For anyone who has followed the longest enduring acts from the 90's Norwegian black metal scene, you have most likely heard the legends of one they call Lord Kaiaphas, the once former vocalist of the band Ancient who had recently returned to perform with the band to support the anniversary tour for "The Cainian Chronicle" album. Ever since his triumphant return, the band Ancient all of a sudden seemed to have such a resurgence in the black metal community worldwide, even though the interest for the band has always been there throughout the years. This time however, it is a very exceptional case that sparked such positive fan feedback throughout the entire year and luckily, they are planning to keep on going. Sadly, I was unable to attend the band's show on the Explosive Stage at the Exit Festival 2024, which is held every year in my hometown of Novi Sad at the Petrovaradin fortress, but I was very fortunate to get in touch with Lord Kaiaphas and do an interview with the man himself. We talked about his return in Ancient and we also covered his history with the band since he joined in 1995, while discussing other subjects such as the work on the beloved "The Cainian Chronice" album, the story behind the shooting of "Lilith's Embrace" music video, the development hell behind Mad Grandiose Bloodfiends, his involvement in other projects such as Thokkian Vortex, Le Chant Noir, Minimal Criminal and Dream Invaders, and we also talked a bit about his passion for travelling all around the world as a very hardcore globetrotter. I hope you will stick around until the end and if you enjoyed this interview, I would highly appreciate your feedback.

Vladimir

Hey, Valerio. How is it going?

Hey, buddy. You were at the show. Yes?

You're talking about the show at the Exit Festival this year?

Yeah.

No. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the show because I was in Sweden around the time.

Okay.

I'm kinda pissed off because this was actually our honeymoon we got as a wedding gift, and I wasn't even aware that Ancient was gonna be performing in my hometown of all places. So, I was really let down by that.

Oh, well. Okay. It was a good show.

Was this your first time coming here to Serbia?

Yeah. At first, we spent some days in Belgrade and we liked it. We enjoyed it. And then, and then a shuttle came to pick us up from Belgrade to Novi Sad, and then we did the show there. And then back to Belgrade for another day or 2, and then back, back home. I thought it was a very nice city. I even had some nice craft beers. I'm a big fan of craft beers and they had some good ones there. I brought back a can from Serbia. And the thing that made an impression is how hot it is. It's like it's the hottest place we've ever been to, and I'm from Brazil. It was incredibly hot, because we were told that because of the buildings and the asphalt, the heat just remains, and there was no air conditioning anywhere. So, it was like we could not believe how hot it was. We were not expecting it to be that hot in Serbia.

Yeah. It was above 40 degrees this Summer, and the worst part is that it was near 50. I don't recall if one day it was actually going 50 degrees, but this was a very strong heat wave that even struck the north of Europe, like Sweden. They had this same scenario in September. But when I was in Sweden around that time, the temperature was very good. It wasn't so hot that you couldn't breathe, because it's not so closed and asphalt all over you like Novi Sad. And I think that's the biggest problem because we lack nature. We lack natural resources. We don't have as many trees and grass. When a guy from Brazil such as yourself says it was hot, it was hot. So, I believe you.

Yeah. And I live in Israel, and here we get temperatures like high forties in the Summer. But they have air conditioning everywhere. Like, all the shops, all the buses, everything in the house, we have central air conditioning here. And in Belgrade, we didn't see much of that. Just maybe a few places. It was very hot.

We're very known for the fact that we don't actually take care of this kind of stuff, so I believe you. I believe you completely. Even if you drove with our city buses, you would have died. Trust me.

No. We walked the whole time.

Good. I think it's safer to walk or to go by car with air conditioning on. Never take a bus.

Yeah. We had a good time. It was cool. Very cool. Enjoyed it. Hope we get some other gigs in Serbia in the future.

I know you're quite a person who likes to travel. I mean, judging from all the posts that I've seen on your social media, how come you're such a globetrotter? How come you are so excited to travel so much?

Well, I'm from Brazil, but I grew up in America. I started living there when I was 6 years old. So, every summer vacation I would fly back to Brazil to visit the family and then back to America. So, I've been flying since I was a little kid. And I had these two cultures. And then when I joined Ancient, then that's when I got to go to Norway and Sweden, and then we went on tour across Europe. But the traveling bug didn't bite me until years later, like around 2001. I went to Morocco, for a trance music festival over there. And that's when I got the idea "Hey. Traveling is cool. Checking out other cultures and eating other foods, the sites, the smells, all the new stuff". And then I decided to go back to live in Brazil, explore Brazil more. And then from that point onwards, every year I would go somewhere new and I had a thing. I have to go to a new place every year, at least one new place. And then, because I also make trance music, I had gig offers in different countries as well. So, because of that, I got to go to Australia to play in Australia, Turkey, other places in Europe, obviously, Brazil. And now back with Ancient, we've been playing a gig almost every other month. So back to traveling.

Since you came back to Ancient, did you travel more, i.e. do more extensive tours than you did back in the 90's when you originally joined the band?

When I was in the nineties, we had a couple of tours, two main ones. One was supporting Dark Funeral, and one where we were the main band with Behemoth, believe it or not, supporting us. That was the second tour and it was basically 22/23 gigs back-to-back, a couple days break, on a tour bus with 20 people, double decker bus, like hardcore, just going to European countries. It was two tours and then we did one mini tour in America that we played just like 5 gigs up and down the East Coast, and that was it.

You've been absent from Ancient for quite a while now. All of a sudden, people got so excited to see that you came back. So, what's actually the story behind you rejoining Ancient?

I've been in touch with Aphazel for all these years. You know, off and on, we would talk and stuff like that. So, I've always been aware of what they're doing. I went to Greece in 2003 and I was talking to Aphazel and he said "Hey. We're gonna play some gigs in Greece. Why don't you join us on stage for a couple songs?" So, I was in the way. I sort of got a ride to where I was going through them. I played a couple gigs with them and then I kept in touch with Aphazel. And then they started having talks about The Cainian Chronicle, because then the 20-year mark or 30-year mark or whatever hit, I'm not sure how long. And then, maybe we should do an anniversary tour. They started doing the Svartalvheim anniversary, so the next album would be The Cainian Chronicle. So, we were talking anyway. He came here to Israel to visit some years back, like 10 years or whatever back. So, it was in the cards. It would have happened sooner or later.

When you came back, did you feel more optimistic about being a part of this band again more so than you were back in the 90's?

I've changed a lot. Not changed, but I guess, there's lack of a better word. Back when I was in Ancient in the 90's, I couldn't compose my own music. All I could do was write lyrics, vocals, play drums, so I didn't have a creative outlet for my music. Since then, I've learned audio engineering, music production, things like that and I've acquired the skills that I can make black metal by myself now. I can write the guitar parts on the midi keyboard and have someone play them, and I have my project Thokkian Vortex. So, that means that I can satisfy my musical needs for creativity and expression, no problem. So, I can join another band and be able to step back. I feel a lot better. So, being in Ancient now, I fulfil my role, which is the vocals and to interpret the music and do that better. I don't care about writing music for them or any of these things. Back at the time, I was frustrated because I couldn't write my own music, and the music wasn't going the way that I wanted it to go. And then I went through a period of confusion and all this kind of stuff. I don't have any of that anymore. I'm obviously much older. So, yeah, I feel great about being in Ancient.

Since you mentioned Svartalvheim, the album actually turned 30 years old last week. It's crazy to see how Ancient has been around for so long and you joined Ancient somewhere after that album was released. You originally joined as the drummer for the band and then you also started doing vocals for Ancient. Do you recall how you joined Ancient back in the mid nineties?

Yeah. I remember very well. Before I joined Ancient, as you may know, back in the day when you didn't have the Internet, bands and fans would communicate by letters, snail mail. So, he was one of my contacts. I traded my demo tape for the Ancient 7 inch, and I got the CD. Somehow, either I ordered it or I got it from him, and we wrote back and forth. So, he knew that I was a drummer and vocalist, that I did both from my demos. Ancient at the time was him and Grimm, and Grimm was the drummer and vocalist. Grimm left the band, and then Aphazel just got a contract from Metal Blade Records, but he needed another guy. And because he was talking to me and he came to America, he visited me, and he was aware that I was capable of playing drums and doing good vocals, he was like "Hey. Would you like to join Ancient?" And it was a very easy decision. It was like "Do you wanna join a band that has a contract with Metal Blade Records or do you wanna stick around with the band where you don't even like the guys that you're playing with? The guys are going nowhere, so do you wanna stay in Virginia or do you wanna join a Norwegian black metal band on Metal Blade?" It was an easy choice.

Yeah, especially around the time when Norwegian black metal was a very popular thing.

Yeah. That was the beginning, because what happened at that time was that all the labels were looking for Norwegian black metal bands to sign and a lot of the bands were signed already, like Mayhem, Emperor, Dimmu Borgir. They were snatching everybody and so Metal Blade was like "We're taking Ancient". That's what happened. We all have to thank Varg Vikernes and Euronymous for the incidents that led to the rise of and the noticing of black metal in the 90's. That was a big push.

Yeah. It's a weird balance. Something bad has to happen in order for something good to happen for black metal.

Yeah. There's a saying in America. They say that "you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs".

That's it, that's actually what I had in mind. But generally speaking, since we're talking about Ancient, which is a very traditional Norwegian black metal band, and you're someone who's from Brazil. Brazil has its own extreme metal bands, from Sarcofago, Mystifier, Sepultura and Vulcano, and they are very different bands. These are very aggressive and extreme bands and you're from that background. How did it feel to be a guy, from a different extreme metal background, be a part of a band which was fresh around the time with that kind of cold and grim black metal from the north?

Well, I was into black metal and bands with satanic lyrics and all that early thrash stuff since '86. Before that, I was a heavy metal fan and the most extreme band that I knew was Metallica. And it was, you know, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Scorpions, all the classics. In '86, I discovered Slayer, Kreator, Destruction, Sodom, Venom, King Diamond, everything all at once. And I discovered all of that stuff in Brazil. So, in my first pile of records that I bought that year, I also had the first Sepultura split with Overdose and the first Vulcano, the first Vulcano album which was a live album. So, all of that was part of my influences. In America, in Virginia, in the early 90's, I joined the scene there, the death metal scene there. And then I got into the underground and stuff like that. So, it was just an eventual step. Then the black metal stuff started coming out. Before the Norwegian stuff, I was into the Greek stuff and Finnish bands like Impaled Nazarene and Beherit. I was really attracted to the satanic bands, because that was something that I was into more and that type of sound, the raspy type vocals versus the death metal stuff. I like some death metal, but black metal is the stuff that really hits home. And what the Norwegian guys were doing was a new black metal based on Bathory and the stuff that came before. And I was like "That's the sound". That's the right approach".

You found something that you could easily relate with at the time.

Immediately. Yes.

Speaking of joining Ancient and finding the right place for you around the time, for me personally, I think The Cainian Chronicle is an important Norwegian black metal album. It doesn't get mentioned as much as the early Norwegian black metal albums, but when you see people who are very enthusiastic about it, you sometimes see people talking about Ancient and saying "This band made a fucking awesome album based on a biblical story and revolving around that concept". The best thing about it was that the album was produced by Dan Swanö from Sweden. And he was working with bands like Dissection, but mostly with the Swedish melodic black and death metal bands.

A lot of bands. Abruptum and Dark Funeral.

Even Marduk at some point.

Marduk as well. Yeah.

When that album was fresh and new, what was the initial reception that you got from the fans and the media?

It was a bit of a hit at the time. The people liked it, responded well. I mean, Metal Blade, Records, it has a big outreach. I mean, it's a big label. Like, probably one of the very first extreme metal labels, like they're legendary. I was very, very happy to be on Metal Blade Records and so it got a lot of promotion and it was in many magazines. It was everywhere. So, it got good reviews and then we did that crappy video which got played on MTV in Europe and then that also propelled the band forward. And so, we were able to sell a lot of copies of the album. So yeah, it did well at the time.

The funny thing is, since you mentioned the "crappy video" for Lilith's Embrace, that's how I discovered you guys. And the funny thing was, somebody put you in a compilation for one of the worst black metal music videos ever.

It got number 1. I saw one that said it was number 1. So yeah.

Number 1? Okay hahah.

Number 1 worst video.

Hahah, oh my god. I don't know how that is possible, I've seen worse things. I mean you could see it is like a DIY kind of video, but still for fuck's sakes, the song is so great and I cannot even imagine the song without the video itself. Every time I listen to the album, I just see the images from the video in my head. So, after that, you cannot listen to the song without connecting it to that video. So, for a black metal band on MTV, it's weird how much black metal stuff was on MTV even if it was late hours.

They had like 10 videos at most. Not even Cradle of Filth had a video yet at the time. They just had the Immortal video.

They had Hecate Enthroned.

Hecate Enthroned video. Like, almost nothing. Root from Czech Republic. Like, very few. They had almost nothing to play and then they had the Ancient, and that came from Metal Blade. So, like "Oh yeah. We're gonna play this one".

Yeah. That's a bit more serious since it's a major label backing up the band.

Yeah. And we had the worst video in their entire roster.

That video still holds a special place in my heart.

Yeah. People like it, because it's like a guilty pleasure type of thing.

Yeah. I guess it's safe to say so. I mean, there's a lot of things that you can love and hate about the video, but I guess the thing that I liked the most about the video was where you guys were playing, the background where the fire was being set and it was a very dark background.

Yeah. That was like in a parking lot close to a forest that was in view of these apartment buildings and there's a satanic panic in Norway during that time because of all the church burnings. So, older people were like looking out for Satanists and stuff. So, somebody in the building up there, they saw that there were these guys with paint and stuff with fire, and they're like "There are Satanists right in front of my building", and the police showed up while we were filming. And then Kjetil, the drummer guy who was a good talker, went and talked to them. I don't speak Norwegian, but I understood what was going on. He said "No. We're just shooting a video. It's just a music video", and the cops were like "Ah, okay. So, it's another one. So please, guys, do it fast and get out of here because you got neighbours calling".

Oh my god. So, there's even a story behind it. I cannot believe it. I always love when I hear stories about the making of music videos, but this one, I actually had a similar situation, but mine was a lot worse than yours, and I won't go into that. I'll keep on going with the subject of The Cainian Chronicle. Back then, Kimberly Goss was the keyboardist and the backing vocalist of the band. I think she added a lot more to it aside from the great black metal music that you guys have already had since Svartalvheim and developing. It was weird to see how she went from Ancient to Dimmu Borgir. I recall one interview where she called you guys out saying "This shitty band from Bergen called Ancient". I was like "Why are you doing this?". I thought it was a very immature thing to do, because I was like "be grateful for the fact that you were in a black metal band and you joined another black metal band later". I mean, was there any rivalry with Dimmu Borgir at the time?

No. I met the Dimmu Borgir guys, the year that we recorded the album. I met Shagrath, the main guy. And this was when they had just recorded Stormblåst and it was just about to be released. They just had a new label, and all they had as far as releases was the For All Tid album and the Devil's Path EP. And he gave them to me, like he just gave them to me and he was super cool. I remember he was very cool at the time, so I'm unaware of any kind of rivalry of any sort. I don't think they ever paid much attention to that. It was mostly Kimberly, because we had to kick her out of the band after our tour together, so she probably had sour feelings. And then, that's why that stuff happened.

Was she a difficult person to work with in the band?

It got like that. At first, no. But then it became like that, and then it was a problem. We had to do what we had to do.

Yeah. I mean, I'm very sorry that it had to go that way. But, in any case, I hope that the shoutout she gave at least opened some interest for Ancient around the time because that was a German interview, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, I think it's on YouTube even.

Yeah. It is. That's how I found it. I mean, back then, when I heard her say that, I wasn't sure if she was talking about Ancient or Ancient Rites because it would usually confuse the two.

Yeah. It was definitely us, because at the time in interviews, she also said negative things about us as well. It was brought to my attention. Different fans would say "Hey. Have you seen what Kimberly said about you?" And I was like "I don't really care, but okay. Show me". Okay. Yeah. Whatever. I mean, I'm good.

I'm glad that you guys weren't highly affected by her response and what she said about it.

It just makes her look bad if she's the one complaining. We had nothing to say about that.

Indeed.

She did vocals on The Cainian Chronicle? She didn't do the synth on The Cainian Chronicle. That's all Aphazel. She did just the vocal parts. But on tour, she toured with us alongside Dark Funeral and Bal Sagoth from England and on that tour she did play the synth and did more backing vocals. And it was good. It was good. I mean, it was good while it lasted but then after that, we had some problems. She had moved to Norway and she stayed, she just went back home to Norway. It was not like we kicked her out and she had to go all the way back to the USA.

I understand. Did this whole situation affect how you worked on the next album Mad Grandiose Bloodfiends?

No. It was different. But, looking back, I have a lot of things to say about the Mad Grandiose Bloodfiends because I'm very disappointed by that album, in particular the production.

I'm actually curious to know more, because the direction that the band was going was much different, from The Cainian Chronicle. It wasn't as complex in structure and it wasn't as progressive or as epic. It felt very much like it was trying to go for a more atmospheric approach, but in a way so that it would feel moody. I remember when I listened to the album, the first thing I noticed was different production and it is a bit of a step back from Dan Swanö. I am also interested to know why was the direction of Ancient changed for that album?

Well, mostly because the album was not composed solely by Aphazel. You see, The Cainian Chronicle had already been written. Practically, the whole album had already been written by the time I joined. He sent me a cassette tape with all of the songs and all I had to do was write lyrics to them. Now I remember that that riff from "Lilith's Embrace" stuck out. Like, I said "Wow. That song is cool". For Mad Grandiose Bloodfiends, we kind of wrote some songs together. I had a little bit more of the input when it came to arrangements and we also brought in my friend Dave into the band who was in the "Lilith's Embrace" video and was also the bass player on The Cainian Chronicle tour. He had joined in as guitarist for that album and he actually wrote some songs. You know, he called himself "Jesus Christ".

Like the former vocalist of Venom, Clive Archer. He also called himself Jesus Christ hahah.

Well, it's a silly name. But anyway, he wrote some songs and we rehearsed in my basement in Virginia. So, there was more input from different guys. It wasn't just Aphazel and Aphazel wrote some stuff and I pushed for different types of things to happen in the album. I wanted the album to come out a lot grander and different than what resulted, but another thing is that he had plenty of time to do The Cainian Chronicle. I imagine at his home in Bergen, he wrote by himself nicely with his drum machine, whatever and Mad Grandiose Bloodfiends was done in a rush. Like, we have so many months to write this album because Metal Blade wants to release another album. There was some pressure at the time. And a lot of responsibility fell on me and I was not very responsible at the time. So, I went in and I found the studio for us to record, but it was the wrong studio. Not that they didn't have good equipment. It was a very well-equipped studio, more equipped than Dan Swanö's studio. This was a studio equipped to record an orchestra. They had like aquariums and various rooms, and wood finish and it was a beautiful studio and a giant mixing desk that took up the whole room. It was really a fancy studio. However, the most important thing, the engineer/producer had no experience in recording and producing extreme metal. And as I discovered many years later when I became a producer myself, that extreme metal, in particular death metal and black metal, are the most difficult types of music to record and produce properly, because you have everything going at the high volume, high distortion. It's high speed and so forth, it's very hard to balance everything. If you're just a rock band or a blues band, just go on record. That's it. You can get a good sound quite easily, and that's what he was used to. So, when he heard all that crazy shit, he didn't know what the fuck to do. And there was a lot of pressure, and there were a lot of people in the studio. We had friends come over and it was like a party and stuff, and he couldn't concentrate and it was just a big mess. So, it was not recorded under the greatest conditions. It was recorded in a rush. We weren't really ready to record. There was no process of like "Maybe we shouldn't have this song, maybe we shouldn't have that song". We pretty much released everything that we recorded, and that's why it ended up the way it did. But surprisingly, there's still many people that like that album.

I've seen people showing more support for this kind of stuff that was either overlooked or critically bashed, because they found something that they didn't find on their first hearing. Speaking about that part of production, about, you know, extreme metal genres being extremely difficult to produce, that's true, because you gotta find the right sound for those kinds of riffs, for that kind of style that the band plays, and even I know that from my own experience. The funny thing is, nobody is as lucky as Mayhem was when they did Deathcrush. I mean, the guys who did that album, they thought they were gonna record this reggae or ska band because that's what they got used to. And they were like "Uh, we don't play reggae or ska. We play metal". And what they ended up with turned out pretty great. I mean, it's fucked up when you don't have the guy with a very trained ear for all kinds of music. Even if it's not something he listens to, at least sonically if he could understand like "okay, this riff should sound like this or these songs should sound like that", because with a good production, the music stands out more, at least from my point of view.

Yeah. The main problem production-wise, or sound-wise with that album is the drums. I play the drums on that. There's no low end on the drums or the bass. You can't hear the bass. There's nothing. There's nothing on the low end at all. As if you took an equalizer and you cut all the low-end frequencies. It's inexcusable. I'll take a lot of the blame for that, because I should have known a bit better. But the thing is, I didn't have studio knowledge, audio engineering knowledge the way I do now. Now I can look back and I know every single mistake that was made. I would know how to fix it. I would be able to remix that album much better today if only I had all the recordings, which are lost. Like, we asked Metal Blade, and they're like "I don't know where they are. I have no idea".

I guess the master tapes are thrown in the trash bin.

Something like that. Like, they don't have the individual recordings, which is unfortunate. This is what happened. I recorded my drums, and then I went into the control room, and then I said "Let me hear the drums". And then he played the drums. He played it and the drum sounded big and fat, big snare, big everything, because he had the reverbs and everything on the drums. It was like "Excellent! Keep them like that". I have nothing to worry about. I felt like I got nothing to worry about, he's gonna keep the drums like that and that's it. But when it came to the mix, I didn't know that there was gonna be a final mix and everything was gonna go back to 0 and he was gonna do everything. I didn't know about this stuff. So, when he did that process, no more reverb. I don't know what happened to the bass. They mixed it all wrong. In the end, that's what happened and then I discovered it. I listened to it at home and stuff, and I was like "Oh my god. What happened?", and it was too late to fix.

It's a sad circumstance, because I think that this album was approached by someone who might be a good experienced producer, but I think it was approached from a point of view of somebody who doesn't know what black metal should sound like or thinks what black metal sounds like to their ears, that's how you they made it. As somebody who has a very kind surface level thinking because there are a lot of idiots who think that black metal should sound raw and should have no low end.

Yeah, but even all those old Darkthrone albums, Transylvanian Hunger and so forth, they have low end. They have oomph in them, old Emperor too, the demos and stuff. They do because they didn't cut that out in the mix. This engineer must have been like "There's a rule. You have to cut this much out of it". I don't know what happened, what he did. I wasn't in there for the mixing, I was somewhere else. But there is no low end in that.

Were you at least able to support the album on tour when it was released?

Yeah. I told you earlier that we went on tour for that album to support that album, and we were the headlining band. Behemoth were the co-headliners according to them, but like, it's the only three bands. It was Belphegor, then Behemoth, then Ancient. And we did a similar tour, like the previous tour, for The Cainian Chronicle, in a lot of the same cities.

So, it all went great, even though the album didn't turn out that great in the end?

Yeah. We still had good turnouts, and I think that crowd-wise, it was a little bit less than the previous tour because the previous tour, Dark Funeral were headlining and they brought I guess they brought more people. Maybe in retrospect, Ancient wasn't ready to be a headlining act on the tour, but it was still good. We still had like 200, sometimes 300 people per gig, you know, small clubs. It was good.

What eventually led to you leaving the band, after that album had been released?

Well, I don't know how to explain it. I was going through a lot of confusion and I was sort of growing as a person, but going through some difficulties. I had some issues, different kinds of issues. And when it came to the band, I felt frustrated because I wanted to have more creative control. Even though I couldn't compose music, I still felt that I wanted to have more creative control. I thought that it was difficult working with Aphazel at the time. Now it's not any kind of issue whatsoever. But at that time, the truth is that I didn't really know exactly what I wanted. I thought I did, but I wasn't sure. So, I figured "Okay. I've had it with Ancient. I'm gonna do my own thing with my friends". We had Erichte, the female vocalist, and her boyfriend. We were good friends and they were talking to me about starting a gothic project together, like something cool and we got along very well. So, I figured "Okay. So maybe I'll start a project with them and I'll have more creative input with that". So, the truth is that I didn't really think very well. I didn't think about it. It's not like I weighed the pros and cons and made an intelligent decision. You know, when you're in your twenties, you do things on the spur of the moment. You don't think about stuff so much, unless you're really wise and I wasn't, you don't think about it. Because looking back now, it's very clear that it was absolutely a mistake. I would have been able to accomplish everything that I accomplished after that, even if I had remained in Ancient. Like, there was no need for me to leave. I should have stepped back and said "Hey man, you're the vocalist and lyricist for this band. If you wanna do something on your own creative thing, simply do it on your own. Like, have a side project". There was nothing holding me back from that, but for some reason I was despairing. I was like, "Oh, no. I'm too frustrated". And that's what it was. And also, at the same time, Aphazel also had his own plans to maybe move to Italy to reform the band. I'm not sure exactly, but that's precisely what happened at the time, very shortly after I left. I think one year later , within two years or less, he already had another album. I mean, that's just how things turned out.

A lot of things going around at the time, and the decision that you made, it was a very conscious decision based on how you felt. I mean, nobody basically blames you. I mean, everybody makes their decisions based on the way they feel about certain things. Maybe it was a good decision after all because you see how things changed when you got back and how there was this whole resurgence. And the best part is you were still active musically. People associate you with many different projects. They know you for Le Chant Noir, they know you for Thokkian Vortex, and they also know you for the trance project that you have, which is Minimal Criminal. You've had that for 20 years already, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah. I started that with a buddy when I was living back in Brazil in 2004, and then I left Brazil in 2007. And then, eventually, me and my ex-partner, we split up, and then he started doing his Minimal Criminal, and I started doing my Minimal Criminal. And then lately, for the last couple of years, I have a synthwave project with my wife called Dream Invaders. And we make some retro synthwave nostalgia for the 80's. And we also make some horror synth/dark synth, style, which is influenced and inspired by 80's horror movies. And very recently, we composed the score for a horror documentary called In Search of Darkness.

Oh! You did that?

Yeah.

I didn't know you did that. I know the documentary, but I didn't even know you were involved to do the score.

They have a new one that has just been released, the digital release, which is In Search of Darkness 1990 to 1994. They're interviewing horror icons, directors, actors, makeup artists, so forth like Pinhead and many famous people like Tom Savini and they're talking about different movies from 1990 to 1994. And Dream Invaders, we did the score for the documentary. And, next Friday, we're going to release the score on all platforms like Spotify, Bandcamp and iTunes, everything.

I'm actually very glad that you're also doing synthwave, because I love synthwave. Not just the modern artists like Mega Drive, Perturbator, Carpenter Brut and Dance with Dead.

They're all great artists. I love them.

Yeah. For me personally, it all started with John Carpenter's movies, because of the soundtrack for his movies. I'm glad that you found that. Were there any plans to do physical releases?

Yes. There are. I want to, but Dream Invaders is a very, very new project. Very few people know about us. So, we'll see what we can do, but it'll be great to get some more physical releases. But so far, we have a cassette. This small label released a cassette version of the first Dream Invaders album. I'm into it, I like vinyl. So, for me, having a Dream Invaders album released on vinyl would be fantastic as well as Thokkian Vortex and stuff. There's a new Thokkian Vortex album that's going to come out next year as well. It's ready, mastered and everything. I'm just going on a label search at the moment.

I would love to see Dream Invaders, because synthwave on vinyl for me is very authentic. But it's not just for the sake of authenticity, having an album on vinyl is very special. It's a very special item. It's a very special way to experience the music itself. So, there is of course that famous channel, New Retro Wave. I don't know if you guys ever got in touch with the guy who holds that channel, but I think it would be awesome if you could have him release the album itself.

We have released an EP recently through a label called Retro Reverb Records from Italy. But the New Retro Wave label is pretty much like the biggest synthwave label out there, and it's very difficult to get on their roster. You can't just write to them and expect them to listen to your music. However, they are the label that is providing the soundtrack to In Search of Darkness, because In Search of Darkness, you have the soundtrack with just synthwave tracks and then you have the score which is some synthwave mixed with everything. Like, we did even some grunge tracks, because we compose what they ask for. So, you had these two different albums being released. So, because of In Search of Darkness, I'm in touch with the guy from New Retro Wave. He hasn't responded yet. So, let's see what happens with that. If we get on that label, that would be the ultimate.

I mean, what can I say? Best of luck. I hope you will get your record deal and I hope you will be able to release Dream Invaders on a 12 inch.

Yeah. Well, we're gonna keep doing it. So, like, it's maybe sooner or later. We'll see.

Thank you so much for this opportunity, Valerio. It was a very big pleasure and a big honour to talk with you, man.

Likewise.

Thank you. I hope you will continue being as excellent and keep on pushing your efforts. Any final words you'd like to say?

Yeah. I'm gonna keep making music. I think Ancient, we're gonna be doing this Cainian Chronicle tour for as long as people want it. We might even do Mad Grandiose Bloodfiends, because there's been some request for that too. We might do that. Thokkian Vortex is gonna continue, with a new album coming out next year. I intend to keep making my own black metal as well. Minimal criminal, I still do that. It's a little bit on the back burner because I have multiple projects. I can't dedicate equal time to everything. I'm only one person. But still, I'm currently working on a Minimal Criminal track for another label, so I'll keep making that kind of music as well as Dream Invaders. So, I'm not going anywhere.

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