Interview: kontinual, editor of the Dark Legions Archive

I don't know how you, dear reader, got into metal or where on the internet you first found it. For many of us, it was the Dark Legions Archive, that despite its goofy web address has been here supporting death metal since the late 1980s. It started off first as a dial-up bulletin board, then become an FTP site, and now is a sprawling maze of HTML.

We were fortunate enough to get some answers from kontinual, the site's Editor and a seventeen-year metal veteran. He has been in charge of the site for the last few years and is responsible for its modernization and inclusion of newer bands from the "underground continuation" movement. Check out what he had to say.

When did you get interested in metal, and what interested you in it? Are you still interested in the same things?

I've been into metal since being shown works by MEGADETH and METALLICA by friends in 1993. My relationhip with metal wasn't total immediately -- I had some ancillary interest in the radio bands of the day -- but it was nearly so. The external imagery, even for this milder stuff, was almost hypnotic in combination with such visceral music. It was thrilling that something could seem to command so much power. Also a perfect outlet for adolescent testosterone, it turns out.

Within about a year I was getting through SLAYER, SEPULTURA and other bands on the mainstream fringe. Soon thereafter it was OBITUARY, DEATH, MALEVOLENT CREATION and AMORPHIS, from whom I've looked back very little since. Black metal came slightly later, despite my being aware of it around the same time -- there was still a mystery about it at that point that I managed to perpetuate for myself. The Internet at large as a tool came later still, and helped solidify what already had solid footing as far as my listening goes. Much credit goes to the Dark Legions Archive for that, but there were places like LARM! and the old USENET groups that were also very helpful.

At this point in my interest I sit somewhere between the waves of fanaticism I've experienced over time, or more likely beyond them. The peaks include my initial contact with metal, which lasted through my middle teens, and during my stint at the university, where lots of spare time and energy and a foolhardy relationship with money brought me into tape trading and regular plundering of second-hand CD shops and mailorder. I've become more reflective since reaching a saturation point, which has only partly been brought on by the constraints of adulthood. I've had the interesting experience of becoming friends with more "metalheads," many younger, since reaching maturity in metal than before; in combination with my work with the Dark Legions Archive, this has allowed me to properly frame my relationship with metal, which has been with me more than half my life.

So, metal is still very prominent in my listening diet and an important, but far from the only, component of my spare time activity. I like to think my involvement with and enjoyment of it transcends nostalgia and speaks to its lasting power both musically and culturally.

You've been Editor of the Dark Legions Archive for some time now. What's the most challenging part of the job? What do you hope to accomplish as editor?

The most challenging part, unfortunately, is simply finding the time and discipline to keep things in line and to produce content. The vastness of what is left to write about is staggering, even with the decades of information that has been accumulated on the site to date. This presents another problem: there's a need for intuitive organization of this material, along with design updates and needs in other realms that would generally be the dominion of others were we to have the luxury of more contributors and a broader hierarchy.

With time, my wish is that the Dark Legions Archive will continue to be a destination for intelligent metal on the Internet, and a legitimate archive for the best that metal had and still has to offer in all guises. The readability and depth of the site would make it a primary axis of information for the neophyte, seasoned listener and curious academic alike.

The site seems to advocate a belief that underground death metal and black metal are derived from European Romanticism. Do you agree with this? Why or why not?

Certainly. I think Romanticism can be seen from metal's first rumblings onward, but the underground really excels in the Nietzschean, lionized form of it, one that is much more palpable and less literary. And, like Nietzsche, both genres often seem to be unaware that they shine like Romantics even in their condemnation (or complete ignorance) of them.

In underground metal, there is a youthful coalescence of seemingly disparate ideas, a syncretism. These are rooted in themes of heroism, warfare, death, the beyond, history, endtimes -- indulgent glimpses into worlds beyond the individual and the dreary present, and far from merely temporal or personal concerns. The approach is boundless and powerful, and the music matches. It would be a tricky exercise to avoid calling all of this "Romantic."

How long has the Dark Legions Archive been around? Where do you hope it is in five years?

In primitive form, it has been around since the late 1980s (an e-text newsletter, of sorts), but it has been in the familiar (maybe too familiar? We need to update our graphics) Web form since 1993. Since then it has gone through various iterations, spawned multiple forums, radio, a blog, an e-zine, has been spurned by endless vitriol and caused endless inspiration, and still continues strongly to this day.

I'll be more than disappointed if it doesn't manage to do the same for the next five years, at least. As I alluded to above, I also hope it can come to serve as something of the following:

• A museum, of sorts, for casual passers-by, complete with underground metal musical exhibits and historical documentation
• A semi-literary archive suited for study and pleasure for the more established or more sympathetic visitors; a trusted source of intelligent information on this music to be read, cited, internalized, meme-ified, abused and disseminated
• A source for cultural inquiry for all

What are your personal favorite types of metal and bands? Has this changed over the years?

I'll always admit quickly to liking death metal as a whole above everything else. Black metal certainly gets second bill, and probably captures the best of my imagination in its finest moments, but I trained myself early to listen to it with such reverence that I rarely pull it out for short trips, with friends or in other venues where a lot of my listening occurs.

The sheer variability of death metal, both in the musical sense and as a genre, is exactly what makes it the most compelling for me; minor geographic distance, for instance, played such a larger role in the aesthetics and morphology than it did with (second-wave) black metal, which travelled so quickly and was by virtue easier to emulate without most of death metal's rhythmic and technical demands.

It may just be my analytic mind working regarding death metal; black metal provides excellent space for abstract thought, but (I find) less of the visceral and intellectual pleasure in it on average. And since these preferences have changed suprisingly little over a long time, it may also just be that I'm an obstinate soul -- I certainly wouldn't discount that.

How many people come through the Dark Legions Archive, and would you describe them as typical metal fans?

My numbers aren't precise, but certainly on the order of thousands per month. Judging by the random messages received, users on our Metal Hall forum and people I've met, I think the cross section of users is suprisingly diverse.

The most vocal ones tend to be one of two types, one being highly sympathetic and the other highly critical -- not too different from my experience elsewhere.

The sympathetic folks are often intelligent, though may lack subtlety and are sometimes wet-behind-the-ears when it comes to the music. They've felt a connection with the music and the site and are following it through, often without regard for the "social" consequences the site engenders as a result.

The detractors are often bitter. Their common assertion is that this site is ruining things with seriousness, which I will never buy, though it may spring from their observations of their diametrical counterparts in the wild. Any validity their notions may carry is typically lost in their resentment.

I'd like the DLA to speak to those in the center, who are quietly and thoughtfully taking in the ideas of the site and enjoying the music free of negative posturing or intellectual grandstanding. If we can run the site to better manage this I think we'll have accomplished something important.

What are the most exciting things -- bands, movements, ideas -- going in metal today?

The sum of my knowledge of metal from the last five years is almost nil, except for where older acts persist. That bands are surfacing from 10-15 years ago and creating again, with a renewed sense of mission in some cases, is probably the single most promising development. Some who never disappeared seem reinvigorated just the same.

That said, I have no faith the idea of forced revivalism. The fact that most of the solid stuff is being done by old-timers does not bode well for the very long term, but could prove interesting for the next three to five years if the quality of recent BEHERIT or IMMOLATION can be matched.

Movements and ideas: has anything new been explored recently? Again, I only have vague, peripheral knowledge of current trends. The second wave of "retro-thrash" is a particularly embarrassing one, and it dates me that I remember the original. I wish I could say I am missing the mark hopelessly, but intuition says not.

If you were made ruler of the world, what would you do to advance metal?

The best one could do to make metal vibrant would be to make it necessary to work for it again. A generation of underground metal is currently passing into middle age; it would be great to install the ones who aren't completely mentally burnt out or drug-withered on a council of some sort, which mentors promising talent and keeps the rest at bay. Canonical works would be celebrated in this spirit and used as a watermark. Random cage matches and gunfights could help eliminate the meekest or least experienced.

However, I think what I would not do would be to sterilize it through formalization or normalization. I would hate to see it become a mere relic, more bureaucracy than living system.

Or it may just be more efficient to foster the development of a limited, more intelligent population and let the chips fall where they may with everything else.

What has been your personal favorite moment or high point as Editor of the Dark Legions Archive? What would be your dream interview, or experience, in that capacity?

Simply to be trusted to head the site after many years of reading is a great compliment. I never thought I would actually be contributing a review of my own to those mysterious expositions that seemed so cryptic to me when the 'net was a new experience.

Other than that, I've been able to help with a lot of great interviews; IMMOLATION and BEHERIT, the latter having been his first for many years, come to mind as the most recent experiences. Being able to read the well articulated and genuinely interesting thoughts of people whose music you've admired for so long is a fantastic feeling when disappointment at the brash or uninspired personalities in metal, even with good music to back it up, is more the norm.

That summarizes my dream "experience" as well: to have metal, though the Dark Legions Archive, finally start to seem to many others like it has to me for so many years of my life. I can only hope to help carry that through together with the talent of SR Prozak and the other friendly contributors to the site, who have done more than I can ever imagine.