Ever felt one of your favourite bands being too less known in comparison to other more celebrated ones not as good as? There needs a talk to propell their name in your lustful brain and this is exactly what I did, so that you may support their great black metal music the same way I do. Well here it is, the Kult ov Azazel's mastermind Xaphan's point of view. Make his words a treasure and please enjoy. Interviewed by Griffar. It seems the Kult is prowling around since five years or something, and your discography starts getting plentiful. Which are your creative methods? Do your songs come out of experiences, do they take inspiration from every day's life , do they reflect the sensations you have of your living ambient or simply you get your guitar and play and the result is all that splendour? It’s comes from everything you have said. Many and different things evoke me to write. It’s not really an easy thing to pin point. Just when the time comes I know it. Oculus Infernum, your most recent full lenght, is in my opinion your best one so far. Boys, it will be hard to beat it... it is perfect: aggressive, various, superbly played, melodic when it needs. What I'm holding in my hands is exactly what you always dreamt when you started to be a band, or do you feel your best work has not been conceived yet? Thanks for your comments. It’s something we are proud of and think it’s the best material we have written up until this point in time. But yet it is far from being the best work we have conceived if that were the case we’d stop now. Every album and every song is a continuation of our strive to write the best album we can. In the "Forever heaven gone" promo out some five years ago there are two songs later enclosed in the "order of the fly" release, very much shorter... why did you cut out these songs? To you does a song with a considerable lenght lose impact or whatsoever? Those songs should not be any shorter on the promo than they were on the CD since we took the songs straight off the CD for that promo release. To answer the question about a song losing it’s impact after a length of time to me it does although we have written some longer material which will be released in the future. A six to seven minute song I can deal with but bands that write long songs just to write long songs in the end shows through the music. I heard about a good friendship shared by you and Malevolent Creation great deathmachines... take away a curiosity of mine: do you share even the drummer with them? The Hammer is simply fantastic, his way to play recalls to my mind the last Malevolent's album and by the way tell him he's played the best drum parts ever appeared on a black metal album, no less. On “Triumph of Fire” we had Gus Rios session drum on the album. He has in the past been in and out of Malevolent Creation. On “Oculus Infernum” we have a new drummer who is a permanent member of the band. The only thing in common he has with Malevolent Creation was he tour managed them back on the 2001 Malevolent Creation/Hateplow tour at which time is when I met him. What is your opinion of the U.S. black metal scene? Is it infested by envies, rivalries, jealousy and treacher just as every scene of the world or you are more massive and friends one another? Long distances run from a band to another, the market is vital and Cd's sell well and gather interest everywhere, what can you tell us about? It’s like any other scene in the world. You have the ones that are totally dedicate to this form of music and those that wish to infest it with childish antics. You are correct that there is great distances from band to band since the United States is not as easy to travel as in Europe. This however does not keep us from being in contact with other bands from our country. As far as the market being vital for metal you're misinformed there. The market for metal sucks in the US. Touring the US for bands playing black metal or death metal for that matter is a waste of time. The crowds that show up in Europe for shows make the crowds here look like low attendance Girl Scout meetings. What do you think about collectorship? All your releases are pressed into vinyl, do you consider it still a cult owning a LP record rather than a CD? I'm 32 years old and started listening to metal with vinyl, I'll adore them 'til the day I die, is it the same feeling of something old keeping itself alive against everyone and everything that you feel? What do you think of the extremely high prices some records reach in the collectorship market? What if you saw one of your titles gone e-bay and sold for, let's say, 100$...would you feel honoured or disgusted? I’m your age as well and grew up listening to metal on vinyl. I didn’t own a CD player of any form until around 1989. I still have a nice vinyl collection of the stuff I grew up listening to and still buy vinyl releases to this day. There’s just something I enjoy about them that I can’t really put my finger on, I guess it reminds me of the old days. It’s like sentimental memories I suppose. Has nothing to do with collectorship or anything like that. I never understood the whole collectors thing, always looked at it as overrated bullshit. I never understood people that would buy something just because it was rare to just turn around and sell it again. That’s not a collector that’s a money hungry leech. To me a collector is someone that buys or obtains something because it holds value to them and it’s something they’d never part with. If you run out of cash and were forced to sell all of your records, which are the ones that you wouldn't sell for all the gold on earth, facing bankruptcy with proudness holding them in a box? My entire Venom collection, Possessed and Destruction vinyl and of course the Kult ov Azazel vinyl I have. Black metal at some point in time had become something like a spiritual movement, what do you think have its faults been now that its main purpose to let the crystal palace of religion crumble is just a mere concept of the past? Its worldwide diffusion in your opinion is a good thing or just some kind of trend destined to vanish somewhere in the future? It is 13 years by then we're speaking of black metal... I wouldn't say it’s a trend that is going to vanish in the future because like you stated it’s been over 13 years. Trends last for short periods of time not years. It’s like when metal first started people claimed it would not be around years later yet it was. When it got more extreme people said it would not last long and it has. Black metal will never die or go anywhere, it may not be a popular form of music yet all it takes is one person or a few to keep the spirit alive and that will always be the case. To me black metal is still an ideological movement since I don’t like to use the word spiritual. The concept of seeing religion crumble is more so reality now than it was 13 years ago and black metal can only help to advance it. Now something more earthly...tell us which are your plains for the future, may we wait for a new release or more of yours in a near time? We’ve just finished writing the next album which will be titled “The World, The Flesh & The Devil”. A rehearsal track of it can currently be found on our website of the song “Compelled to Die”. Again it’s just a rehearsal track we did using a four track and adobe audition software. There’s no vocals on it just the skeleton of the song. We have no immediate information on when it will be recorded but we are shooting to have it recorded and released for early 2005. We’re also working on a tracking a new song that will be included on a split 7” we’re doing with Krieg. There’s a new release that just came out from the Malaysian label Inquisition Musik titled “Black Mass Consecration” which is a complied recording of everything we had done up until 2001. Also we have just finished negotiations with a French label that will be releasing “Oculus Infernum” on LP here shortly. This one comes from the frontman of Polish band Tenebrosus, when informed you might've appeared on the outcoming number of ToT he wanted to ask you this question:.......At first Hails Xaphan & KoA horde. Tell us something about Your concerts... How much importance to You have live shows, how they look like, and when You gonna visit my Country, Poland. (I add Italy too ehehehe) Playing live has since the start of this band has always been an importance to us, in fact we were playing the entire “Order of the Fly” material live for months before we even recorded it. But over the years being plagued with drummer problems it has hindered our focus on playing live yet this has changed since the addition of a permanent drummer. We are currently trying to line up some European shows for this Fall, looking at around November if possible. Now that we have some management behind us our focus on touring has re-entered the picture. I’m uncertain if Poland, or Italy for that matter, will be countries we’ll hit. I certain hope so since I have been through both with Hateplow and know that the people are die-hards and complete maniacs!! On the topic of how our shows are there’s basically nothing special about them. Being that we don’t make a lot of money and can’t afford any sound or lighting engineers it’s just really about us getting up there and letting it rip. We don’t use any theatrics or stage props since we believe that the music and atmosphere created by it should be the focus. We do use corpse paint and spikes, what you see in photos of us is pretty much what you see when we are on stage except animated. Lastly I’ll add good luck with your band, the demo I got has been listened to many times. Also hail to you Griffar for the interview and exposure. Your support is very much appreciated!