Dödfödd|Reverorum ib Malacht I
2024-07-16
by Niklas Göransson
At the dawn of the new millennium, Emil Lundin co-founded Swedish black metal band Dödfödd. In chronicling his musical pilgrimage, we begin with the blood-stained saga leading up to their classic demo Besvärjelse för omvänd rekreation.
EMIL LUNDIN: My mother’s side of the family is from Finland. Her Karelian father was conscripted to fight in the Winter War at nineteen and ended up wounded three times. For example, he had a glass eye and no hearing in one ear from being shot in the head. They gave him a few medals, but he threw them away because in war, he said, all you want is to survive.
Following the Second World War, Emil’s grandfather started working on a farm. He met a woman, got married, and then moved to Sweden with his wife in the early 1950s. That’s where Emil’s mother was born.
EMIL: She used to joke that I’m related to half of Finland and might not be too far off, considering how she has no fewer than thirty-nine cousins. Thus, I grew up surrounded by Finnish immigrants and melancholic tango. I often say the gaping hole in my soul is that I speak several dead languages, but not Finnish.
Much like his maternal grandfather, the young Emil was rather prone to injury. First, he suffered a spiral fracture in his leg from a skiing accident.
EMIL: My foot was twisted 180 degrees, so it pointed backwards. My dad freaked out; he grabbed my ski boot and yanked it around. This was a bit of a shock reaction on his part because it looked so weird. Fortunately, he twisted it the right way.
This left Emil in a cast for six weeks before he had the briefest of respites.
EMIL: My cousin tricked me, ‘Once the cast is removed, you can just get up right away and sprint faster than ever.’ So, as soon as it came off, I stood up and tried to run. Obviously, the leg wasn’t fully healed yet, so I tore something again. My mother said that I screamed for an hour straight while they put a new cast on – and then it was back to square one.
Once he’d healed up and the cast came off again, Emil was able to enjoy a brief period of full mobility. Then he got into a fight, during which he re-injured his leg and had to walk on crutches.
EMIL: When it finally mended, my father had promised to take me to a local water park. While he cooked waffles, I was out riding my bicycle. My dad had built it; he likes welding and is pretty handy with such things. It was fully functional but not entirely straight. I’d previously borrowed my friend’s mountain bike and could ride it without touching the handlebars, so I thought, ‘It’s all about mindset and determination! I just have to decide to ride without using my hands.’
The ensuing impact was so violent that Emil’s helmet shattered against the ground and left him bereft of consciousness. Besides head trauma, his leg was broken again. This time, it took an entire year to heal.
EMIL: I could go on – for several years in a row, I broke something. They even tested me for osteoporosis, thinking I had too many fractures in a short period. And after the last one, I thought, ‘I’m so infinitely sick of this.’ I distrusted my bones. There was no telling when my body might break down next. Looking back, I regard this as a valuable experience; it forced me to confront my mortality and acknowledge that things can quickly go awry and leave you incapacitated.
Do you think it does something to the human psyche to undergo so much pain in formative years?
EMIL: Pain is relative; some people go through far worse. I mean, at no point did I go hungry or anything like that. But if one is to speak about my arrogant years, I suppose I had notions about being able to handle a lot more discomfort than most. But whether it affected my psyche at some kind of base level… I doubt it. I think that’s a common human trait. One can see it everywhere – people clinging onto something to which they can attribute their gritty character. I suppose this was where I could tether mine.
When did you get into music?
EMIL: Around seven. My sister had previously played the flute, so we kept one at home. I started learning classical guitar at twelve, which was actually my mother’s suggestion. I wanted to focus on sports, but she said, ‘No, play an instrument. We never got to do that as kids.’ My mother grew up in a large family, and they probably didn’t have the means for it. So, she got me an acoustic guitar.
At first, Emil attended a group class. However, he and his friend – whose father was a local Borlänge rockstar – were soon selected for private tutelage.
EMIL: I’ve always had a good ear for music, able to hear a melody and then play it back immediately. The moment I got truly hooked was when my mother bought my older cousin’s electric guitar for me. ‘Wow, I can make it sound just how I want!’ Playing Bach on the acoustic wasn’t the same – although I’m grateful for that experience today. I remember proudly calling my sister to demonstrate the first riff I’d learned: “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (NIRVANA).
Emil became a huge NIRVANA fan a few years earlier, in 1994. Having already developed his death fixation, he sought them out as soon as he learned that the band’s frontman, Kurt Cobain, had committed suicide.
EMIL: The internet was new, and my friend – who had rich parents – could access it. He was a bit special, this fellow. But as I recall, he printed out post-mortem photos of Kurt Cobain with his head blown off, and that’s what adorned my school desk. All my classmates got them in black and white, whereas mine was in full colour.
Emil’s keen interest in religion and the supernatural led him to black metal at the age of thirteen. After several unsuccessful attempts to start a band, he met a fellow musical prodigy, Philip, in the summer of 2000.
EMIL: We started a band called SADISTIC DICTUM. Philip told me over the phone that we must play death metal. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Black metal comes with a bad reputation. I mean, just look at you!’ We attended different schools – about seven kilometres apart – yet I had somehow become known as an unpleasant individual.
Emil’s imposing stature – standing at 1.94 metres (6.36 feet) in high school already – and his antagonistic mindset fostered an affinity for violence and intimidation.
In the print-exclusive DÖDFÖDD/REVERORUM IB MALACHT interview in Bardo Methodology #8, Emil recounted an incident in which eighteen classmates banded together to lodge a complaint against him with the principal. While it was challenging to substantiate harassment in individual instances, the similarity in accounts lent credibility to their claims.
EMIL: Then, gradually, Philip got drawn into black metal and eventually embraced the whole package. He was never religious, as far as I know, but liked being evil and so forth. And when I say ‘evil’ now, I’m sure you understand what I mean.
Philip and Emil’s first black metal band, NAUGLAMIR, recruited a drummer and a violinist. In early 2001, they performed a local concert. One song, “I dödsriket mitt”, from this set is available on YouTube. I must say, it is quite sophisticated for a band in their early teens who hadn’t played black metal for more than a couple of months.
EMIL: I remember that show; I hadn’t eaten for a full day beforehand because I wanted to feel genuine discomfort. A heritage from Dead (MAYHEM, MORBID), presumably. But was the music really that sophisticated? I don’t think so. Some of the riffs are alright – but it’s really just fifths stacked on top of each other. The violin played one harmony, Philip another, and I a third. It’s neither particularly complex nor difficult.
Surely, that’s a few steps above what most metal musicians that age can do?
EMIL: True, but since all of us had prior musical training, working with harmonies, scales, and such was no big deal. I’d also practised like crazy, obviously; I approached musicianship with the same monomaniacal mindset as always. ‘This – and only this – is what I do now.’ I wrote a lot of riffs once I learned the guitar. I had the idea to play chords but split them up through multiple guitars; I still do that to this day.
Somewhere around this time, Emil figured out how to use music software for multi-track digital recordings. Combined with computerised drums, it enabled him to experiment outside the rehearsal space.
The first music Emil recorded with his home setup went under the name MENTAL ILLVILJA. For lyrics, he read straight from an encyclopaedia of Latin names for diseases. The music was in the vein of early ABRUPTUM.
EMIL: The ABRUPTUM demos are the best black metal ever made. Really, that is my honest opinion. I plugged our Marshall amp directly into the computer, without a cabinet, which is how one achieves that ‘depressive black metal’ guitar sound. Those bands did the same thing, but I never cared for it. I still have that recording, but it’s not very interesting – largely due to the terrible production. ABRUPTUM must be mixed properly to sound good. Better reverb is a must, for starters.
Following the first recording, Emil recruited a few friends to MENTAL ILLVILJA and created an album called “Nekrotiskt våld i skogen”.
EMIL: It wasn’t very serious, nor actual music, but the underlying idea was good: I decreed that we should isolate ourselves in my family’s old 19th-century cabin without electricity or running water. I covered the windows to make us lose track of time. After a few days, we made a recording with everyone just howling like maniacs for forty minutes straight. It’s an interesting concept, but the result was underwhelming. I still have it. Maybe I should boil everything down to thirty seconds and use it for an intro?
Simultaneously, Emil also recorded material for another new project: SJÄLADÖD. The idea was to create black metal with distorted guitars but no drums.
EMIL: SJÄLADÖD was meant to be the darkest music ever but, unsurprisingly, it turned out extremely boring. The band name came from my mother, referring to my tendency to do monotonous things for long stretches of time, which she called ‘själadöden’ – the death of one’s soul. As soon as I heard that, I thought, ‘Yes! Spiritual death is precisely what I seek.’ Plus, it sounded good.
While attending a local record fair, Emil and Philip learned about an upcoming underground festival: 2 Heavy 4 You in Falkenberg, Sweden. This gathering took place in May 2001 and became a historic event in many ways. It marked the first time that DESTRÖYER 666 and ROOT played in Sweden, as well as NIFELHEIM’s stage debut.
EMIL: I mostly drank at the campsite, but I caught a few songs from some thrash band called STORMRIDER. As I recall, they had one good riff. And then THE LEGION, because I liked their drummer, Emil Dragutinović. That’s when he peaked. Afterwards, he became too fixated on speed and proceeded to ruin MARDUK. I also watched NIFELHEIM; I was really impressed with “Unholy Death”.
These days, NIFELHEIM’s original drummer, Demon – who played on their 1993 demo, “Unholy Death” – is a member of REVERORUM IB MALACHT.
EMIL: Martin (Demon) told me they had no idea what they were doing. And you can hear it; he’s playing the entire drum kit at once: ‘ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding’. And then E and F, the only chords you need for black metal. I found their whole approach intriguing. I’d also read an interview where they said, ‘We try to make the shittiest music possible’, which was a great inspiration to me.
Later that summer, Emil and Philip fired both their drummer and the violinist. The bassist had already been lost to a girlfriend earlier that year. Tired of collaborating with people who weren’t serious about the spiritual aspects of black metal, they decided to continue as a duo, with Emil on drums.
EMIL: We were having trouble getting these people to rehearse regularly; for them, it was just a hobby. I’d worked during the summer, so I could afford a cheap drum kit with five toms. We stole the cymbals and drumsticks. And now that I think about it, some microphones as well. I still feel terrible about that. Actually, I should return them – they’re around here somewhere.
Emil discovered that he could track drums with two mics connected to an Akai cassette deck and then transfer everything to his computer. That’s when the duo formed DÖDFÖDD, a continuation of SJÄLADÖD. Their first demo, “Livlös massa, dödfödd själ”, was recorded during the autumn.
EMIL: I’d only been drumming for a month by that stage, so it sounds terrible. In addition, I had a forty-degree fever and was half-delirious, hallucinating even. We recorded “När intet mig tar” – which is about the great nothingness… ‘I’m going to die, I am ready’, and so on – at the height of my feverish delirium. I fell asleep while Philip tracked guitars; he woke me up and said, ‘Come on, we’re recording the last song.’ And if you listen to it, you can hear how I’m lagging behind the beat in an unnatural way.
Once the drums were recorded and Philip started on the guitar parts, Emil took another nap before it was time for him to perform vocals.
EMIL: I had a fever dream in which I looked down on our neighbour’s house from the sky above. Then I saw myself, bound by seven knots. One on each arm, two over the legs and torso, and one on my forehead, pinning me to the ground. In my youthful ignorance, I interpreted those knots as the seven deadly sins. But they’re really just vices – not sins. The opposites of the seven heavenly virtues.
These virtues, originating from Greek philosophy and adopted by the Church, are prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, faith, hope, and charity. In contrast, the ‘cardinal sins’ are seven vices that spur other immoral behaviour: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.
EMIL: It was all clear to me: ‘Of course, these are the seven deadly sins.’ And I had so many ideas related to this experience afterwards. I still think about that dream today, but without necessarily attributing much significance to it – which I did then. The song in question, “När intet mig tar”, became a kind of lodestar for how I wanted to perform vocals.
A few weeks after completing the demo, Emil sliced open his veins in an attempt to kill himself. Not so much from depression, but rather as the culmination of a longstanding obsession with death. Further discussion around this can be found in the Bardo Methodology #8 feature.
In light of Emil’s attempted departure, it’s somewhat surreal that he – just months later – persuaded his father to help him burn CD-R copies of the DÖDFÖDD demo, albeit with a fake booklet. The real one was printed in secret to conceal the fact that they not only praised but also encouraged suicide.
EMIL: My father found even this fake cover too extreme. ‘Why must everything revolve around winter and darkness? You’re cultivating this mindset!’ But he’d already become well-aware of what I got up to. You see, my dad is somewhat of a hacker. For instance, back in the early 90s, he’d rig satellite-dish cards for all the neighbours. Anyway, he hacked my computer and read the entire mIRC logs and email archive. All of it.
mIRC is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client used for real-time online communication, primarily through text messaging. It was extremely popular in the 1990s and early 2000s before the widespread use of social media. IRC allowed users to chat in channels dedicated to different topics, including music subcultures like black metal.
EMIL: My father found discussions about spreading glass in playgrounds and whatever other idiotic ideas we had. One of his first reactions was, ‘You’re the only one in these conversations who keeps swearing!’ Meanwhile, my parents were busy building a summer cabin, leaving me to my own devices, absorbed in their own monomania.
Later that autumn, DÖDFÖDD recorded their second demo, “Förfall, undergång och död”.
EMIL: What I remember most is not being able to hear what we were doing. Nowadays, drummers listen to the guitars through headphones while recording. We had a massive Marshall 412 cabinet next to my drum kit; Philip stood behind it so he could hear his guitar. I sat on the other side to minimise audio leaks into the two mics. Plus, our only two cymbals were broken. But that’s how we managed it.
In November 2001, Emil and Philip brought both demos to Motala Metal Festival and sold them there.
EMIL: Philip and I had already sent out a few online orders, but most of our sales happened in Motala. Those were the demo days when people still bought cheap tapes or CD-Rs. I think Henry Möller (ARDITI, PUISSANCE) got a copy; that was the first time we met. I also talked to Tena from Shadow Records, though he likely doesn’t remember. It was interesting to finally put faces to some of the names.
In October 2002, the DÖDFÖDD duo completed their third demo, “Besvärjelse för omvänd rekreation”, and released it through Orderless Evil, a Swedish underground label run by Marcus Hinze of MORTUUS. The booklet shows a lineup of three members; besides Emil and Philip, there is also a bass player.
EMIL: That bassist didn’t actually play on any of our recordings; he wasn’t good enough. Philip wrote a few riffs for “Besvärjelse…”, but he had bad performance anxiety and couldn’t contribute as much as on the earlier demos. But when he came up with riffs, they were the best of the entire release. I recorded some guitars, too – just a few riffs I couldn’t be bothered to show Philip. He handled the piano parts, and I added effects and samples. I also played piano in the intro, which required four hands.
Emil’s family had a piano in the living room, so he brought down his tape deck and set it up.
EMIL: To maximise the volume, Philip and I played the keys as hard as we could. Interestingly, as soon as we finished playing, the clock stopped ticking. It was one of those classic grandfather clocks. Brown, mechanical – the type you wind up. And it just went silent. If one wants to be rational, it probably happened because of vibrations in the wall it stood against.
After vocals had been recorded for all but one song, they decided to experiment with the final track.
EMIL: Philip’s parents owned a grocery store outside Gävle and were often away, which meant that we could drink ourselves senseless at their place. His poor sister had to clean up vomit and blood and… come to think of it, she’s a psychologist today. Anyway, we decided to get obliterated the night before. Whoever woke up first would rouse the other without speaking a word, and then we’d immediately record the vocals. And that’s what we did.
Was the rest tracked at your place?
EMIL: Yes, everything. I had transformed the hallway into a rehearsal space: drum kit, amps, and so on, which is where I recorded all my demos. My entire life, essentially – played out in there.
The weirdly paced symphonic part of the title track, is that a Finnish tango influence?
EMIL: Correct. I probably had it in the back of my mind that triple-time is tango – which by default is Finnish tango. I doubt this was my first three-beat riff, but what makes it unique is that I play chords on the bass. Oddly enough, as far as I know, nobody else has done that in black metal either before or after. The bass was routed through a guitar pedal so it wouldn’t sound muffled.
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