One of the most remarkable moments from the Meads of Asphodel’s history was the album “Sonderkommando”, a concept album portraying the horror and atrocity of the Holocaust. I know it was a painstakingly cra�ed and researched album, with you actually visi�ng Auschwitz and wri�ng the lyrics while inside the camp. How did you find that whole experience at the �me, and how do you look back on it now almost a decade later? That album sent me into a dark hole for over a year. I basically ignored my partner and kids in a way and in the end it was detrimental but that is another story. I basically drowned in death. I had to remove the poli�cal mask of Nazism and the effects of Jewry in a very fragile post war German society to stare down the barrel of Human viciousness. It was no crueler than what the Romans or many tyrants have done. What was unique was the industrialized death machine that was born from pure and simple hatred. Once I had understood this soul of the crime so to speak, I delved into the poli�cs of Nazism and how it was born to a fer�le people who were being castrated by a Europe s�ll wounded by the Great War. The hatred of Jews was already imbued in most European na�ons so that was nothing new. The German people turned a blind eye to the ini�al menacing, and then War made the issue less concerning. Anyway, from an impar�al perspec�ve one cannot escape the conclusion that Hitler was a maniac and his ruthless policies u�erly abhorrent. Yet, we as human beings through the ‘History is wri�en by the victor’ reality forget the equally brutal genocidal intrigues of Stalin, the Turks, North American Indians, Mao, the Japanese, and so on. The Jews have the monopoly on Genocide, there are Holocaust days, and it is good to remind us of such inhumanity, but let us not forget the hidden abomina�ons, the unspoken slaughter, the disconcer�ng watered down blood drunk barbarism of human tragedy elsewhere.. Nothing we do will ever change what we are. I know the recep�on to that albumwas kind of mixed, I know it met with both posi�ve and nega�ve reac�ons within the metal community, and I also remember seeing the album reaching beyond the metal scene, even being praised in the Jewish Telegraph as I recall. Were the reac�ons from various quarters what you expected, both in and outside of the metal community, and in hindsight how would you say it’s perceived now a�er seven years have passed? The world is full of ignorance and arseholes. We had the whole racist card thrown at us; people were lost in how to dissect a horrible event set to music. The Holocaust is such a taboo subject when it comes to music. It’s ok to make a movie about it, write a book, but it’s not ok to sing about it, is what we learnt. The subject is so ingrained with NSBM that it is hard to disassociate from that par�cular hardly sub-genre. I am aware I do not help ma�ers by asking Hoest [Taake] to sing the lyrics to, Jew Killer. The track is about Pon�us Pilate who was a Jew killer, and has no Nazi meaning whatsoever, and yet we got the racist card shoved at as without anyone looking into what we were trying to do.. It’s that witch hunt syndrome again where Hoest HAS had an� Islammoments, and yet no one ever bemoans an� Chris�an content which ‘shock horror’ black metal is saturated with.. It was the album ‘Sonderkommando, when we were interviewed by the Jewish Chronicle who had nothing bad to say about the concept. I think if they are ok with it, then the wankers who gave us shit should just get back in their bedrooms and wank over a Burzum cd.
30 Publizr Home