Overall, when you talk about Finnish Black Metal, you are always in for a surprise. It can be as regressive as Azazel or Barathrum, but also as progressive as …And Oceans or genre-defining as Beherit or Horna. But then you also have a band like Hail Conjurer, the solo band of the musician with the same pseudonym, which actually blends all those elements together splendidly. Musically, Hail Conjurer moves into ever wider landscapes without ever really losing sight of the genre’s origins. He never shies away from experimentation; on the contrary, he treats us every time with a record that stretches the imagination further. Time to have a chat with the man behind all this creativity…
Hi there, first of all, thanks a lot for your time and granting us some insight in your current musical activities. With Hail Conjurer you have recently released your newest album, ‘Satanic Phenomenology’. Before I am going into the nitty-gritty of that album with you, how would you describe the creative process around creating this latest offering? Was it any different from your usual way of approaching recordings?
Greetings! First of all, there was more time for putting all the pieces together than I usually have. Since I recorded the “Anti-Dualist” demo in January 2022 I had planned on returning on the slightly more straight-forward and tightly structured metal songs for a full album, but before getting properly onto “Satanic Phenomenology”, during the summer 2022 I did another continuation for the other 2022 demo, as “Ouroboros Lust” takes some element from the “Lunar Action” demo a little further. When “Ouroboros Lust” was released in May 2023, I already had the basic ideas for “Satanic Phenomenology” (including the title and the thematics) ready to be recorded. But instead of getting the album recorded in early June 2023 as planned, due to a small accident which prevented me from playing drums for a little over a month, I was forced into an extra round of pre-production, so to speak haha! So, I spent June 2023 writing the full lyrics ready for the album (for the first time in Hail Conjurer history) and composing and recording all the instrumental and experimental pieces, so when I finally got on the drums and metal songs, everything had a clear place in the whole and the studio work was just about tracking everything down to where they belonged. I left some freedom for instinctive decisions to be made (in the song structures, rhythmic choices or the riff evaluation), but there’s a huge difference in comparison with all the previous albums I’ve made in the amount of that instinctual or improvisational content. But as the original plan was to focus on the more clear and structured song-writing anyway, this partly accidental turn of the process ended up serving well the original vision and its manifestation.
I was asking, because each of your last few albums do sound similar to each other in the sense of using the same cornerstones to build them up with, but they also show a clear difference. A certain intelligent growth, musically. On each successive album your musical visions seems to crystalize a bit more, better even. How would you describe the musical development of Hail Conjurer?
Every release has indeed opened some doors and expanded the horizons. I wouldn’t say the visions crystalize per se, as I see it as a living process which is less about getting closer to some fixed core and more about the revelations through the manifestations, and taking steps into the horizons they open. With every finished album my perspective renews. There is always something reality-altering in the manifestations of Will and the pieces of art work exactly like that: they don’t just serve as a lens to interpret the reality as they also alter the very nature of reality. So with every finished piece, the creation and expression is renewed. Practically speaking, after every album I find myself with new directions to go to, many of them the likes I couldn’t predict when starting the process. Quite often I am left with several doors to be opened, so I am forced either to leave some directions deferred for the further explorations or finding a way to collide them and see where it goes. Thus there is a lot of continuation within the discography, but the so-called crystallization happens on many different levels, sometimes through progression, sometimes regression or even deconstruction.
Something that to me is the most intriguing in the musical concept of Hail Conjurer is your ability to weave together elements from various genres. Although Black Metal is the obvious foundation, but there careful listener is able to unravel bits and pieces out of Death Metal, Noise/Drone, Electro and Doom Metal. Especially the latter seems to be of great importance, slow and menacing riffs are a central part of the music. How would you yourself describe the music you produce with Hail Conjurer? And what would, musically, you consider the main sources of inspiration?
Well, as one who got into Black Metal first through Beherit and Burzum, Black Metal has essentially been an experimental and diverse form of art for me from the start. As I see it, Black Metal cannot be reduced to the mere formula or the instrumentation, unlike the genres you mentioned, but it rather uses the different forms and sounds as tools for transgressing the shallow trivialities and reaching deeper and beyond at the same time. That also makes it a much more profound artform for me than the other genres of rock and metal, even if there is a lot of primal magical power of rock itself. I am not limiting my choices of tools in any way, so any genre, be it some sort of metal or rock or not, can inspire me as any other. If there is some common thread of my creative process, it’s probably the combination of rhythmic and textural, as most of the time I am drawn by some sort of “pulse” and the audial texture which sets up the horizon for the other elements of music.
On a more general level, what would you consider the common denominator in the whole Hail Conjurer back catalogue? You are slowly approaching your ten year anniversary, did anything change when it comes to your way of approaching music and forging your ideas into Hail Conjurer songs?
The music of Hail Conjurer reflects my journey as a whole, so I guess the trivial answer would be that I am the common denominator, haha! In one sense Hail Conjurer already reached the ten year anniversary, as the first album as Hail Conjurer, Ride For Revenge’s “Enter the Gauntlet” just was released almost exactly 10 years ago, and working solo as Hail Conjurer is definitely affected by the initiation into Ride For Revenge. With Hail Conjurer the band, I guess it’s the practical knowledge of recording equipment and such that has changed the most, as it’s been a very “trial and error” sort of process of learning how to find the sounds that I am looking for. So, the more I’ve learnt, the more I’ve freed myself from the technical puzzles and released a lot of capacities into the actual creative process. I guess the difference wouldn’t have been that drastic if I had a habit of writing everything down before the actual recording process. But as I have found that leaving a lot of it to be appeared within the process is working the best for Hail Conjurer, the less I need to be slowed down by the technical difficulties or any other distractions, the further I am able to get. That doesn’t mean that I’ve compromised any of the earlier albums, as my capacities at the time drove the whole process into the somewhat cruder horizons, so nothing was left undone because of the inabilities anyway.
And when it comes to non-musical influences? Judging from various titles it seems you are being inspired by things like magic, occultism and eroticism. Can you tell us something about the conceptual work behind the music?
A lot of my work deals with the Flesh as the nature of Will, which can and in my experience often manifest itself through sexuality and magic. I also consider my creative process essentially sexual and magical too. And most of the time the approach isn’t that much of an intellectual one, but instead of surpassing the limitations of rationality and language by concentrating on the personal, expressional and experiential side of it. Especially on the early recordings the approach was very practical too: instead of focusing on writing the lyrics, even the vocals were mostly serving as a non-linguistic form of expression. Sometimes the song title was the only traceable lyric you could find, and thus a key to interpretation of something I might’ve not fully understood myself either until the album was ready and released. On the later albums the amount of written lyrics has increased a lot and the latest album “Satanic Phenomenology” is the first one with full lyrics written down. But the overall approach on that album is a bit different than the others anyway, as on that one the whole concept is a bit more “philosophical”.
Although you already recorded and released four full-length albums and a handful of demos and (split) EP’s before ‘Earth Penetration’ with Hail Conjurer and all of them have their highlights, to me it felt that with that particular album you started to really find your niche. That album really showcases a certain balance of all those aforementioned elements and formed a homogenous, organic and overall musically mature whole. How do you view such an observation?
I find it interesting that you think so, as the sixth album “Earth Penetration” has a little different approach in my mind. At first, when I recorded the title track, my initial idea was to make an album with nothing but electronic instruments (excluding the vocals), just like the track Earth Penetration is! But I did change my mind during the process and included some of the most “heavy metal” songs of mine in the album, with a huge amount of synths to stretch some of the polarities of the album further apart. So it ended up being a kinda unique mix of those elements, yet at the same time I find a lot of similarities to parts of “Dreams of Serpent” and “Carnal Light”, so it definitely links to the other parts of my discography too.
That you are not limiting yourself musically is not only shown through your music, you have also done multiple collaborations both on stage as well as through recorded music. Can you take us with you on how such collaborations gets initiated and off the ground?
The origins of collaborations is rooted in the urge to expand the expression totally outside the metal category. The collaboration with Metsäkirkko which resulted in “Maailmansyöjä” and one live show started brewing in my mind when I wanted to get further on the path that I shortly visited on Triumphant, the opening track for “Carnal Light”. Even though there’s a variety of elements on Hail Conjurer albums, they are all still supposed to be black metal, so collaborations work perfectly as means of exploring the non-metal spheres more freely. The collaboration with Absolute Key was an idea of Antti Klemi of Absolute Key, a kind of natural continuation to many gigs we’ve played together over the years and the split 7” we already did in 2020. I had already done more experimentations on the noisier stuff at that time, so it was a welcomed detour in the middle of other Hail Conjurer work. Unlike the collaboration with Metsäkirkko, which we got on stage only once, due to it’s more ritualistic and delicate setup (it wouldn’t work in a “normal” metal gig setting), the Absolute Key collaborations has been relatively active live during the 8 months since the release of the “Trident and Vision”. The collaboration is also fairly noisier live than on the record, leaning more towards the industrial noise and power electronics, as we wanted the live interpretations to work as its own, instead of being “just” the live version of the album. Thus we decided to self-release a small number of live tapes too, to be available on the next live collaboration in Turku within a few weeks.
I can imagine that being in such a rather large range of different bands, from Hooded Menace to Ride For Revenge and from Horse Latitudes to Regere Sinister, has some influence on the way of making music. To me it feels that a lot of the elements from these bands also resurface in Hail Conjurer. What do you actually take from the experience with these bands to Hail Conjurer, and vice versa?
As talked already, Hail Conjurer being a personal journey of mine, all my experiences affect the music I do. Every band is obviously a different thing and working with inspirational people also widens the future horizons. I guess the main difference is the variety of Hail Conjurer stuff and the fact that there is no one but me to prevent something being done, so I can make it just like I am willing to, and many times go through the trails that wouldn’t be possible if I had to convince someone else there with me. When the idea of a song of a riff or a beat or an atmosphere occurs, I usually know which band it belongs to. Sure there are some elements that end up to an other band than originally planned, for example when a riff I was having in mind for Hail Conjurer works nicely on a context of Regere Sinister, or when I force an originally heavy metal song into Hail Conjurer realm, but most of the time it’s pretty obvious from the start which belongs to where.
Listening to Hail Conjurer and keeping in mind your wide range of different current and former other musical projects, I can imagine you have a rather wide taste in music. Can you take us with you to your record collection and tell us what you have been buying and listening lately?
I’m usually pretty slow with buying the new releases and the most of the stuff I buy is older stuff, so I surprised myself by having all my favorite albums of 2023 in physical format already:
- Malokarpatan – Vertumnus Caesar
- Akitsa – Devenir le Diable
- Primitive Wings – Morphosis
- Terveet kädet – Kaikki Kaikkia Vastaan
- Clandestine Blaze – Resacralize the Unknown
The newest stuff I’ve found interesting is a Helsinki based trio called Ruusuriimu playing some apocalyptic folk. Their self-titled debut album was just released, but unfortunately it doesn’t have a physical release yet, so I’m hoping that some cool label would take a hint and make it available for me and others to enjoy properly! And talking about new experimental sounds, Nuori Veri has a new tape “NVV” out on Aussaat, you should definitely check it out, as well as the new Metsäkirkko tape “Outo kesytön polku”, which is out on Brownhill Mafia.
Lately I’ve been obsessed with Rose McDowall’s music and I was glad to be able to hunt down Strawberry Switchblade’s self-titled LP. Besides that, I’ve been listening a lot to McDowall’s solo stuff, Sorrow and Nature and Organisation too. Recent obsessions also include the whole discography of Blessed in Sin and Rozz Williams’ era Christian Death.
And of course the best album of the year 2024 so far, Judas Priest’s “Invincible Shield”, has been on an ultra heavy rotation since the release. It’s beyond amazing how they could’ve come up with such a strong record at this point of their career. Definitely their best since “Painkiller”, and in many sense it sounds like a natural continuation for it.
You have released your music through a wide range of different labels, worked with lots of bands and individuals, I think you can be seen as a rather active figure in the Finnish extreme music scene. As an insider, how would you describe your local/native scene. To me, as an actual outsider, the Finnish scene seems to be thriving more than, let’s say, a decade or so ago. I’m curious to hear your points of view on this matter.
Well, I don’t know if I am the right person to describe any scene as I don’t consider myself belonging to any. From my point of view, it’s the active individuals with their own individual visions that makes the underground vital, here or elsewhere. I have a lot of respect for the people I work with, based on their vision and integrity, and that kind of mutual respect is likely to yield interesting collaborations and long-lasting co-operation.
Despite being in a lot of other bands, you seem to keep a rather steady pace of writing and releasing with Hail Conjurer with releasing one album a year with a few EP’s and additional releases on top of that. What can we expect from you in the upcoming months?
In addition to a vinyl release of an album and a couple of compilation releases that are prepared for the late 2024 release, I am actively working with the next Hail Conjurer album and I am just waiting for the time to concentrate on it properly. As I told you earlier, the process itself has a lot of importance on how Hail Conjurer albums occur, and as I want to keep on enabling the burst-like, sometimes instinctual process, I need to wait until I know I can have enough time for such an intense work. But there is no fixed schedule and thus no need to release an album every year, so I don’t promise any date for that. But knowing myself, it’s not something I can keep on waiting for too long, I usually get very restless and distracted if I don’t get the stuff out.
Alright, thanks a lot for your time and answers. Do you have anything to wrap up this interview?
Thanks for your interest! The heat goes on, and there are some live action happening too. Anyone with interesting inquiries, offers and suggestions, feel free to contact me via email: hailconjurer@gmail.com
Pictures courtesy of Tekla Vály and Timo Ketola.
