by Niklas Göransson

During Christmas of 1996, Grand Belial’s Key entered the attic sanctum of The Black Lourde and emerged with a monolith. Guided by Gelal’s contrarian compass, the duo conjured Mocking the Philanthropist – sacrilegious, defiant, unrepentant.

 

GELAL NECROSODOMY: Our first show with Cazz (The Black Lourde of Crucifixion) was somewhere in Virginia during the summer of ‘96. The Marauder – better known as Holocausto from ARGHOSLENT – handled bass. I remember playing “Goat of a Thousand Young”, a few older tracks, and two new ones.

The gig took place in Dumfries, Virginia, in July 1996 and saw GRAND BELIAL’S KEY take the stage alongside TWISTED TOWER DIRE and ARGHOSLENT. The Marauder performed with all three bands.

At the time, G.B.K. had recently signed to Wood-Nymph Records and were preparing to record “A Witness to the Regicide”. Though The Marauder appears as bassist in the EPs credits, he only played on one track.

GELAL: I never intended for him to become a member. After Demonic stepped back, no one filled his position permanently. I didn’t want anyone else – I still held out hope he’d return. When we needed a bassist, it was strictly for live shows, and always someone from our circle.

“A Witness to the Regicide” also marked the arrival of G.B.K. keyboardist Lilith. A few photos exist, but little else is known beyond her synthesiser prowess.

GELAL: Lilith and I were dating for a few years. She was seriously talented – guitarist, pianist, singer, violinist – and could both read and write music. I remember asking her to play some Chopin on guitar, like, ‘I wanna see what your fingers are doing that mine aren’t.’

Performing Chopin on guitar is a radically different discipline from metal. It demands not just finger independence and dynamic control, but also a grasp of classical phrasing and advanced harmony.

GELAL: Every now and then, she’d listen while I practised. Lilith was the first to say, ‘Oh, that’s a diminished chord, a seventh something-or-other’, and I’d go, ‘What are you talking about?’ She’d ask, ‘Wait, you don’t even know you’re playing a G minor?’ I had no clue. She couldn’t believe I wrote this stuff without any theory and called me musically ignorant – which is totally true.

 

“Mocking the Philanthropist”, the debut album of GRAND BELIAL’S KEY, was recorded at Crucifier Studio during Christmas 1996. Despite sharing both name and location with the “A Witness to the Regicide” session – The Black Lourde’s attic in Chichester, Pennsylvania – the setup differed.

While the EP was tracked on Gelal’s four-channel porta, the album used professional studio gear brought in by George Jacob of Ground Zero Recordings in Roanoke, Virginia. Earlier that year, ARGHOSLENT had hired Jacob for their “Arsenal of Glory” demo and were pleased with the result.

GELAL: He said, ‘Come down to my studio’, but I refused; ‘No, man, bring your shit up here.’ I wanted to record where G.B.K. practised, in the same environment where we’d grown used to hearing our material. But it became a massive hassle – George lived almost four hours south of me, and Cazz was three hours further north.

THE BLACK LOURDE OF CRUCIFIXION: The plan sounded great to me. I didn’t have to pack up my gear and haul it down three flights of stairs to a studio; everything was already set to go. It turned out to be a great experience – worth every penny.

GRAND BELIAL’S KEY spent the entire $4,000 budget from Wood-Nymph on installing Jacob in The Black Lourde’s attic.

GELAL: All of it went into logistics. I had to drive us up, book a hotel for him, feed the guy… then we bought extra mics, tapes – you know, those old analogue backup drives – and whatever else was needed.

How did he take to his work environment?

GELAL: George was pretty shocked at first – ‘What the fuck?’ – because Cazz had these statues and all sorts of weird shit up there. Then he goes, ‘Man, your strings are too old, the guitar tone is terrible, and those ancient drumheads sound like cardboard.’

THE BLACK LOURDE: I simply lacked the funds to replace anything. I told him, ‘We’re not trying to be SAXON, man – just record us. All the screaming on top is gonna drown out my drums anyway.’ <laughs> Which, of course, it didn’t… but whatever.

The one saving grace, equipment-wise, was The Black Lourde’s amp: a Peavey 5150, known for its thick, cutting tone and high gain – perfect for heavy riffing.

GELAL: My only gripe with “Mocking…” is the length – it’s a big chunk of music to sit through. “Reign in Blood” (SLAYER) is only about twenty-eight minutes, and that hits perfectly. Still, even though ours runs long, I don’t think it’s monotonous. The album flows well, at least to my ears.

 

“Mocking the Philanthropist” featured over an hour of material that the duo had to memorise and perform with consistency. Further complicating matters was Gelal’s three-hour drive each way just to rehearse, which naturally limited how much could be refined in advance.

GELAL: Hence why the drums sound the way they do – those aren’t necessarily the original, intended beats, but rather what happened in the moment. There was so much material that some stuff just got left as-is. No stopping to fix mistakes; we didn’t punch in or edit anything.

And no metronome, presumably?

GELAL: Fuck no. Put “Mocking…” into Pro Tools with all that tempo-correcting digital shit, and errors will light up everywhere. Some riffs are repeated three times at different speeds, a few beats ended up backwards… but we kept everything. That’s how it is. This is black metal – what matters is the feeling.

THE BLACK LOURDE: We didn’t need a metronome or studio trickery because our music wasn’t meant to sound sterile or be locked to a grid. “Mocking the Philanthropist” is all about power, energy, and blasphemy: the sheer evil of it. The record lives and breathes – and that’s what makes it so special.

GELAL: I was happy with everything else: heavy-ass drum sound, loud guitars, audible bass, and super powerful vocals. The old CRUCIFIER demos had mostly deep growling, and I pushed Cazz to try stuff he’d never done before – high screams, weird spoken parts, all of it.

 

Once Jacob packed up and left, GRAND BELIAL’S KEY had recorded fourteen tracks – two of them instrumental interludes.

GELAL: Once we pieced it all together, every box was ticked – “Mocking…” didn’t sound like anything from the Norwegian forests, or any other US band for that matter. At first, I worried about mixing new songs with demo tracks – ‘Man, do these still sound like G.B.K.?’ – but they flowed together just fine.

“Mocking the Philanthropist” features re-recordings of four demo songs: “Shemhamforash”, “Sumerian Fairy Tale”, and “The Seventh Enochian Key” from “Goat of a Thousand Young”, along with “In Rapture by the Fenrir Moon” from “Triumph of the Hordes”.

THE BLACK LOURDE: I’m not usually the kind of guy who listens to my own material. I play sloppy – I know it – and I’m very critical. If something’s off, it bugs the hell out of me. But “Mocking…”? I listened to that album over and over. I credit Gelal’s songwriting: the structure, the way he puts things together. I was proud to be part of it.

GRAND BELIAL’S KEY’s debut stands out for its intricate guitar work, fusing first-wave black metal with distinctive, idiosyncratic elements. This music would be considered original if released today, let alone twenty-eight years ago – ridiculously catchy, yet framed in a production starkly contrasting the plastic-sounding Abyss recordings of the time.

GELAL: Musically, the album could be anything. We had thrash riffs, black metal parts, death metal, heavy metal – even doom breaks, like in “The Seventh Enochian Key”. The opener, “Foul Parody…”, sounds almost like hardcore punk with that first riff. We crammed everything in there, making it hard to classify.

So why call it black metal?

GELAL: The lyrics, really. If ROTTING CHRIST is black metal, and BLASPHEMY is black metal, then we fit somewhere in-between – “Mocking…” touches so many styles. Early ROTTING CHRIST was basically thrash-picking; it’s the same kind of variety we had, so I saw that as a good thing.

 

After Lord Vlad Luciferian was ousted from GRAND BELIAL’S KEY, Gelal assumed primary responsibility for the lyrics. On “Mocking the Philanthropist”, The Black Lourde wrote two of his own – “Foul Parody of the Lord’s Supper” and “The Slums of Jerusalem”.

GELAL: I knew CRUCIFIER had killer lyrics, so when Cazz offered to contribute, I said, ‘Sure.’ After seeing what I’d come up with, he was like, ‘Alright, you’re writing in this kind of style.’ I think I might’ve suggested the titles first, then he wrote the words to match.

THE BLACK LOURDE: I didn’t really try to emulate Gelal’s writing – it was probably more a case of us being on the same wavelength. I approached the G.B.K. lyrics the same way I do for CRUCIFIER, and it just worked.

While “Mocking the Philanthropist” lacks the historical and theological rigour of later G.B.K. material, it still laid the conceptual groundwork. Lyrically anchored almost entirely in New Testament imagery, the album assails Christian doctrine and its institutions through violent blasphemy, apocalyptic inversion, and mock-liturgical language.

GELAL: Black metal usually goes after Christianity, so that’s where G.B.K. started. I already knew a lot about this shit in ‘96, though not everything. The deeper you dig, the more you realise you’re only scratching the last layer of the onion – its lineage runs way back. Focusing solely on Christianity is flawed; it’s just the outer shell.

Upon finishing “Mocking the Philanthropist”, Gelal felt he’d said enough on the topic and began shifting his lyrical focus further back in the biblical timeline.

GELAL: Once you examine its roots and grasp that Christianity is only part of a bigger structure, you’ll notice how you can attack it freely – but any deviation stirs trouble. People rarely tolerate the same critiques of Islam, Judaism, or anything else. So, being natural contrarians, we followed the trail upstream.

 

GELAL: We sent Wood-Nymph all this music, thinking they’d release a full-length plus an EP or something. But no, Filip wanted to go full force: ‘We’re putting all of it on vinyl because it’s fucking awesome.’ And I was like, ‘Okay man, whatever.’ Not fucking bad, eh? I mean, how many bands get their debut album as a double LP gatefold?

In 1997, while the “Mocking the Philanthropist” double-LP was in production, Gelal reissued “Goat of a Thousand Young” on cassette through his label, Sinistrari Records.

GELAL: I wasn’t involved in the original distribution – Valerio (Lord Vlad Luciferian) handled that, and he did a good job. But people were still asking about the demo, so I used the master tape for a reissue. By then, old cassettes were breaking down, the sound quality degrading with each duplication.

Why did you change the cover artwork?

GELAL: I’d started using those biblical paintings – and having never cared for the original cover, I decided to redo it. I bought transparencies from Office Depot, layered the pictures, and colour-copied them; swapped the goat artwork for the new image but kept the original text.

Did you ever consider releasing your albums through Sinistrari?

GELAL: No. Demos are one thing, but self-releasing albums felt like cheating. I believed the proper way was to have someone else invest in you – to show they believed in your music enough to risk their money.

 

Wood-Nymph released the vinyl edition of “Mocking the Philanthropist” in 1997, distributed by Hammerheart Records in the Netherlands. Oddly, this was long before the CD came out.

GELAL: Probably boiled down to finances; Wood-Nymph didn’t have much money, and gatefolds were fucking expensive. Most of their budget went into the vinyl, and it turned out real nice – good jacket quality. “Mocking…” was the first LP of mine I ever held in my hands, so that felt huge. Now it’s just a piece of plastic, but back then, it mattered.

THE BLACK LOURDE: Man, getting those records delivered to my house was insane. Just being part of something as monumental as GRAND BELIAL’S KEY felt amazing. Wood-Nymph must’ve poured a serious amount of money into that pressing, because it came out spectacular.

How was the reception?

GELAL: Didn’t notice much, to be honest. The LP wasn’t sent to magazines or distributors – that would’ve been too expensive – so only individual listeners had it. I doubt Wood-Nymph sold many copies in the first year. Our demos got around, but I don’t know how many people picked up “A Witness…” or if it was the same crowd who bought the album.

While preparing the CD release, Gelal and The Black Lourde noticed a strange numerological coincidence: the total playtime clocked in at exactly sixty-six minutes and six seconds.

GELAL: ‘What the fuck? 666 for the album length.’ Filip kept saying we’d cursed Wood-Nymph – shipments stuck in customs for months, me needing a notary just to prove my identity and free the vinyl. Always something. He called it the ‘G.B.K. curse.’ We don’t buy into that, but weird stuff happens, I guess.