REVENANT MARQUIS: AN INTERVIEW BY NEILL JAMESON AND THE PREMIERE OF “ALL THE PLEASURES OF HEAVEN”

(On October 6th Death Prayer Records will release All the Pleasures of Heaven, the final album by the Welsh black metal band Revenant Marquis. Today we are privileged to present an interview by Neill Jameson (of Krieg) with S., the person behind Revenant Marquis, followed by a premiere stream of the new album.)

It becomes difficult, after being involved in a scene for so long, to overcome that jaded, nearly apathetic feeling and truly lose yourself in someone’s music fully. For the last few years I’ve felt this way about Revenant Marquis. Truly unique and disturbing black metal, created alongside an unnerving aesthetic, Revenant Marquis stands as one of the most authentic voices of horror in a cacophony of lesser acts vying for attention.

Manifesting his first recording in 2019, Revenant Marquis has cast a long shadow across twelve public releases, with his newest, All the Pleasures of Heaven being the final, and darkest, spell he has brought to life. Today we have the honor of presenting this record to you as well as the final words from the man himself.

My sonic introduction to the project was through his split with Lamp of Murmuur, though I had seen advertisement from the Les Fleurs Du Mal label for Youth in Ribbons, which piqued my curiosity. The Victorian child, awash in a green hue, was striking, not just in the strength of the visual but in that you especially didn’t see this kind of imagery unless it was on a Woods of Infinity release, though unlike them there was nothing grossly sexual about it, rather it was haunting and melancholic. Musically, Revenant Marquis can be described exactly as that: haunting and melancholic. Cavernous and demonic, it was “The Turn of the Screw” put to sound.

Anyone who is generally familiar with me knows that I’ve felt this project continues to get better and better. I can firmly state that All the Pleasures of Heaven is his best record. Heavy, foreboding, feeling like it was recorded a few rooms away in an old, abandoned mansion, this is the perfect statement to put the project to rest. But enough from me, here’s our conversation:

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I suppose we should start with the most obvious question, that being; why is this the final Revenant Marquis record?

I’ve always seen the order of things like the inside of a machine, and those discs and pieces spin in a circle like clockwork, the same, over and over from decade to decade. Things line up, work, or they line up and they tell you when it is time to finish. There are omens, signs, symbols, the abyss will tell you when to move or stop. It’s told me to stop. Everything has lined up for this final ritual, so I have to obey. I would like to continue but I am void. I am completely exhausted from channelling.

 

I would like to take a few steps back (and forward) before we really dig into the new one: when you initially created Revenant Marquis, what was your original purpose with it?

It was purely an occult practice, first and foremost a means of harnessing forces and expelling them into being. I was also consumed by hatred. I wanted to release that bile, and I wanted to return as quickly and as deeply as I could to profound practices. These rituals only saw the light of day, in the first instance, because a friend pushed me to put them out there otherwise they would have been nowhere.

And now that we’re at the end of the journey, has that purpose stayed with you over these years and do you feel as though it’s been achieved?

People have missed the point on what I do and have hated it for the wrong reasons. They talk about muffled production, blown out sound, how it’s stupid. This is fine, but they’re missing the point of the whole thing.

Some people think that Black Metal is about arrangements, and riffs, and mechanisms that govern music. They think it’s a fashion of sorts, something to be picked up and played with, like it’s rock music. That’s not the case for me, and should have never been the case for Black Metal. It is the music of the Devil, in the truest sense of the word it is devotional in its core intent.

On the other hand some people love what I do, but again for the wrong reasons. However, there is a very small select few that understand, and connect in an occult sense with the project. It sets them into a mind set, it makes them picture things, takes them to a place. That is the achievement, that it connected to those people in that sense, and the ritual is completed.

 

Regardless of what uninteresting people say, black metal is obviously more than just music to many of us and one facet of that is however we present the visual side of things. That said, Revenant Marquis has a very obviously thought out aesthetic that has stayed consistent while evolving. If you had to describe this aesthetic how would it be done and why has it been so obviously important to have such a strong visual element to your music?

The notion of lost innocence is a huge part of the project because this is a highly charged concept. Both physical and metaphysical shadows lie in wait for innocence to undo or destroy it. Time lies in wait to rip youth to ribbons. We are always undoing, and that is always reflected in the presentation. That presentation becomes part of the ritual process also. A true and very ugly evil is in the blood of my family. There are many Demons and monsters so I acknowledge its presence in the confinement of these aesthetics, and expel it through sonic rites.

 

You draw much of your inspiration from, at least from my perspective and I could be wrong, from Welsh and English occultism and ghost stories. Am I far off and what about these topics fascinate you?

The Devil has hung around my neck since I was five years old, and that weight shapes everything.

Much of your music has a very distant, haunting sound to it. I’ve compared it to being recorded in the next room over in a Victorian haunted mansion. There’s a spaciousness to your music, almost a sonic mist, that blurs the line between black metal and otherworldly dark ambient. This seems somewhat common with members of the Pembrokeshire Black Circle. How did you come to such a sound?

By using the same equipment we have been using since about 1992. I remember back then recording was frustrating, wanting to sound a little crisper, wanting to do things that were financially prohibitive. Now, that sound becomes charged by the passing of time, it becomes more powerful just by its association to that past, that was more pure and true.

 

The spaciousness I described previously has become more claustrophobic and violent, noticeably on Milk Teeth and especially on All the Pleasures of Heaven. Was this a conscious shift or do you feel you’ve just organically evolved to this point?

It’s not intentional. With Revenant Marquis how something comes out through the ritual is how it is, and will be. I do not sit down and figure out riffs, things just come on the day and then are committed through the process to the record. People don’t believe this, which is fine. I’m not trying to impress anyone, or anything. I don’t care if people believe this, because it is how it is. It just forms then and there like channelling, like mediumship.

 

I greatly enjoy all of your records but one I find a lot of personal attachment to is the Orphans EP. What are your memories surrounding that one?

That’s a strange one to pick out. Thank you. Those pieces were thought to be lost on the Anti-Universal Compassion sessions. At the time, the original black attic studio was in a different location and due to damp the tracks were inaccessible. A friend in the circle saved them, and tried to use the same set ups on another piece of equipment. That’s why those rituals sound so different to everything else. There is about another record’s worth of rare Revenant Marquis bits and pieces that Death Prayer will release in the future if they feel they want to, so perhaps that will also be to your taste.

Moving on to the new record, All the Pleasures of Heaven, I’m fairly certain (to me) this is your finest record. While not as distant or ghostly as some of your other work there is still an uneasy eeriness permeating throughout, with layers of instrumentation and some very dense and heavy moments. Are you proud of how you’re ending the project?

Very. Working with Obskuritatem gave the whole thing a different life. His aggression makes the record feel like the start of something rather than its end. Ironic. The rituals on this release were the most painful to do also, they took the most out of me. I think the whole thing reeks of occult focus, and diabolical intent.

 

A vague question but describe what the record is about.

I would rather not go into this. It is for you whatever it is for you.

 

Two songs I’m especially curious about are “Black Metal” and “Bliss”. The second being the end of the record, this would seem to be your last act as Revenant Marquis. Would I be correct in thinking that it represents the relief/catharsis at the end of the journey?

Absolutely, that’s correct. There had to be absolute focus, and concentration throughout and I wanted that magick pureness, as well as the pureness of early Black Metal to be present throughout without compromising the channelling involved in the rituals. It was a balancing act but it was achieved. I could not do it again.

 

I’ve been told you find the act of creating this music to be exceptionally draining?

Without it being draining the records would sound like a tribute act. IT has to be real, or there is no point, it has to be a ritual with structure and order over the channeled chaos of the music, or it is pointless. That balance is draining, channelling spirit is draining

Visually and musically, what are the most important artists you draw influence from?

Musically, early Kate Bush, the first two records so, The Kick Inside, and Lionheart. She was a witch at this period and those records are unsettling, and charged either consciously or unconsciously with hermetic fire. After those two she fell away from that flame and just made music.

Visually, things just come to me, I found a lot of the images used on my releases buried in the cellar of my house, so in a sense they were given to me by hidden hands

 

What makes the bands of the Pembrokeshire Black Circle so unique? Every project I’ve listened to that is involved has something very special to what they create. Will you still be involved somehow?

It is all governed by a set of principles, a set of rules that unite everything as with any secret order. It’s not that secret however, as you know about it, but people in Pembrokeshire, local people I mean, have absolutely no fucking idea who, or what we are. They don’t even know it exists.

 

We’ve come to the end of this: the final statement is yours.

Thank you for connecting to the work

 

Bass and drums on the album were performed by O. of Obskuritatem. All The Pleasures of Heaven is available now through Death Prayer Records via the links below. And after the links you’ll find our premiere stream of this remarkable new album.

https://revenantmarquisuk.bandcamp.com/album/all-the-pleasures-of-heaven
https://www.deathprayerrecords.com/product-tag/revenant-marquis/