Photo: Piotrek Rynk Ryniu;

There haven’t been any new releases for the past three years. Are you working on something? 

There is the music I am doing now, completing seven songs for the new album. We are planning to do the release next year. 

How did things change? And how has the music changed?  

In everything in life, you have this normal evolution happening. Beat myself as a person. Beat myself with my guitars or whatever. You always have a point, you have some other point and trip to the other point. It’s normal. What happens in life:  you live, you learn, or you don’t learn, but in any way, you live and you get wiser, hopefully.

With music, I play every day with a metronome. My musical capabilities is Archgoat, not the band where I’m going to showcase my ability, because we want to keep it in a way honest to the the stuff we started. In life, there’s an 80-20 % rule, it means with Archgoat, you have the 80%, which is this AC/DC, Motörhead part and 20% that is something new. Like in 2009, for the first time we made a totally slow song for our album. Then in 2015 we took the harmonies from the whole guitar neck. So then we made a good guitar lead. It means that with every album this approach brings something new – evolution. 

And with the evolution of technology, has it made your process any easier? 

Of course, I’ve been living now over six years in Germany. The other guys are in Finland. So in old school technology, I would be recording the riffs with cassette and making tabulators with pencil and paper. Now I can record everything at home. This is how it works. I record at home. I put basically two-three guitars, drums, bass guitar, or two bass guitars, and send it to the guys as a ready song. 

Along with your music, has your audience changed? 

I think the audience has changed. It’s kind of you have the guys who’ve been listening to our band from day one, and then you have guys who are younger than our band, so yeah a new generation. 

And do you feel like the interests of the modern Black Metal scene have changed? And has that affected your band?  

You know, it doesn’t, because when we started Black Metal, there was really no Black Metal scene. Regardless of what happens around us, we keep doing Archgoat. We don’t do it to sell records or this kind of stuff. We do it because we want to do it. But at the time, I would say Black Metal was original. It was true. Everybody did their own stuff. 

And then came 1983 with Norwegian Black Metal. And every band wanted to sound like Dark Throne. It means that every musician tuned their guitars back to standard. They made lyrics similar, they made their vocals similar. And suddenly every band you listened to, they were just like copies of each other. The originality and the kind of dynamic and the flame behind the whole black metal died. And for us, scenes and bands come and go. 

We do our stuff. And I think, for me, it’s not even relevant that we look like a band from the scene or not, because we are Archgoat, we do our stuff, call it reggae or whatever people like. We do our stuff, regardless of what happens around us. And maybe with a little bit of a poke at the modern Black Metal. In my opinion, what happens in the world nowadays is kind of a trend in Black Metal, that you go from having beautiful muscle cars, to fucking Teslas and electric autos, whole meaning, whole ideologic, whole important topics of Black Metal. But make it original and full of energy, not like afucking Tesla box. 

You don’t like bands that release music but don’t play live, the modern ones, especially?

Absolutely, I really dislike it. Because you have to… this is, in my opinion, really kind of the reverse today, because earlier you had to earn your respect so you would make the album. You even got to release the album. But today you have these guys who live on their mommy’s stellar, they do music, release it through a Facebook or whatever YouTube channels. And this is, for me, really kind of not the way in which direction black metal should be taken. It’s supposed to be played live.  

You clearly dislike modern bands that do the music, but do not stick to the ideology. What do you think of the old school metal bands who have not stuck to their original Satanic roots? 

It’s not Black Metal anymore. If you take the philosophy of,for example, things like NSBM. For me, it’s not Black Metal, pagan Black Metal is not Black Metal. And I think all you have all this vegan and whatever black intolerance metal. I really hate it. You play Black Metal, or you don’t, just so simple. If you lose your kind of philosophy, do something else. Because then, if you say that you are playing Black Metal, you do something non-satanic, why do you call it Black Metal?  

We talked about the bands that you dislike, but are there any bands that you are happy to listen to?

Absolutely. And again, you’re a little bit getting me being black and white; I’m absolutely anything but black and white on many topics. You have new bands like Malum from Finland. Then you have Blood Chalice also from Finland. You have Theotoxin out of Austria. The world is full of new bands, that are coming in.  The thing is that, how do you start to do it? Is your ability only to follow what others been doing? Or do you want to do your own stuff? And if you want to do your own stuff, big respect to you.  

You’re saying that a band can start on its own and then pick up the ideology along the way to make Black Metal music?

Absolutely. We started with death metal, grindcore and then we bumped into Venom, Celtic Frost, Bathory. And we noticed that this was the music for us. This philosophy interested us. And with the years, this interest became both a lifestyle and a philosophy. 

Are there any bands that you’re keeping close contact with or that you can relate to? 

Whoredom Rife. And basically, most of the bands that we’ve been touring with: Black Witchery, Blasphemy. I have my show posters here that I am looking at now. Surrender of Divinity. There’s really a lot of bands with whom I am keeping contact today. But not because of the band, but because of the people who play in the band. 

There was also a quote in one of your live interviews on YouTube where you said that “the dark image is not relevant to the scene anymore”. Can you elaborate on that? 

I think I can only, from my point of view, say this: you now have bands who come on the stage to play this so-called Black Metal. They come on the stage in a way that shows that they are not representing Satanism or Black Metal philosophy. And this is, for me, a really big no go. You have to have certain elements. You have to have inverted crosses. You have to go on stage to play Black Metal instead of performing a circus. 

Are there any themes that you will not touch, or lines that you will not cross?

Like? Can you give me a few examples? Islam and Nazi stuff?Maybe. Archgoat is purely a Black Metal band run by Satanistpeople. Other religion. We come from Finland, why should we be interested in some religion from the Far East or Africa? It’s not our war. We do things our way because we are a Finnish band. But we do it like our culture is. And then this NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal). Black metal is a religion, a philosophy, not a mass movement, like fascism and this stupid bullshit. Myself, I think, since day one of our careers, that this Nazi bullshit is fucking stupid. And for some weird reason, there are still these kind of, I would say, insane people putting out these pamphlets that Archgoat is NSBM, and we are Nazis, which is fucking far from the truth. 

And how do you react to a lot of metal bands being censored? What are your thoughts about “cancel culture”? 

I myself am totally against this cancel culture. People are getting too soft, too offended. And it’s kind of, in today’s world, it doesn’t make sense, or it’s not the main factor that would make sense, but who’s the loudest. And also, this kind of philosophy that lets all flowers bloom. If something is unhealthy and sick – it’s against this Darwinian evolution to let it kind of grow and spread. I hate it because we ourselves were hit by this fucking cancel culture regarding one of our shows in Finland, because of what this one Norwegian idiot was promoting.   This person will have bands that he will cancel and make this European show difficult for everybody. Fuck him.  

So your music is for those who want to explore the depthsof Satanism?

Bingo! Thank you for understanding.