When you sit back and look through your metal music collection, especially if you are an avid death, black metal or extreme music fan like I am, there are a lot of fucked up words and images that go along with what we all take in, tons of albums worth of blood, violence and other images that would send any non-metal fan running scared. But this is what we digest, and most importantly, what we worship. I guess you can say we are all desensitized. But there are certain albums which we come across every once in a while that some of us will question and/or be taken aback by. That album in question for me is _Hell Injection_ by black/death metal French act Arkhon Infaustus. Arkhon Infaustus' disc has got to be one of the scariest and most horrifically evil albums I have come across in some time (fellow Osmose labelmates Sadistik Exekution's new album _FUKK_ scares me too with its intensity). The album just hit a nerve with me and it really opened my eyes to what kind of horror and hatred this band is releasing to the world. I'm nowhere near offended, I am just seeing all of this from a different point of view. Chronicles of Chaos tracked down Arkhon Infaustus' bassist The 666 Torturer to get the real meat on why things are so fucked up in the world of this savage extreme metal act and what it really means to be extreme. We begin...
CoC: You guys are obviously not strangers to censorship. First off, how does censorship make you guys feel? Does it push you more to further your cause and push the envelope? Or do you just laugh it off and deal with it?
The 666 Torturer: Hail Satan. It just confirms what we think of the world. We [the band is rounded out by guitarist D. Deviant; drummer Hellblaster recently left the band and they are currently looking for a replacement -- Adrian] don't do all this to derange and shock people. We do it because it's the revelation of our inner selves. The fact is that what we are disturbing to the masses. We know that we are some anti-part of the world and the world knows it, like a void from the inside. They have fed us with their lives and now we take revenge on them. We have bred upon their morality, cults of devotion and laws. Never did we kneel, never did we follow, and never did we obey. Censorship is nothing to us, and they can be afraid, as it will get worse and worse.
CoC: This is a really -evil- record, a record unlike many that I have heard in the last little while. What was the mood like in the studio and what ideas fueled this new album?
666T: Arkhon Infaustus is born from our need to make something that was 666% us. And this is the result. What you can hear, see and read in Arkhon Infaustus is what we have inside of us. No game. No lie. No disguise. _Hell Injection_ was done with our true feelings, so that people with sick states of mind can get into it. What we say is what all of you have in your most inner soul; some hide and refuse to let it out, while others let it burst away and take all pleasure from this state of being. Look at French priests: they try to bring us their enslaving morality and are here among the first caste to molest children.
CoC: What bands inspired you to start off? Do you still hear those influences?
666T: We'd been playing in other bands before, so that we could blast off our early influences and start to create our own style. But if you really want some names of what I listen to, I would say Incantation, Sodom, Beherit, Blasphemy, Bestial Warlust. Of course, we still listen to all these bands.
CoC: What do you get out of all the music that you make? Is there a sense of excitement with each album when it is completed?
666T: There is this feeling of finding the right words and the right notes out of us. We are as sick in rehearsals as on stage. If we didn't feel anything while playing, we will stop. We make it for ourselves first, then for Satan and then for the perverts of the world. We live our lives responding to our personal pleasures. When there is no adrenaline anymore, what is the reason to live?
CoC: Where does the band fit into today's music scene? I personally think Arkhon Infaustus has a unique sound, but you may disagree.
666T: We are not at all standing among the black metal crowd that plays some kind of "fastest band contest", but rather with all sick black and death metal bands that really know what violence is and the real goal of it. I agree that we created our sound. During the recording session of the _Dead Cunt Maniac_ 7", this was really our sound, violent and heavy as death metal, dirty and raw as black metal. But we don't intend to have a particular sound or style musically, we just play and make it sound the way we feel and it always ends up sounding like Arkhon Infaustus.
CoC: Next to your band, a lot of other metal bands look tame and weak. Do you like that? I mean, you guys are full on metal while many death and black metal acts are playing it safe these days with their music and image. Do you agree?
666T: Too many bands play this kind of music without any real understanding. We don't take this image to fit the music; the music is extreme because we are extreme. Among today's bands I respect Revenge, Impiety, Watain and Aborym. There are still some sick people to carry, though in different styles, the real spirit of evil upon the earth. No sweet and clean music. Some people leave our live shows telling people outside that it was too extreme and that what we did was not about metal. Those kind of shitty people are just looking for some nice black or death metal and leave the show to go back to their shitty comfortable little lives. If our image makes these people leave and not buy our stuff, then it's all the better.
CoC: Music is meant to convey some kind of message. I think the image of the band and album cover says one thing, but what do you want fans to get out of the music and lyrics?
666T: All those that listen to it, seeing artwork, lyrics, etc., will understand it. If they are not afraid of the message, they will understand fully. I don't want to make it easy to people; we are not sheep following masters. I want people to wonder and experience.
CoC: What about the business and label side of the music industry? Is that something you try not to get too involved with or is it the opposite?
666T: We don't care at all about the business side of the music industry. We chose Osmose because they didn't ask us to change anything. They let us do whatever we want. We have no limit. The few parts of the business that I've seen so far would make most of you puke and Osmose is really different and not like that. We didn't change when we signed onto Osmose and never will. That is the important thing. We evolve without changing. We've been playing Satanic music for more than ten years now, and Arkhon Infaustus is the climax of all this. We are not selling Satan, rather opening one of the gates to him. I am not at all into the idea of the Church of Satan, but if they bring some people to the real state of evil, pleasure and eternal cumming, then I support them. We are the black semen waste upon the world that liberates it from its former morality.