Interview with Graveland: From Black Metal Music to Paganism
Part 1

4,775 words

Graveland is one of the most proficient bands of the black metal genre, since 2016 it has been possible to see them live, as they decided to perform at the Hot Shower festival in northern Italy. The band became a victim of leftist censorship when their 2016 concert in Montreal, Canada was cancelled. Despite this, the band can be seen at a few dedicated festivals in Europe – Eternal Hate Fest (Czech Republic), Steel Fest (Finland), Call of Terror (France). From radical satanic black metal, the band moved on to epic pagan black metal and long symphonic pieces. Their live shows are worthwhile and will be appreciated by any fan of quality black metal. Even though Graveland is in the musical underground, the band features professional musicians and their performances have a unique atmosphere.

We talked to lead singer Robert Fundali about Poland, Behemoth and his friendship with Adam Nergal Darski, the essence of black metal, Wotansvolk, pagan art, Ron McVan, psychohygiene, his most extreme experience and sacred places in Poland.

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OM: After your Raiders of Revenge split with Honor, what happened to them? What are your memories of that split?

RF: Split was a great reaction to the mood of the Polish metal scene at that time. At that time many people in our country were involved in the revival of ancient pagan beliefs. There were many such people on the metal scene and among musicians and creators of various zines dedicated to metal and pagan music. The band Honor wanted to bring these themes into their environment to inspire their fans. At that time we were still quite strongly influenced by our personal dislike of the Catholic Church and Christianity. I remember that Honor wanted to make it clear with this split and later albums that they were far from Christianity! Once the split came out it didn’t cause any controversy, rather it was well received especially among people who understood its purpose perfectly.

Our paths then separated, as the turbulent fates took us on completely different paths. Today, many years after that split, there are people who try to use this split as a weapon against my band. This split has become one of the most important pieces of evidence in the propaganda of the left-wing censorship organizations. Even though more than twenty years have passed since then, they try to write about it as if it were a year ago.

OM: What do you get your energy from? There’s an incredible amount of love for music, personal time and real songwriting skill in your music.

RF: I draw inspiration from the same sources, books, films, music and of course my own life experiences. But nowadays it’s getting harder and harder to use pure sources that have something that fits my needs and spirit. Just today’s changes in the world, so-called globalization, do not serve people like me at all. It even seems to me that all this news and so-called “progressiveness” is directed against people like me. Someone wants to limit people like me and cut us off from the sources of our power. Free thought, free creativity, independence in decision-making are in the gunsights of certain organisations that work for globalisation. Many of them go wrong or are artificially/covertly led into areas where traps and a semblance of independence await them. These people do not realize or perceive at all that something is being taken away from them. They are being robbed of things that have always been of great importance in the history of mankind for building the strong indomitable will that man needs to survive. When I see all this, I do a kind of self-censorship and reject most of today’s pop culture. I subject this pop culture to harsh criticism. I often express my criticism in my statements without worrying about any political correctness.

The career path of my band has never been determined by political correctness. I always find what I value most. The world is full of relics of past civilizations – ancient mythology, forbidden history, archaeology, and the pagan beliefs of ancient people. There are still plenty of books in the world that I haven’t read, I never limit my selection to Europe. I love Japanese culture, also the beliefs and history of the pagan peoples of South America. And now that more and more very bad films are being made in our cultural sphere, usually overloaded with all sorts of “progressive” ideologies and propaganda, I can turn to Japanese, Chinese or South Korean cinema. I even watch and listen to Chinese dramatic operas, they are available on some Chinese YouTube channels. All of these things continue to influence me, and because the world is really big and rich, there is always more to discover, and I can still feed my imagination with a soulful mystical art that awakens all the senses.

OM: How does the process of composing music work?

RF: I listened to a lot of music in the ’90s, often listening to it at night and dreaming about things that came to mind from books I loved. I was very into fantasy and of course horror. The world of Lord of the Rings and Conan, the stories of Lovercraft, Poe, the novels of Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells. I’ve also watched a lot of movies with this theme. That’s how I came to love film music, which has always been with me. For example, the soundtrack from Conan the Barbarian has never tired of me to this day, and has even become one of my biggest musical inspirations, influencing the construction of my interludes on my albums. The soundtrack from The Omen sparked my love of choruses again, because it showed that choruses can generate some potential for darkness. There’s something intensely soulful in the choruses, depending on the type of music and the intention of course. There are a lot of parts in Graveland’s music that I compose on keyboards using samples of choruses. I just took that from movie soundtracks.

The contemporary sample banks that I use on the keys have choirs that can sing the lyrics as well, that’s an amazing opportunity for musicians like me. You can create choral parts that sound really very realistic. In addition to what I mentioned, I had other musical tastes, of course. I listened to a lot of Dead Can Dance, then Belcanto, Enya, but the music that had the biggest creative influence on me was old medieval music, which I got to know through the soundtrack of Conan the Barbarian. One day, while reading the booklet contained on the CD of this soundtrack, I read that the composer of the music, Basil Poledouris, used melodies and ideas he found in early music, such as the Carmina Burana codex, played by a group from France: the Clemencic Consort. Through this, I have been exposed to the world of old music and have become familiar with the work of performers and ensembles such as Rene Clemencic, the New London Consort and Jordi Savall. In the intro to the demo In the Glare of Burning Churches, I used a track that I took from the New London Consort’s music, but added the screams of burning witches. Since then the old music has continued to accompany and influence my musical ideas in Graveland and also in my folk project Lord Wind. Currently, I am even playing and composing music for Lord Wind on an instrument I have always dreamed of and heard in many old music ensembles. It’s a rebec! The themes of my lyrics are also basically related to what I have already mentioned. In the past, when I played black metal, a lot of the lyrics were written by Capricornus and were much more inspired by Satanism and darkness. When our paths diverged and I moved from black metal to pagan metal, my lyrics started to be all about paganism and fantasy, mythology. And that’s still the case today.

OM: What happened to Capricornus? Do you ever see him again? Why did he stop doing his Capricornus solo project?

RF: Capricornus left the metal scene a long time ago. I haven’t seen him for more than 15 years or maybe more. He doesn’t keep in touch with his old friends from the metal scene, so practically nothing is known about him. The CDs of his old music that come out are just copied without anyone contacting him. Sometimes people from record companies write to me looking for his records and asking about him. Capricornus used to have big problems with the law, it seems to me that his decision to withdraw from music and the metal scene is due to that.

OM: Have you had any transcendental experiences in your life?

RF: Yes, of course, even when I was a child. I remember some of these things very well and it is possible that they strongly influenced my understanding of the world around us. I am more open and sensitive to phenomena of a paranormal nature. Of course, sometimes I take it with a grain of salt, sometimes seriously. I always come into contact with something that responds in some way to my thoughts and rituals during the various pagan ceremonies. I take supernatural phenomena and spiritual life as part of my faith and part of my destiny. Sometimes I think it’s even a destiny! My spiritual energy, which has been accumulated in me through my faith and cultivation of pagan traditions, influences my imagination and shapes it in a specific way into a form that harmonizes with the surrounding spiritual order of the universe. The real and the spiritual world are one and the same to me. It’s so commonplace that when I witness a supernatural event, I don’t overreact to it. Of course, I could describe to you here exactly what I mean, but I think these are things that should rather remain my secret.

Each of you should work on your spiritual development individually, despite all the difficulties and chance events connected with it. When you realize that what you believe in you have worked for yourself, you will be stronger at it. And that clearly shapes your character and originality, in everything you do in life. In our family, we always talked about supernatural phenomena. My grandmother was a witness to them, my mother and now my sister is strongly interested in them. Some of these things are simple, others more complex and unexplained. In this day and age when atheism is being promoted, it can all seem like a fairy tale, but for me there is a kind of power and energy that drives my work. It helps me in my decisions and wishes for fate, it protects me from danger. I have no shortage of inspiration to create music or graphics and often inspiration comes unexpectedly, which leads me to unusual ideas.

OM: Have you had any pivotal encounters or moments in your life that impacted you for life and changed your life path?

RF: Martial law, introduced by the communist authorities in Poland in 1981, quickly took me away from my typical childhood years. I lived with my parents in an area where there were frequent anti-communist demonstrations and regular street fights. I saw tanks and armoured vehicles driving through the streets. Militia units beating people and throwing tear gas into apartments. Once, when I saw something happening on the street, I came out of my house and after about ten minutes I had to run away. I hid in the gate of the apartment block, where the militiamen caught up with me and beat me brutally. I was later arrested and detained at the police station. This happened when I was still in primary school, I was about 16-17 years old. That time marked me strongly and made me a very distrustful and anti-system person.

OM: What kind of mental hygiene do you use?

RF: I learned meditation when I wanted to practice controlled OOBE exits. However, the presence of natural forces, especially at sacred ancestral sites, has the best effect on me. I am fortunate that one such place is near my town, about 50 km away. It is Mount Ślęża, on the top of which there was once an ancient Celtic shrine. Our ancestors practised ancient pagan beliefs on this mountain, and we modern pagans have adopted this mountain for our rituals and mysteries. When I come to this mountain and stay on it either day or night, I always somehow cleanse myself of all negative emotions. I feel that I have mentally reset myself and the life energy comes back into me. This mountain not only affects my spiritual strength, but it also affects my physical strength in some way. I am healthy and full of strength, as if I have completely rejuvenated. Of course, your spirit must be in harmony with this environment, respect its aura and not come into conflict with things you don’t like or understand. One must not subjugate these forces and energies. Because in such a place one is always only one of many visitors.

OM: Good to know. Are there other energetic – sacred places in Poland? 

RF: For me the most important place is the Ślęża Mountain, but there is another very important place, the stone circles in Odry, a former Gothic cult site. In the north of Poland, on the coast, there are a lot of stone circles and barrows left by the Nordic Goth tribes. Many of them are intact because the surrounding modern population often avoids these sites. There are traces of ancient Celtic cult sites at the top of Ślęza Mountain. There is a spot on the mountain where there is a huge flat boulder by a stream flowing out of the mountain, which is believed to have been the site of animal or even human sacrifices in honour of ancient gods. The place is haunted because there are trees leaning against each other that creak incredibly in the wind. In all the years I have been going to Ślęża, I have never met anyone who dared to sleep there at night. And the sacrificial stone is so big that two adults can sleep on it comfortably. Of course, I have had mystical experiences on this mountain and we often slept in the woods after the nightly ceremonies there.

Sometimes I also came to Ślęża alone and spent the night on this mountain in the forest, in hidden places off the road. Spending the night there is always an unforgettable experience. I think that is why this mountain is attractive to people in all pagan associations, but also to other enthusiasts of supernatural phenomena, including people who are into UFOs. At the top of this mountain is a small enclosed church and a stone statue in the shape of a bear, probably a remnant of a Celtic cult. Today, archaeology in Poland is much more open to this part of the history of these lands. Therefore, new sites of former pagan tribes and other cult sites associated with them are being discovered in Poland every year. This is important because in the past the Catholic Church, through its strong influence, censored knowledge about these times. We have been cut off from our true roots. According to the Church, the official history of Poland began with the baptism of these lands and the acceptance of the royal crown by the first Polish king, Mieszko I.

OM: You said in earlier interviews that you were a misanthrope. Are you still a misanthrope? Or how did you deal with and overcome misanthropy?

RF: I think I’ve rather never been a misanthrope. I don’t remember ever saying anything like that. When I changed my interests and inspirations, when I went from black metal to paganism, I took on completely different characteristics. Paganism is all about creative energy and appeals to sun deities in its beliefs; paganism taps into life-giving, uplifting sources of power. The warrior needs something that empowers and strengthens him, not depressing or misanthropic content. In black metal, for example in the 1990s, some bands created the image of the Satanic warrior. However, when the musical creation of this type of warrior referred to the destructive forces associated with Satanism and darkness and sought in them the power to destroy in the name of evil, it led to inevitable disaster. For often evil turned against its followers. It has brought them to areas where man is teetering on the edge of a abyss into which he can fall with even a small mistake. Among the warriors of evil, the so-called “brotherhood” has always been a legend because, as the history of Scandinavian black metal and also Polish black metal has shown, these people often turned against each other. I understood all this perfectly, because I had witnessed it, and that’s why I turned to other values when I entered the pagan path.

OM: What’s the most extreme thing you’ve experienced in your life?

RF: All of the most extreme things that have happened to me in my life I experienced in the army when I was serving a two-year military service in the navy during the communist era. I had two incidents for which I could have gone to military prison. But I don’t want to talk about that here now. In the army, I also witnessed, like some of my colleagues, things of a supernatural nature that even today I cannot explain. There was a boy in my troops who learned to hypnotize. In his spare time, he used to show us his hypnotic tricks. Simple and banal things like making people immune to pain. Later, it was more dramatic stuff, because he would put people into a state of hypnosis where they remembered previous incarnations. One boy fell out of his chair and started writhing as if he was going to die. Later it turned out that he remembered dying in World War II, shot in the stomach with a rifle. One day we were on guard patrol when we went to guard a post with guns loaded with sharp ammo. There was an accident that could have ended very dangerously. The friend of mine who was hypnotizing performed other tricks on the young soldiers in our building where we were resting between guard duty. By the end, he was severely out of control and waking them up. These soldiers would go on guard duty with their guns ready to fire, and then, when left alone at their posts, would fall back into a state of hypnosis.

When I was on guard duty, I received a message that I had to leave my post and go to another guard post where one of these young soldiers was standing and behaving strangely. It was, of course, in the middle of the night and I had to leave my post, against regulations, and go to him and find out what was happening to him. This soldier was standing at the post with his phone and not talking, when I approached him I noticed that his eyes were white, I immediately understood that he had fallen into some kind of hypnotic state. I immediately called the guardhouse from the phone and told our “hypnotist” to get up and come over immediately and wake the kid up. Because there was no telling what he might do, especially with an AK-47 on his shoulder. I can honestly say I felt like I was standing next to some zombie armed with an AK47 Kalashnikov. To this day I have not forgotten it and remember everything in detail. Such memories last a lifetime.

OM: You have very nice album covers and textile designs. There is a quality aesthetic to your music. Can you tell us something about Graveland’s aesthetics and art? How do you come up with album covers?

RF: As much as I appreciate traditional writing and music, I feel the same way about the art of painting. I’m a traditionalist in these areas of art. I don’t like abstraction and all those pseudo-progressive modern inventions. I also don’t like brutal bloody nudes, in which one can sense the pathological obsession and psychopathic tendencies of the creators. For a while in the 90s (probably because of metal music:-) ) I liked Giger’s paintings and drawings. I still have several albums with his paintings in my collection. When I was young, before I started playing black metal, I was interested in history and I loved to read and look at history books which had many paintings depicting past important historical events. When I was playing black metal I was interested in genres like horror, of course. I also came across the art of Arthur Rackham. I love his paintings, especially his painting set on the legend of the Ring of the Nibelungs. The way Rackham painted Wotan or Valkyrie is etched in my memory as the most perfect rendition of these characters. Through the Graveland album covers, I wanted to convey something of this love I have for traditional painting to fans. For I believe that in the art of painting, and perhaps in virtually any kind of painting or sculpture, a certain spiritual message can be conveyed and passed on to the next generation. The creator of a work of art transmits his spirit to the people through his work. It is a kind of code that is recorded in a drawing, painting or decoration. A code that later subconsciously speaks to the spirit of the people who admire these works, awakening in them the same spiritual power and faith that the creator of the work once felt. I believe that the current cult of abstract art is artificially created by certain influential people who have a hidden agenda; that it is part of a propaganda to cut us off from our true cultural and religious roots.

OM: I guess you also have personal experience with Nergal from Behemoth? Could you describe that experience?

RF: I’ve been in contact with Nergal since the very beginning of our Polish black metal history. Nergal, like us here in the south of Poland, knew very well what was going on in Norway. We had our own contacts with musicians there and from them we got the propaganda of true black metal, created by Inner Circle. I remember that Nergal was very emotionally connected to what was going on in Norway, just like we strongly supported the black metal scene there. And later on our Polish black metal underground also had the idea to create an organization like Inner Circle in Norway. Nergal was the one who, together with a few other musicians from our underground, initiated the creation of The Temple of Infernal Fire. At that time I was in very good contact with him and supported him and his band. At that time there weren’t many of us in the Polish black metal underground, so we strongly supported each other, we considered it a duty and part of the plan of the organization. Me, Capricornus and Karharoth also joined The Temple of Infernal Fire. At that time, our underground was increasingly influenced by Varg Vikernes.

Some people have left The Temple of Infernal Fire. Nergal also began to move away from the organization in small steps. In later years I kept in touch with him until I stopped caring about the changes in Behemoth. Since I started playing black metal, I had a strong aversion to death metal. I didn’t like the genre and I still don’t like it. When Behemoth started moving in that direction, I lost interest in their music. Behemoth didn’t exist for me for almost fifteen years. It’s been a long time since then, and I’ve gone through my entire career dealing exclusively with Graveland’s music. Years went by and I finally changed. When Nergal got leukemia, that was the turning point that brought us back together. It culminated in the arrival of Nergal, visiting me quite unexpectedly and without warning. Since then, I have been in friendly contact with him again and we meet occasionally, whether on the occasion of Behemoth concerts or, for example, the promotion of his books in my city. Nergal was also planning to organize a joint concert between Behemoth and Graveland in Poland. However, this idea fell through because his circle of friends didn’t like the idea very much. For this concert we were to prepare only old songs from the 90s.

As for how Nergal is behaving today, I’m completely indifferent to it because I don’t think it’s my problem. It’s possible that a band of this caliber, in order to continue to exist, has to do some unpleasant things, otherwise they would become the target of attacks, criticism and censorship. We live in a time when intolerance is very widespread thanks to the internet. It’s because everyone has access to everything and a lot of people who are not fans of metal music and don’t listen to it at all are starting to get involved in metal music. For example, there are music portals dealing with metal music that practice political indoctrination under the guise of music, I am of course thinking of MetalSucks. Sometimes it seems to me that a lot of what Nergal says is just to please certain circles that have influence on his musical career.

OM: Lets go back to the 2000 album Creed of Iron. How did the book Creed of Iron by American pagan Ron McVan inspire you? Do you have any memories of that album?

RF: Ron McVan sent me books like Creed of Iron and The Temple Of Wotan. I’ve been in contact with him for quite a long time. I wrote to him a lot about how the Native Faith (what we used to call our pagan movement) was developing in Poland and how it was influencing music and other cultural things. The development of paganism in our country was heavily influenced by metal music. After a few years of the triumph of black metal in the underground, there were also quite a few metal bands inspired by paganism. Some of the black metal bands simply changed the direction of their interests, just as I entered a new phase of the band’s history with the music of Graveland. Some people from our metal scene started to travel east to Lithuania, Belarus or Ukraine and participate in pagan rituals and gatherings related to Slavic culture. Thanks to this, paganism in Poland started to be revived on a certain basis that had strong roots. From metal music, pagan beliefs soon began to permeate other areas of art and history. For example, students of archaeology began to transfer Slavic beliefs into various historical reconstructions, thanks to which more and more people learned about the Slavic roots of our country. Ron McVan was very interested in these things because when he saw the overall positive effects of pagan culture, it gave him the idea to start doing similar things in the US. I, on the other hand, liked some of the views and philosophies presented by the religious association Ron founded, Wotansvolk.

On my journey of discovering pagan beliefs, I was very comfortable with what Wotansvolk was creating at the time. I was interested not only in the pagan beliefs of the Slavs, but also in the Vikings or the ancient beliefs of the Germans. I can honestly say that my Creed of Iron album was influenced by my pagan faith, which already had a lot of Wotansvolk inspiration. The title of the album was of course inspired by the book Creed of Iron, Ron also gave me permission to use graphics from his books and informational brochures. So, for example, I took one drawing from the Creed of Iron book depicting Odin sitting on his throne and put it on the front of the Graveland “ Prawo Stali” t-shirts. Ron and I also shared a strong passion for fantasy, written by Robert E. Howard. That is, the cult of the sword, the cult of the warrior, a love of Wagner’s music, and of course a love of the iconic soundtrack to Conan the Barbarian. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been a fan of Conan, and maybe that’s why I never became a fan of The Witcher. Wotansvolk was trying to do pagan rituals similar to ours back then, as well as little historical reenactments. It seemed to me at the time that they were going to go in the same direction as we did in Poland.