black metal from Switzerland: Summum Silentium

Summum Silentium (Switzerland)

What is happening with black metal in Switzerland? Well, for one, Summum Silentium has the debut album “Klartraum” ready. Summum Silentium is at that exciting point in which they want to play black metal, and are not having an identity crisis about their music. Instead, the band concentrates on making their best songs, with their take on black metal, while remembering to add melody to the speed and fury. The quality of the recording is a balance between the grim sound and making the music listenable.

Metal Bulletin Zine sent some 357 questions to the band, and they answered all of them. This interview right here is a rather good presentation of Summum Silentium: Flurin (bass), Mischa Horn (vocals), Waltýr (guitars), Jakoból (drums), and Apophis (guitars). www.summumsilentium.ch

-- Greetings, Summum Silentium! The combination of fast songs with a bit of melody is a good combination for sure! How is life for a black metal band in Switzerland?! It appears you all do not live in the same city or town, but rather in three different ones.

Apophis: First of all, it’s nice to hear that you like our music. Thanks for looking into our album.

We’re actually doing quite well. Since our new album has been released, things are going great. There are new listeners from all over the world, even from Nepal or Indonesia. In Switzerland there is actually just a small group of people listening to black metal. Genres like death or thrash metal are much more popular within the scene nowadays. Yes, you’re right that we’re not living very close. Two of us live in the same village, but Waltýr and Mischa are living about 2 hours away from our band room. So for us it’s probably more difficult to practise every week than for other bands. Often Jakoból and Apophis do some really basic records of the new songs and send them to Waltýr and Mischa, so they can listen to it at home and practise there. Unfortunately on this way we can’t practise so much together as a band and I think at the moment you can see that on our gigs that we still have a lack of routine. But we hope to develop in this point in the future.

Can you explain how the idea of forming a black metal band started? What happened in 2006 that you said, "I want to form a black metal band!”

It appears that only Apophis remains from the original time when Summum Silentium was formed? Apophis: In 2006 I was 15 years old. I started listening to metal some years before and at this time I found some new music, called black metal. Dimmu Borgir, Old man’s Child, Dark Funeral, Darkthrone, Burzum and Nargaroth were the first bands I’ve been listening to. At this time I also started playing the guitar and with two friends of mine I began to play something you could call symphonic black metal. We were playing that kind of music for some years, wrote songs and had several gigs. But actually it was always predictable that this would have no future. Our keyboarder didn’t really listen to black metal at all and our drummer preferred the raw kind of black metal like Marduk, Endstille or Mayhem.

So in 2009 our keyboarder decided to leave and so there was left a musically conflict between me and our old drummer. But as good friends we decided to make a compromise and to do both. I think that’s also the beginning of Summum Silentium playing metal all through the different kinds of black metal, as you said a “combination of fast songs with a bit of melody”. However in 2010 he left the band. I was left as the only member for some months. I thought of ending up with that band but then my good friend Jakoból asked to play the drums. That encouraged me to continue and soon we found a second guitar and a bass player. Andi "Apophis" Huber plays guitar, but he also used to do vocals until 2011, when Mischa Horn took over the vocals as a new member. Why the change? Did Apophis grow tired of playing guitar and doing vocals at the same time in concerts?

Apophis: You’re absolutely right. That was one very important reason. For 5 years I’ve been doing vocals because there was no one else who wanted to do it. Also on our demo songs on youtube it’s me singing. In 2011 it was me who told the others that I’d like to concentrate on my guitar playing. Besides I’ve never really liked my voice so much. So I was really happy when Mischa sent us some songs of his old band as an audition and we all were fascinated about his awesome and unique voice.

You released the album by yourselves. Why is that?

Apophis: For us it was normal that if we wanted to record an album we had to do it by ourselves. In my opinion you first have to produce something before any record company should take care of you. We’ve never even thought about asking a record company for help. Now I guess we wouldn’t say no to a good deal with a record company. But we actually like the freedom we have right now. Nobody is telling us about any concepts for our album or how our music could be “better”.

Another reason to produce it by ourselves was that a good friend of us is doing a really great job with recording and he never had recorded black metal so far, so he was looking forward recording us. For the mastering we sent the songs to a professional studio mixer in Zurich.

Can you explain the concept behind the title of the album: "Klartraum"? "klar" (clear) and "Traum" (dream)? I can only read a bit of basic German, so I am ignorant and cannot translate very well. How are all the songs connected conceptually?

Apophis: Klartraum means a state of dreaming where you can actually influence what you’re dreaming. So your body is in conflict between having control of itself and being led by fantasy. The lyrics of “das Licht” are describing a very extreme case of that state. The two songs “Zwielicht eines Traumes” and “Das Licht” correspond to the title “Klartraum” but honestly there isn’t really a concept in our album like all our songs would fit to the word “Klartraum”.

But these two songs are the newest and that’s why we took this name. “Der Kalte Tod”, “Rache” and “Vorbereitung der Schlacht” are more about (as you said correctly) death, hate and revenge on Christianity and humanity. These songs express our misanthropic stance to the world and to life in general. “Rache” is the only song that contains also a religious topic. It complains about how Christianity worked during medieval and about stupid ideologies and explanations of Christianity and other religions.

Are these songs all older songs that Apophis had written a long time ago?

Apophis: No, not all songs are from the early days of Summum Silentium. “Vorbereitung der Schlacht”, “Der Kalte Tod” and “Rache” are old songs on which battlegrim still played the drums. There were several other songs from the old times but these 3 songs plus 2 other songs (demo versions are on youtube) that we’re still about to change a bit are left from the past. Guitars and lyrics of all songs are made by myself so far. Until 2011 Battlegrim played the drums. Nowadays it’s Jakoból and me writing the songs. I still do lyrics and guitars, but he actually takes more influence with the drums. I think you can hear that the new songs (“Zwielicht eines Traumes” and “Das Licht”) are much more complex than the older ones.

The song "Das Licht" ("The Light") is almost 10 minutes long! Yet, it has different emotions in it, with variety. Did you use acoustic guitars on it or just clean electric guitar sounds? Do you remember how this song was created? And how do you describe the lyrics to this song? By the way, the guitar melodies/solo towards the end of the song, along with the speed, are a very good ending to this song!

Apophis: The song writing didn’t really take so long. It’s like a medley of a bunch of ideas I’ve had in the past. There was a long time where we hadn’t produced any new songs. So there were so many riffs in my head, I only had to combine them and “das Licht” was done. That clean part is actually done with both, acoustic and electric guitar sounds. We’ve been thinking about that for a long time and couldn’t decide between acoustic and electric so finally the only solution was to take both ;)

The lyrics of “das Licht” tell about a guy who’s in coma but he’s actually able to notice people around him and most of all he’s able to feel pain but cannot tell anybody because there is his body preventing this. As I said before he’s in an extreme state of a “Klartraum”. I like to think about the despair and the pain in that situation. In general I like thinking of desperate and helpless situations. So that’s what relates the song with “Zwielicht eines Traumes”, “Vorbereitung der Schlacht” and “Der Kalte Tod”. Thank you for the feedback about the melody at the end. I think this is one of the typical characteristics of Summum Silentium. Fast drum parts combined with that kind of melodies. You’ll find these parts in almost every song of us.

Have you played "Vorbereitung des Schlacht" live yet? How was it live? What do you mean by "Preparation of the Battle"? In what sense would say is it a "battle" here?

Apophis: Yes, we’ve even played it live really often. It’s always the last song of our set list because of its fast and melodious ending. I think people like it because there are several parts where you can bang your head very well. Here it means a battle against religious people. As I wrote the lyrics I thought about the final days of humanity as we know it nowadays. It’s a frightening and cruel act to destroy everything and everybody believing in any god just to show those ignorant people that there is nothing that protects them. It also describes the rise of a new kind of human being. Enlighten and independent from anything above us.

Are you pleased with the drum sound?

Jakoból: Actually, I’m quite pleased by the sound of the drums. In my opinion it fits very well to the rest of the instruments which are recorded pretty well too. But I know what you mean. I also like that raw sound for example of the old Darkthrone. But there are far too many bands playing like that. So we decided not to follow this trend. Cuz I think if you have the possibilities to record a nice drum sound, why not do it?

In books and on the internet, there is this image of Swiss people are being at least bilingual and multicultural. In the case of you all, is it true that you speak German (Swiss German) and either French or Italian? And now, do the Swiss learn English in school? But for the music of Summum Silentium only the German language will be used in the future?

Apophis: Yes, it’s true that in Switzerland there are spoken 4 languages. Within the band we speak the two languages Swiss German and a bit of French. Of course we also learn English at school and I think we’re speaking it more fluently than French. German is like our second mother language because TV and all commercials are in German (Swiss German isn’t a written language). As I started writing lyrics I’ve done it in English. But after a while I recognised that in German I could express myself even better than in English. So I could give much more feelings to the lyrics in German. There is one song left from the old days called “Enter the Darkness” which I would like to play live again but we have to change some parts in it. Besides, the German language has become more popular in black metal nowadays. Bands like Agrypnie, Nocte Obducta or Todtgelichter are doing great lyrics in German. Those bands influenced me a lot in my decision to write German lyrics.

I know you hate this question, but here it is! What is black metal to you?

Apophis: I knew there would be this question.. (laughs) I think I could write a book about what black metal means for me. But I’ll try to do it in some sentences. Black metal for me is a way of thinking. But not like there is a song or a book where you can read into this thinking. It’s inside you or not. There are people who like to think about dark things, despair. They ask themselves about their own existence and the existence of god. Sooner or later those people, including me, will find that magical music called black metal. I love exploring and expressing these thoughts inside me with Summum Silentium. Black Metal is like a platform for all those people thinking as we do. We as Summum Silentium concentrate in our songs more on the topics of despair, hate and darkness.

But for me, as I said, Black Metal includes also asking about things that in our society are treated as totally normal, like religions. Black Metal means for me to watch behind this deception. There are people who open their eyes and watch behind all this. They see that big lie befouling our world and they refuse to follow these ideas. And like Erik from Watain said: “Once I opened my eyes, there is no reason to close them again”. I think that’s important for the way of life of Black Metal. Not to bow you to those stupid constructs but to doubt everything all the time. In my opinion life feels so much better with opened eyes. For people who don’t do that, life must be so hard. Because you never attribute things on yourself. If things are good you thank god for giving you a nice life and you can blame the devil for making your life bad and search help by god. But actually you’re not doing any progress like that. We are alone here and no higher force cares about us. For the quality of our life we’re solely responsible. You have to improve if things are not good, but you can be proud of you when life is good and there is nobody you have to thank.

There are no political ideas in our music. For us, music is definitely the wrong place to put in political messages. But we know that in black metal there are many bands hiding political propaganda in their lyrics. Our music, especially our new music sounds more and more depressive and dark. In opposition to songs like “Vorbereitung der Schlacht”, “Rache” or “Der Kalte Tod” our new songs are technically a bit more difficult and the riffs are more atmospheric and less brutal.

Some black metal bands think they are "rebelling" against the society's ideas. For example, lots of black metal bands have lyrics against Christianity. Yet, lots of black metal bands are also very patriotic/nationalistic; very "macho," which means sexism and homophobia; also hatred of Jewish people. BUT all those ideas are very Christian: hating gay people, thinking that men are "superior" to women, that Jewish people are "evil"? It seems that that type of "rebelling" is actually an affirmation of old, conservative Christian values!

I totally agree with what you said. I’ve also thought about that controversy for myself. Like Faust of Emperor killing a gay guy or that whole nationalism thing that tries to creep in Black Metal. We’re neither homophobic nor nationalists. Like I said before, Black Metal is asking about the whole thing. Not Jews or Muslims, but the whole construct of religions. All of us are Atheists so it wouldn’t make sense to judge more about one religion than about others.

Has there been a lack of maturity and intelligence in this regard for some of black metal bands? And where do you think that the tendency to see racism, sexism, homophobia and anti-Semitism as expressions in black metal come from? Is it that some young men feel isolated, powerless, socially awkward, social misfits, "losers"?

I think the problem is that Black Metal is a very aggressive kind of music. So unfortunately there are many people having no idea about anything Black Metal stands for. The only thing they can see in the music is aggression and it makes sense for them to put in nationalism, as an aggressive construct, as well. They don’t see that nationalism is a theory full of mistakes and false beliefs and neither do they care.

They’re angry because their life sucks and they need to find a scapegoat. Not better as Religions, blaming the evil for failure and thank god for success. It’s sad what beliefs like these made out of Black Metal. Also homophobia is the same kind of stupid view. Christianity said it was forbidden to get together as a homosexual couple. So first of all why should I support a Christian rule? And what problem is it to be homosexual?

Last one. How can people stay in contact with you?

The most current place to get news from us is our Summum Silentium facebook page. If you’d like to read our biography you can do that on our website www.summumsilentium.ch. Unfortunately there are no t-shirts yet because there is not enough money for that at the moment. But it’s certainly the next step we want to take. THE END.