Racism as blasphemy: an interview with Famine from Peste Noire
Entrevue du Cercle Non Conforme #9, February 2014.
If you want to support Famine from Peste Noire, who recently lost his house due to a series of unfair and politically motivated trials, you can donate to him, buy merch, CDs and original mix files of his albums, but also preorder his ready and upcoming album ‘On s’en fout’ at the following link: https://lmhfrerie.com/fr/.
[Peste Noire has achieved a discretely legendary status in Black Metal, and this not simply over radical political matters. Born in Avignon, the Southern French ‘City-State of Popes,’ in 2000, the band managed to gain recognition quickly in these underground milieux. A now better-known one, Alcest, created just a year earlier in the charming Bagnols-sur-Cèze — half an hour from Avignon —, was soon to be tied to Peste Noire: its front-man Neige became PN’s drummer and backup vocalist, and was part of the band until 2009. Together with other members, they would achieve creating a very novel, bizarre style in the genre, and quite dominated the French scene with it. Instead of copying appeals to Nordic mythology or singing in English, Peste Noire chose authenticity, using medieval themes and references, singing poems by Verlaine or Baudelaire, others in Old French, but also sometimes evoking the “darkest hours” of France, singing about Satan and STDs equally, sampling military marches sung by traditional Catholics, lugubrious organs or collaborationist speeches alike (La Mesniee Mordrissoire is typical in this regard). All this would be furthered by the front-man Famine’s experimentations in blending genres, ending up with rap songs since L’Ordure à l’état pur (2011). The whole discography, for those open enough to such brutality, deserves a listen, and could also be the object of extensive comments, analysis; the same could be said about the members’ diverging paths. But what interests us here is that Famine, instead of just using tropes in a superficial fashion, has a deep and lived interest in what he sings about: be it radical politics of the most nonconformist kind, French history and literature, architecture, sculpture, landscapes. Therefore interviews of such a cultured thug can be very rich, and his reflections, interesting even to the most averse to his extreme music — this is the case of the following one especially, where he for example addresses the significance of ugliness and repellency in his art. Since both the original and its translation are no longer available online except through archives, it seemed of interest to republish it, with slight corrections when considered necessary to get closer to the original tone or wording. The translation of a bit from the end of a video on a new trial Famine was then subject to, made in January 2025, will serve as an introduction. Links were added to better locate artists, albums, works, and sometimes French political movements and figures mentioned. Needless to say: as a Catholic, I do not quite agree with his views on religion.]
“[Links between National Socialism and Black Metal will always exist] for a very simple reason: Black Metal was born in Scandinavia, in the North of Europe, and Black Metal is not a ‘safe space’. It is even very much the opposite to one. Formally speaking, Black Metal evokes danger, fear, hatred, and when you have a musical style that’s born in the North of Europe, which talks about hatred and danger, references to NS were mandatory. At some point, it was obvious that some would use them […].
Black Metal is, by essence, blasphemous. It was very antichristian in its beginnings, but the thing is, Christians no longer exist nowadays. The most harmless, the least dangerous thing you can do today is to attack Christians. They have already been completely kicked out of the public sphere, and if there’s a kind of people that doesn’t get angry when you hit them, it’s Christians. And so, what I say is that the new religion in the West is antiracism, based on human rights ideology. So, if you want to blaspheme efficiently, you need to blaspheme where it hurts. As I was saying, anarchism advocates for the autonomy of moral consciousness, beyond good and evil as defined by a dominant orthodoxy. What is good, as defined by the dominant orthodoxy nowadays, is obviously antiracism. What is evil, as defined by the dominant orthodoxy nowadays is: racism.”
Interview with the Cercle Non Conforme, Feb. 2014
1) C.N.C: What conclusions have you gathered so far in your career with Peste Noire? Do you think you’ve made any mistakes, or have things in fact gone as nicely as you would have expected them to go?
Famine: Musically speaking, there were failures, successes, some unlistenable bits, some average ones; but I will always be proud of having gotten stuck in with the real stuff, of throwing myself into the arena, be it at the cost of getting things sloppy or rushed, when many old comrades had made great compositions without the patience, the will, the pugnacity of a pack leader, without an architect’s global vision, which would have allowed them to go forward as a team against physical obstacles and the egocentric, pain-in-the-arse musicians that are always trying to take all the credit without understanding anything about your own approach and your own universe. One must find the few good people in the little pond called Black Metal and have no qualms about cutting out the dead wood. Nothing should hinder you: neither a pair of tits nor gossip, neither hard times nor these humongous whore-of-a-reviewer whose pervert drive is to terminate two years work in a few lines. On a Saturday night, after a rough day’s work recording L’Ordure à l’état pur, I learnt that my father had died in a motorbike accident. On Sunday morning I was still going to the studio, recording. That’s what being a musician is like. I mostly made ‘constructive errors,’ ‘strategic errors,’ essentially related to studio production and to forcing myself to play with people I didn’t like, whom I wanted to strangle, but whom I needed, or with scam from labels and live orgs. I regret nothing, as I did what I did with what I had and what I could demand at the time, in order to make a name for myself, as they say.
Today I no longer suffer from these issues, recognition oblige since the Ballade album came out. I get my say now: my partners are handpicked according to their skills and their community of spirit with me. I can just not forget that at the start, when I didn’t have a dime and lived in a region where Black Metallers were as common as coppers in a French suburb [the original banlieue, in French, is a euphemism for ‘ethnic neighborhood’], it was an ordeal than to find a producer. I got suckered into selling the rights of my first two albums against a Lilliputian compensation that I never saw, in return for recording in a pro studio, because the producer was a sound engineer and also a fake friend, by the way. I accepted that his label wasn’t registered at the SACEM [equivalent to the US BMI or British PRS] to avoid being abusively taxed, and to allow him to save money I took the risk of not being protected by this organisation, naively confident in the pseudo-principles of underground Black Metal, and of the word of a man given to the other. So he took advantage of the situation and didn’t pay me for that infamous microscopic fee we agreed on (0.5 euro per CD, to split in four since we were four members, and this after the first thousand units were sold) when these early albums were doing very well, telling me that he needed that dough to reprint my CDs, which is what I wanted above all. But without this abusive deal, I could do nothing with no funds, so we were stuck with the hidden defects and bullshit of the rare producers we could find at the time. And this, according to a fully capitalistic principle: whoever has the funds to print your CDs and the gear to record you – basically the Capital, without which you can do nothing – makes them available for you to then reap the fruits of your labour. You can’t bawl over it, it’s only the rule when you haven’t got a cent or someone to borrow gear from, this is the only way to either start, or you have to put a stop to your band if you aren’t a spoiled son. And when I speak of the flaws of the only producers that we could find at that time, the sound of the second album Folkfuck Folie for example was literally annihilated, especially the vocals, because the ‘sound engineer’/producer didn’t know what he was doing, combining two pre-amps on the vocals, which gave the impression it was recorded in a 10-miles-long tunnel, when in fact I had the same vocal power as on our first album La Sanie de Siècles, so I had decimated my own voice for an utterly crappy result.
So, main mistakes: 1) having whored out for rapacious producers and labels1 just waiting to rip you off; 2) having made compromises with the rare musicians that were available, even though they understood nothing about my world, and who (due to their overbearing egos) wanted to run PN in my place, and make it the next METALLICA; also tolerating the input and lack of comprehension of another with regard to my production, which I always wanted rusty, analogue, outdated and filthy, when the studios only master clean and sanitised sound (I’m not talking about the sound engineer for L’Ordure who really did a flawless sound). At least I proceeded and spawned five albums, despite the often unfavourable material and human circumstances that came my way. I haven’t opened my mouth or shown off on the net by sticking up loads of photos on Facebook before actually working. Too many poseurs in Black Metal today act as rock stars in Ray-Bans after having posted their GuitarPro songs on Soundcloud. They’ve got patches, t-shirts of their band before having proven themselves. Their only motivation is the illusion of fame. Their place is in Air Guitar contests. They forget that we began as knight-monks when this music spoke to no one, when it was ultra-obscure and didn’t attract any chicks. When we ourselves were ashamed by this ugly gargoyly style, when we had to hide in order to practice it, irresistibly. Never done that over interest or narcissism. I feel that the only thing that matters for these faggots nowadays, now that BM is more popular, is to waddle on stage in front of twenty people as if they were Axl Rose. I call it the Big Brother syndrome: wanting to be famous from sitting on the sofa; posing without working. There aren’t many musicians now who really work on their instruments or on having a distinctive playing style in the shadows; kids learn to play primary styles like Darkthrone’s and Bathory’s and just stop there, whereas in my time we would play until hurting at 13 years old on the three Ms (Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth). More worrying, less and less artists think about their music before playing it, have an experience, experiment with new forms such as those who forged Industrial and Batcave in the 80s, less and less Black Metallers who really build an inner world such as was the case for NUIT NOIRE (two brothers who hiked a lot at night, before thinking about learning how to transcribe what they felt during those trips and to make it a band), DARVULIA and CELESTIA back in the day, bands that I had started alongside with and who, regardless of quality, had their own universe and a unique thing to say. I’m talking about a time that those under 20 cannot know about: BM. With a few exceptions, the current French scene is full of clones, copycats, embittered reviewers and butthurt forum users whose main hobby is assassinating the rare bands courageous enough to be at the forefront of the genre, and who do not know the effort that goes into composing, creating a world, managing a team, recording and making a living from a genre that they judge and gun down from their cottony armchair. These useless people make me think of those football supporters looking like blobs of gelatine who insult and judge hyper physically fit professionals when they miss a goal. Seriously… you are the spiritual look-alikes to French sports journalist Pierre Ménès. Look well at your soul in this fucking mirror:
You are parasites. Impotent meatballs. And I am Usain Bolt, Alexei Yagudin. Keep that in mind. Or else, show us what you can do musically speaking. From experience, the most vehement shit-talkers are also those who release the biggest dung. Always ask this question: ‘Where are you talking from? What did you do? What is your legitimacy? What are your high deeds?’ to quote the horrible Klarsfeld2. And concerning the errors that sprung from youthly naiveté and allowed labels and concert organisers to bend me over under the pretense of Underground not being a business but a free passion, made out of love and spring water and friendship and consensual sodomy, whereas Black Metal has never been so profitable as it is today (I run my own label, so I know here what I am talking about), today I operate independently and no one, apart from the French state, will ever make more money off my music than myself. It also concerns the live shows that we are now preparing hard for at the moment. Being exploited off of my own child is an error that I will no longer make in the rest of my career. Otherwise you’ll have to deal with him:
2. CNC: What are the groups that have molded you, musically speaking? And which you would recommend today?
I’ll talk more about albums than groups. To mention the bare minimum of those that counted most for me and that will continue to haunt me:
Above all others for now and for eternity:
…Ich Töte Mich Jedesmal Aufs Neue, Doch Ich Bin Unsterblich, Und Ich Erstehe Wieder Auf; In Einer Vision Des Untergangs… [2004] by SOPOR AETERNUS,
Then…
Remains [1999] and Vampires of Black Imperial Blood [1995] by MÜTIILATION
Aske [1993] and Det som engang var [1993] by BURZUM
Chants d’Europe III [most likely 1982] by CHOEUR MONTJOIE SAINT-DENIS
A Sorcery Written in Blood [1993] by GORGOROTH
War Funeral March [1994] by VLAD TEPES
Je sais pas trop [1997] by MANO SOLO
Everything by EVIL SKINS
Ainsi soit je… [1988] by MYLENE FARMER
In the Nightside Eclipse [1994] by EMPEROR
Everything by NEOKLASH
3. CNC: You often make reference to the Middle Ages in your lyrics and visual aesthetic. Any reason(s) why?
The Middle Ages haunt me since I was a small kid; I couldn’t say why. I always had flashes from that era. All the aesthetics (from the castles to the tapestries, from the religious buildings to the armours, from the literature – especially The Matter of Britain – to the sound of the instruments, from the code of chivalry to the racism of the chansons de geste, the heraldry, the balance between culture and nature, the omnipresent animality, the art of rendering the monstrous beautiful, the hand-to-hand combat rather than drones and dropped atom bombs, everything, in this (large and varied) era that historians have condensed into a single monolithic block, everything except for the puritanical Catholicism at the end of the Middle Ages electrifies me. Without wishing to sound like my dear Neige [for those who don’t know Neige: Neige is the leader of the band ALCEST who had visions of a past life where faëries and hobbits were fucking in his garden – note from Famine], I constantly have flashes of a past life amongst unspoilt nature and Medieval villages, visions that soothe me, make me euphoric, and have a calming effect on me, something I feel less with Classical Rome or the Grand Siècle [17th C. France] for example. I can’t explain it. Without directly referring to the Middle Ages but thinking about it, I talk of a ‘genetic memory’ in our forthcoming magazine to evoke this phenomenon, that a dirty and dusty Black Metal (akin to the first MÜTIILATION records) describes perfectly:
“The idea of the Beautiful, of nobility and grandeur, leaps to mind when this kind of Black Metal gives you flashes of regions and times of old, ancestral mental heritage, genetic memory. Because what kind of face at least stay pure in our cavalier heads? Only those of your ancient lands, O Old Europe! Invulnerable and virginal, not yet mutilated by the obscene talons of the Last Man. BM is an integrism – from the Latin stem integer, meaning intact – which helps us remain intact within a dying world, amidst a rotting people, unworthy of its Blood. Its stigmata and its stench, its smell of a thousand-year-old corpse, are there only to show that it is as old as the times it incenses. A regional religion, it gives us a sense of continuity in time and permanence in place, as writes Jean Lafond in a preface to L’Astrée [probably the most famous French pastoral, dating from the early 17th]. A pure A.O.C. product [Controlled Designation of Origin label], a fromage blanc [white cheese] (neither artificial colouring agent), gamy in taste (nor conservative), that exudes the place in which it is made. With it the past or history of a place, out of reach, comes back before us. ‘Art is connected to nigromantics. ‘Magie’ is the anagram of ‘image.’ Art is metamorphosis. It gives life and voice to the inanimate’ wrote Jacqueline Cerquiglini. Images, lives and voices from obscure national History, as from our local legends — Black Metal delivers us from this Century by resurrecting the Erstwhile.
And hate, terror, disorder, will arise as soon as it will tell you the future, or the current world…
Through it as much nausea as love gets expressed, as much filth as beauty.”
(From Peste Noire’s Journal, to be published [?])
The fact that I make reference to the Middle Ages in my texts or that I sing directly in Old French is because I studied Letters in University and that I was starting to specialise in Medieval literature, before ending up in a psychiatric ward.
4. C.N.C: What was the reception like for your last self-titled album Peste Noire, in the Black Metal scene and beyond?
Overall the album was considered fine, sometimes good, but not great. That is my feeling as well. This album was more of a synthesis, an album of atmospheres rather than a groundbreaking thing or a flagship album in the band’s discography. A bit of all of PN can be found on this album, which is why it is called Peste Noire. It’s hard to renew oneself after five albums and four demos, hard to merely stay fine for what’s PN. PN is judged related to PN, not to others. We withstand. This is the hardest thing: to make it last the distance. On the last one I think I mixed the vocals too loud, but by the end I was tired of being locked in the studio so I just released it as it was and didn’t try stand back from it. I’ll mix the next one better.
5. C.N.C: Peste Noire seems to have undergone a mutation in recent years, moving away from the canons of traditional Black Metal to create its own universe, be it musically or visually. Do you still feel part of the ‘French BM scene’, or have you gone beyond all this? What is you opinion on French Black Metal?
Just because we borrow from classic rock, folk, Oi! or musette [19th-C. French folk music and dance], that does not mean that our world is no longer that of Black Metal. Our universe is dark, muddy, evokes the brothels, the sewers, village festivals ending in pogroms or in acid-soaked murderous sexual orgies such as in Pont Saint-Esprit, all kinds of dark holes and old French localities — French because I make an imaged Black Metal, and because I try to translate into sound scenes, moments, places where I hung out when I was younger with my bike or which come to me in flashes, and which are located somewhere in the Hexagon. My opinion on French Black Metal is that many of those who are involved in it are sob hangers-on who wait for your music to become globally popular to start taking you into consideration, or even copying you in the hope of finding in it a winning recipe. At the time of Folkfuck Folie we were already becoming heavily slandered/ostracised because we were beginning to address this rural-Rabelaisian universe which has forged our identity, and that the pedants reduced to a Joke [in French: Blague] Metal. It is only since L’Ordure that the die-hard [BMers] have fully understood us and that the pure traditionalists finally left us and have stopped throwing shit at us, having accepted us as we are. They now just say ‘Bah, well, that’s just Peste Noire.’ We are our own genre. Hated before, now hype, and probably forgotten in five years time, but I have lost count of all the groups in the French Black Metal scene which have been accused of copying PN, thereby making it obvious that we’re still producing Black Metal, that we constitute a part of its identity, that of a local, ingrained, bawdy Black Metal. As for no longer playing traditional BM, what does ‘traditional’ mean? Something, static, preserved and pickled in a jar? Plenty of groups today think they are traditional by copying the form rather than the essence of the first Black Metal groups, which were progressive and I would even say archaeofuturist, drawing from old common European springs to create new forms, regenerating these wells with powerful modern tools. Those who make Black Metal that is called ‘traditional’ are merely content to shit out Slavic and Scandinavian gimmicks, which themselves were based on non-conformist experimentation, as my frater L’Atrabilaire outlines in a question during an interview on my website3:
“Former Black Metal was an experimental, non-conformist music. When Bathory, Sarcofago or Hellhammer smashed the rules of Thrash and Punk around 25 years ago, when Burzum or Emperor integrated elements of classical music into it, [or when Mysticum or Thorns dabbled with industrial sounds,] it was pure experimentation. They invented a style without knowing it. Nowadays creativity has dried up, for the past few years we’ve had reissues of anything and everything on CD, on blue, or green, yellow, goose-shit coloured vinyl, you want it, you’ve got it… because there’s nothing new, fresh, or okayish. Apart from a few rare pearls, it’s been a good 15 years since BM has the creative level of a Panurgian herd, 15 years that we hear the same riffs invented by Burzum/Darkthrone/Mayhem/… universally rehashed, by thousands of impersonal bands [44 Black Metal full-lengths were released in 1993; in 2013 there were 1,744] who have never been able to free themselves from imitating their influences [i.e. they limit themselves to listening solely to other Black Metal groups, unlike the former bands who had a variety of stylistic influences, an appreciation of the broader metal culture and also a real musical knowledge]; basically ‘apprentice groups’ who write ‘study’ albums in ‘homage’ to their favourite ‘master’ band. [In short, they aren’t paying tribute to Satan as they claim, rather they are worshipping at the altars of their favourite musicians.] Like for example, when PN was born, I remember that few hexagonal BM groups dared to use French, opting instead for English, and musically everyone wanted (and still wants?) to sound Viking/Norwegian/Swedish/Finnish, American, Slavic, or something else, but never French. Few people would/will accept themselves for who they really are…We see that in spite of everything, you have developed a uniquely personal sound, invented a ‘Pestenoirian’ style that is unmistakeable, yet changes from an album to another, to the point where you now find bands copying PN! How did you do this? Is it due to some enchanting visions of a wonderful sparkly fairyland you had in your childhood? Isn’t it? Perhaps you are able to inject a good dose of colour and nuances into the usual black monochrome of basic BM, and unlike the same undifferentiated emotions as those up-their-own arse clones, you have managed to express the multiplicity of man (his joy, sadness, anger…), a man who, in truth, ‘is wholly and throughout but patch and motley’ (Montaigne: Essays, Chapter XX)…like the an Arlequin?”
We are more traditional than their so-called traditional Black Metal because we draw further upon tradition. Already, on ours, on French tradition; and on a more distant tradition, on the musette, on good old Rock’n’Roll and on the Middle Ages.
6. C.N.C: The personality of Famine that you depict in your albums is a kind of “right-wing” anarchist, a punk patriot, is that your real personality or a way of spicing up your Black Metal sauce?
This is my real personality, but I am less eccentric/excessive in real life, luckily for me.
[quoted: lyrics from ‘Sale Famine von Valfoutre’ from L’Ordure à l’état Pur.]
When L-F Céline writes about himself in Death on the Installment Plan, he turns everything into an excess, it’s what makes his autobiography into literature. I am reserved by nature in real life. PN is my Id, an instinctual outburst that allows me to curb my violence. All the filth expelled through PN makes me a calm guy in daily life, as far as possible[, apart from if you touch my lady, my family or my land]. Catharsis. Having said that, we play this game in KPN, to pretend to be the most cocky, the most irritable, the most stinking, in other words as overly French as humanly possible, so much so that an Aussie reading my words would pay 600 quids for a plane ticket, or that a 500 lbs American mouth breather would swim an ocean, both just to slit my throat. I cannot imagine PN other than as a bottle of piss wantonly thrown on someone.
7. C.N.C: Peste Noire has long talked about France. Why this choice, during a time when many groups fantasised (and still fantasize…) about Vikings and German soldiers…?
There are no words which can describe how much I love France, its landscapes, its old stones, its food, its cemeteries, the names of its villages, which are pure poetry in themselves… It’s not a choice to talk about it, it’s an order from below. I could have talked about German soldiers (and I have done it) because I have Germanic origins, and some of my Alsatian and German ancestors fought alongside the Krauts, but who else would spew about the ancient and dark France in today’s Black Metal? Deathspell Omega with their Hebraic Black Metal? The Parisian junkies with their anti-roots Black Metal? A band like Diapsiquir takes care of contemporary urban France very well. I take care of the White trash, the inbred and the rural one. I should point out that I am not saying that the countryside is inbred; my Black Metal however, very much is.
8. C.N.C: How do you manage to combine your love for Eternal France with a rejection of Christianity, which is a significant historical component of the formation of France?
France is not Christian, it is Catholic. I purposely utter such a paradox, and underpin it as much as I can in another interview:
“And if by Satanist you mean anti-Christian, then yes I am, with the proviso that I quite dig traditional Catholicism, from which I draw my entire aesthetic, which is to me anything but Christianity: rootedness VS Christian universalism; anti-Semitism VS a Jewish God; a sense of hierarchy and elitism VS neotestamentarian egalitarianism; racist crusades (one has only to read the Song of Roland to see that it would make the writings of Vacher de Lapouge seem like ADL notes) VS victimhood and love for one’s neighbour; love of beauty and luxury VS the hoboesque poverty advocated by Jesus. If White Christian art gives me a raging hard-on (typically it was made by Whites for Whites, on top of Pagan temples….also White indeed*), the content of the New Testament literally makes me puke.”
*As per big boss Pierre Vial [Pagan, formerly New Right, then dissenter over issues related to race which were watered-down by De Benoist], the Auvergne kept, in the Middle Ages, clear traces of Gaulish heritage. The squat churches carry plane sculptures in stark contrast with the round bosses typical of the Romanesque tradition. Interlacing patterns and solar motifs perpetuated an ancient symbolic grammar carved into the stone. The Auvergne artists affirmed without complexity their originality, especially in the Upper Auvergne where, as per Bernard Craplet, triumphed in the Romanesque period ‘a popular art, full of life, racy and even bawdy, whose verve was given free rein on the corbels along the apses.’)
So all in all, I’m okay with being a Catholic, in the same way I can be a socialist: a National one. Forgiveness, sharing, ok, but with my own kind. Of course I am talking about Ashkenazi pygmies — that way I won’t end up in jail.
9. C.N.C: Do you not think that at the moment, the only religion that it is appropriate to fight is this ‘religion of Capital’ with its monetary God, priests and morality?
Yes but this religion – that of predestination and usury – stems from Protestantism (see Weber) and behind Protestantism lies the Old Testament (see Attali), and behind the Old Testament one finds the Swedes (again, I don’t want to go to jail). I’m adverse to all Abrahamic totalitarianisms: Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. Let’s leave these religions to the camel shaggers.
10. C.N.C: In an interview on your website you talk about Méridien Zéro [close to the C.N.C.], and we thank you for it. What do you think about these types of initiatives?
Between the Bourgeois-Christian moraline of Radio Courtoisie and the impossible fantasies of reconciliation found in Egalité et Réconciliation – two sources of information that I respect and listen to by the way – MZ meets the expectations of the youth, especially Black Metallers: serious historical and cultural pedagogy, ethno-European vision and ribald, caustic humour. The youngest radio station (with music that is close to our hearts), the most ethnocentric and the most popular. Since many of us find an interest in the Nouvelle Droite, Terre et Peuple and the magazine Réfléchir et Agir, we welcome this little radio station (which serves a bit as their voice) as a blessing. I must admit also to having a soft spot for the Krampon/Vaudan duo that make me piss myself each time they come on.
11. C.N.C: In general, do you think it is necessary today to engage politically in one way or another (elections, culturally, socially etc.)? How do you explain the lack of politicization within the Black Metal community and the obvious failure of NSBM?
Although PN is ultra-politicised as I cannot make it otherwise, I don’t think that music influences opinion. Music touches the sensitivity of a person — emotion, not reason. I listen to punk and I listen to Mano Solo, who politically was my worst enemy. I listen to big rap of Blacks and North African barbarians because I am a pure ethno-differentialist and because difference pleases me AS difference and specificity, and I want these friend-peoples to be strong in their own country, not strong in mine. Listening to them doesn’t give me a tan. It’s the same with politics, listening to the Bérus [Bérurier Noir – Cult French anarchist punk band from the 80s] doesn’t make you homeless or an advocate for undocumented migrants.
Social engagement in the style of M.A.S [Mouvement d’Action Sociale] or CasaPound in Italy, that has more impact in my opinion. The workers have no time to inform themselves and only believe what they can see. They believe what they see on TV, i.e. lies and demonized images of our movements. But they also believe what they see on the ground. So if our movements are more present socially (with aid of all kinds) on the tarmac, the media demonization will work less well on the popular masses. Without overdoing it I mean, helping with a good heart, with authentic racial solidarity, not proselytising like those Jehovah Witness freaks who turn up at the slightest incident to convert everyone. Since we live in a democracy of opinion, where the media dictates both good and bad votes by manipulating the masses, sincere and concrete help to our people, which only only exists in the form of promises and mirages among politicians, will provide an effective contrast. Thus social commitment can precede electoral choices, can influence votes. And first, it simply helps our people go better.
As for NSBM, I personally came back to Black Metal during the NS boom in France at the start of 2000, so I can talk about it. NSBM was ultimately less of a political program than a fashion. In that time any piece of shit stamped ‘88’ was being snapped up like hotcakes, including mine: Aryan Supremacy, my first demo, which really is a big piece of shit. So shit that it was limited to 14 copies. All sold in one day. NSBM disappeared for a time, then resurfaced recently. But between us, seriously, who really believes that NSBM is good propaganda? I consider NS Black Metal to be expressing the dark, perverse and hateful side of National Socialism. Yes, I said ‘perverse’. Because there are three approaches:
Those who say that Evil does not exist, that it is a Judeo-Christian invention. That NS is order, beauty, nobility, health, hygiene, purity, light, power, perfection, and strength beyond Good and Evil. That there is only will-to-power.
Those who are attracted by the fact that NS is demonised today, who think that NS is THE Evil by very definition, because the Trotskyites in National educaZion taught them that at school. They were told that the Nazis cooked babies for breakfast, and because they want to be evil because Black Metal is evil, they are Nazis.
Finally, those like me who prefer Italian Fascism – which the Jewess Anna Arendt herself characterised as flexible and said it made few death sentences, cf. Méridien Zéro’s broadcast on Fascism – rather than Nazi totalitarianism with its Germanocentrism, its marches of domesticated robots and its strong State interfering everywhere; those who accept the good and the bad, the clean as well as the dirty side of White people. Better: who make their dirty side a central theme in their music, just as others take Order as a central theme in Martial music. For me, Black Metal is the dandyism of the Aryan bad boys, perfectly incarnated by the actor Michael Pitt in Funny Games US (2007).
I think that there is a universal taste in Man for Evil for its own sake, within all men, all peoples, whatever the form of this Evil – proteiform in essence – is throughout the ages. The love of Evil for Evil’s sake which Artaud said is often confused with sex and freedom, is not in my view exclusive to Christian taboos or a Jewish invention but is an anthropological constant. This love of Evil is called perversity: a FREE disposition, dispassionate (that’s where it borders on the sacred, therefore on Satanism), to do evil INTENTIONALLY with the resources of intelligence and imagination, to inflict it upon oneself or others according to individual tastes. It’s a matter of taking pleasure in it, a combination of Eros and Thanatos, of enjoyment and the death wish, that is for me not Aryan-incompatible. The Roman munera and venationes which consisted in organising duels to the death between armed slaves or throwing them to wild beasts, just for the fun and pleasure of the crowds; the fact that both plebs and nobles rushed to the sight of sophisticated public executions in France; the fact that a friend of mine pisses on his wife to make her come are just some examples of this phenomenon. And I would go even further: it’s the extinction of wickedness in Whites, in contrast with peoples which are still cruel or with satanic oligarchs who abuse our candor, that will cause our downfall. Black Metallers should stop wetting their panties over Ancient Nordic warriors (as depicted on your typical BM covers): the barbarians of today have Kalashnikovs, djellabas and ride around in Mercs. In brief, the partisans of ‘Evil is a Jewish invention’ and of ‘Evil doesn’t exist’ say that NSBM, through its hateful and noisy outlook, expresses anger, war and violence; in other words defense or power, but free from the idea of Evil. To this I reply that the warlike hatred, not unhealthy in itself, can also be expressed in Death Metal, Hardcore and so on, it is not specific to NSBM. What is then formally specific to NSBM? In my eyes: its perversity. If the discourse of the original National Socialism (on the left) is face with NSBM’s forms of expression (on the right), they are in fact two exact opposites:
Order / Chaos inherent to Black Metal.
Cult of full health / Expression of disease and madness.
Beauty / Ugliness of Black Metal.
Hygiene / Disgusting production, dirty, harsh sound of the recordings.
Purity / Dirty vocals.
Sociability, NS collectivism / BM marginality, raw style, badly produced and difficult to access, reserved for a small number of wackos like us and so makes bad propaganda.
Perfection / Imperfection of amateur and negligent playing so typical of the majority of NSBM groups.
Cult of the Superman / Most Black Metallers are parasites living off social welfare.
Light, solar cult / Darkness, night, shadows, recurring themes of the moon.
Etc.
You don’t express Mother’s Day as established by Marshal Pétain, you don’t express Germanic virility with the screams of a possessed witch as if she is being burnt alive. Black Metal, of European origin, expresses for me this dirty, sadistic, horrible side of the White race. Black Metal attracts BECAUSE it is unsane, evil, destructive, as in the Middle Ages
‘you would think that the deformity and ugliness of the devils increasing as much as they intensified their misdeeds, they would have been repugnant and shied away from by spectators. Not in the least, ugliness pleases the popular masses and they never stop requesting their sight. The most admired characters in the mysteries are not as one would think Adam and Eve in their nudity, nor the saints with their gilded robes, or even the Virgin Mary, but rather Satan and his cohort of shaggy demons.’ (Gilles Néret, ‘Devils’).
This is exactly why GRAVELAND and VELES, whilst unhealthy and disgusting and great in their infancy, have become so bland as soon as they started talking about Blonde children dancing around fire with vocals that sound like a slaughtered pig and a more polished production. This is the prime failure of NSBM: to not be accepting of itself as it is, or to be a contradiction in terms. In NS Black Metal there is the word ‘Black’, i.e. an avowed love not for African descendents but for the dark side of our minds. Yes, I make N.S.B.M: National Satanist Black Metal. And the only version of NS that suits me is this one.
12. C.N.C: Who are your favourite authors? Those who have influenced your life philosophy and thoughts?
I stopped reading a few years ago, no time, I don’t even know if I still know how to read so I won’t be terribly original. In literature I loved Bloy, Céline, Lautréamont, and on the margins of literature/politics Rebatet; in philosophy Nietzsche, Cioran, Bataille, and currently Jimmy le Sicilien on Youtube. Even though I don’t agree with his integrationist line and pro-Muslim stance, I find the punchliner Soral great in everything else he does.
13. C.N.C: What are the factors that led you to settle in central France?
I used to know the Haute-Loire well, as I came here for several days each year for the ‘Fêtes du Roi de l’Oiseau’ festival at the Puy-en-Velay, visiting the surroundings. I love the richness and nobility of its heritage, the clean air that boosts me more than amphetamines, the fact that the Middle Ages has still a palpable presence here, the dark sombre volcanic stone, or the cold granite in my area, which gives this abbey such a warlike architecture:
The immense dark forests of the Livradois, where horses have their heads bitten off by unknown savage beasts, the low population density where I live, the still-rooted spirit of the inhabitants, the fact that they have a gun always ready and are on the verge of calling the police as soon as an unknown car comes too close to their land I like, as someone born in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, that French Florida overcrowded with cosmopolitan Joe Six-packs, and disfigured by gaily coloured advertising signs and disgusting pink houses.
14. C.N.C: What are the future plans for Peste Noire? Concerts, albums?
We are currently recording a new song that will be part of a split record with Diapsiquir [Rats Des Villes VS Rats Des Champs, 2014] and a video clip for Peste Noire [Dans ma nuit, 2015]. I also plan to re-record ‘La Blonde’ with a professional studio to do another clip. We are also starting to get back to work with live shows, which is not easy because I never wrote down my songs, my working method always being the following: compose, play the riffs, record and forget. Must find them all back by ear. This added to the fact that I have included a seventh member who will integrate samples and play traditional instrument sounds on a synth, like the organ, accordion and trombone. A PN album will be coming after these concerts, perhaps in 2015. Our magazine ‘La Mesnie Herlequin’ should also see light of day in 2014/2015. Thanks for the interview and apologies about the length.
Translation by M.D.L. (Perfidious Albion) & L’Atrabilaire (Patria Linguae Occitanae), courtesy of La mesnie Herlequin; (reviewed and sometimes slightly modified by fleur inverse).4
[The translation adds the following bit, absent from the original: “(the most recent example of this is my unfortunate transatlantic deal with the Canadian label Transcendental Creations/La mesnie Amérique (R.I.P 2011-2013).”]
[The son of a couple of “nazi hunters,” working as a lawyer after having served in the IDF; he said this before throwing a glass of water on a journalist who defended freedom of speech in historical inquiry in 2003.]
[https://mesnie1.rssing.com/chan-21263655/article1.html; differences with the original French were put into brackets.]