This Interview was translated by Le Scribe from French....
Hi Famine, and thank you for answering my questions. Can you come
back for us on the foundations of Peste Noire? In 2000 you formed
yourself in Avignon (my city! Editor's note) under the name Dor
Daedeloth (in reference to Tolkien) and you released the demo "Aryan
Supremacy". Can you tell us about the creation of this first training
and the objectives that were yours? Your musical and thematic
influences?
The name Dor Daedeloth had to be adopted for a
week, the demo was released under the name Peste Noire, so we can
consider that Dor Daedeloth never existed. My thematic influences came
from a painter with a slightly tense moustache and my musical influences
were the Toulon and NS Slavic scene. Concerning the objectives, I just
wanted to ask the name of the band before someone found it for us,
because this demo is objectively nil.
The line-up of the band
at that time is composed of you (under the name of Aegnor) but also of
Neige (Alcest) on drums and Argoth on bass (also in Alcest). At the time
PN was founded, you also played in Alcest, which gave two bands to the
same line-up. Can you come back for us on this time? How did you two
meet? How did you distinguish the two projects?
We lived in
the same small town where nothing was happening, so we quickly came
across each other. At first there was only Alcest. Neige was in a black
forest / Scandinavian trip, and I wanted to sound French, dirty, raw,
less sublime and more hateful, with a marked political dimension, so the
split was made naturally but without conflict since he played the drums
on all the demos.
Aryan Supremacy gives us the opportunity to hear a "true" and dirty Black Metal, with openly NS themes. Were you influenced by the Black Legions? I am thinking in particular of Mutiilation? But I am also thinking of groups from the South such as Blessed in Sin from Toulon or In Articulo Mortis from Avignon?
The Black Legions and Mütiilation, yes, totally. For the groups from the south, it was rather Kristallnacht and Lord Voland whose productions I ordered on the Aura Mystique distro paper.
You write the lyrics and play the guitar on Alcest's first demo, "Tristesse Hivernale" in a rather different genre, although also "raw". Can you go back to that recording?
I composed the main riff of "La forêt de cristal" plus another one but from memory I didn't write a text on this demo.
In 2002, you released "Macabre Transcendance" at Drakkkar Prod, the emblematic label of the Black Legions. Does the name change to Black Death come from the fact that you are from Provence, where the Black Death so violently decimated the populations? As far as the demo is concerned, you are then a "duo" with Neige, is that right? Musically we stay in something very raw and violent, with these gloomy screams and this deadly atmosphere. Can you give us your retrospective view of this period? Anecdote, we find on this demo the original version of "666 million slaves and waste" that you cover on your last album. What made you want to make a new version of it?
Best period of my life in my relationship with the BM, the one where I had the most hatred, and this demo is the embodiment of it: a precision of total darkness. For me this tap was more than music, it was a matter of life and death. The rest of my discography is almost a hobby compared to the tension I was able to put in this tape. Concerning the context, it was the time when we were seeing the guys from Drakkkar Productions who were ten years older than us and who put us on the right track: not to confine ourselves to Black Metal but to dig into all the extreme dark styles - which I still do today with rap, the trap being a pool of dark instructions. We often visited them in their castle (they really lived in a big old castle of Pont Saint-Esprit 5 km from my house, formerly used to make ass movies and where the Black Legions had made some recordings, it sets the mood). Noktu made us discover totally underground projects of indus, noise, dark folk etc. We met other Blackeux, the guys from Nuit Noire in particular (during their Black Metal period); there was even a room dedicated to discussions where we talked about philosophy, art, extra-musical projects but always related to black metal. I have a magical memory of that period because everyone who was in the underground BM at that time was either violent or crazy, and the BM physically owned them.
You are quickly noticed for the quality of your texts (being also from Provence, Sade country, I am not surprised). Where does this taste for words and beautiful speech come from?
I am too impulsive to speak calmly, with fluidity and organization, words collide and fight in my mouth when I go out, so that I express myself as a handicapped person under speed. Writing gives you time to organize and search for words, it is a form of revenge against the failures of oral and spontaneous expression. "A stutterer is a born stylist. " (Cioran)
In 2003, the demo "Phalènes et Pestilence - Salvatrice Averse" was released. The medieval atmosphere becomes striking. Do you see this demo as a new direction for PN? Musically, melodies are more present, and the NS side much less so....
It's just a matter of context. I am like a sponge, I can't lie and always immerse myself in the real universe in which I live. At that time I was studying medieval literature at university and it reflected on my music. People don't like the new Black Death because they are looking for what is not there - the soil - but it is totally faithful to the universe in which I am currently living: the dilapidated and peri-urban areas of Kiev, the immense ex-Soviet ghettos. The degenerate part of the new album is the soundtrack of this kind of places, with a greyish, dirty, cold and mechanical industrial and urban vibe, whose architectural equivalent would be Brutalism.
In 2006 you released your first album, which is also a masterpiece. Even today, "La Sanie des Siècles" is still considered by many to be your best album. What do you think of that?
If the majority of people decide that it is the best, it is the best. I try to make a different album for each release, so it's hard to compare and prioritize them, but in the long run it's the audience that decides, not me. According to everyone's taste, "L'Ordure", "Ballade" or "La Sanie" will be the best, but they have little to do with each other. What interests me is experimenting, not doing the same thing twice. The most honestly in the world, I would be able to do a "La Sanie" bis in less than three months, but that doesn't motivate me. Or when I'm poor.
In 2007, the EP "Lorraine Rehearsal" was released. A rehearsal recorded in Lorraine. Musically speaking, we are in the continuity of the album, with a complex and varied music, which some people at the time were not afraid to classify as "avant-garde". You're already talking about "Hooligan BM". What can you tell us about this recording?
It's just a shitty rehearsal on side A and a more elaborate recording on side B, mixed by me. Side A is bland black without interest, but side B is possessed, with a really unique and ancient sound, a deep nostalgia, it justifies this vinyl on its own. The very hilly, disjointed and heterogeneous aspect of the B side comes from the fact that I recorded my tracks on floppy disks limited in terms of recording time, I had to record segments of 3 or 4 minutes and then switch to another floppy disk. I composed my songs accordingly, anticipating pauses from 3 or 4 minutes, then starting again with a new riff on the next floppy disk.
In 2007 comes your second album "Folkfuck Folie". The latter immerses us in themes related to mental illness (with references to Antonin Artaud) and establishes, I find, a new sound for PN, which prefigures all the rest. You leave the "classical" BM for a genre that you create, imbued with sounds almost punk (in terms of sound) and a song that oscillates between pure Black scream and that "degenerate" song of a crazy French singer that you will continue to develop. I love this album because it represents a synthesis of your two musical "eras". What do you think of that?
For me it is the weakest. I love the intro and the last track - "Paysage mauvais" - which were recorded and mixed separately by me, but the sound engineer of this album literally killed the rest of my compositions with his filthy production. The voice, which was ultra aggressive like on "La Sanie" at the catch, sounds like soup, it's a total shipwreck. I think nothing is more frustrating than working on a dozen texts for months to get them blown up in the studio by a disabled person. The worst NP for me, a distant bad memory.
I don't want to "psychoanalyze" you, but your lyrics and the atmosphere of your songs are full of sadness, a sadness that finds its way into hatred? Is it related to Ludovic's story or is it just a "character" named Famine de Valfunde?
It is - or rather it was - reality. I was sad and anxious in the past, especially about the future of France. Then I discovered Ukraine. France is a country of old croutons with 30 Glorious Sauces who have confiscated wealth and passively delivered our soil to a future racial cataclysm that they will not have to assume. If there is no violent and explosive confrontation, there will eventually be a catastrophic lowering of the IQ (it has already begun, no one wants to take on this issue but everyone secretly knows the origin of this sudden drop in the French IQ). Ukraine is a country that is certainly poor, but ethnically preserved (the second truth that must not be told: any homogeneous white society, even poor, lives in a serenity, security and well-being a thousand times greater than any multi-ethnic society, and I am talking to you from a country at war there). Ukraine is also a young country, with a much more combative spirit, when the French became trans people. Of course there are exceptions, of course there are the Zouaves Paris and real resurgences of virility here and there, respect and strength to them, but what I mean is that it is really a minority compared to Ukraine, where here it is widespread on a people-wide scale. French activists give young people little incentive to join or emulate them. In Ukraine being NS, natio, pagan is a winner's trick, it's stylish, young people want to be part of it, they attract girls, when the extreme French right only likes forest trolls or old girls with problems... Once again, I make generalities, I militated with the guys from the Bastion Social and the merit of these young people who work their asses off to help the French in need and in exchange only take the spit from the local population (there were 9 of us against 1000 demonstrators - white - at the opening of the local BS Clermont: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN3JRUa4ID8), the more valuable the police and state inquisition is. But they remain microscopic in number. Everything in Ukraine has given me hope: the youth, its number, its motivation, its level in combat sports. Seven months I've been here and I've become straight-edge, I've lost 15 kg, I train every day with guys who pull me up. I'm not saying this to brag, but to explain that having always been immersed in the culture of a bistro, it wasn't easy, and that you too, you little French pillar of a bar and stuffed with andouillette, can get my Greek god body by coming to Ukraine, not to fuck whores but to sweat all your wine with Azov guys or hools from the FCDK. However, my roots are in France and I will never be able to give up my country completely. I love France for its past, its heritage, its history, and Ukraine for its future; so living between the two is a good compromise. And knowing that I am on a pan-European and not a chauvinist line, I do not see the concern that some narrow-minded people see in it. Never for a second in Ukraine did I feel like a foreigner. What Frenchman can he say that he has never felt like a stranger in France?
Redistribution of food by the Bastion Social in Clermont-Ferrand
Total change of musicians with "Balade cuntre lo anemi francor" in 2009. Neige is gone, as is Winterhalter (who plays with him in Alcest). Did you have a disagreement from that time on? Away from "Folkfuck folie folie", this album is a return to the medieval aspect of "La sanie". The melodies are splendid, as well as the omnipresent darkness. Guitars, sometimes dissonant, are always more surprising. You're an excellent guitarist. Did you learn on the job? Can you come back for us on this album? What was the purpose of this?
In fact, Neige plays the bass on "Ballade", he just took a nickname so as not to fry politically, which in itself was noble on his part, I mean just to play for the music and not for the laurels, without being displayed. The story of this album is simple: I couldn't stand my drummer anymore, he took PN for Slayer or Metallica and he kept talking to me about depoliticizing PN to become manyream and make money. To take a break, I had created an unnamed side-project, just to please myself, quiet on my side: the album was composed in three weeks and recorded/mixed in less than a week by myself, like a demo. It was "Ballade". When I was listening to the album, I thought it sounded even more PN than the two previous ones. So I decided not to change bands for this album, but to change drummers for Peste Noire.
What is "funny" about PN is that, even if you are in the sights of some (Antifa and others), they can't attack you on the quality of the music. I even read a "post" on the internet about one of your concerts, where the guy was trying to shoot the other bands but could only bow to your performance. Doesn't that make you laugh?
What you say exists but I think we shouldn't abuse it because in 80% of cases it's exactly the opposite: people get back at ideas by attacking music. This is particularly obvious with the last one. I listened to what was done in 2018 and with all possible modesty, we still hover above the mass, like a Golden Eagle above the gerbils. In the future, the last album will be revised upwards, I have no doubt about that. Today "Folkfuck folly" and "L'Ordure" are sacred, but personally I laugh because when they came out, these albums were shot down and very violently, "L'Ordure" being compared to Finntroll. At the time I had badly received these criticisms, but today that I know that 95% of the Metal/BM scene has a hamster IQ and are the worst hobos in terms of aesthetics, it touches me one without making the other move. How can we take seriously the tastes of people who dress in rangers and perfecto by wearing t-shirts that are too wide? LOL. I think it's really hard to satisfy our listeners today because when they don't attack music to get back at ideas, they expect too much from us. Our fans are frigid old bitches, they had too many orgasms with each album release, and now that their ears are dilated by miles of sublime riffs, they blame us for not making them come anymore. We've mastered the whole new French scene, everyone's stealing my ideas, so who's the Master? Who's the expert? Is it you, or is it me? If I had any advice for my fans, it would be: first, to commit suicide, second, to judge a NP album only ten years later, because you live, eat, smell, smell, judge my works with a rusty brain that dates back to 1993, while I am already in 2088. Honestly, how can we say that PN is dead when we are still able to produce titles like "Aux armes! ", " Songe Viking ", " Aristocrasse " and " Domine "? At some point you have to stop using drugs.
"L'ordure a l'état pur" is a condensed version of black hatred. When it is released in 2011, we are surprised by the direction, which leaves the medieval shores of the previous one for a more contemporary atmosphere, even if the goal is clearly to spit on modernity and urbanity. Can you tell us about this album and the message it seeks to convey? Musically, the combination of brass and heavy/punk guitars hits the mark! The line-up changes again. Difficulties keeping musicians?
Experimenting with new forms and styles of playing sometimes involves changing musicians. But half the time, it's politics that keeps me from keeping them. People who have a public professional career to pursue burn themselves too violently with PN, so sooner or later they break up on their own. Concerning the album itself, I consider it one of my greatest successes. It is the result of the encounter between my wildest ideas and the ideal sound engineer. You can come into the studio with really crazy compositions and have some shit when you get there. Production accounts for 40% of the work, especially in the BM where the atmosphere prevails. Not only is the sound on "L'Ordure" a haven of sound, a perfect mix of punk, old Hard Rock and BM, but every time I proposed a totally crazy idea, the guy would answer me: "yes it's possible", like Hassan Cehef in the sketch of Les Nuls, and hop, he would put it into practice. One of my best experiences.
After a re-release of the band's demos in 2012, you release the eponymous Peste Noire in 2013, with Audrey still singing (already present since "Ballade...") and Ardraos on drums (Charogne, Sühnopfer). To my knowledge, this is the first time we've heard beats programmed into PN, right? This album is very diverse, with really original instrumental parts, and this song you've been carrying around ever since, straddling between Black and Rural Rap. Your writing has also evolved towards a more raw tone, is it due to the influence of Rap? What do you think of this album?
Yes, it's clearly due to the rap influence. I really like the atmosphere of this album because it smells like a deep Auvergne, with a dog punk production, with the sound of a rusty garbage can. It's an album with a demo sound, I love that kind of approach.
What made you leave Provence for Auvergne?
The climate, the vegetation, the voluntary solitude. I needed to immerse myself in a northern and dark environment - I was served. The surroundings of La Chaise-Dieu are icy, empty, populated by huge fir forests, all the villages are dead, closed, for sale, in ruins. And it is not only from now: in the 19th century, Georges Sand described it extremely sinisterly. In 1931, Henri Pourrat in Gaspar des montagnes, described the area where my house is located as follows: "There are places where the sun seems not to have pierced for worlds of years: it is dark, it is black, it is death". Having spent a full winter in Ukraine, I can even assure you that in terms of temperature, it is much warmer here than at La Chaise-Dieu, where it can snow in May. It's quite funny because I had received the singer from TEMNOZOR at La Chaise-Dieu, who comes from Siberia himself, and he was shocked by the harsh Casadian climate. It was the perfect place to compose "Peste Noire" and "La Chaise-Dyable", and probably other albums in the future.
Then in 2014 comes the excellent split with Diapsiquir "Rat des Villes/Rat des Champs". There is a huge "tube" of NP, "In my night", a real masterpiece. What do you think of this split in retrospect, and of Diapsiquir?
The version of "Dans ma nuit" is more raw and sticky on this split than on La Chaise-Dyable, more trampy in the good sense of the word, but the voice is too drowned out, which is why I re-recorded the track. The title of Diapsiquir is good but their production is horrible. For Diapsiquir, I love "ANTI" but their latest album, except for one track, is an unnamed shit. "ANTI" being a masterpiece, they found the perfect name for the successor by calling it "180 degrés".
"La Chaise Dyable" arrives in 2015 and starts a real game of massacre of self-proclaimed "musical critics" who decide that PN is dead. In bulk, you are accused of having become vulgar, of repeating yourself musically. Personally, that's not my opinion at all because I think this album is perfect as it is, in the sense of the evolution of your evolution. "Le dernier Putsch" is a marvel, and the album contains in it a contagious melancholy and the first germs more frankly rap that we will find in overdrive on the last album. How do you see this album?
Honestly, I don't care. It's done, it's done. Maybe I'll have some perspective in ten years. I think "Le Dernier putsch", "A la Chaise-Dyable" and "Dans ma nuit" are atomic bombs, but the rest could have sounded better with a more adapted production and different arrangements. Regarding the fact that PN dies with each album, it's strange to die making more and more views and sales, but if that's dying, well, I'll keep killing myself.
2018 : Peste Noire/Peste Noire split it. I'm telling you frankly: I consider it your best album to date, so much I was looking forward to what you do on the B side of the record, this incredible mix of Rap, French Song and perfect Black Metal. We discussed it by email at the time of "Black Plague" and it was already in your head. Where did you get your taste for rap? What artists do you like in this genre? I thought of Booba, Seth Gueko... Am I out of my mind?
Seth Gueko didn't, except for his song "Démarrer". Booba, for up to "Ouest Side". I still love his writing but musically after "Ouest Side" I have too much trouble. Right now I listen a lot to the German rapper Gzuz and the most aggressive tracks of 6ix9ine, more a lot of Slavic rap, for boxing and sport it's great. My taste for rap came to me around 2006 when I lived in Avignon, the most dangerous city in France at that time according to the statistics, because this music reflected the world I saw every day. The rap part of the album, called "degenerate", was ready three years ago; I had a lot of problems to release the album and my main regret is that it wasn't released before, because the black/trap tracks would have had a more revolutionary impact three years ago. Also, the fact that rap is a totally contemporary music and uses a new lexical field plus new ways of speaking, regenerates French poetry. Everything that could be done beautifully with the old words has already been done. I appreciate the freedom, malleability and freshness that rap brings to the French language. As for those who think it is anti-traditional and anti-European, the Militant Zone graphic designer pointed out to me that rap battles already existed in Viking poetry competitions, where you had to improvise a text orally to make fun of your opponent, something that you also find in a way in French troubadours in what were called Puys, cities where oral poetry competitions were held.
The last album is a co-production between your label, La mesnie Herlequin, and the Russian-Ukrainian label Militant Zone. How did you come to collaborate with them? What vision brings you closer together?
In 2006 I thought I would invent the term Hooligan black metal because I had never listened to Grand Belial's Key and I didn't know they had invented it before me. I don't particularly like football but for me the Eastern European hooligans are the new arditi. Ukraine must be the only country where the BM really infuses itself into the hooligan scene, partly thanks to MZ. Since the beginning of PN, I have always defended the vision of a WB to be embodied in reality, mixing Art and Violence as the troubadours mixed the handling of weapons with the practice of poetry. Alexey de M8L8TH has some mistakes to his credit (murders), he is a poet and a professional soldier, in terms of street cred I think it is hard to do better. People rage at the video clip of the "Dernier Putsch" but the kalachs are real, and the guys who have them in their hands know how to use them, unlike the rappers in their clips... The graphics of MZ, too, is crazy. Then, I can't dwell on what's private, but the M8L8TH/MZ crew pulled me out of the shit several times when I was there. They are loyal and trustworthy people, backed by experience.
The best Peste Noire album?
The demos.
Your favorite writers?
Me.
On January 26th in Colmar, Dunkel from SALE FREUX, a band you launched with your label La mesnie Herlequin, burned a BLACK PESTE t-shirt on stage, telling the audience: "we're not fachos! "Your reaction?
I will start by saying that when I "signed" him in 2013, he was indeed a French nationalist, but having quickly understood that he was more stupid than a broom, I had distanced myself around 2014, so what about this turnaround? That son of a bitch got all the themes from my music back. I said "son of a bitch" but I should have said "son of God" because I gave birth to him. Without PN, Dirty Freux wouldn't even exist. I must still have somewhere the love letters he wrote to me in 2010, and to which I didn't answer. So instead of burning a t-shirt, I invite anyone who is in contact with this swallower to offer her a filmed fight. In truth, I know in advance that this big wine bag that has the cardio of a carp out of the water will refuse; but his refusal will make the fact that he burned a t-shirt all the more ridiculous, knowing himself that he cannot go any further. I will thus enter into the purest French tradition of fighting which makes a lot of noise but will never take place (Soral/Raptor, Kaaris/Booba).
A word to your critics?
Thank you.
If, from a factual point of view, we are one of the BM groups that makes the most views on Youtube, for political reasons, almost no media is allowed to talk about us anymore (and by the way, thank you for having had this courage). We are like Voldemort: the one whose name should not be said. But the only ones who continue to advertise us by obsessively talking about us, by sharing the cover of the last skeud everywhere because they are outraged, are our detractors, and just for that, I owe them a big thank you! Before Black Death, people paid for advertising. For us, antifa are prostitutes for free.
I repeat the offer I made to you in 2015, if you are interested I would like to work with you on a book on Black Death and I think there is a lot of material! What do you think of that?
When I'm 90 if you want. For the moment, the focus is on music.
Thank you Famine:)
Thank you to you!