Interview with fra. Zetekh – Saturnian Mist, King Satan

This interview is very special to me. I want to thank Aleister for the friendship, support and great answers. Chaos is the law!

Satania: Hello, Aleister / fra. Zetekh! Now we’ve got the time to talk again. Six years have passed since ‘Chaos Magic’. Has anything happened in the band during that period – changes in the lineup or your views and beliefs?

Aleister: Hi Milena! Yeah, time flies relentlessly indeed. At the same time it doesn’t feel that long at all, but also when comparing this year to the year 2015 when we made „Chaos Magick“ album, this feels already like a whole another era already. Vision, views and beliefs have not changed really, but have become more strong and clear, especially after all this time which gave us little bit more time for introspection. Which is also why our new album ”Shamatanic” feels very strongly like the magnum opus of Saturnian Mist for us. Line-up changed little bit, but to be fair, even our percussionists fra. Sota and fra. Kult were not part on ”Chaos Magick” album recordings, I still feel them strongly part of that era. Why? Because they joined the band for ”Chaos Magick” live shows in 2015 and played several concerts, festivals and toured the Europe with us already before ”Shamatanic” recordings. So only real change might be our new guitarist fra. Ferreus who joined the band in 2017.

S.: Why did it take so long to create the new album? How is it different than your previous works?

A.: After ”Chaos Magick” album touring and related shows our band members faced several health issues that had to be taken care of. This kind of forced us to take longer pause than we initially wanted and it postponed the new album recordings obviously. During that pause my then newly founded industrial metal project called King Satan kind of blew in my hands in a good way and it kept me much more busy than I ever anticipated until Covid-19 pandemic arrived. It was also one of the reasons that also stalled the finalizing our new album with Saturnian Mist I must admit. But all this pause gave us much more time to reflect our past releases, what did work and what did not and so on, and we really took time to act accordingly which result you can hear with ”Shamatanic” which we think is like I said earlier, a magnum opus of Saturnian Mist.

S.: You mentioned that on ‘Shamatanic’ you pay more attention to shamanism, tell us more about it. What exactly is the shamanism in question, and what is your goal with it? How do you want the listeners to feel it?

A.: There’s rich shamanistic culture in ancient Finland, but also around the world like in Russia, South America and not to mention similarities in Voodoo traditions. The ritual drumming, mushroom eating, trances and their narrative for experiences following… It all suggests that there is a shared origin or reality behind it all. The techniques Shamans use to ”go into another worlds”, alter consciousness and change the perceived reality to obtain the transcendental experience are very primitive and powerful, and has been existing even before any so called occultism became canonized under such terminology. In all of those ancient traditions, percussions played very big part with their rituals. Very primitive way to induce trance by excessive energy, contact with the deepest level of existence. On contrary to more modern religions, which all uses ritualism in very calm manner. ”Occultism” is a modern interpretation of these actually, if you will. I wanted to combine this into artistic approaching of ours. Of course we have been influenced by Shamanism and Voodoo and other primitive traditions before too, but this time I wanted to use the Shamanic methods prioritized. I adapted them into a ritualistic formula and practice and combined it into the whole creative process. ”Shamatanic” is a journey deep into the dark side of the Self, beyond the conceptual understanding, to the level of existence which cannot really be put into definitive words. How do I want the listeners to feel it? If anything, I would indeed want listeners to feel it, only then after that, to reason with it.

S.: In one of your songs you raise interesting questions: „Have you seen what happens when you remove all the masks? / From all the gods and the devils and all of their offspring? / Have you seen what takes the place when fades the transcendence?“ – Did you manage to get answers to those questions and what would the answers be?

A.: Semantics behind the term ”Occultism”, ”the secret science” are not only semantics, but it might include a lesson. Best hiding place might be the plain sight. ”Shamatanic” album itself is one of my answers to this, especially this song ”Chaos is the Law” where these particular lyrics are quoted from. However, like some people have already noticed, all my lyrical works are linked to each other, not only with Saturnian Mist, but other projects too, because there is no simple answer to complex questions. The Temple is built with one stone at the time.

S.: Is Shamatanic a concept album? Could you say that it’s a complete invocation of Chaos?

A.: Yes. Loosely at least. ”Shamatanic” depicts a personal journey to the dark side of the mind and reality achieved by the methods of Left Hand Path Shamanism which controlling undertone is of course Chaos Magick narrative and which is founded upon the Occult philosophy. All songs are a part of the same journey aligned under the same themes, so this way it is a concept album. In the end, it’s all in the lyrics.

S.: Who is this album dedicated to? As in, what audience is it exactly aimed at?

A.: I think maybe ”Shamatanic” is for those who wants from music something more than just music. For those who seek perhaps. Or never arrived to their destination. Or who wants violent and chaotic musical mushroom trip to the dark side of the mind. But obviously this is not for those who looks for typical black metal, you gotta be open for off-beat mysticism probably to get kick out of this. But at the end of the day, I think an artist do not really pick their audience, but audience pick their artists.

S.: We had an interesting conversation about the current situation worldwide. Do you think that a new world order is approaching, like it has been prophesied for a few years now?

A.: I am happy you remembered it! And you probably remember that I also told you half jokingly that nobody wants to read these kind of answers, hahah! I guess we find out? The world is indeed changing. It is always changing. However, since I am a bit of a romantic, I’d prefer to say that New Aeon is here instead, because the ”New World Order” is usually referring to these cheap collection of conspiracy theories which are obsessed about over simplifying the complex collection of factors about very complex things. I don’t believe in it how it was prophesied, I think it’s just lack of research to pin point this over to one conspiracy theory. There are lots of factors not only in our current time, but in the distant past too which all are linked to each other through different mediators that are not even linked to each other directly in most cases. I think Adam Smith’s theory about ”Invisible Hand” explains the mechanics of how different independent factors, that can be even against each other, can cause similar results or cause an illusion of shared agenda, which is not really true. Chaos is the law, no? It seems that it is very difficult for the most of the people to accept that the fundamental ruling force of this world is indeed, chaos. Nobody’s in the charge of the big picture. Does anyone even know the big picture? It is so terrifying for the most of the people that they accept any explanation over no explanation to the point of very strong cognitive dissonance effects. This said, certain conspiracy theories shares similar logic and structure like fundamentalistic religions or ideologies. World is not anyway so black and white and this kind of ”New World Order” did arrive only to the minds of the people who believe it, never into actual shared reality. Just another pile of ideology glasses. This said, the world is constantly changing, there has been lots of ”New World Orders” or ”New Aeons” through the whole history, always coined by little different narrative or terminology but meaning the same. Change of the power dynamics and paradigm shifts in thinking have occurred almost periodically from Persia to Roman Empire all the way to British Empire before arriving to the modern times. And also of course from Zarathustra to Socrates and Jesus of Nazareth all the way to the rise of Atheism, Renaissance, Scientific revolution and the synthesis of these, which would be the next step and which can be seen already there and there. I am more interested about this paradigm shift in thinking that has been going on for some time, which is more of a spiritual thing, and which is why I’d prefer to talk about ”New Aeon” instead and I think it will be the aeon of Chaos!

S.: What do you think this new world order (EDIT: New Aeon maybe insert here?) would look like?

A.: For a quick look someone might wonder what this has to do with ”Shamatanic” album, but it does actually very much yet not the way you would imagine at first probably. Like I said before, all lyrical works of Saturnian Mist are part of the same narrative and can be understood as a one big lyrical work pawing the way to this kind of ”New Aeon” thinking. Read the lyrics ”Temps-Des-Cranes” from Gnostikoi Ha-Shaitan (2011), and ”Root of the Coiled Serpent” or ”Chaos Unchained” from ”Chaos Magick” (2015) album and then ”Chaos Is The Law” from ”Shamatanic” (2021) and you know what I mean! 
 But anyway, I think the next paradigm shift regarding spiritual thinking I refer here as ”New Aeon” or ”New Aeon of Chaos” could be best understood as a new kind of ruling structure of collective consciousness when it comes to the understanding and experiencing mental, psychological and spiritual aspects of existence. Even we live in the era of enormous technological innovations and other kinds of interesting pinnacles of human civilization, the psychological and spiritual side has not developed together with the same speed. For instance, many of the people still face these kind of things in a child-like ”fantastic religious” -mentality, and take everything like it is fantasy, literal, fundamental or anthropomorphized. This is how children take their reality, no shades of grey there really, but it is surprisingly common that majority of the adults are still on this level of spiritual and psychological depth and understanding. Because usually the most of them just have not paid attention to these aspects in detail, as the world around them has not demanded it. You know, for them, it’s either black or white, atheism or theism, realism or idealism, materialism or idealism, and so forth. But now we face the topics of ending natural resources, pollution, over-population, climate change, which kind of forces people to think outside of their own egocentric comfort zones, which kind of forces to step out from this ”fantastic-religious” mentality. 
Now, I think this so called ”New Aeon” includes a phase, where this ”fantastic-religious” part as controlling aspect of collective consciousness will be history, and shared cultural psyche will have a new born capacity to embrace these topics with more holistic understanding of abstract thinking, symbolism and synchronizations without any anthropomorphized attributes. It’ll make such concepts as ”Atheism” and” Theism” obsolete, as they will be understood as learning phases towards the ”Oneness” of all in sort of ”Neutral Monism” kind of way. I would have thousand examples about it, but take it Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza for instance and his idea of Pantheism combined to Neutral Monism which he already wrote in 1600’s. Widely misunderstood figure at the time, still is, but there lies the synthesis for forced dualism already which the following centuries tried to figure out with bad results, as they were not ready to understand it back then. Other examples of what ”New Aeon” might be like, as they exists already in the world with the works of certain people I like to regard as pioneers of this so called New Aeon of Chaos. Take a look of Nikola Tesla from science. He was way ahead of his time too with most of the things, but he also represented this New Aeon way of thinking way before its time. Other examples, Aleister Crowley, C.G. Jung, even Friedrich Nietzsche with his ”Thus Spake Zarathustra”. I think the concept of Übermensch tries to capture this idea too. And this so called ”New Age” movement was also preliminary echo of the things to come, but it was an intuitive and kind of naive reaction towards it, but which is also often the case with new things before they get serious. Same with the early forms of Satanism. The naive and the fool usually got balls to be part of the change, so they should never be overlooked. They are perhaps the most important part of it, because they will start the waves! Fools are not the same things as idiots anyway. Just take a look of black metal movement too, as it started as very naive rebellious act towards Christianity but still with serious thoughts behind it, and it developed into much, much more. The first steps were not in vain, even they were primitive kind of reaction towards this symbolic deadlock born from the strong desire to be free from the oppression of Christian dogma. But without it, we would not have what we have now, if a limb gets gangrene, it must be cut off in order to safe the whole body, you know? Lots of black metal lyrics deals with these things, and in my opinion most of them, unknowingly. There are really prophetic shit spilled around, especially in the 90’s. I could go on an on about this topic, since these are only couple of aspects of what I think it’ll be. Of course it is very wide phenomena. And it might still take some time to this actualize in its full form, even the signs are there, but they have been there for centuries already. Why so? Because the major changes takes time to be digested by majority. For instance, mainstream view about physics is still based on Newton’s physics written in the 1600’s, even the scientific and physics world have been thinking otherwise the whole 1900’s. It takes time to change the popular opinion, as it develops like pendulum. The new ideas can also be seen through the Arts before they become really understood, as they always will represent themselves through art first in their intuitive form, then through renegade thinkers with some conceptuality and then with the mainstream as a paradigm. Of course different cultures develop with their own phase and this is the fault of organized religions and conservative attitude anyway. They stall the progress always. But we will get there. It might take few years, decade or even more centuries, but it should not stop individuals from arriving there earlier! 

I wonder if I just answered my longest answer to a music interview here? Probably not, I get carried away usually, and we both knew this will happen, hah!

S.: In this regard, you sent me a video to your song „The End Times“ and in it is a saying „The end times are here once again / Always returning, always moving / lurking around the life as we know it / with the grand majesty of almighty death“. Have „the end times“ arrived, and the end of which times you think has arrived?

A.: Maybe my two earlier answers will let this song to be seen in different light now? I don’t want to necessarily give guidelines for lyrical interpretations of my lyrics, even I can talk about general ideas behind my concepts. I want listener to make own mind about it. But I can say this. Apocalypse in the Bible or Odyssey of Homer could be (and should be, in my opinion) understood as inner processes of personal progression. And ”Shamatanic” depicts more of an inner journey as well. When you change, the world changes too and death means transformation. And no new things can be understood before there are people who are ready to understand them.

S.: You are a person who does not stay idle for long. What are you working on now that the Saturnian Mist album is done and will be released in just a few days?

A.: Hopefully we can get back on the stages with Saturnian Mist to promote the new album, it has been so long, but this pandemic situation kind of fucked up our previous plans. So we will have to see about that. We did start already rehearsing with Saturnian Mist and prepare the live shows. We performed live last time in 2017 so it has been a while. Some new Saturnian Mist songs in the making, and King Satan is keeping me very busy, despite of pandemic. But you are right, I don’t much stay idle for long, as I am constantly making new music, or music videos or something art related with different projects! No rest for the wicked.

S.: If the current circumstances allow it, are you planning a tour to promote ‘Shamatanic’? (Hoping you return to Bulgaria soon).

A.: We had some preliminary plans about it this current world situation makes it difficult to make solid plans, and many of our members are now also active in other touring bands as well, so their old tour dates needs to be rescheduled first and so on. This pandemic really did a number for music world, right? I hope we can arrange such things again freely soon enough, and I have nothing but great memories from Bulgaria. Last time we had shows in Sofia and Ruse, and also since our Croatian show got cancelled, we got last minute show replacement from Svishtov, and all of this painted me great picture of the Bulgarian People! So I really hope we can return there.

S.: I know that you like Bulgaria a lot and you keep precious memories from your shows here. And to finish this interview properly, leave a message to the fans.

A.: Check out the new album folks and succumb into the dark river of left hand path Shamanism! Hope to see you soon! Thank you for an interview! Chaos is the law!

You can order the album here.