With recurring themes surrounding the discourse of existentialism and personal tales, the ever-defiant, unconventional Uppsala-based unit Slutet (whose name means “the end” in Swedish) has been presenting unorthodox, passionate tunes since around 2012. Playing mostly Experimental Black Metal, they also tend to incorporate roots of other musical styles as well, such as electronic undertones and ambiences of noise, even some psychedelic nuances– nevertheless, they keep their intensity authentic; branding themselves as a “ferocious Black Metal blitzkrieg”. So far, they have released one full-length entitled “Love & Beauty”, and they are part of a compilation entitled “Begynnelsen” which was released via the Finland-based label Behest. They also have released some stuff under the German label Manifest of Hate Creations. Lyrically, they are known for writing subversive words, deep-rooted in existential contemplations, their forms of revolt against the banality of societal norms, and cultural references.
These Swedish Black Metal nonconformists are ever consistent in experimenting with authenticity and breaking the conventional norms; almost like outlaws, in a cinematic, revolutionary way. They will be performing at the Life After Death Festival later this year. The Ghost Cult editorial team on behalf of Ralka Skjerseth was lucky enough to conduct an interview with them as a means of catching up before they head for Life After Death.
Ralka Skjerseth for GCM: Hello, Slutet! First of all, congratulations on the recent news that you guys will be playing at Life After Death! How do you feel about being a part of the lineup?
FJALAR: Felt unreal to finally come out and play! Ecstatic and nerve-wrecking. Great place, great organizers, weird bands and we got to meet some cool new people and some we only knew from online before.
DINGIR: Hello, all the living! And thank you, Ralka! Life After Death was an extraordinarily memorable experience. Playing live was an intoxicating, blissful moment of my life comparable to some psychedelic substance, to cut it short. Since playing I’ve been quite preoccupied with dealing with the fear and self-critique involved in realizing, as Ryttersson mentions, that somehow playing live for some reason can’t seem to turn out as brilliant, tight and climactic as when we are just the four of us hidden underground in our rehearsal space (but this, for me, has always been the case when recording as well). I’ve been dwelling and trying to understand “what went wrong”, but that has quite quickly subsided as it is a vain, somewhat futile question in most matters. And I’m starting to sense that the festival is something which I, toward the end of my life, probably will look back on with awe and an appreciation that I’ll be regretful I did not fully grasp at the time. I too, am vengeful and hungry for more – I had no knowledge of such an appetite before biting into the fruit that those who brought Life After Death to reality somehow persuaded me into eating. My performance was very far from my best, most natural one, but it is my best live one considering I’ve never done that before and the fact that people are telling me it was more than worth their time, money and energy is very heartwarming. But, like I was saying, I have a feeling that the hospitality, the welcome, the energy, the love and the beauty is something I absolutely should not take for granted in Slutet’s future. I feel humbled, honored, thankful and obliged to give more in return and am committed to giving whatever it is people came to receive, without muddying my gifts with self-doubt and filtering what pours out of my throat with doubt for the audience.
RYTTERSSON: Thank you a lot. We just came back home from it, and I wanted some days to fall upon it before ruminating on it, in order to gain a more sober perspective on the whole affair, because, quite frankly, it feels kind of surreal – a mere 5 months ago Slutet was dead and rotting: it was not a feasible proposition at all that, less than half a year in the future, we would be playing live on stage, and, no less, as the last band of the whole bill. It was a very humbling experience, and we were taken care of to the highest degree. We could not have been more satisfied with the enthusiasm and professionalism with which we were treated. Some technical difficulties here and there, some less-than-par equipment, the sheer novelty of the whole thing and maybe a little too much nose-candy made the performance a very energetic but ultimately sub-optimal affair for me personally. Let me, though, be clear: I have found a new drug: playing on stage. I am pretty satisfied with the performance given the circumstance. As a very introverted person who, just half a year ago, was adamant to never be on stage once in my whole life, I am reasonably satisfied with our operation, but the appetite for revenge is immense within the band. Safe to say, we need to hone this skill, because I feel like that performance was a mere 50-60% of what we achieve routinely in the comfort of our own rehearsals (I take personal accountability for this), so naturally, I would want to show up again and do better. However, the response has been very, very positive and I have had a challenge coming to terms with that personally, since I feel like my own personal performance did not exactly live up to last-band-of-the-bill caliber. There is definitely a vague but intense sort of Impostor syndrome thing going on here. It is difficult for me to accept that this thing that we are doing actually means things for other people. So definitely there will be a learning curve to this, and I can not wait to go out there again to try to capture the ridiculous intensity I feel we can channel when it is only the four of us. Also, I played way too fast (yes, it is possible), because of cocaine and nerves. I need to learn temperance. Rest assured, this thing will only get better and better and better.
RS: I see that you are a part of The End Commune, which is, as far as I know, a larger unit of yours formed by your member(s) as well. Mind explaining further on the concept of The End Commune? Is it like a label, a collective, or any other form of creative unit?
RYTTERSSON: Well, going back all the way to 2010-2011, the first name I had for the music project that would eventually morph into Slutet was Den Fanatiska Kyrka av de Sista Dagars Heliga, which is old, Bible-style Swedish for “The Fanatical Church of the Holy End of Days” or something like that. Eventually this evolved into Slutet – den Fanatiska Kyrka av de Sista Dagars Heliga (“Slutet – the Fanatical Church of the Holy End of Days). This concept later underwent a kind of schism, evolving into two separate but intimately connected things, as I felt already by 2012 that I wanted to do more things than just having a rock band – various solo-projects coupled with other artistic pursuits (most notably video-making, writing, and visual arts) I envisioned could find its place onto this platform, with the aid and commitment of a few like-minded individuals. The foundational ethos of the Commune is one based on fanatical, personal authenticity. The noble extremism of seeking Love & Beauty wherever it wants to be found, even when that so happens to be beneath the ribcage of a dead animal.
Authenticity — that is everything. Specifically, perhaps most so earlier, fanatical individual authenticity in the face of a crumbling, collapsing, putrefying modern Western society. A place wherein we can feel ourselves, re-capture ourselves, help ourselves, arm ourselves, re-calibrate ourselves towards God and the Noble, the Beautiful and the True. A place where we can strategize, plot, conspire, and work out existential regimens in order for us to stand firm on the battlements of integrity and honesty against whatever this fucked, degenerate contemporary clown-meme-world is adamant to throw our way.
A kind of end-time fervour sits at the core of the Commune. Kind of, “the future is evil and bleak, the darkness is imminent, and we would like to stand firm for Love & Beauty in the meanwhile, even if it likely does not matter in the End”. Something like that. Eschatology and apocalypticism has furthermore been very central to the ethos of the Commune. I sincerely think we live, as Europeans, in a kind of end-time, and Slutet & the End Commune is a highly naive attempt at creating a little humble personal bulwark against all that. No matter how much the world burns with existential rot, moral dissipation and all of its spiritual corruptions and the never-ending injustices and evils of a fundamentally flawed humanity, no matter what kind of abominations shall be hurled our way from the scaled back of the Babylon Beast— Slutet will remain, and Slutet will sing its song. At its most desperate, The End Commune and maybe especially, Slutet, can be seen an angst-ridden attempt at remaining sane and healthy in a world which bombards the individual with an endless stream of anti-human, degenerative, spiritually toxic bullshit: commercialism, the dangers of atheism, hedonism, pessimism, gluttony, narcissism, indiscipline, injustice, addiction, nihilism, existential defeatism and all the rest of it. It is why it is called The End Commune, and why the core band is called Slutet (“The End”). This underlying theme will always be with us I think. Maybe not as pronounced at all times, but as an important part of the core identity. It is why certain members, in the first, most unhinged and most drug-crazed period of the band, nurtured violent fantasies and quite serious plans of trying to help the downfall along, and why things like Kalashnikovs and Molotov cocktails have been so central to the band aesthetic. That first era is rife with all these anti-social proclamations and immature, zealous extremisms. We were pretty crazy back in those early years. This is, of course, something I mock myself for today.
The first era is permeated by behaviors trying to facilitate a fanatical self-radicalization and the pursuit of deeper identity and insight beyond what is comfortably expected from streamlined society. Attempts at trying to find out where the actual boundaries are, far beyond where society wants you to think they are. The idea of trying to position oneself on the outside, observing all of this social decay, helping it along, ruminating on the upheaval of old paradigms — instead of being captured in panic inside them — was important to the early conceptualization of the Commune. That is where the whole “naive” or “outsider” thing comes from. We wished never, and still wish not, to be part of any “subculture” or “scene” or “community” — The End Commune is all the context we need.
Well… pretentious quasi-philosophical blabber aside — what is The End Commune today, in function, in practice? Well, nothing more than it ever was, really: a platform made by a pack of friends wanting, needing to express themselves. It is just a loosely tied art collective type operation. A decentralized underground outsider passion art collective. On a perhaps more personal note, The End Commune is a kind of philosophical and artistic “universe” wherein I can do what seems appropriate in accord with my artistic self-becoming. The ultimate ambition for The End Commune is to expand it and make a completely self-reliable record label out of it, potentially also some kind of book publishing thing, with visual arts production operations on the side as well. Total independence/autonomy is what we strive for, but we will yet see if that will ever come to be achieved. Time shall tell. As for now, all it is, is some strange folk – great friends and existential allies, who can not really imagine for themselves a life without honest-to-God artistic self-expression – doing heartfelt, passionate, aggressive, cathartic music, for themselves, against the world. It does not have to be any more pretentious or “sophisticated” than that, because it really isn’t, to be honest.
These days, it seems, mostly what we want to do is to carry on with it all and take it to as many live audiences as possible. That seems to be what feels the most authentic, as of now. So that is what we will do.
RS: When and how did you first get into existentialist discourses, and why did you decide to incorporate those themes into your songs?
RYTTERSSON: For me, it is the only kind of philosophy really worth anything. I can no longer stand pointless masturbations on philosophical theory that has no real bearing on the lived life of the individual.
I first got into Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in my late teens, as well as other proponents of various forms of existential modalities that have since been collected under the wide umbrella-term, existentialism, such as (to various extent), Kafka, Jung, Hesse, Frankl, Camus (when he shuts up about God), Dostoevsky, et cetera. It goes hand in hand with the ideas of radical authenticity that the band has nurtured since the beginning, and has been an important conceptual element through-out the years. Existentialism (in its religious incarnations – I do not like the French post-structuralist/post-modern/atheist shit), to me, is the undeniable metaphysical substrate on which the whole of the human condition rests and from which it sucks its essential nutrients. (Denying God in existentialism is like denying oxygen in air — it makes zero sense to me, because it is what makes it alive in the first place!)
The struggle and search for meaning and purpose naturally sits at the heart of the Endcommunean beast, and I think it is a great arrogance of man to extoll that there is in fact something as objective, intrinsic meaning. Meaning-in-itself. I believe in universal human meanings, but no intrinsic Meaning-to-existence. That is beyond humanity. Only God knows of such things and we should keep our tongues in check – and think twice about it – when going about extolling such grandiose proclamations of ultimate truth. Let us remember that we are human and, as such, painfully limited in our perceptions of the otherworld(s). That being said, I am a fervent believer in Truth. Do not mistake for a second that this is some postmodern Derrida/Foucault-style relativism – it is not. I believe wholeheartedly in Truth and Reality. and Justice. And Love and Beauty. All these things lead me on the path of the existentialist, and the meaning of my life is to become as powerful, competent and spiritually and physically healthy, wise and God-inspired as is possible – with strength, integrity, honesty, humility and discipline as virtues. That struggle and that search for purpose and fulfillment has been central to everything I do, ever since — how could it not be, really? Existentialism is the human condition, and the human condition is existentialism. How ought we to lead our lives in the face of all the terrors? That is the prime question. Remember — modernity and its science and its oh-so-lauded rationality never once even tried to explain to us how we ought to live, because deep inside, it knows it can not, it can only try to make sense of what is, really. Show me the laboratory which studies the human spirit with any progress — it can not be done. How ought we to lead our lives, then? I do not know about you, that is between you and God, but for me, Slutet is a central aspect of it, and the Commune is a channel with which I try to communicate with the transcendent.
Music, poetry, knowledge, ethics, aesthetics, exercise, prayer, friendship, love, hard work, discipline, humility… humility before the Great Mystery and the voluntary exploration and adoration of it, the following of mystical passions… – that is the central virtue of mankind, and so it shall also be the central ethos of the Commune: The End Commune is the effort of every individual involved, to self-realize, self-actualize through art and friendship. That, to me, is peak existentialism.
DINGIR: My answer to this touches on the one regarding The End Commune as a whole. Existential discourses, with self and others, have been present from an early age of my life. It is an age-old human impulse to cast yourself into unknown territory, the one that has been written, spoken, gossiped about and mapped out. These stories, I felt, boiled down to one warning: do not go there because you cannot prepare yourself for what will be done by doing so. And in my childhood and adolescence I was constantly keen on exposing myself to scary unknowns and unutterable horror. Placing importance on epistemic virtue, I wanted to find out for myself: is there really such a place with a what-ever-it-is inside, something cannot be brought back nor named?
With a severe case of hubris and a desire to scare the shit out of myself, I began to research various techniques reported to reveal entryways to the unconscious; experimenting with drugs like a mad scientist; playing with words in a way that altered my perception of being. Either in solitude, or in the company of the Commune, and often while making music and art together. Although, it was just as much a yearning for escape or an alternative to what was to me at the time a morbidly depressing reality.
A compulsion to press against the barrier of comprehension was a type of game which I, until meeting the people who slowly formed into T.E.C, had always played alone. For me all the nights in dialectic discourse – on matters such as the self, the ego, the shadow, the other, personality, freedom, death, life, meaning, sickness, truth, knowledge, evil and so forth – and all the odd, outrageous and funny incidents that came with them has always been one of the primary features and foundations of what T.E.C. is in my view. As Slutet formed in relation to the early formation of The End Commune, it is natural these themes would enter into the music. Living together with other people who lived their life the same way escalated the chaos, but also offered comfort, joy and affirmations of the little I had that felt meaningful and a hand to hold when venturing “into the fields where troubles lay”.
RS: Since I noticed that your songs are strong on cultural references, do you have any specific cultural themes you are most interested in? It can be based on regional areas, beliefs, histories, or anything.
RYTTERSSON: First of all, the End Commune is in no way, shape or form dependent on a single theme. We draw inspiration from all over the place, but, granted, some themes have been more recurring than others. The early material is very colored by the near east/middle east: both its extraordinarily rich history as well as contemporaneous predicaments the region finds itself in. This near eastern thematic, its aesthetics and all references to it, is quite straight-forward: I am simply very, very interested in it. It just came to develop that way organically, naturally.
We have always been big on mythology. Inanna, the legendary Sumerian goddess of war, love, lust and fertility, among other things, has been crucially important thematically. In fact, I hold the ever-beautiful Inanna as a serious avatar of the Divine. I adore her. Many of us do. She is, and has been, important to our artistic enterprise. I believe she exists, but not in the way you and I exist. She first found me in my late teens – probably through Pazuzu (indeed, how many young boys have not initially cultivated an interest in the Sumerian and Semitic mythologies of Mesopotamia by way of Pazuzu, the coolest demon-figure of them all? It seems almost unavoidable, being a young man, being a fan of death- and black metal and finding one’s way to Pazuzu…)
Mesopotamian/Near Eastern mythology has been a kind of cornerstone of influence since day one: our first label-released effort, the 2015 self-titled compilation, bears a cover that reflects both the historical-mythological and contemporaneous near east elements, where a lion-human-bird figure is holding an AK47 and a Molotov cocktail. This is a rendition of the Anzû bird of Mesopotamian (Sumero-Semitic) mythology. Anzû was a lesser divinity of the pantheon, and is according to some accounts responsible for stealing the Tablet of Destinies from the Gods. The Tablet of Destinies was the stone tablet upon which the fates of the world and all its subjects, humans or otherwise, were written down. Whoever owned it, controlled these destinies. The symbolism here is that Anzû is a re-conqueror of autonomy from the Gods, a kind of archetypal, Promethean figure if you will. We chose this mythological creature to symbolize (re-)discovery of self-determination and autonomy as opposed to merely following, like fish in a shoal, the natural or “expected” trajectory of one’s existence, whatever that may be. The symbolism here is very heavily existentialist. The AK-47 and the Molotov cocktail are added as more or less universally recognizable symbols of insurgency, the struggle for independence, revolutionary militias, asymmetrical guerilla warfare and stuff like that. Basically – symbols of resistance, and of strife for dignity and vindication.
Also, the evil rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) coincided, so to speak, with the rise of the Commune, and it impressed, imprinted on me, and fascinated me deeply. There is always something happening down there, in the Middle-east. Also, the 2013 Turkey riots and 2014 Kiev protests were immensely inspirational. This can, probably, be observed most clearly on the track, “Seven Days of the Weak” from the second demo tape.
Sometimes I think of human civilization as one long, single, deep, profound breath, with the Euphrates and the Tigris as nostrils. From there, civilization is breathed out, and when time comes, into there it shall again be breathed in; ended; collapsed. There is an epicentral quality to that place. But I guess that is no wonder when you have Tiamat herself dwelling on the bottom somewhere down there in the Persian Gulf. Sometimes she shakes and roars in her sleep – can you verily blame her? – so I think a bit of surface irritation, so to speak, is to be expected. How can a whole region of the world be expected to live up to standards of peace, unity, prosperity or tranquility when the very soil of it rests on the back of the scaled Mother herself? There’s something for you to think about.
RS: As an Uppsala-based unit, do you have any favorite bands coming from where you hail from?
FJALAR: Reveal! No Future, In Solitude, Watain, Heligt Folk, and most of the UAHC (Uppsala Hardcore) bands I grew up with.
RYTTERSSON: These are the things from my own home-town that mean something to me: first and foremost – “Demo tape ’09” by Vissovasso. First LP:s from Reveal! and Watain. Early filthy Degial + Invidious stuff. Self-titled LP by Gravmaskin, everything by No Future as well as the “De Mysteriis Dom Christi” and “Martyrium Matrimonii: Sacrificium Christi” albums by Reverorum ib Malacht. Also, Heligt Folk, the obscure project of perhaps the most talented but most low-profile Commune member of us all, deserves both more mention and attention…
RS: How long does it usually take for you to undergo a creative process in terms of writing lyrics? And usually, what real-life events inspired you?
RYTTERSSON: In the first era, I wrote all the lyrics, and the lyrics were the first element of a song to be created in those times. The lyrics for the first demo existed long before we recorded any song or indeed even had access to a rehearsal room of any sort. The first-era lyrics are way more confrontational, anti-social and eschatological in nature. The attitude is more “fuck off, world” than anything. A vicious anti-modernity manifesto put to tape, if you will:
“ONLY THE CACOPHONY OF THE HORNETS AND LOCUSTS SHALL SOUND AT THE VERY END, ALONGSIDE THE NOISE OF DYING PEOPLE BLEEDING IN THE STREETS, CURSING THEIR COUNTRIES, THEIR BELOVED FLAGS, CONDEMNING THEIR ORIGINS IN BITTER CYNICISM AND HOPELESSNESS – THEIR EYES OBSERVE THE PLANET’S OWN LITTLE 9/11…”
The later lyrical content evolved from the spiteful, vitriolic efforts of the first demo tapes to become more and more introspective in nature. Dingir took over these duties for the “Love & Beauty” LP. That was indeed the right call, even though it was hard for me to contend with at the time. Now, I could not be happier with that decision, even though the early lyrics are dear to me. The lyricism on “Love & Beauty” is much more abstract in form and style, and is teeming with personal symbolism, word-play, and a stream-of-consciousness-like quality: they invite, much more so than the earlier lyrics, to lots of, I guess, subjective interpretation: more vague, more obscure, more introspective, more personal. Let us here not mind me but listen to Dingir herself ruminate on the nature of these, later more perplexing and esoteric lyrics:
DINGIR: If there is something there, as I wondered in my late teens and early twenties, it is there because I lost it while devoting myself to finding it. Things became very painful, confusing and shaky for me as my twenties proceeded. It has been very difficult for me to integrate the extremes I had witnessed in others and subjected myself to in mind, body and action during that first, eruptive era of the Commune. I withdrew from the group physically, emotionally and socially for a couple of years and hid my fallen face. Wanted nothing to do with the growing audience of Slutet, interviews, labels, future plans. It was in this period that I wrote the texts that ended up in Love & Beauty. Prior to this, I had not sung words that were my own and I have felt since this withdrawal from what, in our coming of age, spiraled into a cult-like social psychology, that it is important to do only so. Most of the writing was manic, unfiltered poetry that poured out of me sometimes in the middle of the night, when I managed to tap into a mode of structuring my erratic thoughts, bodily perceptions and visions into words.
Writing only took me some hours. I did go back in the mornings, read and consider improvements, but every time I did I lost my grasp of the quality of the feeling with which I had written, and felt that the state of mind the words had come from called for a no-retouch policy. I had no intent of using it as lyrics and I think it is quite evident in the music that the vocals only barely transfer as words. When introducing the texts to the music, I had no doubt that the state of mind with which I wrote it was about as clear and direct I could get about anything at all that mattered to me at the time, although it may be very vague and meaningless to its reader. Perhaps time will tell. I was shutting down my connection with those around me, but I had compulsions daily to share things with the whole world in order to get intrusive thoughts and phantasms cleared up and cleaned out. Nightmares urged me. So, “The Contradictionary”, which was the working title of what became L&B’s lyrics, is all a poorly constructed tale that obscures real events from within the Commune as I’d witnessed them during that first, mad era. All the while representing a foolish attempt at making sense of them without succumbing to what I feared was imminent insanity.
RS: Now let’s move on to the musical style-related contexts. When working on your materials, do you also take inspiration from bands and musicians outside of the subgenres you usually play? If so, who are they?
FJALAR: Ever since I started playing guitar in Slutet (since Jihad) memories of my mother singing old folk lullabies came to mind and those melodies sort of crept into the riffs. So, Scandinavian folk music is a huge inspiration. Maybe Jan Johansson’s records “Jazz på svenska” and “Jazz på ryska” is an example of an artist playing folk that inspired me, but other than that it is just folk music in general. Joy Division, Death in June and Fields of the Nephilim is for me guiding stars when it comes to the more post-punk riffs. But mostly, all the magic just happens on the spot, down in the Alley of the Beaver.
RYTTERSSON: Indeed. We mostly fall into a Black Metal categorization these days, and it is not hard to understand why, but Slutet never quite called itself Black Metal — we have never seen ourselves as a Black Metal band, honestly. We just sound like one these days, basically. No devils and goats and black robes for us, lol. At least, if Satanism is an elemental part of Black Metal, we are not it, by definition. We affirm life radically, violently and militantly if needed, and we see it as unbecoming to try to negate or denigrate it, as is standard in this cesspool of a genre. We actively distance ourselves against perhaps 90% of the Black Metal subculture, just on that merit alone. In fact, the first period of the band is as much postpunk, hardcore and psychedelia as it is Black Metal. To be honest, it is a feat of considerable mental gymnastics to try to describe early Slutet as a Black Metal outfit. Granted, the riffing style of early Burzum, early Graveland and early Master’s Hammer were heavily influential on those early tracks, but that sound was as much inspired by early Siouxsie & the Banshees, early Discharge, and the 1990s French screamo/hardcore outfit, Anomie, together with a plethora of various 1960’s-70’s free folk/kraut/psych bands such as Pärson Sound/International Harvester and Ash Ra Tempel. We called the music, in those crude, early days, “Doomsday Rock”, “The End Music” or just “Outsider Passion Music”, or variations of these. To try to categorize the early music more technically is quite a task. I can not come up with a better description than “Aggressive Naïve Experimental Hard Rock” or something similar. Only later our music came to resemble anything like Black Metal, but not because of a focused effort to do so, but through natural, organic evolution from within the band. In 2015 we shed some skin: our first guitarist did not want to play anymore, and he was much more psychedelia- and hard-rock-oriented than his replacement, who preferred a faster, more vicious riffing style. It is with this change that the current Slutet sound came to be. Also, it should be noticed, that traditional sounds and folk music, as Fjalar well pointed out, domestic Swedish as well as foreign, is more influential to the music of “Love & Beauty” than any specific Black Metal band ever was. We are boundless in everything, and we scoff at genre boundaries — this also applies to our influences. There is no influence that could be considered “inappropriate” as such. Who knows, maybe the next Slutet LP will sound like a 1971 Dolly Parton LP more than anything… now, I would not put money on it myself, but the point is: we drink from every spring that quenches our thirst satisfactorily, whatever it may be. Slutet is an experiment in passion — not an exercise in bandwagoning within the limitations of some artistically claustrophobic subgenre, no matter which one.
RS: Some of your materials contain terminologies that are correlated with spirituality; while still staying in-line with existentialism. Do you consider yourself spiritual?
DINGIR: I can’t say I’m not. I don’t, however, have much to say in the matter. I have long since abandoned the pursuit of settling for a set of practices and theological dogmas. For the most part of my life I’ve immersed myself in philosophy and theology, but I’ve only found the idea of adhering to a regimen of spiritual identity to be unsustainable, unsatisfying and uncomfortable. I don’t see it as beneficial to the spirit to trust that convictions ought to be fixed. I am not, however, at all fond of trivializing Truth. Where I in my youth was very much in my head – thinking, speaking, writing – and occupied with outsmarting myself, I am nowadays appreciative of the vast wisdom that is contained in one’s corporeal presence. To be a body. To feel. To listen. The heart, the lungs, the gut, the spine.
In my experience, anything I say about any inkling of Truth that I’ve had, will be twisted and turned and debated, scrutinized and doubted and rationalized, and ultimately discarded as dubious nonsense. I will not convince anyone of something that only they can know, nor anyone me, I can only catch the glimmer in another’s eyes and reflect a sly smile and believe that we share some knowledge in some form.
So I’ll say yes.
FJALAR: Depends on what you mean with spirituality. But I know there is a spiritual side to life. I don’t think that side is far away from everyday life but mingled together, ever present. The only world we know is the one seen through human eyes and humans are pattern-seeking, embodying and responding to patterns — there is no pure neutrality — meaning is everywhere.
RYTTERSSON: Yes. Spirit has been at the epicentre since day one, but our attitudes around it have developed greatly over the last decade. Granted, the early days of the Commune existed, dare I say, in a kind of overarching Gnostic framework that often veered into seriously bizarre and quite extreme territory. I will not describe these things in detail since some of it might honestly be deemed too shocking and disturbing, but there was a serious undercurrent of what could, with some utility, be described as a highly personalized form of Gnostic devil-worship (or perhaps rather, Death worship) in the early days of the Commune. The Gnostic body-spirit dichotomy was emphasized a lot in the early days. “Spirit = holy, sacred; flesh = worthless, sinful”, that kind of thing. This line of thinking facilitated lots of drug abuse with recurrent overdoses (which were always brushed off as “not a big deal”), self-inflicted mental torment, serious reverence of death and decay, and self-mutilation as attempts at practices of spiritual elevation. Nowadays, all of this skin has been shed, and we only bear with us the harrowing insights that these erratic years left us with, while thoroughly distancing ourselves from the behaviors themselves. No regrets, though. It is a very important part of my life story, and I plan on telling it all in the upcoming Endcommunean biography, which will be completely candid and uncensored. But yeah. These days we are more health-strength-fitness focused than ever. The knives, the wounds and the overdoses have been replaced with newfound respect for the body: running, calisthenics, martial arts, diet, et cetera. Far from perfect, of course, but much better than det som engang var. Our existential weapons systems have been upgraded. Thank God.
Furthermore, we have always been coloured by Jungian ideas at core-level. Dream and myth interpretation has been important. The general idea we have operated on is that the human creature is religious at base, not sexual-biological. Jung was the cool one for us — not Freud. More generally, I consider everything human, spiritual. Human without spirit, what is that exactly? To be clear, not only do I consider myself spiritual: I consider myself a religious extremist. So to answer your question very directly: indeed, indeed. Moreover, I consider existentialism, as I understand it, at its core, to be fundamentally spiritual, because human existence is fundamentally so. I believe that the human being is a religious animal in even her most basic of configurations and the whole Endcommunean enterprise is based in the appetite for spiritual-existential self-realization. Understand, though — and I echo Dingir in this sentiment — I am overwhelmingly anti-dogmatic and have not one evangelizing bone in my body. It is a mystical, introverted, entirely solitary pursuit. This is, however, not some tenet of the Commune — many different opinions can be heard on the matter, and that is a good thing as far as I am concerned, but personally, I do not want a religious community. I turn my back wherever I find it. It does not feel authentic for me to do what the other does. I believe a true seeker must nurture her own personal, customized relationship with the Great Mystery. For example, I pray to the Virgin Mary routinely, she means the world to me, but I also revere Inanna as a religious avatar. I am deeply influenced by Catholic mysticism, but I will never leave behind tenets of classical (Indo-)European paganism and Nietzscheism. What does that make me? I do not care. Not anymore. I am I — no longer care about persuading anyone else, nor do I care about theorizing some coherent system, nor do I care about belonging to some sort of religious sect or tribe of any sort. Let the good ones save themselves; let the bad apples rot on the ground. I do not care. We are, ultimately, in it alone.
RS: Last question; I know it’s still barely the third month of 2025, but is there any recent release that caught your attention from this year?
RYTTERSSON: To be honest, no: I rarely keep up with releases as they come, preferring to sweep the year at a later stage, if at all. I can not think of a single new release that makes me excited, but I am sure I am forgetting something. I have been depressed since hearing the new Volahn track, which made me realize that nothing, not even the man himself, will be able to top 2014’s “Aq’Ab’Al” LP – one of the greatest Black Metal records ever. So I have lost faith in 2025. Time will tell. At the moment, I stick to 1995-2000 era Forest, Branikald and Raven Dark LP:s, the smooth, ambient jazz of Mammal Hands, the “Ritma” LP by Malaysian screamo outfit Piri Reis and various old Cambodian 1970’s ethno-rock such as So Saveoun and Pan Ron. I am too slow and backwards to keep up with music releases in real time, lol. Also, Kali Malone forever. The solemn, brilliant minimalism of her “Living Torch” LP has been the soundtrack for answering these questions.
To hell with the present — the past is alive.
Thank you for the interview, friend.
Buy Slutet music and merch here:
https://theendcommune.bandcamp.com/
WORDS BY RALKA SKJERSETH
Follow Ralka’s work here: