Interview with Graveland: From Black Metal Music to Paganism
Part 2

3,120 words

Part 1

OM: Did you organize any help for Ukrainian Nokturnal Mortum? Do you have any personal experiences with this band? Their store and housing in Kharkiv is destroyed, and the band itself has reportedly left Ukraine.

RF: I have a very long contact and unforgettable memories with this band. The first time I met Knjaz Varggoth was when he and his friends came to the Slavic and Viking Festival in Wolin, it was in 2000 or 2001. Varggoth told me a lot about the black metal scene in Ukraine, how they support paganism and how important our Polish real black/pagan metal scene is for them. Since those years we are in very good contact and I support bands from Ukraine as much as I can. Thanks to this friendship, my band Graveland and also Lord Wind were invited to Ukraine and we performed on big stages in Kiev and Kharkiv. It probably would have continued if it wasn’t for the war that broke out. That’s why when a Polish music label initiated the idea to release a compilation “Polish Scene for Brothers from Ukraine”, we were very happy to record a new song for them, “Flight of the Last Raven”. The money from the release of this compilation was intended for the support of metal bands in Ukraine and for the support of the Kharkiv publishing house and shop “Kolovrat”.

The one that suffered during the bombing. Unfortunately, the official metal scene in Poland is completely turned away from Ukraine and completely fails to support metal bands there. This makes it difficult for Ukrainian bands to hold concerts in that country. In Poland, left-wing organisations involved in art censorship have too much influence on what is created and presented in this country. Since I started performing, which was a few years ago, Graveland have only managed to play three shows in Poland. Other, more famous bands, such as Marduk, also have problems. There are always attempts to block or cancel concerts of this band, and sometimes they succeed. That’s why the compilation features bands and musicians mainly associated with the underground metal scene. My long friendship with Nokturnal Mortum also resulted in the split ‘The Spirit Never Dies’, which was released on Heritage Records on CD and LP.

OM: How is the battle of Wolin going? Do you participate in this battle regularly? Do you participate in other Slavic, Celtic, Germanic events?

RF: In the past, I have very often attended various meetings connected with paganism, for example ceremonies at Old Slavic, Viking or even Celtic cult sites. I have witnessed the emergence of the pagan movement in Poland, which started with a few small associations and now has grown to such a large format that it has a life of its own and inspires people who are not just fans of metal music. I used to fight in historical reenactments at Slavic and Viking battles. Things I described in my lyrics or saw through the eyes of my imagination could be played out in a kind of performance. I remember all those days spent at these historical reconstructions and pagan rituals very fondly and I think they helped me a lot in my music making. In Poland we have the biggest Slavic and Viking festival in Europe, it’s called “Festival of Slavs and Vikings in Wolin”. The battles of Slavs and Vikings in Wolin have always been the biggest in Europe and the most brutal. I suffered several injuries during these battles, one of which still affects me after all these years. I think I gave up participating in the battles at the right time, because after so many years I would probably today have a collection of significant injuries that could severely limit my ability to play musical instruments. I’ve seen a lot of severed fingers in battles. Today, however, I still carry on the tradition of participating in pagan rituals, most often on Samhain night, for example, which my friends and I always spend somewhere in the woods performing rituals by the glow of the night fire. Mount Ślęża is where I used to do my first shoots for Graveland, like The Celtic Winter, Thousand Swords.

OM: What made you want to play live concerts? I saw your live performance at the Eternal Hate Fest in the Czech Republic. Did the American singer Dio influence you in your stage performance? I like this musician, he was very innovative, he invented the famous metal salute and brought dragons, swords, fantasy and medieval aesthetics to metal.

RF: You mentioned Ronnie James Dio, who referred to fantasy, dragons, swords, etc. in his work. I think those things have always been a real conservative inspiration for metal music around the world. Metal music has also always been influenced by Satanism, which maybe didn’t play such a strong role at first, but later on, with the commercial success of bands like Venom and Mercyful Fate, for example, it started to become more and more prevalent in metal music and increasingly influenced the lyrics and the sound of the music.

With Graveland’s music, I also try to build on the traditional conservative sources of metal music that valued the chivalric ethos and the epic cult of the warrior. Therefore, I try to take a traditional view of themes such as the eternal war between light and darkness. In our concerts, what fills and inspires me, this spirit and imagination, is manifested in what you can see and feel. I will be honest and say that to the best of my ability and greater stage experience, I try to convey such values in a planned way. The result is a special atmosphere and aura at our concerts. This is what sets us apart from the sea of other contemporary metal bands. Quite a lot of bands have moved significantly away from the conservative roots of metal. They have been corrupted by the influence of people associated with, for example, hard core or punk, through the mixing of these genres into metal through guest punk and hard core musicians in metal bands. To this day, I still think that no musician who has leftist views or is an atheist will ever be able to play real black metal in their lifetime. To this day I still have a great respect and appreciation for metal bands like Manilla Road, Manowar, Bathory and even Venom. They guided me through my youth and instilled in me a belief in immortal values. Today, I try to carry on a little bit of what they started. And when I raise my sword on stage, it is my tribute to them and also a symbol of the true conservative roots of metal music.

OM: What kind of music do you listen to? I know you mentioned in an interview that you like the soundtrack to Conan the Barbarian.

RF: I listened to that soundtrack a lot, it’s eternal for me, I never get tired of it, I like to go back to it from time to time. In the 90s I listened to a lot of film music from movies like The Omen, Dances with Wolves, Predator, Conan the Destroyer, Robin of the Sherwood Forest, El Cid. There was something very stimulating about film music, it helped me venture into magical and fantastical realms of my imagination. I always listened to this kind of music in the evening or at night, sometimes I would fall asleep to it and the music would keep playing. I had the same experience with music by bands like Dead Can Dance or Belcanto. That’s why I sometimes say that my style of playing the keyboard and arranging all those symphonic parts, which are a lot in Graveland’s music now, was influenced by Dead Can Dance’s music.

Nowadays I listen to a lot of old folk music, medieval music and a bit of metal music. I also like oriental music, where percussion instruments are prominent. On our new Lord Wind recordings, for example, we use a lot of instruments that have oriental origins. For example bendri, santur, saz, darabuka. This is of course inspired by Dead Can Dance music. I also like some of the Wardruna songs. And I also like folk music from Scandinavia, but also from Russia and Ukraine.

OM: What’s the situation with censorship in Poland? How do you deal with it? Recently you had a concert in Toronto cancelled. Is there anything you can do to fight against Antifa’s whistleblowing and internet activism?

RF: Practically all artists have problems with censorship, some less, some more, unfortunately it is felt that our freedom is slowly coming to an end and is not as great as it used to be. When I think back to the 1990s and all the extreme things we did back then, we had much more freedom then. However, just today, when we live in a supposedly democratic world, governments in our countries are introducing more and more measures to restrict our freedom with all this modern technology and electronic eavesdropping. As a result, we are becoming people who, like clones, form a kind of mass. A very easily manipulated mass. We have had exactly one example of this in recent years in the form of the coronavirus pandemic.

The European Union is trying to impose ever more abnormal political and social programmes and ‘progressive’ ideologies or fantasies on us, such as ‘global warming’. Unfortunately, the EU is imposing ever more repressive measures against us and censoring any criticism in the face of growing social opposition. The people who wanted to block our concert in Montreal have no idea why I am under such attack and why the censors are so intolerant towards me. For a while there was even a Graveland website that was absolutely huge fake news. They created it to link to it in their accusatory articles as proof of my Nazi sympathies. It was clear that such a site was not created by anti-fascist stooges, but that it was backed by more intelligent and well-funded political foundations operating within the wider power structures. As a band we live under their constant fire, they hate us as much as anything else that doesn’t submit to them.

OM: Is there a philosophical and emotional shift in Graveland’s music? From black metal destruction, negation, evil, somewhere completely different? Has the whole genre of black metal evolved that way or is it just your personality?

RF: My transition from darkness to light happened a long time ago. It happened because of my faith and worldview, which changed towards paganism, towards the old ancestral faith. My experience in the 90’s, from observing all the events related to black metal and satanic extremism, taught me that I will achieve my goals much better if I turn to creative forces rather than destructive ones. If I have developed a lifelong aversion to Christianity, I will accomplish more by creating, i.e. resurrecting, the faith of our ancient ancestors than by directly attacking the Church and Christianity. The Catholic Church was an institution that we black metal musicians really hated in the 90s. We didn’t just care about Christianity and its history, we cared about the methods of the Catholic Church. A lot of people in Poland think that the Catholic Church has always been the backbone of the Polish state, spreading patriotism and contributing to the fall of communism. However, this could only be done by church workers from the lower levels of the hierarchy; these priests were always closer to the people. Meanwhile, their leadership, in conjunction with the Vatican, practiced a perfidious policy aimed only at preserving the Church’s property, wealth and influence. As part of this policy, the Church repeatedly betrayed and exploited the Polish people. I see strength and spirit in the pagan faith of our ancestors. These are our true roots from which we grow. It is in them that we find the strength that awakens us and leads us back to the right path.

OM: You have an even lesser known music project called Lord Wind. It’s basically film music. Have you ever been asked to do soundtrack music for a film, video or event?

RF: In the beginning I tried to play instrumentally in Lord Wind’s music, I didn’t use the keyboards and drums from the computer that much yet. I also tried singing, but I wasn’t very good at it. That’s how the first Lord Wind album, Forgotten Songs, came about, which I recorded in the 90s. Later, on subsequent albums, all of Lord Wind’s music was done entirely on keyboards, using samples to imitate choirs, symphony orchestra and folk percussion. Creating such music was an incredible experience for me.

I often created this music in the morning after a night’s sleep, according to intuitive melodies that came to me from what I had previously played on the keyboard. That’s how the albums Heralds of Fight, Atlantean Monument, Rites of the Valkyries were made. When I started recording the album Ales Stenar, there was a change. There was a change in some of the songs, and a real string instrument reappeared. This was thanks to Alruna, who joined me. She recorded violin and fiddle for some of the tracks. I, on the other hand, watched and learned. Alruna was a talented musician with an incredible memory. Under her influence, I began to think differently about the future of Lord Wind. I wondered if I could expand the band’s lineup so that one day we would think that we were playing at several small historical reenactment festivals. And it turned out that people liked our playing.

In the following years, other musicians joined us, including my wife Olga, who took care of the lyrics and vocals. Among other things, we played at big festivals such as Kilkim Zaibu in Lithuania or Ragnar Rock “New Wheel” in Kharkiv, as well as at the Slavs and Vikings Festival in Wolin. We are currently working on our next album, for which we have about 13 new songs ready. Most of them I composed on an instrument I play briefly, the rebec, stylized to resemble ancient medieval instruments. This instrument is the fulfillment of a dream I had many years ago when I imagined that one day I would play the violin (a rebec is a kind of medieval violin).

OM: In Poland you are one of the most important bands in Black metal genre. Are you planning to write a book about Graveland and your music? I read chapters about your music in Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, Eastern European Black Metal Guidebook and in Wolves Among Sheep. Have you read those books too? How do you rate their articles about your music?

RF: Yes, there were ideas to write a book about Graveland. I’ve already contributed to a book, I mean a biography of Behemoth, where I wrote my memories of the years we were friends at Nergal’s request. The creation of the Behemoth biography gave other people ideas for writing books about Polish bands. Two different people approached me with the plan to write a book about Graveland. I talked to them about what the book could look like, what mistakes we should avoid so that it wouldn’t be as boring as a Behemoth biography. But I haven’t decided to start work yet, because I’m well aware that there will be a lot of work on such a book. For now I’m more focused on recording new Graveland music and preparing for the next gigs.

Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, I have this book, but I haven’t read it all yet. I also have Lord of Chaos and also other books that contain my memories, such as Rzeźpospolita and Black Metal: Beyond the Darkness. Black metal is an uncompromising genre full of controversy and extreme events related to the excesses of musicians. That’s why I’m not surprised that there are books about it.

OM: How is it possible that the spirit of the European man and high art is manifested in the decadent genre of black metal – vampires, devils, blasphemy, sexual perversion – while in mainstream music, banality reigns?

RF: Because all these traditional inspirations take us back to the roots of metal music. Of course, today’s metal looks much more brutal and extreme, but often under the guise of something that looks decadent on the outside, there are real conservative desires.

People have also learned that in order to be free to create music or other art in the Europe we have today, they have to learn to disguise themselves. The black metal that is played today also has a lot of features of radical rebellion. It questions this reality around us and goes against it in this dark aggressive image. Of course, all of this is also influenced by today’s brutal behaviour, especially among young people, who take it all over from violent computer games and films where certain boundaries are constantly being crossed.

The ubiquitous pornography and sexual pathology that this art encourages and stimulates the development of certain extreme sexual deviations. All this looks like the decline of Western civilisation. It is strange that in the world of Western civilisation there is now a certain approval of such behaviour. That’s why the radicalization of black metal, especially among the young black metal bands that exist in the underground, is associated with all this and follows from it. It’s the way that today’s generations express themselves. Even when musicians want to convey some higher values, they do it under the guise of darkness. In a way, such behaviour protects them from the interference of the ubiquitous censors who interpret this kind of work as “progressive”. But there is one more thing to consider: black metal is very popular today. And the subject matter of black metal songs should always be dark, otherwise you may be considered a poser!

I’m not confused about where black metal is going because I thought the genre was completely dead. I’ve been severely disappointed with what former cult bands have done to the genre and how they have commercialized it. But today there are thousands of black metal bands in the world whose lyrics and music are still darker and more brutal than their predecessors. I could say it looks good, but unfortunately many of these bands have great difficulty creating interesting and soulful music. That’s why it often happens that the band’s image is so emphasized while their music is very poor. In the face of such developments, it is interesting that this genre has survived for so long and still exists. Maybe there just isn’t anything else to replace it.