Jan 235 min read

REUBEN CHRISTOPHER JORDAN INTERVIEW

Updated: 1 day ago

SHRIEKS AND STARES OF UNKNOWN ORIGINS: 12 QUESTIONS FOR REUBEN CHRISTOPHER JORDAN BY MICHAEL M. HOJJATIE FOR VIA OMEGA

The busy body that is Reuben Christopher Jordan is as highly enigmatic as he is multi-talented with music. From the most ghastly type of black metal to otherworldly ambient soundscapes to fusion styles of all sorts, Jordan appears to be indefatigable in his passion to simply create and conquer. We took some time to drive into his mind of madness and ask what exactly his agenda is both now and moving forward.

VO: You switched your base of operations recently. What was the impetus behind this?

RCJ: I abandoned all my material possessions again and crossed the Atlantic ocean for the first time in my life to a strange and remote place for the same reason men have built bridges and waged war, because I was chasing after a beautiful woman who is now my wife and mother of my children. I closed many circles and severed a lot of ties to things that bound me to the barren hellscape of my old life. I intend to one day recede with my family irretrievably into absolute seclusion where no one will ever find me, and continue in hermetic isolationist process of my creation until it reaches the gaze of my unearthly muse. So the completion and purity of certain future endeavors I'm cultivating quietly depends on my withdrawal from the charade of modern society. I'm looking forward to it. Traversal of hemispheres turned out to be an appropriate insight role to realize the full scope of what is fated to happen, and its indifference to visibility to anyone at all.

Finland is a nice place. It isn't perfect and, it isn't “the happiest country in the world”, and as it is to be a foreigner anywhere, it demands a certain character to overcome the profound alienation and integrate one's self fully to make it here. But what I can say is that it has been worth it and I don't see myself living anywhere else or returning to the United States. The process of this integration destroys weak men, and empowers the ones who persevere; immigration into a new society should not be taken lightly, as refugees could tell you. I'm not a refugee, moreso akin to a mysterious mystical drifter, but likewise I know the trials of learning this language, quite literally—at least to my American mind, one of the most difficult European languages on the planet—and understanding this way of life are not as yourself against external forces, but rather yourself against internal ones. You confront yourself and you win or lose, depending on what the heart truly wants.

VO: Where did you grow up and how did that transpire into making you the creative powerhouse that you are now?

RCJ: I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I appreciate it much more with time and separation, but those days were formative for my understanding of what I needed to go on living, because most of the time I did not want that. I also don't believe I would ever need to live there again, but I have accepted it's imprint on who I am nonetheless. I received Abrahamic religion from various sources, all of which were abusive in some form. But that spiritual brainwashing wasn't without its purpose. I did not, as others have, emerge from the blinding trauma of evangelistic torment as an atheist. Of this, I should only comfortably allude to my spirituality by way of reference to some Nietzschean epithet about transforming into a monster to defeat the monsters that torment you, and that to assume the role of your own abyss is not simply about introspection but also of perspective itself. You know the drill, a tale as old as time. The metaphysics of creation encompass a virtue of solidarity with forces which emanate from within but whose origin is inexplicable besides to bask in those emanations and let it create through you. In less esoteric terms, the nightmare existence I lived emerged dark truths from the wounds of the soul collected in my childhood. I sought to anesthetize the sadness by dire means or kill myself. Both exits were tried, but neither of these aforementioned solutions worked because the lessons from the pain were greater than myself and they were greater than those means to an end. That's about as far as I can go in explanation of concepts like this, before my linguistic ability to explain devolves into what you would perceive as insane nonsense.

VO: You seem to take influence from many places, not just the cookie-cutter “Venom/BathoryMotörhead/Black Sabbath” routine sources. Tell us if any other mediums beyond music, metal especially, galvanize you to create.

RCJ: I looked for a spectrum of sonic qualities, instead of genres. Some melodies and chord progressions that I could listen to forever, their occurrence and context were only sometimes relevant, but the quality they had was greater than maybe what even their creators realized and I would listen to those songs over and over again. The exact nature of this quality is something I have looked for my entire life, and it is therefore sacred to me so I can't elaborate on it here, but I believe that everyone looks for this in what affects them on any sensorial level. If I knew how to make perfume, I would do this to capture scents that have held some unearthly significance to me. For example, I associate the memory of my first crush with a certain shampoo. This was over 20 years ago and so that particular shampoo seemingly no longer exists but there are other products that contain nearly the same olfactory qualities, and when I have the chance I always stop to smell them. It isn't that I miss the original wearer of them, in fact I don't actually remember who it was, but the memory triggers a connection to something fundamental, something that connects to who I am on an existential level. Music is like this for me a hundredfold. I have created a lot of music and I've made it available for people to listen to, but it's got so little in common with other things that people struggle to relate to it. That is the trademark of authenticity. When what you create is so profoundly unmarketable, alienating, and difficult for others to explain, it becomes valuable in its rarity. I like some music for different reasons, but the music which is most important to me is something I never discuss casually because it's a bridge to clandestine places within. I believe my music will only become less likable and more confounding as time goes on. My creations are highly inward expressions and I refuse to devote any time to manifesting something on someone else's terms or consistent with tastes or concepts that already exist, but that being said, I gravitate strongly towards cinematic music, because to me it contains the most tangible sense of dimension compared to other genres; my projects all generally approach music in this way, and I might make special mention of Materiæ Abyssu, by which I have scored my own film, and released about eleven or so albums of film-driven music spanning genres like dark ambient, pop, industrial, darkwave, and electronica. Each of these albums, like most of the music I've made, is composed on a narrative basis and therefore a story is being told. Usually these narratives are metaphors or parallels to true events from my life, or sometimes to more inexplicable dark territory of the soul, and that goes beyond my willingness to elaborate further here. Especially regarding the true nature of Materiæ Abyssu, likely the most tenebrous music I've ever created, the less said the better. It's difficult to recommend this kind of stuff to anyone, and honestly I hate doing it anymore. I can't just tell someone “this is dark ambient music”, because it will thereafter be heard in the context of other dark ambient artists and will probably be very unsatisfying to them. I also can't explain that this music is more than music, that it is the substance of my existential dark place, because that is probably not a level of intimacy they wish to achieve with me. The few who ventured out into this corner of my art did, by their own admission, that something horrible must have happened to me and that I must be deeply disturbed. While they admittedly could not say that they found this music to be “enjoyable”, as catalyst for their own catharsis, they did say it was completely worth it. I appreciate their genuine perspective. Like film, immersive music instrumentalizes not just sounds, but scenes, time, space, context. Forsaken Destiny comes closest (so far) to an actual radioplay, providing some bits of scripted dialogue by which to extrapolate the story. Others like Nightmareflesh are something whose nature has the presence of a metaphor but the cadence of a secret. Disenchantra orbits the same star of this artistic intent, but with a more distant aphelion. Past this, you enter the dreaming deadspace of Cathaaria, whose revolution around that star pulls it into the psychological shadow of my sense of good and evil on an earthly level. The multiverse of what I've created is best explained this way, as different celestial bodies of their own characteristics and eccentricity all orbiting the same dark star, with some passing by each other on a flat two dimensional plane, others transcending time and space and only appearing every so often. My book, my film, my graphics work, everything has a place in orbit in my artistic multiverse. People are reading me type words like “dreaming headspace” for example, and they scoff because they are and always will be content to live in their cynical mediocrity, and that's completely fine with me, as it always has been. This is a pretty weird time to live in, where art isn't really appreciated by its meaning or intent but on shallow basis of “cringe” or not, and it's because everyone is perceived to be chasing the imaginary mantle of e-success, “fame”, notoriety in some capacity. That's fine if your art is literally the art of being a cool famous guy. But anyone can objectively look at what I've done and decide for themselves if aggressively fringe media such as this, works so resistant to marketability, is, in fact, seeking to captivate a wider audience or if actually it's making it's audience smaller and smaller with each and every alienating piece of art and music. It can't be both.

VO: Among the wide variety of instrument families you are skilled with, which is your favorite? Which did you learn to play first back in your nascent learning days?

RCJ: There was an old broken piano in my childhood home. We were poor so it was a relic of more prosperous times. It never worked properly though. Keys were dead or out of tune, the pedals were broken. But I played with it a lot before I acquired my first guitar, a loaner, from a local church whose Sunday services my uncle sometimes played piano for. So even though my instrument of preference is usually guitar, my sense of melody is often more that of a keyboard player. That is how it works for anyone. Some people prefer the feel and execution of a bass guitar, but their sensibilities lie more with percussive sounds or drums, and the result is a style consistent with that. Where musicians and skill collide with their influences and what they actually create is the basis for creativity and unique musical signatures; taking someone of a certain kind of skillset and incorporating them into an unorthodox arrangement yields surprising results. Because it starts with the influences and the early exposure to an instrument. Personal tastes emerge as a supportive layer above this, and then comes the intent to play. These factors mingle with the circumstances of their peers, what kind of bands they join etc., and these elements fractal out into wild creative directions. Easy example would be to look at how many technical death metal drummers excel in stuff like jazz and post-rock.

So I played that church guitar unplugged in my room for years, continued on after my family was finally evicted from the house I grew up in to cram into a small apartment in Oakland Park. We had to send the piano to the dump. In the beginning I went to Broward Band in Fort Lauderdale to get guitar lessons, and I learned how to play Crazy Train and Smoke on the Water. The teacher told me to practice so I did when the guitar was available. During Hurricane season, the power got knocked out so I would be home from school in my room with a CD player and the guitar. I had, by then, a few CDs of stuff like Emperor's Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk and Shepherd Moons by Enya. Various CDrs of mixed metal I had downloaded from Limewire, whatever didn't fuck up my computer. Spent quiet evenings by candlelight in my room listening to the storm and trying to learn the solo in With Strength I Burn. Outside my window was a dead tree and it comforted me to look at it. Blue and green lights flashed in the night sky during the power outages, which to my knowledge were the transformers exploding on the power lines in the night. These were the backdrop to my isolated beginnings as a musician.

I did play in some group “band” situations which almost all ended poorly. When I was 16, I auditioned (the one and only time I ever did something like this) as bassist for this band from Miami, Wykked Wytch. The singer told me they would tour with Deicide and as a 16 year old in South Florida I thought that would be my “big chance”, because most 16 year olds would probably think something absurd like this, but I was immediately put off by her when she told me that my own projects would “basically be meaningless” and that their band would take precedence over everything in my life. Needless to say, I did not join this band, and about a month later I released the first Benighted in Sodom album, “Plague Overlord” on CD through German label Obscure Abhorrence Productions. I had somehow during the less abrasive days of social media connected with Paul from Minnesota black metal band Teratism, and eventually we became friends, and he was very instrumental in getting that first album out. Locally, I didn't have strong feelings about black metal from my area. Goth industrial music was more of a prominent thing there, being the origin of Marilyn Manson and Jack Off Jill, etc. There was Kult ov Azazel, saw them live a few times back then. You of course know about Black Witchery, so I don't need to speak on that. Tenebrous was a good band. I don't know them personally, besides some social overlap with VJS but I was into their Arias of the Black Sun album. I was close friends for years with Matt from Arkthos, who briefly played in Tenebrous, and whose album Knights of the Eternal Sun is probably the best Floridian black metal album you've never heard about. Lots of experimental Bathory-esque moments mixed with Thrash and some great riffs and vocals. He and I, and our late friend Cain from Snowfall, briefly had a project inspired by Abruptum and Arditi of all things, known as Blight. We made one recording, which none of us remember exactly doing. We used the shack and barn of Matt’s family farm out in Jupiter and dedicated an evening to whatever this was. To (roughly) quote Black Witchery from their Bardo Methodology interview, “Floridians operate on a level of insanity that normal people cannot comprehend”. The night of the Blight recordings was a rare experience that felt dangerous and wrong, and maybe that was captured in the music. It set a standard for me what black metal should be consistent with, at its core. There was blood, substance abuse, self-mutilation, and eventual intervention by law enforcement. The music that emerged wasn't especially important on its own, it's the story behind it which elevates it to another level.

In those days, I worked at the cafe the the downtown Fort Lauderdale area's Barnes & Noble bookstore, and here was where I met Richard Vergez, of current musical projects Noir Age and Drowning the Virgin Silence and Anthony Mangicapra / Goateaterarts. Richard was the first person I ever collaborated with on anything, with myself recording as Midwinter Storm and himself as DVS, we focused some creative energies with keyboards and prepared instruments of his own design, and this was significant for being the earliest example for me of something more which could be done with music than usual conventions I was used to. Similarly, Anthony, an accomplished painter (you should buy his works) and sort of unofficial historian in different capacities, is and was a mouthpiece for a lot of critical insights towards art that I felt but had until then never heard spoken aloud. We all participated in this weird experimental art and music event of our own arrangement called Noise.Water.Meat at the local bar Roxanne's (RIP) that I was definitely way too young to be present at. Anthony performed this crushing drone set that bordered on harsh noise/power electronics fronted by a single vocalist and himself in this heavily overdriven bass guitar. Weird videos were projected on the walls in the bar. A Cubano man named Sergio sat at a deliberately prepared dinner table in the middle of the bar the entire night, eating nothing. Regular bar patrons were unaware what the nature of this quirky mischief actually was and to my recollection most were angrily driven away by the absence of regular drinking conditions. Midwinter Storm made its first and only performance. I had a BC Rich Warlock and a scary mask. I played keyboard and guitar, or maybe Richard helped a bit too, hard to remember as this was almost 20 years ago. In any case, people were confused by what I did and not very into it. However, I myself got a lot out of the whole experience. Anthony and Richard contributed to the perceptual expansion of my creative intellect, broadening my understanding of what I was capable of and what art could be, and it did awaken something within. My connections with different individuals expanded, too, over time. Loathed as it was back then, MySpace put me into contact with people around the world who, being unprivvy to the clandestine postage zine, letter, and cassette era of black metal, I would not have otherwise known them. In particular, Sister Wrath from Finnish black metal band true Black Dawn, and back then of Enochian Crescent was someone I developed a friendship with. Now, living in Finland, we talk about those days in person and find it fitting that the website, now virtually inaccessible and unusable, shows yet still the final “Top 8” selections of these lost band profiles, with Enochian Crescent being locked in top in mine, now and forever. As well, Alex from Chaos Moon/Mystískaos and all his other bands, the Frostmoon Eclipse guys, and an inumerable amount of sort of “flash-in-the-pan” short-lived bedroom bands. Those were always interesting to discover.

VO: Is Western media and entertainment dying? Has it become too message-driven and way too politically one-sided to having to dominating value and overreach that is has always had anymore?

RCJ: I guess it's always been that way, but I’m compelled to say that this is the worst it's ever been, now that absolutely everyone everywhere is “famous” and has a “platform”. Caring, genuinely caring, about what happens in the world is a good thing and sometimes art and entertainment are a productive way to get these messages across, but that's not what's happening right now. So much of it now is very transparently driven, not by collective altruism, but self-serving personal agendas. Death, pain, sadness, trauma, abuse, injustice, war, all these and worse are fair game in the scramble to capitalize on the shock and tug at heartstrings so that people will remember you and affirm your position as a person of influence. The western plague of “look at me” culture. One day I woke up and everyone was offended by everything, everyone was traumatized, and everyone was doing a silly dance. People are not well. Here's where I'll start to sound conspiratorial, Mike, but if we look at the numerous destabilizing events in very recent history, it could of course be something as mundane as coincidence, but if you told me that these were carefully orchestrated acts set in motion by a shady cabal of sociopaths for some sinister purpose, I would also believe that. Is it really such a stretch to take an objective look at everything and assert its potential to exploit our collective insecurities and weaknesses to weaponize them against us? Because if I was after the decline of the human race, I'd use all my power and influence to sneak in through the back door, not crash the party like the aliens in Independence Day. To Mr. Emmerich, I'm available for script consultation. But besides all that, it's actually rather simple, Michael: if people want a renaissance, they have to abandon glamour and decadence. If people want real art again, they have to relearn how to create it in a vacuum instead of just creating things to be seen by others. The hermetic, isolationist creation of art is an art form in itself, and a lost one. But all creation falls onto a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum is pure, wild, feral artistry, something transcendent which as prime directive satisfies above all an individual will to create. On the other end is pure entertainment, something absolutely socialized and made to be seen, accessed, consumed, and affect many people indiscriminately. The superficial qualities of your art, let's say in music for example, like the production, the artwork, the promotion, those things will for some strengthen as they cruise close towards the entertainment end of the spectrum because to gain the highest appeal you will always be forced to compromise your vision. No matter what. Because the only way you can get agreement between two differing opinions about your art is to find the middle ground between them, which brings you farther away from your original intent. This is known as compromise. Conversely, the truer you are to what you create, the more you resist compromise, the more it will alienate others because it can't be easily understood and as you move closer to the pure artistry end of the spectrum, you begin speaking in tongues of the divine and most people don't want that. People want Pepsi, they want Ritalin, they want to skip to the end of the porn to see moneyshots so they can go to sleep. Most people have no time for your ‘message’ so they skip through tracks and cherry pick the themes and ideas that strike them fastest. A very nice young man, YouTuber “Scale it Back”, reviewed my album, “The Dark of the Night is the Color of Death” from my project Disenchantra, and he reviewed it of his own initiative in a 10+ minute video on YouTube. This was very meaningful to me, because no one paid him to do it and there wasn't any incentive for him to do so. He simply offered his perspective, both positives and negatives in a sincere and well spoken way. This one genuine insight is infinitely more valuable than a thousand blogs, websites, magazines regurgitating inane over-the-top nonsense to try to get people to buy the product. Disenchantra isn't Pepsi, after all. If anything, it's Vanilla Coke— not for everyone, but preferred by those who like it.

VO: Cinema now is basically a joke to me, I seriously think there may be at MOST two new films a year that I look forward to and I’ve gotten to where I only chase particular directors, things have gotten that bad. What are some recent films you have gravitated towards?

RCJ: Funny you should ask, because my list of films I want to watch is intolerably long, maybe at this point longer than my list of films that I have already watched, and only by some cosmic alignment of circumstances am I ever permitted any moment when it feels appropriate to watch a movie I haven't already seen. Just got around to watching The Batman somewhat recently, and it was worth my time. The derision that came with life as the star of Twilight was the humiliation ritual to initiate Pattinson into the upper echelon of respected actors, and I think every worthwhile actor has something like this if they survive their tortured existence as a flavor of the month teen heartthrob media appendage. But more to your question, at the time of answering this interview I am contemplating watching Alien Romulus if I can, for long enough, deflect the harassment of internet advice to the contrary. Still haven't seen Dune. Three hours of my day for a movie is a lot to ask. Something about the absence of imaginable real world characteristics in big budget movies these days makes them feel too grand for my tastes. Like attending a concert at Wembley arena on a doorman's salary. You probably saved for a few months to buy the worst tickets ever, and when you finally get there, it's just a gyrating sea of human flesh with distant sounds of music playing off somewhere that you'll never be close enough to appreciate. I remember seeing Mortal Kombat in the theater as a kid, during the American golden age of 90s summer blockbusters. Never read a critic review of anything before in my life at that point. That felt satisfying. The last movie I saw in theaters as an adult was Halloween Kills. That did not feel satisfying. From my upsetting Southern Baptist household in South Florida, I looked forward to either covertly renting R rated horror films from the library, or enjoying their edited-for-television versions late nights in October. I saw some gems back then. Hellraiser Bloodline is controversially my favorite one, and the only “in space” horror sequel that worked. Anyone who wants to argue about this should drop me a line and put on a pot of coffee. Leprechaun in da Hood. That's the kind of cinema that stays with you for the rest of your life. People ask me about movies and I always end up first mentioning the silliest, most ridiculous shit that I liked growing up. But that's exactly the point, and things were bleak and everything around me was deadly serious with a persistent atmosphere of impending doom. I needed things that took me away from that, I craved escapism. We all know Blade Runner 2049 is amazing. But I'll probably never watch it again. I don't need to simulate depression vicariously through a movie or music unless I've created it. After what I've lived through in my life, all other expressions of this are either unrelatable or inferior. I also don't have any time, really. I have a playlist of pirated movies which has existed since I started putting it together in high school. I've created a lot of art and abused a lot of substances with them playing in the foreground or background. Even now, clean and sober, they still play in the background during almost all creation of mine. Their meaning imprinted something greater than even the very vision of their creators, something transcendent and which truly speaks to that which defines me as a person. People who have followed my art and music know me well enough to mention a few of these, so I'll leave that breadcrumb for anyone who gives a fuck about what I like to follow to their identities. It's not important to me that anyone knows what I like, its rather more important to preserve its sanctity under a veil of mystery. As I said, we are living in the worst time to be a lover of anything culturally, at least out in the open. Movies have mostly been a pathetic rehash of superior ideas from true artists whose names and signatures will be lost under the defining “look at me” of narcissistic charlatans and outright plagiarists. Same for TV. Same for music. Same for books. Probably the same for fashion. TV shows like the upcoming X-Files “reboot” (Without Carter, Duchovny, or Anderson, by the way) and movies like The Crow 2024 should be taken as a warning. These endeavors were financed by studios whose finger sits on the pulse of culture and media, who are simply supplying a demand. The entitled assholes destroying art in their desperation to define themselves have put a bounty on the head of every artist and genuine creator. Harder and harder each day to resist the assimilation to AI creative work when you behold all that human beings have had to offer us lately. The fault, though, does not simply lie squarely in the hands of big budget studios, hack journalists, and artificial intelligence. Society has, by their own deep seated insecurities, allowed their propriety of their own enjoyment to be hijacked; if you let yourself be told what to like, what constitutes good production, good music, etc, then you will be deceived by everyone who stands to gain from your surrender. It's all really very easy to understand: tired of empty, shallow, meaningless derivative bullshit? Stop being sold art, stop accepting falsehoods masquerading as authenticity so the parasites can live comfortably inside your willingness to obey. Take a chance on the unpopular thing. Take a chance on being a fucking nobody, not famous, obscure, a zero. Be patient. Stop liking what everyone tells you to like. Less homogenized critic receptions for things mean that unheard talents have a chance to break through. Resist sloganized bullshit rhetoric about bands and movies being the most evil or most scary or whatever other meaningless marketing tactics are deployed to vacuum up cash from art-trenders, practically deifying phonies and pretenders by turning them into living false gods (products) created by the predatory design of capitalism. It's very droll and more obvious the more bored you realize you are with all of this shit. Even pornography is like this now. Just a lot of jaded, bored, uninspired sexual appetites fueled by narcissism, greed, and personality disorders. More extremity! More things going in and out of drugged up, lubricating holes! More nihilism, more emptiness! Stop reading reviews. Accept and trust your instincts about things, follow your heart to your wishing star, and the things you find will have more intrinsic meaning to you. You won't feel the lust for validation by exploitation of things that matter to you. When you explain things you like to people, when you call yourself a “fan” to anyone, same as with calling yourself an “artist” or “(genre) musician”, you then enter a deficit. Meaning itself is very nearly a tangible thing, and if it's not for something you have made, the more you cheapen it by talking about it like it's somehow your property, the more you give away that meaning to be possessed by others, and they almost never keep it, after all it's less and less than these days that we take recommendations about music and movies, even from our friends. If you're selling it to someone, it doesn't speak for itself. Marketing is only ever about money and occasionally ego. I welcome any counterargument to the contrary but everyone knows this, deep down, to be true. Gatekeeping isn't an issue if everyone would just shut the fuck up sometimes, stop broadcasting everything you like to the whole world all the time. Keep some things sacred. Same could be said for religion. Misinterpretation of “fellowship” contributed to the decline of organized religion, the “organized” part being the nadir in this case. But nonetheless, the black metal scene, as an example, seems to have allowed phonies to buy their way in. They just had more money than anyone who was actually worthy of the exposure to the music, and the livelihood of labels suffered under the increasing pressure to sell records. From here began the dark capitalist covenant between assholes willing to buy merch and records purely for the fashion to belong to something ANYTHING at all to vainly quell their existential emptiness, and labels cornered into this position to release increasingly banal shit suited to the politically upright position the conformists demanded from their “black metal”. This is of course also highly subjective to an extent, because there's the utmost worthwhile music still withstanding the torrents of pandering and weak belief systems. But after they're all disbanded or dead, there will happily be a solemn few to which any torches can be passed. Fashion is transient, spirituality is forever static in the purest of aspirations upheld.

VO: You also have some writing under your belt; tell us about the books you have on your agenda and where you want to go with this. It appears one went to market in 2024, elaborate on that for us.

RCJ: Last year, I finished the first novel in my cyberpunk trilogy, “The Sainthood”. The process took several years to develop completely to where I was satisfied enough with the story to begin writing it. Currently I'm writing the second part to be finished by the end of 2025. Most of part one was written during downtime at my previous job in a nursing home here in Finland. The fact is, as a foreigner, people do avoid speaking with me, especially at work, and especially if they are unaware to what extent I'm proficient in the language. I'm not bitter about this, though. Being a nurse is a hard job, and in their own country they shouldn't necessarily be forced to add the stress of speaking and understanding a foreign language (English) or being forced to navigate through what was, at the time back then, my Finnish language ability in its infancy. So I spent a lot of time alone and in my own head. I spent a lot of time with the characters and their ideas and motivations, roleplaying them in my mind in regards to real world issues. I roleplayed their loneliness, alienation, and depression via my own. At that level, it was cathartic for me to commit their story to words. Inside that world, I left details and clues to things which link to other dimensions of my artistic creation. One of my musical projects in particular, Rust-Colored Glasses, has always been directly composed on the themes and story of The Sainthood. I had a clear vision for it all that fed itself cyclically when I would listen to the music and write.

I enjoy writing. I enjoy writing lyrics and stories, sometimes scripts. I have always appreciated when words have come together thoughtfully to render titles or statements which contain mystical power. But lately, it feels like very few others appreciate the magnificence of words. People, especially those with no significant grasp of the English language, are more than willing to abuse its gifts with stupider and stupider forms of misuse or just outright ignore its potential to transform works of art. That's why people settle for meaningless titles and words. That's my judgment but it's also theirs, these things are failures by their own admission when they say they've been inspired by Deathspell Omega’s lyricist and yet think it enough to aimlessly pull obscure ten cent words from a fucking thesaurus. They're after an impression, they're not after true meaning, that's how they end up with comical clunky titles that leave no lasting impact and feel goofy to say aloud. I can explain every title to every song, album, etc I have ever made. It all has a story and a purpose and a connection to the greater multiverse of stuff I've made. All titles in Ævangelist, for example, the project's songs, albums, merch slogans, are all my creation alone. Does that sound pretentious? Anyone who thinks so can fuck off. We should be sufficiently ducking sick of cynical mundanes trying to set limits on how we regard our creation. These works are our links to the eternal realms, and we should normalize regarding them as such, at least among each other as artists. So-called artists should know better than to use that word “pretentious” lightly. That's like telling me to “calm down”. Fuck you. Don't fucking condescend to me. I am insane and I want to uplift my art with regard consistent with its significance to me. Talk about your own shitty taste with lukewarm affect and fake modesty. These titles I created are a direct extension of the musical works and selections of accompanying visual representation. No part of the artwork should be superfluous. Everything must have meaning. That's the only way it will have longevity to you. I have an unreleased song from my surf rock/country western project Carrion Blues, and it's called “El Sombrero Grande”. Why? Because it's about going down to Mexico and smuggling cocaine under my big hat and the border cops forget to check the hat so I make it back home and do all the cocaine. That's it, that's the meaning. But then there's songs like Endearment of Clandestine Emptiness from Ævangelist. Or Abysscape. These contain words and meanings of dark power, things I could and will write long expositions about, yet still will never adequately explain. Past The Sainthood, I am also writing an unrelated standalone true crime / horror / mystery / esoterica called The Darkwander, perhaps to satisfy my latent male urge to pen the great American serial killer novel. We shall see.

VO: Occult and metaphysical themes permeate a lot of your work. Now let’s be real, this shit is stupid-level Times Square/Hollywood Boulevard tourist trinket store trendy now and it’s gotten nauseating. What sources, belief systems, authors, cultures, on and on, do you draw from, both in your art and on a personal level?

RCJ: There are a lot of things that are inspirational to me, but me, other people, even clever lads as yourself, Michael, we have no context for the scale, portent, and majesty of these things which we are speaking about. These are powers and principalities, things beyond our earthly understanding. So I guess if I mention anything in particular, I might mention other artists whose work has implied, to me, to have emerged via some unearthly influence, and that they too have glimpsed some structure of divinity in their works. I believe in the Lovecraftian conception of Satanism, or devil worship, but its prime attribute for me is his conception of zealotry, fanaticism. I find concepts like this, devotion which borders and sometimes transcends into madness, to be consistent with a kind of trance evoked when receptive to the emanations of that which is beyond the flesh; in other words, creating art. You are temporarily transformed into a vessel for the forces of things higher than yourself. Lovecraft, Blackwood, probably Poe, they experienced this. I might also mention Grant Morrison and Hideshi Hino. Clive Barker. Anton Long. Jim Henson. The Unabomber. I guess probably not the exact answer you were looking for, but the truth is that I have all my “answers”, so it's no longer relevant for me to hear anything anyone else has to say. I have some very specific beliefs that emerged in moments of profound struggle. Wounds of the soul. People died for this. I experienced some things of which I can never tell, but I am forever haunted by them. These things were the keys to the gates of insight. I spent a lot of time out there in the dark, Michael. The nature of my spirituality is exactly what I brought back from it.

VO: There is definitely an “otherworldly” so to speak syncretic angle to darker forms of art and creativity and the metaphysical that run together well with physical fitness (regardless of what is practiced); as an advocate for striving for physical perfection beyond that which most homo sapiens wish to attain, do you see a confluence with the physical, spiritual, and emotional higher states of being.

RCJ: In many cultures and ideologies, we are guided towards illumination by suffering. I might also add that like good deeds and acts of wickedness, we should not compare our sufferings or joy to anyone else's. But found through physical pain, mental anguish, despair, failure, exile, disenfranchisement, we find keys to open new doors of perception, and therefore begin to configure a new visage of ourselves in the mirror. Whether or not that visage turns out to show a prophet or a murderer (or both) is subjective to other determining nature vs nurture type of factors. Propensity towards anything which lasts is always determined on the same scale whether we are talking about carpentry or foot fetishism. There is a pathology to the darkness in each person, and if you follow its path of destiny backwards through time, you'll find where they were informed by the divine.

VO: I know you love Twin Peaks, and David Lynch as a visionary. What did you think of the recent revival? We are seeing lots of sequels/prequels/in-between film and TV works decades and generations after the original work(s) were released, with everything from The Omen to The Exorcist to Alien and even Top Gun. Personally, I hate this fad. It mattered when it mattered, at the time, to the cultural zeitgeist and even the geopolitics of the era and going back to desperately add elements to a mythos and fandom is just… pathetic. I mean, look how polarizing the Star Wars prequels were and if even George Lucas falters with his own creation then who even cares what the director of the sort-of remake of Evil Dead can do with Alien, who Ridley Scott himself butchered with cringeworthy prequels?

RCJ: You know, Michael, there's always going to be capital to fill the world with more useless crap. The revival of Twin Peaks falls flat, probably hardest for me especially as a sort of Lynchian purist. I mentioned my pirated films playlist earlier, and one thing I will reveal is that 70% of Lynch's films are in there. What he did between ‘87 and the early 2000’s will never be surpassed, not even by him. At least not as long as audiences are as mundane and stupid as they've resigned themselves to being as of late. In my own film, “User Unknown”, I upheld the strongest aspects of Lynch's influence on myself as a filmmaker, and they supported my own vision. But these came from where he was still taking chances, where he “innovented”, as Jack Donaghy would say. Remake/revival/reboot, whatever. That in itself doesn't feel like something Lynch would actually aspire towards, not without studio pressure. Ridley Scott is another director who I consider to belong to the elite prestige of visionary filmmakers from my era. To be perfectly honest, I did enjoy Prometheus and Alien Covenant, despite their troubling flaws. Michael Fassbender’s David / Walter android were the best part of it all. I try to simply think of those films as their own “Alien-adjacent” story which takes place in the same universe. In any case, stuff like Blade Runner, American Gangster, Gladiator, speak for themselves. As for Evil Dead 2013, I liked that one, too. Good cast, solid writing, palpable sense of dread, just the right touch of campiness to keep it true to the rest of the series. But Michael, though Evil Dead 2013 was a rare moment when a remake/reimagining did support and work within the originals, there are many examples where this did NOT happen. Most notably for me would be, again, to mention Halloween Kills. There was this impressive surreality to the level of nihilism in each of the deaths. But it left me feeling kind of depressed after using a whole evening and €18 movie ticket to watch it. I saw Rob Zombie's approach to this franchise in theaters when I was younger and having already been a fan of Carpenter and Akkad’s films, I didn't know what to make of it back then, besides the exact same impression Gordon Green and McBride left me with this, which is that though obviously many other liberties were taken creatively, the most memorable change was how they escalated the violence yet again. I never felt the series needed to show a guy brutally murdered in a men's room stall (this actually occurs in both newer iterations of the film) or show a broken fluorescent light go through a woman's neck in highly graphic brutality. I guess to Green's credit, there is a masterful level of attention to detail where the deaths in Halloween Kills was concerned. Every squelch of blood and viscera was reproduced in hi-definition 5.1 Dolby surround sound. I didn't need this whatsoever, but cool I guess. I think they probably consulted a physician to maximize the realism. Comparatively, Rob Zombie went off the fucking rails in exactly the way someone who created music as White Zombie (a great band) would. Woeful as the dialogue between teenagers and anyone under 25 usually is in his movies, I'd still rather rewatch those because they still felt like horror movies and were therefore more entertaining. The realism of Halloween Kills brought it closer to a stylized gore film, which if I went into it with that mentality, I'd choose a different venue for watching. And Michael, we all probably discovered Ogrish, Traces of Death, Guinea Pig, Men Behind the Sun, and all that stuff a while ago. It holds up for it's mystery (probably not for Charlie Sheen, though). But as a dad, as someone who has lived through nightmarish disturbing things, I find that I prefer not to simulate those things via movies and music. I want horror that's a little campy and dumb, not stuff that's going to recreate the horrible things I already know are out there. You can sometimes tell how bad someone's life has been, when they refer to shallow things as relevant to their level of pain in life. All the saddest music I've ever heard I think would be confounding for others, because almost none of it is outright sad, but rather I have attributed emotions to it which are attached to painful memories. But no one can know these. It's a special few songs that do that for me. I'll only say that you probably know most of them. But I'm digressing, Michael. Generally speaking, I am nearly completely over checking out anything new anymore. The stuff that's supposed to be original is usually too over-the-top artsy that it alienates it's audience from the real message because of distracting shock tactics. The remakes feel like a calculated attack on my childhood, as though Hollywood has set out to deliberately ruin everything I loved. So, Michael, what does it tell you that the repurposing and remaking of beloved past pieces of our culture for modern audiences has become synonymous with the nature of modern culture itself?

VO: Did becoming a father change your perspective on anything having to do with these more… “uncivilized” expression of artistic creativity? How will you introduce them to your children knowing that these matters can be seen as touchy and sensitive and not the most “user friendly” forms of expression?

RCJ: I try not to impose too much restriction on their own choices for what sounds good or entertains them. Low brow stuff is fine in moderation, and I want them to just be kids and enjoy their childhood above all. Primarily I try to shield them from the extraneous white noise of public opinion on such things, but I do so passively by providing my perspective on why something is good or bad per my own taste, and I only do this if I'm asked. My son doesn't actually like anything I create, but he has valid reasons for feeling that way, like anyone. I think it would be concerning if he liked a lot of my music, because much of it is generally only remotely likable if from it there's something relatable to you or if there's something wrong with you. I hope he can never relate to it like I do. My children are half Finnish, half American, and we consume a lot of American media but at least half of it consists of stuff that my wife and I watched when we were younger. Newer shows, newer jokes, things made for kids, as a parent are concerning for me. The more you love your kids and the more contempt you have for the human race, the more you start to see through the wholesome imagery to the insidious agenda-driven content design to undermine a parent's role as the primary teaching source in a child's life. Make no mistake: everything you believe, everything you love, everything that matters is under attack. We've talked about movies and the banality of this effect seeping into culture, but as I said, take it as a warning. It isn't limited to these things, it goes deeper and we have unknowingly let them in, given them keys to our homes, allowed them to write the recipes for our meals, allowed them to write our very destinies on terminable parchments that, a century from now, will be lamented as the great and secret coup that subverted our own survival, and we let them do it. And Michael, the frightening truth is that a little paranoia is a fucking good thing. A little paranoia goes a long way to keep you safe in the dark of the night when you walk home alone. You are NOT safe. You should NOT trust most people. A little paranoia protects you from becoming a victim, and I don't mean one of these make believe social media “victims”, I'm talking about a face on the back of a milk carton. As a parent, you SHOULD be afraid. You SHOULD be paranoid. I have lived through enough to never feel truly safe around any human being, ever. Be wary of those who doubt what I say. Watch them, and watch them close, Mike. See how their fear tethers to illusions handed down to them by the powers that be, to sedate them with their celebrity gossip, their pornography, their obsession with the mirror's reflection. They will commodity it, weaponized it against you, and still deceive you into paying for it. They will drink your blood and fuck your soul. As parents, you cannot afford to be a little paranoid. Protect your children from mind control.

VO: Finally, I need to know what you think about the current state of music and film and the streaming platforms and the sad slow death march of physical media to a niche for more die hard collectors and purists who swear to cling on to it for dear life and will pay for just about any gimmicky colored vinyl or lenticular slipcover on a Blu-ray with their lunch money. Hey, we’ve been there too, you know.

RCJ: Some years ago, when I still lived in Fort Lauderdale, but just before I moved to Oregon, I had a very modest, but meaningful, vinyl collection. I had first editions of Shining III, Behemoth's hand numbered demo “The Return of the Northern Moon”, Xasthur’s “Nocturnal Poisoning”, some Emperor Southern Lord presses, Hvis Lyset Tar Oss of course, and my mother threw them in the trash when I moved, because she saw no value in them or anything else that mattered to me. Childhood toys, drawings I made as a kid, photo albums, the first pieces of music I ever made on CDrs, all in the trash. Impermanence of life. I cannot relate to anyone whose family gives a fuck whether or not they live or die, much less those who have grown up in a level of security that protected the most basic of treasured possessions from oblivion. So indeed, I don't give a fuck really about all these ridiculous formats just adding more to the eventual garbage in the world. Look, it's really cool and fun that your album has some die-cut quad-LP silver ink layout limited to 666 copies and splatter vinyl, sure sure sure. But like anything repeated over and over again, it eventually loses all meaning. A lot of albums do not deserve to be published on vinyl, in my opinion. It's a marketing ploy. You have been sold this idea that anything on vinyl is inherently good music, so you will buy it because it's there and someone told you to do so. It used to be, at least in my perspective, that something published to vinyl was done because it was exceptional. Now it's a standard. Reviews of these albums are paid for. All of this is a business now. I have no idea what people actually like, what music actually means to them because they talk in sensationalized quips and buzzwords and e-speak jargon. The programming of human beings instituted to betray even their own tastes is frightening. I honestly prefer to download music and limit my ownership of hard copies to anything created by those I know personally. I'm never in a situation when I could honestly sit and absorb a vinyl record under the exact conditions necessary. It's most convenient for me to listen to music when I'm out, riding the bus, walking around town, moments of transience. But even then, the honest truth is that I'm usually listening to something I've made or something I'm working on. Like I've said, Michael, I feel increasingly detached from others, including other artists and musicians. I don't relate to anyone anymore. It requires that I know the person personally or that the music itself has some genuine emotional stake in my life, for me to voluntarily listen to it. But the art and music I create is what I want to hear, I create the music I want to listen to, and perhaps that relates to what I'm after from music and why I feel alienated from others in regards to this. I don't necessarily require all things I consume to have a deep philosophical or spiritual attachment to my emotions, but they must possess something, even sonically, of relevance to my interests. But I've disgressed again. The music, for me, precludes all this other shit. Physical copies are great, but I believe more in the power of the music, because it's effect is the only part of an album that you can keep with you forever. The fashion and politics of physical releases mean nothing. Material possessions mean nothing, and perhaps I have my mother to thank for this lesson, because it has helped me to traverse the planet with nothing, to begin life anew in the ruins of the old. This lesson enabled me to accept homelessness and cope with progressively greater losses until the moral of these stories finally snapped into focus, and that adjustment to sorrow would be a strength to help me move on. We don't need these things, Michael. None of them will survive the end times. But the song that plays in your heart, that is what sustains you in the valley of the shadow of death. You'll have no CDs, no records, no mp3 players. You'll see that possession of those things was finite and fleeting, and when you found yourself truly alone and abandoned and starving in the rain and darkness, the song you hear is the one that kept you going, that gave you sanity when there was no longer a reason to believe in it. You won't tell anyone what it means to you, because how could you? No one can understand something so harrowing unless they lived it, and a lot of musicians show through the quality and content of their art exactly whether or not they have. But suffice it to say, I therefore cannot relate to most of it. Your records aren't “scary” to me. Mine are. Because only I know what it all really means. That's enough for me. The dark of the night is the color of death.