Canadian black metal band Panzerfaust is quite rightly on a solid march. As they tour Europe with Kanonenfieber, I sit down with guitarist and vocalist Brock Van Dijk in the pink room of De Helling, of all places. What follows is a candid and thought-provoking conversation about the completion of The Suns of Perdition series, the creative process behind the latest chapter To Shadow Zion, and the deeper themes behind the music.
How are you doing?
I am doing well! We were in Oberhausen last night. A sold-out show with 1800 people, absolutely insane! It might be unprecedented if I’m honest. I don’t know, I am just a visitor to your fair continent, but it was unbelievable. It was jam-packed and we had a mad hose at the merch table, which is not a bad problem to have. But we’re having a fantastic time with Kanonenfieber. The majority of the shows have been sold out so far. It is beyond our expectations. We could not have asked for a better tour mate. These guys are on a meteoric rise. Kanonenfieber and the crew are just absolute great guys so we are tremendously grateful.
What’s it like to work alongside a band with a similar thematic intensity?
It’s great, the tour does seem to work really well. It makes total sense to me as to why this tour works. They are specifically a World War I band. I wouldn’t necessarily say we’re a war metal band, although some of the things that we write about certainly cover the topics of war.
Only two days ago, Eisenwald released To Shadow Zion. Congratulations!
Thank you. I appreciate that.
What does this fourth installment of The Suns of Perdition series mean to you personally?
On a personal level, I was in a weird state of mind on releasing this album. When you’re putting so much of yourself into some creative process and when you finally get to release it, you finally get to take something back. But it’s also bittersweet because I quite liked the labor, the process of the writing, and how difficult it sometimes can be. I have a difficult time turning the creative engine off. I am always thinking about the next thing. I am constantly writing, with every conversation I have. With Chapter IV, we’ve spent so much time! We started eight years ago with this idea to make the most extensive piece of work that has been attempted. And now, eight years later, we’ve come to the terminus of this whole enterprise and I am not quite sure if I have fully taken it in yet because it has just been released. I may come to the actual real emotion a few months down the line. Living on the road, you’re living with some kind of adrenaline. So I don’t quite know where my head is at.
It certainly evolved. First I started the band with the initial drummer, who left around ten years ago (after The Lucifer Principle). I had a few years in between where I didn’t have anybody to write with. I personally like to have a drummer to write with. Because as a guitar player, the drummer is my counterpoint. So I spent a lot of time writing by myself. Trying to look for another drummer. Essentially, once Alex joined the band, he had all this material and all these different ideas, they were sonically quite different from one another. We didn’t want to write some album with twenty songs, a two-hour record, which is not digestible, not ideal for any listener. There were a few sonic differences in some of the songs so we had come to the idea to somehow compartmentalize it in these four chapters with distinctly different sounds. I don’t think it is unfair to say there’s a distinct sonic difference between each of the chapters. That was probably the initial idea of how we wanted to divide them up in this way. And there’s this rather juvenile idea to create the biggest record anyone has attempted.
We were worried about the fourth chapter. I said, if we don’t make this the best one of all, like if we wrote a shitty album for the last chapter, one that did not live up to the expectations, I have to turn a gun on myself. So, anyway, we were all pretty happy with the way Chapter IV did turn out. We spent a lot of time, we grinded for more hours than I can probably ever attempt to remember but at the end of it, I think we ended up with a diamond.
Each album in the series carries its own theme and atmosphere. How does To Shadow Zion stand apart from the previous chapters?
Well, I think with the fourth chapter, there has to be an end to the story. At least, we should not leave the listener with a question. The concept with To Shadow Zion was to fuse the idea of a heavenly or holy place, utopia, with a union concept. The funny thing about the term utopia is that it translates to the original Greek, which means nowhere, which adds another layer to the title. And you start to realize that the worst atrocities are often committed by utopian ideas. This is the kind of theme that has been a constant throughout all of the chapters. The idea of the promised land, the holy place, Arcadia… The idea of a union concept of that which is most repressed in the individual or, in this case, in the holy place. That’s essentially why we fused this title.
As a humble student of history, I see the one lesson that’s learned, is that nothing is learned. It seems that we’re doomed to make these mistakes over and over again despite our better judgment. The other day, when we were kids, making a snow fort or something, and other kids were making a snow fort. Your instinct, even as a kid who doesn’t understand a thing, is to destroy the other kid’s snow fort. The will to dominate, the will to destroy, is inherent.
A primal urge?
Absolutely. When you extrapolate that onto massive geopolitics and all these concentric circles that accompany that, you see some of the worst atrocities. How I see it, I feel we’re starting to enter a period that we need to be very cautious of.
We’ll get back to that. Music-wise, what choices did you make in the songwriting process to create this monumental atmosphere on To Shadow Zion?
With Chapter VI, it was a kind of interesting. On a personal level, I didn’t actually go into writing Chapter IV with any really concrete guitar ideas. I wanted Tommy, Alex and myself, the three of us, to write in the room together. We wanted to be completely organic and come from almost nothing as opposed to almost dictating what the song is and how it is going to be done, which is not our writing process to begin with. We were all in the room, writing every second of the whole of the songs. That’s a certain investment of everyone into the project. Because they were in the room, seeing how the brew was made. For Chapter IV specifically, it was probably the most organic and most honest thing we could have written because we all had an investment in it as equals. That probably gives its very unique sound. That sets it apart from the rest.
What is the moment for you to enter the lyrics into the music?
I am always writing lyrics, all the time. If I am completely honest, I don’t particularly like writing all that much. I am having a lot of issues with it. You might be writing something down that seems good at the time. Then you get back, reading it, thinking that it sounds like pretentious bullshit. You think you are more intelligent than you maybe are.
You’re not suffering from imposter syndrome, right?
No no no. But it’s just that I want to find a gifted phrase when I can. You’re trying to create a story and sometimes, there’s the proverbial battle with the blank page. Everybody who has ever taken writing upon themselves knows what I mean when I say that. So I am constantly writing, all the time. I am constantly reading or listening to audiobooks or whatever it is. I am always ingesting information.
Like a sponge!
Absolutely, I have always been like that. I am a pretty avid consumer of information, whether that’s through books, music or media. I stay very much up to date with current events in geopolitics. I think that’s important. Politics may be all bullshit but it does affect you. That seems increasingly so with every waking day. All of these components can contribute to my writing. If you don’t read, you can’t write. There’s a direct correlation between these two things. That doesn’t mean that if you read, you have to write. My favorite writer, Christopher Hitchens, had a great line about this: “In every person, there is a story but in most cases, that’s where it should stay”.
Occam’s razor is essentially: the most simple answer is most likely the correct one. That’s to say not to overcomplicate things. There’s no reason to overintellectualize something. For the atrocities and the misery that have befallen us as a species, you don’t need to look any further than the mirror right in front of you. If you take for example the period of the Third Reich, everybody likes to say: “I would have been Schindler”, “I would have been sheltering the Jews in my basement”. But you know what? From my understanding of human history, you would not have been Schindler. You would most likely have been the Gestapo. You are more likely to fulfill that as a human being than as the person who stands against the crowd. Being truly brave in this world is a very rare thing. The problem was that otherwise decent people did nothing. What they did is, they allowed themselves to be part of the mob. It is much easier to go along with the flow. For example, after the fall of the Third Reich, people said “I was just following orders” or “I didn’t know what was happening”. There was a lot of genuine dishonesty. This circles all back within the context of Occam’s razor. The reason that these things have happened is that chaos is not the exception, it is the rule. When I look around here for example, in the beautiful city of Utrecht, sitting down and having a beer with Tommy this afternoon, it’s so beautiful and organised. If you look at it over the scope of human history, this is the exception. The rule would have been chaos, famine, death and destruction. The fact that a peaceful civilization such as this even exists, is an anomaly in history. That is not just something that is ordinary.
So how should we interpret the line ‘Et in Arcadia ego’?
Even in Arcadia, the devil exists. Good and evil crosses through all human hearts. Every point has its counterpoint. Even in the most holy, sacred places, there are sins beneath the soil. For example, we went to Verdun, which is a famous battle site in France. We saw where all the artillery had scarred the earth permanently. All this death, misery, bloodshed, and meaninglessness has scarred this ground, but the greenery always comes back. And the bones of the young men who fought in these combats are still beneath the soil. So there is a kind of a beautiful poetry.
Are there specific tracks on the album that hold a special meaning for you?
That’s actually a good question, I have never really thought about that. I feel differently about different songs at different times. On this album, there are a few songs that I feel pretty proud of as a musician. Throughout The Suns of Perdition series, Pascal’s Wager on Chapter II is a song that I am particularly proud of. That was probably the most honest I was ever able to write my lyrics. It’s very difficult to write something purely honest. You need to allow yourself some certain vulnerability, as opposed to plenty of bands who are filling their lyrics with buzzwords. That’s more or less meaningless. And that’s fine, but I can’t write in that way. I really struggle with every single line. With that song in particular, it was just honest. I wrote it down in the snap of a finger. I was like, okay that’s it, let’s go record it right now. It just came on the spur of the moment. If something happens all at once, it can be the most amazing thing.
Comparing to Chapter III, why didn’t you add any interludes in Chapter IV?
That’s funny you say that because it seems to be the public opinion that the interludes worked against the album. People have disagreements with these types of things. The interludes were something specific for Chapter III. Because everything you hear in Chapter III, was recorded down in the sewer underground, where there’s a storm drain entrance. We go down there, into these tunnels underground, which were quite cool. You can hear the drain constantly going through all of these interludes. The Astral Drain was a play on words with the astral plane. So as the inverse of that, the interludes were supposed to be the audible drain through the sound of the whole album. That was the function of the interludes. So for that album, it seemed like the appropriate thing.
Panzerfaust’s music often explores philosophical and historical themes. In ‘our world’ today, do you still need books for inspiration?
You need books! There’s something about books, it’s not just reading the words. You open a book, you smell the pages, and you hold the book in your hands. There’s no digital light. I don’t read on a tablet or e-book. I think the people who keep the used bookstores alive, are doing a tremendous service. Every time we’re on tour, we go to used bookstores. Tommy and myself are pretty avid readers so we’ll go in there and see what they have. You always find something! But it’s a bit of a dying enterprise. If you are lucky enough to find a used bookstore, you’ll be amazed to see what you can find in there.
So which book influenced To Shadow Zion?
One of the books that inspired me tremendously was Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. It’s essentially an old western. The writing style is distinctly American English as opposed to the more articulated British style of writing. It’s dark and it’s dusty. And it’s raw. The grammar is unconventional, to say the least. Everybody who tells you there are rules in writing is not a writer. Because once you realize that there are no rules, this is supposed to be the domain of absolute freedom. And he certainly exemplifies that. We actually use a quotation from that book on the back of our new shirt: “Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner”. I get goosebumps even right now. So I encourage anybody who has the time and patience to go read this book. You won’t regret it!
Freedom of expression is paramount. What changes do you see in how that can manifest in today’s world?
It’s ultimately the only thing that does matter, the freedom to express oneself. People often forget when they exhibit the censorious instinct, that human expression doesn’t just mean the right for you to speak. It’s the right for you to listen. Because even if there is one person in the room who doesn’t agree with the consensus of every other person in the room, it is doubly important, even if that person is saying an obscene, wicked, evil or incorrect thing, it is important for you to establish your first principles. Why you know what you know. Come to think, how do I know the earth is not flat? It’s always important to establish first principles. And every time you censor somebody else, you make yourself a prisoner of your own action. For me, the freedom of expression is probably the only thing, above all that I care about in some fundamental sense. I am seeing censorious forces beginning to encroach in many different ways. When you hear these terms like misinformation, disinformation, my antenna goes up immediately because I know that person is projecting, that person is immediately going to lie to me right after this. When engaging in misinformation, who is going to be the arbiter of that? The classic thing you have to ask about when it comes to freedom of expression, is who would you nominate to decide for you what you could hear or say? Does anybody have a nominee for this? Because nobody is qualified to make those decisions. And certainly, the person is going to fail the job to decide for everybody else what they can see or say or hear. The person is obviously going to become corrupted or is going to be the worst imaginable person who is going to occupy that position. I guarantee that.
So what do you hate most about Justin Trudeau?
Oh, where do I even begin? To tell you the honest truth, I’m going to piss on his grave one day. If I’ll be an old geriatric man, someone has got to wheel me over there and I’m going to do it. I promise you.
That speaks volumes. Given the time, let’s get back to the music. The artistic effect of the dual vocals adds to the grand and immense experience during live sets. Do you have any ideas on pushing the limits further on this?
With Chapter IV, one of the distinct elements of this chapter, in particular, is that we wanted to push the vocals to the maximum and thought capable. So on a personal level, that meant a much more ambitious vocal approach. A lot more syllables are being used. A lot more of a vocal range. It wasn’t until we were recording The Men of No Man’s Land on Chapter I whereas I had done this one part of the song where I didn’t know what I had to make my voice do that. Then you start thinking of ways how to expand the vocals. With this chapter, we push the vocals as far as I thought could be pushed. And this is a delicate balance. You can be experimental with vocals but at some point, it becomes something else. I see a lot of bands experimenting with clean vocals and stuff. That’s fine, it’s not for me to decide what another musician should do. But we wanted to have an emotional depth to the way that the vocals are being sung. Who knows what we will do next? I sometimes say one thing and then when we start writing, I completely change my mind on that. My mind is always open to change.
What do you aim to achieve through your music?
I want people to think. I just want something to be thought-provoking. I don’t want anybody to draw any particular conclusion. If we can get someone to perhaps think differently, and question their a priori assumptions about the world, I think we’ve been successful.
The band’s stage aesthetics have evolved, now Goliath wears two crossed ammunition belts across his chest. Does this tie into the themes of the new album?
I don’t mean to disappoint you but with this one, we just wanted to have the most brutal and terrifying-looking monolith on stage. That was more the intention than anything. We’re going to give him bullets, cover him all up in fucking mud. He’s six foot nine, he’s rather an imposing figure so no matter which way we frame it, he’s going to be a big boy.
What’s your take on the best release of this year, besides To Shadow Zion?
I would not be so narcissistic to say it was our own record. A lot of music has come out this year. The year-end list must be quite difficult! Especially in black metal, there were a lot of really good releases. There seems to be something of a renaissance in the style, which is good. Because it seems there’s more room to grow. You may have some other metal subgenres that find they hit their limits.
Agreed! Black metal is often seen as a boundary-pushing genre. How do you approach writing music in a style with so much tradition, while still seeking innovation?
Just be true to it. Write what you want to write. If you’re basing what you’re writing on what somebody may or may not think, you’re not writing in any honest sense. Because this should not play, this should not factor into any consideration when it comes to writing black metal music.
Next year marks Panzerfaust’s twentieth anniversary. Can the fans expect any surprises to celebrate the occasion?
Yes, we’re planning to do some pretty considerable things. It’s quite hard to believe it has been twenty years.
Yeah, you started the band when you were only fourteen years old?
Yes, and I think that a lot of guys that start in a band at those ages… You might start one band and the band breaks up, one of the serious guys in that band forms another band, and so on. I just had the benefit of keeping this one together since I was a kid. It’s as much part of me as anything could possibly be. But yeah, we have some plans but we’re finishing this tour first.
Exciting! Finally, do you have a message for our readers?
It’s very nice to be back here! My family is originally from Nootdorp in the Netherlands. My father’s parents came to Canada after the war, like a lot of Dutch people. It’s very nice to see where my family comes from.
You’re always welcome here! Many thanks for your time and beautiful music. Have fun on the road!
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