“Occult Spiritual Anarchy” is the third studio album of King Satan, which will be released on the 8th of April. The release presents more of a metal-oriented side of the band’s genre-fluid musical style, which draws its major influences from electro-industrial and death metal just as casually as from the areas of dance music and symphonic black metal.

Although, the group’s carnivalesque brand of extreme metal is perhaps best defined by their non-conforming tendency to combine the philosophical topics of Satanism and Occultism together with exploitation, blasphemous dark humor, and nihilistic absurdism. Here’s our interview with the mastermind of King Satan, King Seth Aleister Satan!

For me “The Pagan Satan” is the clearest, the best structured, and the most straightforward and matured King Satan video, so congrats!

–Hark! The style of the new videos was of course intentional choice from me as a director! I directed and produced all our new album music videos with a little different manner than before, because our new album is also taking new steps into new directions musically as well, so I figured to make it all aligned together. Don’t get me wrong, I am of course very proud of the previous music videos as well, and they were actually much more difficult to make than these new ones, but

I felt that I had consumed my vision for the time being with the dominant aspects of the earlier style, with these rancid exploitations, lo-fi psychedelics, and splatter arthouse style, or whatever you want to call it, and I wanted to experiment with other styles for now.

I don’t want to do the same things twice and I like to just experiment with different styles, and now it was time to make something which style is more organic from its surface! 

Can you tell me some details about the working process behind the song itself and about the script, and directing as well?

-I wrote the song originally inspired by the primitive rhythmic and dance music from the pagan cultures, as I was studying them at the time very carefully, and the song just basically wrote itself using me as a vessel! The band came along very well with this idea, and our ex-guitarist Dalai Daimonicus came to play a cameo guest solo for the song as well and another member of Iterum Nata, Jack Heretic also played some additional percussions there as a guest. There’s also actually one funny anecdote worth mentioning when looking back on this I think! The reason I started studying those primitive rhythmic and dance music things was actually when I debated with my good friend about HEILUNG (I am a big fan myself) and he told me that

”no one should combine industrial elements with pagan music, it’s just wrong kind of wrong”,

and I like usually things that are considered the wrong kind of wrong, so my inner rebel got fuel from that which gave me an excuse to pursue these kinds of musical aspects in King Satan context before I had intended! (laughs) (We were discussing these things already before with the band actually that we should do such things in the future). I had anyway already some raw lyrics written about the pagan origins of the Archetype of the Devil at the time, so then I realized I can combine these together. 

-I don’t want to give any interpretation guides really, because I think it works best when you make it personal. However, I’d like to think the lyrics are kind of self-explanatory about this, but in case I am wrong, it is strongly related to the pagan origins of the archetype of the Devil with some additional twists and turns related to everyday life. And this is speaking about it on a general level, so it shouldn’t ruin the part where you make your own interpretation about it. The music video has different dimensions of course, parallel story if you will which is better to see for yourself, but here are the lyrics:

The Pagan Satan

I believe in Devil that is older than time
I believe in the meaning behind the name
I believe its source and power
it’s all the same, deep, deep within
the time and the space

I believe, I believe, I believe in Satan
I believe, I believe in Pagan Satan
I believe in wine orgy and ecstasy
I believe in Will, I believe in You

I believe in salvation in damnation
Avichi-Nirvana, spice of the All
I believe the nature of universe and truth
emanates to us through the soul of fire

I believe, I believe, I believe in Satan
I believe, I believe in Pagan Satan
I believe in Loki, the flesh and the Soul
I believe in Bacchus, Dionysos and Pan

I believe, I believe, I believe in Satan
I believe in Will, I believe in Perkele!
Testify, testify, O’ so divine!
Joys of the flesh are the joys of the Soul
I believe, I believe in Pagan Satan
I believe in Saturn, Chronos and Louhi
Papa Legba, Angra Mainyu
I believe in Will
I believe in You

How long did it take to put the new material together?

-It was quite a loose schedule actually, as we didn’t rush or anything because the world was still closed mostly because of the Covid lockdowns and we wanted to wait for the live shows to return before we would release the album. It was a really surreal time actually. Most parts of the whole production took only a few months. Songs were composed during springtime, and we entered the studio already in summer with ready songs. Mixings in Studio Sampolaaris took the place right after in autumn and we had the final master made by Janne Tolsa of Studio Note On in our hands during in following January. So, ”Occult Spiritual Anarchy” was circa 8 months process from idea to final product. 

 -Which song was the most challenging one?

-I think ”Devs Ex Satanas” was the most challenging one for some reason. Probably because our usual musical recipe couldn’t be applied to the atmosphere I wanted from the song. At least it was a song we spent the most time with during the mixings and there were several versions of it actually. Me and Hekate even had to go to re-record some parts in order to make it work, because I just couldn’t lose the feeling that this song was indeed missing something important. So we decided to work with the song until we would find that missing aspect since I was not even the only one feeling the same way and we all agreed the song had strong potential and that it was also indeed an integral part of the album. 

I originally sang the song with my usual guttural growl shouting death metal-like style very loudly, and it just didn’t fit the song’s overall atmosphere no matter what we did in the mixings.

So, I re-recorded the vocal parts in a more calm and atmospheric manner eventually and it proved to be the right solution, letting the song’s symphonic and funeral-like atmosphere breathe much better this way. Another tricky part was the middle part’s symphonic climax, which was something I composed originally alone, but we felt that there was something missing too from there, so Hekate re-worked the part during the mixings the way we hear it now, and it was totally a right move.

I remember our mixing engineer and album’s co-producer Antti Välimäki said after the mixings were finished, that even though he’s very happy about the results, he might’ve become traumatized by the word ”nuance”! (laughs)

Which song is the most special one for you and why?

 -It is difficult to pick one above the others really, as the whole album is one continuum of the same energy for me and sentimentally there’s no huge difference between the songs for me. But if I just had to pick one, maybe ”The Faces of the Devil”. This is because it was the first complete song which was made for the ”Occult Spiritual Anarchy” album and it was also a clear step towards a more metal-oriented sound where we kind of say goodbye to our EBM/aggrotech era (for now) and embrace more industrial metal sound much strongly. So to say, this song will probably always be for me some kind of a guardian of the threshold conquered-type of thing and therefore it might be the most special song of the album for me. 

Are you planning to go on a European tour with the new material?

-Well, we did have plans but they went sour. We were supposed to go to support industrial legends DIE KRUPPS for European Tour in May 2022 to promote the album, but just a few days back it was canceled because of various reasons you can read about elsewhere, but mostly because of some Covid-19 security planning uncertainties and restrictions in Germany. It sucks big time, but what are you gonna do, the times are what they are still… So at the moment, our calendar is quite open. But, we are looking for other tour possibilities for the second part of 2022, yet it is kind of short notice to get on board with these things anymore at this point, so no idea at the moment if there will be tour plans for this year elsewhere than in our native Finland. 

We do have some individual shows in mainland Europe in May, Netherlands, and Belgium at least, so let’s see if there will be more such things coming together.

Basically, our sights are directed to 2023 already with new European tour plans, but if something great comes across before that, we are there without a doubt. Would be amazing to play again in Hungary though! 2018 feels like another century. “Fuck the rest, Budapest” never forget!

And last but not least: how would you describe the upcoming album?

-Musically speaking “Occult Spiritual Anarchy” is more strongly a metal album than our previous ones. It is also our first album where a human drummer (Pete Hellraiser joined the band in 2019 and this is his first complete album with King Satan) has replaced the drum machine completely also in the studio, so this is clearly a step outside of our EBM/aggrotech oriented sound towards the industrial metal sound with fuller grasp. I think also the symphonic side is also much more strong here than before, so maybe I still have no idea what kind of genre we do represent anyway, (laughs) but we don’t really care about any genre boundaries now more than we did before. 

I also have to say that I think this album will be also the darkest or at least most melancholic album from our discography so far, even the carnivalesque absurdism and dark humor are still presented there too.

I also have to say that I think this album will be also the darkest or at least most melancholic album from our discography so far, even the carnivalesque absurdism and dark humor are still presented there too.

Thematically “Occult Spiritual Album” is the end of the trilogy we started already with our debut album in 2017 and which ruling undertone is this so-called “Spiritual Anarchy” theme. The album and the albums itself speak better for themselves lyric-wise in my opinion, but as it is said in our label promo texts, our style is perhaps the best defined by our thematic tendencies combined together with music, rather than our musical style alone, maybe a word about the theme can be said here.

So, the album’s fundamental theme is something I started calling “Spiritual Anarchy” already in 2017 and it is strongly related to the Devil’s archetype

as this kind of mental attitude is the first thing what “the Devil”, be it a symbol, force, archetype, deity or whatever, should represent to the people (at least intuitively) before one could pursue deeper things with their own efforts, instead of just echoing other people’s thoughts and emotions without chewing and digesting them. Like a pallet cleanser of the mind, which is offered and encouraged by the archetype of the Devil. Creation through destruction, clowning is serious business… and so forth!

Of course, writers like Friedrich Nietzsche, C.G. Jung, Aleister Crowley, Anton LaVey, Fjodor Dostovyeski, Chaos Magick and Left Hand Path philosophies have covered similar aspects there and there in parts whilst not using the same terminology,

which I chose to use here to combine these certain aspects under the same roof concept and tie it to the exploration of the Devil’s archetype. But anyway, everyone of them is a massive influence on this album theme-wise, and on all our albums since 2017 for the aforementioned reasons. And “Occult Spiritual Anarchy” album is a culmination of this theme from our side, presented of course in industrial metal context and rock’n’roll lyric format; which all can be understood also of course alone as an independent work from most of its parts, but if you really want to get a grasp of the philosophical side there from all of its aspects, one should read them in the context of the trilogy which parts are King Fucking Satan (2017), I Want You To Worship Satan (2019) and Occult Spiritual Anarchy (2022).