Interview: Deströyer 666

Interview by Jeger

KK Warslut – the personification of what True Blackened Metal has always stood for: Rebellion, Liberation and a big fat middle finger to societal oppression. For more than 30 years, this iconic figure has brought it fucking heavy and ruthless – just the way it’s supposed to be brought, and his current and long-running band, Deströyer 666, are the epitome of what life should be like for True Metal Warriors: Knives, Guns, Motorcycles and unbridled Blackened Metal thunder!

KK has had a storied career that has seen him and Deströyer 666 evolve from pure Black Metal to Black/Thrash, all the way through to the current Black/Heavy Metal era. The time between these eras has been marked by steel town rampages, LSD-induced epiphanies, epic albums and hard-fought battles against confused anti-fascist and social justice groups. So, it is truly an honor to have been granted an audience with a genuine hero of mine. During this interview, KK Warslut of Deströyer 666 delves into some of his early experiences, the band’s latest album, “Never Surrender” and gives the commies a well-deserved lambasting.

This Is Black Metal: Hails, KK and welcome. I’d like to start with some background. You grew up in Whyalla, which is a small steel town on the Southern Coast of Australia. What can you tell us about the local music scene back then and what inspired you to play Heavy Metal?

K.K. Warslut: Whyalla was a Hard Rock Metal town like many industrial towns throughout the West in the ’70s and ’80s. Long hair and steel cap boots were the norm. Motorcycles, denim, leather and cool as fuck welding shades. Perfect place to grow up, apart from the fact that the only metal around was the literal kind. Our crew changed that and formed a couple of bands – Morbid Terror being the only one that could actually play that well. Sarcophagus wasn’t too shabby either, and even managed to put on a couple of shows in Adelaide, which was a big deal for us as kids. I had a band called DeathFuck. We were killers in the shittiest sense of the word. I wrote lyrics about hating the pigs and people we didn’t like. Ya get the idea.  

TIBM: You relocated from Whyalla to Melbourne in 1990. I was reading about your experience with LSD in ‘91 at Box Hill Gardens and then at the house you were living in. For those of us who don’t know, how did your trip change your perspective? 

K.K. Warslut: It was a total game-changer. Opens the doors of perception as it was said. Made me realize that the physical reality I was stuck in wasn’t the whole picture. Gave me faith in the spirit. No, more than that, it gave me actual evidence of its existence. 
I went in with a modicum of knowledge: Some Jung, a little Nietzsche and a healthy dose of Manson. I don’t wanna bore your readers debunking the whole Manson myth about the murders. If you’re interested, buy Nikolas Shreck’s book on the subject. Or leave some dull-witted social media comment about how disgusted and repulsed you are. It will make you look like a good person to your peers, ya silly cunt.
Regardless, those three names helped me navigate the other side well enough. My quite random reading choices seemed to me at the time as pre-destined for the path I was about to enter. Acid’s good like that; for making sense of the world, and you can make of that what you will.  

TIBM: You released your latest album, “Never Surrender”, in 2022. There’s much more of a Heavy Metal vibe to this one when compared to 2016’s “Wildfire”, which was more Thrash-Inspired. What inspired this shift in creative direction?

K.K. Warslut: Nothing in particular other than my music tastes veering in that direction. Whether the next album stays on that path I can’t say. And ya know, there seems to be enough bands doing the more extreme stuff. Likewise, there are more than enough fairy floss Heavy Metal bands today who are neither Heavy nor Metal. I figured where I was headed, somewhere down the middle wasn’t ground overly tread so why not?  

TIBM: The track that strikes me is the epic “Batavia’s Graveyard”. This one feels like a deeply meaningful song. What can you tell us about it?

K.K. Warslut: Concerns a shipwreck followed by a bizarre slaughter of men, women and children by the self-proclaimed lord of the island along with his willing/unwilling accomplices. They managed to hack, stab, drown and rape some 80 people or so. The exact figure escapes me at the moment. His reasoning was sound. There weren’t enough supplies to feed all the mouths. Interesting guy regardless of your thoughts on his campaign of murder. He had a moral religious philosophy, which he managed to convince his followers. Essentially, he believed that if one was one with God, and God could not be judged as evil then you, being one with God, could also not be deemed to be evil; regardless of conduct. Fascinating religious concept, and one well worth remembering when you next read of some atrocity in the world.  

TIBM: How have fans been responding to the new stuff live?

K.K. Warslut: Fucking killer.

TIBM: You’ve got some shows on the books for 2025. What have you been doing differently on your touring cycles for “Never Surrender” that you might not have done previously and what can fans expect next year?

K.K. Warslut: Nada, we’re always the same. Expect the same. Metal in ya ugly faces.  

K.K. Warslut

TIBM: It seems these days that a lot of people have lost sight of what Metal is all about, which is liberation, rebellion and animal instinct. PC culture has unfortunately infected the scene, and the people who subscribe to this nonsense seem to think that Metal music is a platform for promoting various political agendas and for virtue signaling. Makes me nauseous just thinking about it. How do you feel about the current state of metal?

K.K. Warslut: Sick, like most of the West: maladaptive, degenerate, weak and spiraling downwards.
I turn away from most of it cos it makes me sick to behold. Fortunately, there are some diamonds in the rough and perhaps a new generation that sees these commie fucktards the same way we saw the normies or hippies when we were kids – as a bunch of old church ladies ranting and wailing that we all gotta follow their sick demented rules and regulations.

Ill give the old church ladies one thing; their BS was at least coherent with an unchanging and solid historical foundation. Not a constantly changing rainbow of diarrhea, commie rhetoric, word salads and epithets – all backed by big business and big government, and strangely they’re still retarded enough to paint themselves as “rebellious” – the outsiders. It would be hard to find a less intelligent bunch on the face of the planet. Their IQ is inversely proportionate to their propensity for hysteria. Give them the ridicule they deserve. And let’s face it, being so patently ridiculous, they are incredibly easy to laugh at. Believe it or not, sometimes I find myself even pitying some of them. Imagine being that mentally confused about the world. I think many of them need serious help, but I ain’t the one to give it…

TIBM: KK, thanks for your time!