Hexvessel - The Druids of Psychedelia

As if the seething “No Holier Temple” wasn't already enough - an album that, this year, has put Hexvessel on the lips of anyone with even a passing interest in the none-too-fertile neo-folk scene - even just corresponding by email with Khvost, aka Mat McNerney, a refugee from Cornwall now in Finland, makes it clear you're dealing with a mystic, someone who has fully internalized an idea, a philosophy of life.

What struck me about your previous interviews is that you've found, in Finland, new sources of inspiration: an interest in paganism, above all, as well as the fascination of the local landscape, of course. Does a culture truly permeated by the religions of the past exist there? Is it something that drives the Finnish neo-folk scene, like Tenhi, for example?

The lifestyle here is more based on a connection with nature and the forest - from the paper and forestry industry and the people who live off it, to those who gather berries and mushrooms in autumn. There are even words in the language that come from the old religion, like the word for "thunder", ukkonen, which derives from the sky god, Ukko. Everyone celebrates midsummer the old way, at their summer cottages by the lake, in nature.

I don't know if this is a driving force behind the Finnish neo-folk scene, but it's something that inspires us. It's not that there's a real scene of that kind here, or at least not one we know of or are connected to. I've never listened to anything by Tenhi, so I can't speak for them. I'm not into national, romantic music, nor its idea, because, although I hold a special affection for Finland, the relationship with nature and its beliefs are the same throughout Northern Europe. It's just that man in his natural state will always remain close to the natural world. All our problems begin when we try to separate ourselves from it.

It's not really a new culture as such - this way of life has always been part of me and of the culture I cherish. I think it's in our blood, in our ancestry. I think that by going to Finland, where nature is unspoiled and there are vaster, more uninhabited wild areas, it was easier to indulge in these fascinations.

We are pagans, we always have been, and that's what we should remain if we want to sustain ourselves. Here I'm freer to make the kind of music I make, it's given it meaning, a purpose. It has freed the music and left it open to all influences - nature frees us from the worst of our human spirit.

They were the first musicians I've worked with who approached the music with a truly open spirit, rather than playing exactly what I had written or having someone else's music in mind. They just wanted to improvise together, focusing on the feeling, on channeling something, rather than copying or playing in a certain way. They let the music become what it needed to become. There's a spiritual connection with the music, rather than simply following the notes. Some musicians learn to play like other musicians, but these guys just want to be themselves, without ego. That's something magical you can still find in Finland - people without the ego bullshit you find in bigger European cities. People in London are too focused on pop culture and on being someone else. There's too much social pressure pushing you to behave a certain way.

My band's background is the psychedelic scene of Tampere; some of them come from Dark Buddha Rising, whom I followed quite a bit. It wasn't a matter of unifying our style - they knew what I wanted to do and I knew what I wanted from them. It was quite an intuitive thing, it wasn't about piecing everything together, we instinctively knew it would work. It had to be that way.

How would you relate your two records to each other, from any point of view?

They're both folk albums, but played from different perspectives. “Dawnbearer” is an inward vision, looking from the outside in. It's about a personal revelation, an awakening. “No Holier Temple” is more objective, a view from the inside out. It's more of a worldview, really – the search for a common point of view, people connecting through the same kind of awakening.

The whole point of stepping outside the current popular scene was precisely to create a new one – this is the beginning of something. We feel it, and so do the people around us. We hope to be part of something new – of people influenced by different genres, who tend to be more open-minded when making music. But a lot of what's coming out is influenced mostly by the sound of the 60s/70s and not by the actual lifestyle, the culture. They just want to be fashionable. It was important for us to include the social and philosophical side as well – not just recreate a certain sound. Humanity was moving toward a way of thinking that harked back to the 60s, and we'd love to see it return, to rise again. We're part of a new movement, and we're its spearhead. It's about creating something new rather than clinging to older things, and we're inviting others to join in. We're not really avant-garde, but more of a reaction to the current state of the world. It would be great to give people a voice, a meaning, rather than just be a curiosity. There are too many bands like that around, I find them easily disposable.

Svart is committed to releasing quality music with quality. They believe in what they do and they care, they listen, and they'd like to change the way record labels work with bands – which I think is very important these days. They feel like an extension of the band, which is essential. The label feels part of what we do and they get to interact with what we do. When we talk about marketing, we can do it honestly, without pushing or winking at people to get them to buy our product, but actually telling them what it's about, on our own terms. Svart is a label people can believe in.

To sound genuine, natural, you have to be genuine and natural. It's important that, whatever you do, you do it with heart. Great metal bands, even with simplistic, generic or childish lyrics, always win if they put their heart into what they do. I don't think listeners are so dumb as to judge bands that critically – they listen with their heart, and people like what moves them. It's important to do things with honesty, pure entertainment is another matter. A great example is Autopsy, whose lyrics are ridiculously splatter, almost childish, but they do it with such feeling that it always comes through.

It's about being a lightning rod and a conductor, you just have to channel what's right for the music. We're physical beings, so we can't do much more than that, and our sound is our own, it connects with other people if they're physically wired the same way or inclined to listen – sometimes you touch something and, as a songwriter, you're constantly looking for how to do things as honestly as possible. The worst thing for me, as a songwriter, would be to be accused of being affected or of saying irrelevant things.

If you do things honestly and with a pure heart, then I think you have to be prepared for the fact that people might find it too much, that they might feel repelled or nauseated by it. People don't like being confronted with the truth and their own emotions, but in my songs I always look for a way to get where I set out to go in the simplest and most direct way possible. I think John Lennon's “Imagine” is the ultimate example of an honest song, one that goes straight to the heart, so much so that I can never understand how anyone could fail to be moved by it, yet there are people who find the song... I guess the biggest goal for us is to be able to win over an audience where many of the people listening to us have never heard anything like it before, to be able to open some minds.

On the subject of representation, you've made quite a few videos for the songs on “No Holier Temple”, all dealing with some kind of woodland ritual. Can you tell us about the idea behind each one and how they were made? How important is the visual component in your music?

I write lyrics, so I always think visually – lyrics are already visual. We come from the visual era and that's how our minds work, so it's important to give people some kind of platform from which to dream. I really like the whole fan-video side of things, people making videos for songs they love, it's something bands should devote more attention to. It's such an important part of a band's culture that people attach a certain imagery to it, that they explore it visually, associating something they love with the music they love.

I think we treat videos by offering just one perspective – how we see the songs – and we'd like it to become a dialogue, where people respond by showing us what they think of when they listen to the songs. I used to build my own personal videos in my head, it would be interesting to see the real-life counterpart. I don't think videos are a way to get people interested in your music, I've always felt Hexvessel's music as a soundtrack. It's nice that people feel the same way.

“Woods To Conjure” was directly inspired by Dave Foreman and what he said about going into the forest, our reasons for doing so, whether we go just to relax, because it's picturesque; he talks about it as if it were much more, and we wanted to show, in our forest videos, a contemplation of our relationship with it. We're completely connected to our environment, to what surrounds us, but I fear people have lost their understanding of that connection. We hoped this film would give people conflicting feelings, in a positive sense.

“His Portal Tomb” isn't about nature in an obvious way, but it is in the sense of all of us being an intrinsic part of our environment, then because of themes like death and rebirth of human beings, then because it speaks to the whole cycle of earthly life. I wanted to explore the idea of death and of life beyond it, what our dreams and stories tell us about it and its true meaning. “Sacred Marriage” is a song written by an artist named Carolyn Hiller, one of the first musicians to open my mind to paganism. In her songs she invokes the gods of nature, and I wanted to explore not just the song but the story of two young people on an adventure in a forest, who have a spiritual awakening upon discovering the pagan gods. I wanted to look at the interplay between innocence and spiritual awakening, the balance of light and darkness and how these two things are one and the same.

How does all this translate into your live expression? Do you project anything? Do you also enjoy physically interpreting the songs?

I don't like the word "ritual", I'd rather say "channelling", since, as in the name "vehicles", we're emanating wavelengths out from ourselves. I'd love for it not to just be about watching a band, but for the audience to come and dance and be part of it. After playing black metal for so many years I really grew tired of the imagery, I no longer feel like I have to hide under a cloak or makeup. For me, the best performances are the illuminating shows I've attended, the ones I walk away from with some new knowledge of myself, or where I manage to dream about things beyond myself - not big entertainment where you pay to be entertained. It's much more about finding something within ourselves and within the audience than about entertaining.

Sagan was an icon of positivist thinking about humanity and science, he was a "positive" thinker about the future. We admired the way he filled us with wonder about subjects that can often be horrifying, terrifying, or simply too difficult to grasp. I think we see a shared kinship between what we're trying to do and what Sagan was trying to do. A lot of bands play with the darkness of paganism, or use the world of the occult to give a stylish veneer to their trendy music.

We're really trying to open minds to what paganism truly means - what Sagan and we are both trying to say is that there are labels for things people don't understand, and they're often used as masks to hide behind or to scare people. True paganism, like true science, isn't a belief, it's a search for knowledge and for our connection to the universe.

He was a man alone against the world. He had fairly direct goals and he managed to achieve them. He had an incredible vision, and it's wild how much we all owe now to a single man. Muir proves that if you keep your values and beliefs intact, you're capable of doing something positive not just for a decade but for many generations to come.

We'll be doing a small European tour with Sabbath Assembly to start with, and throughout 2013 we'll try to tour as much as possible! Thanks for the interview!

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