Interview with Dave Hunt of Anaal Nathrakh

On the occasion of their upcoming performances in Greece, we have the pleasure and honor of having with us the frontman of the British band Anaal Nathrakh from Birmingham, Dave “V.I.T.R.I.O.L.” Hunt, a band that has established itself in the industrial, black metal and grindcore scenes as a significant force worldwide thanks to its distinctive dystopian and nihilistic hard sound. With this discussion we had the opportunity to feel the hot breath of the serpent, the Anglo-Saxon humor and discover their philosophical concerns about the Orwellian reality we are experiencing.

Welcome to Metalourgio. Thank you for your time.

For those who are not familiar, can you explain what Anaal Nathrakh means?

In practical terms it means the band – I mean that in the same way as whether anyone knows or cares what an Iron Maiden is, i.e. it is a thing, the name came from somewhere, but it’s not really something that the band focus on. In our case it means serpent’s breath, and relates to a spell to summon ‘the dragon’, which is an idea of a hugely powerful but destructive force. But to us nowadays it is simply the name of the band.

What inspired you to start the band?

There didn’t seem to be enough savagery and evil in Black Metal at the time. So we made it ourselves. We had lots of things we were into and lots of things we wanted to do, so the idea was always to do whatever we wanted, and we weren’t necessarily intending to make Black Metal ourselves, even though it was always a big influence. But especially at the start, what we were doing was a kind of reaction to Black Metal at the time, and what we thought Black Metal should be like – because even if pure Black Metal wasn’t our ‘solution’, you might say, to us it seemed that those two things had become different.

Your music embodies an extreme approach that challenges conventional norms in metal. What drives you to explore such intense themes and sounds?

We like feelings and sounds, and that’s how we approach making music. The feeling we mostly base Anaal Nathrakh on is AAAAAHHHHHH!!!! We don’t really think of ourselves as challenging conventional norms, we’re basically ignoring them and doing whatever we find satisfying. I think that for both of us there’s a kind of Anal Nathrakh feeling, a certain combination of emotions and sounds we hear in our heads and we essentially turn those things into music – that’s something Mick is particularly gifted at, and then I react. So if anything we’re exploring these things anyway and making this kind of music is just releasing parts of what’s going on in our heads regardless. I know that personally I can’t help but think this way – I don’t focus on it all the time because if I did that I’d have been dead a long time ago. But it’s always there. I have pages and pages of things I’ve written down, pieces of lyrics, quotes, ideas, so at any point really I’m poised to just let some of it out.

What steps do you take to create an album?

It starts with simply experiencing a feeling that it’s time. There’s nothing we can really do about that – either it is the right time or it isn’t, and there’s not really any way to predict it. We can’t really book studio time and then work towards it, the feeling just comes. Generally Mick writes and records the music in a frenzy, it’s ridiculous how quickly he can do it when the power takes him. Then we get together to record to vocals. Very often I haven’t heard the music until we start recording, which is intentional so that the way I respond to it is in the moment. Yes I said a moment ago that I’ve always got fragments of lyrics and ideas, but I don’t know what they’ll turn into until we sit down and go through the tracks and I react to what I’m hearing. It’s a much more spontaneous approach than a lot of bands, and I’m sure it wouldn’t work for a lot of other people, but it’s how we work. 

Given your interest in philosophy, how do you select which concepts to explore in your lyrics? 

Like I say, I keep notes of things I think would potentially work, but it’s about what feels like it would fit with the particular song we’re working on. Whether it’s the overall idea being compatible with the atmosphere of the music, or particular phrases having syllabic patterns which suit particular rhythms – it’s just a matter of what feels like it works. I’ll often have a few favourites among the ideas I’ve had so I’ll lean towards those. And of course it’s not all about philosophy. I’ve just spent so long thinking about philosophy and it’s such a part of how I approach the world in terms of concepts and underlying realities that it just often happens that it’s a philosophically informed idea that takes a song. 

Jens Bjørneboe's books have clearly influenced your music, particularly in "In the Constellation of the Black Widow" and "Passion"Can you discuss how his themes and ideas resonate with the lyrics of these albums?

Yeah the title of Constellation is based on a particular passage in Moment of Freedom where the narrator describes the moment in history when the atomic bombs were detonated near the end of the second world war. It’s all described in an abstract, dispassionate way, but rather than diluting the effect, I found that this weird way of writing made it all the more impactful. Like you can’t describe those events using a direct style of writing, they are too powerful and can only be approached in an oblique way. The whole book is incredibly powerful I think, in a variety of different ways. It is very down on humanity but in a way which echoes experience and history. At one point the narrator says that in ten years’ time he will have accumulated enough experience and records of human behaviour that life will become impossible and he will kill himself. And I understand that around ten years after writing it, the author committed suicide in real life. I don’t think that suicide can be reduced to something as trite as that may sound, but it is nevertheless serious stuff. As I touched on earlier, that’s not necessarily a way one can live one’s life – just look at the author’s example. But these perspectives and thoughts are part of the world.

Are there any specific ideas from your readings that you feel particularly resonate with the themes of "Endarkenment"?

You’d have to think about that for yourself. I’m happy to answer questions about what someone thinks about what we’ve done, but I prefer not to lay it out for you from the start. There are some notes in the booklet for the album, and there’s quite a lot in many of the titles and bits of words that you can make out. But, while I’m not quite so phenomenological and uncommunicative as someone like Rothko, in the end it’s up to you what you think of it. 

In the video for "Endarkenment," you incorporate quotes from George Orwell. How do they connect to the song?

Look around you, look at recent history and where you think the world might be heading. When I do that, I see a lot of Orwellian things. And to me the endarkenment, i.e. the turning away from enlightenment ideals of rationality and the belief in the primacy of the rational human mind, goes hand in hand with a lot of Orwell, or more specifically 1984. It’s a cliché to say that 1984 was supposed to be a warning but seems sometimes to be treated as a blueprint, but as the light fades I think we drawn closer to that dystopian darkness. 

Your album art is often striking and provocative, reflecting the themes of your music. What inspires your creative process when designing the artwork?

We’ve always designed our own artwork, typically with Mick executing it. Generally it’s something we spend quite a lot of time thinking about together, sending pictures back and forth and talking about ideas. Usually it will be informed by me describing to Mick some of the themes in the lyrics, and we’ll talk about a central idea and embroider it in line with the themes of the album. But there’s not necessarily a set approach. We spent ages and ages, for example, looking at WWXNUMX imagery, particularly paintings, when we were making the cover for A New Kind of Horror. But then in the end Mick pulled a number of the ideas we’d discussed into a kind of collage, and we didn’t end up using the Otto Dix or whatever piece we’d spent all that time working towards. It’s kind of like marinading – you immerse yourself in the symbols and images present in the album and then dredge something up that encapsulates it as best you can. It can be more difficult than you might think – Vanitas in particular took a long time for the ideas to coalesce. But when it starts to come together in the right way, we just know it’s right.

If you could score an existing film with your music, which would it be and why?

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a film that I think would fit with what we do. Parts of Threads perhaps. Yes, I think that’s’ what I’d go for. A film that everyone should see, and which most people will wish they hadn’t. It’s brilliant in its collision of mundanity and apocalypse and horror and unrelenting follow through. A masterpiece of reality, naïve hope and terror.

Given the current global socio-political climate, how do you see your music serving as a form of protest or criticism? Are there specific issues you feel compelled to address through your art?

I don’t’ know that our music does serve those roles – it’s hardly uncommon for the themes we work with to be rooted in a very real sense of bitterness and disgust at aspects of the world, and often in fairly contemporary ways. But I don’t know if that’s how it lands with other people. I expect that most people who listen to music like this just like the noise. But insofar as there might be people who try to engage more than that, then I suppose an effect might be for them to find that they’re not the only ones who see the world in something like the same kind of way, at least at times. Our stuff is critical, howlingly so quite a lot of the time, but for it to become protest, I’m not sure. It’s not intended as that particularly – it’s an expression, but anything past that is up to the listener. 

What do you think about the death grindcore scene and how much it annoys the ears of those it decries every time?  

I have no faith whatsoever that anyone who is decried in grindcore music has ever heard it, beyond perhaps that Asian leader who Napalm tried to persuade a few years ago. 

If there was a “Big 4” in Grindcore who would it be?

I don’t know. Napalm because they invented it and because they’re still at the top of their ferocious game. Pig Destroyer because, if nothing else, of track 3 on Prowler In The Yard. For me, Circle of Dead Children for being spectacular for letting me feel a sense of weird kinship. And although they’re not generally thought of as grindcore, but since the term has changed so much in meaning over the years I’ll include them anyway, Extreme Noise Terror. 

Who would you like to share the stage with?

King Diamond. 

The UK has a rich history in metal and extreme metal. How do you perceive the evolution of the UK scene over the years?

You’d probably be better placed than me to answer that as someone active in music journalism. We invented heavy metal, punk and grindcore. So it’s hardly a bad track record in terms of metal and extreme metal. But I’m sure we’ve had just as many shit bands as any other country too. I think at its best music from the UK marked by a genuineness – kind of the opposite of the presentational Instagram culture. The best UK bands have tended not to try to be a specific thing, and have just done what felt right to them – and in a number of notable instances thereby come up with something which changed the world to some tiny extent. In my experience the bands who start out saying ‘we’re going to be an ‘x’ band’ – be that glam or NWOBHM or black metal or whatever – tend not to be the best bands. And the UK has a decent list of bands who never did that.

What can we expect from your upcoming lives in Greece?

We’re spending our lives in Greece? I thought it was only a visit for a couple of shows! We’ll bring the apocalypse with us. What that turns into at the shows remains to be seen…

Thank you very much for the interview. Would you like to add anything else?

Thank you for taking the time, and to anyone who made it reading this far. You only get one go – seize the day, though the world may perish. Go for the throat.

The interview was conducted by Metalourgio