An excerpt from the Don’t Break the Ghost narrative.
The chapter Reverence: Merciless Faith deals with Isten #7.
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I craved life metal. Heavy metal for life. And “heavy”, for all you smart alecks out there, is not a prefix. Heavy metal is not even a genre. Heavy metal is a realm. Swear the oath. The Force is heavy metal. Mental Funeral is heavy metal. A Blaze in the Northern Sky is heavy metal. If it doesn’t work as heavy metal, it’s fucked, it fails, full stop.
You commit yourself to the practise of this magic—night after night of exaltation and ceremonial rites as you try to decipher the coffin texts and puzzle out the minutiae of the ceremonies. Listener or musician, it makes very little difference. You need to be a fanatic first and foremost.
When it came to myself, devotion and desperation certainly walked hand in hand. I worked for twelve months on the closed ward of a mental institution (my non-military service). The experience was eye-opening for reasons different to those I had expected. While I identified with the infinite loneliness of the inmates, I detested the attitudes of the personnel: cynical, condescending, defined by the strict confines of their hollow lives. I felt clocks melting as if in a Dalí painting, and remember contemplating this whole zine insanity long and hard. It wasn’t much, but it was better than a dead-end job in a soon-to-be-closed small-town hospital. It gradually dawned on me that Isten was my canvas to paint. I was like Nosferatu doodling in his castle.
To what extent was the underground an imaginary world? Let’s ask instead to what extent the imaginary substance in heavy metal is real. I’m referring to the apparition that flickers throughout the history of this music, in its liturgy, in its sacraments and institutions. Is it this chimera that resonates in our chests, sets our eyes aflame, and makes us clench our fists? Or is it, in fact, our own merciless faith? I think they are one and the same. Inherently interwoven, in constant upheaval, requiring ardent practice. At least half of it is you. If you fail, don’t blame the priest. Don’t blame the doctor. Don’t blame the placebo.
Fosforos, A.R.G., Demon’s Gate, Vorum, Mara Balls, Warp Transmission, Myrkky-Käärme and Sarcofagus. 100 pages of Isten Fanzine, the most hardheaded fanzine in the Northern hemisphere — no compromises, no apologies. Take it or leave it.
