Thank you for answering this interview.
You can The black metal wave emerged out of rejection of
start by giving us a brief summary of the history of
Draugurz.
There’s nothing extraordinary about the early history
of Draugurz, it was just another band that emerged in
response to the black metal wave of the 90s. The only
difference, perhaps, is that my interest was rather
limited before I discovered the link between the genre
and paganism and National Socialism. Draugurz was
conceived when black metal was becoming more
conscious of its meaning and atavistic roots. That
happened towards the end of the 90s, when NSBM
emerged in close association with the pagan wave that
swept that generation. Those values and worldview
were something I could identify with, and so Draugurz
was created, meant as my contribution to that
movement.
It appears that the creative impulse behind
Draugurz is associated with a will of transcending
the imposed reality, something that can be linked to
the meaning of some of the early movements and
orders related to NSBM. For some, this subgenre
has an aesthetic value, with belligerent songs,
samples of gunshots and explosions, and an
indiscriminate and profuse use of symbols as the
culmination of the musical offering. For others, it’s
about a spiritual revolution based on knowledge,
experience and expression of values and ideas in
accordance to a cosmic order. Concerning this
ambivalence found in the NSBM milieu, we would
like to know your take on the issue.
reality in the terms it presented itself (or rather was
presented) to us. Even though we were young and
didn’t know much, we knew too much was wrong.
Above all, we rejected the bourgeois-materialistic
perspective on life of our baby boomer parents and
teachers. Our rebellion, thus, took the form of a
counter-reality that was anti-materialistic and also
something rather immaterial, “a dream without holds in
reality.” Our dissidence was grounded mostly on
symbols and references we gathered from the so-called
“youth culture” of the time (Tolkien, Howard,
Lovecraft, D&D and RPGs in general, films, heavy
metal music etc), we were waging our war on reality
under the banner of fantasy − a fantasy that was
ultimately groundless, but felt more authentic and
truthful to life than the disenchanted reality that was
being forced on us.
This fantasy was, at first, something very loose and
anarchic, it knew no boundaries, no rules and no
foundations. The “satanic” impulse for individual
affirmation and freedom was dominant around that
time, but if that movement was to mean something
serious it needed a steadier foundation. Some of us
knew, even if only intuitively, that the fantasy was
more than just a whim of the ego, that there was
something more to it, a thread to be recovered, roots
that run deep waiting for us to reconnect with them.
And eventually the black metal rebellion found this
thread and took a turn towards National Socialism and
pre-Christian European spirituality.
Of course, a lot of the early references to National
Socialism were just for shock value, but despite that
the rapprochement with NS introduced an element to
that movement that brought it closer to reality. As the
pagan/NS wave developed there was need for rules, for
a code of conduct, for supra-individual notions of right
and wrong. If you want to call yourself a pagan and a
National Socialist you can’t do as you please, there’s a
price to be paid: the modern liberal ideal of an
individual with no roots whatsoever, completely “free”
and disconnected, has to go. If you’re attached to roots
that run deep, you have to sacrifice much of your
individual freedom and whims at the altar of something
greater than yourself, of the ancestral heritage of which
you’re but a link, not the whole chain. You have to
man up to the responsibility of picking up the torch
from the grave of your ancestors and carrying it
forward, amassing honour and dignity along the way,
to be passed on to the next generation. That’s what
Nature herself demands from us, and as a wise man
once said, "when man attempts to rebel against the iron
logic of Nature, he comes into struggle with the
principles to which he himself owes his existence as a
man."
The reason for the ambivalence in the NSBM
movement, the way I see it, is that some of the people
involved still have their hearts too attached to that
early fantasy that was loose and inclusive. Perhaps
they can’t conceive that there’s in fact a real
foundation, or they just don’t want to take the whole
concept of counter-reality to its ultimate consequences,
which would require accepting that that’s the only
reality and that everything else, including most of what
they know and feel attached to, is just shadows on the
wall. For these people National Socialism provides just
an appealing aesthetic that serves as a good theme for
their metal music. The concept of a spiritual revolution
is just entertainment and escapism to them.
What is the meaning of NSBM for Draugurz?
The meaning of NSBM and the broader pagan wave
associated with it was, at the beginning, closely linked
to the meaning of the National Socialist revolution.
While the latter had as a starting point the political rise
to power of the NSDAP in Germany − a revolution that
was supposed to produce a second, spiritual revolution
−, the one we intended to bring about would have to
start with the spirit and find its way into the realm of
politics from there, as the political climate wasn’t
favorable in the least. There is a text from the
Allgermanische Heidnische Front from that era that
expresses rather poetically this emphasis on the
spirit/intellect:
“In Europa there is an order of knights that do not
have horses or lances, nor armoury, shields or swords,
but who uses their dreams as riding-animals, and
thoughts as piercing lances, their callosity as shield
and armour and the rays of the sun as swords. Their
world is built upon two rivers that flow from the jaws
of the Fenriswolf, one is called Víl (Will) and the other
one is Ván (Hope). Perhaps it is only dreams, perhaps
it is only hope, but it is still there...
The dreams, I figured, represented the chthonic,
subconscious activity of the mind, our intuition and
impulses; the thoughts are reasoning, the rational mind;
and the rays of the sun represent that which the mind
has to reach for, knowledge, episteme, and truth, un-
forgetfulness, aletheia. For waging war with such
weapons a form of paideia in platonic sense was
necessary, an ascension from the darkness of the cave
towards the light of the sun. If that movement meant in
fact a manifestation of the Wotanic archetype, the
music had to come accompanied with a quest for
knowledge, it had to be imbued with the same thirst for
knowledge that led Wotan to sacrifice his eye to Mime
in order to drink from the pool of wisdom…
I perceived NSBM, thus, as something related to a
quest for a foundation, for knowledge and wisdom, and
I remained true to this quest, even after I distanced
myself from the music scene. The truth is that the
music was never really important, it was never the
focus. It was never an end in itself, but merely a means
to an end. It was powerful and compelling, and it
stimulated our dreams and fantasies, but after a while it
became quite clear that all the dreaming and
fantasizing wouldn’t take us far. If we wanted a real
revolution we would need to establish a steady
foundation in reality, and that’s what Draugurz has
been all about.
After the release of a split album with Woodsmarch
in 2008, Draugurz spent 11 years without releasing
any new material. Improvement requires deliberate
use of time. Besides, there’s a belief in the concepts
of progress and improvement as semantically
equivalent. Concerning this, tell us how you
evaluate the action of time on Draugurz in terms of
thorough improvement.
For a while I remained too focused on music, and I
wasn’t going anywhere really, I was stuck. The idea
that a subjective form of artistic expression was the
key was too limiting, it couldn’t produce a proper
foundation, so ultimately it boiled down to escapism
and nihilism.
The message I wanted to convey through Draugurz in
the beginning was quite simple, and I successfully
covered it with the two tracks I recorded for the Reh
Demo, “When the Shadows Lie” and “Into the Light”.
Those two tracks are part of a concept that deals with
circularity, night and day, shadows and light: the first
track is dark and melancholic, it’s about wandering in
the darkness of the modern world, looking for
meaning, while the second track is chaotic and
triumphant, it’s about the end of the search, about
standing defiantly as the darkness is banned by the
light of a new dawn − the dawn of a new pagan era.
The idea was to establish the goal, reaching it would be
up to us. I didn’t know how to get there though, I just
had some vague ideas and I thought music was
important, so I continued to pursue it. After writing a
few more songs that were variations of this same
theme, however, I felt I didn’t have much else to add,
and so I started to feel weary and unmotivated. Writing
music made sense while I felt that what I had to say
was urgent and important; but if I had to come up with
something to say just to keep having music released,
that would have been too unauthentic and ultimately
pointless (like most music out there these days), and
I’d rather not write music at all. In the meanwhile it
also became clear that music alone wasn’t the answer,
so I moved on to other pursuits.
path will be once again unhindered for us to answer the
call of the past (of the dead ancestors, “Ein Ruf aus der
Vergangenheit”), and we will be able to cross the gates
of eternity (i.e. to become godlike, “Die Tore der
Ewigkeit durchschreiten”). With the closing of the
circle we have a new beginning, and out of the forces
of chaos adversity will emerge again (“Pest”). And so
the circle goes...
It is nothing groundbreaking, but I think it still makes
for a compelling journey. The next album will be a
proper conceptual album, something more meaningful
and deep, a philosophical journey to the depths of the
Earth and back, the retrieval of un-forgetfulness and
the meaning of life and death.

The split with Woodsmarch was recorded in 2006, and

it remains my least favorite Draugurz release. After
that the project was put to rest and I spent the next
years mostly studying. My personal life is of no
interest here, but let’s just say that I have lived a quite
unusual life so far. The reason for the return of
Draugurz is that I have something urgent and important
to say again, and the music offers a medium. If it’s an
appropriate medium I guess only time will tell…

Recently a new Draugurz album called

“Elbenopfer” was released on Darker than Black.
What can you tell us about this album? Is there any
concept behind this work? What are the lyrics
about?

Most of the music and some of the lyrics for this album
are quite old. It’s essentially the material I was writing
for the album I planned to record right after the Reh
Demo, but got busy with a couple of splits instead and
then lost interest in recording or releasing music
altogether. The lyrics were written at different times,
but they all fit loosely into a concept, which goes like
this:
You wrote the lyrics for the song “The Cleansing of
Earth” featured on the Evil EP “Rites of
Cleansing”, released in 2017 by Darker than Black.
How was this collaboration arranged? Are you in
close contact with the members of Evil?

We summon forces of Earth and Blood (“Erd- und
bluthaften Kräfte”) as we fight under the eye (of
Wotan, “Unter dem Auge”), a war of resistance to be
waged until the coming purifying storm arrives (“Der
kommende Sturm”, “The Cleasing of Earth”). When
our dying civilization finally collapses in the storm, the
I have been in touch with Warlord of Evil for a couple
of decades at this point. We’re both quite busy with
our own lives, so I wouldn’t say the contact is close,
but we interact every now and then. He helped with the
distribution of the Draugurz demo back when it was
first released; Evil was kind of a legendary band
already in the late 90s, so it was great, of course. At
some point I was even invited to be a member of Evil,
around 2009, but I was too busy with other things at
the time and it didn’t work out. I visited Warlord right
after they finished recording their “Ashes of Old”
album, I think it was back in 2014, and he told me they
had a couple of songs for an upcoming release that
didn’t have lyrics yet, so I sent him some of my lyrics
and he used them for that song – an amazing song by
the way! That’s pretty much the story behind the
collaboration.
The social structure is usually thought in terms of
two supposedly opposing orders: left vs. right. The
concept of society from an economic perspective is a
distinctively modern perspective that goes against
the fundamental ideas of National Socialism as a
movement that was essentially revolutionary,
oriented towards the retrieval of symbols and the
establishment of an organic life. Even though
National Socialism is considered to be a third way,
some contemporary movements presenting
themselves as heirs of the NS movement indentify
themselves with the extreme right or the alternative
right, and are labeled as white supremacists,
traditionalists, anti-Semite and anti-communist. In
this sense, we would like to know how you see the
relation between these contemporary tendencies
and National Socialism, and what are the real
possibilities for resisting the establishment.
National Socialism, as it happened in Germany in the
1930s, isn’t something that will ever happen again. The
“mood” of that era, the circumstances and conditions,
the individuals involved etc were all unique and are
now lost in the mists of the past. The best we can hope
for is to retrieve the same spirit and imbue a new,
different movement with it. To achieve this we need,
first of all, to understand NS as a historical
manifestation of a timeless ideal, something much
greater than the relatively short-lived political
movement that took place in Germany between the
1920s and the 1940s.
Roughly a century ago, at the turn of the 20th century,
the human experience was something radically
different from anything we know today. Modern
national states were in most parts a rather recent
phenomenon, while the negative effects of the
reconfiguration of societies according to the new
industrial paradigm were only beginning to cause
enough discomfort for people to start raising doubts
over its course. Most people still lived in rural areas,
and all agriculture was still free of synthetic pesticides.
The emergence of nuclear weapons and the realization
of the massive destructive potential of technology was
still a few decades ahead in the future. It was in many
ways a much simpler time, in which mankind could
still hope to take over the reins of the modernization
process and assume control over it before becoming
enslaved by it.
And that was pretty much the idea behind National
Socialism. They perceived modernity as a disease and
rejected it, but they also knew modernity was
inescapable at that point in time, so they embraced it as
a means of overcoming it. When they stamped their
modern war machines with ancient runes and symbols,
they were re-signifying their meaning and their role.
They did the same to work itself, to industry and all
modern day activities, as a means of taking control
over modernity and escaping its enslaving grasp. They
knew they only had a small window to act on it before
it was too late, so they tried their best shot.
Fast-forward a hundred years into the future and we
have a completely different scenario. The National
Socialists were still able to use much of the institutions
of the bourgeois German society of the early 1930s as
a basis for starting building the new Germany they had
in mind; reforms were required, of course, as well as
new regulations, laws etc, but an organic life grounded
on the common ancestral heritage of the Volk was not
such a distant and unattainable notion as it is today.
Our present day “western civilization”, on the other
hand, is spiritually broken beyond repair. No roots
were left uncut, there’s nothing left to be salvaged,
nothing worth preserving. Marx’s historical
materialism became the basis for ALL accepted
perspectives, coming from both sides of the political
spectrum, left and right. National states are ruled by
private interest lobbies, the whole political system is
just a façade. The window we had to take control and
perhaps succeed in changing the course of modernity
was closed when Germany lost WWII; since then the
rhythm of the decline has only accelerated, all
institutions have been corrupted beyond salvation, the
very fabric of our modern societies became too tattered
and rotten for it to be fixed or serve as the basis for
anything healthy and desirable. The very idea that
people should have any rights to freedom and dignity
is no longer attainable under the weight of civilization,
as the current system has grown dependent on debt and
wage slaves to sustain itself – the masses of alienated
consumer-slaves have to keep working in exchange for
the useless trinkets they are brainwashed to want and
to think they need, otherwise the whole monstrosity
will collapse. So when people from the so-called
“extreme right” who are playing the current political
game make references to National Socialism or use
symbols linked to that movement while promising
more jobs, more purchasing power and more freedom
of consumption to white people, they either have no
idea what the NS revolution was all about or they are
simply trying to fool us (in this sense it’s not surprising
at all that most “extreme right” parties these days are
financed by bankers and openly promote liberal-
capitalist and pro-Zionist agendas).

The good news is that at this point, unlike in the 1920s

and 1930s, modern civilization is no longer
inescapable. It’s already on borrowed time, we can
already envisage its demise. If future generations will
see a new Reich shaped in accordance to the National
Socialist worldview, one thing is certain: it won’t be
built upon the infrastructure offered by our current
civilization, but rather upon its ruins. The spirit of the
NS movement will live again when we are able to
return to small rural communities of sturdy and proud
families of free farmer-warrior-landowners – a new
nobility of blood and soil shaped in the same mold as
the ancient European nobilities, as envisioned by the
“grünen Flügel” of the NSDAP.

The symbols, as signs representing abstractions,

take on the antithesis retention (when they retain
meaning that resist generations) – transportation
(when they awake impulses and elicit action). In
this sense, how are the use of symbols approached
in the context of Draugurz’ output?
Thanks for your time. This space is yours to add
anything you want.
I could write a book on the subject of symbols (and I
plan to, at some point), but I will try to be brief here.
We were lied to about pretty much everything. What
Mythic symbols provide the basis for building up the
they told us NS was all about has nothing to do with
foundation I’ve been talking about. Through them we
what it really was all about. Its true meaning is buried
can grasp the greater order to which we owe our
deep with our roots, under the thick layer of mud they
existence, we can glimpse eternity, ascend to the gods
threw all over it to keep us from it. It takes a lot of
so to speak. But we need to approach them properly,
digging to retrieve it, so you better not waste another
otherwise they won’t serve this higher purpose. That’s
moment and start digging! Forget about metal music
why in Antiquity the access to symbolic content
and such hobbies, do NOT listen to the Draugurz
required initiation. The indiscriminate use of our
album if it will distract you from what is really
ancestral symbols we see today only produces more
important. If you’re not up to task at hand, it doesn’t
nihilism. When National Socialists made use of ancient
matter how many NSBM albums you may have in your
European symbols they were trying to overcome
collection, you will remain a part of the problem.
modern nihilism by retrieving a lost foundation and
building upon it. We should follow in their steps.
When I started Draugurz I thought the so-called NSBM
movement offered a path for that, but returning to it all Interview by SS Helferin, August 2019.
these years later I noticed everything has just sunk
further down into nihilism. Perhaps it is a just another
dead-end, after all.