Sinistrous Waves

While we send The Sinister Flame our be***al wishes on his ride further into the abyss, it's worth pointing out that there's a hefty closeout in motion (be patient with the occasionally overloaded webstore). Apart from Sinistrous Waves #1 going real cheap, we can at least recommend grabbing some of the label's own releases: you have e.g. today's finest Finnish black metal duos Aethyrick, Celestial Grave, and Ordinance, as well as the evocative and captivating sonic sorcery of the Serbia-based Diablerie.

There surely is a certain melancholy to these endings, even if the magazine side of TSF had already been laid to rest a few years back. In both word and deed, NorthWind's genuine passion and vision has shone like a torch in the dark throughout the decades – and there are never too many of such inspiring individuals that truly tread their own path.

Something writhes in the murk... something yet unformed, but moving with a purpose to eventually evolve into a shape...

The coffin lid will close for The Other Records this Saturday, but those in the Helsinki area can still go feast on their carrion until then. Prices have been chopped in half, so this is your chance to make some rewarding cultural investments, be it by picking up a copy of Sinistrous Waves #1 cheaper than anywhere else, or by selecting some crushing death metal from The Other Records' own catalog, ranging from Torture Killer to Charnel Rift. No webshopping, go there in the flesh!

Sinistrous Waves have made their way to mainland Europe and the British Isles as well, as the issue is now listed in the webshops of Iron Bonehead Productions and Cult Never Dies. In Finland, Iron Co**se also has the zine in stock. You ought to check out the latest releases by Frogskin and Mädätys from this extremely prolific underground filth purveyor, by the way. Our own zine copies are beginning to run low, but we still have some left in Helsinki. The feedback has been encouraging so far, but we're always open for more... especially critical takes are welcome.

Europa Burns Provided to YouTube by Nuclear BlastEuropa Burns · Dismember · David Blomqvist · Matti Kaerki · Martin Persson · Nico ElgstrandDismember℗ Nuclear BlastReleas...

The interview with Jack Control of Butcher (US) is one of those that came about to fill a void of sorts; to find out more about an amazing recent band that seemed to have largely remained in the shadows, even if Jack's name must be previously familiar to many punks and metalheads alike, be it as the former vocalist of World Burns to Death, or as the engineer behind Enormous Door Mastering. In this candid back-and-forth, we peer into the diverse inspirations behind Butcher's forward-thinking hardcore punk and its unusual aesthetic, exploring existential wisdom at the time of death, among other grave matters.

There aren't too many recent bands in Finnish black/death metal that embody the unhinged wildness present in pioneering classics such as the works of early Impaled Nazarene. However, Sickness from Turku is one of these exhilarating exceptions, playing it unsafe, chaotic and hideous. This interview was done face-to-face with the band in their hometown back in the summer of 2020, when their debut album "Daemones Sub Terra" was still taking shape. It offers a solid introduction to Sickness regardless, as we discuss topics such as the influence of the near-forgotten early 90's Finnish band Satanic Darkness, the transcendental power of black metal, the band's lack of lyrics, and their nocturnal shenanigans at the Devil's Nest.

The Waves are spreading around...

For capital area dwellers, a couple of copies are physically available at the Monomatic Records HQ in Pasila. One of the few local record stores focused on alternative music that's still kicking, support!

Now in stock at the webshop of AIONI kirjakauppa & antikvariaatti as well. They have some interesting zines such as Zazen Sounds available, along with a vast selection of esoteric books.
https://www.aioni.fi/collections/tuotteet/products/sinistrous-waves-1

The zine can also be ordered through Gate of Deliria, a fine little Helsinki-based label and distributor peddling sludge, grind and other gnarly sounds from the gutter. All despondent slowheads should pick up GoD's latest release, the new tape by Wonder, while at it.
https://gateofdeliria.blogspot.com/2023/01/new-in-distro-sinistrous-waves-zine.html

In Lahti, the underground lair Sarvilevyt will deliver you the Sinistrous goods. Also available in the Northern Heritage webshop, so you can add a copy to your order while acquiring NH's latest quality releases by Apogeion or Nécropole, for instance.
https://www.nhfastore.net/books-and-zines?product_id=15039

Additionally, the zine is in stock at The Sinister Flame, a black metal label and distributor that's as devoted as it gets. TSF also used to publish a magazine concentrating on the spiritual currents of black metal, which sadly seems to have been laid to rest after seven issues. They are plenty active as a label, though, putting out e.g. some of the most captivating Finnish black metal of today from names such as Aethyrick, Celestial Grave and Ordinance.
https://www.thesinisterflame.com/shop/sinistrous-waves-1

Copies are also on their way to a bunch of other European distributors, stay tuned!

Avoinna tänään klo 12 - 18.

Myynnissä uusi upea Sinistrous Waves zine #1. Noin 100 sivua syväluotaavia artikkeleita ja hinta vain 8€.

Copies of Sinistrous Waves #1 are making their way to various distributors... Additional tips of distros that stock zines are more than welcome!

In Helsinki, it's possible to pick up a copy physically at KVLT, Finland's only record store devoted to black metal, and the label home to the likes of Beherit. For technical reasons, their zine selection is not listed in the webshop at the moment.

A few copies are available at AIONI kirjakauppa & antikvariaatti, a new book store specialized in esoteric literature that is well worth your support.

The Other Records has a stack of copies as well. Run by two seasoned underground enthusiasts, this is a fine store and label for your death metal urges, also stocking a selection of worthwhile zines. Ours should be listed in their online shop shortly.

Lahti's sanctuary of apocalyptic culture Sarvilevyt should have copies soon, also to be available through the Northern Heritage/Freakanimalrecords webstore.

The Sinister Flame and Breath of Pestilence will have the zine in stock shortly, both being long-running underground black metal labels and distributors with a solid zine selection.

Brownhill Mafia has a few copies that you can pick up while you're familiarizing yourself with some of the most vigorous rural sounds of today's Finnish experimental scene, or simply ordering all the essential Chestburster LPs. brownhillmafia.bandcamp.com | [email protected]

In Germany, Schattenmann Publishings will get copies later in January. Be sure to check out their jaw-dropping selection of zines! For international orders, this might be the most feasible option for the time being. schattenmanns.wordpress.com

Another marathon of an interrogation, testing the limits of the interviewee’s and the reader’s patience, is our discussion with visual artist Kim Diaz Holm, conducted live in his hometown of Bergen, Norway, in the spring of 2020. I think it’s safe to say that these 16 pages feature the most in-depth interview with Den Unge Herr Holm out there, as apart from the obvious background stuff and his more recent dabblings in drawing concerts and album covers, we discuss his tricky relationship to comics, go full-blown Lovecraftian, dissect Kim's inspirational ties to Norwegian nature, national romanticism, mythology, occultism and mental illness, as well as talk about his sharp stance on copyrights. Although our non-Norwegian readers are unlikely to be previously familiar with the artist, to those with an attention span exceeding that of today's average dopamine ju**ie, this is a rewarding read that should provide both candy to the eyes and food for the mind.

Sinistrous Waves #1 includes 112 black & white A4 pages of in-depth interviews with
❖ Aethyrick
❖ Antediluvian
❖ Arcana XIII
❖ Butcher (US)
❖ (the true) Chestburster
❖ Concrete Winds
❖ Den Unge Herr Holm
❖ Lantern (official)
❖ Mausoleum Gate
❖ Scumripper
❖ Sickness (FI)
❖ VEHEMENT
❖ Vengeful Spectre 殞煞

Sold out from us, try getting it from one of these distributors:
❖ Aioni: https://www.aioni.fi/collections/tuotteet/products/sinistrous-waves-1
❖ Breath of Pestilence: https://breathofpestilence.com
❖ Gate of Deliria: https://gateofdeliria.blogspot.com/p/t-shirt.html
❖ Kohina Records: https://kohinarecords.com
❖ New Era Productions: https://new-era-productions.nl/shop/magazines/11736-sinistrous-waves-1-magazine-lantern-arcana-xiii-vehement-antediluvian-concrete-winds-vengeful-spectre-aethyrick.html
❖ Schattenmann Publishings: https://schattenmanns.wordpress.com/distro/
❖ The Sinister Flame: https://www.thesinisterflame.com/shop/sinistrous-waves-1

Closing our debut issue in a fittingly over-the-top fashion, we have a chat with the three long-running members of Savonian heavy metal traditionalists Mausoleum Gate. With this interview conducted as a free-flowing face-to-face conversation, which ran for over two and a half hours, you’ll get an 18-page introduction to this fine band. Is that heavy enough for you?

Exceptionally not including any prepared questions about lyrical details or the like, the interview actually turned out to be the most music-centered one in the issue. So, for once, there’s quite a bit of technical talk for those kinds of nerds, too! Supposedly that’s what happens when you give free rein to a bunch of guys who are ready to drive down to Germany and back just to pick up a Mellotron.

In Arise! #3, A. Klemi wrote how "some of the interviewees mentioned that the questions are too detailed, deep and personal – 'This isn't a band interview but a person interview!' sighed one artist. But I'm fine with that – actually that is what I yearn for." This sentiment is easy to concur with. In the case of our interview with guitarist-vocalist Rat Pitt of the Finnish death metal punks Scumripper, the questions themselves weren't so privately probing, but they elicited delightfully long and personal answers, to the extent that our interviewee might've felt a tad uncomfortable about them in retrospect, heh.

We couldn't be happier with the interview, though; we live for these kinds of passionate, exhaustive rants. There's talk about nearly anything and everything around Scumripper – be it their lyrics, artwork, movie samples, influences, gigs or future plans – which in turn leads us to discuss more general matters of significance such as environmental issues, drug abuse, s*xual violence, vigilante justice, and Iron Maiden's "22 Acacia Avenue."

In addition, the look of the interview turned out stunning, for which we can thank our page frame perversor Greger Grönholm, Scumripper's trusted visionary Ensimmäinen Kultti Illustrations, the various photographers, and of co**se our unbelievably patient layout artist Oona Rouhiainen.

While waiting for Finland's sorry excuse for a postal service to deliver the Helsinki half of the copies, let's continue with the teasers. One of the most profound conversations of issue #1 is surely the one with Haasiophis of Canadian black/death metal group Antediluvian. Any metal bro looking for the secret behind that ballsy guitar sound or those badass riffs can leave the hall at the get-go, as this interview concentrates purely on the lyrical and visual side of the band's art, with the first two full-lengths Through the Cervix of Hawaah (2011) and λόγος (2013) as the main focus. Get your Bibles and encyclopedias out, as we delve into religious mysteries, existential questions, and their various implications, from geopolitical to s*xual to evolutionary to psychedelic... This 12-pager is a proper dive to the deep end, but hey, there's also talk about GOAT METAL, and a Manilla Road quote!

And here we fu***ng go! 112 pages and 350 grams of inquisitorial questions and obsessive detail tinkering. Get yours by getting into contact with sinistrous(dot)[email protected], PM through here or direct from me (Ville Pirttinen) or Ossi Turpeinen. Coming soon also to various distributors of quality music.
13.50 € is the price in Finland, postage included.

Although perhaps not quite as voracious as in the past, both of us are still avid readers of zines. An important part about making a zine of our own is the need to fill a void: making the exhaustive interview that we'd like to read, asking the obsessively detailed questions that we want to see answered. At least that was the main motivator to talk to Concrete Winds. This duo made their debut in 2019 with Primitive Force, probably the most interesting (and definitely the most extreme) Finnish death metal album of that year, delivering sheer sonic violence. Yet there were no proper interviews with them to be found at the time.

So we set out to make one. We tackled the obvious topics like the members' past in Vorum, and their roots on the Åland Islands; their influences and relation to genre traditions; about every aspect in the creation of the album, from songwriting and arrangement to the sound and the look of the release; the significance of live performances; the band's adversarial, misanthropic and dystopian themes... and more. The guys weren't our wordiest interviewees, so the article runs for "only" six pages, with lengthy editorial ramblings, but it should still serve as a fair introduction to the tumultuous world of Concrete Winds. As they summarized it: "we are merely troglodyte noise torment devices."

Since we did the interview in 2020, Concrete Winds unleashed their second album Nerve Butcherer the following year. It's an exhilarating example of a band fulfilling the promise they have shown earlier, delivering an even more decimating strike, and doing exactly what they set out to do: pushing the boundaries and raising the bar.

While gathering the graphics for the issue’s layout, we approached an illustrator to ask if he could send us a particularly cool shirt design that he had done for one of the bands interviewed. He was helpful and prompt, so we offered to send him a copy of the final product in return, to which he replied: “I don’t need one, unless there’s black metal content.” Worry not, thou dark heart, we got you covered!

At least with AETHYRICK, it’s black metal through and through. Packed with melody, thick with a simultaneously melancholic and solemn atmosphere, rooted in the Nordic sound of the 90s, yet sounding fresh and inspired. A strong vision shines clearly behind it all, with the music, the lyrics and the visuals coming together to form a captivatingly complete creation.

As is suitable for black metal, this interview revolves around the lyrical side of the band, mainly dealing with Praxis (2018) and Gnosis (2020), the first two full-length chapters in Aethyrick’s “magical diary of sorts.” Individual lyrics serve as stepping stones to discuss central themes such as ritual work, spiritual growth, the connection to nature, and the significance of dreams. While a brief update about the third album Apotheosis (2021) was added later, the duo churns out quality material at such a feverish pace that there’s no way for an old-school zine to keep up… and so The Sinister Flame has released Aethyrick's fourth album Pilgrimage by now as well. And wait, another three-song EP just this week? Damn, I guess we’ll have to do a follow-up interview down the line.

While most of the artists featured in Sinistrous Waves #1 happen to fall under death and black metal, this is due to a natural concentration of our shared interests, not because of an imposed restriction. We’re also happy to talk to artists outside of metal – anyone that we find interesting and inspiring, really – take (the true) Chestburster, for instance. Their filthy and psychedelic rock’n’roll fits perfectly onto the pages of Sinistrous Waves, with its fascinating thematical coalescence of the urban and the natural, the carnal and the spiritual, the mundane and the transcendental… And this interview has it all; from the s*x, drugs and turbulent turns, to the defiant outsider mentality and the rich world of inspirations underneath. And hey, we did also end up talking about black metal.

From an interviewer’s perspective, making the Chestburster feature was unbelievably smooth and satisfying. After sending drummer Pyry five pages worth of questions in April 2020, he returned the document in less than two days, with comprehensive answers from all three members! (For those who haven't tried conducting proper interviews over the web, a response time of several months is quite normal, and some artists don’t bother answering at all.) A few additional questions and answers were added afterwards, and voilà, what we had on our hands was undoubtedly one of the strongest features of our debut issue, and the ultimate Chestburster interview. Of course, to show our appreciation towards the diligence of the 'burster boys, we sat on the interview for about three years. And those guys thought they were BORN TO DISAPPOINT? Yeah, right.

As Sinistrous Waves began as a continuation of sorts to Perverse Gospel 'zine, with half of the editorial duo remaining the same, it was fitting that the other half of PG was among the first interviewees picked for the new zine. The main reason for sitting down with Cruciatus of Lantern (official) was him being the mastermind of one of the most interesting and unique bands in contemporary death metal, though. This thorough interrogation was conducted in early 2020, preceding the release of the band's third full-length "Dimensions". As that still remains the latest Lantern release, the interview hasn't luckily become too outdated during the last three years! However, we do touch on plenty of timeless topics as well, from the intricacies of artistic inspiration to the mysteries of life and death. And cover almost anything you could imagine from along Lantern's journey of fifteen years – without forgetting its chaotic predecessor Cacodaemon either – be it discussing line-up dynamics, peering into various individual lyrics, or digging up drunken stories better left untold. Over these ten pages, Cruciatus also talks about some of the other bands he's been involved in, his preferred methods of dying and burial, and reveals what he thinks about Possessed.

After three long years of pondering, planning, problematizing, procrastinating, polishing, and a bit of actual work, the first issue of Sinistrous Waves has been sent off to press. Expect 100+ pages of mercilessly drawn-out, obsessively in-depth and shamelessly outdated zinestry to f**k up your mind. This time around, we went over the top, below and beyond with Lantern (official), Arcana XIII, VEHEMENT, Antediluvian, Scumripper, Butcher, (the true) Chestburster, Den Unge Herr Holm, Concrete Winds, Vengeful Spectre 殞煞, Aethyrick, Sickness, and Mausoleum Gate. (Dis)graced with eyeball-melting art by Greger Grönholm. Watch out for previews!

The waves are coming.