Interview: Aegrus

Kelly Tee March 4, 2020

Interview by Kelly Tee

In autumn 2005 Inculta and Asylum joined forces and started to make satanic noises and visions against Christianity. Inculta was the one behind the battery and vocals, Asylum played the guitars & bass. Soon they had a handful of pure evil songs and made a demo called “Unholy invocations“. It was self-released at the end of summer 2006. After the release of the demo, they needed to find someone to play the bass & drums. They heard of a local bass player called Yekith who shared their ideology, after a short rehearsal they took Yekith in the band. After a few months, they found a drummer called A. Von Heimrich that had already been in a local Black/Death Metal band called Karelian Warcry. After a while Yekith however departed from the band. That was the beginning of a new era! This Is Black Metal Webzine found Darkseer Inculta and Lux Tenebris from Finnish Black Metal band Aegrus and talked about their latest masterpiece “In Manus Satanas”.

This Is Black Metal: You have just released your 3rd full-length studio album; In Manus Satanas, a big congratulations to you all on this release. Listening through this album, it feels and sounds like a deep and intense commitment to Satan. Where does the inspiration for your lyrical content come from? Is this more than using Satan’s name/or concept to amplify the impact of your evil and intense sound?

Darkseer Inculta: Thank you! We managed to capture well the intended feel and atmosphere that we wanted for the album. Our music and the lyrical outcome is real commitment for the Satanic matters, not just rhetoric one. We draw inspiration from various sources and the lyrical tone of each song may differ between blasphemy and more devotional approach. Death, hatred for religions, despise against general human stupidity, dark tales and mythology, those has always been a part of our lyrical content. But over the years, more deeper glorifications for Satan/Lucifer has occurred. Our personal lives and experiences along this path reflecting to the lyrics. By the process of aging and more knowledge gained, this is only natural progress. Our inner black flames burning stronger than ever, without any kind of flickering.

Lux Tenebris: Thank you for my behalf too. Darkseer Inculta writes most of the lyrics when I am responsible for the minor part of those. My lyrical content is usually more devotional than profane and it is truly more than just abusing the “scary” term. Satan has been in my life a long time and I breathe one’s energy every single day. I worship Satan as true knowledge and resource of power and will, and I strongly feel we’re in symbiosis with one.
TIBM: What is your latest album all about? Is there a story that flows through this entire album, or is each track separate from each other?

Darkseer Inculta: Each song is a separate entity of its own, so this is not a concept album by any means. But since every song is about Satanic matters in one way or another, there’s that common factor existing of course…

Aegrus – In Manus Satanas

TIBM: Aegrus now has a new line up – tell me about the changes and how this has impacted the band, is it positively or negatively and why?

Lux Tenebris: Praestigiator has played with us over a decade but never recorded with us so practically it didn’t change anything when he jumped officially into the line up. Just eased up little bit of my burden now when other rhythm guitar is played by someone else. Serpentifer has played with us since 2015 so we had managed to find pretty good dynamics before In Manus Satanas recordings. These kind of things have good and bad sides but overally I feel we have developed to positive direction.

TIBM: In Manus Satanas evokes the next level of cold and melancholic Black Metal with strong and emotive melody, yet it’s incredibly raw and aggressive. I felt the progression since your 2017 release Thy Numinous Darkness. How important is it for you as a band to keep pushing your creativity, while keeping your sound still familiar to avid fans?

Lux Tenebris: First of all as cocky as it sounds but we don’t keep our sound as it is to avid fans. When composing songs I just feel like I’m delivering something honest from inside and I don’t think too much does it sound like us or not. The basic work with music has always been like that. I think the main reason for the feel of progression between two of our latest albums is result of expanding into four man collective and I myself don’t see drastic progression, at least between compositions or lyrics. Although in newest one tempo has risen and soundscape is stronger.

Aegrus – Thy Numinous Darkness (Full Album)

TIBM: The spirit of Finnish Black Metal to me is about being raw, cold, aggressive and very bleak while ignoring boundaries. You Finns just go for it!. What makes Finish Black Metal this intense and distinctive from other Black Metal being produced in say Norway, German, etc? What is the driver for such aggression?

Darkseer Inculta: That’s quite hard to answer, but maybe it has something to do with the Finnish determination and stubbornness combined with the melancholy and introverted nature that is rooted deep inside us. It’s part of our legacy and thus reflecting to the music as well.

TIBM: Your current record label, also hailing from Finland is Saturnal Records. How is your relationship with this label and how do the dynamics work between your band and this label?

Lux Tenebris: Just fine.

TIBM: Was it important for Aegrus to sign with a Finnish Label? Or was this by chance?

Darkseer Inculta: Of course it’s always a plus when you can handle all conversations with your mother language, but in the end it’s not really that important at all. One reason why we chose to work with Saturnal Records, was the fact that we somewhat knew the guys who founded the label and thus it helped us to make the decision to join with them.

Aegrus

TIBM: Black Metal seems to be thriving in Finland? Would you say it’s at its strongest? And why?

Lux Tenebris: Finland has produced great and strong Black Metal since late 80’s but maybe you have point there. Today’s scene is really strong too and amount of high quality bands compared to the size of our population is pretty big. There might be several reasons combined and I don’t think anyone knows exactly the answer but one element must be our honesty. Finnish people are known for being extremely honest generally and in Finnish Black Metal there’s not much room for fakers. We must also remember that metal generally is very popular here so that must be related to the case too.

TIBM: Are there plans to tour soon, given your release of In Manus Satanas, and if so, what countries are on your target list?

Darkseer Inculta: No, unfortunately not a tour of any kind, but there’s possibly few single shows happening next year. Although nothing is 100% confirmed yet. We haven’t ever been hugely active in playing live before, so we’re looking every possibilities at this point. This year has been a really busy one, especially to our drummer Serpentifer in personal front. Now things are seeming to get better again so we can start to look for more opportunities.

Turku Saatanalle VII, Darkseer Inculta (by Arto Soini Photography) ~ www.facebook.com/artosoiniphotography/

TIBM: Black Metal is being executed perfectly by many counties now and is not always so confined to Scandinavia / Europe. Are you are of the strong Black Metal scene and bands that hail from Australia for example? And if so, who are some of your favorites Aussie Black Metal bands? And why?

Lux Tenebris: Of course there’s lot of great bands all over the world and in Australia too. From there the best ones which first comes to my mind are be Spear Of Longinus, Deströyer666, Abyssic Hate, Pestilential Shadows. Other good ones but not on my top list are for example Vomitor, Sadistic Exection, Gospel Of The Horns, Cauldron Black Ram…

Darkseer Inculta: My list doesn’t differ much. Abyssic Hate and Deströyer 666 are probably my favourite ones hailing from Australia. Two vastly different bands to listen depending on my overall mood. First one is really great when I’m in need for atmospheric and melancholic Black Metal. The latter been more into pure hatred with that “fuck off” attitude and mentality.

TIBM: Have there ever been any circumstances where Aegrus has been caught up in Political Correctness causing you to change your direction slightly or held you back from playing gigs in your area? How did you overcome these circumstances?

Darkseer Inculta: Yes, there has, but we will never change our lyrical content for such nonsense. As absurd as it is, we, a Black Metal band with zero percent politics involved, have received our share of this “racist/fascist/nazi”-accusation shit. Although our supposedly “right-wing” activities have been pretty minor ones. Only one show thus far has been cancelled in our case (Perkelefest in 2019), and our “sin” in that fiasco was that we’ve performed on the same events with bands such as Grand Belial’s Key, Sielunvihollinen, Naer Mataron, White Death etc.

The gig with Naer Mataron and Sielunvihollinen got “attacked” by three persons from Varisverkosto, which is basically Finnish version of antifa. One guy stood in front of the bar’s desk ordering drinks as a distraction, while those other members poured in secrecy somekind of construction mortar into the toilets. It’s quite amusing that their ridiculous and feeble mission was to prevent from “nazis” to take the dump. Luckily those idiots were caught by surveillance cameras.

Aegrus – Wolves of Belial (from the EP “Wolves Howl Revenge”

TIBM: Why do you think Black Metal is being targeted by Political Correctness Warriors (if you can call them that)? Do you think it is just a pure lack of understanding of what art is? Or is there something more sinister hiding behind the appearance of “goodwill”.

Lux Tenebris: There’s nothing sinister hiding behind those twerps. They are just naive, ignorant and lost in every way what comes to the spirit of Black Metal. Black Metal isn’t about human rights, it’s crime against humanity. These so-called warriors seems so often to be leftist humanists who might in the worst case have their own “black metal” band with their leftist values, hahaha!
– “let’s do black metal!”
– “but… what about the lyrics, we don’t want to hurt or discriminate anyone?”
– “…well let’s just sing about deep forests, icy mountains and something superficial which sounds dark”

What a joke.

TIBM: Tell me about your writing, recording and production process for In Manus Satanas? How long did it take to create and what was your creative process as a writer, musician, person, and band?

Darkseer Inculta: In Manus Satanas was created pretty much the same way as our previous releases. We record everything by ourselves in our rehearsal chamber. When finished, the raw files will go through the mixing/mastering process, this time handled by H. Sorvali at Trollhorn Audio. After all this, we start to concentrate on the cover arts and photos with a close friend of the band, whom we have worked with since the very first demo. If we can do something by ourselves, we will certainly do so!
As for the compositions, we basically already existing at the time when Thy Numinous Darkness was released. Every album until this one has suffered from somekind of delay or setback, so we had time to create more songs in the meantime. This is one reason why we chose to split the new material and also release the 7″ EP Wolves Howl Revenge. Lyrics in the other hand has been manifested steadily within this two year long period.
Although we recorded all the new material as a four-man group, the same old methods for creating work still remains. Like Lux Tenebris previously already mentioned, he does still all the music whilst I do most of the lyrics.

Lux Tenebris & Darkseer Inculta

TIBM: There is a subtle influence of Sargeist and Naglfar heard within In Manus Satanas. Some have even heard the essence of Ragnarok. Are these bands an inspiration to Aegrus, and why?

Lux Tenebris: Of these three only ones that I can name as an influence is Sargeist but I can’t delimit our influences even with all of my fingers because they are so many. What comes to Sargeist all of their albums contains great mood combined with iron hard music and quality lyrics. Satanic Black Devotion was first one I heard of them and if someone has never heard Sargeist that’s great album to start with.

TIBM: You have just re-released Thy Numinous Darkness on vinyl. Can fans expect In Manus Satanas to be released on Vinyl at some stage too? And where can we grab ourselves a copy?

Darkseer Inculta: Yes, In Manus Satanas will be released in vinyl format. In matter of fact, it may already be out by the time this interview comes out. Like Thy Numinous Darkness, this will be also released by Purity Through Fire. And for the time being, their web shop is the best way to get a copy of this.

AEGRUS – Devotion for the Devil (Full Album) | 2015 |

TIBM: What is the best way for us to purchase your albums, where the monetary aspect supports you as a band?

Lux Tenebris: The best way to support us directly is to buy albums and merchandise from our gigs.

TIBM: Is there anything else you would love for readers to know about Aegrus? Please tell us.

Darkseer Inculta: Thank you for the interview! If you’re interested in the ongoings of the band, please keep track of our facebook page as we will update it once a while when something noteworthy happens.

Ave Satanas!

TIBM: Thanks for your time.