Cezar Cortezzooouhh

Interview with Cezar Cortezzooouhh

(Resurrecting the Demo[n]s) 

Hail my friend, Cezar of Resurrecting the Demo(n)s, Hellcome to Archangel’s Lantern! When and how did you get introduced to underground music?

- Hi George thanks for the invitation.. I discovered this kind of music thanks to some old friends back in early high school times.

Which were your very first stuff (cassette, vinyl)? Which metal-band did you see live for the first time?

- Maybe it was some Metallica or Manowar but only some recorded tracks on an old tape, but I do remember that someone gave me at that time Black Sabbath – "Master of Reality" and man I tell u I was blown away with that heavy sound.

I saw a bunch of local bands in my home town Tulcea but nothing great. There were some local projects. My first gig that I do remember was more later back in 2001 at a festival called Metalheart in Constanța. I saw a bunch of cool Romanian bands other shitty ones but my big goal that night was to see Negură Bunget [the old formula].

I like so much your excellent group on facebook, called Resurrecting the Demo[n]s, I’m proud to be a member there. When did you start with it?  Would you be so kind as to tell us all the important things about Resurrecting the Demo[n]s?  What is your main goal with this awesome group?  

- Thanks for being a part of Resurrecting the Demo[n]s mate. I made this group at late February 2015. This was mainly a continuation of my old group Worship Demo[n]s that I started some years before. This is about sharing ancient demo tapes photos or links and some new ones. My main goal with this group was to find and discuss with the other contributors about those very obscure bands that were at some point releasing some great demos. Is a good way to find such obscure music for the ones who are true worshippers of the UG scene. Of course there are some shitty demos out there but at least u can find what u want by lurking on this group.

How was the Romanian metal scene, in your opinion, back in the day? What is the current situation with Romanian underground nowadays? Would you be so kind as to recommend a few small underground places and hordes from Romania?

- The Romanian metal scene was never too big and great. Well in the 90’s were some good UG bands of corpse but the majority after releasing 1-2 demos vanish into obscurity. They were not promoted by no one back then. The very few promoters from here just wanted bands that sound little modern and are more easy into get by others. So this was promoted instead of the true UG spirit and for the most bands was a fatal thing regarding the financial issues in our economy back then. I would kindly recommend some good old hordes from here. Ultimatum from Timișoara [very solid Death metal], Necroticism from Resita they made Exces Morbid a self financed album back in '94. With a better production this music was much darker and the vocals were in Romanian. For Black metal I would say about Mercy’s Dirge from Suceava [probably the first band that record like a professional demo tape of this genre "Another Hell" back in '93 and they sounded very bestial in the Blasphemy vein. They are not so well-known even here]. Also I would recommend some old bands from Banat region like Negură Bunget [the emperors of Transylvanian BM] Argus, Vokodlok or Makrothumia [a side project of 2 Negură Bunget guys]. There were some others that were good but they never manage to find a way and release important materials]. I like to mention a new band also by the name of Rotheads. They play very good ancient death. Their demo was killer and their debut CD will be released next month by a Spanish label, so keep on eye on them.

Did you play in a band and write any reviews, make interviews for ’zines ever?

- I was planning to make a band in my high-school times but the lack of interests by others made me to quit rapid, but  were cool times when we meet for practice and finish drinking much beer or vodka haha, fun times. Some years ago used to write some reviews at a local zine but never was my kind of stuff that I liked so I write few bad reviews and quit this after some time. From march 2017 I have a radio show at a local station here Radio rock 89. is an online show once a week but we promote only oldskull extreme metal bands well-known or very UG.

I’m always so fascinated when I see your music posts about underrated/ unknown bands.  Could you please name 5-10 of your favourite underrated bands and their albums?  What are your favourite stuff from well- known bands? Which hordes do you like from Ukraine and Hungary?

- Thanks that u follow my posts with more obscure bands. Here are a few Death metal albums I would recommend for any fan of oldskull sound.

DVC [US] – Descendand Upheaval [1989]

Delirium [Hol] – Zzooouhh [1990]

Funebre [Fin] – Children of the scorn [1991]

Miasma [Aut] – Changes [1992]

DAI [Cze] – The Advent [1993]

Tenebrarum [Mex] – Alta Magia [1994]

Maleficarum [Ita] – Across the Horizon [1995]

For the more classic bands I worship much early materials from Morbid Angel, Immolation, Deicide, Dismember, Burzum, Mystifier, Master’s Hammer, Rotting Christ, Sarcofago, Possessed and of corpse the mighty Slayer. "Hell Awaits" being an absolute favourite and a major influence for many extreme bands that came after.

From Hungary I like much Tormentor for the godly "Anno Domini" release [pure Hungarian blood!!!], some hordes from the '90s like Monastery, Extreme Deformity or early Sear Bliss for releasing good albums. I totally worship that early sound of blasphemy from the demos of Fantom, Detonator or Exhumator they sure deserved more attention by some labels back then.

From Ukraine used to listen more early stuff from Nokturnal Mortum, Castrum, Infected, Innercell, Bleeding and some others but I never was very impressed with this particular scene. I know is a strong NSBM scene in this country but I’m not that interested in things like that.

Unfortunately I’ve never been in Romania but I really hope I can visit it in the near future. Constanța, where are you living, is a pretty old and very nice city. What places are your recommendations to visit in Constanța?

- Well Constanța is an ok city for visiting. Has the largest port from the Black Sea we have the seaside here more for the tourists that come every summer.. It has couple of bars and pubs some ok restaurants for eat and drink. Being is the past centuries under the Ottoman Imperium there is a somehow Turkish feeling here and tradition at least there are some delicious foods but the Turkish customs are not my type anyway.

Which foods, drinks, and tobaccos do you recommend to us from your area?

- As I speak before we have some Turkish style foods like shaorma or kebab if u like fast food. We have good fish of course, those sea foods specialities and as for drinks we have wine I would recommend dry white wine when u eat fish and light meat. Here we do lots of bbq also and especially pork and chicken. U can find many drinks like usual but the beer remains my fave hehe.

Do you have any special hobbies besides music? What are your favourite  books, movies? 

- Besides music I like watching movies I’m a fan of old horrors some comedies also. Like much discover some obscure things about life and the things are going on in this world that are forbidden to mass media and thanks to the internet u can find much of those. I enjoy history also, I like to know more and more things of the old times and not what that we are told in school cause is a big difference I also like gather with friends, make bbq go travelling. I like mountains a lot but unfortunately I not manage to go very often.

Archangel’s Lantern is eternally dedicated to Jon Andreas Nödtveidt. What are your favourite bands/stuff of His heritage?

- Yes Jon had that genius evil spirit from the early 90’s I enjoyed his music on the first 2 Dissection albums and also that album from 94 "The Priest of Satan" with his project The Black. I even like his old band when he was a teenager and played some kind of thrash Rabbit’s Carrot, haha what a funny and innocent name for this kind of stuff.

Mersi/thanks so much, my friend Cezar, it was a pleasure. Unleash please some thought from Resurrecting the Demo(n)s.

- Thanks my friend for thinking doing this interview and sorry for answering not so quick. It was a big pleasure unleashing some unholy thoughts with the readers of your wonderful zine.

NEVER STOP THE MADNESS WITH THE TRUE UG SPIRIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Important link: facebook.com/rock89radio/

Shelmerdine (Dark Awake)

Interview with Shelmerdine (Dark Awake)

Hail Shelmerdine, welcome to my small, own inferno, Archangel’s Lantern! First of all, tell the readers the history about the beginnings of Dark Awake. Where did you get inspirations and ideas back in time to create your dark ambient band from? How would you define the style of Dark Awake?

- Dark Awake is a martial/neoclassical/neofolk/dark ambient/ritual/post industrial band from Greece and was founded by me (SHELMERDINE VI°)  around 2002 Anno Domini.

Dark Awake is a path for me to express my philosophy, my views and my magical experiences. The music is inspired by occult subjects and has a strong philosophical and alchemical context.

All Instrumentation, Orchestration, Human Bones (Kangling), Apocalyptic Sounds, Production is done by me and the Narrations, Choirs and Vocals by Sekte.

The Music and Image exploring the fields of SYMPHONIC NEOCLASSICAL ORCHESTRAL APOCALYPTIC FOLK MARTIAL DARK AMBIENT RITUAL OLD NOISE POST INDUSTRIAL!

Thematically and musically it's about the topics, like runes, paganism,esoteric occult  and other subjects with neoclassical instruments, ambient soundscapes, human bones instruments,  etc.

When did you start to play the musical instruments? Which musical instruments can you play? Do you have a musical education?

- In the middle of 90's I was start playing and learn alone guitar. I haven't any musical education.

I'm interested now only for the orchestration with neoclassical instruments, ambient soundscapes, human bones instruments, etc. 

After listening to the albums of Dark Awake, I must admit, I enjoyed all of your tracks, as they are well-composed pieces of dark art with a specific occult and an obscure atmosphere. How the process of creating a new composition is look like? Which are your favourite composers?

- I turn the deep thought into music by achieving a situation where the mind is immobile to be able to perceive the subtle vibrations of inspiration.

Some music examples from my music influences are Dead Can Dance, The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud, Throbbing Gristle, Zero Kama and many others..

Dark Awake has a very rich discography since 2008. Would you be so kind to speak about the releases? Which persons were invited as special guests for your materials? Your band worked and works with a lot of different labels. Enlighten us about the circumstances of these collaborations, please.

- We have released (on physical audio formats like vinyls, CD-s, tapes) 6 full length albums, 2 mini albums, 1 vinyl 7'' EP, 1 split album (with HYPERBOREI) and we have participated in some compilations with other bands.

We  take into account when choosing a label the reciprocal curiosity and esteem, the chance to improve, same goals.

In our last album “Atropos Of Eudaimonia”  we had 2 guests, one was Giordano Bruno (Prince of Agony) from the Italian cult black metal band EVOL who has taken the artwork pictures for the CD and the other was Richard Weeks (from Carnivorous Forest) who has added male vocals on the  “Kneel To The Cross” (song cover by Sol Invictus).

Now let’s talk about the lyrical conception of Dark Awake. What should we know about your lyrical themes? Who writes the lyrics in the band? How many different languages and titles you used yet in your materials?

- The tracks that we used lyrics is not too many. In general our thematology is taken by subjects as Ahrimanic Persian Sorcery, Anachronism, Art, Baroque, Goetia, Dandysm, Elitism, Enochian, Erotism, Fantasy, History, Literature, Occultism, Orientalism, Mars, Nietzsche, Luciferian, Renaissance, Romanticism, Runes, Saturn, Secret Societies, Sethanic Witchcraft, Sigils, Symbolism, Sumerian Civilization, Zoroastrian, Zos Kia, Victorian, W.O.T.A.N., 1700-s, 1800-s, 1900-s, 1920-s..

I have write some Lyrics but usually we take parts from philosophical and occult  grimoires.

What kind of literature do you prefer? What are your favourite authors/books? 

- I'm reading a lot  just to mention some books  by Austin Osman Spare, Guido von List, Karl Maria Wiligut, Stephen Flowers, Evola, Dion Fortune,  Crowley and many others..

Name us the historical era(s), where you would live with pleasure, if you could choose from.

- In ancient Greece.

Which occult teachings, articles are the closest to you?

- Runes, NAOS, Chaos Magick, Goetia, Astral Projections, Psychic Vampirism, Necronomicon but I use my own methods.

You are from Hellas. What mysterious places would you recommend us from your beautiful ancient land? Greece is not only famous as a country with rich cultural and historical heritage. 

- All the ancient ritual places from Hellas.

ευχαριστώ πολύ!/Thanks a lot, Shelmerdine! In the end, please send some thoughts from Dark Awake to the readers of Archangel’s Lantern.

- I would like to thank you about this interesting interview.

DEFEAT MAN AND BE A GOD!

Important links: 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DARK-AWAKE-189786207738223/ 

Bandcamp: https://darkawake.bandcamp.com

Jonas Lindblood

Interview with Jonas Lindblood (Puteraeon)

Hail Jonas! First of all I’d like to congratulate you  for your awesome 7” EP, called ”The Empires of Death” (released by Growles from the Underground), brilliant Death metal stuff. Share with the readers please more information  about  ”The Empires of Death”.

- Hi Georgius! Sorry for the extreme delay in doing this interview. A lot of different things fucked up, computer kept on crashing, new job and so on... I’m sorry for this. Anyway, on with the questions.  Thanks for the kind words on "Empires...”. It’s as you said a 7” EP. It contains 3 new songs from us. Recorded by Daniel Vandija in our studio Hatecraft. Mixed and mastered by Dan Swanö at Unisound. I think the EP sounds really fresh even though it reeks of old school, and in short, I think it is the best release we have ever done. The songs have that thrive feeling I think we have while playing live, and that to me was an important task.

I’ve watched all your  new videos (”At the Altars” ”Providence" and ”Epitaph”) through official Puteraeon YouTube-channel, I must say, amazing  pieces of old-school Svensk Dödsmetall. Tell the readers with your own words all the interesting things, track by track.

- We did 1 video for every song on the EP. In a Bathory homage, the videos go under the influence of „Blood, Fire, Death”. Maybe not that obvious at first, but when you know it... Blood is the main thing in the song "At the Altars”. Fire is very present in the video "Providence” and loads of stuff like graves etc (Death) is present in "Epitaph”. Rune Foss who made all the videos did one hell of a good job I think.

If I’m not mistaken, the cover-art of "The Empires of Death” is your work. Would you be so kind to talk about your awesome drawing?   I like a lot your painting/drawing-style and it was a pleasure to publish Part I of your art. Let’s go to do the second part later then :)  

- Yes you are very right. First up we had completely different pic as the cover. An old picture of Lucifer eating Judas that I had redrawn into Cthulhu. But it didn’t look cool enough so I started thinking about doing something else. I really enjoyed an older pic I did with Lovecraft depicted that we used as the backside for a shirt. So I redraw it again slightly different with more detail this time and that ended up as being the cover art. I think it turned out really iconic.

What is the situation with the other bands,  where you are playing, like Deletion (I saw on Ecyclopaedia Metallum as it’s on hold status) and Commander?  

- Deletion is on hold for a couple of years. I’m not sure if we will do anything more with this band or not. Right now I don’t have the time for it but we shall see what happens in the future. Commander on the other hand hasn’t been active since I think 2003-2004 or something. We did 3 demos as I recall and for some reason that i don’t really remember it all just stopped. No hard feelings or so, I guess Commander was always considered the side-project band to many of the members and while some of the other guys other bands were prioritized. I still enjoy Commanders 80’s Saxon/Judas Priest type of music. And Commander felt really promising at some point, but, maybe we didn’t give it the time it needed to grow ... I don’t know.

Which bands did you enjoy as guest musician last time? ( I just saw you did some vocals to Feral in 2015, on 9th track, called Mass Resurrection)

- I’m not really sure, but I think that was the latest stuff I did. I have done some stuff for Ulverheim, Megascavenger, Just Before Dawn and Likblek before as well. It’s always fun to do.

Would you be so kind to share your experiences from Puteraeon latest live-performances?

- Right now we haven’t played live for a couple of months. We’ve been busy rehearsing new stuff for a 2018 release, so that have been taking a lot of time these last 5 months. So we are now rehearsed and will start recording our next release a 5 song mini called "The Dunwich Damnation” any day now. Drums are all set up and ready to go. I guess we will do like we did with "The Empires of Death” and first up just release it online. That could happen sometime late February/ early March 2018. Look out! 

You played on guitars  in a Danish band, Thorium’s debut album, called ”Ocean of Blasphemy” (2000). How did you enjoy them? Tell us more about this Hellish collaboration.

- Well I had been in contact with Michael for a couple of years since my old band Taetre was signed to his label. He had an idea of forming an old school Death metal band, and in that time there were mainly melodic death metal at that point. Either Dissection or At The Gates clones (or like Taetre somewhere in between heheh). I remembered that playing real old school would be really cool so I joined them for a short time. I played with Thorium live opening for Artillery but that was mainly it. I didn’t want to travel so I told Michael that I could still write a couple of songs if he wanted to. So on the first album i wrote 3 songs and on the 2nd I wrote 2. On their third I kind of remember being asked but I guess I didn’t have time for it. Thorium will release a new album, my guess next year. For this album I wrote 3 songs as well. So you will hear my music in Thorium once again.

In our first Puteraeon-interview you mentioned, as you met Jon Nödtveidt (R.I.C.) many times in the ’90-s. Did your band(s) share the stages with Dissection ever? What is/are your favourite Dissection album(s) and track(s)?

- Yeah that’s true. No we never shared stage, but since Dissection lived in Gothenburg during that time, we met often on concerts and in town. Everybody who was die-hard into Death metal at that time knew each other, and everyone would be recognized (like outsiders in society if you will). I like all Dissection albums. One of my favorite songs is "The Somberlain” which really is a killer track. The "Reinkaos" was at first hard to get into, but now I think it is their absolute masterpiece. Songs like "God of Forbidden Light” and "Maha Kali” are just ingeniously written.

As far as I know, you and Ronnie Ripper Olson of Turbocharged are good friends. Is there any interesting or funny story about you from past/nowadays?

- We haven’t hung out in real life more than now these last few years at gigs we’ve done together. As for Turbocharged, the guys are really easy to like people and I think we have the same sense of humor so that works out really good. I really enjoy their company and I hope they say the same thing. Would love to do some more gigs with them in the future.

Tack så mycket/Thanks so much, Jonas, it was a pleasure to talk with you again.  Share some thoughts from the Empires of Death in the end.

- Thank you so much for this interview! It’s been a pleasure answering. Well, check out “The Empires of Death”! It’s available on 7” vinyl through Growls from the Underground and other distros. Also available on digital, Spotify and so on. And if you like it, we got some more candy coming early 2018. Cheers!

Important links:

Facebook: facebook.com/PUTERAEON/

YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCE1UNInAgIkj-Bd5vvGBz8w