The Extreme Metal maniacs of Witchfukker are set to unleash their debut album ‘Tapestry of Unspeakable Horrors’ through De Pankraker Records and Destruktion Records. Fed by the aesthetics and primitive force of the 80’s and early 90’s, their mix of Black, Death, Thrash and even Doom Metal left me thoroughly impressed. More than enough reason to have a conversation with the band about the conception of the debut, their inspirations and visions, and much more.

We appreciate you taking the time to answer our questions. The release of your debut album ‘Tapestry of Unspeakable Horrors’ is upon us. I’m sure it’s been a while in the works so it must be great to have the physical edition in your hands soon. What are you most excited about with regards to your debut release?
There are a couple of things we’re very excited about! First of all we think this is the most aggressive and frantic we´ve sounded yet, everything on this album sounds utterly insane and completely over the top, layers of guitars that all sound like an overclocked chainsaw, drums that vigorously beat you to death and vocals that absolutely agonize the soundscape. On top of that, visually, I designed everything by hand. So to see all of that come together on a slab of wax will be amazing!

Let’s talk a little bit about the process leading up to the record. You started in 2018 and have been releasing a few demos on the way. What did you learn from these demos that in the end prepared you to record a full-length, and when did you decide, we are ready for our first album?
There are a lot of things we learned, the most important two being that preparation for recording is VERY important, the first three demos were all recorded with one single microphone. Don´t get me wrong on this, although we do think these demos all have their individual charm and power, there are some aspects that could have sounded a lot more powerful and impactful in the final result; but I guess that’s why they are called demos. Besides that, we learned that some songs need time to completely develop and grow to their full potential. It’s when you rehearsed songs for a couple of months that you actually start developing new ideas within the already existing structure of that song. For us, it’s those new ideas and perspectives that end up turning the “first draft” or concept of a song into a fully fleshed out track.

We decided we were ready to record our full length after we finished writing the tracks ‘Abyssal Autosarkophagy’ and ‘Nymphomania’. With these tracks we were confident we had every single element down that we wanted on the album. Death metal, black metal, thrash metal and doom metal being our main goals here; with ‘Nymphomania’ being the most doom metal track on the album and ‘Abyssal Autosarkophagy’ being the most varied of all.


The new record contains four brand new tracks but also four tracks that have appeared on your most recent demo ‘Deathhaemorrhage’. You mentioned these songs deserved a better sound, and that’s why they ended up on the album. Out of these, ‘Death Comes Ripping Through’ is a track that first appeared on a rehearsal demo from 2019. What is it about that track that, five years down the line, you still wanted to include it on your debut, while some of the earlier demo songs were left in the past?
‘Death Komes Ripping Through’ being on the full length is something that was Giljam´s idea, at first I disagreed because I wanted a longer and more complicated track in its place. He argued that ‘Death Komes Ripping Through’ was one of the first developments we made towards the sound we have now, aggressive fast paced riffs with doom breaks in it to break up the pace. I agreed, and looking back at it I am really happy we made that decision. It’s a track that really adds to the flow of the album as well as being one of the thrashier tracks on the record. Besides that, it’s also just such a raw and fierce song to play live.

What can you tell us about the four new tracks that make their debut on the album? Are these indeed newly written tracks for the album and how are they different from the older songs?
All these tracks were written specifically for the album. We wanted to write some longer songs with more structural variations while still capturing the same primitive attack as the older songs. For instance, a track like ‘Sordid Aggression’ is very primitive in its songwriting in some aspects, as it is more inspired by tracks like Black Curse from Nifelheim or Lamentation from Blood. But we still wanted it to have some intense tempo switches in the structure to surprise the listener. 

Besides that, all these newly written tracks share some of the same subject matter lyrically; those topics being aggression, obsession, auto-mutilation, dread and delusion.

The album has a raw, overpowering and chaotic sound, as a perfect complement to the untamed music. What did you do to ensure that the production exactly matched the sound you envisioned?
We were very adamant about the album having a raw and powerful sound, so we took some steps to ensure this. During our recording sessions we locked ourselves up in our rehearsal room and didn´t stop until we were done. Drums, guitars and vocals were all recorded in 10 days, we pushed ourselves to our limit and had a damn good time doing it. Recording everything in one go is something we really wanted to do for this album; we didn’t want any long breaks in between recording instruments since the energy and mindset needs to be captured raw and in the moment. We recorded everything without click track, using two eight-track recorders and a lot of borrowed microphones (since we don’t really have any good ones ourselves, hahahaha). For the lead guitar we split the signal over two separate amps by using an ABY-switch, resulting in a crushing guitar sound that sounded very overwhelming. I think this DIY approach we took towards the recording of this record has really helped us in achieving the sound we desired.

The whole album has been engineered and mixed by Max (our bassist and latest member). It was a fukking blast to work with him; not only is he very good at what he does, he’s also a long time friend and that fits right into our dynamic! We had a very specific vision of how we wanted the album to sound, I think it’s really thanks to his engineering and mixing that the album ended up sounding just like we wanted.


I can imagine you had fun making the video for ‘Abyssal Autosarkophagy’, a gory VHS-style visualization of what Witchfukker stands for. We’ll go into the theme in the next question, but first: What made you decide to put the time and effort in a dedicated video clip, and to this track in particular?
It was a lot of fun. I´ve always had a huge passion and admiration for horror and storytelling, both in music and movies. Besides that, I think it’s just a very important and often overlooked part of metal. In the past you had bands like Necrophagia, making insane videos like ‘Through The Eyes Of The Dead’, but bands really don’t make shit like that anymore… I’m gonna put it like this, I really don’t want to see some stupid AI generated lyric video or some high budget video where you´re practicing your rockstar moves in front of a camera. I want to see some old school filthy fukkin’ horror.

There are a couple of reasons that made me choose this specific track, first of all it was the subject matter that just made it so appealing to make a video clip for it. The idea of someone consuming himself alive in sacrifice of a Lovecraftian deity is just so utterly over the top and disgusting, I just wanted to visualize it. Besides that, it’s a track that both Giljam and me think is one of the best from the album.

The video shows a ‘Cut Your Flesh And Worship The Ancient Ones’ ritual in front of the gate of Yog-Sothoth. From this visualization and going through the lyrics, it seems the Necronomicon and works of H.P. Lovecraft have left their mark on the band and album. Can you elaborate on what it means to you?
Lovecraft’s stories have definitely had an impact on me. I think his stories reveal how afraid humans are of the concept of endlessness, how we dread the idea of being insignificant and vanishing in the vast plains of existence. The other aspect of Lovecraft’s stories that make them so interesting for me is the aspect of pure obsession in them, the protagonists in all of his stories are utterly obsessed with knowledge that is forbidden. Both of these ideas have influenced me a lot while writing the track ‘Abyssal Autosarkophagy’. This track is about Azathoth, a deity created by Lovecraft. Azathoth, also known as the BLIND IDIOT GOD, is a deity with no definitive description, as everyone envisions him differently. Yet he is one of the most horrifying concepts Lovecraft ever came up with in my opinion. Azathoth is an Ancient one who is kept in a slumber by his keepers, because if it awakes from its slumber, all will cease to exist. Our reality is a mere dream of this horrifying deity, and can only exist as such. Our past, present and future are all figments of its imagination. On the other side of the story is our protagonist, delusional and fukked in his head as he might be, he wants to awaken Azathoth and enter its realm of existence by offering himself performing an autosarcophagic ritual.


Digging a little bit further into the aesthetics of the album, you have spent a ton of detail on the booklet, with different images representing each song. It looks rugged and twisted, exactly like the music. What can you tell us about the artwork and how important is it to add this visual song by song counterpart to the music?
It’s VERY important, I´ve always loved looking at covers of the albums I’m listening to. When I look at the artwork of an album, I want to lose myself in the world of the music and artwork. When I drew the artwork for ‘Tapestry of Unspeakable Horrors’ I listened a lot to the album itself and really tried to visualize all the ideas we had when writing the songs. In the end I think our album cover perfectly sums up what we stand for and what we are trying to bring across to the listener. This being a vision of disgusting horror, one that crudely portrays the true spirit of ugly and raw old school METAL.

When talking about the importance of visual art in music, I of course HAVE to mention Sadistik Exekution. Rok´s art has had a profound impact on me. The worlds he creates with his art are such an extension of the music itself, a world of pure agony, crudely drawn red hellscapes and demons roaming the dead plains of an endless horrible hellscape. It’s a perfect example of how visual art in metal SHOULD be done.

After years as a duo you recently added a third band member to the fold with the addition of bass player The Agonizer. I’m curious to hear how that cooperation came to fruition, and how has it changed the dynamics in the band? 
Well, Max basically joined Witchfukker as a full time member right after the recording of the full length. He had played with us live before as a session bassist but we really felt that he belonged in the band as a full member after he engineered, mixed and did bass on the album. He was such an integral part of the sound that we decided to take him in as a full time member. He’s got a great and critical eye for songwriting, which a lot of people miss these days. Besides that he has been a friend of ours for years, so I guess the dynamics in the band haven’t changed much. All that’s really changed is that we have an absolutely killer bassist with us now to join us on our future writing and live endeavours. 


I sadly missed out on your shows here in Utrecht but I heard your live show was intense. How do you see the relation and balance between releases and live shows? Can we expect some shows to promote the new album?
To be very honest, we´re always having the best time when we´re rehearsing, it’s recreational for us. We love hanging out, ramming out our frustrations on our instruments and drinking some beers while we’re at it. In my opinion it can´t get any better than that. Since we´re very used to rehearsing together every week, it’s no problem for us to write together and play around with ideas we have for new songs. I do have to say that our songwriting process may be a bit slower since we value taking our time with songs, in order to give them the time to develop naturally. 
As for the album release show, we´re planning one in both Belgium and the Netherlands, hopefully with some good company too! Expect to hear ‘Tapestry of Unspeakable Horrors’ in its entirety and maybe some other older songs from older demo´s too!

Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe you guys are a bit of a younger generation, at least compared to the two 40+ old farts here at The Whispering Darkness. Yet clearly you have a musical style that’s very distinctly influenced by Extreme Metal from the 80’s and early 90’s mostly. How did you guys end up digging far back in the past and basing your band on the likes of Messiah, Damnation, old Slayer and so forth?
To deny the influence of the internet in this would make me a liar, so we’re not going to pretend that we found out about all these amazing bands via tape trading and record hunting. A lot of the bands that we take influence from we discovered together, were shown to us by friends or we found out about them on the internet. I guess the main reason we kept on digging deeper was just because we were both morbidly curious. When looking through all these “proto-death metal” bands there are some real gems in between them. Digging through a whole lot of not so interesting bands to find a band like Infernal Death is just amazing.

Might not be a bold guess based on the band name spelling and your musical style that an act like Sadistik Exekution was at least to some extent an influence on the band. What appeals to you in the music from the bands in this scene?
Sadistik Exekution certainly is a great influence on us, so are bands like Vomitor, Martire and Order from Chaos. I’ll even go out of my way to say that the Australian scene has some of my favorite bands of all time. It’s the absolute fukkin’ chaos and the militant fukk off attitude that really appeals most to us. I do have to say that we have a lot of different influences, we’re not just limited to the Australian death/black metal scene.


What’s your view on today’s Extreme Metal scenes?
I think there are some killer bands in the scene today, bands like Deathhammer for instance, this is a band that lives and dies for metal. But on the other hand, there are a lot of problems with the scene too. One of the main problems with the “Extreme Metal scene” is the urge to be appealing to a large audience. Easily digestible, overproduced crap with the same boring double bass “Speed metal” riff in every song. Making sure that you keep an eye on the newest trends and get enough likes on your Instagram posts. Sucking dick for a bit of attention and paying large companies like Facebook to put out sponsored ads of your new upcoming single, to be released digitally on Spotify, Bandcamp, Apple Music and Soundcloud! Also, don’t forget to buy our merch! Support your local scene!

Fukk you.

Though, essentially there’s nothing wrong with having social media or using streaming services, these are tools made to share your music. It’s the way you use these tools that actually make the difference. If you’re just looking to boost your ego and make a lot of money, then just become an influencer or start your own company instead. “Extreme metal” should be militant and completely over the top, not this corporate crap.

Now that I got all that off my chest, here’s some cool bands you definitely need to check out; Omega Vortex, chaotic paranormal death metal from Germany, Sepulcher, devastating thrash from Norway, Faceless Entity, audial thanatophobia from the Netherlands, Spirit Possession, weird black metal from the US, Markgraf, experimental heavy/black metal from Germany.

There’s nothing that says more about a person than what music has been playing on heavy rotation recently. What albums, or EPs or demos have you been listening to on heavy rotation?
That’s true! There are a couple of records that have been on repeat for me lately, starting with Roky Erickson – ‘The Evil One/Light in the Attic’. This record is just amazing in its own right, Roky´s songwriting is just magical, every track on this record is just written with absolute passion and love. Second has to be G.I.S.M – ‘Detestation’”’, a record that has changed my view on punk completely. It’s raw, chaotic and VIOLENT in nature. The songwriting on this album is absolutely unique, fast hardcore punk riffs fueled by classic heavy metal power! And third, but certainly not least is Aura Noir – ‘Deep Tracts of Hell’, this record is just batshit insane, it’s a perfect example of how black thrash should be done, the intricate song structures and the technicality of the riffs is such a breath of fresh air in the genre. It’s a perfect record that keeps delivering every time I listen to it.

Giljam: A few records I’ve been listening to a lot lately would be Sepultura’s ‘Morbid Visions’, Repulsion’s ‘Horrified’, and Dust’s ‘Hard Attack’. I regard all 3 of those records as important classics in their respective genres. ‘Morbid visions’ is one of my favorite records ever recorded. It perfectly captures the raw, unfiltered and filthy essence of early death metal. Real deathrash the way it’s supposed to be done. My second pick ‘Horrified’ is a seminal cornerstone in grindcore and death metal that frequently enters rotation for me. The raw aggression and genuine uncompromising character of the record have kept me coming back to it for years. This record will never seize to deliver. When it comes to my third pick, Dust’s ‘Hard Attack’ is a record that I’ve just never gotten bored of. It’s one of the best hard-rock records of the 70’s, but it’s one that is often forgotten or overlooked. The drumming on this record is pounding yet intricate, the bass is thunderous yet melodic, and the intriguing melodies, song structures and dynamics of the tracks are a testimony to the top-notch musicianship of this band.

I think that satisfies my curiosity for now. Once again, well done on a beast of a record and we appreciate your time to answer our questions! Anything you want to add, the stage is all yours!
Thanks for the interview, the questions were very interesting to answer!
If you’re interested in getting our album for yourself, definitely keep an eye on De Pankraker, the presale should start on the first of July! 

KILL FOR METAL, BLEED FOR METAL, DIE FOR METAL.