Interview: Arma Christi: Black Metal Apparel from the 20th Century

Interview by Dayal Patterson

With over 300 pages and hundreds of photos of classic Black Metal merchandise, Arma Christi: Black Metal Apparel from the 20th Century is an essential book for any devotees to the old ways. Featuring an introduction piece by Cradle of Filth co-founder Paul Ryan and shirts from Emperor, Rotting Christ, Mayhem, Bathory, Mysticum, Dissection, Enslaved, Arckanum, Taake, Beherit, Carpathian Forest, Watain, Summoning, Darkthrone and almost every other key 1980s and 1990s Black Metal act, readers will discover iconic designs they missed at the time or recognise old purchases, either still worn with pride or lost to the sands of time. We discussed this mighty tome with creator Valnoir, born Jean-Emmanuel Simoulin, who answered our questions frankly and with his trademark lack of diplomacy!

This Is Black Metal: Before we talk more about the Arma Christi book, could you tell us a bit about your own contributions to Black Metal aesthetics?

Valnoir: “Oh boy, if I take my entire client list and extract the Black Metal, or Black Metal-affiliated bands, I come up with 116 names, so I won’t list them all. Apart from Deathspell Omega, I can mention Watain, Antaeus, Ulver (the trilogy), Taake, Akitsa, S.V.E.S.T., Ondskapt, Nachtmystium, Drudkh, Departure Chandelier, Blut Aus Nord, Behemoth and Ascension. This list includes album covers, layouts, merch, photography, posters – really, a bit of everything. When I started my business, black metal was my priority, along with a few industrial and ambient projects from the early 2000s, which allowed me to experiment with things I couldn’t afford to try with Black Metal bands – or at least that’s what I thought. But yeah, my goal was to contribute to the scene and, while I was at it, to innovate.”

ΤΙΒM: It’s interesting you specifically mention innovation; what is your position regarding originality within black metal? The movement has arguably always been characterised by a certain tension between tradition and innovation, and you seem to be leaning unambiguously toward the latter.

Valnoir: “Those who say that Black Metal must stay true to ‘tradition’ are idiots or ignorant. Black Metal initially set itself apart by the necessity to obliterate pre-established norms and offer a personal and innovative approach. In the 90s, a band that sounded like another band wasn’t taken seriously. I was committed to continuing that mission. What initially captivated me about Black Metal was that it moved beyond the realm of entertainment and into that of commitment. The idea of donning a uniform to enter a religious order resonated with me.”

“The second thing that drew me in was the artistic proposition – innovative and without limits. Jumping from one band to another, the universe changed drastically, from Battles in the North toBergtatt, Verwüstung, Aske, Suomi Finland Perkeleand Ceremony of Opposites, it felt like traveling from one planet to the next. Each band’s identity was deeply asserted, and it was crucial to sound different from the neighbor; otherwise, it was worthless, straight to the trash. The boundaries of the genre were more defined by ideological lines than stylistic constraints. It was very common for a musician playing hateful and violent Black Metal to also have experimental projects leaning toward folk or industrial but carrying a message of equivalent substance. Was it always good? Certainly not, but there was a desire to break new ground, to innovate, to create experiences, to tell unique and personal stories. In the end, this is probably the only healthy and valid approach to art: does artistic practice have value if it doesn’t exclusively reflect the emotions of its creator, whatever that means?”

“The problem with Black Metal is that it’s very easy to do badly. Copying Darkthrone is much simpler than copying Megadeth, and this quest for individuality quickly mutated into a traditionalism artificially constructed by a lazy, technically mediocre audience and, above all, one without any vision. In a way, it’s understandable: you’re 16, you’ve had a guitar for only six months, and you manage to cover Burzum, a project that obsesses you above all else – why would you look any further? And suddenly, we found ourselves with a constellation of bands copying each other. To be honest, I was probably more part of the problem than the solution at that time, but I was (and still am) searching for bands that made me leave the real world by offering a musical approach that was uniquely their own. We went through a brief golden age, an inexplicable moment of grace during which even Immortal and Satyricon managed to write great albums. My first trip to Bergen, Norway, at the end of the 2000s, was quite tough from that perspective. I expected to meet romantic visionaries (in the literary sense) with deep spirituality and total commitment. Instead, I found myself in small rooms surrounded by jerks in battle vests who listened to Motörhead on repeat while doing speed.”

ΤΙΒM: And have you met any such romantic visionaries in the years since, or at least a demographic you find grander than ‘jerks in battle vests’?

Valnoir: “‘Never meet your idols,’ as they say. It’s a statement that has often proven true, especially when youth and immaturity lead us to project idealised monuments onto the artists we admire, imagining them as beings of pure art and spirit. And not as people who, like everyone else, have to deal with everyday realities – breaking plates, getting dumped, or taking a number two. However, once those adolescent fantasies are set aside, meaningful encounters can happen. While my biggest disappointments have certainly come from Scandinavia (I’ll keep the names to myself out of respect), I’ve also met artists elsewhere who are deeply passionate and dedicated to their craft and the messages they convey through their music. Countries that were less in the spotlight during the golden age of the scene have, in the end, given birth to projects often much richer in creativity and sincerity, like France. I never tire of the conversations I still have to this day with TT (Abigor) or certain individuals involved at the forefront of Deathspell Omega or Svest. I’ve also always appreciated the volcanic energy that emanates from Hoest (Taake), and there’s a deep authenticity that radiates from Alan of Primordial, despite his sometimes unstoppable flow of words!”

ΤΙΒM: How soon after discovering Black Metal music did you become interested in merchandise and begin to wear it yourself?

Valnoir: “The question of ‘when’ seems less important to me than ‘why.’ And there are two elements to the answer to this question: The first, as I just mentioned, is more outward-looking and involves the need to belong to and be identified with that group. This phenomenon is not unique to Black Metal, nor even to metal in general. Most countercultures come with their own distinct and clear uniform. The younger and more fervently you join one of these countercultures, the more you do so with a bang and with excess, and Black Metal is no exception to this rule – quite the opposite. If I could have, I would have worn a cape and corpse paint from morning till night, 365 days a year. But since I didn’t live in the Norwegian Carpathians, I reduced this uniform to its most socially acceptable civilian version: black clothes and band t-shirts.”

“The second reason is more inward-looking: I was utterly captivated by the aesthetics of this scene and its ideology – its slogans, logos, and symbolism. I felt a deep, urgent need to embody this spirituality. It was already decided that appearing dressed any other way, until my death, was not an option. As a result, the (very) small monthly budget I was given was, from the very beginning, split evenly between music and merch. My first T-shirt, a longsleeveMoonspell, spent its life moving from my shoulders to the washing machine, non-stop. 30 years later, I still wear merch 95% of the time, though I’ve obviously taken some distance and occasionally wear grey instead of black.”

ΤΙΒM: What challenges did you face while creating the book?

Valnoir: “The main problem I encountered, which I never fully managed to solve, concerns dating the shirts. Some have copyrights, but that’s far from systematic, and the bands themselves don’t necessarily remember the year a T-shirt was printed, especially when it was almost 30 years ago. The best compromise I could find was to link the T-shirt to the release date of the album it promotes.”

“In terms of my previous books] the one that was most similar to Arma Christi in terms of concept was Analogue Black Terror, as it also involved gathering many archives related to Black Metal in the 20th century.However, that first project had the advantage of working with small-format, monochrome documents, which were therefore easy to digitise remotely. With a few precise instructions, contacts worldwide could send me printable images without too much difficulty. And even then, I encountered setbacks. You see, the worst part about working on projects involving outside people is that most humans are, for the most part, blobs incapable of stepping out of their pathetic comfort zones and motivating themselves to contribute to a project that matters. And there’s something I viscerally hate about the underground: empty promises and half-hearted commitments that lead nowhere. How many fools sitting on amazing collections have promised me repeatedly to send scans, making me wait for months, only to vanish? Seriously, it makes me want to commit murder. Their excuses, when they have the courage to send me one, are always the same: ‘I didn’t have time,’‘ I’m too busy,’‘ I forgot.’ A message to all the underground idiots: Don’t say ‘yes’ to a project if, in the end, you know you’re too lazy to follow through. You’ll save precious time for those who are trying to push themselves and make things happen. I have brothers in the scene who have kids, a job, and still manage to play in two touring bands, run a distro, and a label (wink wink, Berzerk). Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

“Here, the problem turned out to be even more complicated: it required taking photos, and usable photos at that, of a consistent quality. Of course, I initially tried asking reliable contacts to send me images of their T-shirts, but I ended up with phone photos taken in poor lighting, which wasn’t surprising: photography is a profession. Not to mention the point made above, about strangers who claim they want to help but never actually intended to. To avoid having to rely too much on the self-proclaimed elites of black metal, I quickly realised that I had to manage everything myself. So, I started traveling to photograph collections. I had very frustrating exchanges with collectors who had insane archives languishing in locked cabinets in Greece or England. I was ready to invest, buy tickets at my own expense, and travel across Europe, only to get the final response, ‘I have a kid and a job, I don’t have time to let you in for two hours.’ Bullshit. Enjoy your dormant, useless collection, pal. Most of the images were taken in France and Belgium, with all kinds of collectors. As with Analogue Black Terror, this ranged from maniacs living in mansions to complete outcasts living in the darkest squalor.”

ΤΙΒM: This book is obviously dedicated to a particular era of black metal, arguably its most important and formative years. How do you feel the aesthetics of black metal, and in particular black metal merchandise, have changed in the years that follow the focus of this tome?

Valnoir: “An era I would have liked to cover and could have covered – but one must know where to set limits – falls just after, in the mid-2000s. During this time, there was a readjustment, a refocusing of part of the scene on the ideological foundations of black metal, in reaction to another part of the scene’s shift towards an entertainment logic. Or simply towards a logic of de-radicalisation. There was the rock-starisation of old Nordic icons wallowing in the pathetic circus of celebrity, the so-called mature and adult evolution of others (in reality, a simple self-inflicted castration by many, for the sake of returning to ‘acceptable’ social norms), etc. Around labels like Norma Evangelium Diaboli, we witnessed an ideological, musical, and also aesthetic revitalisation of a faction of activists still deeply committed. Deathspell Omega, Watain, Funeral Mist, Antaeus, and the like were keen on putting the devil back at the center of the debate in a way rich or open enough to allow for a new set of visual interpretations. Interpretations which, once again, were reproduced identically by the shapeless cohort of unimaginative followers that represent the active majority of the metal scene.”

“Since then, the Black Metal scene has fragmented into an innumerable array of currents, subcurrents, and sub-subcurrents that are impossible to track or count. Absurd tumorous outgrowths have emerged (wink wink, Black Metal Rainbows), leading obvious facts straight towards self-negation. Postmodernism and its exponentially speeding centrifuge continue to amplify the phenomena of self-influence and gimmick replication. I live in an accelerator within which I see images flash by, faster and faster, and that interests me less and less. In the face of this, reconstructing the past feels like a gentle caress, patiently awaiting death.”

Arma Christi is a 312-page colour hardback book and includes a bookplate marked by the author in their own blood. It is officially released in January 2025, and can be ordered now from the main Cult Never Dies store (cultneverdies.myshopify.com).

In 2025 it will also be available from the Cult Never Dies EU store (https://cultneverdies-eu.travelling-merchant.com), as well as a range of metal/book stores including (in alphabetical order) Ajna Offensive, Black City Records, Centennial, Consouling, Coop Records, Dark Earth, Darkness Shall Rise, Katakomben, LevykauppaÄx, Raven Records, Rockmark, Season of Mist, Vrijheid, Direct Merch and more.