Q&A with Thurston Moore

Posted May 27 by J. Bennett

“I read Decibel, man.” We obviously love it when anyone says those four words in exactly that order, but when someone we’d never suspect says them, it’s especially satisfying. Like Sonic Youth vocalist/guitarist Thurston Moore, for instance. When word hit Decibel HQ that he’d been getting deep into black metal lately—so much that the band’s forthcoming album, The Eternal, is rumored to bear a whisper of the influence—we immediately got on the horn to grill him. After pledging his allegiance to the mighty dB, he drops this one on us: “I basically spent the winter of 2007-2008 standing on my roof with my shirt off with two axes over my head in a crisscross shape just listening to black metal. That’s probably when I was deepest into it. I was going ballistic.” Over the course of the next 40 minutes, while driving from New York to his home in Western Massachusetts, Moore gave us the full rundown on his long-running love affair with the grim, the black and the ugly.

When did you first get into black metal?
I was an early Venom fan. I was really into the albums Black Metal and Welcome To Hell—those were both really big albums for me. I used to bond with the original guitar player of Swans, who were kind of a compatriot band for us in New York in the early ’80s. At the time, Swans were really loud and crushing and they had this woman guitar player [Sue Hanel], and she was really into Venom, too. I was kind of a closet metal head as a kid, though—I was always into Deep Purple and Black Sabbath and Zeppelin and early Judas Priest. But Venom, in a way, were sort of the first metal band during the punk years that we kind of accepted. Punk rock kind of overtook metal for a lot of us, but the hardcore bands were referencing metal to an extent. Certainly Black Flag was doing it in a big way, and the fact that anyone involved in punk was referencing anything before 1977 was sort of radical at that point in the ’80s.

There was also this magazine that came out of Massachusetts called Forced Exposure, and that was one of the first hardcore punk magazines that wrote about Venom in a critical way, so we were really into it. And I actually released a seven-inch from Venom on my label Ecstatic Peace! It was a live seven-inch, totally unauthorized. It was a gig they did with Black Flag in New York. Black Flag was opening, and most of the audience was there for them—it was all hardcore kids and punk rockers. Henry Rollins or someone recorded Venom and then edited out all the music and just left all the between-song banter.

Oh, shit—I’ve heard that. But I had no idea where it came from or who was behind it.
Yeah, I put that out. We only did like 300 copies because we figured no one would buy it. We just sort of did it as a goof. But it was the fastest-selling, most successful record Ecstatic Peace! has ever released. It was huge, and it didn’t even have any music on it. I think the show was in like ’84 or something—maybe ’86. They had come over once before and played Staten Island, and that was the first time people here had seen Metallica because Metallica opened up for Venom at that show. But I missed that concert, actually. It was kind of a bummer. I can’t remember if I was on tour or if I just couldn’t afford it, but I was a big fan.

When did you get into the second-wave stuff, like Mayhem and Burzum?
I remember Sonic Youth playing in Scandinavia at the end of the ’80s and early ’90s and all the kids there were getting into local metal stuff. I remember them walking us around to record stores and they all had long hair and leather jackets and they were all kind of morose. I remember going to this one store in Oslo where all they were playing was Deicide. [Laughs] Deicide was coming to town and they were really excited about it—more excited than they were to see Sonic Youth. And then there was all this local stuff, like the first Mayhem recordings. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time because it just seemed like sub-Venom. So I didn’t really start listening to black metal until maybe the last ten years or something. I was into certain things, like the first Burzum record. I remember buying that in Scandinavia after I’d read about it somewhere. That record was cool because it was so unusual. It had this very displaced kind of quality to it. It was more avant-garde compared to most metal—it was almost alien. But I wasn’t really following it too much. Like a lot of people, I think it happened when that book came out.

Lords Of Chaos.
Yeah. When that book came out, it tied a lot of things together for me—Euronymous having that store, Helvete, and how Venom was a really informative thing for them to such an extent that they bought into it and sort of applied it to their own feelings of displacement in their culture. And the thing about them wanting to reclaim the original, genuine paganism in their culture that they felt had been glossed over by this kind of Christian, right-wing money culture that they felt was an affront to their roots as Norwegians. Nobody knew too much about that stuff outside of Scandinavia until that book came out, it seemed. After reading it, I got those first Mayhem records and thought they were kinda great. But my favorite was the dude from Abruptum, who was like, “Whatever you do, don’t confuse what we do with music.” For somebody to actually say that about what they were doing, I was completely intrigued. I mean, I’ve always been involved with scenes of anti-musical behavior—beginning with punk and then the whole New York no wave scene, etcetera. Just musical destruction, you know? And all of a sudden there’s this guy who didn’t’ even really want Euronymous to put his record out because then people would confuse it with music. I was just like, “Man, this is serious.”

So I got into that first Abruptum record big time—all that overly-reverbed, hellish yowling. It was really beyond any kind of tenets of heavy metal. It was just kind of atmospheric, desperate, miserable howling. The fact that they were dressing up as the walking dead just kind of added to the whole performance of it all. Abruptum sort of led me into wanting find out about all that music. The more confused sounding it was, the more I was into it. I really investigated it big time, to the point where I was able to appreciate stuff like Emperor, bands that really play a certain stylistic type of black metal, with super-blitzkrieg riffing and really oppressive, layered production where there was no air left for anything. Every single iota of space was filled with that buzzing guitar tone, and I kind of appreciated it in a way. But I was always more into the shambolic, atmospheric stuff. That led me into the whole French scene of the ’90s, the Les Légions Noires scene—especially Mütiilation and Torgeist. But that stuff was so hard to find. It wasn’t until much later that you were able to get CD bootlegs of all those cassettes, because most of the stuff existed only on cassette, and it was pretty hard to come by.

That must’ve been appealing to you, though. You’ve always been into cassettes.
Yeah, I have lots of black metal cassettes. Most of the best stuff is on cassette, I find. But I didn’t become so much of a collector of it because I figured trying to collect black metal records in any kind of real way… I mean, first of all, I think my family would leave me. And then I would probably become a raving lunatic. I’ve already been through so many levels of record collecting that for me to get into deep black metal record collecting, I would be in so much trouble. So I just took the easy route and accessed the stuff through CDs.

Were you ever into death metal?
I really drew the line between black metal and death metal. Death metal was obviously more of a technically proficient kind of playing, which I had no interest in. I wanted to hear music by people who had no desire to impress with any kind of traditional, skilled playing. I do appreciate hearing riff masters, but they’re a dime a dozen. I’d much rather hear the Les Légions Noires guys or even the guys who get into heavy, long-tone black metal drone stuff. I really got into the West Coast stuff, too—Leviathan, Xasthur. They’re the two big wigs, and their stuff is great, despite whatever issues people have with Xasthur. I know there’s anti-Xasthur movements out there. [Laughs] But I never really go see this stuff live. I guess most of it doesn’t really exist live. I did almost get to see Striborg live in Australia, though—I just missed it by a few days. Oren Ambarchi, who plays with Sunn O))), lives in Melbourne, and he flew Striborg over from Tasmania to do a show together. I guess Oren picked him up at the airport and he was in full corspepaint regalia. [Laughs] At the show, Striborg just used a contact mic, a fuzzbox and a hi-hat or something. So I guess it was kinda raw.

It seems like the guys who create these recordings and this whole mythos about their world through these recordings, you put them under the hot lights onstage and it all kind of disappears and they’re kind of not that seasoned. Oren said it was kinda off. And then the club turned into a disco and Striborg started break-dancing. He asked him about it and Striborg told him he had been a break-dance champion as a teenager in Tasmania. So that kind of put him back into the real world. [Laughs] But I think Striborg is really representative of the loner dude out in the cabin in the woods with a Peavey amp and a four-track, making these really personal records that are about the whole world of solitude and depression and despair. But it’s also this celebration of death as an avenue after life. Some of that stuff I find fascinating in that sense—how it’s so relentless in its celebration of misery.

Is the corpsepaint a detraction for you?
I guess it’s goofy, but it’s also kind of ritualistic. I sent some corpsepaint photos of some bands I like to this guy I’ve known since way back in the ’70s, and he wrote me back going, “Dude, you were always into Kiss.” Which is true—I was a huge Kiss fanatic as a teenager. So he just saw black metal as an extension of Kiss, with the makeup and everything. And I see his point, but with black metal it’s almost like it’s this uniform they use to recognize each other in a way. It seems like it’s their way of staying elite and true to a certain perspective. And I like the fact that the music throws up all these walls and really wants to be elite. It really wants to have this fascist existence. It’s ridiculous, but at the same time, it’s about creating this sense of purity and refinement to what they’re doing in the face of having this repressed lifestyle. And they don’t wanna be liberated at all. They’d rather annihilate everything around them.At the same time, the first half hour of some black metal records is just this beautiful piano fugue or something. There doesn’t seem to be any real sense of trying to cut to the chase and sell something to a certain public. It’s all so self-infatuated, like “We have no concern for any marketplace aesthetic at all.” It’s amazing. You’ll hear these records that just take so much time to get through certain sections of music. There’ll be these pieces that are like 18 minutes long. It’s so beyond the traditional strictures of heavy metal that it almost has more to do with modern composition and classical music than it does with heavy metal. You can go either way with some of this stuff. A lot of the black metal I like exists on a plane that’s purely avant-garde as opposed to having anything to do with a band like Metallica, let alone any of the bands on Southern Lord, which are really just sort of commercialized variables of what’s going on elsewhere, as far as I’m concerned.

One of the things you mentioned earlier that I think a lot of black metal fans and musicians are in denial about is the fact that many of those early ’90s Scandinavian bands didn’t understand that Venom were kidding. It’s a line I’ve repeated often over the years because to overlook it is to misunderstand the genre completely. It’s ridiculous, really, until you see that it resulted in multiple murders and suicides.
Oh, yeah, yeah. I’m curious if those bands would’ve existed without Venom or Bathory. You know, I think Burzum is getting out of jail pretty soon, and I’m curious what’s gonna happen. I think there are a lot of people who are very loyal to the memory of Euronymous who are waiting for Burzum to get out so they can exact revenge of some sort. Maybe not, but the fact that those people committed such atrocities probably means that there are other people who might do the same thing back to them. It’s kind of crazy.

Part of me would like to say that these guys were pretty young when all those things happened, and that they’ve since matured. But from interviews I’ve done with some of them over the years, I don’t necessarily get the sense that that’s always the case.
Well, you know, we just played a festival in Norway last fall, and Mayhem was on the bill. I was excited to see them, and Attila was singing with them. It was amazing, and then he actually came to see us play that night, which was really wild. Talking to him later, he was like, “You know, Sonic Youth and Birthday Party would come to Scandinavia and those were the shows we’d go see.” And that was weird, because I never really thought that would be the case. And then there’s this guy who plays in this West Coast black metal band called Bone Awl, and he was writing to me for a while. He told me there’s this one song off of Daydream Nation called “’Cross The Breeze” which was a blueprint for a certain black metal playing style. I was like, “You gotta be fucking kidding me.” But then we started rehearsing Daydream Nation to play it live, and I saw what he meant. There’s a certain drum style that Steve [Shelley] is doing on there, and the guitar stuff on there was also very black metal—it was this two-note thing over a stomping hardcore beat and Kim [Gordon] was just yelling on top of it. So I sent the Bone Awl guy this live tape I had of “’Cross The Breeze” and he sent me all this stuff from his label and started talking about all these super-underground German black metal bands that referenced “’Cross The Breeze.” So I was really proud of that. That made me really happy.

And now the rumor is that black metal has seeped into Sonic Youth.
[Laughs] I don’t know about that. To me, you can’t really reference black metal. You either gotta play it totally and purely and devote yourself to it or not. There’s these guys who come out of this New York avant-garde band called The No Neck Blues Band, and a couple of them have a black metal band called Malkuth that’s actually really good because they’re genuine in what they’re referencing and they really do know a lot about it and they really love it. I’ve seen Malkuth play a few times now, and I can truly say that they’re a black metal act, as opposed to like art-boho improvisers slumming it as a black metal band. I mean, it really matters what your intention is and how you embrace that music. I’ve always brought elements of metal into Sonic Youth, much to maybe the unknowingness of the rest of the band. In fact, somebody wrote an article once in the ’80s about how indie rock was referential of two main acts—the Velvet Underground and Black Sabbath. And I always thought that was really kind of interesting because it’s so true. One time at rehearsal, I mentioned to the band that I bring Black Sabbath riffs and time signatures into what I’m doing all the time, and Lee [Ranaldo] was like, “You gotta be kidding me. There’s no way you do that.” Lee never listened to Black Sabbath growing up. He was a total Grateful Dead / New Riders Of The Purple Sage kid who got into Talking Heads. Whereas I was a total metal kid who got into punk. But the connection became more apparent as time went by, especially when Nirvana hit.

What about the title of the album, The Eternal? Was that influenced by your listening habits?
[Laughs] I definitely came up with the title in a black metal state of mind. But it also made sense for where we are as a band. I mean, we can’t even break up. We have to die before we break up. So I thought it made sense. And then Steve pointed out that “The Eternal” is also the name of a Joy Division song, so we almost didn’t use it for that reason. But Joy Division, in a way, were a huge inspiration for a lot of black metal practitioners. So it all ties in.

What’s in your current black metal rotation?
Ecstatic Peace! is actually releasing a record from a band called Servile Sect, who I really like. And there’s a band called Ovskum—I really like them. I’m also really into the early Beherit stuff. Hold on—let me see what else I can find here in the car … there’s a band called Zarach Baal Tharagh. And I like that band Woods Of Infinity. There’s an old San Francisco band called Weakling that I used to love. I also like that band Warloghe. There’s also a band called T.O.M.B. that’s really amazing—their new one is great. And I really like some of the Canadian bands, like Akitsa. Dominick [Fernow] from Hospital Productions does a thing called Ash Pool, and I really like what he does. He’s actually been really responsible for turning me on to a lot of this stuff. I was sort of flirting around with it, and he threw things at me that led me down some avenues that I liked. Those guys at Aquarius Records are really knowledgeable, too. But it goes deep. I’m not a black metal warrior, but I’m pretty deep into it.

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