"Being a human is a very lonesome journey."
Here is the promised interview with Kjetil Manheim, the drummer of Order, who released their new strong album "The Gospel" these days. Kjetil had a lot to say, so I divided the interview, which took almost two hours on Skype, into two parts. In the first part you can read what Kjetil has to say about the new album in musical and lyrical terms - we talked about the fragility of human life, buddhism, Aleister Crowley and organized religions, the (im)possibility of life after death but also about Emperor. In the second part we will talk about Kjetil's other musical playgrounds in the field of noise music, but also about the transfiguration of Norwegian black metal and the movie "Lords of chaos". We talked about his departure from Mayhem and former singer Dead as well as Kjetil's fondness for Berlin.
Yeah, Maybe this is a coincidence. Or maybe something happens in Norway these days?
Haha, maybe, I don´t know…
Yeah, that movie sounds interesting.
I would say it is something like a horror comedy. Not not to be taken too serious. According to that, I want to ask, did you maybe watch the 30th anniversary Emperor livestream ?
No, I didn’t. I saw that board, which was announcing it, and I thought I was going to watch it, but I haven't yet. So, I have it still in front of me. Did you watch it?
Yes, I have watched it. In the beginning, the whole thing seems a bit sterile and cold to me, not much reminded me of black metal. The longer it lasted, the better it got, in the end I was thrilled, really great visual effects.
I think they did a quite big production there. So that's the problem, right? These days, when you have to do things like this on video and pre-production, it's quite expensive. So, you know, like a band like ours, we don't have that budgets. So we have decided not to do those shows like that because it doesn't come through to the audience, you know? So the only thing that we do live over internet are interviews, podcasts and radio shows.
I asked Mortiis if he knows you and your band, and he said he doesn't know you personally. But he knows Anders Odden, and he knows Order.
You can take away all "or" because it's more of all of that -it is more sinister, it is more direct, it's more aggressive in its form, but it's still more personal, in my opinion, than the last one. A lot of people are now checking out our debut album "Lex Amentiae" as well. If they do that, they must understand that I like the album. It's a good album with some good songs on it, but it's a collection of songs and it's something that we did after we started Order because we didn't want to just play in the rehearsal studio. We want to take it somewhere. So then you try to make an album, you try to just see where you can take this band, how you can bring this band into its own expression like this. This aspect is always unique with the band. When you take someone out of the band and someone new comes in, it always changes the whole dynamic (former bassist René Jansen died of leukemia in 2014). So at least if you take the person on board as real member of the band. When we were working on the debut "Lex Amentiae", we came to a place where we said to ourselves that we need to get a record out. But it was more a step in the direction of where we wanted to go. But we thought that we had come to a place where we could start to share this with the world. With this album "The Gospel", we have a ride to where we aspired, where we hoped that we could achieve with Order. I think we have found the source of Order, so to speak, where we finally get into shape, as the band we are and I hope there is more and we're going to, of course, produce more albums. But this album is kind of how we came to this station where we decided to go and we achieved it. So, we are very happy with the album. I think we really made it this time, I still listen to it myself, actually. So that's strange, because when you finished an album, you usually take a break, right?
That's right. That's absolutely true and it's more intense. And I think when we started working on this album, we did that well. If you know our history, it's been a lot of back and forth with Order lately. And, well, latest was the incident when Anders got sick and he was diagnosed with severe cancer. So when he gladly came out of that, we felt that we really had something with this band. But if we were not going to be just this one record band we need to get some progress. So when we sat down, it was with the pure intent that nothing will happen with this band until we have the next record out. That was the decision. And when we worked on it, we looked at all the material that we made, that's been piling up. We had that and then it had been three years since our debut. There was a lot of material there, but it didn't go anywhere. So we looked at all the material and we saw, there's enough stuff to make another "Lex Amentiae". But that would be a standstill. So we decided to throw it all away. We just deleted it all and decided to start new. And what you hear in "The Gospel", I think or I hope, is the energy that happened when we did that. And then we just unleashed it in this creative period of september and october last year where we wrote most of the material of all, and it was quite intense. That's how we made the music. I'm behind the drumset and Anders on his guitar, he is incredibly talented in changing riffs all the time and trying different things. And I'm pretty clear myself. So we do this dance together. And when we hear that something really works, we try to lean on that and triple in on that. And that's how we make our songs and "The gospel" was coming like pearls on the threads, like one song, the next one and another one. And we recorded everything in the studio as demo songs. So I did the vocals, Anders on the bass and you know, we put it together. So actually, we had the whole album as demos finished. And it was just intense and incredibly good creative project, I must say, it's like we unleashed some energy there, and I think that's what you hear because the things got faster, it was more desperate. I've also written the lyrics on this album excerpt from the title song and they were written as we made the songs, so the song and the vocals are deliberately mixed into, they're part of the song making. That probably made the songs better as well, often in metal you have the riffs and then you put on the rhythm and everything else and then the last thing you put on it are the vocals, and it's like, you know, who can write the lyrics? Sometimes the vocalist does it himself or everyone participates in. It's kind of something that is put on afterwards. So this was kind of intense, all was entwined. That's what you hear on the album as well. I hope it comes through when we sing about "Descent", it's about a self inflicted pain, so as we made it, that was what we had in mind. And these were the lyrics that we wrote down as we were in the studio and creating the riffs and making the songs.
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"That's what life teaches you, it just can happen now or tomorrow. Next week can be your funeral, right? And you don't even know about it."
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Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think your analysis is quite fiiting, adolescence is a good description for this age period, being young means you feel immortal. It's kind of death is something that you know, it's there, but it's not relevant for you somehow, it's something that comes later, it's something that you don't need to consider at the moment. So I think you're right. I'm not sure if it's theoretically, it's more talking about something instead of talking about something that's part of you. "The Gospel" is a concept album, it's all connected. "Bringer of Salt" is the first song we wrote for this album. And when I sat down, it was just, that I wanted to talk about that, about this storm, that's so close, but still, it's not here. So this force, that's always present. That's what life teaches you, it just can happen now or tomorrow. Next week can be your funeral, right? And you don't even know about it. So that was what I was talking about.
"We go into this this darker side of humanity, and we explore it, and we don't try to escape."
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Yes, it is, but it's not coming from there. I also have a friend and he is a buddhist, you know? And there we were sitting together and he was asking about the project, how is it going? This was a few weeks ago. I explained to him what we're trying to say, and he said, well, this is buddhism. And I thought, of course it is, but I never thought about it that way. But, there's some truth in this. I think you find truth in in a lot of -well, not in many religions, but I don't know if you can call buddhism a sort of religion. I am a follower of Thelema. It's not a religious following, I have been member of O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis) for many years, I'm not that at the present, but I like the Aleister Crowley idea of how everything is about will and it's about respecting other people's will. Are you familiar with Aleister Crowley?
Yes, I know the rough structure of his thinking, just around his guiding principle "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." This statement was very often misunderstood-it was never meant in the sense of direct satisfaction of needs at the expense of others. The funny thing about it is that nowadays there are countless, also Christian-influenced life advisors in book form, who proclaim this credo or also carry it in variation in the title, such as "Do what you want, that is the key to happiness". Only with Aleister Crowley the whole thing was so terribly evil...
It's kind of ironic, isn't it? The problem is with as it is with many things that are being quoted, and when people try to say, what is it all about and just take one part of it. So the sentence "do what thou will shall be the whole of the law" shouldn't stand alone because it's been followed by another sentence. You probably know this, but this is "love is the law, love under will". The will is just the foundation of your inner drive. So if I'm to follow Thelema, I need to show respect that you have a will as well. So you must be able to follow your will and you need to respect me that I can follow my will. And there you have it, it will never be anarchy, because one of your driving forwards is to live, right? That's one of the biggest wills in any creature on earth. But the point is that you're absolutely right concerning the lyrics of "Descent". It wasn't written to have any reference to buddhism, but of course, it has some of the life wisdom, but it would be extraordinary if we found something new epiphany about the meaning of life. I think what we have done here is to reflect on ourselves. And of course, I've been doing most of the lyrics, but I know that the other guys recognize this very well. It's not that I've done something very strange and they wonder what it is. So "Descend" is meant to be how to understand life. Well, it had this working title, and it was "My violence". But the point was that it's not the violence itself the song is about. I was trying to say how we go steadily through life, through our choices, through everything we do. We build this thing that torments us more and more, in that context, of course, it could be a neighbor who does something terrible to you. It could be someone who just does something terrible to you. And of course, it affects your your happiness or how you live. But that's not what "Descend" is all about. It's about how you build things inside yourself, because being a human is a very lonesome journey. So we are a social creatures, right? And we love to talk to people. During the pandemic, we probably felt a bit about how it is to be totally isolated. We don't like it at all. But even though we are social, even though we are out having beers together and we all have all these people around us, it doesn't mean that the other people around you understand who you are, you are basically alone. And it's how you interpret things, it's how you do your choices. That's how you look back at your life and that's what I meant with with the pillars of destruction where all the chains are pulling you, you know, steadfast. There's no pause. It's just pulling your closer more and more into this agony that torments us. You know, it's not overwhelming, for some, it can be overwhelming, but it´s there. So that's what the song is all about.
I mean, you wrote „I am the smith that holds the hammer, I'm the architect who designed to structure“. This, of course, says a lot. Well, it's some kind of correspondence in this lyrics. I was a bit irritated because the info sheet from the record company said that the lyrics to "The Gospel" have autobiographical features of your life, but the lyrics were written by Messiah.
Absolutely, and it's the same in the Scandinavia. It's been called the most secular part of the world, but still in Norway, 80 percent of the population are a member of the state church. But the point is that by being a person like you describe there, like being even a "critical" Christian, give the pope power, right? Because he can say that you're part of his church. So he has all these members around him. And the same goes with the Norwegian Church, they can say that they have 80 percent of the population behind them. Then they go into the political scene and they say that abortion shouldn't be allowed. So why should we listen to them? That's right, but 80 percent of the population, so they argue, stand behind them, they have this voice into everything in society. I can do any rational discussion with you at any time. But as soon as there comes a priest and put some bloody religion into it, it poisons the whole discussion because then there's no rationality, there's no reasoning. It's just that "God said this", it's just bloody stupid. And if you know some history and I happen to do, I know the bible, I grew up in a Christian family, my parents were Baptists, it's always this way. You know, I have seen this audience.
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"They didn't call it indoctrination, they called it Sunday school."
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I also grew up in a Catholic family, but my parents were (and still are, incidentally) very liberal.
No, my mum was also liberal, I have had a good upbringing, so it's not that, but they were Christians, and they went to church every sunday and I had to go there and they tried to indoctrinate me and their church tried to indoctrinate me. And they don't call it an indoctrination, they called it Sunday school. They tried everything they could to put all this poison inside your head about this Jesus figure and what you shall do and what you shall not to. If I have one project in my life, if you can take one thing out of my life besides what I've done musically, it's about telling people "Don't listen to these guys. Don't listen to the religious people." If you look at this album, there's also a song called "Rise". It's the first song on the album, it's about coming to age. It's about the awakening you have as a grown up when you take your first steps. Some people are late, some people are early, they go into the world and now they're going to be an independent person. So the "Rise" is about that you just look at all this chaos and disorder and you look at all these people that are trying to tell you what to do. So it's some kind of "Fuck you", you know? Fuck your religion. Fuck your deities.
Following on from this topic, I am interested-if it is not too intimate-do you believe in any form of consciousness after the decay of the body, is there life after death?
Well, I like the answer that Richard Dawkins gave to that question once, and I totally agree, this is also how I feel. I am a convinced atheist. I've read a lot about a lot of religions and I love philosophy, I spend a lot of time concerning this. I don't find it plausible, I find it impossible that there's anything else than the physical thing that we see here now. So in that sense, I'm an atheist as far as you can go without being a fanatic. But that's because I am not a fanatic, because I don't know and of course I'm open. Give me the evidence and I will believe. Of course it could be, but I haven't seen the evidence right now. So I believe that when we die, we die. We are a species, life is wonderfully wondrous. It's strange that it's happened. The universe is full of mystique. I don't know what the universe holds, but I think, as mentioned before, that when we die, we die. This is not an audition, this is what this is, life and when we die, I don't know what comes next. I think there will be nothing but of course I could be wrong.
I think the same. But to be honest, if you talk with people who are convinced that there is something such as life after death, sometimes I think I would like to be able to believe in things like that- it's a nice thought. If you think there will maybe or there will for sure come something after but I simply can't.
Let's hold that thought because I understand what you say. Isn't it nice to have found it, you know? Yeah, but it's still just the belief, right? They don't have any more evidence.
For me, there is no real cause one can believe that there is or could be something like this.
Exactly. So let's say that we get some evidence, then let's say that the evidence on the table talks about another dimension, for instance, that we actually can prove it. You know, there's something that we didn't know about before, but it's there and we don't know what it is, but probably there's some connection between this dimension and the next dimesnion. Okay, that would be a cool thing to argue around. Because then we know something, we can discuss it, we don't know everything about it, but we know enough to understand that there is something, then the discussion would be okay. If this is something that we're connected to, I can hope that it's going to be a good thing, right? But I'm not sure if life would have become easier or better then, because it would be just one more thing we would know, but we wouldn't know everything yet. So if you get an answer but you don't really understand it, what then? Take answer "42" to have a reference to the literature. So if the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42, what does it mean? You know, you don't know nothing. That, I think, was Douglas Adams idea when he he wrote that. What does that mean to you? It doesn't give you much. You know, you just open another box of enigma.
So when we started to look back at all the songs, it became clear what Anders and me were doing, we were talking about the intensity of life and how the pain that comes with being a human, how this is actually something that we have to live with. It's something that we endure, but it's just that all these feelings are still there. Some people, of course, are overwhelmed by these feelings, other people live with it. And so if you get sick, of course, then you need help to get out of it and cope with it. If you don't get sick, it doesn't mean that you don't have all these feelings, right? Of course I don't know you, and I don't know what's your personal experience with these feelings are. But I'm certain that you have friends and colleagues, who have been sick by these feelings that can be pretty tough to cope with. But what we try to do is to say that what means it to be human, in the age of 18 or 20 you haven't lived your life, and that's what I tried to say in that interview, or I probably mentioned it several times, and so I don't think I would be able to have the same perspective decades ago as I have now. So when you're 20 years old, you look around and everything is possible, right? I mean, you don't have that much experience in defeat, you could have, but the point is that you have this life ahead. As life progresses you see that there's actually no nirvana there, there's no station that you're travelling to. And you can't take away these parts of life, you know that these feelings, our sorrow, despair, anxiety and pain, all that is there. And if you take that away, what's left then is just numbness. In our music, we don't talk about the parts of life that are friendship and love and family and all the other parts of life. We talk about this part and I think that this is probably the essence of this music, we go into this this darker side of humanity, and we explore it, and we don't try to escape. We don't try to run away from it, we go into it and try to express it both in music and lyrics. So, this is black metal. It's more like it sounds very poetic when I say it's like this, but it's more than the music, right? So it's not unique with black metal, but it comes with a package. And I think that's what you get with „The Gospel.“
Coming to another track „Descent“, which was pre-released with a video clip. It's about not blaming anyone else for your situation and taking full responsibility for your own life path. My first thought was, that this is the core of buddhism.
Coming to another track „Descent“, which was pre-released with a video clip. It's about not blaming anyone else for your situation and taking full responsibility for your own life path. My first thought was, that this is the core of buddhism.
Yes, it is, but it's not coming from there. I also have a friend and he is a buddhist, you know? And there we were sitting together and he was asking about the project, how is it going? This was a few weeks ago. I explained to him what we're trying to say, and he said, well, this is buddhism. And I thought, of course it is, but I never thought about it that way. But, there's some truth in this. I think you find truth in in a lot of -well, not in many religions, but I don't know if you can call buddhism a sort of religion. I am a follower of Thelema. It's not a religious following, I have been member of O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis) for many years, I'm not that at the present, but I like the Aleister Crowley idea of how everything is about will and it's about respecting other people's will. Are you familiar with Aleister Crowley?
Yes, I know the rough structure of his thinking, just around his guiding principle "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." This statement was very often misunderstood-it was never meant in the sense of direct satisfaction of needs at the expense of others. The funny thing about it is that nowadays there are countless, also Christian-influenced life advisors in book form, who proclaim this credo or also carry it in variation in the title, such as "Do what you want, that is the key to happiness". Only with Aleister Crowley the whole thing was so terribly evil...
It's kind of ironic, isn't it? The problem is with as it is with many things that are being quoted, and when people try to say, what is it all about and just take one part of it. So the sentence "do what thou will shall be the whole of the law" shouldn't stand alone because it's been followed by another sentence. You probably know this, but this is "love is the law, love under will". The will is just the foundation of your inner drive. So if I'm to follow Thelema, I need to show respect that you have a will as well. So you must be able to follow your will and you need to respect me that I can follow my will. And there you have it, it will never be anarchy, because one of your driving forwards is to live, right? That's one of the biggest wills in any creature on earth. But the point is that you're absolutely right concerning the lyrics of "Descent". It wasn't written to have any reference to buddhism, but of course, it has some of the life wisdom, but it would be extraordinary if we found something new epiphany about the meaning of life. I think what we have done here is to reflect on ourselves. And of course, I've been doing most of the lyrics, but I know that the other guys recognize this very well. It's not that I've done something very strange and they wonder what it is. So "Descend" is meant to be how to understand life. Well, it had this working title, and it was "My violence". But the point was that it's not the violence itself the song is about. I was trying to say how we go steadily through life, through our choices, through everything we do. We build this thing that torments us more and more, in that context, of course, it could be a neighbor who does something terrible to you. It could be someone who just does something terrible to you. And of course, it affects your your happiness or how you live. But that's not what "Descend" is all about. It's about how you build things inside yourself, because being a human is a very lonesome journey. So we are a social creatures, right? And we love to talk to people. During the pandemic, we probably felt a bit about how it is to be totally isolated. We don't like it at all. But even though we are social, even though we are out having beers together and we all have all these people around us, it doesn't mean that the other people around you understand who you are, you are basically alone. And it's how you interpret things, it's how you do your choices. That's how you look back at your life and that's what I meant with with the pillars of destruction where all the chains are pulling you, you know, steadfast. There's no pause. It's just pulling your closer more and more into this agony that torments us. You know, it's not overwhelming, for some, it can be overwhelming, but it´s there. So that's what the song is all about.
I mean, you wrote „I am the smith that holds the hammer, I'm the architect who designed to structure“. This, of course, says a lot. Well, it's some kind of correspondence in this lyrics. I was a bit irritated because the info sheet from the record company said that the lyrics to "The Gospel" have autobiographical features of your life, but the lyrics were written by Messiah.
I can elaborate on that. When we wrote "The gospel" Anders and I weren't unhappy with how the song went. It was a great riff, but we didn't really find the right furtold for it. But then we just halved the speed, I don't know how slow we made it, but then everything became really majestic, it was really cool. But the song also had the potential to be quite long, and we knew that Messiah had this lyrics which are really good. And we decided that those lyrics will fit very well to this song, we tried it and it worked perfectly fine. Some of the lyrics been written many years ago, but we use it on this song and the lyric is a story and that's the double meaning of this album. So the whole album is kind of a gospel, a message about the torments and the agony and all the strain that comes with being human. Then you have a gospel, which is the anomaly on the album, because it's not about that, it's about the story, it's about the gospel of something that happened many years ago and is still remembered today. And if you know where to look for it, the lyrics are quite hermetic. And so he uses a lot of your references and analogues, so it's kind of difficult to understand what he's singing about.
I think it's referring to Orwells "1984".
Absolutely. So, when you start to follow that, he was talking about this radiance from the east. He's talking about this plague that makes people witches again. You know, we're talking about the age it places, this is very much in the 80s, and he talks about the four horsemen. So they came together in the cellar, this pig's cellar and tried to make their horror of their own. And we go forward and it's about me, it's about Necrobutcher, it's about Euronymous; it's about him. So he is writing about a period of his life, that's the reference.
I read that you like some writers, I think who were running under the label "new atheism", writers like Richard Dawkins for example.
Absolutely, I love those writers, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, a lot of those. You could call it new atheism, maybe. I don't know, they've been quite like Daniel Dennett. You know, scientists or thinkers who have spent a lot of time to explain to the world what's true and what's not true? And I think it's no secret that I really, really dislike organized religion, I think it's probably the most hiddeous and the most destructive force for human development and enlightment. I think it restricts people, how they choose to live their life, it restricts how people are able to live their lives. It restricts how we are able to think, who we are or what we do, but also with whom we are having sex with. You know, it's crazy and all based on lies. So if you want to extend this interview very much, we can talk about that longer.
I agree with you for the most part. The question is, though, if it hadn't been for religion, would people have found other reasons to bash each other's heads in? Especially since I think it is a not inconclusive thesis, which I once read in an interview, that religion was often only a pretext, in truth it was more about money, power and land.
Of course, I also believe that there have been people who exploited religion to demean for whatever they have in mind. But remember, this religion in itself is a dogmatic structure. So if I say that we believe that this is true, and we believe it's true because there's some divine authority who has said that it's true, now to to change that fact, to change that belief, you need to go into theologically discussions, right? Because you need to convince everyone that follows this faith, that we were wrong about what this divine being has told us. You know, we have misinterpreted him or her or whatever you worship, and that's a pretty long process. So when you put something into work that is dogmatic, it's also a prison, it means chains. Let's take the Christians today, they still argue about sexuality, right? Why? Well, it's easy to understand why, because they're dogmatic and they have the bible. And if you look into the New Testament and the Old Testament, they're full of references of supporting the dark Christians who says it's a sin to do anything else but having sex within the marriage. You can't deny that, just put up any translation of the bible, it's there. So what they struggle with is, that should they follow what's in the scripture or should they follow something else? I don't know exactly why, but for some reason, the right wing think that sexuality is also very important, so they want to control people who behave differently than they do. It's very strange; I can't understand why this is so important for them, but it is, so the only thing that we need to do to them is to rationalize around how stupid that is, you know? I guess that there's no divine order, it's just the same thing, it's not written, it's not part of this. This natural law is just that they hate gays, you know, it's stupid. Why do they hate gays, why do a racist says that he doesn't like people from Africa? So why? You know, it's a religion that says so, then it becomes dangerous, right? So religion poisons everything.
I don't want to get into the position of defending religion, but on the other hand, I think there are so many people who call themselves Christians, but absolutely don't care what the pope says or what the bible says, it just has no meaning for them. Here in Germany it is like that, and at least in very many European countries as well.
I think it's referring to Orwells "1984".
Absolutely. So, when you start to follow that, he was talking about this radiance from the east. He's talking about this plague that makes people witches again. You know, we're talking about the age it places, this is very much in the 80s, and he talks about the four horsemen. So they came together in the cellar, this pig's cellar and tried to make their horror of their own. And we go forward and it's about me, it's about Necrobutcher, it's about Euronymous; it's about him. So he is writing about a period of his life, that's the reference.
I read that you like some writers, I think who were running under the label "new atheism", writers like Richard Dawkins for example.
Absolutely, I love those writers, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, a lot of those. You could call it new atheism, maybe. I don't know, they've been quite like Daniel Dennett. You know, scientists or thinkers who have spent a lot of time to explain to the world what's true and what's not true? And I think it's no secret that I really, really dislike organized religion, I think it's probably the most hiddeous and the most destructive force for human development and enlightment. I think it restricts people, how they choose to live their life, it restricts how people are able to live their lives. It restricts how we are able to think, who we are or what we do, but also with whom we are having sex with. You know, it's crazy and all based on lies. So if you want to extend this interview very much, we can talk about that longer.
I agree with you for the most part. The question is, though, if it hadn't been for religion, would people have found other reasons to bash each other's heads in? Especially since I think it is a not inconclusive thesis, which I once read in an interview, that religion was often only a pretext, in truth it was more about money, power and land.
Of course, I also believe that there have been people who exploited religion to demean for whatever they have in mind. But remember, this religion in itself is a dogmatic structure. So if I say that we believe that this is true, and we believe it's true because there's some divine authority who has said that it's true, now to to change that fact, to change that belief, you need to go into theologically discussions, right? Because you need to convince everyone that follows this faith, that we were wrong about what this divine being has told us. You know, we have misinterpreted him or her or whatever you worship, and that's a pretty long process. So when you put something into work that is dogmatic, it's also a prison, it means chains. Let's take the Christians today, they still argue about sexuality, right? Why? Well, it's easy to understand why, because they're dogmatic and they have the bible. And if you look into the New Testament and the Old Testament, they're full of references of supporting the dark Christians who says it's a sin to do anything else but having sex within the marriage. You can't deny that, just put up any translation of the bible, it's there. So what they struggle with is, that should they follow what's in the scripture or should they follow something else? I don't know exactly why, but for some reason, the right wing think that sexuality is also very important, so they want to control people who behave differently than they do. It's very strange; I can't understand why this is so important for them, but it is, so the only thing that we need to do to them is to rationalize around how stupid that is, you know? I guess that there's no divine order, it's just the same thing, it's not written, it's not part of this. This natural law is just that they hate gays, you know, it's stupid. Why do they hate gays, why do a racist says that he doesn't like people from Africa? So why? You know, it's a religion that says so, then it becomes dangerous, right? So religion poisons everything.
I don't want to get into the position of defending religion, but on the other hand, I think there are so many people who call themselves Christians, but absolutely don't care what the pope says or what the bible says, it just has no meaning for them. Here in Germany it is like that, and at least in very many European countries as well.
Absolutely, and it's the same in the Scandinavia. It's been called the most secular part of the world, but still in Norway, 80 percent of the population are a member of the state church. But the point is that by being a person like you describe there, like being even a "critical" Christian, give the pope power, right? Because he can say that you're part of his church. So he has all these members around him. And the same goes with the Norwegian Church, they can say that they have 80 percent of the population behind them. Then they go into the political scene and they say that abortion shouldn't be allowed. So why should we listen to them? That's right, but 80 percent of the population, so they argue, stand behind them, they have this voice into everything in society. I can do any rational discussion with you at any time. But as soon as there comes a priest and put some bloody religion into it, it poisons the whole discussion because then there's no rationality, there's no reasoning. It's just that "God said this", it's just bloody stupid. And if you know some history and I happen to do, I know the bible, I grew up in a Christian family, my parents were Baptists, it's always this way. You know, I have seen this audience.
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"They didn't call it indoctrination, they called it Sunday school."
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I also grew up in a Catholic family, but my parents were (and still are, incidentally) very liberal.
No, my mum was also liberal, I have had a good upbringing, so it's not that, but they were Christians, and they went to church every sunday and I had to go there and they tried to indoctrinate me and their church tried to indoctrinate me. And they don't call it an indoctrination, they called it Sunday school. They tried everything they could to put all this poison inside your head about this Jesus figure and what you shall do and what you shall not to. If I have one project in my life, if you can take one thing out of my life besides what I've done musically, it's about telling people "Don't listen to these guys. Don't listen to the religious people." If you look at this album, there's also a song called "Rise". It's the first song on the album, it's about coming to age. It's about the awakening you have as a grown up when you take your first steps. Some people are late, some people are early, they go into the world and now they're going to be an independent person. So the "Rise" is about that you just look at all this chaos and disorder and you look at all these people that are trying to tell you what to do. So it's some kind of "Fuck you", you know? Fuck your religion. Fuck your deities.
Well, I like the answer that Richard Dawkins gave to that question once, and I totally agree, this is also how I feel. I am a convinced atheist. I've read a lot about a lot of religions and I love philosophy, I spend a lot of time concerning this. I don't find it plausible, I find it impossible that there's anything else than the physical thing that we see here now. So in that sense, I'm an atheist as far as you can go without being a fanatic. But that's because I am not a fanatic, because I don't know and of course I'm open. Give me the evidence and I will believe. Of course it could be, but I haven't seen the evidence right now. So I believe that when we die, we die. We are a species, life is wonderfully wondrous. It's strange that it's happened. The universe is full of mystique. I don't know what the universe holds, but I think, as mentioned before, that when we die, we die. This is not an audition, this is what this is, life and when we die, I don't know what comes next. I think there will be nothing but of course I could be wrong.
I think the same. But to be honest, if you talk with people who are convinced that there is something such as life after death, sometimes I think I would like to be able to believe in things like that- it's a nice thought. If you think there will maybe or there will for sure come something after but I simply can't.
Let's hold that thought because I understand what you say. Isn't it nice to have found it, you know? Yeah, but it's still just the belief, right? They don't have any more evidence.
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"But I'm not sure if life would have become easier or better then, because it would be just one more thing we would know, but we wouldn't know everything yet.
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For me, there is no real cause one can believe that there is or could be something like this.
Exactly. So let's say that we get some evidence, then let's say that the evidence on the table talks about another dimension, for instance, that we actually can prove it. You know, there's something that we didn't know about before, but it's there and we don't know what it is, but probably there's some connection between this dimension and the next dimesnion. Okay, that would be a cool thing to argue around. Because then we know something, we can discuss it, we don't know everything about it, but we know enough to understand that there is something, then the discussion would be okay. If this is something that we're connected to, I can hope that it's going to be a good thing, right? But I'm not sure if life would have become easier or better then, because it would be just one more thing we would know, but we wouldn't know everything yet. So if you get an answer but you don't really understand it, what then? Take answer "42" to have a reference to the literature. So if the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42, what does it mean? You know, you don't know nothing. That, I think, was Douglas Adams idea when he he wrote that. What does that mean to you? It doesn't give you much. You know, you just open another box of enigma.
Thanks a lot that we could talk so much about the lyrical concept and the surrounding thoughts and superstitions. But of course I have some other questions for you.
We went far into the philosophical world now. So go on.
We went far into the philosophical world now. So go on.
You can read the second part of the interview HERE.
