FUNGOUS ADEPTS QUIZZED

Questions answered and expanded upon by Aarni - if you have any further answers, please send them to fnord@aarni.info and we'll provide you with detailed questions.

• What about all these strange titles?
• When and where will you gig?
• Your influences?
• The ideas implied in your songs?
• Tell me about 'Bathos'?
• Tell me about your next album?

Question: What about all these strange titles that appear not written in Latin or English?

Answer: Well, then they represent some other languages. Because of overwhelming popular demand, we offer them here alongside English translations.

- Lampaan Vaatteissa [Finnish] = 'In Sheep's Clothing'
- Metsänpeitto [Finnish] = To find oneself under glamour and become lost in the woods by the actions of a mischievous forest-spirit.
- Myrrys [Finnish] = Shaman's trance-state / spirit journey.
- Duumipeikon Paluu [Finnish] = 'The Return of Doomintroll'
- Bathos [Greek] = [ba:tos] insincere or overdone pathos; sentimentality; anticlimax.
- Kivijumala [Finnish] = 'Stone God'; 'God of Stone'; 'Stony Idol'
- Kesäyö [Finnish] = 'Summer Night'
- Tohcoth [Enochian] = [to:koþ] "This name comprehendeth the number of all the fayries, who are diuels next to the state and condition of man" -Dr. John Dee

Q: When and where will Aarni gig?

A: In short: we do not. Never have and perhaps never will. If this changes you will be the first to know.
Long answer: Aarni has chosen not to play live, because its members have no interest whatsoever in either giving concerts or attending them. Try to think about it for a moment and consider this parallel: when a movie gets released, its director, actors etc. usually do not get requests to embark on a tour of live performances or stage adaptations of the film. Neither do painters, writers or most other artists. Yet in the case of musicians this seems taken for granted. Just why this should be the case has always been somewhat of a mystery to us. The demands of convention and base "entertainment" do not make much sense in most instances, as you probably have already noticed if you happen to live anywhere on planet Earth. So, Aarni won't gig and pestering us about it only wastes everyone's time (and in the process makes you a prime target for our psychotic urge for violent astral/physical retaliation).

Q: What do you consider as your influences?

A: Well, first off we can offer the self-evident platitude that everything we have experienced has influenced us. But more precisely: in the past our musical inspirations involved the likes of Paradise Lost, Anathema and My Dying Bride, while some of our both past and present favourites include Black Sabbath, Black Widow, Camel, Candlemass, Cathedral, Piirpauke, Iron Maiden, Wishbone Ash, Clannad, Primus, Metallica, Joe Satriani, Lake Of Tears, Skyclad, Van Der Graaf Generator, Maudlin Of The Well, Opeth, Amon Düül, Focus, King Crimson, King Diamond, Hawkwind, Pantera, Buckethead, various computer game and classical composers etc. ad nauseam.

Aarni's more or less evident non-musical (writers, ideas, artists, thinkers and so forth) inspirations: Salvador Dalí, H.R. Giger, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Michael Moorcock, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Carlton Mellick III, Rabelais, Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley, Chaos Magick, NLP, Transhumanism, Timothy Leary, Shamanism, Fenno-Ugric folklore, Ancient Egypt, Taoism, Zen Buddhism, Dadaism, David Lynch, William Burroughs, Moebius, Grant Morrison, classic (adventure) computer games, Aleksis Kivi, Eino Leino, John Dee, Hakim Bey, Wilhelm Reich, Carl Gustaf Jung, glossolalia, coprolalia, pareidolia and Discordianism.

Q: What are your songs about? I lack basic education!

A: We think we have usually made the subject clear enough. At other times the listener may need some basic intelligence, knowledge and learning to 'get the picture'. However, some curiosities:

'Transcend Humanity' may appear naïvely misanthropic in sentiment and preachy in style. MW got its lyrics in a kind of retarded epiphany in late August 2001. Later, after the so-called "WTC terrorist strike/US inside job", this song has gained a somewhat prophecy-like reputation, whether deservedly or not.

'Liber Umbrarum vel Coniunctio's lyrical content and mental imagery came to MW in a waking dream after intensively reading Jung. He has got better since. As apparent to anyone even slightly familiar with Jung's ideas, the song deals with the individuation process and more specifically with confronting and subsequently assimilating one's Shadow and other Jungian key elements of one's unconscious. The 'Book of Shadows' and 'Book of (the) Youth' mentioned in the song's title and lyrics obiviously refer to these archetypal images and to the works of Jung himself, respectively.

Q: Tell me about 'Bathos'?

(Taken from the "Song By Song" section of Metal Storm)

1. Ονειροσκόπος:
A short and mellow intro track. The Greek title translates as "dreamscope", in other words an instrument for watching dreams and back in '98 numbered as one of the original band name suggestions for Aarni.

2. Squaring The Circle:
This song may be musically the most "traditional doomish" one on the record. After the intro part it becomes literally a three-chord song. I included the needless and tasteless outro guitar solo mainly as a misguided joke. The lyrics deal with the individuation process using alchemical and magickal terminology.

3. Quinotaurus:
A shortish song about the origins and agenda of the EU...perhaps? If sought, encoded information can be found in the lyrics.

4. Kivijumala:
A lengthy Fennougric folk instrumental done in the best/worst Kalevala style. The Finnish title can be translated as "Stone God". The track and its booklet art were inspired by the esoteric correspondences of element Earth and by the human-shaped cliff in Eastern Finland, where the composer Jean Sibelius discovered the first known Stone Age rock paintings in the country.

5. V.I.T.R.I.O.L.:
A very relaxed Twin Peakish and old song of mine featuring alchemical/Jungian lyrics, flute and clean guitars.

6.The Thunder, Perfect Mindfuck:
The only song on the album with growled vocals, perhaps also the most clichéd in a metal sense for the main part. The lyrics were largely inspired by the Gnostic texts discovered at Nag Hammadi. I meant the outro part to have a jazzy/progressive/spaced-out feel to it. Ride the snake...

7.Mental Fugue:
Another instrumental, with embedded spells and flamenco-like/neoclassical experimentation. Truth be told I wrote this track rather quickly to replace a 20-minute song I originally inteded to include, but ran into album space restrictions. Maybe we'll hear it on the next record...

8.Niut Net Meru:
Translates as "City Of Pyramids". This track deals with initiation and illumination veiled in Ancient Egyptian, Thelemic and Discordian imagery. I have made the verse riffs intentionally arhytmical, meaning that the instruments play in concert but not to a fixed tempo. This feature I wish to further implement in Aarni's future material. I sung the song in Old/Middle Kingdom Egyptian as befits the Oriental-style music...drawing the booklet hieroglyphs felt like the biggest single task in the making of the album :)

9.Kesäyö:
The Finnish title translates as "Summer Night". A long-winded and trippy Kalevala instrumental, intended for listening in an expanded state of bodymind or when you really don't have anything better to do.

Q: Alleviate my impatience, tell me about your new album?

A: Aarni's third album bears the simple title of 'Lovecraftian'. A serious theme album dedicated to the 20th century horror's dark and baroque prince H.P.Lovecraft. Song titles so far: 'Nemesis', 'Yule Horror', 'Cats Of Ulthar', 'Obscene Angles', 'Celephais', 'Nyarlathotep'. Azathoth have mercy on us all...