Finland’s masters of black/death blasphemy have returned. Archgoat have unleashed their brand-new full-length, The Luciferian Crown, nine songs of desecration and Satanism. Decibel spoke with Ritual Butcherer, Archgoat’s founding guitarist, about the album, upcoming live shows and a live album.
The Luciferian Crown is available to purchase now.
Since getting back together in 2004, Archgoat has released music at a very fast pace. How do you maintain this speed of releases?
I would not really say that we have been abnormally resourceful with our releases as we typically release an album once every three to four years. Creativity is a difficult state as it comes without a warning and leaves equally unnoticed. I do not start to compose by accident but when I feel it is for me time to start the work on a new album, I start to try new things until something I like comes out of the mass. This is the first step for me that opens little by little the flood gates of my creativity as I have a start to which I can start to connect new elements. New elements and “work-in-progress” songs bring along inspiration to my lyrical writings which I always want to start after I have completed a song. The musical landscape of a song gives me alongside it composing an idea what I want to express with that specific song.
When we premiered the title track to The Luciferian Crown, you talked about writing a song that sounds like Archgoat. What do you think makes a song sound “like an Archgoat song”?
I think that we have certain barbaric “fist to face” approach in our music but also now new elements that possess certain complexity. My philosophy is that when combining two different elements you can create a situation where 1 + 1 equals more than the sum. By this I mean that with blast beat and doomish parts playing together, the fast part makes the doom part sound even slower and heavier than it is as it in its own turn underlines the fast parts and the aggression. As I now also arrange our vocals, I got now good possibility to use the vocals more like [an] instrument and fit them the way that they firstly create the lyrical thematic of our (from praise of Lucifer to blaspheming Christianity) but also “pound” in the music like a hammer.
What ideas or topics did you write about on The Luciferian Crown? Obviously it wouldn’t be an Archgoat album without blasphemy and anti-Christian themes, but did you have anything specific in mind?
For the lyrical concept, I can say that this album was much more about the spiritual development towards the Light of Lucifer than the previous works of ours. As my journey has been developing the lyrics—especially on “The Obsidian Flame (From My Depths)” and “I Am Lucifer’s Temple”—are very personal experience and interpretation of how I understand and see this philosophy and where it has lead me. My journey in this philosophy has changed my understanding many times as how I see Satan – in the beginning of my journey I was worshipping a cosmic power that was external but whose fire I felt inside me. During the years, the fire was growing and I suddenly had my moment of enlightenment when I was consumed by this fire and noticed that the external fire was now internal one and one with me. The to catch this fire was my Promethean climb and the fire inside me was something people call the Tree of Knowledge. As far as I understand, you can’t make black metal if you are not Satanic because for me this genre is the most philosophical or religious music there ever has been. If you are not one with the power and don’t know Him you sing about, how can it be real?
Once The Luciferian Crown sees the light of day, what comes next for Archgoat? Do you already have plans for new releases?
Firstly we will start again to play live after our longest period of not playing. We have for this year 30 shows remaining with scope from Europe to Asia. We play as support for Marduk in late November to December and have also started the planning of the the tours and shows for 2019. The concept for 2019 is to play 50+ shows in total, so we intend to be busy then. What is certain is that we will with Debemur Morti Productions release a live album with main focus on the songs that we haven’t released as live version.
