Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Interview with THY SERPENT in Issue#4, 2000

THY SERPENT. Interview with Sami Tenetz. Otherworldly craft. But we are all humans anyway. Read.
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THY SERPENT. Anything to do with your fascination of the creature ‘snake’ and the mysticism surrounding it?
There’s no deeper meaning behind that. First it was just meant to be “SERPENT”, but as I found out that in Sweden has already a band called SERPENT, so I just put THY front of it. I was tired of all those pure satanic and gore name, and it sounds good and original, so I chose it.
Is it true that your two earlier albums before “Christcrusher”, “Forests of Witchery” and “Lords of Twilight” are some kind of a collection of old and new materials?
No, “Christcrusher” is our second real full length album. First was in 1996, “Forests of Witchery” contains six tracks, all of new ones and the length of the CD was almost 50 minutes. “Lords of Twilight” is some kind of collection of old material, but all the material was re-recorded at TICO-TICO Studio.
The covers of “Lords of Twilight” and “Christcrusher” flourished from the same idea, it seems…
Yes, and the first one was too… you know the nature and the colour. This was our first trilogy. Next three ones will be different ones. New layout, new logo, new line-up… just wait and see.
Ever since the formation of the band, you’ve labeled the music as ‘dark Metal’. A couple of bands too, but none of them including yours sound similar with each other. So what’s ‘dark Metal’ from your own understanding…
“Dark Metal” is simply Metal music with dark lyricks. Lyricks are not a satanic ones, not gore type and not any other, just dark. Even our lyricks are very antichristianic, that’s not mean that we’re a black Metal band. You know, you can be an antichristian person without being a Satanist or satan worshipper. And you can play stereotype sounding black Metal without being a black Metal band.
There’s a remarkable progression of THY SERPENT from the demo-stages right through the present days.
Of course, that’s a very natural thing. Over five years has passed since the “Frozen Memory” demo and if THY SERPENT hasn’t progressed at all by that time… I had stopped this thing few years ago.
And what may be the different between those one-man period to this full line-up formation?
Nothing else except that Azhemin is handling better bass, vocals and synths than me, and Agathon is better chose than a cheap drum-machine. It’s better and easier to work out now…
How did you finally decided to get a full line-up for the band?
As I wrote a contract with SPINEFARM in ’95, I thought that I can get a better final result if I find some players in the band who can handle their instruments better than me… as I still was just a guitar player back in ’94 and ’95. And that subsequently explains why THY SERPENT finally agreed to play live-shows?
Because there has been so many peoples asking about it. We’ve had many chances to play tours with more or less known bands. Still I don’t like to play live, but as far it’s okay to me when I get some promotion and money from it.
Is THY SERPENT still your definite spawn or becoming a kind of communion now?
Yes, THY SERPENT is still my band as Azhemin and Agathon has their own bands. I do the major music and job for the band.
Haven’t lost your possession in the band?
As I told you in the last question, THY SERPENT is still a band lead by me, and therefore I haven’t loss any venom.
I found that there’s an enormous feelings of weird sadness enshrouding your materials. How’d you explain that?
Hard to say. Material that me and Azhemin write is coming very natural. We’re very misanthropic persons… we do not even know each others, even that we play in the same band!
The lyrics in “Christcrusher” are mostly done by T. Maensivu…
He’s just a friend of us and he wrote nice lyricks. We just liked what he has done, that’s why we took his lyricks.
From my point of view, most of the Finnish bands sound different from each other. Why does it turned out that way?
Once again, really hard to say. In my opinion the Finnish scene at the moment is a really strong one. Just wait and see… there’s a new label in Finland called SPIKEFARM, it’s a division of SPINEFARM Records. SPIKEFARM is led by me and I surely chose only good and quality bands in it, mainly Finnish ones.
Your music is quite inhumane, so do you see yourself as a human?
Yes, I’m human… Quite an eeevilllll one, aaarrghh!
And what about life after death?
I don’t believe there’s something spiritual after death. Your life just ends…
What’s the highest prospects that you would like to achieve with THY SERPENT?
I don’t have any special goals with THY SERPENT. If I could get so much money that I can get my wife and two childrens lived… that would be cool. But I think that would never happen.
What’s the band will up to next? Do you still in tape-trading nowadays?
Just a new album in the year of 2000. And no, I haven’t done that since ’95.
What happened to that beautiful girl on your second demo’s cover?
She died. So, it’s quite hard to see her anymore.

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