FORGOTTEN TOMB
Interview with Ferdinando 'Morbid' Marchisio by Diego "Ildanachh"
It can be heard a certain difference in the style of your first "Obscura Arcana Mortis" an on your debut...What are for you the main difference in term of inspiration, influences, lyrics "and so on"
There
is definitely a big difference. The old MCD was Misanthropic Sick Black Metal,
in the vein of "De Mysteriis..." by MayheM but with some soft
depressive shades too. The direction I took after the MCD is Depressive Dark
Black Metal. This is due to a natural progression, both personally and
musically. During the years I became always more depressed, melancholic and
misanthropic, and I think these feelings have been reflected in the new songs. I
felt the need to change a bit my musical and lyrical direction towards something
more depressive and suicidal, expressing my inner torment. I will talk about the
musical influences later. Regarding my inspiration during the songwriting of
"Songs to Leave", it came from various obscure and depressive feelings
and thoughts. Coldness, loneliness, sadness, melancholy, suicide-fixation,
sickness, misanthropy, hate, darkness, self-injuries, all these things inspired
me a lot for both music and lyrics. Compared to "Obscura..." the new
lyrics are more personal and depressive.
Notwithstanding the obvious differences, Isn’t there a communication between you music, that you call "Dark Depressive Black Metal" and hypnotic and depressive doom-sombre music, like some Unholy songs, or better the incredible Finnish band Dolorian?
Yes, as you know, I like Depressive and Raw Black Metal as well as extreme Doom/Death, so it’s natural for me to mix these 2 influences to create an utterly depressive and suicidal proposal. I love Dolorian, they’ re one of my fave bands and I feel really sick every time I listen to their music. They’ re an influence for FT, but I have more Black Metal influences compared to them. Anyway, I’ m a real Doom supporter. I love the old Doom (Saint Vitus, Obsessed, etc.) and the Doom /Death of the 90’s, I advise the listeners to check out Burning Witch’ s "Crippled Lucifer", I listened to it recently and it’s fucking amazing!
Are you visually inspired by some kind of scenario or emotively by the essence of some particular events?
Surely
some places inspire me during the songwriting: deserted houses, for their grim,
old and rotten atmosphere, train stations and subways, for their obscure apathic
sickness, industrial and urban zones, for their grey, desolated and depressive
mood. I’m also inspired by the sadness and by the sick atmospheres of the 4
seasons. Summer, Winter, Spring and Autumn possess different but always eerie
and depressive feeling, but you have to be really particular as I am to feel
some sick sensations in Summer, for instance.
Is
Selbstmord rec., together with your band, contributing to a sort of corruption
to the roots, directed to destroy every form of expectations about life and
future?
Besides
any personal meaning, FT is a way to express and to spread Suicide-Propaganda
through the listeners. My music could be useful for some intelligent people to
look into themselves, discovering a new meaning for pain and depression, and on
the other side it could influence other shallow people towards absolute
self-destruction, depravation, madness, murder and hopefully suicide. Some
people are really simple to manipulate, especially the young ones, and my
message could be very important to inspire them towards those kind of things.
The 99% of the people is represented by fucking morons and meaningless pathetic
beings, and honestly I don’t give a damn fuck if they die. If someone will
kill himself and someone else will blame it on FT, I will print T-Shirts to
celebrate our victory, ha ha! I’m serious. I spread a negative message, if
someone will follow my words killing himself, well, I will have no remorse. I
only hope this will not happen to the people I consider as "friends"
(a few ones indeed), because my propaganda obviously is not against them.
Anyway, as all the other Selbstmord Services bands, to audially harass the
listener is my main purpose! Various kind of perversions and self-injuries are
permitted while listening to FT. And be known that Selbstmord prints thousand of
copies of our albums because we have to reach a good number of listeners to
spread the plague.
What
Do you think of the other Selbstmord bands?
I
love all the Selbstmord bands, I think they release some of the best bands of
the current Black Metal scene. SHINING are no more on the label, but they’re
absolutely one of my fave bands and they’re always able to create really
terrifying albums. CRAFT are fucking raw Black Metal, I love their old-style
attitude, they’re very good because they’re able to maintain a real "groove"
while playing Black Metal. They have a true Hellhammer/Celtic Frost feeling and
this is great! ONDSKAPT are probably my fave band, their style is incredibly
grim, sick and obscure, they are darkness incarnated! I can’t wait to listen
to their new opus! KROHM is another great band, very grim and eerie, between
Burzum and Manes, so I love it! ZAVORASH are a bit different from the usual grim
and depressive Selbstmord bands, in fact they’re more straight swedish Black
Metal with some melodic touches, they remember a violent version of Dissection
in some ways, and I like their vocals, they’re pretty original. LEVIATHAN are
damn good too, they possess a really evil and sick feeling! For the old bands,
JOYLESS were definitely strange but I use to listen to 60’s music, so I think
they were pretty good. FUNERAL DIRGE were similar to old Thorns, they were
another good band and it’s a pity that they’re disappeared.
Do
you believe in a form of profane apocalypse, when mankind will turn to ashes by
itself?
I
would like to believe in it, but it’s difficult to turn dreams into reality!
Anyway, in a future, I think a total apocalypse caused by men’s ignorance will
be possible: pollution is becoming an enormous problem, and men keep on
destroying and raping nature, so I think that one day oceans, earthquakes, etc.
will erase mankind. This is what I hope!
What’s
for you the meaning of self-mutilation, an escape from the physical form or an
expression of sadness and internal suffering, or something else?
It
depends on various things... Usually for me is an expression of suffering and
disheartenment, but sometimes
it could be a way to express my scorn and anger towards myself, towards life and
people. Sometimes I feel caged in this fucking human shell so I feel the need to
injure myself to feel unhuman and to regain the psychical sanity. I used to cut
myself especially in the past, because I was really depressed, and sometimes I
felt the need to cut my flesh and let the blood flow to erase the pain... It was
a sort of painkiller for me. Now I hurt myself when I need it, often when I’m
angry, when I’m stressed or when my nerves start to fall. Sometimes I also
like to see and to feel the blood streaming from my body... Sometimes before to
play live I use to cut myself too, because it helps me to enter the right mood
and when I see the blood I become a fucking unhuman beast.
Who
can be considered an elite in your vision?
Who?
I don’t know. I consider Selbstmord Services as an élite, for instance.
Surely in the Black Metal scene there are a lot of idiots considering themselves
as an élite, but they only remain fucking idiots.
You
say to "hate the actual false morals", so you think that to be an age
of decadence, but do you think that there was a period of the human history
where the situation was different, if yes, what?
Actually
I said "the current false morals" only because this is the age in
which I live, but I don’t think it was different in the past. But surely there
were less shallow things in the past centuries. This world is falling to pieces,
and I have to be the plague, I want to infest it and mock it.
Isn’t
that actual world too materialistic and uninterested in the intellectual insight
to understand your inner message?
Yea, surely. But it’s obvious, "normal" people will never understand some kind of concepts and lifestyles. I need the stupidity of the current society, because it helps me to hate people in a stronger way.
What’s
about politics...Isn’t black metal too anti-human to deal with those warm
matters??
Yea, that’s for sure. I’m definitely bored by all these fucking political messages in the Black Metal field. I’ve been claimed as a nazi in the past only because I included some pictures of killing fields in my old MCD, no one understood that the concept of killing fields was referred to anti-human tendencies, not political tendencies. Well, I explained this story 1000 times, so fuck everyone! I hate you all and your subhuman world, fuck politics and everything else that is different from Death. The only topic to be explored into Black Metal lyrics must be anti-human and strictly based around the longing for Death. Everything else doesn’t exist for me
Is there a reason for you why the core of Black Metal has almost always been the northern side of Europe, I ask because I see the in Italy is almost the same, in the southern side there’s much more thrash metal instead of black metal bands?
I
really don’t know, I could start to talk about the usual things such as "the
cold weather", "the darkness", etc. , but I don’t think it
really depends on these things. I only noticed that in the northern europe many
people start to play in a younger age compared to the rest of the world, so
it’s simply to find damn good young musicians. Many guys in the Selbstmord
bands are younger than me, but they’re incredibly skilled musicians.
Everything there is very different from Italy.
Some word about the Italian Scene...
I’m definitively bored by this question... I answered to something like 40 interviews ‘til now and I found this question for each one... The worst thing is that I hate the italian scene and I don’t give a damn fuck of the other bands... So I have nothing to say about it... I only support a few bands and they know who they are.
About Black metal bands who are become famous, like Immortal, Dimmu Borgir, they lost the sadness of the early release (For All Tid, Stormblast, Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism) thinking much to the success and to its lights of illusions, will they awake from the dream turning back to nightmare, is Black Metal a genre that can really land to a strong commercial triumph?
Well, as you can see, those bands are selling very good so it’s possible to gain money with Black Metal... But True Black Metal is surely not like current Dimmu Borgir or Immotal, so I don’t think that you will become a rockstar if you play underground stuff. I think that it is good to sell some thousand copies, but not too many. Anyway, I think there won’t be this problem with FT... Anyway, I don’t think that those old bands like Immortal, Satyricon or MayheM will ever come back to the old days, they lost their attitude through the years. Apart from the commercial purpose, I think nowadays they’re really unable to write good old Black Metal songs, as I told you, they lost their sick underground spirit and attitude.
Your
preferred bands and albums…
Well, I listen to various kind of music so it’s always difficult to quote my fave albums/bands and stuff like that. Anyway, I will only speak for Black Metal/Doom Metal. Fave bands: Abyssic Hate, Shining, Dolorian, Craft, Evoken, Burning Witch, Mutiilation, MayheM, Darkthrone, Deathspell Omega, Katharsis, Ondskapt, Manes, Krohm, Burzum, Forgotten Woods, Graven, Katatonia, Silencer, Deinonychus, Thou Shalt Suffer, old Emperor, Throne of Ahaz, old Thorns, Watain, Tsjuder, Bethlehem, Xasthur, Satanic Warmaster, Ildjarn, Grotesque, Necrodeath, Dissection, October Tide, Strid, old Paradise Lost, Diaboli, In the Woods, old Samael, old Bathory, and others I surely forgot... Fave albums: MayheM- "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" & "Live in Leipzig", Darkthrone- "A blaze in...", Abyssic Hate- "Suicidal Emotions", Burzum- "Filosofem" & "Det som engang var", Shining- "Within deep dark Chambers", Bethlehem- "S.U.I.Z.I.D.", Manes- "Under ein blodraud...", Katatonia- "Dance of December souls", Dolorian- "When all the laughter has gone".
When do you think that the Forgotten Tomb’s objective will be reached?
When some subhuman morons will cut their wrists in the name of FT!
Future
plans?
The
new album, definitively titled "Springtime Depression", will be
recorded during January 2003 at The Abyss studios in Sweden with Mr. Tommy
Tagtgren as sound-engineer. Wedebrand (ex-Shining) will play drums on it. I will
play all the other instruments as I always do. The album will include 6/7 songs
(plus intro & outro) of utterly depressive and suicidal Dark Black Metal, I
can assure you it will be a real monument of nihilism and it will rise in you
deep and nocturnal atmospheres. It will be a bit different from "Songs...",
but there will be no drastic changes. There are less lead guitars and more
distorted and grim arpeggios. Tours, live dates and stuff like that are "working-in-process"
currently so I can’t say something sure about them. A song for a cult
LP-compilation to be released on Blut & Eisen Prod. will be recorded as
well, and I’m currently working on a split-CD/LP with another band, but
everything about this has to be confirmed. New T-Shirts will be re-pressed soon
and they will be available for January 2002. Write to Selbstmord Italy at fanaticism@libero.it
. Visit www.selbstmorditaly.cjb.net
, www.selbstmord.nu and www.forgottentomb.com
. Support the Suicide-Propaganda! DEPRAVE
& MANIPULATE- Herr Morbid, December 2002