AN NCS INTERVIEW: NEILL JAMESON (IMPERIAL) OF TWILIGHT, KRIEG

 Interviews  6 Responses »
Mar 042014
 

(NCS writer BadWolf interviewed Neill Jameson of Krieg and Twilight, whose third and final album is due for release in a couple of weeks. To say it’s a wide-ranging, no-holds-barred discussion would be an understatement. You don’t want to miss this.) 

When it comes to the US Black Metal movement, few individual musicians have made as much of a splash as Neill Jameson. He released his first demo tape as Imperial in 1995—just a year after Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. In the nearly twenty years since, Jameson has produced raw and honest “bedroom” black metal as the sole member of Krieg. Many consider his 2004 LP The Black House to be essential USBM listening. There will be a new Krieg album this year on Candlelight, but first Jameson needs to live through the press cycle for the third Twilight album, III: Beneath Trident’s Tomb.

Jameson had his hands full recording III, dealing with a rotating cast of characters. Twilight has been blighted by negative media attention since the arrest of founding member Blake Judd (also of Nachtmystium). Judd is now out of the band, but Thurston Moore of esteemed noise-punk outfit Sonic Youth is in. Alongside them stands super-producer Sanford Parker, as well as Stavros Giannopoulos of The Atlas Moth and Wrest of Leviathan. These five musicians are giving Twilight the swansong the project deserves.

Jameson took time out of his busy schedule as proprietor of a record store (the man’s Facebook posts, often putting his own customers on blast, are among the funniest you’ll read) to talk with NCS about the tumultuous story of Twilight, from beginning to end. Continue reading »

LEVIATHAN: “HER CIRCLE IS THE NOOSE”

 Metal News  7 Responses »
Sep 022011
 

Leviathan is a one-man American black-metal project whose alter ego is Jef Whitehead (a/k/a Wrest). Whitehead has been making Leviathan music since at least 1998, including 15 demo’s, 7 splits, two EPs, and four full-length albums, the last of which was 2008’s Massive Conspiracy Against All Life. Whitehead also collaborated with Nachtmystium’s Blake Judd and the multi-talented Sanford Parker in a project called Twilight that created a highly regarded 2010 album entitled Monument To Time End. Despite my continuing efforts to become better educated about black metal, my exploration of Leviathan has been limited (by time) to just a few tracks from the last album, but it’s clear that the name is one to conjure with in circles of the black metal intelligentsia.

Over the last year, Whitehead has gained notoriety for reasons other than his prowess as a creator of distinctive music: He is facing criminal charges for assault on his former girlfriend. You can read about the details here or here. In an interview of Blake Judd conducted earlier this year by our own BadWolf, Blake Judd questioned the accuser’s credibility, and he doesn’t appear to be the only person who’s doing that, but the charges are still pending.

Today, Pitchfork published an interview of Whitehead, the first time he’s given an interview in close to a decade. In addition, Pitchfork premiered a new song from Leviathan’s next album, True Traitor, True Whore, which is scheduled for release by Profound Lore on November 8. Pitchfork’s Brandon Stosuy, who conducted the interview, has heard the album and calls it “one of the best metal albums of the year.” In a different interview, Chris Bruni, the head of Profound Lore, called it “very creepy, dark, eerie, and quite disturbing and unnerving” and “different than anything Leviathan has done.” I haven’t heard the album, but I did listen to the new song.

It’s called “Her Circle Is the Noose”. It’s a harrowing piece of music, clattering with off-kilter drumming, shrouded in a haze of melodic tremolo chords punctured by electronic pulses, and charged with Whitehead’s visceral, hair-raising vocals. Worth hearing — which you can do by following this link.

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NACHTMYSTIUM

 Interviews  19 Responses »
May 012011
 

(NCS contributor BadWolf caught up with Nachtmystium’s Blake Judd, Will Lindsay, and Sanford Parker before the band’s live performance at Harpo’s in Detroit on February 25, 2011, and conducted this very interesting and revealing interview, which includes candid comments about doing business with record labels, some news about Nachtmystium’s next album, including a working title that appears to have been conceived during the interview, and some eye-opening comments by Blake Judd about the rape charges now pending against Jef Whitehead (aka Wrest), the frontman of Leviathan and a Nachtmystium collaborator. BadWolf proves again that he knows how to do this interview shit . . .)

BW- So how’s the tour going?

Blake Judd- Tour’s going really well so far. The Cradle of Filth guys have been super cool to us, which was our biggest concern. Not that we had any reason to worry but they’re a big band and we’re not and we’re playing direct support to them.  We thought we would be treated like we’ve been treated before which hasn’t been the case. Kids are coming out. The crowd reaction has been sort of eh; some people seem kind of confused by it.

BW- But that’s your career though, isn’t it?

BJ- There’s truth in that, too. The tour is good though. We’ve had more problems with our internal, like, with our bus company than anyone else as far as the people we deal with on a day-to-day basis.

BW- At first I was really puzzled by the bill and then it started to make sense to me. Cradle of Filth is a band where you can ask ‘is it Black Metal?’ Well, what is Black Metal, anyway? It is Black Metal but it’s reaching out of that sound in a way, which is what you guys do as well, so it ended up making sense to me. Did it make sense to you?

BJ-I don’t give a shit, personally. We come from a world where most members of bands I know would take joy in beating the shit out of someone from Cradle of Filth. That’s the world I come from. I don’t care about that anymore, I’ve been over that for a long time and do my own thing. We haven’t really found our crowd. We don’t have beards or a mountain of Sunn amps, so we don’t appeal as much to the hipsters. The people we work with deal more with bands like Cradle of Filth than bands we might listen to in our free time. It’s strange but we’ve got a good thing going, a good crew of dudes. The crowd certainly doesn’t seem to dislike us. We’re further proving ourselves to be a flexible band, which is important. I don’t know, what do you think? Continue reading »