| 14/05/2008 | |
English & German Interview by Obliveon Magazin & Michael Kuhlen | |
LITURGY OF DECAY The interview was translated from English to German by Michael Kuhlen for Obliveon Magazin : LITURGY OF DECAY - Lobgesänge auf den Niedergang Here is the English version. 1.) First of all I'd like to have a little bit of background information on LOD, e.g. when has the band been founded, who were the founding members, what were your musical influences, did you release something before "Psalms…", did the members play in other bands before, do you have side-projects besides LOD etc. Well, to begin with, Liturgy Of Decay has been created by me at first with college friends, in 1997. We had played some music together before, but this is the moment when I decided to take things into hand, to invest in a good keyboard/sequencer which was appealed to become the basis of the sound of the band, and when I put the fundaments of the whole general concept – and the name of the project. This is the moment when I started to compose real songs and to take the place of the singer which was still empty. This first line-up ended at a moment when our existences were taking different paths. Music was becoming the center of mine and one can not go on like this with people who don't share the same view, the same passion, who do not make the same existential choices and who take the practice of music as an unnecessary week-end secondary entertainment. In the mean-time, we recorded and released a first EP demo 4 tracks CD entitled "Suffering The Ideal" in 1999 and we recorded the first version of the album "Psalms Of agony And revolt – L'Oeuvre Au Noir" that you can hear on our myspace pages in 2002. Several other line-ups did follow with no need to be mentioned longer, they simply did not fit. At this time, I knew a desert crossing since everything into and around the band seemed to collapse in my life and, as I will explain later, I met all the external doors of the scene (labels, etc…) completely closed to us. The activity into Liturgy Of Decay decreased considerably into this desert experience of delusion. But maybe 2 or 3 years ago, at a moment when I was giving life again to the almost dead corpse which was the very sense and meaning and source of my life, I met in a period of very few months the people who are now taking part of the band. They are the most implicated ones who ever entered the project. For the very first time I found a deep, sincere and profound echo in other's passion and in other's vision of the world and art. We share far more than music, and this is the reason why music goes and flows so naturally. This collaboration is so efficient, so deep, so bright that I decided to rearrange all the songs with the new members, letting them put their hand and the brightness of their sensibility into the existing musical material to make it a little bit their own too, and to record again the album instead of releasing one on which they would have done nothing while still asking them to defend it. The new versions of the songs are, sometimes, very different from the old ones and, as for me, each time, quite improved with ideas, sounds and harmonies. They go far deeper into the general concept, create an even more personal sound than what it was before. This is what we are working on at this time, apart from other ambitious things which we can not deal with yet because they are not ready. But the release of this album will represent for me the real act of birth of Liturgy Of Decay, and the current members are, to my mind the real founding members, because their arrival sounded like a renaissance for the project and the elevation to a quite superior level in all its artistic perspectives. We have several side-projects which will probably be included in a bigger and global one (of which Liturgy Of Decay represents the center and the heart) entitled "De Profundis In Excelsis" but most of them are not advanced enough (still at the stage of mental projection and ideas) to be mentioned, except one, called "Oxxo Xoox" (www.myspace.com/oxxoxoox) : this is the personal project of the other guitarist of the band, Laurent Lunoir (who is a very creative, talented and sensitive person), a doom gothic universe which is, yet different, still quite close to Liturgy Of Decay in many aesthetical and spiritual aspects. Its purpose is more oriented to our relationship towards the planet that we share and to what the world of men has done of it. Both projects (as some of the not mentioned ones) will probably share more or less the same line-up, only the internal roles will be changed and switched. More info to come in time. Apart from this, Xavier, our drummer, also plays in a French batcave band called "Deadchovsky". 2.) How would you define the musical style of LOD? Based on the many influences like (progressive) metal, gothic, sacral elements etc. I guess it's very difficult to reduce the band to just one style only. Would you agree that beside the influential bands you're mentioning on myspace also bands such as Saviour Machine, Braindance, Vauxdvihl or Wedding Party had an impact on the musical development of LOD? Harsh question, as you mentioned! To find a "sticker" or a "denomination" which could give an idea of all the main attributions and perspectives of our music, we had to create quite a long (and pompous ☺) one : flamboyant gothic metal (atmospheric, symphonic, metaphysical and mystical). Another description saying "the most metal of gothic bands, the most gothic of metal bands" fits quite well for me too. I don't know any band which is so much at the crossroads of those styles, which goes that deep into both directions at the same time. In fact Liturgy Of Decay's music is what represents the most the term "gothic" for us, in all that it means to ourselves, all the imagery, atmospheres and sounds that the term does evocate to our minds and we have put into this, to serve this universe, atmospheres and imagery, the power of the metal sound and tools, as many bands have done now, but our own way. I would describe our music as the meeting of saturated guitars and organs, strings, harpsichords, choirs, carillons, synthetic and sometimes industrial backgrounds, with a clear voice chanting the suffering and rage of a painful past and the invocation of a glorious future, carried by the meeting of power, injury and spirituality, of the will to rise and the condemnation to fall and to be crushed. For the bands you mention, I will probably deceive you, but I don't know any of them ☺. To be more precise, I did not know any at the moment when the musical identity of Liturgy was created. Now I know a little bit more Saviour Machine, I recognize that we share with them an image quite orientated in order to raise the question of the sacred – especially considering a christen inheritance. But if you see links and correspondences with those bands, I will soon take the time to see and hear what they all do. 3.) What was the initial idea to call the band Liturgy of Decay? A liturgy normally is known as a ritual or a mess celebrating and worshipping god although the original ancient meaning has been a different one, meaning that rich people for example opened up soup kitchens for the poor and helped them in a social way. What is your explanation? It has evolved with time, and I'm very glad to have found a name which can at the same time embrace the past vision and the future one. The basical statement remains the same in both : the quest of an Absolute, of an ideal, whatever it is, in this world, is a (perpetual or at least a partial but almost unavoidable) crucifixion. This world of men is not made for nor at the image of noble souls living for the thirst of high things and splendours (sentimental, existential, spiritual, aesthetical, etc…). At the beginning, my disillusioned belief went deeper, pretending that this quest of higher things and marvels was bound to lead to pain and delusion, that this greatness was simply unachievable, that ideals were simply lies and chimeras – in other words, that there was nothing left powerful nor true and beautiful to be praised, nothing… but pain. Pain appeared to me to be the only absolute that seemed to be reachable, that seemed to be authentic, that did not lie and that seemed to contain the highest form of beauty. So I decided to create an artistic liturgy of it, an aesthetical worship of this particular fall, not of every fall, but of this particular one which was based on a quest of the absolute which has exploded and been broken into pieces while crashing into the wall of the tiny perspectives of the miserable world of men. This very special form of decay (which carries in itself all the romantic and symbolist inheritance of the XIXth century), beauty in pain, were to me the only things to which could possibly be raised a devotion and a liturgy in a disenchanted world, the only absolute remaining after the fall of all the others. "Liturgy Of Decay" was meant to put into the same banner the religiosity of our music and also its despair, the one of a spiritual/mystical/ceremonious fibber which was orphan and had nothing anymore to embrace and celebrate but pain. I changed, we all changed our perspectives. We don't believe anymore in the absolute incapacity which is our to caress and to hold the Absolute. We believe that there is a possible flight to the heights – which begins by lots of falls and declines and by a certain way to live and rise through those different experiences of the fall. We believe that all our "dreams" are higher promises that we all carry and that we have to make happen by the strength of our faith into their achievement and by our fidelity to their principles – a fidelity towards which the experience of suffering can be seen as a test and not an end nor a death certificate nor statement of vacuity. We've all gone through Hell, and back, each one of us his own way. We found the exit, even if it's too soon to deal with this. The name "Liturgy Of Decay" now refers to the different steps of the alchemy of the soul which can see one turn all that is low and dedicated to gravity (aka to the fall) in one's spirit and nature into gold. "Learn to fall to learn to fly" is what is written on the frontispiece of our personal temple dedicated to the cult of greatness and of higher forms of life and destiny – which means, for the moment, on the front of our myspace page ☺. The means to reach the Sacred of our nature not only despite of the experience of pain, but also through and during the experience of pain, this is what "Liturgy Of Decay" could now refer to, including a certain way to dive into hell – or at least into pain – without fear and to go through it, to be burnt by it in order to be reborn better and stronger. This is not masochism (not necessarily physical, but also mental and spiritual). This is the contrary. The aim is not to fall and to say "marvellous, I'm dying and my mind is rotting into perversions, dirt, resentment and mental diseases, how glamour and splendid I am, let's spread my disease and misery all around the world ! ", but to live a fall the right way (which is precisely not the one mentioned) and to turn the fall into a flight – which means into an enrichment of the Self. We are far more in a "let's spread the cure and the call of glory that we all carry inside around the world" perspective and, considering this, as opposed to the approach formerly described, we are some sorts of Anti-Antichrists Superstars ☺. This is our own vision of Nietzsche's sentence "What does not kill me makes me stronger", which I was personally unable to understand existentially speaking (only mentally, and for me it was a lie and a pose) during all the time when what did affect me was killing me slowly each time a little bit more even if not in a brutal and lethal way, weakening the general construction of my personality and mind because I did not know how to become stronger through this experience of pain. Now I know, and this is what I will praise, but it's a little bit too early to deal with that… Liturgy Of Decay is now the sum of all this : a descent into hell and an escape from it, a declaration of love an faith to a higher conception made sacred of human destiny and put into acts at the very center of the storm and chaos characterizing the tragedy of our existence in this world for those whose life boils in their veins and whose nobility reigns in their hearts, a declaration of love to a superior conception of this Life in all its burning passion, incandescent emotion, to its power, to its abundance, to its flamboyance, to its supreme majesty, a declaration of allegiance and loyalty to the quest of the splendour of Mankind (to be more precise, to Life in pain yet still struggling and refusing to corrupt or to abdicate), and at the same time an aesthetical, ideological and metaphysical declaration of war to all that obstructs those higher and sovereign manifestations of Life, which means a declaration of war to Death – into ourselves, into our heart, into the world and its values or representations which make the lowness and the contemptibility of Mankind by his enslavement through fear and neurosis – and to its apologists and servants who are its first victims, its puppets and its slaves. Because, to make mine words of the other sinister side and to rearrange them my way, I shall say that we are no more slaves to a Lord of flies and worms and master of all decays whose greatness doesn't exist, and we are no more slaves to a death drive that doesn't give a shit. This drive almost defeated and destroyed us… almost. Now we're back, alive as we've never been before, as we should have never ceased to be… and angry, too. This is flamboyant gothic, this is what we are, this is what we praise : people from below in the depth of shadows and pain watching up the sky and yearning to fly, lights shining In the dark and fighting to shine more of their internal unbeaten fire as stars sparkling in the nights, instead of watching down to find how they could descend further more and become blacker and evil more. 4.) Would you also say that the name of the band is some kind of political and social statement with regards to the world we're currently living in, with all the grievances that everybody has to face everyday? Well, it's difficult to say. In a certain way, each time you deal with metaphysics and existentialism, you put a foot into politics. What we praise is purely existential, which means necessarily highly political and social. The "decay" we deal with is the personal and intimate painful experience of the world we live in (of the world of men to be more precise, since we have to make a difference between the place we live in and what we've done of it). But if one does apply the vision we share and praise to each aspect of his life, it could be described as some kind of revolutionary approach since, as I said at first, the fundamental statement or report is that, I shall not say that almost everything goes wrong, but I'm not far from it though. Among the band, we now do not believe anymore in the vacuity of ideals and searches of the absolute in the different domains of our existence. We simply believe that to find them, to share them, to make them exist, to meet them and to make them descend into our lives, we simply have to return almost all of the values, beliefs and perspectives in which we're born, the social values on which are built our societies and our world. So, yes, highly social and political… but on second thoughts, and not as a priori aim which remains aesthetical and existential… But some other (side) projects I was mentioning before will be more directly and specifically politically oriented, in the perspective of what could be described, to sum up and to simplify, as a personal vision of a certain notion of " ecology and altermondialism" - the idea that another world is possible by making a revolution (aka a complete return) of our perspectives and manners. 5.) I was very much surprised to find that LOD still is an unsigned band because of all the professionalism that the band stands for, a great and powerful production, great songwriting skills, an interesting image and so on. Did you refuse offers by companies or did none of the labels approach you for a contract, which definitely would be a shame for every A & R in the metal/goth/music business. Well, at first, sincerely, thank you very much for your kind words about our work. They are deeply appreciated. Considering your question, I will develop what I was saying before. The labels did not only "forget" to approach us, they simply refused us when we did approach them. All of them except one, a small Italian label of heavenly voices bands who said to us that it was not the genre of the label but that he may sign us if we had found nothing at the end of the year (it was in 2002 or 2003). He was right, the musical style was too far to make his label able to work properly on the band so we did not call him back. But for the rest, after the end of the recording and mixing of the first version of "Psalms" that you can hear on our myspace page, I sent a promo CD with 5 of the best tracks of the album to almost all the gothic, metal, independent and major labels and companies in Europe and to most of them in the US. I sent maybe 100 CDs. The music did fit to none of the A&R departments you were mentioning. There were too many gothic keyboards for metal labels, too many heavy guitars for gothic label. An important doom/gothic metal one wrote to us a hand written answer, saying "the music is great but it's not what we have planned to release as for bands in the forthcoming future". "What we have planned to release"… : this simple sentence sums up all that is, for me, the corruption of those scenes – our scenes – by commercial considerations, from the business point of view at least. Those scenes have emerged while young, passionate, idealistic and ethical people carried mostly by aesthetical considerations have created the structures (labels, fanzines, etc…) to make their ideal live. They were looking for artistic personality, integrity, originality. They were able to take financial risks for what they loved and praised. From this came out an emulsion of creativity, and the richness of our scenes is born from that. It's capacity to change and to open itself to new perspectives made it flourishing. But the young and passionate people grew old – and mentally obese. Their labels or fanzines became corporations and magazines, the means by which they were living and paying their bills and beautiful houses and cars – and yes, whatever non-materialistic you were at the age of 20, at 30/35, you really like this big new car which is your, most of times. They became middle-class persons, started to think money and low risks. And now they're not seeking for originality anymore, not looking for what does not exist yet, for what you can't foresee nor plan (since the original project which will create a new scene, a new branch of the scene or at least write a new page of the story of the scene which will be its own, you can not predict it, it is what you've never heard before, what you can't expect nor give an already existing name and form to, what does not exist yet and will create the surprise by the birth of its own an personal category), but they are looking for the greater benefits with the lower efforts, for short term and highly rentable investments – and unfortunately short term views kill long term existences. Consequently, sometimes they gather in companies briefings, deciding and planning "what" they will release, what genre and form it will have (but you can think and conceive a vision of this "form" that you're expecting only on the basis and model of what already is) because at this moment it fits to what sells, which means what already exists and has already made its commercial proofs, what already makes money so that they will sign the copy of it and make a little less money, but money yet, money for sure. They have been cutting the branch on which they sit for years doing that and having lost the purity of their former and original spring but they did not seem to understand and they still go on while they're already falling one after the other… Obviously, Liturgy Of Decay can not find a place in such an industry lead by that kind of mentality. The first reason is that we don't fit to anything existing. We don't and we will never fit the cases – the cages – that they have in their heads and through which they see, analyse, render in terms of money music. But this impossibility to exist through that kind of structures lead us to find alternative means … By the way, I know some signed bands around me and in most cases (but not all of them), I would never have accepted to be reduced in such a slavery with such a lack of regard and respect. I'm sorry if I make a myth fall, but the stinky and sordid rules of modern and aggressive capitalism which you can find illustrated through major companies' behaviours have managed to enter and corrupt those underground and formerly ethical scenes which should have remained bastions of resistance towards this. 6.) Are you currently in negotiations with a label? No, and we will not. We have revolutionary fibbers and perspectives in that domain too ☺. 7.) Coming to "Psalms And Agony", when did you start working on the songs? Do you have more songs that will not be released with "Psalms"? In fact, the full title of the album is "Psalms Of Agony And Revolt – L'Oeuvre au Noir". I started working on the songs in 1997 (yes, I know, quite a long time). The first 4 tracks demo CD was released in 1999. The first version of the album was finished and mixed in 2001 or 2002 I don't remember. We have few songs left. The second version of the album will contain 2 more songs than the first one. We also have a long cover of The Cure songs ("Cold" and "Lovesong") from which we made a medley of our own but we will not release it – commercially speaking. We will probably let it on our myspace page or something approaching. 8.) What was the idea to call the album "Psalms And Agony"? I guess the title can also be considered as a political and social statement of todays' world. Besides that, what is the general reason for you to use religious symbols and expressions in connection with LOD? For me, basically, "Psalms Of Agony and Revolt" was the best way I've found to describe into words the themes, topics and atmospheres of the music. The subtitle "L'Oeuvre au Noir" came after, when we reconsidered this first album as the illustration and the testimony of the first step of a mental, spiritual and existential travel for which we took the image of alchemy as a metaphor – the testimony of a descent into hell, despair and disillusion preceding a rebirth. There is a spiritual side of the old alchemy which is not known and which is the only one presenting interests concerning our approach (the "physical" sorcery has no connection with us) : the quest of gold by transforming heavier brown or black metals of low quality into this noblest one while applying on them procedures of a transmutation was taken as an image to describe the spiritual quest of elevation, the search of a new and enlightened humanity, of an overwhelming of the limits of our nature in its condition, in its corruption, leading to the rise of a new Man, wiser and brighter, stronger, elevated to a "divine" dimension of the self. In the physical alchemy, you have 3 different steps of the process: the black art or blackening ("l'oeuvre au noir" in French), the white art or whitening ("l'oeuvre au blanc" in French) and the red art or reddening (l'oeuvre au rouge" in French). The first step, the blackening (to which refers the subtitle of our first album), spiritually speaking, corresponds to the descent in the hell of melancholy, mental loss, a sort of death before the rebirth. All this represents perfectly the very heart of our work. "Psalms Of Agony And Revolt" is an expression which describes the spiritualization of a state of mind driven by loss, pain and something which can be understood both as resentment (which is a force of degradation and decay) but also as an force of elevation – which already possesses in itself the promise of the renaissance – through the rage against the mechanics of a system which avoids and obstructs the explosion of Life in its former and essential power. "L'oeuvre au noir" includes this state of mind into a wider context, saying that all which is described, lived and said into it and through it has not to be taken as an end nor an absolute aim, but as a step, the first one of a greater evolution and perspective. Concerning the religious symbols, the fact is that mysticism is one of those numerous sides of the quest of Absolute and idealism I was dealing with before, one of those "chimeras" which did fall as a part of the global fall of ideas of greatness and splendour at first. The mystical fibber, which is a manifestation of the highest Instinct (the Instinct of Beauty), is an essential part of our work – and of our former disillusion. Even when the spiritual dimension of it seemed to be a dead-end road, yet the aesthetical aspect of religiosity still remained extremely dense and present in our work as a manifestation of this taste and quest of greatness, the search of things which overwhelmed the common human horizons and perspectives. And, last but not least, of course, the crucifixion (including the martyr) is another main aspect of our work, as mentioned before. Crucifixion is there, this is what we experience down here in this pursue of higher existential perspectives, this is obvious – and only this would justify that we made of it the very heart of the concept I've described before. Then, once enounced this statement, we have to ask to ourselves where does it come from, what shall we do of it, etc…, all sorts of questions raised in our work which give reasons for the use of this symbol. To sum up, now, the religious system as an oppressive and deceitful manifestation of a thirst of power and control of minds, was and remains one of the worst enemies of our cause to raise humanity to its full and accomplished Self and one of the things which has to fall as any manifestation of oppression and tyranny. But it's not the case of the religious feeling and of the mystical fibber of Mankind ; sometimes, when it's not the reflection neither of a neurosis nor of a slavery to a tradition, but the manifestation of a will to more, of a thirst of higher things, we do not put the same critical and condemning eye upon it, far from it. 9.) France and the French government has a lot of problems with social and cultural problems among young people that led to many riots over the past years. What is your opinion on the politics of Sarkozy and the riots that took place? Oh my God I could write a book about it, you're taking high risks ! ☺. To sum up, I would say that our president – and all the values that he incarnates – represents more or less the strict opposite of what we are and think in the band. He is the incarnation of a modern barbary with its aggressive exhibition of money, its brutal manners, its perverted obsession of control, of power and its devotion to the powerful ones – which means the financial, media and political powers, this explains his fascination towards the United states and Bush with whom he acts almost like a groupie when he sees him (hysteria not included, though). He is more or less like a seller of carpets who became president, with the same vulgarity, brutality and violence, the same complete (or close to complete) misunderstanding of the highest values of the living and of the true wealth of the human nature and heart – and also the same misunderstanding of the basis of psychology. Whatever hides in his mind, this is what his politics tend to prove. Because all his policy (at least what I know of it) can be reduced, more or less, to those facts. He chooses the interests of the rich and despises the poor (by the way, considering the poor, it's more or less his own fault if he is, the one who's got the will to success does, as for our president, the idea lies in the shadow of some of his speeches). To stick to the topic of your question, there is a whole part of the youth in France who's grown up in sordid places made of colossal, inhuman and dirty blocks, in conditions of living that we would normally dedicate to animals (which is also a problem and should not exist, but this is another question)… Misery, existential despair, high rates of unemployment, great lack of perspectives (professional, social, etc…, especially due to ethnical discriminations towards employment), all this put into a context of constant and aggressive ideology of consumption which strikes from every part and everywhere (on TV, in the street, at school, etc..) to be sure not to miss every potential target, and which makes you feel and believe that you are someone when you take part of their artificial consumerist dream (which means, in negative, that you are no one when you can't afford it), making emerge in permanence desires that will never become sated for the poorest and which are bound to engender recurrent and frustrations, discrimination and a feeling of rejection, all this is the earth on which naturally grow the evil seeds of rage and violence. Moreover, those among them whose parents/grandparents come from north Africa suffer from what we can call a growing arabophobia of the western countries since many are the children of the immigration of the 50's-60's when our country called in mass cheap and low price workers from Muslim (to simplify) countries without ensuring them the least decent conditions of living – and now we are astonished that the children who have grown into those conditions of ugliness carry some ugliness and resentment in their heart, what a surprise ! This arabophobia, which tries to make us believe that this identity is incompatible with our western values and that all the problem in the country with this population is due to its allegiance to Islam which would be devilish by essence, has seen those kids hear since their very childhood that they were "evil", that they would never be a part of our morally superior western republic, that they would never be considered as normal and respectable citizens, that they were "the others", "the barbarians", and each day which passes sees them controlled by the police sometimes violently without reason, and each day sees them meet in people's eyes fear and judgment towards them like small picks entering their flesh and nerves all the time. A famous French Arab comic coming from those ghettos and who managed to get out from them used to say, in substance, "when one makes you believe that you're a beast, you finish by acting like a beasts and on the contrary it's when one manages to consider an treat you with respect that your become respectful and respectable in all things". Those kids are like children who have been beaten by their mother since they're born, our so called egalitarian "Republic" who does not have the same prodigal, generous and abundant breast for all her children and who treats some as pariahs deserving a rotten milk on a blemished one. Now they are starting to revolt because they are really angry. Some of our suburbs are like powder reserves. This despair finds some bad exits in a communitarian reflex – the more we beat them on their community of origin and the more they have an exaggerated and excessive relation to it, trying to find in this excess all the construction and recognition of themselves that we refuse to them. This communitarian reflex finds one of its most destructive intensification since this population being rejected and despised and brutalised psychologically by a society and physically by a police reflects itself and sees a parallel of destiny with the atrocities committed by Israel – and the whole western world behind, guilty of complaisance – in the Occupied Territories, once again against the "barbarians". Apart from that, I want to mention that many of those suburbs kids who tool part in the riots were not arabo-muslims, simply kids who do share their same social background, so we did not face, as some stupid pro-Bush American medias said, some "Muslim" riots putting the light on a "Muslim" problem of the country, but the manifestation of a social problem which, for historical and non cultural reasons, entailed an important (but non exclusive) part of the French Muslim population since this population, historically, has been doomed to this social despair which turned in second time into a cultural issue because we made it do so. The problem is that Sarkozy, by himself, does incarnate all this. He crystallizes in his single person all those aspects of the conflicting situation. As I told you, he's the reflection and the embodiment of some kind of middle brutal uncivilized (spiritually speaking) France. He's acted toward those kids like this middle stupid France does. He's like a father who would see his teenage son having behaviour problems after having been beaten and having lacked of love and attention during all his childhood and, instead of trying to understand and erase the causes of those behaviours by comprehension, dialog and wisdom – by a form of love –, and who would say "a good back and return with my hand in his face and he will shut up". He went in one of those ghettos with the noble and aristocratic manners of the brutal and stupid carpet seller he is, and said "this place, we will clean it up with a Karscher (note : a tool to take mud, dirt and shit off while throwing on it water at a very high pressure)". To sum up, he went to those kids and said to them "you are some shit, I am the boss and I will fuck you up", in a mix between Charles Brownson, Al Pacino in Scarface and Robet Bidochon (a French character from comics representing perfectly well this very middle stupid average French man (stupid considering an intelligence of the heart, I mean)). Before his arrival at an important ministry (and now as a president), all their anger was against a system, something vague, undetermined, impalpable, and he gave a flesh, a body and a voice to it. He managed to crystallize it all in his single person. So, at the very first problem with the police after his speech, the spark fell into the powder and exploded. This is what happened. Those are the main reasons of the riots you mention. What do I think about that? Those riots turned most of times into stupid destructive manifestations and blind violence, for sure. But it seems that we are discovering that despair leads to violence and that violence is blind, oh my god what a surprise! In fact, what a complete hypocrisy! Violence has been blind since the very beginning of the History of Mankind, this is one of its prior and essential properties, and the problem (as its resolution) still lies in the comprehension and resolution of the causes of the violence, in what generates and feeds it. A burning car is only the chaotic manifestation of a burning heart and soul because years of constant and daily judgment and despising eyes did put the fire birth and feed the fire growth into it and because the absolute lack of anything to loose did not manage to temper it – and having absolutely nothing to loose when you are 20 years old, this is a tremendous tragedy. This shall be a good way for our politicians and citizens to begin to consider the problem, instead of taking the stupid stick to hit and to try to mute the pain by this violent mean. It never worked and will never do. The Israeli State has broken its teeth for 40 years believing that it can make the pain and anger of victims of its oppression shut by the use of violence, and it has never been so close to chaos than nowadays. Violence simply does make the madness go deeper; stronger and blinder, it never heals it. Never. As the Sword always leads to the Sword. Apart from that, quoting (in substance) a current French radical left philosopher Alain Badiou whose adopted and Black son does experience everyday those grievances and the violence of our society towards our "indigene" populations, "a country has the riots it deserves" and the monsters it engenders. Nicolas Sarkozy is the worst answer (and the greatest promise of chaos) we could give to this problem – to more or less all the problems that we face and which are bound to explode in our country and in the whole world in the forthcoming years. As for me, those riots represent only a part and a parcel of a general resentment growing and growling from every part of the world into the heart of those to which a certain might of money has said for a quite too long period "shut the fuck up and starve while we make profits on your despair". But this "chaos", unfortunately, which is only at its stammering, is in the tragic order of things, and it seems that something has to die in pain in order to let something else and better rise. 10.) Karl Marx mentioned, that "religion is opium for the masses". What is your attitude towards this statement? I do partially agree with that. I think that what can be considered as a form of "opium" for the masses is more general and that religion was one of its particular manifestations in the time of Marx. The opium is something which gives poisonous pleasures and a form of drunkenness through illusion (sometimes through violent experiences of the senses) and which allows to escape from a daily (and harsh ?) reality by the means of an intoxication, entailing a dependence and a form of slavery. In the ancient Roman world, all this was said to be the properties of the circus games. "Bread and games" was said to be what allowed one to control people's mind and to ensure people's obedience – which means violent entertainments and blood. Considering religion, this "extreme" experience was/is ensured by a work one people's fear – since we have an instinctive and absolutely perverse fascination towards what we fear which completely enslaves us –, especially while facing the question of death, but also through the escape of the mind (for the best and the worst) given by the contemplation and imagination of upper worlds. Nowadays, religion has experienced, if not a disappearance, at least for sure a very important decrease of its power and influence – and many other systems have taken its place instead to ensure the existence of those properties and means of control and power. Mass medias and the political circus, for example, represent for me quite well all I've said about the reasons why religion could be considered as an opium for the masses. I would personally say that a certain communion into blood is (one of the possible, yet the mostly practiced form of) opium for the masses. Real TV, news received from a trash, spectacular and almost non reflexive mode (I don't especially want to avoid a certain degree of trash and unveiling of the violent reality of things working on emotions if this emotion is carried by a reflection and if it's employed to serve a better use of the mind and a better comprehension and knowledge of the (sordid and tragic) world we're living in); mostly all forms of modern entertainment carry this part of violence and death sentence (even if only by words) in an arena. I find this as illusionary, violent, fear involving, manipulating, death carrying, bloody mass for the masses looking as ancient circuses and religious rites. And it works ! You can sell wars to people with such means while putting them in the same complete "drunkenness" and disconnection to the realities of the world they live in as religion would have managed yesterday to convince of the benefits of holy wars. The same communion into blood too… But the problem (or simply the question) of the "religious" phenomenon is complex and does not let itself imprisoned in an "ease-of-use/ready-to-use" simplistic vision. It answers to different (and on certain aspects, opposites) needs, instincts and tendencies of the human mind and heart which have to be analyzed separately : the instinct of elevation and the instinct of gravity (aka, the instinct of fall and degradation). The very misanthropic (and blind) guy I used to be years ago would have only seen a part of the explanation – a part of the truth –, putting the emphasis on an analysis of the attraction on people's mind of the "easier way" without too much questions to ask oneself represented by the religious package and which can explain a certain part of the addiction it entails. At the basis, this comes, as for me, from a fear of freedom, a fear of life. The will of being controlled is another face of the will of comfort and security that leads people to consume easy-to-use truths provided to them by authorities into which they choose to put their belief because they supply a stable and one-way vision of life, a railroad from birth to death answering to all questions – or making believe so, so that questions should not be raised anymore and can be avoided. It's a submission of the will and a dissolution of the Self into a comfortable enslavement that sees the individual put himself in a cage which they make us believe that it is golden. In fact, this is a very puerile reflex (in a pejorative aspect of the term "puerile" that I personally oppose to "infantile" which carries for me great amounts of wisdom). All this, for me, is a manifestation of the instinct of gravity and fall, an instinct of refusal of Life, when you let yourself carried by the flows of things which always lead one day to the abyss. You could find this instinct yesterday into artificial mystical devotions, you can find it today into "modern" and TV watching (and believing) people – which means, alas, most of people. But on the contrary – and that's for the other part –, the religious fibber to which the oppressive religious institution gave an answer and on which it did work reveals for me the strict opposite, which means a thirst for more than what the world of men does give, a thirst for upper, brighter, higher and deeper perspectives, a will to give a true meaning to one's life and a will to envisage it in wider frames than the closed normal ones – than the stupid materialistic ones. The man who dreams sincerely of the divine is not the same, as for me, as the one who dreams of a new 4X4 watching people tearing apart each other on a TV channel – but sometimes both represent two contradictory and opposite faces of the same individual. The first one feeds what inside of him sees and tends to go over what he is, in a logic of self overtaking, the second one is imprisoned in gravity and sees below him. Nietzsche used to say that one of the most obvious property of Life as a tension and as an urge is to try to overwhelm itself, to see and to create beyond itself in a will to more. I do completely agree with that, even if I disagree with many other aspects of his vision of things. But for me, the mystical fibber, when it's sincere and not neurotic, is a manifestation of this will-to-more, of a call of greatness, of a quest of the divine which reveals in perspective a quest of a saving wrench from the gravity of our condition and from the limits and lowness of our corruptible nature, a will to rise above our restrictions and above all the things that crush us into the world and into ourselves. This is not a symptom of the instinct of gravity and easiness I was mentioning – the only one which could lead to despise a so called aspiration to the divine through the membership of a religious institution – but a manifestation of the instinct of elevation and self-overwhelming – which is a sacred one, as for me, a vivid and brilliant expression of a higher form of Life and Self, a true manifestation of the sacred of our nature and in our nature. When I see cathedrals and imagine people working on them for 500 years and even not having the least hope to see the final result of their work during their life, but still doing it simply because they had the feeling to take part in something better and greater than themselves, to reach something beyond themselves that enlightened their destiny and task of a superior meaning far beyond their little self interests and satisfaction of their least egotist desires, and when I compare this to the ugly architecture of things erected right now by people having matters of profitability and financial optimisation in their short mind, unable to think things otherwise than "the least effort in the least time for the maximum earnings", I don't really recognize, on this single point (which is linked to others) any greatness nor superiority to the modern unreligious man. When I see the complete disrespect of anything by which our arrogant kind enslaves the whole environment without being able to hear the decreasing beating of the heart of our planet because everything has to be reduced to physical material in our obstructed vision of things – and the idea that everything can and has to be turned into merchandise is the logical accomplishment of this restricted vision – and because we believe ourselves as the kings and the center of all things for who consume greedily everything and take what they want without even thinking of giving back or sharing, in a complete thoughtlessness and without the least sense of responsibilities, and when I read that there is a Christian and very religious movement which is vegan because its members believe that killing animals is destroying the Creation, I think that small pieces of this "opium" may be useful to our world to get out of its blindness and to recover the sight of greater views and values. Religion did and does also feed the will of communion into moments of deep collective emotions, into higher ideas and conceptions of Life shared at the same time by a crowd, higher than stupid profit, higher than stupid money, higher than stupid social recognition and prestige, higher than a stupid new car because it's the new one and a stupid larger TV-screen than the neighbour's one. This is also a part of the ebriateness and of the exhilaration it provides which may not be condemned or seen as contemptible. I work sometimes as a live sound engineer for other bands, and when I take care of the monitor desk, I'm on the side of the stage and I can see people's face and eyes. When the band really has its own public, I always find it impressive – and beautiful. This is Life and Man as they should never have ceased to be: passionate and fervent. Modern rock concerts (in a very wide vision of "rock" which can include hip hop, reggae, etc…) are the occasions of real communions of masses into which people share a same fervour, a same ardour through the celebration of something high, of a human will to go up and further – which is the fundament of art, to magnify and to sublimate elements of reality. Public celebrations of art represent for me public celebrations of the manifestation of what is the most sacred into the human nature : the instinct of Beauty and the will to make it exist through acts and to make ugliness step back into the world. Love is another side of this instinct, as the will to elevate oneself also is. Through those experiences of ecstasies (which are only more intense and authentic moments of Life and existence to the world), people give to themselves rare and precious instants of being carrying a deep and powerful, a bright and noble meaning. This is religious for me, in an elevated conception of the term. This ardour, this passion which sees very different people look into the same direction, elevate themselves to and accomplish themselves into a denser, a higher form of Life, this is what can and should be considered as the main properties of the religious – but I really don't see anything low nor contemptible into those mass celebrations. During a concert of Liturgy Of Decay, at the end, someone in the crowd did kneel and raise his arms up the sky in an ecstatic way. Our dream is to see the whole crowd sharing such a joy, such an intensity of emotions, such a bright manifestation of the heart and soul. I want to see in front of me thousands of people screaming, crying and laughing at the same time – LIVING completely and extraordinarily from and by every part of their Self at the same time, liberating this Self – which is mostly enslaved the rest of their life – at the same time, whatever forms the liberation takes which will engage the specificity and individuality of each. This is one of the main (yet far from being the single) reasons why I do dedicate my life to this project. And this is religious, not in the oppressive and crushing aspect of the phenomenon, but on the contrary in the emancipative notion of the term. Few days ago I've seen a three hours and a half concert of The Cure which they did finish in a moment of common contemplation by a memorable version of their song "Faith", with few lights around that gave the impression of being candles into the choir of a church. It reminded me this idea that modern rock concerts are the closest thing I've ever seen that could fit to my vision of the religious in a superior and liberating for the Self conception. And this has not to be despised nor spoiled by an intellectual pose, as for me : this has to be praised, as any higher and upper manifestation of Life, as any phenomenon involving the truth and power of an authentic emotion – because this is what frees men and minds and what makes stronger and brighter beings. 11.) Do you consider the album as a conceptional one, just as you might consider the whole band as an overall concept? Considering what I've said before, obviously, yes ! In fact it may be integrated in a trilogy (including the musical illustrations of the whitening and the reddening steps I was mentioning before, concerning the metaphor of Alchemy) which was formerly appealed to be called "De Profundis In Excelsis – Ars Magna", but since the general wide project into which all our different ones (Liturgy Of Decay, Oxxo Xoox, etc…) converge is tending to have the same name, it shall change in the future. But what is sure is that "Psalms Of Agony…" is not something to take as an end, but as a part of a global process, as the illustration of the first step of an existential and metaphysical path which makes of it the first chapter of an artistic wider enterprise and travel. The second album will probably be entitled "Psalms Of Harmony And Reward – L'Oeuvre Au Blanc". 12.) I also read that the version of "Psalms…" which now will be released already is the second version, with one unreleased version before. Therefore I wonder what went wrong with the first unreleased one? The first one is the one I sent to you, the one you can hear on our myspace page and the one that all the gothic/metal/indie/major labels we contacted did refuse to sign. The second one is the one to come, that we will record in the forthcoming months. 13.) Being a band with such a strong image I'm pretty sure you're also interested in visuals and videos, maybe for your live-shows to be displayed in the background. Do you have plans to work in that direction to in the future, too? Yes we have. In fact we have plans to put some kind of animated visuals on our music that we may bring live too. We are working hard on all this currently and for months now, because we have to create the tools to produce them. I can not say more for the moment… 14.) What are your additional plans with LOD? Any live shows planned for France and also for the rest of Europe, especially Germany or The Netherlands? Unfortunately, there are no live shows planned. We are now working in the shadow to finish things which are still under construction. After that we will probably do other dates in France. But it would be very surprising for us to play in foreign countries in the near future. As we are completely unknown there, we would have to come as the first and opening act of another band, and most of times those things are the result of business decisions towards actors of the scene who have financial interests in common. Bands have very very very rarely their word to say, and since we do not belong to any of those business structures, the chance we have to catch a first part on foreign tours right now is close to 0. But things will change… in time. 15.) Any plans also for the release of a DVD? Not in the future, but whenever we have the means (which will not come tomorrow), we will surely do. 16.) When will your homepage be up and running again? The only valid LOD-page currently seems to be the myspace-page. The new and yet still unachieved and in perpetual improvement web site is online : www.liturgyofdecay.com 17.) Any last words from your side, e.g. where the album will be available and for what price? For where, we can't say now. For what, if we manage to do what we want, it will be around 10 euros. For the rest of what I would say to people, well : the world is changing very fast, and not for the best for the moment, even if the best can arise from the worst as flowers on graves. Prepare yourself and awake now before explosions awake you by force and violence, but unfortunately too late. Put down all the lies you've been taught and which have built into you a false vision of life that serves interests of mighty ones. Never forget that everything is possible and that every single thing has to be questioned – especially those you've been taught as the most sure and solid ones, which are the first ones to be put into the light of doubt (into the light of intuition). Reject the consumption dreams and the social schemes they did put into you to enslave you and to make you feed their might – because the very secret of destiny is not an advertisement in tantalising vulgar, flashy and sordid colours. Only by those means you may find who you are – which means the most precious thing that you possess. It has never been so much time for you to be yourself. Because time is running out. Because the life that you carry is the most precious thing that you hold even if the world you live in often makes of it the heaviest burden to carry. By this you have the might to return it and to turn crushing destinies into brilliant and glorious ones if your faith and belief are strong enough to make the truth that you hold defeat the lies they did implant into you. Hold your destiny and glory behind their lies, desecrate by the sacred of your destiny and glory the oppressive nature of their lies – and one of the most murderous one is to make you believe that you can not have an existence apart from their schemes, apart from the one they built for you to feed their own. As I said, things will change… in time. Be that change. Be that time. Best regards… Thanks a lot to Michael Kuhlen and Obliveon Magazin for this interview | |
| 22/10/2007 | |
Speech delivered on October, 20th at Le Nouveau Casino, in Paris | |
The next song is about oppression and uprising against the alienation orchestrated by the world we are living in, and the few words to introduce this song, dealing precisely with this world and with this alienation, are becoming a custom in our concerts. The last time we played that song in Paris, I hence introduced it by a speech about, among other things, the terrible fate held in store since our new president’s arrival and the beginning of his policy for the wretched and the homeless, who are the first victims by mistreatment of the Police State that he is settling. I ended my speech by a call to refuse the war that men of power were preparing for us and selling us – because they already started selling it. Afterwards, during this week, George W. Bush, our dear president’s model and idol who is also the greatest mass murderer and criminal of the beginning this 21st century, uttered the terrible term of « World War 3 », pretending that military power will have to be used against Iran to prevent this war from happening whereas it is by the very use of this power that we will make it happen. Each time our cynical politicians show and shake tragedies’ terrifying spectres while demanding war intervention to avoid their happening, it is precisely by these interventions that they concretely materialize and make them fully exist. Iraq, as an example, has never – and far from it – been such a cradle of terrorism and chaos than since they went there to spread misery and death in the name of their fight against terrorism and chaos. And the world will sink into an even bigger chaos if we let them do, claiming they want to avoid and prevent the disaster, while what all this is really about for them is to make nation-scaled hold-ups on deposits of oil to give them to their buddies who financed their electoral campaigns – because the warlike leaders of our moralizing and so-called so civilized Western World are nothing else than hoodlums and scum with ties, who send their hired hands draw their big guns to take over the stocks of black gold. On the other side, the outcome of the hold-up is 700 000 dead people, a civil war and a tumbledown country. It is also an incommensurable amount of pain, of bitterness and of thirst for revenge. This thirst is absolutely not justifiable, but fully understandable and absolutely not free. So please, refuse it, refuse this fucking war. Know that TF1(*) will sell it to you, through a generous use of broadcasts that work on war, broadcasts about our suburbs, about Islam, about Arabs, about the Middle-East, and about nuclear power. They will make you believe that this war is necessary. Know that you will be manipulated by marketing and propaganda techniques learnt from the masters of the genre 60 years ago and which can be found nowadays in commercials, reports and news. But please, for pity’s sake, refuse it, because if you don’t, it will be in our subways, in out cities and in our homes that it will invite itself. The British people naïvely thought one could go and spread misery and death in the other side of the world with impunity and without seeing them inviting themselves back into one’s life as a return. What happened in their subway few years ago during the war on Iraq made proved the contrary, and that is only a beginning regarding what could happen if we leave the already drawn plans of bombing Iran and the Muslim world happen – because one must know that these plans do exist and have already been laid on tables for years, just as it was the case for Iraq even long before September the 11th. If they talk now in such clear, direct and raw words about this war-to-be, about this war-to-lead, about this necessary war – and that is what our president as well as our Foreign Affairs minister already started doing –, it is because their decision is already made and that they are only waiting for ours to apply it, since, in our travesties and simulacrums of democracy where masses are manipulated way more than they are leading, power is still in our hands. Tomorrow it will be our turn to take this decision or to refuse it, and tomorrow is already today. We are on the edge of the pit. One more step and we fall, irremediably. It is now that we must wake up. It is now that we shall not be all wrong. Electing at the top of our state the servile slave of the powerful and the president of the French Fan Club of George W. Bush who, when he goes to New York, behaves like the last of the groupies, it was already taking half this terrible, bloody and murderer step. So for pity’s sake, let us not fully pace it, because we still have the time, but time is running out and we have very few left, alas. To all the ones who heard me, I dedicate this song of revolt, of resistance, of bitterness, of fright and of fight in front of the sinister walk of the world and of its growing barbarism. Some of you already know this song, it is called TRISTIANA. (*) : TF1 is the first and the main TV channel in France, dedicated to junk real-TV and distorted and manipulated news. | |
| 15/10/2007 | |
Speech delivered on October 5th, 2007 at La Scène Bastille in Paris | |
The last time we played on this stage was a well-known May the 6th, 2007. During that evening, Nicolas Sarkozy was ceremoniously celebrating his triumphal coronation in a great TV-mass on TF1 (*), his favourite propaganda organ which sells cerebral availability to great multinational corporations and which uses fear to put the most powerful tool of mass manipulation ever created by a cynical thirst for power between the hands of politicians. On our side, we were on this small stage, trying to make something else than all this audiovisual stink exist – because making something else exist is and will be more and more meaningful in the coming times. About two months ago, I talked with a tramp I know a little bit who roams around Bourg-La-Reine, where I used to live before. He told me he had spent an awful night because the police chased him off the place where he used to sleep. It was done roughly, violently, using tear-gas – and he was indeed bearing on his neck wide over-infecting scalds due to the closeness of the gas use. He told me that since our dear president's election, the police went crazy, became uncontrollable and frequently bullied street people. It reminded me of a discussion I had with a Romanian father, also wretched, who told me in a very approximate French that he had been beaten down and handcuffed in front of his family before he got driven out too. This is what we voted for, and this is what we got. There it is, the real face of the miraculous and salving kärscher supposed to clean the society of all those destitute whose sufferings splash and stain the clear consciences and whose odours make unwell the proper France when she does her shopping just as she's been told to, in order to make work and turn on the machine which dehumanizes us and crushes all our dreams and all that is beautiful into us. The next song is about oppression and uprising against alienation. This alienation is notably the one imposed by the greyish, dull, tasteless and quite often heartless norm, about which even one of those among the most humanist individuals said 2000 years ago that his God of Love (who is also mine from now on) vomits it through the mouth. This norm which rejects all that doesn't look like her and all that, by conviction or by compulsion, does not take part in its gigantic social, consumerist and mercantile masquerade, this norm which eats some CAC 40 in the morning and dreams of 4X4 next to a pair of buttocks at night in a commercial on TF1 (*), this norm found its champion in the person of our current president, and the destiny he has in store for the destitute is nothing but the one dictated by its embarrassed and guilty indifference. I would like to dedicate this song to all the ones among you who still have a heart and an operational compassionnal function to be moved by the fate of these people to whom we recognize from now on no other right than the one to die, and silently, and away from sight, please, because the France made of proper people is working tomorrow – except that I am personally deeply disturbed by this silence, and given the fact that I have the opportunity to be on a stage and to have the right to speak, I think it is fair and legitimate to give a bit of this right to their misfortune, because it terribly hurts me and revolts me. To all the ones, hence, who know that this norm of fear, of closing to the other and of judgement, it lies in each one of us and deserves to be fought in an every instant war into one's heart, to all the ones who refuse the slumber of servile cattle and beasts who obediently graze, to all the awakened ones who refuse to take part in this gigantic insidious barbarism, polite, clean and glittering as a new penny, into which the world is currently sinking, to all the ones who, tomorrow, I hope so, will refuse war, this war that social, economic and political higher interests won't restrain themselves from selling to us with the same marketing methods as the ones cars or presidency candidates are sold with – and this sale already started – to all these ones, hence, I dedicate this song of bitterness and revolt. Some of you already know it, it is called TRISTIANA. (*): TF1 is the first and the main TV channel in France, dedicated to junk real-TV and distorted and manipulated news. | |