• I think that this interview speaks for itself, soi advice you to pass this prologue and start reading the interview! The name BATHORY is a pure legend!!!

• Quorthon: First of all…thank you for the great words said regarding DESTROYER. In some media they have labeled it the biggest load of crap ever. But I suspect it has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of people expects wonders from something with the “legendary” name BATHORY on its cover. Some have titled it the best release of the year. So it is very hard to judge the album from the market and buyers perspective. The important thing, though, is not the reviews, but the response of the fans. DESTROYER was made for them, not for the media or those who have bought the idea that BATHORY is about being either 100% this or that.

• When we decided to do DESTROYER the way it was done, it was the result of close to two years of pain and agony. We had originally planned to do something completely different, but the flow of fan mail demanding stuff reminding of the past, made us change our minds about what the next album should be all about. In the end, we felt so much time had been lost, we spent only 112 hours in the studio, making DESTROYER the second fastest recording in the history of BATHORY. I am not even sure all the guitar solo’s are there. One track even still has demo vocals on it. I began writing for DESTROYER on June the 10th. We entered the studio on July the 24th and we had the album all done by mid August.

• Once we had decided on making the album a sort of a compromise reminding of the past as much as possible, we searched for month’s for a studio that would remind of our Heavenshore Studio from the 80’s (which essentially was a garage with some demo equipment in it). But not many studios use ¼ inch tape and 12-track tables these days. They’re all computerized and digital these days, and we didn’t want anything like that. Finally we found a small private demo studio which was very primitive and reminded a lot of Heavenshore Studio.

2.I’D LIKE YOU TO REMEMBER ALL YOUR CAREER AND TELL ME  WHAT MISTAKES YOU THINK YOU DID AND WHICH THINGS YOU DON’T REGRET DOING.

• Quorthon: I never look at life like that. We make mistakes all the time. Life is not about being perfect or immaculate in any way. That’s the great thing about life, we live and learn all the time. If I’d be given the chance to live my life all over again I’d probably do just about everything differently. No fun living the same life twice…

• As far as mistakes regarding BATHORY, I guess I can accept the mistakes that went down the can because I was there seeing it all from behind the curtain. I know the circumstances. The albums regarded as classic and legendary, were all recorded in a garage using 12-track, ¼ inch tape equipment between 18 and 12 years ago. We had virtually no effects to work with but the filters. It is amazing that what we did even made it onto vinyl. There are certainly enough mistakes on the albums. We just didn’t bother about touching things up. The atmosphere was the important thing to us.

• BATHORY never produced the best quality albums, we were never the best musicians, the songs weren’t the best made of all time. But there was something original and genuine about them albums, which I think is the entire key as to why BATHORY is still regarded so special.

• So I am not going to be sitting here and drag stuff up from the past and cut this or that incident, decision or whatever, by the ankles. The mistake anybody would do doing that, is judging the past by today’s frames, values and the progress made since.

• I know a lot of people are stunned by the fact that I have always tried to keep BATHORY as much low profile as possible. They seem completely bedazzled how BATHORY can put an album out and only book 10-20 ads worldwide. They regard it as commercial suicide to produce only a limited edition poster for only a handful of the many albums you did. They go absolutely apeshit when they hear that BATHORY waited ten years before producing any substantial number of T-shirts etc. But I desperately want BATHORY to be about the music and lyrics, the atmosphere on the albums. I do not want BATHORY to be like all the other acts out there which seem to make it onto the cover of the metal magazines here in Europe, simply because they have a new shirt motive out and in huge quantities. Of course a lot of money, and I mean a lot of it, didn’t come my way. I know tons of manufacturers of cheap and lousy bootleg shirts and pictures discs etc, having made a small fortune producing stuff which we did not supply the fans with. But I haven’t had to take a job for 15 years, and I have lived a very good life from the money I make from the music alone. So I guess I both made some cash and were able to keep my pride, usually a hard combination.

3.WHICH ARE THE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCIES AMONG 80’S, 90’S AND 00’S BATHORY?

• Quorthon: Some say that the atmosphere and spirit of BATHORY is still there, some will say that BATHORY died at the end of the 80’s. Others will just pick one or two goodies from the catalogue and hail that as BATHORY’s true spirit ignoring the things that does not fit in with their image of what BATHORY is all about. I am certainly not the right person to compare and value the decades against one another. I have listened to the entire back catalogue of BATHORY only two or three times. As soon as an album is out I never ever listen to it again. Until a year ago I didn’t even have any of the BATHORY albums myself. So I guess those who have a better view of the entire picture would have a lot more interesting things to say about BATHORY than I would.

• But I can say this much. The 80’s were a decade when BATHORY would constantly evolve and explore new sounds and styles. We went from primitive Death Metal to heavy Epic Metal, touching the Nordic concept and mixed Thrash, Hardcore and Death as we evolved.

• In the 90’s, people would ask us to do either this or that in order to please their own personal idea of what BATHORY is all about musically and lyrically. So we did a couple of more brutal albums ( REQUIEM and OCTAGON ) for our more brutal fans, and BLOOD ON ICE for our more Nordic & Epic fans.

• The demand for stuff that reminded of the 80’s and the constant talking about which style & sound of BATHORY that was “true” or “false”, brought about the JUBILEUM volumes. So in effect, the 90’s was basically about throwing pieces of goodies to the wolves and try to remind of a glorious and much talked about 80’s made legendary for some reason.

• It was a very tough position to be in. It wasn’t very nice at all to find yourself painted into a corner, put on a pedestal and made a legend. It killed creativity, BATHORY wasn’t allowed to evolve and live. BATHORY was almost made into a Las Vegas hall of fame show. We were asked to either pick up what BATHORY was all about during the time we did our three first albums, or we were asked to continue what BATHORY represented stylewise and lyrically during the time the next three albums were made. It became a mission impossible situation.

• It didn’t matter that half of our fan base loved what ever a new album sounded like. The other half of our fan base hated it. And so we tried to please that other half by doing something on the next album that would suit their taste and image of BATHORY, in the process displeasing the first half of our fan base.

• So it feels good being able to leave the 90’s behind. I don’t know if a new millenium means that BATHORY is allowed to evolve much like we did in the 80’s. It would be good for creativity, though. I know that there are certain limits, frames, which BATHORY would have to move within. We have gathered a following throughout these twenty years, of people who will continue to demand BATHORY to do a heavy, atmospheric and Epic Nordic album with a twist of Viking feel to it every once in a while. The other half of our fan base will demand a brutal and hardcore, perhaps even demonic and satanic spiced album every once in a while. So don’t be at all surprised if the next five years or so will show BATHORY making albums alternating between the two of the above mentioned styles.

• Quorthon: The destroyer of worlds phrase originally comes from the Hindu mythology. I once read a biography on Robert Openheimer, the scientist who if not invented so at least put together the first practical atomic bomb. When he watched that first atomic bombs go off in the New Mexico desert in , I believe it was July 1945, his first reaction was the same as for everybody else involved in the Manhattan project. I mean they had been working on that bomb for ages and spent astronomical values, and finally it worked. There was of course joy and celebration. But Openheimer all of a sudden realized the immense destructive powers they had just unleashed. And he remembered a part of a Hindu script mentioning the god of death – Shiva – introducing himself as death the destroyer of worlds. And so Openheimer said to himself that he had become death, the destroyer of worlds. I just enjoyed that conflict of emotions within a split second, going from sheer joy to thoughtfulness. At the end of the song you can hear how the bomb is being brought over Hiroshima. That’s why there are Japanese instruments in the background.

5.WHEN YOU REVEALED IN THE “BLOOD ON ICE” BOOKLET THAT YOU ARE INSPIRED BY HORROR STORIES, WEREN’T YOU AFRAID THAT SOME FANS WOULD BE DISAPPOINTED?

• Quorthon: If they were disappointed, it certainly wasn't that “scoop” that did the job. What upset tons of fans was the fact that I wrote how the albums of the 80’s were recorded. As mentioned before, they were made in a garage using very primitive equipment and I sometime would stand knee-deep in dirty laundry or boxes of washing powder while doing the lead guitar or I’d be standing in a cleaning cabinet while doing the vocals. Peoples image of BATHORY was that of three true satanic neo-nazi Vikings (?!) living in a bats cave in the north of Sweden. And while eating infants, drinking blood and only come out at night, we sometimes would make an album. It seems the entire revival of Black Metal bands of the 90’s consisted of acts, which had based their whole lifestyle, image and appearance on a false picture of us. People had bigger problems with their image of BATHORY than I did. I received tons of mail from people who thought that I had done something that can only be described as sacrilege by telling the world the truth. I was originally intending to write a book, but the response from the fans made me realize that the only potential buyers of just such a BATHORY book were the very ones who wrote me saying things like: “-Just who do the hell do you think you are talking about BATHORY like that!?”…I mean who the hell do I think I am to talk about BATHORY like that….to some people I AM BATHORY.

• I have been doing tons of in-stores and have had fans looking me over saying things like: “- You’re not Quorthon… Quorthon would never wear jeans and T-shirt”. I have always tried to personally answer as much fan mail as possible. I may not have the time to answer all, but at least I will read tons of fan mail. Still it’s tough establishing a close relationship with people who will begin their letter by saying things like: “-You’re my God!!!” How do you form an honest and normal relationship with a person who will accept no image of yourself other than that of their Satanic Nazi Viking God?

6.HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW WATCHING MANY BLACK METAL BANDS EMBRACE OUTRAGEOUS PHILOSOPHIES AND BELIEVE THAT MUSIC IS A FORM OF RELIGION? COULD YOU EVER IMAGINE THAT?

• Quorthon: I can only relate to how we positioned ourselves to that whole bit back in the early 80’s. BATHORY was never ever a satanic act. We didn’t know what that was and we weren’t interested. We simply just painted with words. BATHORY was an anti-Christian act but not satanic. I personally have never believed in any gods or followed any religion.

• It’s up to anybody to form their own belief, to live by its ideals and to use it in their music and lyrics. It’s called artistic freedom and is well worth fighting for and exploring. I will never judge an act for their image. They can wear all the clown make-up in the world. What it all comes down to in the end is they need to have this something special. Their music and lyrics need to show some originality and be genuine and intelligent.

• What we are seeing right now is the end of a boom. A boom is a phenomenon, which happens all the time. It just looks and sounds different from the most recent boom. It may be called Grunge, Glam Metal, Punk Rock, long hair, short hair. It may mean spiked black leather or unbuttoned flannel shirts.

• It’s true most of the Black Metal acts in the past 5-10 years refer to BATHORY as their main influence. But the fact is they’re more influenced by BATHORY’s so called epic nordic viking albums than the earlier primitive satanic and demonic Death Metal releases. I regard all these acts as my babies. I am immensely proud of them all and wish them the best of luck. I may not know what they’re called, what they sound like or where they come from. I know absolutely shit when it comes to what’s hot or the flavor of the week. I do not listen to metal. I don’t go to concerts. I will not mingle with people at clubs. I don’t buy CD’s and I never read the metal press (not even BATHORY reviews). But whenever an act sends me their new CD and I listen to it, I can hear riffs I did 15 years ago. Then I know BATHORY’s impact. When BATHORY fans write me and let me know about this or that act referring to BATHORY as their main source of inspiration and influence, I know that BATHORY has meant a lot for tons of fans and acts alike over these past 20 years. So I am of course immensely proud.

• Quorthon: I am not sure if it’s religion as such, I think it is a fact of using the supernatural and abstract imagery of religion. When you write a lyric about the environment, politics, war, serial killers or anything else, it’s highly concrete and factual. You can watch that on TV every day or by just looking outside your window. But to write about raping angels, masturbating on the golden throne in heaven, wiping your ass with the scalp of God or blood raining from the sky, that’s all imagery, painting with words. Christianity is highly abstract. I mean a virgin giving birth to Gods son, walking on water, parting seas and stuff. All the hokuspokus of Christianity is laughable really, until you realize that this very religion managed to enslave the known world for nine hundred years, conquering the rest of the world destroying tons of cultures in the process. Christianity is fascism divine. God is the most destructive and potent thing man ever invented. It has changed history and can make people fly civilian airplanes into buildings.

• Quorthon: The music presented on DESTROYER is a compromise really. We intentionally picked sounds & styles up from various earlier BATHORY albums. Not wanting to produce an album that was either 100% this or that, we went for an album that was a true mix of virtually every sound & style we have done in the past. We deemed this was the best solution, particularly since it had now been quite some time since BATHORY had released anything new. We hadn’t planned for it to take five years. The plan was to take a break for about two years.

• Here’s the deal. After the release of BLOOD ON ICE in 1996 and my second solo album in 1997, the waves went pretty high in fan mail circuits as far as what BATHORY was all about and should be all about. The reason for all this is truly weird. In the late 80’s BATHORY released a couple of pounding heavy epic albums ( HAMMERHEART and TWILIGHT OF THE GODS ). The absurd thing is that people sort of believed that this was what BATHORY was all about. Some people have very short memory and few seemed to remember the albums of the early 80’s and what they were all about. So when we did REQUIEM and OCTAGON in the early 90’s, they totally fell out of frame. People’s idea of BATHORY was that of big production, atmospheric nordic flavored Epic Metal. What they weren’t thinking about, was that this was 7 years down the road, and BATHORY had done totally different shit in the past. And the evolution that had led up to the sound & style which people now confused for BATHORY’s true spirit, had incorporated stuff that REQUIEM and OCTAGON were in fact very close to.

• HAMMERHEART and TWILIGHT OF THE GODS is still regarded as the true BATHORY style & sound by some. But the truth is that these two albums are in no way any more true as to what BATHORY is all about than any other two albums in the back catalogue. Mind you, there is a portion of our fan base that despises these two albums and will hail only the two first albums ( BATHORY and THE RETURN ) as true BATHORY. Others enjoy a mix of styles & sounds like our third and fourth albums ( UNDER THE SIGN and BLOOD FIRE DEATH ).

• It all depends on who is holding the pen and writing the articles/reviews. I have encountered journalists with very absurd ideas as far as BATHORY’s true spirit is concerned. During making interviews for DESTROYER OF WORLDS in the past four months, I have encountered the most narrow minded and sarcastic cynicism and have experienced the most mean and ignorant ideas as far as BATHORY and DESTROYER is concerned. I remember this English journalist ordering me to stop reading fan mail and stop trying to please all our fans by doing a little bit of everything as is the case with BATHORY of the 90’s in general and DESTROYER OF WORLDS in particular. What it all boiled down to was him ordering future BATHORY releases to fit in with his view and taste as far as what BATHORY is all about. His words ended up in the article, his personal view influenced several weak minds reading the article, his taste determined the rate in the review. His taste, view and ideas of BATHORY reflects the taste, view and ideas of BATHORY of less than 25% of the entire BATHORY fan base. Few will understand this. Fewer still will agree that anybody with an opinion as to what BATHORY is all about other than their own, actually does have the right to have an opinion.

• Still, the conflicting demands from the various camps of BATHORY fans, and BATHORY itself taking one step to the left and one step to the right with every second release during the 90’s in an effort to please first one half of our fan base and then the other, was a truly weird situation. In the end it wasn’t fun anymore. We knew even before entering a studio to record an album that half of our fans would hate it. That is an awful situation. You can not record great albums knowing that what you’re doing is going to please only half of your fans.

• Also, the first 8-9 years or so of BATHORY’s history were made legendary and immaculate times. The first 6 albums were put on pedestals, made perfect and unsurpassable. The whole generation containing the initial BATHORY fans grew up, formed their own bands and created their own fanzines, thus helping in creating the glory of our past. BATHORY was all of a sudden godfather of Nordic Metal, the grandfathers of Death Metal and pioneers of Black Metal. If people begin to talk about you using this kind of terminology, it usually means you are either six feet under or retired. This created an atmosphere of “BATHORY used to…” or “BATHORY were…”. When people talked about BATHORY, they always made a reference to the past. Automatically everything we did was deemed unnecessary and unimportant. The revival of Black Metal, and all these bands that hailed BATHORY as their gods, only made matters worse. People, media and bands focused on our first 3-6 albums that reminded them of their own youth, the stuff they had grown up listening to. The connection between a point in time more than ten years ago and now was made, a link from the past was established. Then was erected as the ideal pattern for present.

• The stupid thing is that we sell more albums today than we ever did back then in the 80’s. Sure we receive fan mail from people who are too young to have been a part of the first generation of fans. I’ll receive fan mail from people like George 16 years old from San Francisco who loves UNDER THE SIGN. You realize the guy is 16 years old and consequently wasn’t even born when we did UNDER THE SIGN…sort of gives you perspective, doesn’t it…

• And so after the release of my second solo, I told everybody that I was going to need a two-year break. First of all to see if I still enjoyed doing this at all, if making BATHORY albums wasn’t just something we did automatically as a reflex. Secondly to see if people were going to miss a BATHORY record every once in a while, if people weren’t just taking a BATHORY album every now and then for granted.

• I didn’t touch a guitar during 1998 and 1999. In 1998 somebody told us BATHORY celebrated 15 years and perhaps it would be a great idea to put out a third JUBILEUM volume. It contained almost 40% previously unreleased material so that people wouldn’t get the idea we were only milking a legend. But this third volume of the JUBILEUM series, and particularly the previously unreleased tracks from the early 80’s, only had the effect people began to talk even more about the first 7-8 years of BATHORY as the pinnacle era of extreme metal.

• In late 1999 beginning of 2000 we began working on a new album. Thinking that this was a new millenium coming on, and enough time had passed by, people would have gained some perspective and wised up, BATHORY could probably record an album that was fresh, new and interesting all by itself and not because it said BATHORY on the cover. People would hopefully judge it for what it was and not unfairly weigh it against the first 5-6 albums. The material we were working on was rather progressive extreme metal incorporating both medieval and classical instruments, a lot of backing vocals and soundeffects. But the topics were neither demonic, satanic nor Nordic or Viking.

• In the meantime, we had told our record company Black Mark they could let everybody know a new BATHORY album was being worked on. This had the effect a lot of people began writing us demanding for the new album to be either 100% this or that. This was sad news for us. I realized then not enough time had passed by and that it wasn’t the right thing to do putting out a BATHORY album like this at that moment. And so we had tons of release dates out, which was kept being postponed again and again, working titles all over the place, confusing people even further.

• So we came up with the idea to scrap the album we were working on, and instead make an album containing a mix of all styles & sounds from the past. I asked Black Mark to send me some BATHORY albums. I’d spend most of early 2001 listening to the past, trying to remember how we did this or how we recorded that or what we were thinking and how we were functioning at the time. So while writing the material for DESTROYER I made sure that most of it would sound as if it could easily have been a part of either TWILIGHT, HAMMERHEART, BLOOD FIRE DEATH, UNDER THE SIGN or any other previous album.

• This may seem like a very unorthodox way to return to the scene after five years of absence. But it was the best solution. Had we done anything that would have been more than half either this or that style & sound from the past, again it would have been said that BATHORY was shooting wide off target. The target of course being whatever anybody regarded as the true BATHORY style & sound. The reaction to the album has been that some will enjoy one half of it, while others will enjoy the other half of the material. Which is basically what we had anticipated. The mix was a good solution. Not the best, but acceptable. DESTROYER pleased all of our fans, but only in parts. So I guess it won’t be all that easy to slip out of that legendary and stylistically static either demonic/satanic or nordic/viking corner after all. The future, it seems, will again have to be all about filling two coats at the same time…

• Quorthon: No. The first solo release ALBUM was just for fun, not an attempt to create a career for myself. The second album PURITY OF ESSENCE was responding to all those who wrote me asking for a second effort. I was surprised neither one of them solo releases ever received any bad reviews, the reviews were confused but never down right bad. The solo efforts do not say what I am all about or that’s really what I want to do. They are just a bunch of guitar based albums heavily influenced by a mix of the stuff I grew up listening to. I combined my heavy Beatles and Sex Pistols influences. But a lot of people do have a very short memory, and so they referred to whatever they deemed closest in style & sound to them, which was Oasis and Nirvana (both heavily influenced by Beatles and Pistols). People reading that in a review, may have decided not to pick any of the solo albums up. There are tons of Tony Iommi riffs in there, the harmonies were heavily based on late 60’s stuff. I just brought a guitar, a bass and a drummachine into a studio and had fun.

• Quorthon: People still talk about these tours that were planned in 86-88. I don’t remember that much about the details. But I seem to have a recall there was this American management that wanted to organize this total death tour down the east coast of the USA and maybe beyond. BATHORY was supposed to headline. I think that Celtic Frost and Destruction were supposed to be the other acts on that tour. Some American band may have been in the picture as well.

• At the time the BATHORY line-up had just split. Or rather, I had told the bass player he had to stop taking all those fucking drugs or he’d be out. The drummer wanted to educate himself going back to school, so I found myself without a line-up. I wrote a letter to Carsten Nielsen, the drummer in Danish band Artillery, to ask him if he wanted to join BATHORY and go on a US-tour. He wrote back and said that Artillery was going to be much bigger than BATHORY would ever be, and consequently he didn’t want to leave Artillery to join BATHORY. So I asked Witchhunter of Sodom if he could help me out. And Witchhunter did come to Stockholm for a week to rehearse some BATHORY material. In the end though, we thought that both the BATHORY fans and the Sodom fans was going to be very confused. Also, Sodom had to re-make some tracks for the album they had just recorded.

• When nothing came out of that, I really felt that it was really the last shot. I said to myself  “-To Hell with it all!” and after that I have never bothered about line-ups and tour plans for BATHORY. After that, BATHORY’s music changed so much it would be almost impossible to reproduce on stage what we did on record. Somebody told me “-Don’t break the band up. Why don’t you just make records!” And so that is how it’s been ever since. I am still amazed how people can bother about a BATHORY tour. First of all it’s been me and a friend of mine doing the albums for the past 11 years or so, so who the hell would be on stage? Also, a lot of the music is too complex to do on stage. A lot of people have such great ideas and images of a BATHORY concert we’d be a real disappointment no matter what a BATHORY show would look like. They expect flying drums, dragon ships to sail across stage and bombs going off every two seconds. Fans of the various sides of BATHORY would probably clash in front of the stage and it would be total madness….. Initially, we don’t have that kind of organization behind us, to take BATHORY on the road. And I don’t get any kicks out of concerts.

• Quorthon: I guess we just talked about that a little earlier in this interview. I believe I’d change it all. It would be a total drag to live the same life all over again. I’d probably do everything differently. I might not even have anything to with music at all in an alternate life.

• Quorthon: Back in the early 90’s, when we were asked to put together this sort of best-of-album to celebrate our 10th anniversary, we asked the fans to write us and let us know which songs they though best represented BATHORY. I was really surprised in some cases. Some tracks that received a lot of votes I had completely forgotten about. In the end, it turned out we couldn’t release just one CD, we would never have been able to fit in all the tracks that the fans wanted on it. So we were thinking about a double CD, but it was deemed too costly, bulky and more difficult to handle in the distribution net work. So it became a twin release. That way we could sport a full picture of the evolution of BATHORY during the first 10 years.

• There have been cases when I have been not too sure about a specific track, if this or that track actually should end up on the album. Years later people will write me and tell me that track was the best of the whole album. So I guess it is not my personal taste or idea about BATHORY that’s the ideal. On the new album, “Ode” seems to be a favorite. But that particular track only represent one side of BATHORY. So I am afraid you are going to have to make a choice yourself here. Or better still, ask your listeners.

• Quorthon: It depends what you mean by “weren’t able to”. If you mean that I’d be hindered physically to write and compose, then I’d probably go insane from hearing music inside my head 24 hours a day. If you mean that I just wouldn’t have the ability, then I guess I wouldn’t even reflect over the situation. But having said that, I remember this buddy of mine once asking me “-How do you write a song?”. The funny thing was, I couldn’t answer him. What comes natural for me to do, also turned out impossible to explain to someone else. I formed my first band in 1974 and have been playing in tons of acts, covering many different styles. Music is all I know and all I want to do.

• Quorthon: It wouldn’t have to be a movie of a certain style. You’d write whatever fits the story and atmosphere of the film.

• Quorthon: Actually, it was all very sweet and innocent. I went to London with a friend back in the summer of 1981 or something like that. And I ended up at the London Dungeon, a horror wax cabinet. In one section there was this big ancient bathtub filled with blood, with a naked woman sitting in it and a couple of naked women hanging suspended upside down from the ceiling. I mean, when you’re a teenage guy there are few things in life that will attract you’re attention as much as blood and gore and naked women. So I checked the sign and it said Countess Elizabeth Bathory. So I checked her up in literature, and when it came to name the band that I would form in March 1983, one of the names we thought of was Bathory. And it was a great name, because if you would call your band Satan’s Penis you’ll have people put labels on you even before they have heard your music. Bathory was a neutral name, if you didn’t know about the Countess. However, should anybody want to know as to why we had picked that particular name, there was a story to tell from real life.

• Quorthon: It’s just part of an ongoing little thing called history of mankind. Whether it is imperial British forces enslaving china-men or Arabians for 300 years all in the name of white anglosaxian culture and interest, ultra-Christian Spanish explorers destroying the culture of the entire south American population in the name of a king and God, or communist regimes in Russia, eastern Europe or Asia murdering and robbing hundreds of millions of people of their individual value and human rights. It is all a part of all our nature. Only reasons, excuses, religion, political ideals, language and scenes change. But the desire to kill, rule, inflict terror and destroy is the same. This time it happens to be a bunch of fundamental Islamic nut cases with enough money to buy themselves ex-soviet nuclear arms aimed for the heart of the industrialized white Christian nations. And they’ll do it in the name of an unsolved conflict in the middle east that has been going on since the days of the pharaohs. And what is the initial reason for this ongoing bloodshed? A city regarded as “holy” by no less than three religions, patches of otherwise inhospitable land millions of people consider worth killing and dying for.

• We allow Jay Leno to pull off one Afghanistan joke after the other, ridiculing an entire population in the process. Afghanistan may be a utterly poor, dry and inhospitable place, with no 3-car garages or drive-in churches. It may be an easy target to ridicule. But at least it is a place worth spending hundreds of billions of dollars surveying and bombing in the search of a group of men who were the heroes of the western Christian industrialized white world only a decade ago when they defied the Soviet Red Army.

• There are tons of places in this world where people do not necessarily see the constant presence of US carriers just outside their harbors as a sign of and a guarantee for democracy and peace. There are immense differences in areas such as culture and history, economy and geopolitics, which determines the amount of freedom of people in a certain region. And freedom is usually something we will define from our own perspective. A people that may not have 300 cable channels to choose from, or 6000 different flavors of breakfast cereal, is not necessarily less fortunate or less worthy. You and I may have this immense freedom of choice. But a boy or a girl your age in Afghanistan may not even have the choice of a glass of drinkable water. We judge other cultures and people by our own situation, lives and moral.

• It is true no other nation more than the USA has sacrificed the lives of their grandfathers, fathers, brothers and sons to free the people of other nations. It is true the USA has fought in wars of other nations for the freedom and human rights of other people. It is true real freedom, true democracy, lasting peace, human rights and values of equality are worth sacrificing a lot for in order to preserve and spread. But the US, and the European Union, will forever be a legitimate target to anybody who’s interest, pride, prestige, interest or religion is being scuffed by the economic interest, influence, military presence or political power of our respective nations. You and I have very little to do with the big moves made above our heads, just as our ancestors had very little do to in the killing of the native American tribes, the agent orange sprayed over south east Asia, or the obvious atrocities of the crusaders (even though what is considered an atrocity today, was perfectly legitimate in those days). The shit of both past and present is orchestrated and ordered by those in power. But just as kings of the past were concerned with the loyalty of the people, so are today’s presidents and prime ministers equally concerned with four more years. Any bomb dropped is dropped in our name, so we better wise up and become as informed as we possibly can get. He who buy’s the lavishly promoted book is blind – he who is blind need no book at all.

• We’re a killing specie’s and will kill anybody for any reason may it be land, money, power, religion or scuffed pride. It’s in our nature.

• Quorthon: I would like to take the opportunity to thank all the BATHORY fans out there, without whom nothing of what has gone down in the past 20 would have been possible. As it is said on the DESTROYER credit list; This album is dedicated to all the BATHORY fans – you are the best !! That was no bullshit !! Hail the Hordes !! Good luck with BEHIND THE VEIL, and all the best for the new year. May the Northstar shine on your path!!