originally written by Juho Mikkonen
Being the odd one out. That’s Black Crucifixion’s existence in a nutshell. They’ve been around since the very birth of Finnish black metal, yet they never released a classic Finnish black metal album. There’s no Ugra-Karma or Drawing Down the Moon in the band’s discography. They jumped ship around 1993-94 when it was time to proverbially cash in on black metal’s “success,” only to briefly resurface over ten years later with a record that pretty much wrote off almost every trace of black metal the band ever had. Then, all of a sudden − when the first decade of the new millennium was about to be rounded off with the finding of new exoplanets and death of Patrick Swayze – Black Crucifixion initiated their third coming with sporadic live performances and a semi-continuous flow of new releases. Upon their comeback (or whatever the fuck you should call it), one could instantly tell that this was again…well, something else, something that nobody could really put their finger on, even if it was just a matter of trying to answer the simple question of if they are any fucking good or not. All in all, Black Crucifixion has never stood at the forefront of a movement, jumped on a bandwagon to become relevant, or even sounded outdated like the Mayan calendar in 2013.
So, what is one supposed to make of them? Where do they belong in the grand scheme of things?
As I sit in a relatively fancy office room (another thing that might sound a bit out of place, considering the context), talking to Black Crucifixion’s figurehead, Forn, I get the feeling that – while there is nothing premeditated in how the band has been able to establish themselves on estrangement – this has a been a very comfortable state of being for the band for the whole time. And, as Forn explains it, this is how they’ve managed not to blow their load on the first couple of releases, like so many bands do, but, instead, to develop the song ideas and their writing chops for as long as it needs and then start flourishing when the time is right, whether it would be two months or – as in this case – 20 years later.
Forn ponders Black Crucifixion’s late blooming:
“We were young guys back then, and although we were creative and able to create good music, we weren’t skillful at it. Doing music was so fucking difficult and required a long process. Nowadays, creativity is easy to control and not so chaotic. There is no artist’s anxiety attached to it. I’ve got loads of ideas for songs and I’m thinking about them constantly. It’s kind of like automation. The time available is more limited than it used to be, but when I sit down with my songwriting partner, it automatically happens very professionally and easily. Maybe it’s also because we don’t do this for living, so the classic rock history cliché of having one creative burst or period and then losing it forever, like with Noel Gallagher or Paul McCartney…it’s never been like that for us. So, during the 23 to 24 years that I’ve been writing songs, the process has become easier for me. Also, our catalogue of songs is thin, but I have no intention to add more weight to it on the expense of quality.”
This approach has unquestionably paid off. The band’s latest installment, Coronation of King Darkness, possesses magnum opus-like grandeur and completeness. Like the frontman himself notes, Black Crucifixion has been an extremely divisive orchestra throughout its lifespan, yet it would be hard even for the naysayers to deny that the newest BC album sounds mighty impressive, irrespective of the fact whether it’s your cup of Joe or not. Forn also agrees that, with the one-two punch of Hope of Retaliation and Coronation, the band has at last found a consistent sound that they’re happy with:
“It was on Retaliation, when it became clear to me…the way we could sound at this very moment, when you can combine the modern recording techniques to our organic style of playing. Then we also knew how the next album would sound like, and after that it was just a matter of doing it. In a way, Hope of Retaliation was a promise of what’s to come. I believe it was the same way for many of our listeners, because only the A-side consisted of new material. So, they must’ve thought, ‘this sounds promising and I wonder what these guys can come up with next.’ Anyway, the bulk of the material for Coronation was already written at that time.”
The singer-guitarist also unveils that Black Crucifixion has been carrying ideas and riffs from the day they first started writing music. For example, the title song of HoR got its initial shape already in 1992 but wasn’t finalized until seventeen years later, when the band first included it in their live set. This also applies to Coronation of King Darkness which, according to Forn, contains snippets that originate from the early 90s. He openly admits that the only thing that these rough sketches for songs were missing at that time was his skill to flesh them out and bring them to life.
Indeed, over the years Black Crucifixion has developed into a troupe of skilled, self-assured musicians. A telling demonstration of this confidence is that they invited one of the most legendary Finnish six-stringers, Pekka “Rekku” Rechardt of Wigwam, to join the recording sessions – not as a featured soloist who would elevate the band into the collective consciousness of the prog rock enthusiasts through a sticker in the album cover, but, instead, as a musician among other musicians.
“Myself and our bassist, E. Henrik, we have been listening to Wigwam and Rekku’s playing for 20 years. Of all the Finnish guitarists he’s been the guitarist for me. I’ve never been a solo guitarist myself, but I’ve always thought that stylish guitar heroes are simply tough guys. Rekku has always had his own style and played the right things in the right moment. He has his own way to weave these sorts of webs in his music, and he just knows how to write good songs. So, when we started working on the album, and actually when it was pretty much recorded, we began thinking that it could use the layer which Rekku would be able to add to it as solos, which have been rare in our songs before. Both Wigwam and Black Crucifixion draw from the same Finnish, minor scale driven soundscapes, so it was clear for us that, even though the basic sounds of the two bands are so different, Rekku would fit well into our organic style.
“When we contacted him, Rekku was very skeptical of all of this. He has been interested in metal but has only listened to it very randomly, so you couldn’t really know what his reference material was. He had been looking for some new challenges from very technical metal as opposed to his rock ‘n’ roll and blues style of playing. We’ve never been very technical musicians, so what Rekku could bring to the table was the virtuosity, the ability to do things in a completely controlled manner, and that was a great thing to experiment with on this album. We didn’t want it to be this standard feature thing…you know, like ‘play solos here and there’ without ever even meeting the guy. Instead, we spent a couple of days in the studio, so that he had listened to the demos beforehand. It was a pretty strict do-this-and-don’t-do-this kind of method, so we produced him very rigorously. I mean, he was free to play what he wants, but we only used the good parts. For example with “Lodestar”, he listened to the song, played a solo and then we asked him to do a second take which finally ended up on the album. He delved so deeply into the solos that there was no way we could’ve made him play them ten times, but usually the second take was good. We of course tried to squeeze everything we could out of him, but usually one of the first attempts was the best one.”
No doubt, one of the unintentional (yet not necessarily undesired) byproducts of Rechardt’s involvement on Coronation has been the increasing interest from the side of mainstream music media and consumers. Upon its release the full-length appeared on the official Finnish top 40 chart and was featured on the pages of the country’s biggest newspaper, which – while not completely unheard of – should be taken as an indication that Coronation of King Darkness might become a gateway album for some uninitiated poor souls at some point. Forn chuckles at this notion; based on the feedback, there are those who have been gravely disappointed that the end result wasn’t Pekka Rechardt featuring Black Crucifixion, whereas others have been very appreciative on how the band was able to incorporate Rechardt’s handicraft into the fabric of their sound. This, of course, begs the question of how the two songsmiths themselves feel about the outcome of the collaboration.
“He (Rechardt) was very amazed when we listened to the final version in an auditorium with the production team. When we played it really loud, Rekku was very impressed and said that this is the kind of music which he can’t describe, because it needs to be heard. It seems as if he has not started having any regrets, but, instead, is proud of having been part of this.
“I could imagine that we would work together in the future, so it was not only this kind of fanboy stunt to include a well-known guitarist only to meet the guy. The collaboration was very natural from the get-go, which we already assumed. He’s fairly unconditional, ambitious, artistic and self-conscious, just like perhaps we are, so it would either work extremely well or be over in 30 minutes. Luckily it worked. Still, there was the fanboy aspect: it was worth giving it a shot even if it would leave us with nothing to tell home about. Then we would’ve abandoned those tracks and let nobody know about it. I mean, no one knows who else has been there in the studio with us and failed,” Forn laughs.
When taking the whole Black Crucifixion back catalogue into scrutiny, it’s easy to come to a conclusion that the band’s connection to what most of us consider as black metal comme il faut is more historical than musical or ideological in nature. Heck, one could even claim that in 20+ years the band has lapsed back into the era when genres weren’t as heavy-handedly refined as King Charles Spaniels and the demarcation lines were yet to be drawn. Also, with statements like Black Crucifixion being “black metal for people who like music,” it feels as if the band is deliberately widening the gap between them and the true. Forn has his own take on this supposed disunion.
“We have a dichotomous position within the black metal sub-culture. Others think of us as pioneers, whereas others think we’re brainless emo homos who’ve sold their principles. Music has been always the reason for us to do this, although the ideology has been there in background. That was the case with all the bands in the beginning of the 90s. The common denominator for bands like Impaled Nazarene, Beherit and Black Crucifixion is the great songwriting. You can play Beherit by the campfire with an acoustic guitar and you can play the songs from the first Impaled Nazarene album with bongo drums and some guy yelling his guts out on top of that, and it sounds good. They’re not based on some sound, image or some other extramusical thing.
“These things, of course, have their place in good metal music and particularly in black metal, because it is an entirety consisting of all these features. But if something else than the actual music is the thing that defines the band, then I don’t have any use for such band. This is about music and songwriting which are inspired by something. It’s just that…I think we’re more of kindred spirits with Bruce Springsteen than with some Norwegian church burner.”
Indeed, Black Crucifixion seems to be mainly a vehicle to fulfill its members’ artistic ambitions – a motive that is many times considered as too superficial to properly drive the creation of the darkest of arts. Like we all now, surpassing a certain level of complexity in your music might render you false in the eyes of those about to cult (case in point: Deathspell Omega) and publicly disregarding the dyed-in-the-wool values and ideals won’t bring you any scene credibility points either. Not surprisingly, Forn seems to be fairly unmoved by all of this. Upon the release of Hope of Retaliation the front man gave a series of interesting interviews, where he ran through the history of black metal the way he had seen it, demystifying some of the tall stories of the era, downplaying the importance of the so-called second wave for his own musical development and taking some intentionally provocative potshots at some other affairs. These statements were sure to ruffle some feathers, but Forn appears to be genuinely surprised that anybody would care enough to get riled up. However, he refuses to take any of his words back.
“I stand behind what I’ve said, because at least I was there. Maybe one should ask about these things from Holocausto and the other guys, who were there as well. Maybe they would give another perspective which also wouldn’t fit into the idolized history writing that constitutes many people’s worldview. I’m not trying to pretend that I know all the truths, and an old guy’s memory can be deceiving, but in the beginning of the 90s things were done in a very different manner than today. Things could grow to ridiculous proportions, when there weren’t the same means of communication as nowadays. That’s what happened with the hostility between the Norwegians and the Finns. It was caused by misunderstandings and myths. But I think we exhausted this topic during the Hope of Retaliation interviews and it’s not Black Crucifixion’s job to comment on these issues in every single interview. I don’t have the need to write or rewrite black metal’s history. However, I can still say that Norwegian black metal didn’t function as an inspiration to the first wave of Finnish black metal. Somebody can write a PhD thesis on that and try to prove me wrong, because that would be chronologically impossible. Even the corpse paints didn’t come from Norway but from Canada, Brazil and the old Sodom album covers.”
Forn rushes to explain that his mission in life is not to be concerned of what people think of him, but he also mentions that he has never had any beef with outfits making serious black metal with serious intentions irrespective of the fact whether he likes their music or not, because that’s the original bedrock for Black Crucifixion: devoutly anti-Christian black metal. He also states that the name of the band is pretty much the only thing that ties them to the one-sided hatred towards a limping religion, because his interests are geared towards the constructive side of Satanism: manifesting one’s own will and acknowledging the animal nature, the beast in man. Therefore, Forn doesn’t fully concur with my earlier idea that the band has nowadays only little to do with black metal – past or present − when it comes to its ideological and musical dimensions.
“If Venom, early Sodom, Celtic Frost and Bathory were black metal, then we have a lot to do with it. If the early material from Sarcófago and Blasphemy are black metal, then we’re black metal, as well. If the stuff that originates from the Norwegian sound is the only (thing considered as) black metal, then I guess we’re not that. I have, for example, never heard Emperor’s In the Nightside Eclipse or most of Immortal’s back catalogue. From Mayhem, I’ve only heard Deathcrush. We are, of course, very much detached from the world where the bulk of modern Finnish black metal draws from. It’s a fundamental difference that stems from playing techniques, gear and tone of the guitars, which results in us sounding very different from most of the black metal. We’ve just never adapted the equipment or the aesthetics from the Norwegian scene. I’d say we’re more influenced by And Justice for All… than the classic Norwegian black metal album that you can insert here.”
Forn also doesn’t look at the current state of affairs with the flames of disgust burning in his eyes, whether it comes to black metal or underground metal as a whole. He mentions the swansong of Arthemesia and Ascension’s With Burning Tongues as recent black metal releases that have impressed him, although Forn also admits that he’s not been that active in browsing the distro lists for new stuff simply because he feels his life is more than just black metal. As somebody who has experienced the growing pains of the nascent Finnish underground scene from the eye of the diabolical hurricane, it would be easy for our interviewee to resort to bitter nostalgia and long for the mythical past, when every black metal fan was a weapon in Satan’s hand, constantly breathing down the necks of the followers of Semitic religions to the rhythm of four-track war hymns. As expected, these sentiments are alien to Forn.
“For example, the better living standards, cheap flights and things like that have made it possible for bands like Primordial to function on a semi-professional level. Black Crucifixion’s existence as a band that plays shows and makes albums is possible because of these things. When we started, everything was so fucking expensive. There were only these so-called professional studios that were few and far between, and even though their equipment wasn’t really that good they were still very pricey. Also, travelling and communicating were extremely high-priced. The standard of living in Finland was just so much lower those days. Nowadays, when you walk into the rehearsal space of a young metal band, it’s like walking into some Metallica making-of documentary, whereas before you just tried to scrape up some kind of set of equipment.
“The Fallen One of Flames was recorded with an eight-track. Coronation of King Darkness, which is in no way a technically cutting-edge album, but rather just recorded by today’s standards while not exploiting any studio trickery, consists of more than 80 tracks. Today it’s just made possible to further produce your music and make it sound a lot better. The guy who’s responsible of engineering and mixing both Hope of Retaliation and Coronation of King Darkness represents a generation who has never had to push a physical rec button. But we still record using the old methods: long takes, continue from where we left off and then do another take for the next track. Anyway, nowadays it’s so much easier to make music that sounds good,” he concludes.
Forn also suggests that the inflation of music’s value actually steers people into embracing the artistic freedom, because making underground music as one’s profession has become a less viable option, weeding out those who don’t feel the inner calling. The one thing that he does identify as a flaw of our times is a devaluation of music has affected how people rank it among other pastime activities, reducing it to a mere background sound for washing your socks, something that should be just a free click away. Still, even with this issue, Forn leans on his “music first” paradigm and hints that maybe it’s not only the shelves (and loved ones’ sanities) collapsing under the weight of your vinyl collection that measure your devotedness.
“Music is still, above all, music. If it doesn’t sound good from the iPhone mono speaker, it’s either very sound-depended music or then there’s something wrong with it. Although we’re not aiming for flawless hi-fi sound, our way of producing music is very obsessive in a way that I’ve listened to the master of the new album with some 30 different setups before the final approval so as to make sure that it would work for as many people as possible despite their sound system. If an album is considered as a story, the story must work even in a poorer setting.”
The frontman, however, keeps reminding us of the “holistic experience” of the music, the full blow of which can be only received via the interplay of sounds, words and visuals. For Black Crucifixion, playing live has become an increasingly important part of the whole shooting match, and the band has put effort into making their shows something special. In addition to spending a fair share of man-hours to hone their act, there have been guest appearances from the likes of the first BC drummer Sodomatic Slaughter and Thelemnar from Secrets of the Moon, an outfit that Black Crucifixion feels close connection with, plus the band is just gearing up to climb on stage with none other than Mr. Reckhardt himself. However, for Black Crucifixion, the less-is-more approach is valid also for this dimension of the artistic holism:
“We’ve been very selective since we started properly doing gigs in 2009. We only do a handful of shows every year, because we don’t have any intention to make a professional career out of it. We don’t have to start competing in selling albums or gigs, so we can just go wherever we are wanted and wherever we want to go. There are no greater ambitions there, although playing gigs is a hell of a lot of fun. It’s part of the whole artistic experience and definitely not just repeating another part of it. It’s there only for a moment, whereas the albums are the part that stays forever. The gigs are rewarding only if the moment, the hour that we spend with the audience, is good. For a band like us there’s no sense to do gigs for promotion, for marketing yourself or for making money.
“It would be great to do more gigs in different countries, because we’ve not played that much abroad. But because metal music has a very special place in Finland and our kinds of bands can appear on official charts and play in proper places, so we’re glad that we can operate from here. Finland is an exceptional country in that regard, and that’s why we haven’t felt the need to get on those long van tours, let alone fund it from our own pockets and support somebody else’s tour. If I’m allowed to take one more trip down the memory lane, many of mythical gigs were about under-aged kids playing for other under-aged kids. We couldn’t even dream about playing in joints where there would be an age limit. I don’t think that that scene anymore exists, whereas that’s what it was in the early stages of Finnish death and black metal.”
When we proceed to the topic of Black Crucifixion’s future, Forn clarifies that all of this has been such a rewarding experience so far that he hasn’t really put too much thought on where to go next in terms of live performances and following releases. I take it that the “rewarding experience” refers to the Coronation of King Darkness rather than to this interview. This is confirmed, when Forn utters his final words before I push the physical stop button of the recorder:
“It turned out to be pretty fucking good.”
Not gonna argue with that.
