—Fenriz (Darkthrone)
“When I read the lyric[s] of the Samael song ‘Worship Him,’ I felt [sic] on knees over the ground and gave servitude to Satan. This song is a true pray [sic] to the Evil, one can see that it was written… not only with feeling, but faith too!”
—Tomasz Krajewski, later of Pagan Records,
writing passionately in the early nineties in his zine Holocaust
“Euronymous was like, ‘Oh you gotta listen to this album, it’s fucking great,’ and gave me the Samael album Worship Him. That was a musical revelation to me.”
—Silenoz (Dimmu Borgir)
HAVING ALREADY GIVEN the world Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, Switzerland had one more highly significant contribution to make before the eighties came to a close. Formed in 1987 by Michael Locher, otherwise known as Vorphalack and later simply Vorph, Samael drew upon the primal magnificence of the early eighties black metal bands, who were by that point largely forgotten thanks to both the increasingly technical thrash scene prominent at the time and the burgeoning death metal scene that was fast emerging.
“Basically when we started up in 1987 we were mainly influenced by what is called the first wave of black metal, the originators; Venom, Celtic Frost, Bathory, stuff like that,” begins Vorph. “I had been listening to metal for years, but the darker side of metal was always a little bit more thrilling, a bit more interesting to me. It’s probably when I heard Apocalyptic Raids from Hellhammer that I thought, ‘Wow, this is something that I can do, that I can dig and that I can do my own way,’ because most of the metal bands at the time were very technical, they had a wide range of possibility, whereas we were more limited. So instead of trying to show off how good you were at whatever instrument you were playing or impress people with your skills, we were trying to create a mood, an atmosphere. That’s how it started really. I used to say it back in the day, it was more about feelings than melody or technique, I was just trying to create something that [would cause people to] find themselves in a different dimension or world somehow.”
In the early days, Vorph took the leading role in the band, handling everything other than the drums, which were played by one Pat Charvet. Two rehearsal/demo tapes were issued, entitled Into The Infernal Storm of Evil and Macabre Operetta, before Pat was replaced by Vorph’s brother Alexandre, who was known as Xytraguptor, later shortening his pseudonym to the more pronounceable Xy.
“Pat was my best friend at the time and I just convinced him to take up the drums, ’cos this was something I wanted to do for a long time,” Vorph explains. “With him I recorded two demos, but it wasn’t really his thing and he kind of lost interest, which is when Xy took his place. He wanted to do a band of his own, in fact he had his own band with two other friends where he was actually playing guitar, but there were a couple of times when Pat didn’t want to come to the rehearsal and Xy was able to learn the songs in one week or so, so we soon had two songs that were perfect. We were not hanging out and it was probably only when my father died that we got closer and actually that’s when we started to play together.”
In 1988 the duo recorded a three-track EP entitled Medieval Prophecy, released at the end of that year, initially as a tape and then as a seven-inch vinyl. This well-received release contained two original compositions, namely “Into The Pentagram” and “The Dark,” as well as a cover of “Third of the Storms” by Hellhammer, a band from whom Samael had clearly taken much inspiration. Drawing upon the slow, despairing, yet aggressive approach of their countrymen, Samael pushed things a stage further, not least through Vorph’s vocals: slow, unearthly screams that hinted at the likes of Quorthon (who Vorph explains was “one of my biggest influences for my vocals”) but entered into even more tortured realms.
“We recorded [Medieval Prophecy] in a home studio of a guy who didn’t have much clue about metal at all, but at least he had a place, so we tried to do best we could. Of course, it was pretty pathetic, if you listen to it today, he had no knowledge about how to do things and neither did we, so we had to find ways to make our music as close as we could to what we expected. I think we recorded for two days and did the mix together at the same time. A few months later we had the copies of the seven-inch and nine months after we received the first thousand copies we sold out, so we printed two hundred more with different covers.”
It is testament to the strength of the underground (as well the strength of the material) that the band were able to sell out of Medieval Prophecy in such a short amount of time, especially given that they were not yet playing live and were pretty much on their own, both stylistically and geographically. Though Samael had corresponded with Norway’s Mayhem since their early days (Euronymous was a great fan, and even suggested that he regretted not having them on his label), at this point there was nothing approaching a “black metal scene.” Instead it was a case of engaging with the small but varied collection of bands that inhabited the international metal underground.
Pure cult: Medieval Prophecy, 1988. Originally released on tape, it was soon pressed onto vinyl in 1000 copies (shown here). It was repressed with a new design after selling out.
“There was no Internet, which is like talking about the Middle Ages somehow,” laughs Vorph, “but we were in contact with other bands, trading tapes, and trading tapes against fanzines, so we had a lot of contacts. Once we had the EP out we sent ten or twenty copies to the biggest fanzines we knew and they made reviews and that’s how it spread. You spread flyers all over the place, and would get orders from South America, Japan, anywhere in the world. The flyers thing was the best way to have your own name somewhere else, you would spread your own flyers along with those of other bands that you got, everybody helped each other somehow. A lot of those bands don’t exist anymore, I don’t even remember all the names, but I remember trading with Nick [Holmes] of Paradise Lost, Lee [Dorrian] from Cathedral, Chris [Reifert] from Autopsy, Immolation, Nocturnus, Blasphemy, Beherit, and Carcass. Carcass were a fine example, because they already had an album out and it wasn’t a rule, but most bands when they had an album out, they would not waste time to trade stuff with people from the underground. But Carcass were one of the only bands who were signed but would take time out to check out what was coming onto the scene or happening in the underground.”
A flyer for Samael’s 1991 debut Worship Him, featuring a notably youthful-looking lineup.
Recognizing promising new talent, the newly formed Osmose Productions—a label which, a few years down the line, would gather one of the most impressive rosters in the black metal scene—quickly signed the band. Released on the auspicious date of April 1, 1991, Worship Him was not only the first album for the Swiss group, but also, in fact, the first full-length album released on the Osmose label. By now the band had become a trio, having been joined by Christophe “Masmiseim” Mermod, a bassist who had previously played in black metal outfit Alastis and still remains with Samael today, some two decades later.
Vorph—who had contributed vocals to Alastis’ demo the previous year—continued with guitars and vocals, his lyrics remaining suitably hellish, the title track being “a prayer to the lord of the dark side’s glory” and other songs exploring black magic and occult practices. For his part, Xy was now contributing keyboards as well as drums to the band, a fairly minimal addition at this stage, but one that would increase dramatically in the years that followed. For now, however, the band continued in a vein similar to the “Into The Pentagram” track on their debut EP, playing primitive Hellhammer-inspired black metal, a sound still largely unheard of at the time, not least by Claude Lander, the next producer to work with the group.
“That guy didn’t have much idea about metal either,” Vorph sighs. “I think he’d recorded two metal bands, but they were more like hard rock. He’d never heard someone screaming their lungs out in the studio, so for him it was kinda weird and he probably didn’t consider it to be music, but at least he tried to do his best with the knowledge he had. The charisma of t
hat first record is of working with a guy that doesn’t know what he’s doing, while you have a precise idea of what you want to do, so there’s that confrontation.”
After the release of Worship Him, the band moved to Germany’s Century Media, another relatively small label that would grow massively in stature as the decade progressed. Vorph explains that the band were keen to join the label as they had noticed that bands already on the roster were touring heavily, something Samael were desperate to do, if only to counter the drawbacks of their geographical isolation. The decision paid off, and the band did indeed embark on their first European tour (with labelmates Unleashed and Tiamat) following the release of their second album, 1992’s Blood Ritual. Adorned with a stunning cover painting that positively oozed atmosphere, it was a record that saw the band finally working with a like-minded individual in the studio, namely Waldemar Sorychta, who produced almost every Samael album that followed.
Picking up the pace: Ceremony of Opposites, 1994, helped break the band internationally.
Blood Ritual certainly features remnants of the sinister Hellhammer-inspired primitivism found on Worship Him, but is a somewhat more sophisticated-sounding effort, the production being notably less raw and the songs being a tad more technical, utilizing instruments such as acoustic guitars and keyboard to powerful effect. Just as the debut album reworked songs from the first demo, the follow-up reworked two songs from Macabre Operetta, namely “Blood Ritual” and the title track itself, a song that retained its drawn-out and ritualistic vibe, neatly complementing the similarly inclined lyrics.
A far bigger leap in style, however, would come with 1994’s Ceremony of Opposites, an album that once again came in a striking sleeve, this time featuring a red-bordered monochrome depiction of an eyeless Christ-like face with nails hammered into his head. A notably slicker effort musically, it boasted a significantly more polished production, as well as a fourth member, Rodolphe H., who handled keyboards and sampler. The album picked up the pace considerably, with driving and surprisingly catchy compositions that moved away from the cavernous primitivism of old in favor of a less archaic atmosphere, with orchestral flourishes used to great effect on numbers such as “Baphomet’s Throne.” It was a record that would surprise and even alienate many of those who had followed the band previously, but one that would also win the band many new fans. This shift in direction reflected a significant change within the workings of the band itself, and from this album onward Xy took over the writing of the music, as a surprisingly modest Vorph explains.
“On that album I let him do what he wanted to, I wrote one song and that was enough,” he explains. “I felt a little bit relieved and that things were falling into place. When you learn to interact with other people, you learn to let something go. I mean, I had less control, but I felt better because I agreed that he was better than I am to write the songs. When Xy started to do the music it became more technical, because he’s a better guitarist than I am—still today in fact. I had to learn how to play the stuff he was composing, so I had to work a bit more but it also gave me more time to work on my lyrics and go deeper into the subject matter.”
Samael’s lyrics had already drawn attention from fans and the underground press due to their heavily occult subject matter, and while the third album continued in a similar vein, it also saw Vorph begin to expand his horizons thematically. No longer responsible for the compositions, he began to pour more time into researching the lyrics and to this day the conceptual foundations of the group remain a focal point, with Vorph putting a great deal of emphasis on the subjects of spirituality, philosophy, and self-discovery.
“It was the first time I didn’t compose the music so I spent more time on the subjects I wanted to deal with. On the first two albums I would write about things I’d read somewhere—occultism, secret societies, stuff like that, that was the main inspiration I had. I never considered myself as a Satanist—of course I had an interest in it, it was one of the things that was around, so I wanted to know what it was all about. Probably already on Ceremony, I started to write about things I felt and experienced myself ’cos I started to have a life.”
“To me spirituality is not bound to religion,” he continues, elaborating on the approach that has defined the content of later records, “it’s how you build yourself inside. Part of it is a response to the environment and the education you have, and the rest you’re doing yourself, you’re building yourself the way you want to be. That’s how I look at spirituality, it’s how you work out your ‘inside universe.’ And that’s why we’ve used references to space. A lot of people have thought that we are about space travel, which wasn’t the case for me; it was more about putting images to this ‘inside space,’ which is one of the central themes in our lyrics and concepts. I’m interested in Daniel Dennett, who wrote a lot about how you build yourself, about what is predetermined and what is your margin of choice.”
Over twenty years later and the band’s anti-religious position remains: 2010’s Antigod EP.
If Ceremony opened the gates of self-discovery lyrically, then so did it musically. But while that album showed a massive leap stylistically, it was nothing compared to its 1996 follow-up, Passage, the first album, incidentally, to boast any galactic imagery. While Xy remained the main songwriter, he removed himself from his drum kit, seemingly permanently, taking over keyboard duties and handling all percussion on the album via drum programming. It was a bold move and one that had a massive impact on the band’s sound. Retaining the groove present in its predecessor, Passage was an intense and stomping listen that married industrial elements with then-contemporary black metal overtones in a highly rhythmic fashion. Needless to say, the shift was another controversial one.
“We never really cared about that,” laughs Vorph. “Passage was our fourth album and we had some experience of how things worked. When you released your first album a lot of people would turn their back on you, ’cos your album was available in the shops, so you would no longer be part of the underground family. That was the never-ending talk—being ‘real,’ being ‘underground’—so in that sense we’d already betrayed something in the eyes of some people. Then we did Blood Ritual, which had a good sound, which again wasn’t good for some people. Ceremony, even though it was sounding good, it was sounding different to anything else. Then Passage had the drum machine—there is always something for some people to complain about. As long as you’re comfortable with what you’re doing, it’s the most important thing. That’s the reason we’re doing this, we’re not really a band that’s there to please people.”
This disregard for outside opinion stretched as far as the band’s record label and, despite protests, the members decided to commit fully to electronic percussion from the Passage album onward.
“The label was quite scared by the decision we made and did everything they could to get us to have a real drummer. In the studio they thought it would be okay, but live they thought it would be a total mess, which wasn’t the case. That was probably the biggest change in the band’s history though. It opened doors for us, to do different things and play with different sounds. We didn’t have to have a drum sound on every song, we could use different samples. We did a mini-album between Ceremony and Passage called Rebellion and there was one song which was only programming, an experimental song. We had no idea [then] that on the next album we would use the drum machine, but if you look back, it could be the link. Some of the early industrial bands like Ministry, Godflesh, Pitchshifter, they had an influence on us at that time, definitely. Those were bands who were playing with the drum machine and trying different sounds.
Despite struggling to get out of Switzerland in their early years, Samael are now a regular touring band, headlining venues around the world.
“But I think the way Xy programs the drum is very different,” he continues thoughtfully. “It’s more like he plays the drums, it’s not repetitive or about using loops, it’s just programming it the way they’re played an
d that makes us more metal than industrial probably. Today there are still people who want the real thing, for us to have a drummer like every other band does, but that’s one of the things that makes us different and I don’t think we will go back to the original formula. We will stick to our guns.”
Samael have certainly done that, continuing with a successful career until the present day. However, Passage—rather aptly given its name—was arguably the point when the band really moved away from the black metal movement. Though it shared traits with the then-modern black metal sound (perhaps by coincidence as much as intention) it left behind the early black metal sound the band had worked with so successfully. Later albums would move more squarely into industrial/electronic metal territories and away, therefore, from the central focus of this book.
10
ROTTING CHRIST AND GREEK BLACK METAL
“While the Norwegians were good at making headlines and making sure their faces snuck into the frames of magazines, black and extreme metal was actually being shaped from the outside inwards, toward Norway. One of the major Southern European influences was Rotting Christ, with their unique brand of mid-tempo Bathory-esque mystique and eerie atmospheres. Totally unique and magical! And the fact that one of metal’s biggest disgraces, Dave Mustaine (eek!), stays away from festivals if they’re playing (because of the name), should award them some kind of honorary award.”
Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult Page 11
