Hometown: Salo, Findland
Album: Beyond North Star, out May 18th via Season of Mist
RIYL: Shamans. Folk Traditions. Spontaneity.
I’m always fascinated by the artistic process because there are only so many ways you can metaphorically skin a cat and put that sound to tape. Primarily, you take a riff, a melody, or a feeling and go from there. Something has to be the spark of creation. Well, what if that spark was something deep inside you that you wanted to tap into? We talk often about a creative well, and sometimes letting it happen with likeminded creatives can do just the trick. To call Henget a psychedelic black metal act may conjure up images of men in corpse paint dropping acid, and while that’s a funny image, it’s not at all where Henget wanted to go. Drawing from historical folk and Shamanistic traditions both from around the world and from their native Finland, Beyond North Star is quite the transformative experience. It’s aggressive, colorful, and almost hypnotic; I’ve never heard anything like it, and I think that was the point all along. Vocalist King Aleijster shares the lyrical inspiration behind the record, one that hopefully bears future fruit:
“Ironically, we decided initially that we should try our best not to talk about psychedelics in the context of this album, because we know from our experience that these kinds of practices can be done without psychedelics too, yet it requires much more discipline and patience, or some kind of neuroatypical brain chemistry at least. For some it can be a great help, but to some a grand disaster, depending on the individual’s mind structure, and if you can eventually understand the experience and not just get mesmerized by the surface of them. Oh well and anyway, the lyrical concept of Beyond North Star is to portrait a journal of mental and spiritual journey with strong astral emphasis. In Ancient Finnish mythology and folklore, it was believed that Shamans used various methods to induce themselves in trance-like state of mind in order to ‘travel’ to the other side of reality. It was believed that the place was Tuonela, the land of the dead and from there, they sought wisdom and power. In Finnish language the pathway or the method was referred as ‘Lovi’ (English: Cleft) where they went to fall into a cleft. So I wanted to do this myself without prejudice and to combine it with my artistic method. I wanted to go as deep as possible at the time I could with my mind. And with Beyond North Star I am simply reporting my experience of that journey. I guess it is all very symbolistic after all, and I acknowledge the idea that the symbolism is the language of the deeper layers of the reality, call it a soul, spirit, subconsciousness, eidos or collective unconscious or whatever – maybe there’s something universal there. But, I of course shall leave the interpretation of the content itself for the listeners. I’m just a messenger here.”
Photo courtesy of Joonas Juntuen.
