Trepaneringsritualen - Dark Rituals of Blood

Trepaneringsritualen has restored ritual industrial to its former glory, fusing influences from early Current 93 and Coil with the Nineties sound of Mz.412 and Brighter Death Now. A true heir to the iconoclastic spirit that animated the legendary Swedish label Cold Meat Industry, Thomas Ekelund has raised the bar of a sonic research that successfully blends dark-ambient with a feral black and death metal imagery, all steered towards abrasive death-industrial textures. The artist himself has described his art as "ritual music from the Göta Lände", a term referring to the southern region of Sweden, which in ancient times was the land of the Geats, a Germanic tribe of the Goths (also mentioned in Beowulf) who had inhabited Scandinavia since the early centuries AD.

Live, Ekelund stages brutal ritual performances, accompanied by mythical, sacred, and at times blasphemous imagery, appearing on stage in corpse paint and covered in animal blood. Even live, he manages to stage a universe as coherent as it is merciless and extreme. Imagine a perverse fusion of Mayhem and Throbbing Gristle under the shadow of a black sun, and you'll have an idea of Ekelund's extremist vision. His work could be placed within that borderline genre known as "black industrial", also sharing much with the atmospheres of Mz.412 and Nordvargr, pioneers of the genre. Indeed, Henrik "Nordvargr" Björkk is an artist with whom Ekelund has often shared the stage. Together they have also given life to two projects, Det Kätterska Förbund and ᚲᛟព II // ᚾᛟᚾ ᝝ᛁ᝝.

Within a few years, Trepaneringsritualen managed to capture the interest of a varied audience, both within the metal scene (touring with Bölzer and Deströyer 666, as well as collaborating with bands such as Deathstench and Sutekh Hexen) and within the noise-industrial and power electronics scenes. Numerous appearances at international festivals such as Maschinenfest, Congresso Post Industriale and the Stella Natura Festival in the US have helped build a solid reputation as an extreme, uncompromising and unconventional live act.

Many of his works feature elegant black-and-white covers, a format that also showcases the artist's graphic skills - he is also the man behind the Swedish label Beläten, an outlet operating in a strictly underground and DIY fashion, which since 2012 has released excellent material, mainly on cassette (in homage to a certain "old school industrial" tradition), spanning post-industrial, noise, and even dark/coldwave. Over the course of the new millennium, Beläten has released artists such as Veil Of Light, German Army, Distel, Blitzkrieg Baby and many others.

Ritualer, blot & botgöring is his debut album as Trepaneringsritualen, a stunning first outing that leaves its mark and, like many of his works, would go on to see various editions and reissues over the years.

"Bloodletting Ritual", a genuine descent into hell blending subterranean echoes, demonic barking and sinister noises resembling tormented stringed instruments, is followed by "Black Heaven/White Hell", a nearly fourteen-minute-long suite in which the initial dissonances gradually give way to a ritual mantra that stretches across the entire track. "Knife Play" is instead split in two: distorted vocals in the more rhythmic first part, which then give way to an atmospheric section reeking of death. "Bestraffning & Belöning" is once again a great piece of macabre ritual death-industrial, followed by "Den sista dag i Helvete", meaning the last day in hell, a fitting epilogue to this work.

After a series of solid EPs released on cassette in 2010, Roi Perdu and Septentrional, 2011 saw the release of Veil The World, a work issued in a super-limited edition of forty copies on magnetic tape inside an elegant wooden box. Prices for the original work run fairly high, but fortunately in 2015 the English label Cold Spring reissued the whole thing on CD. It's a must-have, if only for the excellent Death In June cover. The version of "C'est Un Rêve" is one of the most terrifying and unsettling tracks Ekelund has ever composed, as well as one of the finest Death In June covers ever recorded.

2012 saw the release of Deathward, To The Womb. The album opens by quoting an evocation of "Babalon" conducted by "Frater T.O.P.A.N" (the name behind which Jack Parsons concealed himself), a fellow follower of Thelema. Babalon is the "Great Mother" who embodies the impulse of fertility. Through her flame, she is called upon to burn and purify all of creation in anticipation of the "Aeon Of Horus", an era of self-realization and spiritual seeking under true will ("True Will"). The birth of Babalon, however, will not herald an age of love and peace but, on the contrary, will plunge the world into a kind of violent cataclysm, a purifying apocalypse manifested through the image of the "Black Flame": She is flame of life, power of darkness/ She destroys with a glance/ She may take thy soul. She feeds upon the death of men", to quote the very lyrics of "The Babalon Working" written by Parsons.

Deathward, To The Womb revolves around two opposing principles: the fertile mother and the destructive principle that seems to prevail today. Musically, this duality tips towards the noisier and more chaotic side, with a lo-fi attitude that hurls the listener into a pitch-black black-ambient ("Osiris, Slain & Risen"). We are immersed in an infernal magma in which post-industrial debris worthy of S.P.K. floats ("She Is Flame of Life") and from which, at times, Trepaneringsritualen's unsettling, distorted and cavernous voice emerges.

Among the 2013 releases worth noting are the EP Konung Dómaldr Vid Upsala Hängd and the 7" Judas Goat, two works that show Ekelund's sound maturing further. The former is a ritual concept piece dedicated to the winter solstice and to the Saga of the Ynglings (Ynglinga saga), which tells how King Dómaldi was sacrificed to death by his own people following a long period of famine. The cover features the famous painting by Carl Larsson, Midvinterblot, dedicated to the sacrifice of the Swedish king. The fresco, housed in Stockholm's national museum, had already been used for the cover of Blood Axis's famous live album, "Blót: Sacrifice In Sweden".

"Judas Goat", on the other hand, is dedicated to the Judas goat that leads the herd to slaughter. It's one of the fiercest and most incisive tracks Trepaneringsritualen has ever produced, an extremely violent track that leaves no escape. The lyrics screamed by Ekelund repeat obsessively:

My Brother. Betrayer. Your blood on my hands.

I claim your death. I claim your death. 

I claim your death in my name

Between 2013 and 2014, two important split albums also came out, the first with Deathstench and the second with Sutekh Hexen, American acts both operating within the darkest, noisiest reaches of industrial, albeit with a distinctly black metal iconography. Also in 2014 came Papist Pretender, a new 7" with two tracks.

Perfection & Permanence, released in 2014, is probably the Swedish artist's best-known album, his consecration before the wider (post-)industrial audience, and at the same time one of his most immediate and accessible works, even beyond a certain niche genre. Here an oppressive atmosphere is conjured through the use of frequencies, metallic noise and layered vocals steeped in effects, turning his voice into a kind of ghostly, inhuman presence emanating from the Beyond. The work shows a strong production and great care in sonic research, while deliberately retaining a "lo-fi" quality, as raw and brutal as sandpaper.

"Venerated & Despised" is the start of the journey, with voices chasing each other almost indistinguishably, wrapped in a kind of murky, suffocating amniotic fluid. "A Black Egg" is a hymn to a pagan goddess, perhaps Isis (mother and daughter, virgin and whore, as the lyrics put it), about to emerge from a great black egg. "Castrate Christ" is a true hymn to human pain and suffering, in which an impotent Christ is tortured with typically human sadism, amid waves of distortion and reverb imploding upon themselves. It's one of the album's most violent peaks. Next comes the instrumental "Liken Ingen Jord Vill Svälja", before the first part of the album closes with "Alone/A/Cross/Abyss", a concentrate of pulsing psychic blasts in which Trepaneringsritualen's many voices overlap and crumble into magmatic drifts.

After the slow interlude of "39 Lashes", it's the turn of "The Seventh Man", one of the album's most accomplished tracks, with its catchy riff over which Ekelund screams: "Body, Mind, Desire, Will. Perfection & Permanence!" It's the pure triumph of Will and Spirit over matter. The Christological metaphor returns in "Konung Krönt I Blod" (King Crowned in Blood), though the track also sounds like a cursed reference to Eiríkr inn sigrsæli, Eric VI the Victorious, the Swedish king guilty of being the first to betray the original pagan heritage of the Scandinavian peoples for the new Christian religion. The instrumental "A Ceaseless Howling" conjures a cold arctic landscape through bleak dark-ambient, before the album closes in the noise (and pain) of "He Who Is My Mirror".

2016 saw Ekelund collaborate with Celldöd, a Stockholm artist working between techno-industrial and old-school Electro-EBM. The two made a split cassette for the Swedish label Brutal Discipline. For the occasion, Ekelund used the name Teeraal Räum Pheynix, also abbreviated to T × R × P.

It was a period of intense live activity, and the following year saw the release of several Trepaneringsritualen live albums well worth attention. The first is Oberhausen Ritual – Live At Maschinenfest 2016 E.V, a devastating performance that went down in the annals of the German festival, released on tape by Raubbau/Pflichtkauf. In 2020 the album was reissued on vinyl and distributed by Tesco Organisation.

The same year brought a live album recorded in Italy, at Club Kindergarten in Bologna on the occasion of the Decimo Congresso Post-Industriale organized by Rodolfo Protti of Old Europa Cafe. Mz.412/Trepaneringsritualen – X Post Industriale/Rituals 2015 e.v. came out as a double LP, with the spectacular Mz-412 performance on the first disc, and Ekelund's bone-crushing ritual on the second. Both albums reveal the dark soul of a project conceived essentially as a form of cathartic ritual performed on stage.

Also in 2017, the German label Tesco Organisation released a new album, Kainskult, a work dedicated to the figure of Cain, seen as the first heresiarch, the archetypal transgressor and enemy of Yaldabaoth, the demiurge and creator of the material world according to some Christian Gnostic visions. In the figure of the first fratricide we find the primordial flame of rebellion against the slavery of the flesh, and above all the fight against a creation corrupted from its very birth. Cain, through his mark, will brand his own lineage, destined for the very destruction of creation.

After the propitiatory chant of "Death & Ecstasy", Ekelund's distorted screams carve their way through tribal percussion and hammering bass lines in "Maðr Malformed", before the white-hot assault of "All Flesh Has Corrupted", a track that will dig a deep hole in your soul. Everything seems to wither, collapse and fall apart, and, as Ekelund screams, "This is my vision, this my curse". The cult of Cain is staged here as a true cult of entropy perpetuating itself across the centuries, as it destroys and disintegrates everything relentlessly ("Feral Me").

On the strictly musical side, this work continues in the wake of Perfection & Permanence, almost like an even more wicked twin, working on sonic layering and repeated mantras delivered in a growl, as happens in "Serpent Seed", amid obsessive metallic percussion ("I am spirit, light and flesh/ And my seed shall know no death") that recalls somewhat the post-industrial sounds of Peter Bjärgö's Sophia, though here steered into Mz.412-style black-industrial. There's no shortage of forays into dark-ambient forms that seem to brush against hallucinatory drifts in the style of Deutsch Nepal, as happens in the hypnotic "An Immaculate Body Of Water" and in the final orgy of "V ∴ V ∴ V".

At this point in his career, our man reinterprets tracks by Coil, Nordvargr and Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio. The split with the Dutch duo Distel takes the form of a record titled A Knife In Sound. It's a highly unusual vinyl, shaped like a chaos star, on which Trepaneringsritualen covers "A Cold Cell", while Distel tackles "Solar Lodge", both hugely famous Coil tracks. Around the same time, Equilibrium Music also released Nature Seeking Equilibrium (War 4 The Principle Of Balance), a 7" vinyl featuring the famous Ordo Rosarius track on side A, and Ekelund's version on side B.

ᛉᛟ – Algir; eller Algir i Merkstave is a new album released on Cold Spring. Here Ekelund gives vent to the more introspective, yet no less unsettling, side of the ritual Trepane. This is an instrumental work in which we hear echoes of "Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words", Ekelund's old drone-ambient and post-industrial project, though here the atmosphere is far more menacing and disturbing. We're in the territory of the most inspired Raison d'être, and we're certainly sailing through dark, threatening waters reminiscent of a certain Nineties Cold Meat Industry-brand dark-ambient, and the classic Lustmord of the "Heresy" era.

The album consists of two long tracks, one per side of the vinyl edition. It's a kind of ritual dedicated to "Algiz", the fifteenth rune of the ancient futhark and the eleventh rune of the Norse runic alphabet. Minimal yet devastating in emotional impact, the album conjures an apocalyptic neo-pagan imagery steeped in the mists of Scandinavian mythology, an arid and dark passage in which, according to the album's liner notes, everything is at once Union and Dissolution.

Silences, bell tolls, metallic clangs and low frequencies build a sense of constant tension, an atmosphere worthy of the best horror film soundtrack.

If Kainskult conjured a fierce, fratricidal imagery, ᛉ -Algir; eller Algir i Merkstave seems to paint unsettling, minimal post mortem scenarios, a genuine journey into the realm of Hel, the Norse goddess of death. Through pauses and silences, Trepaneringsritualen delivers a truly terrifying album, another excellent work able to build just the right climax and thus become the soundtrack to the final stages of Ragnarök, the twilight of the gods and of humanity as we know it.

2019 also saw Trepaneringsritualen perform alongside Nordvargr at the festival organized in Stockholm by the American label Cloister Recordings: Dominion of Flesh: 5 Years of Cloister Recordings. After remixing each other's tracks on the excellent split 7" titled Konung Krönt I Blod/Salve Teragmon, the two played together with the addition of a third member on percussion. For the occasion, Ekelund began the performance wearing a mask made of burlap sacking soaked in coagulated blood (apparently pig's blood) and a hangman's noose tied around his neck. Not long after, a 10" in an extremely limited run of just 19 copies was released, T × R × P Manifest As Then Ramske Pakt – Hä Roda För Sola, as a Cloister Recordings exclusive.

The legend of Trepaneringsritualen continues after a year's pause due to the pandemic. In 2020, only a single long track of over ten minutes was released digitally, titled The Crownless Sovereign, a sinister, macabre accompaniment into other worlds that moves through dark ambient territory close to that of ᛉ – Algir; eller Algir i Merkstave. A new album with Nordvargr has already been announced for 2021. This time the duo will dust off the Det Kätterska Förbund moniker for a more fully realized, expansive work. Also forthcoming is a remix EP produced for Aufnahme + Wiedergabe featuring artists such as Headless Horseman, Pact Infernal, Ancient Methods, and Codex Empire reinterpreting some tracks from Kainskult in a techno-industrial key.

One thing is certain: the Swedish artist's music will always be the perfect soundtrack to a world in agony. At the exact point of balance between light and darkness, love and hate, life and death, the ritual never stops.

Contributions by Michele Beccaria (“Ritualer, blot & botgöring”)

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