to the song. Of course artists

have written well-formulated lyrics through the

years—from an objective point of view—but for my

concern it has always been the ‘universal’—very

personal related—lyrics that have granted me the

right feeling and understanding. Just like with very

sensitive and emotional literature…

“An artist can often reveal and open up a new

world to an audience. If a person has a strong

desire to express a feeling with words, but cannot

because his vocabulary is hindering him, he can

often get the déjà-vu experience while reading

a lyric piece or a novel for that matter. The artist

managed to capture the moment this person was

striving to freeze, and that’s probably why we build

up such strong relations to different artists. They

might give us a feeling that makes us feel like a part

of a team. They give us feedback to whether our

thoughts are good or not. Maybe the feeling of not

being alone as well.

“Much of the same goes for the music part,

I would say. We often enjoy particular songs

because we can relate to them. Some are

reminders and memories of situation we’ve been

in, while others please us with their sound as

they strike a chord within us. For me, a brilliantly

composed song is when you can hear that

the artist(s) have been all the way “down the

basement” for the ingredients that made a hell of

a supper.”

“Well, there might be. I am of the opinion that

everything we consume with our senses will sooner

or later reveal through a creative process. Many

of us listen to sixties and seventies rock music

occasionally, and I’m sure it has some influence on

the final outcome. To me, that is a positive thing,

because I view this period as the most creative

and wave-breaking/innovative period. A lot of

bands today take their inspiration from bands that

were originally influenced by bands from this ‘era’,

which makes the whole thing turn into recycling.

I don’t intend to hold the sixties/seventies as

the one and only ‘school’ for rock music and its

subgenres—after all, innovation and total originality

is to be preferred—but I believe that we will always

have a lot to learn from acts like The Beatles, Led

Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Floyd, Dylan, David

Bowie and so on. They, among others, explored

territories in music that most musicians of today

view as “too fuckin’ weird…”

“Yes, we’re totally into being a band with a

chronic state of progression. Guess it’s all about

listening to yourself. I mean, we live our lives

and we develop as human beings. If we still had

the same sound now as we had five years ago, it

would have been unnatural. We would have had

to force ourselves to think exactly like we did back

then, something which is impossible in itself…

Maybe that’s why I’m having second thoughts

about some metalheads these days. I’m tired of

hearing about e.g. ‘Metallica’s huge sell-out’ etc.

Fuck! They change, and if people don’t like it,

don’t buy the albums—as simple as that! You can

hear that Metallica love their profession without

compromising. We should honour artists for that,

not tell them to fuck off…”

“Maybe I’ve been out on the desert road for far too

long. Or, to put it this way: my involvement with

the underground scene hasn’t been overwhelming

for the past 2-3 years. That’s why I was rather

surprised when your words flew through my

questioning brain-salad! To be honest, I must say

that it’s kind of ‘hot news’ to me, and I feel it might

be a bit of an “over the top” comment from thy

Isten camp. Nevertheless, I might be able to pick

up a little hint from your observations: as we don’t

compromise on what we do, and some do it all the

time. I guess some people would pick up our works

as a refreshing outcome from the music scene.

Individual emotions always hold some originality

within, and as long as you ‘give life’ to some of

them, the origin will always shine through in one

way or another. I never really thought of it this way

before, and I find it strange to say the least.”

“I’m not really sure. Naervaer is such a completely

different thing, because I’m not too much involved

within the creative process of that project. I might

share some of my ideas on arrangements in

general, but still I feel that Naervaer is the child of

Terje Sagen. I more or less lend my voice out when

needed, even though he holds me as one of two

original members.

“It’s a very exciting thing for me to take part it, as

the music is more open for experimenting etc. than

e.g. In The Woods… It might sound a bit weird,

but I never really considered myself a musician.

That’s maybe why it’s hard for me to understand

my involvement with three/four different projects.

Who said the world was fair?!”

“As time flies, my fascination for more introspective

lyrical themes increase. Previously, I could write

about anything almost. These days, I’m having a

hard time doing that, because it makes me feel

dishonest. The forthcoming In The Woods... album

will hold anecdotes from the past year, I guess.

There has been quite a few happenings that made

me re-evaluate my situation in general. When

situations of a more negative character take place,

I often find shelter in the writing; whether it’s music

or lyrics/poems. It’s like therapy. The thing that

often characterizes my writing is that it’s always—at

least usually—written within the more pompous

side of the scale. I like to draw the lines and make

them fit into an entirety. The consequence is often

that a finished lyric will look rather cosmic and

universal when you read through it in the first

place, while the most personal views will shine

through between the lines when it’s read more

carefully.

“Recently, I’ve been doing my own little project

being that I’m trying to consume most of the

worthy Norwegian literature. I’ve been reading

national authors like Björneboe, Björnstad, Mykle,

Saabye Christensen, Loe, Eggen, Sturlason,

Fossum etc. Most of them not too known outside

the Norwegian borders, but they are all authors

with a perspective. I believe I will cope with

Norwegian literature for at least a couple of

years more. After, I will try and pick up the most

important Nordic authors. When this project has

landed, the idea is to kick off with world literature I

hold high. The whole thing might sound a bit ‘over

the top’ but I guess it’s a nice project for a lifetime.

We’ll see how long I’m staying here for. No one

knows for sure.”

“The release schedule for the third album (Strange

in Stereo) is supposed to be autumn 1998. A

second 7” (in a series of three) will be dropped

during March/April ’98. We hope to do the third

7” together with the third album. After that, I’m

not quite sure. We’ve been talking about a year’s

break. Put the band on ice for a while and then

concentrate on other projects. I guess all of us will

benefit from that. However, nothing is settled yet.

“Misanthropy usually take care of the commercial

side of the road and we’ll let them continue with

that in the future as well, I assume. We have a lot

of interesting tracks for the coming album already,

and as usual it’s supposed to be rather different

from the second album. Strange in Stereo will be

a very demanding album to finish off, but as long

as we can do it our own way, we won’t complain

at all.”

“Come gather ’round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You’ll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin’

Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like

a stone

For the times they are a-changin’”

(Bob Dylan)

599 She’s Lost Control


600 Don’t Break the Ghost


Heavy Message

Into the Morbid Back

With 1999’s monumental 100, Isten died a beautiful

death. Once we understood that the definition

of the underground scene is “putting something

between yourself and metal”, we understood that the

underground had failed. The promo records and tapes

that we received made us physically sick. As did the

emphasis on bonding, categories, gimmicks… and the

simple fact that metal was heavy on everything and

anything except HEAVY itself.

We never thought of this issue as The End, but we did

write it that way. The floodgates were open, so we

went down in a blaze of glory, firing on all cylinders.

Talking the talk, walking the walk, knowing the

dangers of friendly fire all the way.

Isten 100, April 1999.

72 pages A4.

Offset printed at Cityoffset Oy, Tampere.

Print run 500 copies.

Created by: Mikko Mattila, Janne Sarna,

Kola Krauze, Damhair and Kristian Piililä.

Contents: Morbid Angel, Darkthrone,

The Haunted, Pentacle, Unholy, Twisted

Tower Dire, Choronzon, Future Loop

Foundation, Metalion of Slayer Magazine/

Head Not Found, Roberto Mammarella

of Avantgarde Music/Monumentum/

Cultus Sanguine, a tribute to Derek

Riggs, “Tolkien Heads” by Kola Krauze

and a board game called “The Scene“ by

Damhair.

The feedback and the conversations that followed

immediately felt more interesting than the prospect

of doing another issue. For example, Metalion wrote:

“I wonder how you will continue the saga of Isten?

What might the next step be? How can you top this?

Or do you want to top this?” My response was,

“Aaaaargh! That’s precisely what’s wrong with the

scene. Nothing’s ever definitive, everything’s just one

item in an unceasing stream of scene products, nothing

really means what it says, nothing’s ever 100 per cent.

Everybody’s terrified with the prospect of saying the

final word in something, doing something irrevocable,

making it hard or even impossible for themselves to

go on releasing more scene products. That may be a

nightmare to others, but to Isten, it’s lifeblood: speak

the truth, do or die, do and die.”

I don’t know if it was a case of metal having gone to

piss (as Dave Carlo of Razor once put it), but isolation

no longer worked. It only served to underline the

sorry state of affairs. Timo Ketola gave Isten 100

601 Heavy Message


a glowing review in the third and final issue of his

mighty Dauthus, describing the content, “The DIY

underground has turned from a healthy soil into a

stenching swamp where the respectable bands are

isolated like the general metal fan is supposed to be

isolated from mainstream music (...) It’s not only a

declaration of war but also of love...”

We never expected much in terms of response, because

it had dawned on us that the scene (and naïve as

we were, we had yet to realize, the world) is full of

people incapable of being provoked by the truth of

true believers. Everybody is too ready and too quick

to categorize anything and everything. In this case,

“a couple of old farts venting some nostalgia-driven

angst”... let’s archive it here and put a lid on it. As

Dominique Poulain—who has had a remarkable role

in Isten’s post-death efforts—put it, “The end of the

world is not a white hot maze, it’s people everywhere

being so damned happy with their meaninglessness.

Everything’s equal, anything goes.”

Layout-wise the issue was designed as a sketch, a work

in progress, complete with added notes in shorthand

and coffee stains. It was supposed to portray a

relationship with metal: living faith; constant scrutiny;

an all-engulfing, ever-evolving religious existence...

that of a metal monk, really. A weekend warrior’s

journal it is not! The printers added a quirk of their

own. After having asked us, in hushed tones, whether

we were devil worshippers, they continued to screw

up the scaling in most of Damhair’s photographs

throughout the issue. Janne thought this was only

appropriate for the overall concept, but for this

book we have decided to present the photography as

intended.

Some critics complained that the tone of 100 was

holier-than-thou and know-it-all. Sure enough—it is

the sound of excess and no return. It is metal as heavy

as death epitomized in print: personal, passionate,

unreasonable, inconsolable. Definitely too much

for most people. It’s not like we were dissecting the

scene with surgical precision, more like haphazardly

stabbing it in the dark. In many ways, this tome is a cry

of desperation, a reaction to the rude awakening, the

betrayal of my underground years.

I wasn’t ready to admit it at the time, but the ghost had

flickered for a while. There’s a certain vulnerability to

Isten 100 that many people never realized. It was not

only an exorcism but also a confession: that our own

numbers of the beast had been below One Hundred as

well. We should have probably declared Isten dead, to

make it more tangible. I think Janne and I discussed it

at the time.

People who expect us to produce a sequel to Isten

100 or, on the other hand, assume that we are

nostalgic about it, are out of their minds. I’d never

want to revisit that period of time. It was matricide,

divorce, and the burial of your baby all rolled into

one. I did nothing else in the Nineties, and certainly

accomplished nothing else—I lived and breathed that

shit, and Isten 100 is me tearing myself out of it all.

It couldn’t be pretty. And it couldn’t be done twice.

Nothing’s really changed. I still stand behind every

single word in it. To this day, we have very little, if

anything, to add when it comes to the heavy message of

Isten 100.

602 Don’t Break the Ghost


With the two-sided flyers for Isten 100 we went

glossy for the first time—and the last time, too.

The following pages 604—673 are from Isten 100, scanned from the originals/printed product. Photographs rescanned where available.

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Mannequin! Headlines! The ritual murder

of a 23-year-old man by Finnish devil

worshippers made the headlines in 1999.

The denim vest was originally mine and

Janne provided the pyramid rivets, but

Damhair did all the work: he screen-printed

the logos and took the photos. Where is the

vest now? The main culprit says: “It’s in my

closet, next to a golden CR7 track jacket.

You want it back for a school reunion?”

We had published two issues back to back in 1997, and they were well received. People felt

safe in sending us advance orders for the next one, taking wild guesses at the price. This is

the standard covering letter we sent along with the copies of Isten 100 in March 1999 plus

personal correspondence to Dominique Poulain.

674 Don’t Break the Ghost


Just another teaser. Damhair sent us sketches of the photo ideas that he was working on. Or, as he

says, “They weren’t sketches, more like renditions of photos in the making, as I was too paranoid in my

idleness to shift any material before I had managed to develop and print adequate 18-by-24 photographs

in my makeshift darkroom.”

675 Heavy Message


This is me talking about the situation with our ephemeral contributor Kristian Piililä but also about

the confusion behind the issue. (An excerpt from my letter to Dominique Poulain on February 11,

1999. The underlinings are all his, by the way.)

Metalion analyzes Isten in his

interview answer—most of which

was omitted from the article.

676 Don’t Break the Ghost


Sayeth Damhair:

Toys from the attic: the screenprinting

mesh used for the

vest on the cover shots.

677 Heavy Message


This painfully apt drawing of Mattila’s letterbox adorned

the envelope that contained the final piece in the puzzle, the

completed version of The Scene. We had discussed the game

with Damhair via email for months, but the teasers you see

on this spread and the previous page was all we had in early

1999—far from finished, but enough to convince us that Isten

100 wouldn’t be complete without it. Otherwise, the issue was

in the can.

During the wait, in February, I wrote to Dominique Poulain,

“Isten 100 (…) It seems like I have nothing to do with the whole

thing—haven’t heard from Damhair in what seems like ages (but

it’s only days, I guess) and I also gave the originals to Janne so

that I wouldn’t destroy them in a whim of rage and frustration.”

678 Don’t Break the Ghost


(Background:) Janne’s original draft for the map of the boardgame.

Isten is as Isten does.

We had the band photos

screened professionally

as usual, then decided

against it and Xeroxed

them all time and again

until they were stampsized

and the objects were

beyond recognition. Time

and money well spent!

(This is Lars Nissen’s

photo for the “XXX

Private Show” article. Mr

Nissen made me promise

to return the pic—erm

Lars, what’s your address

again?)

The triumvirate of Damhair, Sarna and Mattila

discussed the details of The Scene by email.

679 Heavy Message


It’s THE END

The Isten 100 Experience

Mikko, Isten 100 is intense, relentless, merciless. You’re either with it or against

it, yet it cries for you to take an independent, personal stance. Actually, the whole

thing came out so forceful, virulent, unremitting that I think some of the material

is a bit superfluous, in the overkill category. I don’t feel like comparing that one

to Mädchen, Twin Sister or Dark Lord. That would be most irrelevant. For to me,

Isten 100 is THE END. It doesn’t mean it’s finished, but screaming for a new life,

a rebirth that it doesn’t even hint at. Isten 100 is about death. I think that most

everybody will hate you for putting out such an iconoclastic work. There’s no

turning back from what you’ve done, and there’s no foundation for the future

either. Just the stuff of dreams to weave with.

I’m at pains to imagine a more heartfelt token of love of metal than this rag. It has

that very strange way of being arrogant without ever coming across as an ego

trip or anything on its editors’ behalf. Oh, and maybe you’re not aware of that,

but that’s true journalism, too, as in those long-gone days when that word, that

profession, meant fighting for Truth and Ideal. Every pen-pusher should read Isten

and choke on his birth warrant.

Mikko: Well, thank you for your words, but personally I expect little more than

a zombie-like non-reaction. So far it’s been something along the lines of "You’ve

got some really good points about the ‘scene metal’. It’s silly – people who hardly

can play any instruments starts up a band and think they’re a gift to the scene.

We’ll have our debut full-length album out now during June I hope – now we at

least have real drums. I’ll send you a copy when it’s out!". Like, ah sure, keep ‘em

coming...

Sure, I guess it was all predictable. You’re here, you and Janne, being old

underground fellows, coming up with issue 100, and I guess people think you’re

entitled to voicing your frustration. You’ve been there for so long, so when you

speak people don’t listen but they stop talking, and after that they can go back

once more to their talking. Nothing ever happened, right? People are so fucked

that they can’t get it. The typical reaction would be to peruse the rag, to let it fall

on some (carefully selected) out-of-reach corner of your bedroom, and to go:

“Damn, this Mikko guy, must be really pissed off. Well, I kinda understand. Metal

ain’t that healthy these days.” Or, “Well, they go too far, but well, they’re in this

since ‘84, must be kinda jaded old men.”

Seems like everybody has a great time being dead frozen in their own fossilized

excrements. Their only experience of anger is a mild temper-tantrum when

something derails off the tracks of their habits. It’s not that they don’t give a fuck,

it’s that they can’t give a fuck anymore. And doom is that, and death is this, and

let’s drink a beer at the corner bar and talk about it. “Oh yeah, there’s a problem in

metal, I think that... we should... bands nowadays... back then… I know him, he’s

true.. and did you listen to the last ...And Oceans/Dimmu Borgir/Lacuna Coil/

Immortal? My, that’s what I’d call a bomb!”

Oh yeah, let’s wallow again and again in the same normativized opinions, the

same worn out clichés, the same prejudices. No more years of the hungry wolf,

metal today is a petty bourgeois rotary club, and the music’s the wallpaper. After

all, people need an excuse to get together, don’t they? They need an identity, a

sense of purpose, of belonging. So throw in pseudo-culture, Nazi Renaissance and

ignorant, pretentious open-mindedness, too. Quite quickly you should have a nice

feeling of there being a white man’s elite. As in social sciences, the scene lives its

“post” days. Post-guts. Post-glory. Post-metal. Genuine spuriousness. The end of

the world is not a white hot maze, it’s people everywhere being so damned happy

with their meaninglessness. Everything’s equal, anything goes.

Your point with issue 100 is as good as anyone else’s, free speech for the deaf. No

wonder they tolerate Nazis or whatever. They can basically tolerate everything,

and when they try to pretend the opposite, they’ll come up with worn out

arguments and no spunk. What they don’t get is that metal’s no stable perspective,

no reassuring grind. Metal is cutting one’s own veins, laughing like a madman

when you discover what is god for the godless. It’s being alone with one’s fears

and pain, and still living on. No god, no master, no friend, no lover. No self, either.

Dominique Poulain

Spring 1999

—Damhair

Says Kola: “Actually Damhair visited me in Sweden where I’ve been living since 1999

several times and I have a very charming and moving anecdote about him which I won’t

share with you as he probably won’t appreciate it. You’ll have to buy me an ale to hear

that one. But he’s a great guy, very talented.” (Right: Kola’s thank-you card to Damhair for

something.)

680 Don’t Break the Ghost


Isten 100 is a well written and beautifully designed zine. That said, I think you are

all a bunch of jackasses, with the possible exception of Kristian. Your anti-scene is

a scene of its own, and it is more ridiculous than any real scene.

There was NEVER a time when every release was a gem. You must be forgetting

all the awful crap that came out in the 80s. The market was flooded then like it is

now, and for every release that became a classic there were a dozen that sucked

then, suck now, and will forever suck.

Many classic albums were born of a scene. Many excellent bands released records

only with the support of other like minded people.

Trendy, come-and-go metal fans are not only inevitable, they are vital to metal's

health. For every true metalhead who bought Endless Pain, In the Sign of Evil, Kill

'Em All, Iron Maiden, or Show No Mercy, there was a fly by night idiot who bought

it, and made it possible for these bands to ultimately release Pleasure to Kill,

Persecution Mania, Master of Puppets, Powerslave, and Reign in Blood. Record

sales DO matter, because if only the true fans bought those records, many of the

great bands that followed never would have happened.

I don't care what you support. I don't care what albums you buy and don't buy.

Just get the fuck off your high horse. One man's classic is another man's cutout,

and your opinions are not the catechism of metal. Two classic albums out of a

thousand releases in a year is better than one classic release out of a field of only

a hundred releases. If you ARE a true metalhead, you'll find both, no matter how

fucking awful the other 998 are.

Get your heads out of your asses.

Matt Johnsen

August 1999

I suppose I was quietly let go after Isten 100 for not

blindly praising it to the skies. I wasn’t happy with my

crappy handwritten notes being published without my

consent. Though I suppose I only have myself to blame

for not bearing in mind samurai Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s

admonition that all letters should be good enough to

hang on the wall. Grandma Azagthoth’s “you knows”

probably should have been limited by an editor wiser

than me. On the other hand I was at pains to convey how

Grandma Azagthoth actually talks, which I don’t think

any interview before or after has managed (I suspect that

most are invented by journalists incapable of coping with

the recorded material).

“I also feel that “Tolkien Heads”, a definitive article that

really needed to be written, published and spread as far

and wide as possible, could have been handled better

(larger, clearer images, for example). I was disappointed

with the result at the time, but recognize Isten 100’s

sheer bloody genius today and am immensely proud to

have been a part of it and Isten as a whole. I think it was

the right time to be let go, too; it was 1999, and time to

move on.

—Kola Krauze

681 Heavy Message


Editor’s confessions. From yet another letter of mine to Dominique Poulain (dated November 2, 1999).

It goes without saying that it’s a narrow path for a

metal explorer to spend 15 years in the underground

and crave anything that’s new and more aggressive.

Right after Isten 100, I decidedly took a new a direction

with my expedition in metal. Instead of settling with

what was served, freshly squeezed, with sales points

on the side, by someone who wanted an immediate

reaction from me, I chose to dig ever deeper in the

dusty bins of second-hand shops, checking out

anything and everything I had missed during the past

decades.

Digging up misunderstood, forgotten, and most

obscure stuff certainly was rejuvenating. Then again,

writing about these bands was a no-no for number of

reasons. In most cases they were long disbanded, but

more importantly, Isten is not a museum.

Having your mind blown by for example

Resistencia’s Hecho en Venezuela or Arkangel’s

Rock Nacional nearly two decades after their release

is nothing short of a revelation. In comparison, the

proposition of reviewing the debut album of a new

Göteborg sensation—it’s like 40 days and 40 nights in

the wilderness. I’d rather stay home.

—Janne Sarna

Isengrim: the line-up of Isten 100

included new kid Kristian Piililä of

Isengrim Fanzine. He was a bit of

a fly-by-night—a young guy whose

style and attitude I liked, but he

only contributed a couple of short

pieces and we lost touch soon

afterwards. Before Isten 100, he

interviewed me for his issue #2.

682 Don’t Break the Ghost

Janne (left) and I in Kuopio in

September 2000 to see Sabbat for the

second time (after Turku the previous

night). I wrote to Dominique Poulain

on 21 September: “I was looking at

the crowd in both Turku and Kuopio,

and there was not a single soul in sight

that I could possibly think of writing

to. The writing-to-myself-and-myselfalone

aspect is very real in my case. I

actually said to my girl, “One of the

reasons why Isten has lived on is that I

never really used to go to these things,

only once in a blue moon.” But at this

point I don’t seem to have much of an

incentive to write for myself, or publish

for myself, rather. So where does this

leave us? Right now, I tend to agree

with Janne’s statement “I feel I’m much

more valuable for metal as a fan than

as someone on a production line.”


Arrogance in Uniform, the back cover of Isten 100. Photo by Damhair.

Pelican Brief: Janne’s email to Damhair concerning the cover photographs.

(Transl.) “Front cover = perfect. Period. The other pic doesn’t work in full size on

the back cover. One option would be to use it in a much smaller size on the back,

to do justice to the front cover and to separate it from Mädchen/Twin Sister.”

683 Heavy Message


An ex-girlfriend once asked me to do a short list of some

of my favorite pieces of literature, and I had Isten 100

there, right next to the Book of Job. She asked me about

it, and I told her that it’s pretty much the same story

told with different characters: metal as Job and the Isten

posse playing YHVH. But the big difference is that I

told her to skip the Elihu part in Job because it disturbs

the flow, while Isten 100 was pure excitement from the

beginning to the end.

—Harri Talvenmäki, Jumalhämärä

Oh, it’s still a very entertaining read and hasn’t aged at all

in any sense. The Nineties were, for a large part, a fucking

travesty when it comes to Metal. If you were into Metal

in the Eighties, then the Nineties must have appeared

like a joke.

—Ronald, Horrible Eyes zine

I am not sure if Isten 100 was a dead end of a kind. I recall

it was initially nearly too heavy to take but obviously

it has views that the authors just had to express. The

acerbic criticism of the reigning mentality was quite

unheard-of and cut deep.

This was something other than the usual scene

divergence every few years—death metal vs. speed

metal, black metal vs. death metal, etc. Sceneism has

been witnessed since the dawn of history, but the

manifestation represented in Isten 100 came specifically

from the me(n)tal climate of the mid-to-late Nineties. It

does not require a high-level abstraction to look around

a bit and see the relevance of it.

—Tommi Keränen, Testicle Hazard, Keränen et al

My ol’ Relic Shelf on its last legs. In early

2000 my girlfriend moved in with me and

I had to make room for her stuff. Good

riddance to the shelf, but I still miss some of

the stickers!

I think the words of 100 are more valid today than ever.

“Bands still need labels to get their name out there,” it

was said in one of the articles in 100. Unlike many labels,

Isten has well survived the turmoil of the Noughties’

music industry (file sharing etc.). That’s why I put Isten

right next to the very best classic albums in metal.

—Antti Korpinen, The Serpent Bearer zine

When looking through Isten 100, it still strikes me how

strong the layout is. The illustrations and the great

striking photography they used match perfectly with the

text. Although the cover is “back to where it all started”,

at the same time it was so damn original. I remember

being blown away by it! And of course, seeing our logo

used this way… magic!

—Wannes Gubbels, Pentacle

For me, Isten 100 is the pinnacle of Isten and one of the

greatest achievements in music journalism in general.

Everything that was right in Isten and wrong in the metal

scene just clicked together in that zine. The subject and

the object became one in a blinding flash of arrogance,

humour, ingenuity and pure vision. All of these qualities

were more or less visible in the earlier issues as well, but

100 was just pure yoga.

—Tommi Lind, Jumalhämärä

Mädchen, Twin Sister and Isten 100 stand above all else

when it comes to zine layout. They not only read like a

mad, informed, passionate manifesto, but they look the

part too.

—Jeff Wagner, author of Mean Deviation

684 Don’t Break the Ghost


METAL: Professor Black's

fanzine (Episode One:

Diamonds and Rust, the July

2000 issue, pictured here).

Says Jeff Wagner, “Anything

I did with Professor Black

for the METAL publication

had more of an Isten vibe

to it than anything else I’d

participated in. We were

definitely not trying to be

Isten, but I think there was

some inspiration from Isten in

that publication.”

“The demos were better.” I feel Isten’s path followed

the steps of Pestilence: at the beginning they were

promising, then they made some excellent classics

before becoming overly pretentious, and that’s when I

lost interest.

—Nalle Österman, Rumba magazine, Gandalf

Isten 100 was a bitter pill to swallow. Paradoxically

too heroic and too negative, it wasn’t for anyone

who strongly believed in the future of music. I didn’t

understand why the scene, the unworthiest of things

to think about, deserved such a monochromatic hate

jeremiad.

—Mikko Kuronen, Qvadrivivm zine

I received my copy of Isten 100 for free, essentially

Mikko’s response to my asking whether he’d like to

contribute to my new fanzine. (Laugh all you want! I

got this book for free too!) It arrived on the eve of my

university graduation, a moment when I surely had more

questions than answers. My philosophies were far from

complete, my mind at its most open, its most fanatical,

perhaps. It was a time of destroying and creating many

things great and small, but Isten 100 was one of the few

things to come along and do that to me. It picked me up

by the heart and set me down somewhere new, and from

there I experienced heavy metal differently. Isten 100

erased any remaining sense of obligation to keep current

with new releases and shut off any sympathy I had for

mediocrity. It burned away the clutter, clearing a path for

the better, lasting things to thrive, and for these reasons

it remains as prominent an influence as any of my musical

heroes.

—Professor Black

I quoted fairly extensively from Isten 100’s critique of

“scene metal”—metal that exists purely to serve the

scene, without anything original behind it. I argued

that this was an example of the display of “transgressive

subcultural capital” which is a kind of “currency”

claimed by metallers through emphasizing individuality,

eliteness and rejecting the mundanity of scenes. This is

in contrast to “mundane subcultural capital” which is

equally strong in metal culture and is “earned” through

precisely the kind of scene metal that Isten 100 attacks.

I read Isten 100 at an important time during my PhD

(which forms the basis of my book that came out a few

years later), when I was trying to think through what is

this thing called a “scene”. I loved the savagery of Isten

100’s critique and it made me think hard about the kind

of relentless overproduction that has characterized

metal in the Nineties and beyond.

—Keith Kahn-Harris, author of Extreme Metal

Isten 100 reached me right when I was reducing my

collection by half—more or less overnight—another

half of the remaining half going out the window soon

afterwards. The underground was by the late Nineties

a swamp where mediocrity was happily encouraged

and everybody and their mothers were releasing

unique masterpieces of mediocrity. It’s not a matter of

individual releases or bands, but Isten 100 focused on

the problem in a way I didn’t see any other zine do at

that time. I don’t quite even understand how one might

even have survived from then on without in some sense

agreeing with the main ideas of that issue.

There’s probably plenty of mediocrity out now too.

But I wouldn’t know, because starting from back then,

I started to see everything like layers of sediment,

and casually, automatically, started to ignore the

uppermost levels of earth, those turned by fresh winds

and promotion agencies and mags with full-colour

covers. I felt like a radio that only recognizes the lowest

frequencies, those sent out from graves below a certain

depth. Haven’t looked back in anger since then, because

by now I wouldn’t even remember any other frequencies

exist than those with a distinct buzz of soil! We have

become incorrigible walking graves. Hear us roar as the

wind blows through our skulls.

—Timo Ketola, Dauthus zine

685 Heavy Message


Between April 1999 and January 2006 Isten-in-print was on hold, on ice, under lock and key. You get the picture (by Damhair, 1998).

686 Don’t Break the Ghost


Grave New World

Death to Publishing

Isten 100 was semiofficially subtitled deathcheck.exe,

and in a way that’s exactly what it was. We wanted to

make double sure not to go though the motions ever

again with another instalment to the Isten saga. From

summer 1999 onwards, I had access to all the DTP

software that I could think of, working nine-to-five

with it, and I had connections to quite a few print

shops, so I could’ve easily gotten the zine printed at

a considerably lower rate than before. After some 15

years of cumbersome, maddening hassle, the layout

game was suddenly made “easy”. Ease, it turned out,

was interference par excellence. On top of that, in

late 1999 I met a girl, we moved in together, and got

engaged a year later. My life was suddenly very different

from the most stiff-necked underground years.

As a last will and testament, Isten 100 quite possibly

finishes on a wrong note, waging war against the

scene out there and the scene within; well, all scenes

everywhere really. After all, heavy metal, as Dominique

Poulain puts it, explodes in all directions. It’s the

Russian roulette of the Gods, and as such, it deserves a

more glorious eulogy.

Janne and I made dozens of attempts at laying out our

interviews with Entombed and Chris Reifert in the

early 2000s, only to realize that the spark was gone.

It didn’t feel right. We wanted to capture the spirit of

our old favourite, the Finnish hardcore/punk/metal/

shamanism fanzine Deggial, but lacked the means,

the focus and the vision to make it happen. The low

point was that we ended up using the Finnish family

periodical Kummit for reference—three columns with a

very clinical approach and about as far from Deggial as

you can possibly get!

xxx

The Isten website had existed on and off since early

1996. The approach was whimsical to say the least,

with designs ranging from a single straw against a

white background to more evil versions with Third

687 Grave New World


determined to go into the exact opposite direction.

And this went on for years.”

Reich eagles and so on. In the Nineties, it was mostly a

marketing tool, a digital flyer.

After Isten 100, After Isten 100, Damhair volunteered

what he calls his “DIY-cowboy-winging-it” web design

skills, and suddenly it made sense to put some real

content into the ever-growing bitstream. When Isten’s

Internet folly was at its maximum, we shot forth several

previously unpublished interviews, articles, and

reviews into the ether. Many of these are to be found

on the following pages.

As Janne describes the goings-on of this era: “During

these sabbatical years, we were doing print or web,

or both, depending on… I don’t know, air humidity or

vinyl speed or something else. We could have, like, two

interviews and be building two separate issues around

them. Or alternatively three different website designs

for only a couple of reviews. The concepts had gotten

out of hand. In fact, the concepts had taken over—they

were our main product at the time.

“We were like two windmills in perfect synchronicity

creating winds all of their own. Longwinded

discussions led to absolute determination to go into

one direction. After a fortnight, we started to feel more

The thought pattern in a very simplified form ran as

follows:

- Wow, we have this many visitors to the website

(47,187 hits from September 2004 to May 2005).

- Plenty of readers at a much cheaper rate.

- No printing costs, or insane postage rates…

- No licking of stamps!

- Come on, we still have copies of the previous issue to

be sold!

- Finishing a new one will take ages, whereas on the

web…

- We can just add new material as soon as it’s written.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- But the Internet is NOTHING.

- Print is something tangible, it’s for real.

- Reading zines by candlelight, or on the throne…

That’s the only way to go.

- The Internet is made for cheap shots, quickies, short

attention spans.

- Printed fanzines are priceless time capsules.

- It’s what we’ve always been and stood for. In print we

trust.

- But… we have this many visitors to the website…

The catchily titled Isten’s Guide to 20th Century

Finnish Hard Rock and Heavy Metal (or, the Guide)

materialized on the web in 2001. The Guide is Janne’s

baby, and he says that in the Isten system, it’s the

appendix—as long as it’s not infected, there’s no need

to operate. As he explains, “Setting a goal and striving

for it through hell and high water has never been my

game. Instead I tend to busy myself with various things

that I find interesting and sometimes things get out

of hand resulting in unforeseeable goals. The Guide is

one of these things. It was never intended to become

anything—it just happened.”

Back in the mid-Nineties Janne had started putting

together a list of Finnish hard rock and metal vinyl for

688 Don’t Break the Ghost


his personal use only. For years, he had it saved only on

a single 3.5” floppy disk.

Fast-forward to 2000, well after Isten 100. “I think we

had a new web layout or something,” Janne reminisces.

“Mikko was full of energy, writing reviews and stuff for

the web. In theory I was on board, but in reality I was

in abeyance when it came to writing. Frustrated at my

incapability to put anything on the table, I remember

uttering something like, ‘Well, I have this old list. It’s

not 100% complete but with a little work it might be

decent Internet landfill.’ I didn’t expect Mikko to

actually give an arse about the whole thing, but he did.

My estimation of ‘a little work’ turned out to be two

months of nocturnal writing sessions. But at least it

was more feasible than reviewing new stuff.”

Iron Pages of Germany was interested in publishing

The Guide in book form. Our reply to Otger of

Iron Pages ran as follows: “With reservations, we’re

interested. (…) We could offer you something quite

unlike the Swedish bible (much smaller in size, for

one thing), or any other Metal encyclopaedia, for that

matter. We’d be adamant about branching out into

interviews, focusing on key bands, with a perspective

of our own. Not trying to be objective, not going any

further than the year 2000. We’d also jealously guard

our independence and artistic freedom, with tantrums,

laziness, and general fuckwittedness thrown in.”

Otger wrote back saying the approach would need to

be complete, from the beginning to the present day. He

never heard back from us again.

In 2003 we started questionnairraiding people,

musicians and fans alike, with our heavy metal

questionnaire. What would they include among

the seven wonders of metal? What is their greatest

weakness as a metalhead? It was not about empty

chit-chat or one-upmanship, it was about fanaticism,

and, in this light, even matrix etchings on vinyl or the

non-existing debut issues of Polish fanzines can be

significant.

In February 2004, Professor Black joined the team,

writing his own blurb: “Professor Black has been

dragged out of retirement. Too volatile (or was it

‘incomprehensible and libelous’?) for Metal Maniacs,

and too fragile for his own largely-unread publications,

Professor Black’s affinity for ambiguity and proclivity

for paradox make him a curious addition to our pack of

lone wolves.”

Around the summer of 2005 we deleted all our online

interviews and reviews for good.

The following pages 690—701 were laid out for Isten 101 which was

never finished. The interviews with Chris Reifert and Jörgen Sandström

were then published on the Isten website instead.

The pages 702—715 contain material previously published on the Isten

website circa 2001-2006.

689 Grave New World


ISTEN 101

Interview and

photography by Joakim Westerlund,

February 2002.

Questions by Mikko Mattila,

Dominique Poulain and Janne Sarna 2002.

Chris Reifert? Backstage at the Royal

Opera House in Stockholm? Surely not?

But it’s true. The good old Autopsy

sicko visited his chums in the capital of

Sweden and eyeballed Unrealestate, the

opera production featuring Entombed,

and what do you know, a messenger

of Isten is there to throw a bunch of

metaltastic questions at him after the

show. Also present is Mary Ciullo of

defunct NY thrashers Prime Evil. What

ensued was a rare occurrence of the

expected.

Chris Reifert at the Royal Opera,

Stockholm, Sweden 2002.

690 Don’t Break the Ghost


AUTOPSY

So have you had a hella load of people ask

you questions about Chuck Schuldiner lately?

How’s it feel?

Chris Reifert: “Lately… a couple of people, like

old friends and stuff, but not too many. It makes me

feel like twisting my nipples in various directions.

But other than that… I feel pretty good. Not about…

well, you know. Anyway, seriously, if people wanna

ask about him that’s totally okay with me. And I stand

by that. About three people [have asked]. If you

consider three a lot then yeah. I heard from about

three people about death. Huh? Who? The Pope,

God, Satan, Jesus, Beelzebub… wait, that’s kinda

like Satan, me, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins talked to me

from the grave. He’s really a hell of a guy, I miss him.

A whole bunch. I really liked you know that song

he did everyone likes, that one, that’s a really good

song.”

Do you reckon it’s alright for me to feel like me

doing classic Autopsy on the air guitar in front of the

mirror is more essential and more cutting edge than

The Ravenous album?

C: “It really all depends on if you’re playing with a

beer can or a carrot-stick. Personally, I like to break

coffee pots over my foot. Without the coffee ‘cause

it would burn and it would leave scars and I’d really

like my feet to be sucked on. That’s just a side-note

for anyone that likes to suck on people like myself’s

feet. And there are a few of you out there, so you

know, look me up. Oh, I’m thinking about my foot now

Chris Reifert and Mary Ciullo doodling...

Peter Stjärnvind: “Are you saying that we do

Autopsy the way that Candlemass pays tribute to

Black Sabbath? Is that the question?”

Yeah, like they did on the From the 13th Sun album.

Have you heard it?

Peter Stjärnvind: “No… Yeah, I’ve heard it! The

thing with Murder Squad when we started out, we

didn’t try to actually sound like Autopsy, we tried to

capture the atmosphere and think like they did when

we write songs.”

C: “Does it sound like what Candlemass did to

Sabbath? Sure. I can’t really say it ‘cause I haven’t

How do you feel about getting these questions

about Chuck since it’s such a long time since you

played with him?

C: “I have no say in it, do I? I just get hit with these

questions like spit balls from a foreign straw. I just

roll with it like a haystack in a fucking typhoon.”

Mary Ciullo: “That can happen here tonight,

‘cause we’re in a foreign place. Any straw here is

foreign.”

C: “Well, typhoons can happen anywhere.”

M: “Isn’t that the sort of thing that never happens

in the northern hemisphere?”

C: “Details, details, unnecessary details. So, in

other words, I feel pretty good.”

What do you think about death metal, um, no,

what do you think death metal means to people

these days?

C: “Excellent show [referring to Unrealestate].

That’s how I think about death metal. Entombed was

really good. There’s a few good death metal bands, a

whole lot of shit ones but someone’s gotta do it, so…

At long as the heart’s into it, you know, that’s what

counts.”

Well, I didn’t get to finish the question... ‘Cause

back in the day death metal, it was the flesh as well

as the bones, it was you people with your specific

backgrounds and aspirations…

C: “You said ‘ass’!”

…there was a sense of drive and direction to it –

probably stemming from rock ‘n’ roll. Do you think it’s

stupid to try and start playing death metal right now,

at this point in time?

C: “It’s never stupid. It’s stupid if you try and play

it and you don’t mean it. Like a lot of bands now, they

say ‘I’m so hard and deathly’ and they’re playing

completely weak stuff, like copying something that’s

copying something that wished it was Bathory that

was copying something that wished it was Slayer.

Then you suck. But if you’re playing it, shall we say,

from your happy place, otherwise known as genitals,

then you’re in the place because that’s where it

comes from.”

and I’m getting really turned on. I have to leave for a

minute.”

M: “Man, when this gets published your phone is

never gonna stop ringing.”

C: “I know. It’s gonna be almost like it never starts

but it’s kinda like if you think about it too hard it never

stops. It’s all relative. It’s all nonsense but it really

makes a whole lot of sense. So yeah, I would say I’m

about two seventeenths erect right now. Take away

about a half a meter. Yeah.”

Do you find violence sexy? What about metal, is

metal sexy to you?

C: “Metal is very sexy, it’s the universal sexy

language. ‘Come here Tattoo, I must have you now!

Now and in many, various ways!’ For those of you

who don’t know who Tattoo is, you probably never

will ‘cause he’s dead. It’s very sad.”

Would you say that Murder Squad does to

Autopsy what Candlemass did to classic Sabbath

with From the 13th Sun?

C: “This is one for Peter. What do you say, Peter?

Peter steps in for one answer.”

heard that Candlemass. I haven’t heard it but I think

Murder Squad kicks ass.”

Do you think it’s like a tribute to your old band?

C: “It’s a tribute to death metal, anything else is for

them to say, but I think it’s top-notch death metal in

all seriousness. It definitely kicks ass.”

At this point things get a little out of hand. After

a while the interview continues and the question is

repeated.

C: “Okay, I need both hands for this. Okay,

Motörhead… visualize this if you will, I know this

is gonna be read, or maybe, we’ll see, this might

be erased by the time I’m done talking. But just

for the sake of sake, say Motörhead’s right here,

this is about three feet off the ground, right? Okay.

Backstreet Boys, they’re about… right here. Take

the time difference, take a bowl of oatmeal, no sugar

please, and it’s kinda like that.”

M: “For those of you not in the room, it’s about the

same.”

C: “Yeah. It’s total death all the way.”

691 Grave New World


ISTEN 101

Jörgen Sandström used to listen to Venom on the C: “No, it’s collective.”

headphones in his sleep. How do you keep yourself

brutal these days?

Do you think you have anything in common with

C: “How do I keep myself brutal? I would say at Lemmy? The Great Kat? Steve Harris?

least three manicures a day. At least, maybe well,

C: “Well, how many people? Lemmy, Great Kat

lunch, wait no, breakfast, mid-breakfast, mid-toearly

lunch, lunch, brunch, no wait, that’s going back that one night that no one said they would say

and Steve Harris? Well, there was that four-way

one, so take away two, strike that reverse. A couple anything about. Let’s just say that Great Kat is not as

of beers. Seven o’clock, nothing’s on TV, not a damn dominating as she’d like to say she is.”

thing, I’m so pissed.” … “Anyways, the secret to

Have you met her?

brutality, it’s kind of like a lotus when it’s fully spread C: “Well, ‘met’ is one word that you can use.

in the spring on top of the water right before it goes ‘Meat’ is another. [wicked laughter] If you know what

under and a frog eats it up. It’s a little bit like that but I mean.”

kind of a lot at the same time.”

Do you think you could possibly ever grow out of

Do you still have fun making music/records? Metal?

More or less fun than playing air guitar at home?

C: “Right now I’m just, I’m trying to think of all

C: “Ooh, I hadn’t thought about it that way. It’s these funny things to say… I would say, oh it’s going

tough. It’s tough. You can’t have one without the dirty again, I’ve got a dirty mind, I’m sorry I can’t

other can you? When you’re not playing death metal help it. I’m sorry Mary, I don’t mean to make you

you’ve got to be thinking death metal.”

uncomfortable. I was gonna go pubic but rather than

M: “Chris the prophet.”

that… what was the question?”

C: “Profit, all money, baby! All the time, you can Do you think you could ever grow out of Metal.

call me the dean of profit!”

C: “I dunno, I’m like old as the hills and the dirt

So you mean you’ve made a lot of money playing and the rocks and the the centerpiece and the

music?

spiders and the slime and the stewards and the

C: “Let me tell you, you know the amount of toilets and the closet doors, and it hasn’t happened

money I’ve made playing music you can fit in… Okay, yet. Tomorrow I think I’m probably gonna join

you take an elephant, you enlarge that by about Nickelback.”

500, you make a planet out of that, then you shrink it M: “I’m older than you are and I haven’t

down to about this bag, then you shrink that down to outgrown metal!”

about this label on this bag so I don’t lose it ‘cause C: “You haven’t joined Nickelback either! I know

it’s really not mine, I’m borrowing it.”

my way, I’ve got like an invitation like right here.”

Can metal be a collective experience?

Whom is your music intended for? For whom do

C: “What do you mean collective? [consulting you play?

Mary] I was really trying to think of something funny C: “For the spirit of Keith Moon. He was the best

to say and I’m drawing blanks here. So yes, yes it drummer in the world.”

can.”

M: “Amen.”

M: “It’s a blank experience.”

They sure love death metal at the opera!

Chris Reifert in the embrace of a Swedish admirer

C: “Yeah, he’s like the best. And I say that with

not only seriousness but seriousness. He’s like the

ultimate. So I think about Keith Moon when I play

drums. Except for when I’m not thinking about Keith

Moon, I think about the fact that I’m peace and love

amidst of all violence. It’s kinda like that. And I’m

fascinated with Ex-Girl from Japan, I’m like a little bit

obsessed so don’t worry about it too much. I don’t

know their addresses yet.”

I don’t know that band but…

C: “Oh they’re really good. Back to Mono Kero!”

That’s a new band or…?

C: “Weeell, not really but they’re really good. In a

special way.”

Would you mind being considered only as a

money-maker by your record company or is it

important for you that someone at the label actually

likes your music?

C: “Well, if someone at a label was looking at

making a whole bunch of money and they wanted

to sign us, I wouldn’t know what to fucking tell

‘em. Go pour us some damn cornflakes and forget

about it ‘cause it ain’t gonna happen. Unless you

think of some brilliant strategy to make people

realise that everything sucks except for whatever

it is we do. So it’s not in the equation, it’s just a

matter of who’s gonna understand what we play

and who’s not gonna expect you know fucking

neptune or something crazy like that out of it, ‘cause

it’s probably not gonna happen. But with the right

support who knows what could happen? We could

buy new shoes or something.”

M: “Hear hear!”

C: “Or pay our practise space rent or something

insane like that. Think big and you might get… big

big big.”

What makes heavy metal great to you?

C: “Well, that’s a deep question. You gotta just

like wanna go like eat sushi and then fuck for at

least 45 minutes, then eat some more sushi and

smoke a whole bunch of bong hits and fuck again

and get drunk, then pass out. Then wake up listening

to metal. You know, like something killer like…

something you could fuck to, like… What’s good

fuck music? I once fucked to G.G. Allin’s last album,

Brutality and Bloodshed for All, and it was so bizarre.

And the funny thing was – this is a true story, it was

like intermission and I put on you know Univers

Zero from Belgium, ever heard them? I put that on

and fucked some more. It was like such not fucking

music but that’s what made it fuckable, you just like

fucked and you weren’t thinking about fucking but

you were fucking. The next thing you know you’re

fucking some more. Then it’s over and you wanna

fuck again but then you put on Univers Zero, and

it’s like really good. They’re out of Belgium and it’s

really strange music but it’s fucking great. So it kind

of like touches you in your happy place. That’s a very

serious answer.”

692 Don’t Break the Ghost


AUTOPSY

Are there some things you don’t like in heavy

metal?

C: “Anything that’s lame. Which is most things

right now, like all that Linkin Park… wait that’s not

metal, what do they call it, nu metal… Who called it

that? I don’t know if the bands made that up or the

labels or the listening public but all that shit pisses

me off so much. I just wanna fucking kill all those

people, all that stuff, all those weakass fucking shits.

Okay, I’m getting pissed now so that’s your answer.

You hit a nerve.”

Ok, thanks.

M: “This is good, man…”

C: “Spontaneity!”

What is for you as a metal fan a musical

reference point, a band, a song or an album, and

why? Did you ever in your life as a musician try to

equal or surpass that reference point?

M: “Keith Moon?”

C: “That was later. It started off with Kiss,

and then really snowballed and avalanched and

trampolined from there. There’s no point, it’s just all

in the mind which is the only thing I have to go on

‘cause other than that I’d be lost and I’d probably

fucking suck on the end of gun or be a normal

person which I can’t be… I can’t even try. So it’s

like from the guts, that’s where it comes from, no

explanation. I could try and think of something funny

to say, or something logical perhaps, but either one

of those ain’t gonna happen…”

Just be honest.

M: “Kiss is your reference point…”

C: “Yeah, 1978 was when the fucking light bolt

struck over my head, I said ‘Okay, this is something I

can relate to’…”

M: “You were a boy, right?”

C: “This is like a third-grader talking here saying

‘Okay, this is what I wanna do’ and it really hasn’t

changed, I’m like the same.”

Do you think you as a musician have the

responsibility to uphold the metal heritage and

that to innovate? How do you think a balance can

be struck between the need to innovate and to

reproduce? Do you ever consciously think about it

when you make music?

C: “Can I go Johnny Cochran on ya? ‘You can

instigate, you can interrogate, you can flatulate, but

I like to masturbate, and then sometimes I like to

conjugate. Does that make sense? No! It does not

make sense. What am I saying? Does it make sense?

What’s it have to do with this interview? Nothin’.

Does that make sense? No. What would an eightfoot

tall wookie be doing on Endor with a two-foot

tall ewok? Nothin’. It does not make sense.”

Okay, thanks.

C: “That was all totally ripped off.”

Yeah, I know.

C: “I suck, I fucking slurred and shit. I’m sorry I’m

so embarrassed. I think I said a T instead of a D at

one point, I’m totally feeling like really small.”

Are you a big South Park fan?

C: “Yeah yeah yeah yeah, [singing] ‘Shut your

fucking face, unclefucker’…”

Don’t you think it’s gotten too commercial and…

C: “Nooo, you know because it’s like sicker

than ever. You know you always think ‘Aw, they’re

gonna mellow out’ and then you get the NAMBLA

episode or something, you just go, what the fuck, I

can’t believe I’m laughing at this but this is the best

thing I’ve ever seen. It’s like better every time. It

rules. You got like the ass-faced people, ‘We are

the Thompsons….’. It’s like the best. You seen that,

Mary?”

M: “No…”

C: “Ooh, it’s like the best. It’s so funny.”

What do you think is the cause of the current

sorry state of metal. Lack of focus, lack of dedication,

lack of perspective or lack of respect?

C: “Do you want a real answer or a bullshit one?”

Both?

C: “[burps] Okay, this is both: it’s just basically

it’s like a fucking trend. Sad to say but metal, this

that and the other thing, people like it for a certain

amount of time, then they get tired of it. But some

people like it all the time. So, at certain times

everyone loves it for some reason, they go ‘This is

the thing’, and then it’s like, ‘Oh, metal’s big’. Then all

of a sudden you know the other people that liked it

for a minute get tired of it and they go on to fucking

Linkin Park or some fucking bullshit like that. You

know it’s like a fucking wave, it goes up and down,

up and down. Rarely up, but that’s okay because

it’s not mainstream, never was, never will be. You

don’t play it because you’re gonna make a bunch of

money or be on TV or something. It’s more like ‘This

is what I have to do, otherwise I’m gonna kill myself’.

That’s pretty much it, you know, it’s sad to say but

it’s true. What else would I do besides be dead? I’m

sorry that’s not a bullshit answer, that’s actually the

true one, so enjoy it ‘cause that’s probably gonna be

the only one tonight.”

Do you find it alarming that the younger metal

generations don’t really no personal contact with the

source material. It’s like when a relay team leaves

with a huge baton as big as a log. After a while,

younger members get bored with dragging the damn

thing and settle for a toothpick instead. It’s made of

the same wood, what’s the problem?

C: “That’s a cool question, but you know what the

funny thing is about all that is? Like, you ask anybody

from this time to that, like, who played bass in the

band, who wrote that song, who sang that song, who

did that record. You ask anybody now like, ‘Oh, who’s

the bass player for Blank band’, they go, ‘I don’t

know, I just know that hit song, and they’re calling it

metal’. You ask me about any fucking band from like

the mid-Sixties until now, I can probably tell you who

every member of the band was, every song they did,

what order the song was in on what record, what

Unrealstate poster and promotional photos

693 Grave New World


ISTEN 101

year it came out, the label it was on, you know? It’s

like, you fucking live it or you can just go fuck off.”

That’s true.

M: “Dude, that’s beautiful!”

C: “Yeah, isn’t it right, though?”

M: “It’s beautiful!”

Are there any moments in particular when you’ve

felt like the metal that means the world to you was

being sold wholesale? Have you ever felt betrayed

by a fave band, on what occasion?

C: “No specific occasions but it’s happened a lot

of times, you look up to some bands and you think

they’re the greatest thing ever and you meet them

and go, ‘What a fucking wanker! That person’s so

fucking full of himself’ or something like that but it

doesn’t fucking matter, you know it’s like, whatever. If

someone’s… I’m trying to make a lot of sense in this

interview and I don’t like it! (laughs) Let me quote

the late Paul Baloff, ‘Eyeballs flying past your face!’

(laughs) ‘I’ll teach you a lesson in violence you won’t

soon forget’… That’s so disrespectful, isn’t it? Ain’t

that awful?”

Yeah.

C: “Yeah. Fuck, I don’t know, man.”

What about if a band change their musical

direction, do you feel like they’ve betrayed you in a

way?

C: “Nay, not always. I mean if, okay, if some band

was like the most undergrand… underground (grand,

whatever) band in the world and all of a sudden their

lext… next record was like, and I’m starting to get

fucked up here, you can tell by the way. Their next

record was like the biggest seller in the world, but

if they still stay true to themselves, even though

there was a change in music but they meant it, and it

wasn’t to please anybody, then I’m like, three twirling

thumbs up, that’s okay. I have no problem with that.

But if they, you know, do something different just

to sell and they don’t really like what they’re doing,

then they can suck my dick. But I probably wouldn’t

let ‘em. Depends on who it was. That has nothing to

do with this question. If you play what you mean, it’s

okay no matter what label you’re on. If you suck, you

suck. You can be on a small label and still suck. You

can be on a big label and still suck, and then go on

to suck from there and still suck, and you can never

be good again ‘cause there’s no turning back. After

a certain point there’s no forgiveness. Unless you do

something really good, but it probably won’t happen,

so forget it.”

What do you think about a band like Entombed

who try to progress from album to album, and try

different styles?

C: “I would just say I never thought tonight would

happen. And tonight referring to ballet and opera

mixed with Entombed. Kinda similar things have

been done, like say, Therion working with orchestras

or even Metallica with an orchestra which…

Metallica sucks ass.”

M: “Deep Purple…”

C: “I didn’t know about that. But anyway, let’s get

back to Metallica totally sucking stinky unwashed

ass, which they have for a long time, but, it’s not the

progression that sucks. If it’s something that works,

like Entombed with Unrealestate, for some reason

it worked because anyone involved with it had the

chance to back out and most of them didn’t, they

liked what they were doing and it’s a really bizarre

thing. I thought I was in fucking Oz a few times but it

really worked. You know, progression’s cool as long

as it’s, again, from the heart. If it sucks it sucks, you

can only work things in so many ways.”

What is the metal lifestyle, if such a thing exists

for you?

C: “There is no such thing.”

Do you think metal is a state of mind?

C: “Metal is music. You can do whatever you

want in your life, you know, whether you like pet

puppies or fucking build snowmen or fucking like

collect toenails. If you play metal you’re fucking

metal.”

In the Autopsy vinyls you had some funny matrix

texts carved next to the label… Do you remember

what those were all about?

C: “Oh, those were all inside jokes, you know,

like… just little things like… I’m going sexual again,

folks, I can’t help it. Like here in Sweden, you know,

just today or yesterday I saw a sign in a window

that said ‘Slut spurt’. And I thought that was the best

thing, ‘Oh yeah, spurt on sluts! Yeah yeah! Spurt

on sluts!’ and I told Peter [Stjärnvind] who was

driving me around, ‘What the fuck are you talking

about?’ and okay, I had that explained, like, ‘slut’ is

like ‘slut’. ‘Slut’ is like ‘slut’, ‘spurt’ is like, you know,

‘spurt’, not like ‘spurt’ – spurt on sluts. He hasn’t let

me fucking forget that for like ten minutes since we

came across that! So it’s little things like that, just

jokes you come up with that might mean nothing

to somebody else but it makes you just about piss

yourself. Sometimes you get it, most of the time

you don’t…” [In other words, ladeezungennelmen,

‘slutspurt’ is Swedish for ‘final sprint’, in this case as

in a climax of a sale or whatever – Ed.]

Were you inspired by other bands that had done

it (not spurted on sluts but carved those silly little

messages in the vinyl) or why did you pick it up?

C: “No, I don’t know why we started doing that,

just to be funny or something. Or to be lame. We

Whole lotta love!

didn’t care.”

M: “So it’s a secret for the ages…”

C: “Yeah, it’s just the way it is what it is. I can say

that about any answer: it is what it is. I feel so wise.”

You’re in Sweden now to record some material

with Murder Squad. Who came up with that idea?

C: “It was Peter. I met those guys in Milwaukee,

what, two years ago? It wasn’t last year ‘cause last

year was totally weak. They didn’t get any good

bands. Well, there was a couple. But the year before

that, ninety- 2000? 2000! Going back in history… I’d

already known some of them from earlier times.

Knew them guys from before and then got in touch

with Peter real close in Milwaukee. He didn’t say

anything about Murder Squad at the time, he was

just doing Entombed. Later they did a Murder Squad

record and I thought it was really good. And then not

too long ago they said ‘Hey we’re gonna do another

Murder Squad, do you wanna come out and do some

things on it? We’ll take you to Sweden’, of course

immediately I said ‘No that sounds horrible!’ but

then I thought about it for like half a second and said

‘Okay, let’s do it’ and here we are.”

Have you written any material for them?

694 Don’t Break the Ghost


AUTOPSY

C: “One song. Just one. They were doing good

on their own, man, they’ve come up with some good

shit.”

M: “They’re gonna use it?”

C: “Yeah, I allowed Matti the singer to come

up with a title for it. All their songs are really good,

just the way you’d fucking expect, you know if you

know about any of the bands they’ve been in. It’s just

fucking death metal, but there’s more tempos this

time, there’s like some more blast, some more just

ultra-doom, a little bit of polka, a little bit of salsa, a

little bit of waltz, but besides that just fucking, you

know, keeping it sick, keeping it real for the peeps.”

You’re doing a full-length album?

C: “Yeah. I’m only doing a couple things, mind

you, it’s their thing, but I’m gonna sit in on some stuff.

What’s that? Mary’s raising her hand very high in

the air.”

M: “In what capacity are you contributing to the

record?”

C: “I’m gonna drum on three songs, it looks like.

I’m gonna play rhythm guitar on one song, I’m gonna

play I think one or two solos on guitar and then if

they want to have me sing some things, I’ll do it.

Legend has it, word on the street is that I’m gonna do

a couple of things. Just like, if they say, ‘Bust out that

kazoo and bust out that banjo’, I’m gonna fucking do

my damnedest.”

M: “You brought them with you, right?”

C: “No, I’m spontaneity. Erm, I am spontaneity!”

M: “Alright, so you’re gonna have to go out

and borrow a banjo and a kazoo if they ask you to

contribute?”

C: “I’m gonna bust one out of the air, baby, I’ll be

like the Fonz!”

Heard anything about the vinyl versions? Like,

doing anything on vinyl?

C: “Murder Squad?”

Yeah.

C: “I don’t know. I hope so. Nothing sexier than a

vinyl set of pants that just cuts off the circulation like

a grasshopper in a rainstorm!”

I’ve noticed you always have Frank Zappa on

your thanks list. Is that for any particular reason?

C: “Just because we like Frank. I actually met

someone tonight that played with Frank right before

he died. He played drums with him.”

A Swedish guy?

C: “Yeah!”

Yes, I’ve heard of them but can’t remember their

names…

C: “Yeah, Frank Zappa rules, man! I brought

Joe’s Garage with me for the trip to listen to on the

headphones.”

That’s a good album.

C: “Any Zappa is good. I’ve got about 70, maybe

more, albums from him. There’s still about 20 I don’t

have but still, you know…”

That’s a big collection.

C: “I love Frank. I’ve listened to him since high

school.”

I just got a recording from the Czech Republic

from a friend there, when they brought down the

Iron Curtain they had a concert as a tribute of ending

the communist era…

C: “Zappa’s Universe? It’s not that was it?”

No, he was featured with a jazz artist on one

track on that album, I just got a recording of that. A

live recording. A reggae kind of song.

M: “You need that!”

He does a really nice speech before the song

and really get the whole crowd with him. A coupla

hundred thousand people there, live in Prague in ’91

I think. Anyway, that’s not for the interview… But

do you think as a metal musician that you can come

up with more original stuff when you listen to other

kinds of music than metal?

C: “Nah, it doesn’t matter as far as listening goes.

It’s just all from the bowels or whatever you wanna

call it, you know, from the feet, from the eyelids…

You just play what you play.”

A few questions about air guitar playing, is that

okay with you?

C: “What about fire? What about earth guitar

playing? What about water guitar playing? No one

talks about these things. We’re talking four elements,

not one!”

Never thought about that.

C: “Right. See I’m here to expand minds. And

bladders. See I’m like a really water sign but I have a

fire sign underneath, so I can relate to doggy paddle

and then doggy style. Not receiving end, of course.

Nevertheless…”

What kind of air guitars do you have?

C: “Can I say what’s on the tip of my mind, even

if it means nothing? I’m kinda like horny tonight, so

I would say, Fuck guitar! Which means nothing, but

there you go.”

What songs do you have in your repertoire?

C: “Definitely Jump by Van Halen. There’s

nothing like it. When I hear Jump I go…” (jumping

up’n’down) “I can’t stop. Gimme a pogo stick, quick!

Or I’ll exploooooooode…!”

What’s your air guitar tuned in? Would you

consider tuning it down when you interpret a

classic?

C: “I would definitely tune to an N, as in nothing.

N, any time. Sometimes T is good. Not drinking, but

smoking, and then you have a drink after, you know,

like TNT. TNT like AC/DC, which is…”

M: “Standard tuning.”

C: “Right. See, it all is like so relative. I realise

just now that I’m saying ‘like’ a whole lot tonight,

like Shaggy from Scoopy Doo or something. So next

time I say ‘like’, just hand me a beer and I’ll quit

immediately.”

Do you wear ear plugs when you play air guitar?

C: “Yes, but I don’t wear them in my ears. I leave

that to your imagination. I’ve been sexual enough

tonight. Let’s just say that my happy place is quite

busy these days.”

M: “It’s plugged.”

What’s your favourite air guitarring arena?

Do you prefer playing in front of the mirror, in the

shower, at the bus stop, or in the queue at the cashdesk

of a super market?

C: “Well, you put me on the spot here, you know

that. Let’s just say, this is the best time and this is the

best place. Duh-duh-duh, duh-duh-duh, duh-duuhduuh!

[Mary joining in] Mama talking to me/tryin’ to

tell me how to live/I don’t listen to her ‘cos my head

is like a sieve.”

And right now, backstage at the Royal opera

house…

C: “Royal opera house with the king. I bet about

fifteen from the people takes a fucking stinky dump

and he has to wipe like fifteen times, ‘I’m the king, I

still have to wipe, this suuuuucks…’.”

Sometimes there’s still some degree of shame

involved in playing the air guitar. Shouldn’t parents

and bands teach respectively their children and their

fans about these things - that it’s perfectly natural,

everybody’s doing it?

C: “I totally agree, I mean I once started a

petition amongst strictly midgets but I thought it

would work at the time. If anyone knows about air

guitar it’s midgets. We got at least twelve names,

saying ‘you’ve got to incorporate this in the public

education system. It’s gonna work, it’s gonna change

things, it’s gonna do good’. Nothing happened, I was

so let down, I was like, ‘I’m sorry people, all that

work was for nothing so let’s sniff some glue and just

forget about it’.”

I’ll be like the Fonz!”

695 Grave New World


ISTEN 101

By Mikko Mattila,

Dominique Poulain

and Janne Sarna 2002.

Photography by Grant Almén.

I don’t know what it is but it rocks like a

right bastard. As everyone knows, that can

mean the world. All you need’s make the

sign of the horns and...

Me? I’ve written like a dozen caption bits

for an Entombed feature in my head over

the years. Just on the off chance that we’d

feature them again. Last time was Isten #5

in 1991—Uffe Cederlund and Nicke Andersson

answered. It was a total Death Metal

universe we all inhabited back then.

Jörgen Sandström still played in Grave at

the time.

Jörgen Sandström in

Pub Bastun, Åland 2002.

696 Don’t Break the Ghost


ENTOMBED

Grave: at their best, ultra-heavy Death Metal

brutality stripped down to its bare essentials,

sheer overwhelming kill-them-fast power.

Originally founded in Visby on the island of Gotland,

relocated to Stockholm in the turn of the ’90s. Jörgen

Sandström called it a day after three albums.

In 1996 he joined Entombed.

Jörgen, how did you first get into metal? What was

your family like? Did you have siblings who were into

metal? Were you bullied at school?

“I got into metal pretty early. My brother and my

uncle listened to some cool stuff like Judas Priest,

Motörhead, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, etc. And

my first tape I got was when I was 5 or 6, it was

Destroyer by Kiss.

“I thought they looked cool I guess and pointed

on the tape in the store and my mom bought it. And

since then I’ve been into heavy metal! In school it

was total war between heavy metallers and synth

bastards. Almost everyday there was fist fights in

school between us and them. It was great.

“And it made me love metal even more, and

eventually it got me into more extreme metal like

thrash and death and black metal. And I still love it!

To the death!”

reason why Grave moved to Stockholm. There was

no one into metal at Gotland so we couldn’t do any

gigs etc. And that was 10 years ago. I don’t have that

many friends left on Gotland, just a few. But most of

the people I know here in Stockholm are into metal.

And have been since way back.”

I’ve always wondered what your old nickname

”Knot” stood for; care to enlighten me?

”Fuck knows, I think I was trying to be funny on

Scott Ian’s behalf! I wrote Knot on my cap once. If

you translate Knot into Swedish it turns into a man’s

name, Knut, and I thought that was funny, haha... I

don’t know·”

The awesome Grave demo trilogy and the Putrefaction

tape, how do you view ’em today?

”Shit, I still like to listen to these old demos. There’s

stuff on there that I think when I hear it: ’How the hell

did we come up with that idea? It’s fucking great!’

There’s stuff on there I probably couldn’t think of

L-G Petrov and Jörgen Sandström

hammering it down live

were bleeding for weeks! It’s an amazing album,

still! But as I said, we always knew that we weren’t

even close to what Nihilist and Entombed was about.

We wanted a more brutal sound, a more primitive

approach.”

You ended your spot with Grave on a high note with

Soulless, but it probably wasn’t the easiest of rides?

How bad did you suffer under Century Media’s tyranny?

What was the deal like exactly? How did you

squirm your way out of it, and are the other guys still

stuck with it or what?

”I think they were good for us in the beginning.

But back then they didn’t have 1000 bands signed, it

was us, Unleashed, Morgoth, Tiamat, Asphyx and

a few more. So they did support us a lot with tours,

etc. When I think back, they must have worked their

asses off to get us out on all the tours we did. But

we were quite young and didn’t have that much

experience to realise that there’s a lot of work

behind booking a tour. And considering that they are

Have you ever felt there was a cop-out side to your

relationship to metal, that the place it occupies in

your life should be filled by something else?

“Never. I have always listened to metal and will

never stop doing so. But I’m not saying that there’s

no room for other stuff either. I listen to a lot of

other music as well. And doing other stuff that’s not

music oriented, and hang around people that don’t

listen to metal etc. But when, if it comes to it, music,

especially metal, always comes first. I will never

stop, I won’t quit writing or playing or listening to

metal.

“And I’m old enough to say so, I know that it’s like

that and happy to say it.”

What’s your quirkiest metal custom at the moment,

I hear you no longer listen to Venom on the headphones

in your sleep? Is there anything else about

your past metallic excesses that you could mention?

“I had to stop using headphones in general actually.

My ears are ringing constantly and have been doing

it since Metallica’s concert here in Stockholm 1986.

Cliff Burton’s last gig is something I’ll never forget I

guess, coz my ears remind me of it every day.

”Ever since I stopped using my Walkman the

tinnitus has been better, but it’s still there. I have

special made earplugs, that only lowers the volume

and not the frequencies on stage and at rehearsals.

But I hardly ever use them.”

I’m sure you’ve had friends grow out of metal - can

you keep in touch with them or does it get too

awkward?

”Well, most of my friends from when I was living on

Gotland stopped listen to metal fairly early, that’s a

doing today, haha... And consider that 3 of them was

made on a 4-track makes me wonder if we shouldn’t

have been producers instead, haha...”

For you, how does Into the Grave compare to Left

Hand Path? Somehow the production jobs (a tad

one-dimensional, even flat at times) on Grave’s postdemo

work never really did you justice, would you

agree?

”Well, first of all, we never went into the Sunlight

studio with the intention to sound like Entombed. But

at the time it was the only cool studio we knew here

in Stockholm. And I still think that Into the Grave is a

lot more brutal than Left Hand Path. Production-wise

I mean. Left Hand Path is a total death metal classic

and I loved it since the first day when Uffe sent me

an advance tape of it. I was still living on Gotland at

the time and couldn’t believe my fucking ears. They

not a booking agency they did quite good. And we

cost them some money too, but they got the money

back and more through the record sales, that we

never saw much royalties of. WHY? Because we

were young and stupid and signed a shit deal! I

could hate them for giving us a shit deal, but at the

same time, we were not forced to sign anything. It

sounds like I’m defending them. I’m not. But I’m old

enough now to realise where I did wrong 12 years

ago. If I knew then what I know now about all this

business crap I would never ever sign a deal like

that again.”

You joined Entombed during their three-year hiatus

also resulting from record company bullshit. Lookin’

for more trouble, eh? Or were you confident of the

better times ahead? When deep in the middle of all

697 Grave New World


ISTEN 101

L-G Petrov

Knot playing some

Action in the tomb...

mean bass...

Alex Hellid and gawdforsaken scriptures...

L-G Petrov caught off guard by Peter Stjärnvind...

those record company-related hassles, did you ever

think about calling it quits?

”I actually quit Grave coz I wasn’t happy of what

we had become. 3 guys moaning in a van about

being away from home and not earning any money.

”I realised on the last American tour we did in ’94

that I couldn’t go on like this if I would like to keep on

with being in a band. We did some more European

dates after that, and all we did was moan about

everything, so I though fuck it!

”We didn’t even write any cool stuff for the new

record either because we were to miserable with

the situation we were in. So I joined Leukemia,

a band that was around back then. And when

Entombed asked if I would like to play for them, I

gave it a shot, and it was great. It was like starting

all over again. Learning new songs, playing with new

’musicians’, etc.

”The record company bullshit that was going on at

the time never really became me that much as it did

to the others. They were of course really frustrated

and wanted it over with, whilst I was just happy

being able to have fun in a band again. And during

all that hassle, we did some shows, a TV show,

recording some covers etc.

”So for me it was a perfect start, it gave me a

chance to get to know them better as musicians as

well as persons before we got the To Ride, Shoot

Straight and Speak the Truth album out and the

whole year of touring that came with it.”

Do you ever miss the days when you were cranking

it up in Visby? Are things so different for you nowadays

to what they were then?

”We were a few really good friends that were into

metal in Visby, and sometimes I kinda miss it. Like

last year I went there to see my parents, and walked

through town and passed our old rehearsal place

and many of the spots that we just sat around with a

tape deck and listened to Kreator, Death, Destruction,

Celtic Frost, etc. and drinking beer. But it’s not that

much different today, except for some of the friends

are not around.

”But we still sit around a stereo listen to all that

stuff and get drunk before we go to the bar. What

I do miss a bit is the heavy metallers vs. synth

bastards thing. It was fun. We were all so into our

thing that we were ready to beat each other up,

haha... I heard that your countrymen in HIM said in

an interview somewhere that their new album would

sound like a mix between Entombed and Annie

Lennox!? Where’s the world coming to!”

Exactly, HIM being mentioned in Isten and all!

”I don’t like HIM, just had to say what they said,

and I don’t like it! Don’t wanna be mentioned in the

same sentence as Annie Lennox.”

Well, what’s the most irksome memory of your career

so far? Is writing the lyrics to Sexual Mutilation

a particularly proud moment? Do you think that ”Hi,

I’m Jörgen ’Knot’ Sandström, the writer of Sexual

Mutilation” is a good chat-up line?

”I think ’Hi my name is Knot and I have accidentally

drunk Rick Rozz’ piss from a juice bottle when I

was hung over in Poland once’ is a hell lotta worse.

Haha...”

To you, what are the primary things that make Entombed

Entombed? And what makes Entombed great

- what did you think before you joined the band, and

now?

”I was already impressed with them back in the

Nihilist days with the way they wrote the songs.

With how they handled their instrument, that they

sounded so different from all the others. I think the

most important thing with Entombed has always

been the same, NOT afraid of trying out new stuff.

They never really stood still, always came as a

surprise. And we still trying to do that. The songwriting

abilities in this band never seem to stop.”

While writing a song or recording in the studio, does

any of you ever stop and think about guidelines to

follow in order for the end result to be distinctly, unmistakably

Entombed? Or is it more a case of things

feeling just right at some point, without any conscious

input on your side? Like, the Zen of Metal,

so to speak? Gezol of Sabbat from Japan once

put it brilliantly, ”Classic Metal is like a textbook for

us. The sound is alive, like the beating of the heart.

Leave your all to the sound”. Come to think of it, the

Entombed sound truly is something one could easily

leave his all to...

”Well, both yes and no. As I said earlier, we are not

afraid of trying out new ways of doing stuff. But there

has been songs that we had to say: Hell no, that’s

too much off! That’s not even fun how off it is! There

are of course a few guidelines that we do follow,

but that’s really nothing that holds us back when it

comes to writing a song. I can’t speak too much of

what it is here, coz then I have to kill you! Haha...”

I hear you are yourself a bit reluctant (or lazy?) when

it comes to Entombed songwriting. Why’s that?

”I wouldn’t say lazy. When I started with them

almost everything was already written for To Ride

so basically I just had to learn them. Also I always

thought that they were a lot better songwriters than I

am. So I never really got the guts to show them stuff.

”Another thing when I come to think of it, was that

when Nicke quit, Uffe wrote most of the stuff. And

we were doing stuff for the Same Difference album,

and that was a totally new way of writing riffs and

songs for me. So I got a bit lost, coz I didn’t think my

riffs and ideas I had at the time would fit the other

stuff on that album. And then I totally forgot about

them after that. And then when we started doing

stuff for Uprising if felt a bit more natural for me so I

wrote a few of them.

”And then for Morning Star, everything was just

pouring out of Uffe’s guitar like never before so

I couldn’t keep up with his tempo, so I only made

698 Don’t Break the Ghost


ENTOMBED

two of them. Another funny thing is that before we

did Morning Star, none of us knew what direction

it would take. And before we started writing the

material I came up with a great Slayerish thrash

song, so I gave it to Merciless coz they wanted it,

haha... It would have fit on Morning Star as well.

But then again, I’m proud that a band like Merciless

wanna record a song that I wrote!”

Wolverine Blues was such a masterpiece, and then

a three-year hiatus, I guess it was only natural that

DCLXVI: To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth

would disappoint a bit upon release, or what do you

reckon?

As a band you’ve always claimed that the sole

record you’re unsatisfied with is Clandestine,

although it was very well received when it came out.

Obviously, you and your fans don’t always see quite

eye-to-eye; ever feel the urge to beat on your fans

with a baseball bat?

”I know that the others think that Clandestine was

the one they like the least, and to be honest, I do as

well as a fan. There’s some really good stuff on it, but

not as good as I thought Left Hand Path was. And

with Wolverine Blues, it came as a shock for me, and

I was a bit negative for a start, but after I listened to

it again I was hooked. That’s the best album I think.

The production is amazing. And the songs are so

catchy you almost wanna puke, haha...

”Another thing that comes to mind whilst we talk

about what we think and what our fans think, haha...

Same Difference! That was an album that got very

split reviews. And a lot of fans hates us for it still.

But I have noticed lately that more and more of

those fans that rejected it when it came out begins

to understand it now, and it’s not so bad after all!

And I wanna say it now as I said before! It might not

be the Entombed you are used to, in fact it’s pretty

fucking far from what Entombed used to be! But the

album in itself is a really cool album, with really good

stuff on it.

”I remember we talked about it afterwards that

we should have released it under a different band

name, The Threeman Experience. And I still wonder

if people would have accepted it more then or not?

What do you think?”

Well, same diff - everybody would just have gone,

”Oh, it’s official, Entombed is dead”. By the way, the

cover of Same Difference... didn’t you guys say in an

interview that it’s Uffe’s dog in the picture or something?

How come Dan Baird’s CD single entitled

Younger Face (’95) has the exact same photo on the

cover?

”Don’t know about that EP. Uffe and Alx found

that pic somewhere, the dog is cute but I never

understood why they wanted to have it on an

Entombed sleeve to be honest, haha. I don’t care, I

just play bass...”

Can you and do view the music you make as a collective

experience? Is it something you can share?

”Definitely! We put the songs together in

the rehearsal room, and if someone is really

uncomfortable with some stuff we talk about it and

try to re arrange it so that it becomes something that

we can enjoy. At least 90% of it. It’s always some

stuff that someone don’t like, but we are so different

from each other when it comes to music that it’s

impossible to please all of us.”

These days most bands turn out uninspired material,

the spirit of which is ’worry about the sound - forget

about the songs’. It’s most important to be produced

at this or that studio, or to fit into this or that ludicrous

sub-category, than to deliver a genuine heartfelt

performance. Talk about the death of Rock n’ Roll.

In such a context, how hard is it to motivate yourselves

and not get all frustrated?

”We never really pay interest to which studio or

producer is hip. Or trends in general. We are doing

our thing, and only we know what we wanna sound

like. We tried out the producer thing with Daniel Rey

on Same Difference, which was a good experience.

It was mainly our management and record company

that wanted to use a producer. We accepted it after

awhile, and thought that Daniel would be the best

one to use. I mean he did Ramones and some other

cool stuff. He was a great producer, really cool guy

with good ideas and all. But in the end, we know that

we could have done it on our own without spending

all that time and money. After all, we have done this

for so long that we know what we want with our

songs. Bands that use producers can’t be really sure

of what they wanna be. A band that makes music

Jörgen Sandström in praise of the Morning Star...

699 Grave New World


ISTEN 101

for themselves and their true fans, or a product to

please the masses?”

Morning Star is very Metal. What might have led to

this? (a) Touring with Slayer and The Haunted?

”Definitely had a big influence on the record.”

(b) Hammering down golden oldies like “Revel in

Flesh”, “Blessed Be”, “Left Hand Path” et al live a

lot, with great success?

”Not so much, but it’s great to play these songs

again after such a long time.”

(c) Realising what hit like a ton of bricks on Uprising

as well the mental boost given by the (one-off?) rehabilitation

of the old logo - misinterpreted by many

as just a gimmick?

”We definitely liked to play the Uprising songs

live better than the Same Difference songs. So we

wanted more of that for sure. The logo looks great

on some designs, but not always. For Morning Star

Alx Hellid delivering the crunch...

it wouldn’t have been as good as on the Uprising

sleeve.”

(d) What about shaking off Nicke Andersson’s ghost

for good; the mental metal craziness of this line-up -

not least of all Stjärnvind - reaching a peak?

”I think most of us started to get more into metal

again after many long nights with evil Pete in the

tour bus being the tape deck dictator that he is. But

I think another thing is that Uffe and Peter finally

did the Murder Squad album as well, that made

Uffe definitely change his negative thoughts about

playing death metal again.”

What do you think about the state of Metal these

days? Does it actually concern you at all, or is

it enough for you to be able to dust off the old Dr

Shrinker tapes, or put on your favourite Trouble LP

when you feel like it or let Reign in Blood wash away

the day?

”I stayed at Peter’s flat for 8 months recently,

and he indoctrinated me with so much metal

that I have missed out over the years. For years I

have been listening to my old records and demos

and thought that the scene was dead. Funny you

mention Dr Shrinker, haha... Listened to Wedding the

Grotesque the other day, haha... As well as Exmortis’

Immortality’s End...

”Anyway, he got me into alot of stuff like Emperor,

Satyricon, Krisiun. And the most funny of all, I

thought Deathcrush with Mayhem kinda sucked

back in the days so I never gave De Mysteriis Dom

Sathanas a listen, but when he played it to me I

fucking loved it. So I started listen to more and more

to black metal and love some of it. So the latest

couple of albums I bought that I really like is Zyklon’s

World ov Worms, Rebaelliun’s Annihilation, Carnal

Forge’s Please...Die! and I’m sure that the metal

scene is alive and kicking like never before!”

Well, if the metal scene is alive it certainly smells

funny. Do you feel any responsibility for the heritage

of this music? Do you ever think about your position

in the continuum of Sabbath-Maiden-Slayer or whatever

it is for you? Does the necessity to strike a balance

between the need to reproduce and that to innovate

ever appear to you as a conundrum?

”Actually I don’t think of it. But recently Grave

started rehearse again, and there was a rumour that

I was back in the band. They played a show here

in Stockholm in Sept. and a lot of people asked me

if I was back in the band, which I’m not, but after

that I understand that I might be responsible for

influencing a lot of people with my vocals.

”And I don’t really know how to cope with that.

I’m quite shy, maybe more modest, when it comes

to speaking about myself. I don’t think I’m a better

person because I’ve had the fortune to record a

bunch of records and been touring for 12 years. Just

lucky.

”But, of course I get flattered when someone

comes up to me and give me cred for my work. I

don’t think I answered your question there, but fuck

it, I’m tired, haha...”

The death metal boom of the early ’90s heralded

the birth of a number of disastrous trends in metal:

bands always flocking to the same studios in order

to replicate a certain sound, the search of musical

”brutality” for its own sake, everyone and their grandfuckingmother

forming an outfit in a mad asphyxiating

dash of poor demo tapes and worse CDs, the enshrinement

of individuals whose only merit was that

they happened to have been there at the right moment

at the right place, etc.

At the same time, the truly great bands that

ushered in the genre, such as yourselves, Grave,

Carcass, Autopsy, Death, Carnage, etc. never quite

reached the popularity levels of their predecessors

Uffe Cederlund after the attack..

and forebears. And then of course we got black

metal junior. What was so wrong with death metal?

”There was nothing wrong with DM. The biggest

problem was all the record labels signing too many

crap bands. Bands that had nothing interesting to

come up with. So people got fed up and the whole

thing got boring. And I think that’s why the real good

bands got forgotten as well.

”The black metal scene kinda is today where death

metal scene then, too many crap bands get signed

and the true good ones don’t get the credit for it.

”It’s not as shocking as it was when the

Norwegians were killing each other and burning

churches. Fuck, Dimmu Borgir even got a Grammy

in Norway!”

Why do you think Swedish death metal has never really

been interesting on paper? Most of the people

involved were never real good as interviewees, the

line-ups were too unstable and intermingled, and

you guys never burnt too many churches either...

”We Swedes are a quite modest and silent kind of

people. I was never good in interviews, got nothing

shocking to come up with. Then again, I’d like to

keep my private life to myself and talk about the

band and music in interviews.

”Not about how I grew up and then try to get

people to feel sorry for me. I hate that kind of shit. ’I

got raped and abused bla bla bla!’... I’m in a band

coz I love to play, and I think most of us in Swedish

bands are. Not to make a fucking circus out of it.”

What’s the beef with the LP version of Uprising taking

so long? Do you have a special relationship with

vinyl yourself?

”Actually, we don’t consider Uprising as a release

until its on vinyl, or Morning Star. We will try to get

some one to release it soon. We are working on it.

But not so fast, haha...”

Ola Lindgren has planned to put out all the Grave

demos plus the Putrefaction demo on one CD. Do

you know anything about this and how do you feel

about it? I think this stuff (and Entombed’s too, obviously)

should be put on vinyl rather than on CD...

”I know he already did a CD with all that stuff. I

don’t care. I rather put on my tapes.”´

700 Don’t Break the Ghost


ENTOMBED

Do you have any plans to release But Life Goes On

demo on vinyl or CD? How about the Nihilist demos?

What do you think of the bootleg But Life Goes On 7”

that was recently released?

”There is no plans to release the demo stuff. I think

demos should be on cassette. Why release all that

old stuff, why can’t people just tape trade like in the

good old days?”

Do you ever feel Entombed’s cover of “Night of the

Vampire” is the ultimate black metal song, especially

when watching the vid? Do you feast on roasted

pengu?

”I do think that Roky Erikson has a fucked up

mind, totally possessed. When I saw the video that

Entombed did I just laughed.

”They did it for 5000 Swedish crowns and it was

better than any other video I’ve seen. Who needs

special effects for a million dollars when you got a

super eight camera, snow, a graveyard and some

sense of humor!”

Four members of Entombed, including yourself, are

also involved in side-projects. Isn’t there an inherent

contradiction between that fact and the single-minded

devotion required by a band?

”No, we have realised that we have to do other

bands on the side. Otherwise we would have to use

these ideas in Entombed and believe me, that would

be a strange fucking record, haha...

“We use the other bands as a filter of what we

don’t want to involve with Entombed. Well, some of

the stuff in other bands could be used for Entombed,

but that’s just the way it is.

There is tons of new ideas to come up with when

we write a new record, so we don’t worry to much

about it. Entombed is the number one priority for all

of us as a band but it doesn’t mean that we don’t give

100% in the other bands as well though.

It’s a matter of will and a matter of good planning

with releases etc.”

You were involved in Unrealestate, an opera production

with ballerinas and what not. What sense is that

supposed to make for a Heavy Metal band? I mean,

everything even remotely related to Classical Music,

isn’t that the enemy par excellence?

”Totally agree. It’s too fucked up. That’s why we

agreed to do it. I’m sure it will piss a lot of people off!

Be it metal fans or opera fans or ballet freaks, I’m

pretty sure we get shit for this, haha... And that’s the

whole idea behind it, from us as well as the 2 artists

that came up with the idea. They wanna stir things

up in the nice hall called The Royal Opera House.

Where time stands still, where the conservative

people hold their flag up high! We have been asked

to do what we do, to be who we are, nothing more,

nothing less. We’ll be there playing our music, in our

clothes. No one else is involved in the performance

of the music than us. For us it’s another challenge

but at the same time just another 8 gigs! But in a

very different environment.”

Would you say that you listen to metal differently

now than, say, 10 years ago? If yes, would you put

that down to aging or your experience as a musician?

Ever feel sad about it?

”Sure I do. I got a lot more selective than 10 years

ago, well maybe more like 13-14 years ago. Back

then you could get a demo with a fucking vacuum

cleaner on it and a band name and I’d love it! I

actually try harder now to find good death/black/

thrash metal bands than for many years at the

moment. I’m giving it a chance again. Back then it

was so new that almost everything you heard was

cool and fresh, now that everything has been done

twice it’s harder. But there is a bunch really cool

bands out there, keeping the metal alive. I don’t

find it sad at all. I still have all the cool demos and

records from back then to enjoy, haha... And as a

metal fan and as a musician it’s always interesting to

find new stuff.”

Well, there you have it. Heavy metal is such a good

idea. The subtle interplay of unashamedly greasy

hair and social incompetence disguised as tales

of violence and force bathed in an ecosystem of

screaming guitars - it rules, quite simply. If you had

to plump for just one metal stereotype to take on to a

desert island with you, what would it be?

”Boring answer but quite obvious for me. A flying

V of course!”

701 Grave New World


Content previously published on the Isten website.

You Know Me

“You know me, evil eye

You know me, prepare to die

You know me, the snakebite kiss

Devil’s grip, the Iron Fist”

Aah, the force of Iron Fist! Featherlight like a

mausoleum full of panzers, it’s a poignant, beautifully

observed memoir of teen uncertainty. Because that’s

what it’s all about, isn’t it, heavy metal?

In 1984 I was so full of metal I could hardly get out

of bed in the mornings. The Number of the Beast’s

crashing chords and crushing words bled into

my dreams. It anatomized my fears of failure and

rejection, of satanic loneliness. Of a regular maths

lesson turning into a portal to everlasting hell. Oh,

and of even worse spots spawned to be released.

Dickinson sang, in Harris’ words, ‘In the night the

fires burning bright/the ritual has begun Satan’s

work is done’, hiding a history of the universe in

those few words.

Sure thing! Wherever you see hair grow or a zit

ripen, you might just as well spot a flash of the

hoof and the horn. It’s the old arch steel in the

guise of the Devil tempting youngsters down the

Route Irreversible.

It was around that time that I started this magazine

with my cousin. We were probably too young and

innocent to realize that Holy Diver was actually

Ronnie James singing about the adventures of his

todger. Neither did we fully appreciate the finesse

with which Conrad Lant delved the living hell of

sexual frustration in Teachers Pet, and the sociopolitical

commentary of Blackie Lawless’ codpiece

did little more than baffle us.

But there was something about heavy metal that

was sexier than Glynis Barber in Dempsey &

Makepeace. Its gripping otherness devoured us

whole. It was the harbinger of a new weather in

our tender years. Big, wild, beautiful, gloomy,

mean and proud, it galloped into our lives and

made us aware of the world that lies south of

heaven. Or south of the navel.

Poor bastards. And we were everywhere.

“The volume was truly staggering, and

Hammersmith that night was not a place for the

faint hearted. “This one’s called Kill with Power”,

said [vocalist Eric] Adams halfway through.

“Oh my God,” said the guy who’d travelled from

Cornwall next to me, and took pride in telling

everybody. Then he proceeded to get his organ

out, I kid you not.”

Dave Ling, Metal Hammer July 1987

When my cousin sometime around ‘87 traded

the glory of living metal for something that can

only be described as ‘no metal’ - hanging out

with non-metal friends, doing normal non-metal

things, living normal non-metal life - it was a harsh

reminder that there is no common denominator

in belonging. There’s no stable perspective.

There is nothing between yourself and metal, or

there’s no metal at all. I, too, used to have that

choice between metal and no metal until the latter

decided it didn’t want me. How can you not feel

like you’re exactly in the right place at the right

time when Angel of Death is on? When you drop

your studies to the sound of Gods of Wrath?

Lose jobs to Metal Thrashing Mad? Whack off to

True As Steel? And as for Don’t Break the Oath,

how is it not like a beacon, an Olympic flame, an

undisputed grain of truth? Essential as a heartbeat

and a leather jacket.

So my cousin opted out while I took the plunge

—the dragon dragged me ever on. It taught me

everything that I need to know, little by little. For

example that there’s no one except me in the whole

wide world listening to metal with this particular set

of ears. And that it is not a phase. How could it be,

when over and over again the music plays my spine

like some unrecognisable instrument from beyond,

makes the heart skip beats, sucks out the light and

carves out something truly splendid? Or, well, at

least I readily accept a badly-drawn monster as my

icon. Now, there is no easy way of saying this. The

sound of silliness continues to speak volumes to

me. It’s nothing short of a revelation.

I’m twenty-nine going on fourteen. At least once a

year my mother makes it her business to remind

me that I should cut my hair - ‘what do you need

it for? You’re not in a band, as far as I know’.

Yeah, long hair is for musicians and homosexuals

exclusively. Who knows what she thought of

me during my years as the ultimate heavy metal

hermit. And what did she think when my girlfriendnow-fiancée

came into the picture? ‘Years of

unrequited devil worship finally paying off?’

Indeed, I never became friends with Ol’ Nick. And

never had masses of friends anyway. There’s a

reader, a ghost of a reader, here in Mattila’s head.

The heavy metal dragon put it there. It’s a much

better arrangement than putting me in direct

contact with real-life readers and non-readers.

‘Make heavy metal his tunnel, his vision and his

wheelchair,’ the dragon thought, ‘and rid him of

social contacts, so he won’t mind giving it all he’s

got for nothing.’ Contrary to popular belief, heavy

metal is not an escape. True aficionados never feel

like they had allowed metal to fill gaps that should

have been occupied by something else. Ask us, and

we’ll tell you that sometimes, at its best, life is a

pretty good metaphor for heavy metal. Except that

metal doesn’t start somewhere and end someplace

else. And metal’s infinitely more exciting, too.

True metal mania, the dedication of the diehard

metal fiend, is not a watery version of the musician’s

accomplishment. It is a celebration of our own. Vinyl

hunters going on a diet of tap water and crispbread

to nail that 200-dollar Razor debut (vg+, heavy

ring wear on cover). Traders risking life and limb

to restore Devastation’s time-worn rehearsal tapes.

Metal pilgrims going all around the globe in search

of the heaviest gigs or the coolest second hand

shops, or the school where young Bruce Dickinson

urinated in the headmaster’s dinner. Fact is that

the biggest bullheads among us are much closer

to the larger-than-life ideal of grand metal than

many of the musicians. We are the stars. We are the

defenders. We are the metal patrol.

The only reason why air guitarring skills aren’t

universally envied is that metal is continuously

mistaken for a genre of music, a form of

entertainment or a career.

Heavy metal is a realm. Between bad dreams, I

think I can understand it. At least it makes perfect

nonsense to me. This is Isten. It sings its praises of

heavy metal in a croaky little voice, plays a lot of air

guitar, burbs and farts every now and again. A bit

juvenile, but serious as hell.

Mikko Mattila

7 March 2002

Dead and Gone

“Raise your can of beer on high

And seal your fate forever

Our best years have passed us by

The golden age of leather”

Blue Öyster Cult, The Golden Age of Leather

Hi, welcome to metal 2001, a temporal neverwhere

ensconced in post-modernism, where the blood

and sweat of bygone decades is the stuff of namedropping

for vapid socialites, where extremity is

somehow equated with poor riffing and worse

songwriting, where a band such as Sabbat are

dubbed either ‘old school’ or ‘retro’ , where the

power chord has gone limpwristed.

Con-fucking-gratulations on the blunted-edge sideprojects,

the Fischer Price keyboards, the endless

stream of cunting obituaries masquerading as

‘tributes’ , the hamfisted, insulting rip-offs of music

worth living for.

“Rising to our own nadir

Reality we try to extirpate

Trying to raise a twisted smile

Similar to that silver plate

On a coffin which is joined

Hammering in each final nail

Last kill and testament

Left now intestate...”

Carcass, Symposium of Sickness

No remorse, screw the corpse! Let’s come up with

our own bullshit rules, let’s consign our raping

forgery of Heavy Metal’s legacy to posterity. Let’s

bask in the spurious glory of hindsight passed

off as insight. Heavy Metal is larger than life, it

explodes in all directions, it acknowledges no god

nor master, no friend nor lover, it’s the Russian

roulette of the Gods.

Admittedly, that’s a bit too much for you. Yes,

you, who have been busy trying to make sense

of it all, in the hope of validating your teenage

riot. What are you looking for, a secure sense of

identity? A reassuring life narrative? You won’t

find them here. Embracing Heavy Metal’s flair for

cartoons is a meaningless endeavour when you fail

to grab the punch line’s depth by the balls. As for

its underlying current of rebellion-fuelled anguish,

you missed that altogether, didn’t you ? And the

brutal lust for life, and the slap-happiness, and the

powerful sorrow, the laughter and pain, the hatred

and rage. You’ve been playing it safe, sterilized.

Instead you’ve been posturing, painting yourselves

black, waging war against the ‘posers’ and ‘untrue’,

ragging about evil from the comfort and protection

afforded by your bourgeois lifestyles. Having a

personal, intimate relationship with Heavy Metal

became secondary- just to prove the point you

dropped ‘heavy’ en route to nowhere, in the same

way you conveniently forgot that what you got into

was called Hard Rock in the first place.

But you’ve gotten old. Everything changes, though

it all stays the same. In pining memory of your

wasted years, you’re groping along for a link, a

portal to fling you a decade back. You want to

turn your memories into dogma, Heavy Metal into

history—safe, sterilized. There you are, deciding

what bands should be acknowledged as ‘cult’

or ‘seminal’, which ones should be left by the

wayside. What attitudes and demeanours should

be hallowed. You’ve sabotaged Heavy Metal’s

present, now you want to hijack its past with your

702 Don’t Break the Ghost


Digital Glue

“My mission in life is writing about metal for cardboard boxes.”

jury-rigged canons and your gullible use of tired

old clichés.

Yeah, you might even try to validate yourselves

with violence and force: kill for metal, die for

metal! So fucking what? Death is certain, life is not,

you’re only underlining that you have so little faith

in Heavy Metal that you just can’t live for it. You

turn it into a prison, whereas it’s all about being

scot-free; you wanna make it the perquisite of a

ghettoed, self-styled ‘elite’, but it will never comply.

Heavy Metal is wherever heartbeats are skipped

listening to the music, it headbangs in the streets,

air guitars at bus stops, stagedives in the mosh-pit

and fucks behind the PA. It’s fast, loud and rude,

an unstoppable force forever standing proud with

a raised middle finger at your bollocks conventions

and Rotary Club lives.

Reign in Print

I’ve Got Issues

Dominique Poulain

July 2001

My mission in life is writing about metal for

cardboard boxes. At my core, I think I’ve always

wanted to be useful and ambitious but there’s

something in my chemistry that doesn’t allow me

to be. All I can do is try and pretend there weren’t

enough boxes of unsold Istens in our wardrobe.

I mean, who could I blame? Iron Maiden for

writing “Revelations”, a song that makes the

word “heavy” in “heavy metal” sound like an

expression of hardship and profundity rather than

a proclamation of a weight problem?

Whenever I encounter shit in life I seek comfort in

the ridiculous notion that I can put it to good use in

my… erm, art. Ennobled by suffering, kind of thing.

Police report an outbreak of Weltschmerz for an

audience consisting of cardboard boxes in the

Hatanpäänkatu area. No need to panic. No need

to give a shit.

Small Print

Legendary comic artist Robert Crumb had an

older brother called Charles, whom Robert always

considered to be more talented than him. It was

just that Charles Crumb happened to be quite

insane. As his schizophrenia got from bad to

worse, his comics became increasingly text-ridden.

In the end he could no longer fit any drawings

inside the frames, they were all jam-packed with

teeny weeny print. All of it, every last word, some

real meaningful stuff brought to him by goblins at

night, apparently.

Sometimes I feel like Charles Crumb, in a way. I

mean, look at me now, waffling all this profound

nonsense when all I set out to do was writing a

simple review. To-do list for today: kill self, you

redundant tosser.

Dodo Bird

Well, one thing that’s now even more dead than

before is Dauthus, the death metal rag from

Stockholm. It would be a bit of a stretch to call the

third and final issue a reader’s delight, but it does

lend itself splendidly for frequent browsing. You

may love it or hate it, but you can’t help but admire

the deathly chic and conviction.

Timo Ketola’s journal is a coffee table book for

necrophiles obsessed with illegible font faces/sizes.

The rag comes stapled to death on all corners and

dipped in blood and urine (or just paint, perhaps).

The layout is awe-inducing, and the overwhelming

ambience of death and putrefaction makes

you kind of ignore what exactly it is that you’re

reading - with your magnifying glass - whether

it be the interview with Necrovore, or the ones

with Repugnant, Vulpecula, and Watain, or the

graveyard review section.

“6€ Europe / $7 world, no trades, available from

Hell” (that’s Haninge, Sweden, in case you were

wondering, but I hear the mag is sold out now),

says the flyer. Nuff said? Oh, and R.I.P.

Metal as a Museum Piece

On a general note, it’s not a pretty picture: fanzines

and metal magazines in the ‘00s. Who reads them?

Who needs them? If the proper definition of “metal

scene” is “people putting something between

themselves and their metal”, how should one

define “metal zine”? It’s out-and-out self-delusion

poorly disguised as a lame co-branding regime:

“The true old school spirit brought to you by me

asking some silly band what true old school spirit

means to them in 2003.” Or, “I know I’d be much

better off listening to “Piece of Mind” and “Hail to

England” but here I am, reviewing shitty promo

CDs by contemporary True Metal bands”.

When Frank Stöver first kicked Snakepit into gear

in the mid-’90s, we here at Isten towers deemed it

an exercise in heavy metal nostalgia, resembling

a prog rock magazine in spirit. That still stands.

We also concluded that without Frank at the helm,

Snakepit would be a nightmare. Well, Frank’s in a

minor role these days, but we have to admit that

Messrs Konzett, Ramadier, Coe et al are doing a

good job. You’ll have to be completely analgesic

to read it all and smile, the countless reviews and

everything, but the titbits provide lots of fun.

Jeff Wagner’s input in particular is always worth

its weight in gold. This time, his interview with

Leif Edling is the highlight of the mag. Ramadier

and Coe’s exhaustive Whiplash spectacle is a

runner-up, and then there’s Possessed, Vio-lence,

a label special with Combat Records, and so on.

Altogether, 104 pages of good times/bad times of

metal. Try and separate the new bands from the

old ones when you first flick it through.

[Contact information.]

Metaleonid & the Metal Pravda

Slayer Magazine Vol. 17 subtitled “Witching Metal”

comprises 68 pages of Metalion mania. “Bringing

you Metal aggression in print since ‘85!,” it says.

Yeah, everything about commander Kristiansen’s

family mag is so nice and familiar to avid readers

like myself - since ‘87! - that missing an issue is

not an option, even with Metalion’s new and

accelerated pace of putting out these fuckers. In

fact, here I am, trying to review this one and Vol.

18 has already hit the streets!

Slayer Mag is a brezhnevian entity. Think

parades, hoary old war horses wearing fur caps,

time standing still (but in a very nice way). You

just gotta love Jon “Leonid” Kristiansen! Hail

Metaleonid! It’s so sweet you want to give the

whole world a big hug. I also prefer these whitecovered

Slayers to the black-covered ones, for

some reason. If truth be told, it doesn’t quite

possess the same magic and addictive quality

for me than all those years ago when cows that

say ‘OIIINK!’ and the price of Dubbel Dajm were

central themes in interviews.

In Vol. 17 we have mad, bad Jon Nödtveidt

lecturing at great length about anti-cosmic

Satanism and his black alchemical process in

relation to the return of Dissection sometime

in 2004. Fortunately the interviews with Razor,

Candlemass, Exodus, Repulsion et al are more

down-to-earth. It’s good shit, and I don’t even

know why I no longer feel the urge to read my

Slayers word for word, cover to cover. Well, gonna

read what I read, put some Razor on the turntable,

and not worry too much about it. Metal and life,

they’re both better that way.

[Contact information.]

I Just Heard the

Greatest Guitar Solo

of My Fucking Life

Mikko Mattila

7 March 2003

I just heard the greatest guitar solo of my fucking

life. I played it four times in a row, and when I say

four, I mean maybe twelve. I won’t play it again

tomorrow, and probably not the next day either.

The time for this solo is now. And now. And now

again. Wait... Now.

Still, I’m quite sure I couldn’t hum it to you. In

fact, I refuse to memorize it. That would mean

taking it out of context - a spotty album by a

barely-cult band released by a minor label in 1984,

thirty minutes into a batch of material with few

discernable highlights.

Guitar solos have a way of repeating themselves.

And I’m not referring to In Flames’ use of Grip

Inc.’s “Hostage to Heaven” in “Morphing Into

Primal.” I’m more interested in short-term

repetition, like the metallic origami feast here - a

house of cards, as fragile as it is perfect. A map

unfolding and unfolding again.

Some repetition is more subtle. Rock ‘N’ Rolf’s

unending reliance on the same four-note passage

sure is cute, but only if you’re paying attention

(“Soulless”, “Kiss of Death”, “Running Blood”,

“Blazon Stone”, “Black Soul”, et al.) Jeff Wagner

once compiled a compelling tape of all the Kiss

solos that Entombed used for To Ride, Shoot

Straight, and Speak the Truth. And could it be a

coincidence that Iron Savior (“Protect the Law”),

Helloween (“Falling Higher”), and Gamma Ray

(“Somewhere Out in Space”) each stumbled onto

the same lick in 1997? Doubtful.

Perhaps, then, Alan Jones and Phil Cope were

readying to unload their own moments of genius in

1984, while an even darker guitarist stepped into

the light and executed a guitar solo whose only

source material was itself. See also: none. It nearly

plays backwards and forwards at once.

Maybe you could read some tablature, practice

up, and convince yourself you’re playing the same

thing. But you wouldn’t be fooling me. This is

unrepeatable magic of the highest order, not so

much a coincidence as a conspiracy.

Professor Black

2004?

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Dream Death

Don’t Let My Death Go to Your Head

A minor gem from 1987, except that there’s

nothing minor about it. Dream Death’s one and

only album, Journey into Mystery, is tough as nails

and downright scary, a bone-crunching monster

from a label specialised in bugbears.

Superficially Journey into Mystery is a very typical

New Renaissance Records product in that it was

done on a lunch-box budget and is adorned with

a sleeve that’s, well, very very bad. To the great

joy of anyone with a NWOBHM-heavy musical

education, the album caters with doomy tones in

abundance. It’s foreboding like early Celtic Frost,

oozing doomsday vitriol like Sabbath, Trouble, and

Candlemass on a particularly gloomy day, and it

thrashes with the best of ‘em. Brian Lawrence’s

vocal punctuation and rhythm is somewhat

exotic, its impaired brilliance closely related to

the style of one Tom Araya. It cannot work, and

while it doesn’t, it does. Bugger me if that isn’t the

definition of love!

Back in 1987 I interviewed drummer Mike Smail

for Isten 3 and questioned him, among other

important issues, on skateboarding. For the record,

I have never skated in my life and have no interest

whatsoever in the sport, and it was pretty much

the same with him. Why do these things happen?

Apart from Anthrax having a lot to answer for,

Journey into Mystery just happens to be that kind

of record - all sound, no blah-blah. You’ll want to

keep listening to it until the landlord threatens to

call the police. You don’t want to debate it, analyse

it, you’ll just want to assume foetal position and

keep very silent. Well, I do, at any rate.

Mr Smail, do you personally consider Journey into

Mystery a metal classic? What precisely are your

feelings about it some 14 years later?

“A metal classic…!? That’s a bit of a stretch for

me. Classic is such a strong word. When I think of

classic I think of things much bigger, but I do think

it was very good and still do! I think it was a bit

ahead of its time and too quick to fall away (more

due to other circumstances... i.e. label, etc.) We

still play some Dream Death songs, namely the

song Dream Death.”

That’s ‘we’ as in Penance, the drummer’s current

band - ever persevering doom vets, Sabbath

stalwarts, and essentially a direct continuation of

Dream Death.

Done in 11 hours for $800 - would Journey into

Mystery have been as fresh and unique, and

delivered with as much power and guts if you had

been allotted more time in the studio? Is the sound

we hear the sound you had in the rehearsal room?

“Well, that’s a tough one. More time in the

studio is always a good thing, but maybe it

wouldn’t have sounded as it does now, so who

knows? I like to take things just as they are... good

or bad. It was definitely a decent recording, but we

never did capture on LP what you heard live… just

a wall of fucking sound! That’s where experience

comes in and we were pretty much novices back

then.”

Do you think that the nature of the business has

changed so much that something like Journey

into Mystery couldn’t happen in this day and age?

The feel, the performance, the spirit are no longer

where it’s at?

“Yes and no. I don’t think the underground is just

that anymore… underground. Everything is so

accessible now and those days are gone. But on

the same token, with all the technology, home

studios, computers, internet etc., there is much

more of a forum for bands to do things on their

own and get their music out. I don’t know whether

I agree with your last statement though. Something

is either good or it’s not… that simple.”

The music on Journey into Mystery is idiosyncratic,

plain heavy metal played with conviction, cohesion

and flair - that’s what makes it a masterpiece. Do

you think it’s possible to be so successful with the

metal formula when you start trying to push the

envelope too much? Are you still thrashers or just

virtuosos when you’re Watchtower, for instance?

“Thanks for all the kind words! Well, yes you

can be successful if you don’t try and fix what’s

not broken, but at the end of the day- that’s still

a formula and sooner or later, formulas always

lose. I think the trick is to just play what you feel

and to Hell with everything else. Formulas are for

mathematics... I’m a fucking drummer! Ha! I see

what you are saying that the more talent you have

or get to, the more you want to display it. If you

do that in a good way for yourself and are happy

and honest about it... it becomes a NATURAL

progression - which is great! If you do it just to

do it... we’re back to that formula again... great

musicianship, but no song-writing and it usually

shows.”

In the Penance biography I was surprised with the

explanation that “the collapse of the speed and

thrash metal scene” led to your decision to bury

Dream Death. As if it had been a case of being

mere followers! Wasn’t it more to do with parting

ways with bass player Ted Williams who then

joined Eviction (urgh!) and Brian Lawrence not

being able to commit to the cause 100 per cent?

“No. It had the most to do with New Ren being

a SHIT label and not properly run which helped

lead to the 2nd LP never coming out and THEN

disenchantment started to settle in.”

Yeas, the second album Ode to Sorrow never saw

the light of day. To what extent were the songs

written, and what was it like?

“Well, we did a demo after Journey into Mystery

that had ‘The Unseen’, ‘A Wayfarer’s Tale’, and

‘Born To Suffer’ on it which were going to be on

it, but then the label folded etc... Those songs all

saw the light of day anyway, just with the name

Penance. I remember the last Dream Death show

and being very sad. I was upset that the band was

done as it was and I still wanted to play. Especially

with Brian quitting, cause it was him and I from the

very beginning. So that’s where Penance came in.

Terry [Weston, guitar - Ed.] and I kept playing and

called it Penance. Brian sang on our first demo,

Living Truth, because we couldn’t find a singer to

replace him as of that time. Everyone kind of looks

at Dream Death and Penance as two different

bands and I can see why, if they don’t know the

history etc., but they are pretty much one and the

same to me.”

The Living Truth demo remains the Penance

release that I personally am most familiar with.

I guess I’ve been a little superstitious about the

band - as if the magic that Journey into Mystery

possesses for me could somehow wear off. I

reckon I’m entitled to such silly behaviour as a fan?

As a die-hard Sabbath enthusiast you may even

understand me?

“Totally! I met both Tony and Geezer when I was

over in Birmingham rehearsing with Cathedral for

Forest of Equilibrium. They were practising in the

next room! Had lunch etc... said ‘ello when I’d pass

them in the hall...was all a bit surreal. I’m sure they

wouldn’t even remember me though!”

Well, you should’ve asked them about skateboarding,

pal!

Mikko Mattila/Dominique Poulain 2003

Slaughter

Respect the Dead

“It’s a different world today and things are different

and I’d rather let the Slaughter legacy remain as a

memory, of times past.”

Thus spake Terry Sadler (vox, guitars) when

I asked him last year about his band’s thenrumoured

reunion. Fucking ace as far as I’m

concerned, too, considering how many bands

blithely reform only to embarrass themselves - and

me. Calling it quits for good is one of those things

people are extremely loath to do, I suppose; a pity

then that most never-say-diers are in such a great

need of swift mercy killing - human dignity and all

that. Or maybe you’re thrilled at the idea of seeing

for yourself exactly in what way Thomas Gabriel

Fischer plans to rape the Frost’s legacy ? No-one’ll

ever see them fall my arse.

Anyway, back to Terry and Slaughter. On the

band’s website you state that you and the

other band members feel that “the cult, legend

of Slaughter should remain as it was and not

exploited like so many other ‘80s bands”. What

precise examples did you have in mind ?Also,

what is for you as a fan the worst such instance

of exploitation, the moment when you felt like

the music that meant the world to you was sold

wholesale?

“Some of the ‘80s bands that have reformed

that maybe shouldn’t have are Poison, The Cult,

Sodom, Exodus, etc. Although I loved these bands,

I don’t believe that they should continue. I can’t

name one big example but unless it is the exact,

same, original, band members and they succeed in

capturing their classic ‘80s sound and play it with

genuine enthusiasm, then they shouldn’t reform!”

Hmm. You’re mistaken about Sodom, mate; they

never split. They’ve been consistently excellent

over the years, too, Better Off Dead excepted.

Oh well, enough with those reuniting tossers

already; let’s talk about something cooler, like

chainsaw-wielding Punk skeletons for instance ;

the one depicted on Surrender or Die’s cover bears

a strong resemblance to the undead figuring on

some of The Exploited’s record sleeves (noticeably

on Troops of Tomorrow and Death Before

Dishonour). Did you get the idea from them or is it

just a coincidence?

“We got the idea exactly from the Exploited! It

looked cool and we just modified it slightly. I was/

am a big old school ‘70s/’80s punk rock fan!”

That makes two of us, then. Speaking of Punk, I

know that you’re a Plasmatics/Wendy O. fan (and

that you borrowed from them the great “one two

fuck you” line), you toured with GBH at some

point and on the website you claim that Slaughter

played “a mixture of speed, death and thrash

metal combined with the raw, power and noisy,

snot-nosed attitude of early punk rock music.”

How important do you think was Punk, especially

second-wave Punk, in shaping ‘80s Metal? Back

in the day, did you consider that Punk and Heavy

Metal were markedly different in sound and/or

704 Don’t Break the Ghost


Digital Glue

“No-one’ll ever see them fall my arse.”

attitude or did you think both styles shared a basic

identity?

“Many qualities from early punk rock was a

huge influence on the Slaughter sound. I loved the

brutality of the Sex Pistols, Discharge, Plasmatics,

G.B.H., Direct Action, Youth Youth Youth,

Ramones, Johnny Thunders, Wayne County and

The Electric Chairs and the new aggression of the

metal stuff like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Saxon,

Samson, early Rush, Ted Nugent, etc. I believe

that punk put the snot back into heavy metal and

gave it a more vicious,kick in the ass. Look at Paul

Di’Anno in early Iron Maiden and compare that to

pre-punk metal like Aerosmith, etc. I liked all that

shit, but wanted to combine the heaviness of Black

Sabbath with the fury and attitude of The Damned.

In the early ‘80s it was metal fans vs punk rockers

but by 1984 it began to be acceptable to love both

genres!”

If there is one thing Punk and HM share as far as

attitude’s concerned, it’s the ever-present desire

to denounce the “posers”. Isn’t such a concern

the expression of teenage insecurity and of the

burning though unadmitted desire most people

feel at that age to get an identity-by-proxy as part

of a social group? Is it really surprising, then, that

as they get older most people will opt out of HM or

Punk? When a huge emphasis is put on extraneous

bullshit (“if you don’t like this you’re a poserwimp”

etc.) how can it be possible for someone to

develop an intimate relationship with the music,

which is supposedly the point of the whole thing?

“True hardcore metal and punk fans, all seem to

be kids who never fit in with the radio, pop bullshit

that is forced down everyone’s throats by the

media. They can spot poseurs and trendies a mile

away and the true, underground fans despised

corporate, media fodder that is filling up the space

in peoples, empty hollow lives. There are two types

of music fans. Those who are totally absorbed by

the music and soak up every detail of a song and

the people who talk through music, never listen

and use it as background noise to fill up a lull in

their minds to keep them from having individual

thoughts. They use music as white-noise to drown

out any free thoughts that enter their heads. Not

only teenagers are dedicated music fans but all

people who really love their music. You either are

a true music lover or you’re not! No matter what

you’re age, if it’s too loud, you’re too old!”

Do you think that all straight people have the old

banana implant, then?

“Wise,true words from the legendary,Wendy

O.Williams! All straights have rotten fruit, wedged

firmly up the old asshole and they spend their

mediocre lives with rotten fruit on their minds...”

A pretty accurate description, I’d say. Let’s move

on to the topic of Slaughter’s notorious gigs; you

very clearly took pride in kicking the audience’s

collective arse when you played live. What bands

kicked yours? And which ones turned out to be

disappointments?

“The bands that really kicked my ass hard and

made me sweat were the live concerts by early

Judas Priest, early Iron Maiden, Twisted Sister, Kiss,

Alice Cooper, Plasmatics, early Rush, Led Zeppelin,

early Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, The Sex Pistols,

Wayne County & The Electric Chairs, Exciter, Rapid

Tears, Anvil, Slayer, Mercyful Fate, etc. Some shows

that I saw in the late 1970s and early 1980s were

legendary! I remember seeing Exciter on stage with

tons of dry ice, with their backs to the audience

and then launch into a fury of brutality. I saw The

Scorpions with Motörhead and they destroyed my

hearing for a week! I have a noticeable hearing loss

to this day from all the years, standing in the front

row and being blown completely away by many

classic, legendary bands.”

Wendy O. Williams’ arguably greatest live stunt

(from her music-playing days I mean) was when,

in 1979, she drove a Cadillac into a stage loaded

with explosives, jumping out mere seconds away

from impact; and of course she had made an

habit of blowing up cars and lighting trusses

onstage. Yourselves were no slouches in the wild

live performances department, fucking up guitars

and throwing chickens, records or mangled

dolls into the audience. If Slaughter had had as

much money to burn as WOW had, what kind of

wanton demolition act do you reckon you’d have

performed onstage?

“I have a live video of The Plasmatics playing

that show. They blew my mind. Ritchie Stotts

in a ballet dress, drooling all over himself, Wes

Beech grimacing and strumming 1,000 miles per

hour and Wendy moaning and covered in dirt,

dead flowers and shaving cream on a pier in New

York City! If I had the cash I’d think of something

similar like setting the drums on fire,blowing up

a coffin of baby dolls and filling the concert hall

with pigs guts. Imagine pig entrail falling down

from the ceiling onto an audience. Alice Cooper

used to brag about being so bizarre that people

would pay to see the show just to walk out by the

second song... Hmmmmm great idea! We used to

curse the audience out and tell them that they paid

their admission so they better enjoy it or get the

fuck out. We singled out anyone sitting down and

put the spot lights on them until they got up and

moved! Many times I ran out into the audience to

confront the slackers and get them up to the front

of the stage. Some very funny moments there! The

audience basically saw the humour in it all and

we were always very tongue in cheek about it. I

mean, with baby dolls on swords with safety pins

through their nipples and rubber chickens flying

everywhere, how could you not notice us!”

Do you think that to better encapsulate the essence

of bands like Slaughter and Plasmatics we should

coin the phrase Demolition Rock? What other

bands do you think are worthy enough to be

included under that label?

“Demolition rock = the early Who, Alice Cooper,

Kiss, Plasmatics, Slaughter, Venom and T-Rex, etc.”

Dominique Poulain 2003

Janne Stark

Strong Arm of Swedish Metal

When I first saw The Encyclopedia of Swedish

Hard Rock and Heavy Metal I couldn’t help but

gasp for air. Finally a Heavy Metal book that

emanates the same “All or nothing at all” attitude

as Heavy Metal itself. Instead of trying to be a

little bit of this and a little bit of that it was clearly

focused and dedicated.

Janne Stark is familiar for many since the early ‘80s

as the axeman of OVERDRIVE and PARADIZE, and

more currently LOCOMOTIVE BREATH. However,

these days he’s best known as the author of these

two giants of books: Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 of The

Encyclopedia of Swedish Hard Rock and Heavy

Metal.

The following conversation took place in

September 2001 when Vol. 2 was still in the

making.

Since you’re a settled man with everything going

okay in your life, what’s your fire and fuel as far as

Heavy Metal is concerned?

“Basically I am and have always been a music

fan. I was very big on tape trading in the 80’s and

still do trade. Whenever I get new CDs in the mail,

the first thing I do is rush in and browse through

them. It still gives me a huge kick to check out new

bands and releases. So, I guess basically, the music

itself is the fuel!”

How would you describe your relationship with

Metal?

“Hmm... well, being, as you earlier said, a

settled man (age 37, married since 16 years, 2

daughters) today I don’t LOOK metal, it’s more in

the heart. Although I do, to my wife and daughters’

great fear, love to mildly provoke, for example

by wearing “metal T-shirts” in public. I write for

Sweden Rock Magazine, whose T-shirt says in very

big letters all over the back “I LOVE HARD ROCK”.

It really interesting to see people’s reaction when

a short-haired engineer-type guy shows up at

PTA-meetings in such a shirt. I haven’t swallowed

the whole hype, but the music is a huge part of

my life.”

Many people grow out of Metal, or so they say.

Why, in your opinion? And what do they actually

grow out of?

“I think, which I’ve heard from some “friends”,

it’s not considered “grown up” to like metal. “So

you like Black Sabbath. I did too… when I was

a kid”. That sort of thing. Then when you play a

record for them, it’s like, “wow, this is great. I’ve

forgot how good it was”. It’s like trying to repress

your childhood. I don’t really care about those

types of people. It’s their loss. They don’t know

what they are missing!”

How did the idea of the Encyclopedia come about

in the first place - did you choose the subject

matter or did it choose you? And what would

you say is the point of the whole thing beyond

the obvious one which was to come up with an

exhaustive resource on Swedish Hårdrock?

“Well, thank you! It actually started way back.

I’ve always been into Swedish metal ever since the

demo-collecting stage in the late 70’s/early 80’s.

Then it was Swedish singles. Then around 1990 I

started writing for Backstage Magazine, that only

wrote about Swedish bands, from pop to metal. In

about 1994 Lennart, the editor of Backstage, asked

me to send him a list of all my Swedish records,

so he could see what he missed out. I have my

records listed in the computer, so I just edited out

all the non-Swedish. When finished I thought - It

would be pretty easy to include some more info on

each band, like members, bio and description etc.

I had “The International Encyclopedia Of Heavy

Metal” in mind and they only featured 5-6 Swedish

bands. I bounced the idea with a friend at a record

distribution company, who said - Great idea! You

write and I’ll pay for the printing.

“I then started contacting bands and almost

immediately got in touch with Roger Holegård

from Neon Rose. He worked at Premium

Publishing and they were really hot on the idea

and asked if they could take over the project and

the distribution didn’t mind, but would instead

help with distribution. I made a deal with Premium

and we made a plan and away I went. It only took

18 months from start to finish. Mind you I was

working full time, playing in the band and writing

for the magazine at the same time. I however only

need 3-5 hours sleep.”

Although there was a small separate section with

selected demo bands in Vol. 1 you’ve basically

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Content previously published on the Isten website.

chosen to deal with bands that have released

one record at least, isn’t that a bit dangerous?

Nowadays it’s very easy for a band to release, say,

a self-financed CD, whereas such was not the case

at all in the ‘80s; thus, don’t you run the risk of

seriously misrepresenting the latter decade?

“It was very easy for bands to release 7” singles

in the Eighties, too. I don’t think there’s much

of a difference in that sense. However what has

changed is that the demo-section I had in the first

book, will now be a CDR-section. The CDR had

taken over from the cassette-demo. This means for

a band to be qualified for the book the CD has to

be properly printed at a CD-plant. It doesn’t have

to be on a label or so, but NO CDRs are allowed.”

Musicians today seem to form a new project

around every new idea they come across and for

a reason or another nearly all of these projects

end up doing a record. Keeping up-to-date with

all these new releases and projects must be a

nightmare for you as encyclopedia writer, how do

you keep your sanity?

“Who said I’ve kept my sanity? Seriously, the

project-thing is another thing that has changed

dramatically since the first book. I mean now I

will have to write something like “Guitarist Nils is

also found in XX, YY, ZZ, AA, BB, NN, MM”. It’ll

be a mile-long list of bands the guys are found

in besides their original band. It’s actually sheer

hell trying to keep up with all these projects

and especially all obscure death metal bands

being released on puny Korean, Portuguese and

Singaporean labels. The web and Close-Up have

been huge help. I’m however very disappointed

at some labels and distributors who doesn’t give a

rats ass about doing promotion for the bands.”

How do you see this project situation as a metal

fan? Why do you think musicians in the ‘80s didn’t

behave the way their successors do? Even the

people forming the highly unstable early Swedish

Death Metal scene still pretty much committed to

one act only, although the line-ups seemed to be

always changing.

“I think it’s become more and more accepted.

It’s been growing all along. Even though guys are

in bands, they are in cover-bands on the side. The

cover-bands sometimes evolve into something

more. It’s a bit like the music world’s answer to the

free sex movement in the hippe-70’s where you

could sleep with anyone and it was OK (well, I was

too young...)... sometimes you get pregnant and

that’s when the problem starts (i.e. the fun-project

becomes serious). In the case of Sweden it might

also be a lack of musicians. I mean we are only 8.6

million people (same as London) and the amount

of outstanding singers does not match the amount

of bands in need of one...”

Do you find it alarming that the younger

generations of Metal musicians don’t really have

any personal contact with the source material?

Furthermore, up until the start of the ‘90s musical

education was pretty much a fuck-shit-up affair

as far as Heavy Metal was concerned. Sure, the

situation had a bit evolved since the early ‘70s,

when basically you learned all you knew either by

listening to the records or by talking with fellow

musicians, but still by and large there were no

useful schools or courses. Nowadays, budding

musicians have an instant access to relevant

knowledge, be that through institutions or by

doing a bit of browsing on the internet. To what

extent do you think that state of affairs is actually

benefiting to Heavy Metal, if at all? When you listen

to the nth teenage band hailing from Göteborg,

are you wowed by their admittedly impressive

technical level or abashed at their utter lack of

personality?

“I find it pretty amusing when younger people

treat for example “German metal” like Hammerfall

etc., as a “new” thing. Man, that’s the exact same

thing we did in the early Eighties. The same

thing with the “new” stoner bag, Black Sabbath…

anyone? On the other hand, when the younger

fans read or hear where the bands got their

influences they do mention these sources and

point the younger fans in that direction, which is

cool. I myself learned playing guitar from playing

to records way back when and I feel there’s the

danger of stereotyping when kids learn their licks

and scales from the same Yngwie/Vinnie Moore/

Tony McAlpine video. When I listen to new records

and new technical bands wherever they are from,

I can be amazed by their technical skills, but that

just like pissing your pants - it gets you warm for a

short moment. If there’s no substance in the music,

no originality and no feel, it gets a few spins and

probably becomes a dust-collector. I sometimes

get 10-15 records at a time. I immediately browse

through them all and if there are nine utterly

technical and skilled Göteborg-style bands and

one not so technically perfect, maybe even down

right simple but with feel and passion... guess

which one stays in the player. When reviewing you

however have to be careful. The people that read

my review haven’t heard the other eight Göteborgbands,

so I still have to judge the band from its

own perspective. I always listen to a record at least

three times before reviewing.”

You must have pretty good idea how many new

metal releases Swedish bands release altogether

annually? What sort of numbers are we talking

about and has the number been increasing or

decreasing during the last few years?

“In the first book there were 1.000 bands (from

1970-1996). The new book will contain bands

that have released stuff after 1996, band’s I forgot

in the first book and complete and up-dated

information on bands from the first book that have

had records released since then. I’m currently on

almost 750 bands! I haven’t counted how many

new/year or so, but it’s definitely been increasing.

However, as you pointed out before, there are also

all these project-bands.”

What are the most important Swedish records for

Heavy Metal in your opinion and why?

“Tough one... The most important generally:

November - En Ny Tid Är Här (1970) The first

real Swedish hard rock album; Europe - The

Final Countdown - Brought hard rock into the

international charts; Hammerfall - Glory To The

Brave - Resurrected heavy metal in the charts.”

What are the most important Swedish Metal

records to you personally and why?

“Neon Rose - A Dream Of Glory And Pride

(1974) This was when I discovered that a Swedish

band could play just as heavy as the English and

American ones. Then of course all the ones I’ve

played on with Overdrive, Locomotive Breath etc.

I’ve probably forgot something obvious here, but

this is what I came to think of here and now.”

Nationalism clearly is totally out of place in

a musical context, and if possible even more

so where Heavy Metal (who is not exactly

mainstream society’s favourite child, to say the

least) is concerned. In your work, which feels more

awkward, categorising music as Hårdrock/Heavy

Metal or not, or the decision to limit your research

to Swedish music only?

“As a record collector and a collector or

obscure bands and releases I’d love to write an

international encyclopedia, but the problem is I

wouldn’t know where to stop. There was a pretty

huge international encyclopedia released a while

back (an English re-worked version of a German

encyclopedia I think). I received a mail from

the author asking for track-listings for a load of

Swedish records. I sent all the material to him and

never even received a thanks or an offer to even

buy the book. A**hole. The categorising-bit is so

hard. What’s hard rock and what’s not? Where’s

the limit between hardcore and punk, AOR and

pop, heavy rock blues and blues-rock etc. I’ve had

a few people I’ve bounced ideas with and will do

so for the second edition. Speaking of nationalism,

there are actually some Swedish racist hard rock

bands, which I have excluded. I don’t think it

belongs in music and I stand for that.”

Why did you choose not to reveal Quorthon’s

real name in Vol. 1? What’s the point of secrecy?

Of course we all had a great laugh when Michael

Moynihan and Didrik Söderlind claimed in their

book Lords of Chaos that Quorthon’s real name is

Pugh Rogefeldt...

“I can’t help but respect the guy. He even

kept the fact that he even plays guitar a secret

from his girlfiend for over six months. We’ll see

what happens in the next edition. It’s actually my

intention to try to “reveal” as many of these names

as possible. Yes, Pugh Rogefelt, that’s a killer!!!”

How do you see the future of The Encyclopedia

of Swedish Hard Rock and Heavy Metal after Vol.

2? Will there be a third book or is the entire thing

possibly heading for Internet, CD-ROM or some

other format?

“I’ve received mails and calls from people who

have spotted missing or incorrect information in

the first book. Their information will be corrected

or at least commented in the second book.

Considering my mental state I will probably do like

I did after the first book was ready… immediately

start collecting information for the next. There’s

always a possibility to easily transfer the book to

CD-ROM either as in interactive thing with mp3’s

or just a simple pdf-file on the web, but there’s

always the risk of bootlegs and counterfeits when

you put it on CD. Even though this is a great

passion, my family who backs me up incredibly,

and I can at least say I have a hobby that pays for

itself.”

Janne Sarna 2003

Pagan Rites

Branded and Exiled

I had a mate on the phone yesterday, and I was

telling him how good I thought Mark of the Devil

by Pagan Rites was, when, after he had asked me

what it sounded like, I found myself somewhat in a

bind, unable to provide a straight answer.

First I told him they were a black metal band. Then

I corrected myself-nope, they’re a TRUE black

metal band, at which point I felt it sounded too

much like the idiotic ravings and empty claims of

countless scene acts, and thus, changing tack for

the second time, I went like: “well, you know, it

sounds like early Bathory, Hellhammer, Venom,

Samael, Mefisto too a little bit perhaps, though

more as regards the mood than the music itself”.

He then replied: “yeah, a true black metal band,

then”.

So much for nuance.

706 Don’t Break the Ghost


Digital Glue

“Maybe he didn’t want to get personal with a fanzine that has a devil logo.”

Yeah, into the forefatherly black with instinctive

riffs of evil! It’s an album that can lead you to

awkward situations. A bit like playing Venom to

someone who’s never heard them before but

is very familiar with modern black metal. “No,

you gotta understand… aw fuck, forget it, here’s

‘Countess Bathory’, can you dig it?”

Mark of the Devil is torture chamber metal

courtesy of Swedish underground mainstays

Devil Lee Rot (the artist formerly known as Tomas

Karlsson) and Sado Harri Juvonen, assisted by

bröderna hårdrock aka the Nifelheim twins. About

the most evocative thing to say about the music

contained therein is, “This fucking shreds! Hit me

baby one more time!”

Largely driven by the same demons as Nifelheim,

but less frantic with rage in their approach, Pagan

Rites churn out the sort of evil heavy metal that has

nearly become extinct. It’s simple and it calls for a

simple yes-or-no reaction.

Yeah, and what did Professor Black say about it?

“Metal heads trying to play music, and failing”?

So I had a mate on the phone yesterday, and I was

telling him how good I thought the latest Pagan

Rites album was.

“So far, I think it’s only gotten good responses!”

confirms vocalist Devil Lee Rot.

Mr Devil Lee Rot, if you were in the business of

releasing a single to promote Mark of the Devil,

what would you pick for the A-side and B-side?

“Ohhh, I don’t know… My favorite tracks may be

“Die Priest Die” and the classic “Return to the Lake

of Fire”.”

Are the Nifelheim twins involved permanently?

“They were just on the Mark of the Devil album. I

think it worked well. It’s only me and Sadoharri left.

Together we are a perfect team, I think. So far we

have been working together very well.

Too sad that he moved from Sweden! Lenny Blade

and Cab (of Hypnosia) and Tomas Hedlund have

now joined to complete the pagan coven. We hope

to enter the studio in winter 2004/05 to record a

new album.”

I must congratulate you on your vocal performance

on Mark of the Devil as well.

“Thanks dude. I think a lot of people like my voice.”

Is this performance the highlight of your career

so far?

“No, I did my best work so far on Devil Lee Rot’s

album Metalizer.”

And you’ve dropped the vocal style you showcased

on the Hail Victory! 7”.

“In Devil Lee Rot, I use some kind of normal

voice, not as it was on Hail Victory, and some say it

sounds very good! This is my way to sing and has

always been. It’s the voice of the Devil!”

When asked what Mark of the Devil sounds like,

I’m in something of a bind, unable to give a straight

answer.

“I think we can call Pagan Rites a ‘pagan metal’

band!”

Not ‘true black metal’?

“For me, black metal is Venom and Mercyful Fate,

and maybe even my own solo band. I do agree

that we sound like early Bathory, Venom, or Celtic

Frost, but you can also find heavy metal riffs in our

songs. The voice is the only thing I think we can

compare with the black metal of today. But I think

we’re just a great metal band, and metal for me is a

lifestyle. The only pleasure in life!”

Why do you need these three separate outlets

(Pagan Rites, Autopsy Torment, and the solo act)

for your metallic ambitions?

And exactly how boring do you find this question

to be?

“Not boring at all. Nowadays, there’s not many

zines sending interviews!

“As I told you before, metal is a lifestyle, and I

can’t grow up and be a normal person. That’s not

me! There’s no secret behind it. Just stand up and

protect your faith, which is metal! Some of my past

friends are today normal. Why do such jerks forget

what they once were? I’m not afraid to say to the

crowd: ‘I’m a heavy metal man!’

“To live, I need my bands. It’s my feeding ground.

I need metal and metal needs me [laughing.] To

be honest, the number one band for me is Devil

Lee Rot. But I hope the future will be good for all

three.”

What are your goals with Pagan Rites?

“To have fun, play gigs, write new songs, release

more cool albums, try the new line-up, and give the

fans true pagan metal! Pagan Rites just got fresh

members, so we have to start rehearsals with the

new line-up soon.”

Anything to add?

“Thanks for the interview! Don’t forget to order

cool Devil Lee Rot stuff from our labels. To all our

loyal fans… Stay hard!”

Mikko Mattila/Dominique Poulain/

Janne Sarna, interview edited by Professor Black

Jay C. Blade/OZ

Blade Runner

The man who wrote “Turn the Cross Upside

Down” is afraid of Isten. Or maybe he’s just

annoyed with us.

Be that as it may, Mr Jugi Lewis aka Jay C. Blade

first agreed to do an interview with us live. In the

end he was so elusive that email was the only

option. Maybe he was just busy. Or maybe he

didn’t want to get personal with a fanzine that

has a devil logo. Of said heavy metal anthem, Jugi

states “I guess I shouldn’t have made that song.”

Nevertheless, read on for some classic Finnish

metal tidbits. The interview was conducted in

November 2002.

You’ve led rock’n’roll life from quite early on,

haven’t you? How did you get into heavy rock in

the first place? What was your first band Masque

like?

“I got into heavy rock through Alice Cooper,

and later on I started listening to bands like Judas

Priest, Iron Maiden, Motorhead, etc. The early

band experiences are not worth mentioning,

except for Masque, which was a good learning

situation. But we didn’t have enough original

material, so it didn’t really lead anywhere. I joined

Sarcofagus around the same time, and went from

playing bass and singing to just lead vocals.”

How did you get involved in Sarcofagus? Did you

have experience on vocals at that point? What

about “Guts” Leidén, any idea why he’d left the

group?

“I put an ad in Soundi magazine, after which we

got in touch with Kimmo Kuusniemi and quickly

arranged a meeting. I had been singing, of course,

but never as a lead vocalist without an instrument.

I don’t know anything about the Leidén times.”

There are two Sarcofagus playback TV

appearances with you on vocals and wearing silver

facepaint, with lots of fire and smoke about. Please

tell us something about the shooting sessions -

how did it come about and were those two the

only ones you did?

“Those TV tapings were done at TV2, Tohloppi,

Tampere, and they were the only songs we did

there. We got paid nicely, that’s all I remember.”

How did the story of Sarcofagus end? You were

told that your services weren’t needed and the

band eventually turned into Kimmo Kuusniemi

Band/Moottorilinnut… What’s your stance on the

“Moottorilinnut” LP, by the way?

“They fired me with “extreme prejudice”, or

Kimmo did. In other words I was the last one to

know about it, call it a conspiracy if you wish. By

the way, this is the only time I’ve been sacked from

a group, and there’s been a lot of groups. I think

Moottorilinnut sucks big time, it sounds like it’s

been recorded in a big fuckin’ toilet. And I say that

with a big smile.”

How would you describe Kimmo Kuusniemi as a

person? As a band leader? As a musician?

“Well, I guess he had his moments. Good

songwriter, and he also had lots of interesting

ideas. But the albums sounded weird. He wasn’t

too great when it came to producing. I felt that

he was trying to get energy from the Dark Side,

which I admit to doing as well back then, although

minimally compared to him. My final thought

on him remains that he truly was (probably not

anymore) a “black magic hobbyist” during that

period of his life.”

It could be argued that Sarcofagus have been quite

influential - e.g. bands like Mercyful Fate and Celtic

Frost have certainly at times sounded like they’d

given “Envoy of Death” a listen or two… What do

you think?

“It’s possible, but Envoy was hardly a

widespread album back then, so I wonder how

they could have heard it.”

How did you team up with Messrs DeMartini,

Wolff, Ruffneck and Foxx, then? When exactly did

this happen?

“They heard about me through a friend, and we

tried things out at rehearsal. This was in 1982.”

OZ were the most internationally oriented heavy

metal band in Finland at the time. What was the

situation like - didn’t Masque have what it takes

to make it to the top, or after the Sarcofagus

experience, were you in a hurry to pick up the pace

as far as your career was concerned?

“I never even spared a thought on my career

back then, none of us did. We were too young.

Rock music is not like sports where you plan

things ahead. OZ was a real band compared to the

others. We fuckin’ rocked, man.”

Planning ahead or not, you sort of took over the

band straight away, or at least the song writing

dept?

“Song writing was my thing, but as far as

leadership goes, there was no leader, it was

democratic and friendly. Maybe at times I was

making decisions based on my songwriting

capabilities.”

707 Grave New World


Content previously published on the Isten website.

How much did you joining the band affect the

image et al? New stage names and no more

wearing jackets or yellow sunshades on stage...

“We started to look like the bands we listened

to - Scorpions, Accept, Priest, etc.”

What’s the story behind your stage name Jay C.

Blade? And who’s who for real in OZ? The band

went through line-up changes between the first

and second LP so could you please fill us in on

that?

“I don’t know about the first line-up, I wasn’t

there, see? There’s no story behind my stage name.

I still use it in Heavy Metal projects I’m involved in.

Also, I will not reveal anybody’s real names.”

What made the band move to Stockholm? What

was the Stockholm scene like back then?

OZ

“Ruffneck moved first, the rest soon followed. It

was hard times, no money, no food, but eventually

everyone got jobs and things started moving along.

The scene was pretty good, lots of new bands.

We were feared by them because we were ‘crazy

drinking/fighting Finns’.”

The cover of your Fire in the Brain LP was

designed by the son of your label boss Börje the

Boss, right? This father and son combination

became known as Bathory. Any fun recollections

from that period and how did all this affect the

relationship of the label and OZ? Quorthon has

claimed that the better known groups on the

“Scandinavian Metal Attack” compilation were

annoyed because suddenly it was Bathory that got

the most attention...

“No comment on those, sorry!”

Did you or any OZ members ever play on a

Bathory recording?

“No.”

Blackie Lawless of WASP has once said that

fans who take things (the show, the image) too

seriously make him quite uncomfortable. In

Scandinavia all this Bathory/Venom/Hellhammer

worship went over the top in the early ‘90s when

youngsters really started to burn churches to the

ground and boasted that “ what the old bands

only talked about, we do for real”. Fans often

tend to take bands more seriously than the bands

themselves. What’s your stance on this? You’re

a big fan of Alice Cooper, aren’t you - has it ever

gotten unhealthy?

“There are always people who take things to

extremes. I don’t like that but what can I do? I’m

not a dumb-ass, so no unhealthy stuff.”

Fire in the Brain was released under license also

in the USA, Canada and Japan which was totally

unheard of for a Finnish band back then. Where

did you play live in addition to Sweden and did you

feel the support from the label on this department

was good enough?

“The label sucked big time. They got us two gigs

and that was it. It just makes me mad every time I

think about it.”

How would you describe OZ shows in general -

you must have been one of the most spectacular

live acts in Northern Europe. Any particularly fond

memories?

“Our shows were totally crazy. A guy from

Atlantic Records (New York) saw us in Stockholm

and he wanted to sign us right away. But guess

what happened? Our own label fucked it up.”

Alongside with the LP you also released the super

sound maxi “Turn the Cross Upside Down” - how

come such a strong metal anthem didn’t end up on

any of your albums?

“I refer to the label on that, as well.”

The legend says when you got the first royalty

cheque for the 12” the number on the dotted line

was none other than six-six-six and you took this

as a sign of some sort and never wrote a “satanic”

song ever again? What’s your stance on this

decision some 20 years later?

“It’s a true story. It’s almost too corny but it did

happen. I prefer the forces of good nowadays.”

We know this guy who’s bought several copies

of the maxi single in question and has made an

upside down cross of them on his bedroom wall.

What does this sound like to you?

“Sounds like a big fan of us, right? I guess I

shouldn’t have made that song.”

What were your main influences in your opinion?

Iron Maiden and Accept perhaps?

“Accept, definitely.”

What about Third Warning, how do you feel about

the song material on that one? And especially the

production values?

“Great songs, really awful production. And that’s

a shame.”

And Decibel Storm?

“My favourite album. I can still listen to this one

and feel proud.”

Was drummer Mark Ruffneck some sort of a

dictator in the band as he was the one who

continued with OZ while others drifted away?

“He wasn’t a dictator. But he was out of control

when drunk. That’s when you had to look out.””

Have you even heard Roll the Dice yourself and

how do you like it? This line-up also used to play

ABBA’s “Money, Money, Money” live...

“Of course I’ve heard Roll the Dice. It’s ok but

the singer needed guidance on this one as well.”

Jay C Blade in Princess Pang Would you say in the

end there was some sort of contradiction between

your personal aspirations and the band’s goals?

“No contradiction. I just got offered a better deal

with Princess Pang. Who wouldn’t want to play in

the States instead of Sweden?”

The CD re-releases of OZ records look pretty

damn cheap and poor - any comments? Should the

albums be re-released on vinyl, what do you think?

“I don’t give a shit. Or actually, I would like to

see Decibel Storm released on CD.”

Do you have any idea in how many countries your

records have been released? Any sales figures?

“I would say about 50.000 units altogether,

starting the count from Fire in the Brain. And that’s

pretty damn close.”

Do you have any idea where the name OZ came

in the first place? (By the way, is it a capital “Z”?)

Who designed the logo?

“Capital Z. No idea. Wizard of Oz?”

Why do you think even prestigeous Heavy Metal

encyclopedias and magazines mistake you for a

Swedish band?

“Because we lived in Sweden.”

Were you familiar with the band Shock Tilt? The

Vaasa based band who moved to Stockholm in the

late ‘80s to seek success like you did several years

before. Their homicidal maniac of a manager killed

and dismembered guitarist Hannu Rajala in 1987...

“No.”

What do you consider your greatest achievement

in music? And the best song you have ever written?

“Those songs are still unreleased. In metal it’s

Fire in the Brain.”

What do you think about the Finnish heavy metal

of the ‘80s - Zero Nine, Riff Raff, Ironcross et al?

“I liked Riff Raff a lot.”

When you think of OZ, the band’s image was

somehow burdened with a sort of “dog is in the

details” syndrome - whether it be the smoking

jacket on the first album cover, or Ape wearing a

rather silly yellow sun shade on a TV session, or

whatever?

“Bad taste, that’s all.”

How volatile was the band’s life together in

Sweden - genuine Finnish style drinking habits and

violent encounters of the Ruffneck kind?

“That’s how it was. Blood, broken glass and lost

teeth.”

So how did it come about that you left OZ behind

for the land of milk and honey and Big Apple?

Princess Pang didn’t quite succeed in conquering

those pastures of green, although you were

marketed as “the most popular band in Sweden”?

Kind of in the wake of Europe?

“I think we did pretty good considering that we

were a new band. Two major videos on American

MTV, long tour with Mr.Big and tons of radio

interviews and magazines. They wrote about us

a lot.”

You’ve criticised American society and its values

quite heavily. How come it took you 13 years to get

fed up with it?

“ I had enough money to enjoy myself with for

those first 10 years. American people are great,

but their whole system is total complete bullshit,

no matter what Ted Nugent says. Corruption is

widespread in the whole political system, as well as

the judicial. It’s a lot worse than people know. It’s

fuckin’ scary to live there. And remember, I’m not

into politics. I just tell it like I see it.”

Princess Pang was, if I may say so, a pretty

commercial enterprise. Some might think that

your criticism stems from bitterness… How do you

plead?

“No reason to be bitter, it was my own decision.

Princess Pang was everything but commercial. You

have no idea how crazy that sounds to me.”

Nowadays you’re playing in Yö, one of Finland’s

most successful rock bands. Is it tough enough for

you or do you need projects like Heep Purple to

express your heavier side?

“Yö is the best band I have ever played in. Great

guys, good players and no bullshit attitudes. I love

it.”

Do you find it more natural to play in a mainstream

band like Yö than joining a contemporary heavy

metal band like Stratovarius or whatever?

Apparently you did not race Marco Hietala of Tarot

for the bass player/2nd vocalist spot in Nightwish?

“I have absolutely no interest in playing in

Stratovarius or Nightwish. HIM would be different.

That I might like.”

Are you in touch with the OZ chaps these days?

708 Don’t Break the Ghost


Digital Glue

“Listen, I am Heavy Metal. I have put in more hours, more years, have worked every bit as hard as any of you.”

What are they up to nowadays?

“We don’t talk often but occasionally I get in touch

with Spooky and Ape.”

So is there a new OZ album in the pipeline? What

else is in store for Mr Bassojasso in the future?

“I’d like to do the “final chapter” for OZ, but there’s

no time. I’ve tried to contact Ape about it, but he’s

gone underground or something. The songs are

ready. Maybe one day.”

Mikko Mattila/Janne Sarna/

Dominique Poulain 2003

deathvalleymarathon

an email journal of one man’s mission to survive

the unthinkable, over five hours of stratovarius in

one sitting, the equivalent of running a death valley

marathon without a backup crew

To: Mikko

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 11:04:22

Subject: break like the wind

man, i’ve never been a stratovarius fanboy, but the

lyrics to eagleheart and especially the video (the

horror) is totally like classic stuff, so now i have to

and must listen to all strato material i can get my

hands on at the office. something like 5 hours, 18

minutes and 53 seconds - longer than a decent

time for marathon in the death valley.

uh, i feel a bowel movement... must.. put a taxi

driver’s plug in the ass, bite the bullet and rush

onwards.

To: Mikko

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 11:59:52

Subject: Tolkki is GOD

—-

To: Mikko

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 12:46:45

Subject: Re: break like the wind

1h 45min done, still going ok… after this, i have

to put the headphones on, vol to the max and

slaughter by @thegates straight to the cranium.

now playing babylon, damn i wish i could

singalong, but no. good effort, good going, timo

the voice of mankind kotipelto in the mood and a

tear in his eye.

i’m seriously thinking about purchasing one of

those stratoshirts - wouldn’t have thought some

of those terrible strato album covers are done by

derek riggs of all people.

the man has totally fried his brain.

can i play with madness?

To: Mikko

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 13:16:08

http://www.tolkki.com

too bad it’s closed, well he could’ve at least left the

topics and discussions :(

still have 3h 4min to go. starting to go lactic acids,

almost too tired to continue... now playing galaxies

off of fourth dimension.

To: Mikko

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 200313:24:48

Subject: Elements Part 2 cover posted online at

strato.com!

gods of earth and heaven, check out the title of the

bonus track (#10)!

[...10. ride like the wind] reality is stranger than

spinal tap.

To: Mikko

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 13:41:06

Subject: 030366

[lyrics of 030366 attached]

To: Mikko

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 14:10:35

Subject: in the valley of death

2h 11min left, wouldn’t have started if i’d known

what this is like.

To: Mikko

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 14:48:22

Subject: Paradise

this rocks now, wow.

[lyrics of Paradise attached]

To: Mikko

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 17:07:02

Subject: Off topic but as satisfying as scratching an

infected scab

http://www.sonataarctica.com/pics/background/

showpicture.php?dj06-0800.jpg

To: Mikko

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 15:09:51

Subject: march or die!

[from Stratovarius.com:] Against the Wind

It’s about persistence. TT got the idea for the song

once when his car ran out of gas and he had to

walk four kilometers to home in the rain, against

the wind.

To: Mikko

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 15:30:41

Subject: march or die!

Last hour has been broken, 55min to go. in some

perverse way that made me laugh, started to think

among other things what kind of a song would be

born if TT came back to the car with a jerry can,

he fills the tank and throttles home to his liver

casserole and buttermilk. maybe something like,

Coming home again in the night/Speeding fast to

the light/Oh liver casserole and buttermilk...

To: Mikko

Date Tue, 12 Aug 2003 16:10:54

Subject: death rattle

phew, only two songs to go. third from the

last is just about to end in some pseudo organ

choral floods. then it’s about time to cock up the

automatic and run world of lies to flush the ear

drums and off to boot hill to meet up a friend.

running out of humour when kotipelto is shouting

out the audience (the last one is sadly a live album)

- you can really suck up the atmosphere, fantastic.

To: Mikko

Date Tue, 12 Aug 2003 16:22:52

Subject: Re: march or die!

it is done.

thank god.

a bit of good thrashing and then to home, oh

bugger, wonder what i should listen tomorrow.

// the following day

To: Mikko

Date Tue, 13 Aug 2003 08:40:44

Subject: at the gates

damn this sounds sweeter than i ever thought it

would.

damhair

17 August 2003

Scream for Me,

Neighbours!

Harmony lead: MM & JS

Listen, it’s time for air guitarists the world over

to stand proud. It’s time to take the posers by the

neck and spit the following in their faces: ‘You

make music and you find yourselves important.

Listen, I am Heavy Metal. I have put in more hours,

more years, have worked every bit as hard as any

of you. Every riff and every lead that I wield on

my air guitar is absolutely, metalliciously perfect,

while you’re trying to impress the world with your

dishwater metal. The biggest thrill at your gigs is

whether you can pull an audience with any sort of

credibility. There’s none to be found on stage.’

Lead: MM

Personally, if I had to pick just one air guitarring

moment to take on to a desert island with me, it

would have to be getting caught doing “Aces High”

half-naked on the balcony. By my old 4 th grade

teacher. Those are the kind of experiences that

put you fast asleep at night buzzing inside with the

fulfilment of it all.

Me in my teens! The eyes on that boy! Within them

a universe of shame and indistinct expectations.

And watch me now, impregnated by metal and

indistinct disillusionment and so ready to write.

Hear my knuckles crack.

Chances are that you are not as big a depositor

in the bank where awkward memories are kept.

Germany’s distinguished metal journalist Frank

Stöver, for example, is much more mundane about

his air guitarring: “As long as it’s Metal-To-The-

Bone, I like to shred the invisible strings… but I

recall that I always enjoyed the most brutal Thrash

and Death Metal tunes the best.”

Talking in past tense - always a sure-fire sign of a

veteran.

“Air guitarring is definitely HIGHLY underrated,”

Stöver reckons. “I mean, just look at all those

talentless air guitarists out there… a lot of them

definitely need to practice a lot more. But luckily

it’s still pretty easy to separate the men from the

boys in this department…”

Quite true. Wish everything else was as easy as

that. Like today, I went to the grocer’s today for

some minced meat, tomatoes, pasta and milk.

It was a quick, familiar routine, comfortable and

straightforward. I even half-smiled at the cash desk

although I’m known as the Solemn Lord of ‘Gimme

My Change and Spare Me the Pleasantries’ around

these parts. Groceries are starting to grow on me

I guess.

When I walk into a record store these days, it’s part

familiar, part alien territory. I no longer experience

709 Grave New World


Content previously published on the Isten website.

the heart-racing whoooosh that I used to. With

2nd hand vinyl, everything’s still fine. If the records

aren’t in alphabetical order, you make mental notes

like ‘Ah, gonna bump into a Krokus any sec now’

and it’ll actually feel nice when you inevitably do.

The CD racks, on the other hand, don’t beckon

me in the least. Standing there, looking at all those

shining new CDs feels like an act of slow suicide.

Playing mental air guitar to Pain, Rhapsody or

Misteltein… not exactly an option, is it?

Some old geezers seem to inhabit a hermeticallysealed

world where the annoying shenanigans of

new metal fly-by-nights rarely intrude. They know

how to indulge in the music they love undeterred

by the fact that it has turned into a rear-view

mirror. Not me. It isn’t always easy to see eye to

eye with people who don’t share your past in

metal. You can’t help feeling a little condescending

when people think Stratovarius or some new death

metal album is the bee’s pyjamas - ‘Oh, you’re

enthusing about frozen foods, canned meat. You

should’ve been there when we picked the berries

and shot the bear!’ But going apeshit over classic

metal, wielding frantic air axe to the sound of steel

- you can never underestimate that. That’s sacred,

that’s straight from the source.

Demonos of Barathrum:

“Air Guitarring Is Like Musical Masturbation!”

Demonos Sova, warmaster of jet blacksters

Barathrum, for you personally, why is heavy metal

so much better than anything else?

“Heavy Metal ain’t my hobby - it’s my way of

life. Actually Heavy Metal and Tattoos are those

two things that are the most important things in

my life.”

Is air guitarring an important part of your heavy

metal mania?

“Yes of course, especially when I’m just by

myself, I play air guitar in front of mirror, music of

Venom, Motörhead or Barathrum on background.”

What, to you, is air guitar heaven?

“Room with full body mirror, porn pics on the

walls, with 666 megawatt speakers that explode in

the rhythm of Heavy Metal Thunder.”

Any particular song that sets you and your air

instrument on fire?

“Manowar’s “Kill with Power”, because I also

like the lyrics. That’s why I decided to put it on our

lately released limited edition CD-single too. 400

copies, sold out.”

Would it be more appropriate to play air BASS to

Barathrum than air guitar?

“Both… Bass or guitar… both are fine… or

maybe air bagpipe.”

When writing music, do you ever take a song’s air

guitarring qualities into consideration? Kind of like,

‘Whooaargh, what a killer riff for the air guitar!’?

“That’s the basic idea of metal. Head banging

and air guitarring are the basic-ideas of metal.

Don’t you agree??!?”

But do you think the art of air guitarring is

underrated? You know, people can write and play

music for all the wrong reasons, but air guitarring

is always fucking TRUE.

“Lately air guitarring has become quite

widely popular form of art. Like those air guitar

competitions worldwide. Of course that is quite

bad for the fact that I am 100(+)% TRUE Metal

Man… and popular music (pop) is the opposite of

Heavy Metal.”

A couple of years ago the immensely popular Finnish

rock band Timo Rautiainen & Trio Niskalaukaus did

a rendition of Barathrum’s “Last Day in Heaven”.

How do you feel when you see people air guitarring

to that? Proud, awkward or what?

“I really get frustrated when I see people air

guitarring in wrong tunes… that’s really shitty

thing. And almost always people do the riffs from

the wrong tune in the cover version of “Last Day

in Heaven”, because it is played in wrong tunes by

Trio Niskalaukaus.”

Do you ever get the feeling that there’s too much

going on with the whole musicianship and business

side of things that you’re in danger of losing focus?

“Not really. Air guitarring became part of big

business too...”

Are women impressed by your air guitarring skills?

“Most women are not. And those who are

impressed are pretty easy preys to catch… ;>”

Sometimes there’s still some degree of shame

involved in playing the air guitar. Shouldn’t parents

(bands?) teach their children about these things -

that it’s perfectly natural, everybody’s doing it?

“Air guitarring is like musical masturbation. If

you can’t do it with ‘real’ instruments, you can do

it yourself with your own imagination. Runk for

Real.”

Terry Sadler of Slaughter:

“Keep It Pure!”

Terry Sadler of Slaughter, what, to you, is air guitar

heaven?

“Air guitar heaven = parents out, music full blast,

huge mirror and a strobe light! I used to love to

air guitar to Kiss ‘Alive’! I was Ace Frehley or Gene

Simmons spitting blood, breathing fire or hanging

myself like Alice Cooper.”

Do you wear earplugs when you play the air

guitar?

“No earplugs ever!!!!! You need to feel and hear

the full power, intensity and fury of the guitars,

bass and drums!”

Any particular song that sets you and your air

instrument on fire? Why?

“Hmmm... ‘She’ and ‘Deuce’ by KISS, ‘Butcher

Baby’ and ‘Tight Black Pants’ by The Plasmatics,

‘Chemical Warfare’ and ‘Captor Of Sin’ by Slayer,

‘Billion Dollar Babies’ and ‘Brutal Planet’ by Alice

Cooper, ‘Anthem’ and ‘Bytor And The Snowdog’ by

Rush and maybe ‘Dazed And Confused’ and ‘Rock

And Roll’ by Led Zeppelin. More modern stuff:

‘Rock Is Dead’ by Marilyn Manson and anything by

my friend Nelsha’s band called Helldorado!”

What would you say is Slaughter’s greatest air

guitar track?

“I would pick ‘Fuck Of Death’ and ‘Tortured

Souls’!”

Is your air guitar’s case decorated in any way?

Please describe it.

“It’s covered in band stickers, dirt, blood, snot

and cum!”

What’s your air guitar tuned in, would you

consider tuning it down when you interpret a

classic?

“It’s tuned to “open e” with only 4 strings

because I used all the others for a bondage

session...”

Do you think the art of air guitarring is underrated?

“Most defiantly!”

Sometimes there’s still some degree of shame

involved in playing the air guitar. Shouldn’t parents

and bands teach respectively their children and

their fans about these things - that it’s perfectly

natural, everybody’s doing it?

“Keep parents and everybody else away and do

what YOU feel is going to get you off by playing

air guitar. It’s not about impressing anyone but

yourself and capturing the mood and feeling of the

music! Nothing is better than a room full of your

best friends, heads down, hair flying and brain

bashing your air guitars until you faint, puke or

your parents come home and bash on your door!

Keep it pure!!!!”

We also included an online form, a questionnaire

for readers to fill in—”There’s a great many things

that we never wanted to know about your air

guitarring habits.” There was no “Send” button,

but the questions covered important things such

as:

1. What, to you, is air guitar heaven?

2. What’s your favourite arena? Do you

prefer playing in front of the mirror, in the

shower, at the bus stop or in the queue at

the cash desk of a super market?

3. Would you go to your fave guitarist to

propose him/her to air jam with you?

4. To the musos out there, do you reckon

it’s alright for me to feel like me doing

classic Maiden on the air guitar in front

of the mirror is more essential, more

cutting edge, more METAL than your new

album?

5. Is the opposite (or the same, depending

on your tastes) sex impressed with your

air guitaring skills? Have you ever scored

thanks to your air guitaring maestria?

6. Do you wear earplugs when you play the

air guitar?

7. Do you prefer light or heavy air guitar

strings?

8. What’s your air guitar tuned in, would

you consider tuning it down when you

interpret a classic?

9. Are there bands whose musical direction

you can understand, even respect, AS A

MUSICIAN but as an air guitarist you’d

just want to strangle the sorry fuckers

(with an air guitar string)?

10. Do you headbang when you air guitar or

are you the type who needs to see what

they’re doing?

11. What was your best air guitaring

performance, ever?

12. After a particularly successful gig, do you

mind signing autographs for all your fans

out there?

Bullets

Mikko Mattila / Janne Sarna /

Dominique Poulain

Abscess

Damned and Mummified LP

(Displeased, licensed from Red Stream)

Well hey, enjoy your damnation. Reading music

reviews on the Internet, I mean. You prayed for

nothing, and nothing has just hunted you down.

So what’s it gonna be? Drug-induced fever dreams

or vicious self-hate and a true morbid fascination?

Death metal from the right place hits you in all

710 Don’t Break the Ghost


Digital Glue

“Well hey, enjoy your damnation. Reading music reviews on the Internet, I mean. ”

the right places. You can feel it. It’s so organic

that once in a while you might want to check out

they haven’t stolen your organs while cranking it

up. And yes, bothering with the strenuous task of

songwriting is one telltale sign.

It’s not quite Mental Funeral, is it? Is it great or is

it brilliant? You know, Reifert visits the verges of

brilliance frequently enough for me not to rack

my brain with such questions. I didn’t like the

first couple of Abscess records but the last three

albums more than make up for that.

You want to inhale the miasma emanating from

the doom of “Twilight Bleeds”. The opening line

of the title track, “Born in a straightjacket set

on fire” (what a powerful image!) rings true,

somehow. The sickness of Abscess is not a cartoon.

It may make you smirk, but it’s never an entirely

comfortable smirk.

As far as I’m concerned, Clint Bower (guitars/

vocals) is still “that guy from Hexx”, but his “Tomb

of the Unknown Junkie” rocked on 2002’s Through

the Cracks of Death. Here, “The Dead Are Smiling

at Me” is a worthy sequel. The title track visits the

“Mourners Will Burn” territory impeccably, and as

a whole, we’re talking about an album that allows

pleasant pit stop time for my revered Autopsy

elpees. (8 bullets)

Mikko Mattila

8 March 2005

Akercocke

Choronzon CD

(Earache)

I admit to being more than apathetic about

Akercocke to this point, which is a minor credit to

their efforts. I wanted to ignore them-even tried

to-but they remained irritating. Having never

explained myself beyond “Another in that long

line of sorry British bands that only the British

could love,” I resolved to take an objective stance

in critiquing their latest. But since Akercocke

didn’t use any objective judgment while making

Choronzon, I’ve elected not to afford them any

while discussing it. I have no doubt that Akercocke

practices all the time and that their ideas are very

difficult to play. But they’re even more difficult to

listen to, and given the competition these days, I’m

not even interested in the performances.

Whatever the facts may be, the evidence at hand

points to a band with no stabilizing elements or

no bandmember(s) to enforce them. Anything

someone lifts from his Nile, Cannibal Corpse, or

untrue Mayhem CD and brings into rehearsal

ultimately finds its own awkward place in a

rambling composition. Indeed, this band has no

perceptible influences from before 1999. But

that’s trivial compared to their more damning

failures. Choronzon is nonsense, and not in an

awe-inspiring or even appealing way, and not in a

way that multiple listens assuage, and not because

I don’t know what I’m hearing.

The sentences might well be excellent, but it

doesn’t matter, because the paragraphs are

atrocious. Regardless of the quality-control issues

that persist on the riff level, Akercocke has yet

to discover a syntax to make that vocabulary

meaningful. If that syntax exists, it should have

become apparent by album number three. I’m

reminded that Akercocke makes its living selling

T-shirts, not songs, and Choronzon is a mere IOU

where songs are concerned.

For the record: I love British metal. But you really

have to admit it lost its way after Prime Evil. (5

blanks)

Professor Black

16 February 2004

Legends Of Led

Candlemass / Trouble / Force Of Evil

live at Fryshuset Klubben Stockholm

29 November 2003

“This song was written when I was 3 years old…”,

stated vocalist Martin Steene a bit hesitantly

before Force Of Evil launched into “Curse of the

Pharaohs”. Well, singer boy, thank you for sharing

that. Another fact is that your fancy leather pants

can’t quite conceal your desperate lack of stage

presence.

The Mercyful Fate classics (“…Pharaohs” and

“Evil”) lent themselves just fine to underline the

dullness of Force Of Evil’s own material. Great

guitar work, sure, some mean riffs and having Hal

Patino on bass and Bjarke Holm on drums was

probably supposed to add more credibility via their

MF/King Diamond connexxxions.

The problem was that there was no force, no evil.

It’s sadder still that they were filming this show for

a DVD release before their first album had even hit

the streets. Messrs Shermann and Denner, why not

do what every decent has-been would do and and

put a MF cover band on the road? This third rate

Judas Priest from Dullsville, Denmark simply ain’t

such a good idea.

Fallen heroes. I guess I’m a tad too ready to find

fault in whatever they’re doing now. I always found

everything from Zoser Mez through post-reunion

Mercyful Fate to Gutrix a bit lame. Well, I never

really got into King Diamond either, so maybe it’s

just me?

It would’ve been nice to like Force Of Evil, honest,

and I do think that Shermann and Denner are still

doing it for the right reasons, from the heart or

whatever. I love old Mercyful Fate to the grave,

that’s what it’s all about. We’re talking worship

eternal here. And I’m not ungrateful - I don’t expect

them to suddenly turn into alchemists again.

Since Force Of Evil had hit the stage a little after 7

pm, it was somehow hard to believe that already at

half past eight the gods from Chicago stood before

our very eyes. It’s funny how emotional seeing

Trouble was for myself and I suppose many others

gathered at Klubben.

Trouble t-shirt It was all emotion. Respect,

gratitude, the joy of doom. A blur, a haze of

greatness of which no details stick out. What I do

remember is that they were amazing, from “At the

End of My Daze” to “Psalm 9” and so on. It was a

ceremony of classic Trouble songs; tight, technical,

rocking, doomy, melodies divine. Eric Wagner in

excellent form on vocals, totally devoid of rock and

roll frontman clichés, yet every bit as much totally

in command. Dozens and dozens of people singing

along, banging their heads, fists raised, rejoicing.

The band played impeccably, Rick Wartell and

Bruce Franklin’s guitars soaring, original drummer

Jeff Olson accentuating the proceedings perfectly.

New guy Chuck Robinson on bass did ok, though

some spectators (hi Arto!) thought he looked out

of place. Can’t wait for the DVD!

The Candlemass set was also filmed, and it was

not an all-hits potpourri by any means, instead

including cuts like “A Cry from the Crypt”,

“Mourner’s Lament”, and “Black Stone Wielder”,

and omitting “Samarithan” for example. A brand

new one entitled “Witches” was showcased - a

murderously heavy tune that could well become

the next one in the long line of Edling classics.

As Janne pointed out, Messiah doom-dancing looks

like a cross-country skier on EPO aplenty. He’s

definitely one hell of an entertainer. Compared

to Trouble’s low-key stylishness, maybe even

too much so at times. The Marcolin brand of inyour-face

furore mongering and theatrics doesn’t

necessarily always add to the sheer brilliance of

Leif Edling’s song writing. I don’t know, it was just

a feeling I had for a fleeting moment. Had more to

do with the juxtaposition with Trouble, no doubt,

because in August 2002 (at Tavastia, Helsinki) I

had no such qualms.

It was a package made in doom metal heaven,

yeah yeah, all those platitudes. A case of two bands

both richly deserving of the headliner spot. Maybe

a quick breather after Trouble wasn’t quite enough,

but Candlemass truly ruled in their hometown.

Now get that damn deal done, and a new album,

pretty please please please. (9 bullets - for Trouble

and Candlemass exclusively)

Mikko Mattila

24 January 2004

Impaled Nazarene

All That You Fear CD

(Osmose)

The Black League

Man’s Ruin Revisited CD

(Spinefarm/Universal)

Impaled Nazarene’s history of lineups that fall

apart - sometimes literally, sadly enough - always

translates onto record as freshness, a constant

utilization of new human energy. It speaks to the

durability and indeed versatility of the band’s

musical values, and although back-to-back records

with the same lineup haven’t happened since Ugra-

Karma and Suomi Finland Perkele, neither has

any album in their catalog represented a recovery

period, moment of uncertainty, or lapse in quality.

All That You Fear is at once varied and focused.

Compared with Absence of War..., not only

the album but the songs themselves are more

textured and less jerky. The five-piece era of

Impaled Nazarene has now resulted in three solid

albums, each with a memorable selection of hit

tracks. Adding a second guitarist opened up the

riffier side of the band’s songwriting, while the

grindcore influences became less pronounced. Of

course, the extreme aggressions are still an option

(“Armageddon Death Squad”), and the precedent

of pyrotechnic guitar solos set down by Alexi Laiho

on Nihil has paid off bigtime on tracks like “The

Endless War”.

Elsewhere in Finland, The Black League lifts the

curtain on album number three, Man’s Ruin

Revisited, which in some places makes Entombed’s

Same Difference sound like a best-case scenario.

At the League’s helm, of course, are Impaled

Nazarene expatriates Taneli Jarva and Kimmo

Luttinen. The former can’t shake the shadow of

Amok even during the League’s fine Ichor debut,

and the latter released a pair of passable (if

half-hearted) albums of atmospheric mini-epics

as Legenda in the late 1990s. Noble credentials

from a band that now exhibits symptoms of an

unchecked producer, corporate pressure, and

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Content previously published on the Isten website.

too many Monster Magnet albums in the evening.

What isn’t dumbed-down footage from the Ichor

album is watered-down footage that should never

have gotten past the censors, a vulture’s bounty of

riffs that don’t (and aren’t) rock. The Black League

has always contended with a certain awkwardness:

that of elements not mixing, curiously, an earmark

of the albums marketed by the defunct US label

referenced in the album title.

Examples of first-album fluke are rampant a heavy

metal textbook, and the conventional wisdom

that a band has more time to write songs for a

debut than for any follow-up is probably valid.

In The Black League’s case, they had at least two

albums’ worth of strong material on the debut, and

perhaps this has quickened their arrival at Man’s

Ruin Revisited.

Impaled Nazarene burns in hell and I’m sure will

forever. The Black League, on the other hand, is

preoccupied with trying to run up a downward

escalator, too self-conscious and totally misguided.

(Listening to both albums, writing the review,

drinking beers while doing so, taking a shit this

morning... 8 bullets)

Professor Black

28 March 2004

Machine Men

Scars & Wounds

(Dynamic Arts Records)

It’s too bad no Iron Maiden or Queensrÿche

albums are available in Jyväskylä. I mean, not even

youngsters like Machine Men would have the nerve

to do this, had they actually heard the albums.

Right?

Hey, come on, it’s just a case of a young Finnish

band doing the Right Thing. Hell-bent on sounding

international. And professional. Very slick, instantly

accessible, familiar turf, can I move in and call your

record collection mine? When the first track kicks

in, it’s like, aha, so you’ve been listening to The

Chemical Wedding? So have I. Brothers in metal! I

love you, what’s your name?

For “Silver Wings” they’ve got “Silver Dreams”. And

I heard some Rage for Order in there as well. All

coincidental of course. Happy puppies, that’s what

we are, and Heavy Metal has never been as alive

as this.

In this world of two-bit tributes and half-hearted

homages, should we applaud kids who are

influenced by good music? Kids who’ve got carbon

paper and are not afraid to use it?

Sure! They’ve already been dubbed as the

newcomer of the year by the Finnish media.

People are full of praise for Antony, the vocalist.

The level of confidence in his voice, phrasing,

and pronounciation is surprising, yet all I hear is

a teenage wannabe. The songs aren’t half bad.

The musicianship, fine. And I hear they’re very

energetic live (and they even do some Maiden

covers, how’s that!), so...

It’s a world-class release! Get it, sing along, play air

guitar to it, and bask in the warmth of true metal

in your heart.

Or...

Machine Men, your potential is a whore’s promise.

Springlike rain pissing down in February. It ain’t

summer. Or winter, for that matter. (Two truths,

two bullets)

Mikko Mattila

15 February 2004

Puls

Strahaná Tvár 7”

(Monster Nation)

A heavy metal band from Brno originally founded

in 1984 now strikes back with a 7” released on

Monster Nation, a Swedish underground label.

Larger than life it is not. Funny though how it has

taken me years and years to learn and understand

that, praise be, heavy metal doesn’t always have to

be larger than life to work like a charm.

Straight ahead driving metal with a nod or two

to all things Priest and Maiden, the uptempo title

track fixes a smile of contentment right on my

face. The verses make the pyres burn bright and

the chorus rules the night. “Rázem Vládne” is

slower but only a little less invigorating, the parts

with high-pitched singing in particular cheering

me up no end. Oh yeah, admittedly the Czech

language adds a flair of all its own to these nice but

somewhat basic HM songs.

Not much else to add - maybe somebody can tell

me more about Puls. Strahaná Tvár is a release

you can live without, but purchasing a copy is not

likely to make you unhappy. In this cold world,

that’s a good deal. (Say nix, give it a six)

Mikko Mattila

8 March 2004

Black Witchery/Ares Kingdom/Scepter

live at Café Lura, Chicago

7 February 2004

Impurath of Black Witchery photo by Culggath

Immortum Opinions are like assholes, and

luckily, this show was full of both. “Quite

unheadbangable,” grumbled one guy during Black

Witchery. “This is only the second riff they’ve

played,” laughed another during their last song.

And these guys are both experts, believe me. But a

band like Black Witchery uses chord progressions,

not riffs, as currency. Nearly their entire set hung

on a searing blastbeat backbone, and the result is

a grinding black metal furiosity that far improves

on the blueprints laid out by the likes of Blasphemy

and Beherit over ten years ago. Whether you

liked it for the whole 45 minutes (including one

quickly-repaired train wreck) depends, I reckon, on

whether you tried to headbang.

Ares Kingdom photo by Culggath Immortum

Thanks to the tested talents of guitarist Chuck

Keller and a well-received demo/7” campaign,

the crowd gave Ares Kingdom an eager and

enthusiastic response right from the start. Heads

banged and fists pumped, although I came away

thinking that the band’s more elaborate material

would probably be best appreciated at home. The

accomplishments of the guitarist and drummer,

nevertheless, were obvious in real-time, and no

one argued with the appropriateness or freshness

of the Order From Chaos cuts.

Scepter gigs in any city are criminally few. The fact

that they haven’t played live in two years belies

their command of the stage, their violence and

force. Their new release, 2003’s Fucking Metal

Motherfuckers, was actually recorded in 2001 but

held at an undisclosed location while Merciless

Records dragged its feet on a release date. So

tracks like “Do Unto Others as You Wanna Do

Unto Them”, “Slaveship”, and “Metal Means

Stupid” that were relatively new to the crowd had

actually been under Scepter’s (bullet) belts for

quite a while. The result? Impossibly heavy and

damn-near perfect renditions, one after another,

the crowd hanging and banging on every massive

chord. As inspired by Master and Celtic Frost as

they are by 70s FM radio, each Scepter track is

a precisely-judged hammer-blow to the head.

The effort is in the craftsmanship and execution,

both on record and on stage. While it’s easy to

appreciate what Scepter stands for (fucking metal,

motherfucker), I’m even more impressed by their

deliberate workrate and the restraint they show

while dealing in such robust material.

At 2 a.m., I stood waiting for the bus, looking

like a loser but feeling like a king, thanks to my

roaring buzz, ringing ears, and great satisfaction.

The bands, sound, and crowd all exceeded my

expectations. This was a rare and special gig

indeed, and there probably won’t be one like it for

quite some time. (Nine bullets)

Professor Black

16 February 2004

Chaosbreed

Brutal

(Century Media)

Wait, listen. Many a listenable album of today

merely serves as a reminder of the great albums

already in your collection. How’s that for an

observation? Sharp, huh?

For analhydro-blast freaks the world over, Brutal

is probably not brutal enough. The rest of us can

decide for ourselves whether we need members of

Amorphis, Mannhai, Moonsorrow, and The Black

League to remind us of the greatness of old school

death metal. Elsewhere, state-of-the-art death

metallers are ripping off Candlemass. Members of

Dismember and Entombed are paying tribute to

Autopsy and recycling old riffs. I don’t quite know

what to make of it.

What’s “old school death metal”, anyway? There’s

death metal, and the rest - it ain’t death metal. (To

make it even more simple, there’s the METAL/

DISCO dichotomy. Hardly a choice, is it.)

Brutal has very little to add to the preceding

Carnage Unleashed demo. The demo cuts -

“Wretched Life”, “Rotting Alive”, “F/C/D/C” - hit

hardest, offering sufficient jävla dödsmetall crunch

for my purposes, at least. When the Breed rock

at their best, gleeful catchiness and easy-flowing

heavy-duty rifferama abound.

Jarva’s vocals range from Reifertian fare

(“Wretched Life”) to something akin to his

Sentenced self (“Faces of Death”). Moreover, his

titles are mighty fine (“Demon Skunk” et al) but the

lyrics are disappointingly scarce and below par.

Can’t help feeling a little let down concerning some

of the music as well. “Faces of Death” surfs the

rivers of red in Slayer ripoff mode. “Shitgrinder”

strives for the ultimate grind repulsion and goes

flat in an ‘88-style Finnish speed metal flop. “An

Evil Eye” offers lazy Lemmy-isms with a foreboding

backdrop.

All in all, nice stuff with a good vibe. A bit too much

on the safe side. Maybe they want to branch out

into something different on the inevitable album

#2? (I’d much rather listen to Autopsy, so six it is)

Mikko Mattila

20 May 2004

712 Don’t Break the Ghost


Digital Glue

“Pile on the black days and dream no dream.”

Deathchain

Deadmeat Disciples

(Dynamic Arts Records)

Thrash metal undertaker, he did a great job.

Whatever he buried, he put it down deep. Where

no dead shall rise.

You gotta remember how reckless thrash metal

always was, at its best, i.e. when it was thrash

metal instead of speed metal or something else. It

was a brute force, uncontrolled, always in danger

of running off the road into a ditch or falling flat on

its nose. “To the Death”! “Certain Death”! “Ripping

Corpse”! “Abstract War”! “Extreme Unction”!

It was always a total rush of power, of ferocity

dismissing formality.

Today, we have something like the third wave of

retro-retro-thrash going, and bands like Kreator

and Destruction rendering their own classics

unrecognisable and unlovable. It’s a whole new

ball game. Somehow it’s a lot more professional

too. Dread that word.

These Kuopio metallers deliver rapid fire deathrash

like true pros on this, their debut album. It sounds

crisp and modern rather than necro and retro.

The war machine grinds smoothly and perfectly,

making up a coherent package, so much so that it

verges on clinical (never crossing over, however).

The band’s aspirations are easy to detect and

respect. Deadmeat Disciples may not be Slaughter

of the Soul for 2003, but failing to notice how

it oozes promise and joie de metal would imply

deafness on my part.

Deathchain’s attack is more streamlined than

that of fellow compatriots Malicious Death from

Helsinki - whose Devilization lp on Rebellion

Records (2003) you might also want to check

out. That’s not to say Deadmeat Disciples wasn’t

fiercely aggressive. Full throttle workouts like

“Chaos Wartech” and “Undertaker” make you

breathless, and the no less speedy “March of the

Thousand Legions” adds catchiness to boot. The

one-track mindedness as regards speed plus the

fact that eight tracks out of nine are below the

four-minute mark (total playing time 32:53) makes

the whole a bit samey, but hey, that’s only a minor

quibble. It punches, it works. (Six bullets)

Mikko Mattila

12 October 2003

Grave

live at Säätämö,

Turku 4 January 2003

No need for me to slag off supporters Morbid

Dream and Demigod here. Maybe I’m getting soft

at my old age, suddenly a believer of the ancient

maxim, “If you have nothing good to say about it,

keep schtum”. Let’s just say that when Grave hit

the stage, Finnish death metal died another death

right there. Basta!

Neat death straight up - has it ever sounded this

good? Completely devoid of pretension and

present-day metal scene bullshit, Grave deliver

the deadly goodies and quite evidently enjoy

every second of their resurrection. Behind the

drum kit they have Chris “Piss” Barkensjö of

fellow Stockholm deathsters Kaamos doing an

outstanding job throughout. The word has it that

ol’ Jensa Paulsson, in addition to being a family

man and therefore uncomfortable with the chores

of touring, doesn’t want to play fast shit any longer,

so Mr Piss may be in the band for good.

Ditties from the new album Back from the Dead,

while a tad lifeless (erm) on record, make perfect

sense tonight and sit splendidly alongside old

hits like “Morbid Way to Die”, “Deformed”, and

“Soulless”. “Rise” constitutes a brutal call-to-arms

and “No Regrets” is an equally brilliant death metal

anthem: “Stripping flesh from the bone/Tearing

limb from limb”...

Suddenly I remember how Niklas Sundin of Dark

Tranquillity slated Grave’s debut album in Isten

#6 (1993), calling it “tedious”, “predictable”, and

“unoriginal”. I smirk and continue to enjoy the

seemingly endless flow of gems from the mortuary:

“You’ll Never See”, “Into the Grave”, “Bullets Are

Mine”… Ola Lindgren’s zombie-like presence/

charisma rules, and guitarist Jonas Torndal and

bass player Fredrik Isaksson are cheerful with

their metal antics, e.g. doing lumbering bear

impressions to the creepy-crawly heaviest-in-town

riffs.

That’s what it’s all about - a great night out with

the undead.

Mikko Mattila

8 January 2003

Krux

Live DVD

(Escapi)

Say something bad about Leif Edling and I may

have to kill you.

Some people have the gall to blame him for not

churning out epic doom with Messiah Marcolin

on vocals non-stop, year in year out. Some say it’s

too bad he couldn’t just stay on the Candlemass

mk II path, i.e. From the 13th Sun. Personally, I

could never question his ways. I like the Abstrakt

Algebra album. I *adore* Dactylis Glomerata, the

Candlemass album most people (or people most)

deem “not Candlemass”.

And Krux, although it’s the umpteenth side project

for Messrs Sandström (guitar) and Stjärnvind

(drums) of Entombed, makes perfect doomy

sense. The dirty Entombed crunch merges with

the Edling harbinger of judgement; to further

underline (as if any extra proof was needed) the

fact that this man here can turn a few simple things

into a symphony of dooooomstruction like nobody

else.

It may seem premature to release a DVD at this

point, only a year after the self-titled debut album.

But Live works so magnificently that such doubts

are immediately dismissed. It’s clear as crystal

in both sound and picture and shows a band of

inspired musicians reinventing some solid steel.

As always with Edling, Krux has real depth and

a fabulous sense of class to its melodies. True

enough, Sandström hadn’t played the guitar in a

band for a number of years before this project, but

fearlessly he hammers down the crushing chords,

in effect making Krux the most aggressive doom

act of all time. No need to worry about Knot, he’s

always worthy of trust and respect. Vocalist Mats

Levén - of Yngwie Malmsteen Band/Swedish

Erotica/Abstrakt Algebra/At Vance fame - was

someone I was wondering about, a bit sceptical

about how he’d fit together with total metal

dirtbags like Sandström and Stjärnvind. Thankfully

no white sweatsuit in sight, and Levén does a killer

job onstage.

The Abstrakt Algebra cut “Shadowplay” comes

across brilliantly, as does “Abstrakt Sun” off

Dactylis Glomerata. The pounding revelations of

“Enigma EZB” sound a great deal more urgent

than on the album. When Levén sings, “’cause

heaven is coming down/and most things are left

undone/we crumble under the sun/when heaven

is coming down”, it’s doomsday coming alive.

Other highlights include “Lunochod”, the chilling

epic about Russian space travel, as well as Edling

getting his once-in-a-lifetime shot at doing a bass

solo onstage. “Evel Rifaz” rulz!

Krux also marks the return, for Edling and Levén,

to the limbo material between Abstrakt Algebra

and Candlemass II, as heard on The Black Heart

of Candlemass - Leif Edling Demos & Outtakes

‘83-’99 2CD. “Thirst” now appears in an alternate

version as “Popocatépetl”.

Fredrik Åkesson of Talisman delivers the goods on

lead guitar and Carl Westholm operates organ,

mellotrons and moog FX.

Special features: a cosy, lightweight interview with

Edling and Sandström, the video clip of “Black

Room”, an image gallery, and you can choose from

DTS, Dolby Digital 5.1, or stereo. About 80 minutes

of Edling entertainment, well worth checking out.

(Krux strikes nine darkness descends)

Mikko Mattila

15 November 2003

Nifelheim

MCMXC - MMIII: 13 Years

(I Hate Records)

Pile on the black days and dream no dream.

Metal nostalgics, awash in necrolege, as I call it

(don’t ask), cannot see the wood for the trees.

Sometimes, that’s me right there. How come

active, contemporary bands like Nifelheim and

Sabbat cause such bouts of acute nostalgy in the

first place?

Wild, fierce, frantic, and diabolically torrid by

turns, Nifelheim tracks often make me breathe out

the ever-conclusive word “FUCK!” when they draw

to a close. Then I’m hit with a bang of guilt when

I find myself thinking, “This was how metal used

to be!”

I mean, if I insist on being a martyr for self, I can

obviously convince myself that metal, like that,

does not exist in the present. But there’s no

debating with Nifelheim.

“The sound quality is mostly shit but we do not try

to impress anyone so fuck off” … “Nifelheim is not

art, Nifelheim is not atmosphere, Nifelheim is not

feeling, Nifelheim is Black Metal” - thus read the

sleeve notes. Just looking at the back cover’s live

pic renders such statements virtually unnecessary.

Do they look amazing or what! Metal incarnate!

Ditto for the music itself, it is statement in spades.

And if Nifelheim ain’t feeling with a capital F, then

what the F! This jubileum extravaganza offers

plenty of those invaluable moments where you

get goose bumps and want to listen to the stuff

over and over again. Limited to 1000 copies on

clear vinyl, 13 Years (or MCMXC-MMIII) is a true

Nifel-fan’s delight. Side A, from “Unholy Death”

to “Sacrifice to the Lord Darkness”, comprises of

material recorded at the rehearsal room. It’s evil

in the raw, with additional helpings courtesy of

Bathory’s “Reaper”, Motörhead’s “Mean Machine”

and Treblinka’s “Earwigs in Your Veins”. Quite a

few cover versions, as you can see.

713 Grave New World


Content previously published on the Isten website.

Side B offers live tracks from Sweden and Germany

2001, including Korrozia Metalla cover “Spid”.

Thoroughly enjoyable, like the eyeless serenity of

complete darkness, but what I’d really really want

is a new Nifelheim album proper. Therefore, eight

bullets will have to do. (Eight is great, Satan is

super)

Mikko Mattila

14 March 2004

Nifelheim

MCMXC - MMIII: 13 Years LP

(I Hate Records)

Know who you should be listening to? Nifelheim.

And for a second, I thought they were back on

Necropolis Records. See, MCMXC - MMIII is

precisely the kind of this-and-that release in which

said label tended to specialize and precisely the

kind of release that’s the best example of an

oversaturated (yet ironically uncompetitive) metal

mini-market.

Seeing as the last Nifelheim studio LP, Servants of

Darkness, made Swedish black metal a trilogy at

last (Bathory, Storm of the Light’s Bane), I grew

uncharacteristically eager to hear the jubileum

follow-up. Nevermind that it’s half rehearsal,

half live, one-third covers, and a total of zero

yet-unheard Nifelheim tracks. Yeah, I wanted that

yesterday, come to think of it.

As it turns out, I was more eager simply to own it

than to hear it. Studio versions, it will surprise you

to know, far outbang these rehearsal takes. And

can you believe that they fumble “Mean Machine”

and nail “Reaper”? The very idea of Nifelheim as a

live act, to see the leather and spikes, to hear their

clear-as-black rockers at an unspeakable volume...

fantastic. But pieces of gigs heard or watched

from the couch ain’t exactly being there, and if

you were, you’re not forgiven. At least not until the

band delivers the goods to the USA.

So for me, it’s the audio that’s ultimately rendered

unnecessary by the back of the sleeve. Oh well,

caught daydreaming. At your service, etc. (Five

bullets)

Professor Black

29 March 2004

Sabbat

Karmagmassacre LP

(Iron Pegasus)

In METAL #3, professor Chris “Black” Maycock

writes about Metalucifer, “here’s the greatest

Japanese heavy metal band of our time”. Chris

baby, I love you, but that’s not a faulty opinion,

that’s an outright lie. Borne of ignorance or cheeky

“well-apologies-for-being-in-the-wrong-metallicgeneration”

arrogance, it matters not. A lie is a lie.

And the greatest Japanese heavy metal band of our

time, or any time, are Sabbat.

But that’s precisely why Metalucifer troubles me.

The immediacy of their NWoBHM stylings, that

whole Metal Master Tanaka product strategy (no

matter how decidedly unforced it is), the disarming

catchiness of it all makes Sabbat seem like

Gezolucifer’s odd little side project. The crux of it is

this: there’s no talk of Sabbat without a mention of

Metalucifer, but vice versa Sabbat doesn’t really get

mentioned at all.

Why should it bother me if it doesn’t bother

Gezol? Or Temis Osmond, or Zorugelion, for

that matter. Well, because for me the reality is the

complete opposite: when I listen to Metalucifer,

or when I saw them live in Wacken 2002, I go,

“This is fun, very entertaining, raise your fist and

sing along, hey! hey! hey!… but it’s not Sabbat”.

In other words, I think of Sabbat when I listen to

Metalucifer, but never the other way round. Sabbat

takes me to another world.

Karmagmassacre, their eighth studio album, is

an enormously enjoyable work of metal genius.

Sabbat display their version of the Three Stooges

- Black Metal Style! The black thrash of “The

Answer is Hell” and “I’m Your Satan”, via “Demonic

Serenade”, gives way to the national anthemic thud

of “Brothers of Demons”. You sing along or you

die. 6 more tracks to go, you can conclude it is a

gripping study in gouging, plundering black, like

black metal junior never existed.

Venomously peerless though they are in the

context of modern metal, the uptempo spirit of

this album reminds me that Sabbat have a thing

or two in common with Nifelheim: the meistering

of speed, melody, and foolproof hooks – and the

skeleton of heavy metal beneath it all.

Gezol and Temis Osmond’s writing styles

complement each other perfectly (as do their vocal

styles!) and the latter’s lead work simply dazzles

throughout these 47 minutes. (Nine bullets)

Mikko Mattila

6 September 2003

Sabbat

Karmagmassacre LP

(Iron Pegasus)

The point about Sabbat and Metalucifer is well

made, and I’m in agreement with it. I think there

just is no comparing the two of them, really.

Sabbat are one of the very best acts ever to grace

Heavy Metal with their class and dexterity, whereas

Metalucifer is a fun side-project whose lack of

depth is both predicated upon its original premise

and very quickly obvious to the listener. The fact

that that band is a decent proposition, as opposed

to a lame and embarrassing waste of time, is

actually in itself quite a comment on the seemingly

bottomless fount of talent at the disposal of Gezol

and co.

As is, from a different perspective, that upon

hearing Sabbat one can always discern here and

there in the music parts that remind one of other

bands, but never in such a way as to detract from

the cohesiveness and integrity of their vision. What

I mean is that Sabbat is one of those rare bands

with whom similarities with other outfits do not

indicate aped “influences” but common inspiration

and a visceral artistic understanding of what Metal

is about as a music genre (I don’t care much

about what it is besides). Cases in point the Celtic

Frost-like passages on “Brothers of Demons”, or

the Destruction-sounding riff on “I’m Your Satan”.

It’s as if the spirit underpinning the music of those

bands had been evoked by Sabbat, to be ridden

for a while.

Amazing too how their music can be both dark and

heavy yet immensely uplifting at the same time.

Your comparison with Nifelheim is right on the

mark in that respect, although here I’m stretching

a bit what you actually said. And as you also wrote,

Temis Osmond’s leads are brilliant, and never

extraneous or excessive.

As for the whole Japan thing, well, Japan or

wherever else, who cares. Sabbat are in a

worldwide class of their own, so I’m willing to give

Maycock the benefit of the doubt and assume he

automatically put the band in another sphere, up

there with Amaterasu, where national boundaries,

silly as they already are, count for little :-) (Japan,

nine bullets! Japon, neuf balles!)

Dominique Poulain

? September 2003

Entombed

Inferno CD

(Threeman Recordings)

Got confidence to burn and burn’s just what I’ll

do. See, Entombed can do no wrong. That’s the

bottom line. My bottom line anyway. First track on,

“Retaliation” is the name, I’m punching the air. It’s

been one helluva ride - some have cut their hair,

some have resigned, some days might not have felt

the same – but t