WATAIN Frontman: 'Black Metal Is Music For Ambitious, Large-Thinking People'

Shannon Joy of the LA Music Blog recently conducted an interview with Erik Danielsson of Swedish black metallers WATAIN. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

LA Music Blog: "Lawless Darkness" was released earlier this year through Season of Mist. Now that you've had a chance to play some of the new material live, how has the response been?

Erik: I'm pretty delighted by the response and by the way we managed to make the songs work live because it was not... I don't know; nothing is a sure thing. And you never really know how it's going to feel when you just have an album out, and you're going out for the first tour and pretty much replacing at least 50% of the set with new stuff. But I think that with all the response that this album has gotten through magazines and so on, and especially from the fans, I think that people actually came to the concerts to hear the new stuff, or at least so it seemed. It's been very, very rewarding, and it's good to see that it works. And for us, personally, I think the highlight of the new concerts so far has been the new material. So it's good.

LA Music Blog: Prior to its release, you referred to the album as "the return of black metal." Did you fear any sort of backlash from making such a bold statement?

Erik: Well, of course. It was meant as a provocation. But not a provocation just for the sake of being provocative, but for people to try to think and to wake up. I think black metal has been treated a bit poorly in the last years, and it doesn't all have to do with the bands or the labels or releasing albums, but actually has a lot to do with those who are involved in the genre in general — that includes the fans as well. And of course, a lot of people have said, "that's an arrogant thing to say" and "What about this band?" and "What about that band?" But frankly speaking, if one would compare black metal these days to what it once was, we had to take it to a point where there was a matter of either a rebirth or a funeral, and in this case, we preferred a rebirth. What we mean is that WATAIN has the ambition and the power to take black metal to where it should have been by now. People have been lazy and unambitious; black metal is music for ambitious, large-thinking people. I hate to see it being left to just copycats and visionless so-called artists. This genre demands cocky motherfuckers like us that are willing to do something with it.

LA Music Blog: You've said in the past that black metal isn't necessarily the most important thing to you, but Satanism is. What exactly does being Satanic mean to you and to your life in general?

Erik: Well, Satanism is first and foremost a religion and can be defined in many ways. Everyone knows that Satanism has its gods and it has its oaths and traditions and its ways of work. And the main difference between a Satanist and say, a follower of the general world religions, is that a regular Christian is devoting his life to his god and the will of his god. He devotes his life to please that god, and he devotes his life to do the work of his god. A Satanist is different in the sense that I am sliding for not only a union, in fact, a transcendence and an aspiration into my god. And for a Satanist, it is not a sin but it is a blessing to be elevated and to transcend onto the level of a god, which in most religions, is something unthinkable and something extremely blasphemous and threatening. Everything that I do in my life, everything that I am working with, especially WATAIN — which, of course, one could say is the most central aspect of my life — but all of these things are a way for me to communicate and to familiarize and to bond with and eventually become one with. To me, it is a search for my home, a way to get back to where I belong.

Read the entire interview from the LA Music Blog.

Quality fan-filmed video footage of WATAIN's October 27, 2010 performance at Baroeg in Rotterdam, The Netherlands can be viewed below (courtesy of "letthedeathmetalflow").