Surrender Of Divinity
Wywiad przeprowadził Wouter Roemers
Thai black metal elitists Surrender Of Divinity have been around for the better part of a decade now, yet they remain fairly obscure to the general audience. Recently Dutch label From Beyond Productions released the band's second raw offering "Manifest Blasphemy - The Abortion of the Immaculate Conception" which received great critics on our site. I got in touch with the band straight after the release of the album, but due to various matters guitarist Whathayakorn wasn't able to answer our interview right away. After much delay I received answer from Surrender Of Divinity - it was, however, worth the wait.
Hi guys! Thanks for taking the time to talk to us. How's everything with the band?
Ok, everything is pretty chaotic and hectic at the moment!
From Beyond Productions has just released your "Manifest Blasphemy" album worldwide. How are the reactions thus far? Are they anywhere near what you expected?
As far as I have heard the reactions are pretty killer so far. I mean I never see any true Black Metal warriors say, this is a crap or wimpy album at all. And that is more than fine with me. The reviews I got are mostly positive, except those reviews from posers/gays who doesn't know what the hell Black Metal is all about. This album is not for the Masses, it's only for those who really deserved it.
From Beyond Productions specializes in cult and underground extreme metal releases. Can you tell us how the record deal came to be?
I've known Roman from From Beyond/Displeased quite a time, he told me how he was blown away by our unmerciful assaults on the Two Majesties…Split Double 7"EP with IMPIETY and he asked me when I would release 2nd album and who I would work with. I told him that we haven't decided with whom we will sign the deal with and we're almost done writing the hell-hymns for "Manifest Blasphemy". So, he offered us a deal and we simply took it. It's our honour to be a part of From Beyond hell-camp, we are and will always be a true underground band and we care nothing to be on a big label. In the mean time, I cannot run all these worldwide distribution works by myself, so to be unleashed our infernal assaults through their wings could help us a lot.
Tell us something about the number of influences that went into "Manifest Blasphemy".
We're sort of Black Metal band that focus only to deliver Blasphemous, Chaos, Perversion, Cruelty, Hateful and Uncompromising Black Metal. Every composition of our infernal onslaughts derived from the hatred of all religions and our mighty allegiance toward Satan. Musically, I can simply names these great hordes as our main influences: Sarcofago, Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, Bathory, Sodom, Destruction, Protector, Necrodeath, (old) Mayhem, (old) Immortal, Darkthrone etc.
How were the recording sessions for this album in comparison to the one that came before?
As we've never had a thought of changing our hellish sound at all, so in this new album we only have a better sound quality of the drums, which could help adding a new level of brutality and bestiality to the whole music. The rest of the weapons are still extremely raw and morbid soundings as a true Black Metal assault should be.
Your previous album "Oriental Hell Rhythmics" was released by Malaysian label Psychic Scream Entertainment. Can you tell us why the cooperation didn't work out?
Actually, we never have any problem with Psychic Scream at all, they did quite good job on promoting the album and the band without any doubts. However, Eric (the owner of the label) decided to close this label due to he's busying with his other businesses and he said we could find a new label, so we were forced to move actually. We're still friends with him, though.
You're hailing from Thailand, quite an unlikely place for a raw black metal band such as yourself. If I understand correctly, Impiety and Surrender Of Divinity are the two forerunners of the genre that most of us have heard of. How is it to be a pioneer of sorts?
Actually, beside IMPIETY and SURRENDER OF DIVINITY, we also have some other killer Southeast Asian bands such as: LACERATE (Brutal Death), A GOOD DAY FOR KILLING (Brutal Death), MASOCHIST (Brutal Grind) from Thailand, IRONFIST(Heavy/Black/Thrash), DEMONIFICATION (Thrash), ISTIDRAJ (Black), INFERNAL EXECRATOR (Black) from Singapore, MANTAK (Black/Thrash) from Malaysia, KORIHOR (Black), KRATORNAS (Black) from the Philippines etc. In the past there were some great Southeast Asian hordes like ABHORER (Sin), BRAINDEAD (Mal), RATOR (Mal), NUCTEMERON (Sin) etc.
How's the extreme metal scene in Thailand these days? I read in a previous interview that there used to be about 10 death metal acts and only a few black metal acts. Is the scene becoming stronger and more organised than it used to be?
Concerning Thai Death, Black Metal bands, it's becoming worse these days, now we have only 4-5 Death Metal bands left and 3 Black Metal bands that still alive recently. I don't really know why we have very little amount when its comes to Black, Death Metal bands since we have more and more people into underground Black, Death Metal in Thailand. We have lots of maniacs with strong Black, Death Metal attitude and hundreds of Metal supporters but unlucky that most of them don't have musical skills. This may sounds like unbelievable story, but it's entirely true. People here in Thai underground metal scene are more into making fanzines, building their own distros, labels etc. but none of them are thinking to form up a band. However, I'd say the Thai metal scene is getting stronger and more organized really. Some well-known bands like SODOM, MAYHEM, INSISION, DISGORGE (US) etc. has been performed here and I'm sure all of them are extremely impressed and overwhelmed with the entire Thai hell-bangers.
Are there any possibilities in Thailand for an extreme black metal band like Surrender Of Divinity to do some live promotion at regular intervals?
Definitely no, we play live only twice a year in Thailand.
Are there any plans to do some touring in Europe, will From Beyond Productions set up a tour to promote "Manifest Blasphemy"?
We're now negotiating with the label about the European tour, there's nothing has been 666 % confirmed yet, but it would be total holocaust to bring our leathers, chains and bullets storming there someday.
Judging from the pictures on your website, I'd say Surrender Of Divinity should be pretty intense live. You guys go all-out on the visual side of things: corpse paint, spikes, bullet belts, firebreathing, etc. Reminded me a lot of acts like Enthroned, Marduk, Dark Funeral and the likes. How important is the visual aspect of a band, in your opinion?
All of our infernal stage mayhems were always full of blood, chaos, blasphemy and desecration, we're more like possessed by the Devil on each stages. Our performance is like having an unholy war against everything that's good. In the CD version of Manifest Blasphemy, it's also featured a live "desecration" video clip of the horde, so that any true demoniacs and perverted warriors of Satan who eager to know about our show can follow easily. Well, I'm not sure for other bands, but Corpse Paint, Bullets, Chains, Leathers, Studs, Spikes, Blood-spitting, Fire-breathing are something very important for our hell-horde; it's a part of our satanic metal lifestyle and we cannot battle without these infernal armors. Many bands stopped using these hellish weapons because they think it was old but the truth is they are betraying the root of Black Metal Cult!!!!! DEATH TO ALLTHOSE WHO BETRAYED THE OATH!!!
Thailand is a Buddhist country by origin, yet you protest defiantly against Christianity. From what I gather, Christianity is gaining much territory in Thailand over the last years. Enlighten us.
As a matter of fact Thailand is mainly ingrained by Buddhism with the mixed of Hinduism, you can see many Hindu sculptures here, most of people here are Buddhist but they're also worshipping in those Hindu Gods like Ganesha, Vishnu, Kali and shits like that. Most of people that living in the south of Thailand are Islamic and I think 30 percents of people here are Christian. I simply hate all religions, it's nothing but worms and these religions are making people getting more and more stupid. About Christian in Thailand, they're sweeping more ground in Thai society and There're many people converting to Christ. This is because those asshole fathers are smart enough to start to brainwash local Thais in the provinces first. And those people couldn't read their evil minds. Nowadays You can find many billboards saying "God loves You" or "Only Jesus is real" here in Thailand. They even have many Christian advertisements on TV telling people how good to give their faith to Jesus and craps like that. That makes me puke!!!! Do you know why they're converted to this religion? You can be baptized from all sins. But you can't do that in Buddhism, Buddha teaches that whatever sin you do you are destined to receive its outcome and it can't be changed. They fear paying back their evil deeds, which is so stupid from both Buddhist and Christian sides from my opinion. In this album we have an anti-Islam song called ‘Consecration of the Heathen Messiah' plus an Anti-Hinduism song, called ‘Deglorification of the Dogs'. After we got the album's concept, we started looking for our comrades around the world who could put their morbid creation for lyrics as we wanted only true persons who used to socialize and grew up with these religions composing for us. We wanted the lyrics originating from the brain of maniacs who truly hated these religions. Also in this album, we do not want the lyrics cursing only Christian but we did want the lyrics against other religions like Islam and Hinduism and we were honoured from Peter Drozd from American hellish label Unholy Horde Records creating the lyrics of "Manifest Blasphemy" and Karkinos, a demon from Bangladesh and working at Qatar, these two countries are very strong Muslim countries. He helped us composing an Anti-Muslim lyrics called ‘Consecration of the Heathen Messiah' and we had ‘Armageddon Holocaust', an Indian nationality living in Singapore coming from a Hindu family composing the anti Hindu lyrics in ‘Deglorification of the Dog'. So every lyrics on this assault have their very own desecrating stories, and you could say they're truly hateful lyrics. We're planning to attack more religions in our new hellish desecration - confirmed victims are Orthodox Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism etc
Has this obvious disgust for organised religion ever gotten the band into trouble? I mean, police and government aren't known to be open-minded on that subject in that part of the world. Religion is also very ingrained in Thai culture. How's your experience with that?
Until now we don't have much problem with Police. However, we don't scare to have problem with them at all, because in Thailand if you have problem with Police you can just pay money to them under table, and the problem will solve out immediately. Police here are number one of the corruption, if you have money they help you changing thing from WRONG becomes RIGHT easily. That's why Thailand is full of criminal problem, conflicts, social differences, injustice etc. We also never face trouble with religious people at all. However, some Christian and Islamic organizations sent us some letters threatening us to stop our anti-religious activities; otherwise they will report this to Police. It's very funny, so we sent them back a letter saying simply FUCK OFF!!!
What do you consider to be notable differences between the Asian metal scene and its European and American counterparts?
Definitely, the Asian Metal scene is much smaller, but a good thing is Asian scene still honest and very underground, I think it's like in Europe or USA back to 10-15 years ago.
What are your views on the state of the black metal scene as it stands today? A few years ago it was really stagnating, but now it seems to be back on the way up. Would you agree?
Well, I'm not sure but for the true underground Black Metal scene I think things are the same, we have people come and go in the scene. I don't give much attention about the BM scene. I think many of Black Metal bands today lost the brutality, filthy, ugliness, bestiality, cruelty, grimness that Black Metal was meant to be. Many people say they don't care to be TRUE without any embarrassment, they care only about evolution and forgets the real meanings of BM. Many bands are only focus on making something I could consider it as atmospherically and contemporarily electronic crap music and that's definitely not our cup of blood. We want to bring the pride and glory days of the true evil, hellish and unholy Black Metal back alive!
Can you tell us what Surrender Of Divinity has planned for the rest of the year?
Recently, we just released a split live CD with Samurai goat warriors SABBAT, called "Sabbatical SiameseChristBeheading" through Witchhammer Productions (witchhammer.cjb.net) This CD is featuring live materials from both bands and limited to 1000 copies, hand-numbered. For those Vinyl maniacs, our first album "Oriental Hell Rhythmics" will finally be unleashed on double LP with luxurious gatefold jacket through Unholy Horde Records (www.unholyhorde.com) soon. The Double LP version will also be featured unholy cover anthems of Necrodeath and Celtic Frost as a 2 exclusive bonus track. Also we have a plan to unleash a limited 10" MLP to celebrate our 10 years of infernal desecration soon, keep checking our hell-site for more information.
Thanks for the interview, and good luck with all your future endeavours. Feel free to add anything you want…
Thanks for your interview and for your supports. All the best for your Magazine!!! I believe our new Satanic wrath "Manifest Blasphemy" won't be disappointing any true Demons and Satanists of the Black Metal underworld, give it a try and it will obsess you! Black Metal is Satan!!!
Band info:
Info: surrender666@hotmail.com
Site: www.sodivinity.cjb.net
