Forum.RttP{Decibel Magazine sure has black metal pegged . . . }

. . . eh, not really. Black Sharpie vs. White Belt? Sharpie wins.
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Twilight
Story by J. Bennett

Twilight might be the ultimate “kult” band, but most of their members won’t even talk to us.
This black metal bullshit about staying “true” and “kult” is getting pretty tired. Every troupe of sallow-faced corpsepaint warriors from San Francisco to Bergen with a record on Moribund or Total Holocaust feels compelled to announce how much they have in common with Darkthrone or Burzum—or how far removed they are from the high-pitched vampire shriek of Cradle of Filth or the polished stormblasts of Dimmu Borgir—by limiting their releases to editions of 500 while bragging about how “necro” and obscure they are. “Grim” has become the black metal equivalent of death metal’s “brutal,” and a band’s credibility increases as the number of people who have actually heard their music decreases. This mentality is supposed to keep curiosity seekers and hipsters away from a culture that doesn’t cotton to outsiders, but it’s also exactly the mindset that makes us (read: me) cruise eBay hoping to score a copy of that rare, out-of-print Xasthur/Leviathan split 12-inch on Profound Lore for less than 50 bucks. Yeah, it’s pretty disgusting: black metal record hoarding has become both the extreme-culture version of philately and the heterosexual version of antiquing. If these releases were readily available at the local record shop, we (read: I) probably wouldn’t want them so badly. Of course, the fact that some of the most talented and enigmatic fixtures of the domestic black metal “scene” refuse to do interviews only compounds the impenetrable aura of the USBM underworld—and makes journalist douchebags (read: me) want to demystify their shit even more.

Which brings us to Twilight. The brainchild of Azentrius, (AKA Blake Judd of the one-man Chicago-area black metal outfit Nachtmystium), Twilight is a summit of the most creative and twisted minds in the American isolationist black metal circuit: Leviathan, Xasthur, Nachtmystium, Krieg and Draugar, all one-man bands that rarely (Nachtmystium, Krieg) or never (Xasthur, Leviathan, Draugar) play live. Originally commissioned by Sweden’s Total Holocaust Records, Twilight’s self-titled debut was quickly snatched up for US release by Southern Lord mastermind/Sunn0))) guitarist Greg Anderson, who also convinced Wrest (AKA Jef Whitehead of Leviathan/Lurker of Chalice) and Malefic (AKA Scott Conner of Xasthur) to contribute vocals to Sunn0)))’s latest drone opus, Black One. “Twilight is a great concept, but it seems like something that could’ve easily backfired, because you’re talking about musicians who pretty much work exclusively by themselves,” Anderson explains. “In the case of Wrest and Malefic, you’ve got two very misanthropic and isolated individuals who don’t ‘hang out’ or ‘jam’ as part of a group. So when I heard the concept I was like, ‘How’s that gonna work?’ It seemed like a Mission: Impossible kind of thing.”

After e-mailing interview requests to Wrest and Hildolf (AKA Tim Lehi of Draugar)—both of whom gave us the finger—and Malefic—who ignored us—we finally got Azentrius on the horn to explain the cagey elitism of his bandmates. “It’s bogus that they’ve got an attitude like that,” Judd admits, “but I think Jef got sick of being interviewed in magazines with bands he wants nothing to do with, so he’s kind of adopted this very underground-only attitude, which is strange when you consider how incredibly open-minded he is as a music fan. I mean, we were sitting around his house listening to Steely Dan records.” (Stranger still: Wrest apparently has no qualms with a Leviathan track appearing on Thrasher magazine’s Eat the Flag compilation alongside decidedly non-underground bands like Alkaline Trio, Turbonegro and Bam Margera’s Gnarkill.)

Like many artists who make their music commercially available, Azentrius sees nothing wrong with promoting his records beyond the message boards and (parents’) basements of the black metal sub-underground, even if it costs him some credibility in the eyes of the self-appointed “kult” police. “I was like that when I was 17, you know?” he says. “And I deal with people like that now. Just because I’m in a band on Southern Lord and doing interviews with glossy magazines, some of the underground jackasses I’ve been tape trading with for years won’t deal with me anymore because I’ve stepped out of the little circle.”

Clique transgressions and publicity-shy personnel aside, Twilight is a total motherfucker of an album recorded on four-track cassettes sent back and forth through the mail by the five members. As such, it captures the myriad sonic idiosyncrasies of the individual players, from Xasthur’s charred synth ambience and Leviathan’s expert d-drum patterns to Draugar’s cavernous vocals and Nachtmystium’s ruthless guitar torture. Of course, disciples of the musicians’ corresponding bands will jizz over Twilight no matter what; that the record happens to be pretty killer is just a bonus. “The fact that people like it amuses us,” Azentrius chuckles. “We all think it blows. I mean, I’ve grown to love it because I worked hard on it, and it was a cool experience, but we’re capable of a lot more. We’ve already got four tracks done for the next Twilight record, and it doesn’t even sit in the same room with the one that’s out now.”

Despite the fact that most of its members shun publicity—and the band itself conducts most of its business through the mail—the one time all five Twilight dudes actually assembled as a group was for a promotional photo shoot just outside Pasadena, CA. “It was funny,” Anderson recalls. “Because, of course, Wrest didn’t really want to participate, but he was very vocal about his ideas. I remember Malefic was wearing white socks and Vans, and Wrest was like, ‘Dude, what are you doing?’ It reminded me of high school or something.”