Nixil Pursue Gnosis and Curse Fascists on "From the Wound Spilled Forth Fire" (Interview)

As any fan knows, black metal's exploration of evil sometimes coincides with toxic politics. Bands interested in the occult all too often reveal themselves to also be interested in retrogressive ideas or outright chauvinism—it can be a tiring process to separate the corpse-painted wheat from the chaff.

Enter Nixil.

Working with weapons from the trve black metal arsenal—elaborate stagecraft, anti-establishment sentiment, a sincere interest in the occult—while standing firm in antifascism and a commitment to playing live, the Baltimore five-piece made minor waves with All Knots Untied and a busy touring schedule in 2021 and 2022. The band is returning later this month with their second full-length and Prosthetic records debut, From the Wound Spilled Forth Fire, and it builds on Nixil's punk-informed black metal in harrowing ways.

The album consists of six punishing tracks including singles "Collapsing the Poles" and "Abyss to Abyss." From the Wound Spilled Forth Fire is rich with detail from beginning to end, with each song clocking in between six and a half and eight minutes. Nixil pack every moment with riffs, fills and lead vocalist C's spectral howl. The album has exquisite dramatic timing, with melee verses following chanted bridges and swells of dueling guitars. In sum, this is "traditional" black metal done right and without the taint of noxious politics.

That extends to the record's conceptual framework. C maintains a strong interest in gnosticism and magick, and From the Wound Spilled Forth Fire delves into their anticosmic explorations, which form the foundation for Nixil's lyrics and live show. The band even brought the occult into the studio through an impromptu ceremony before recording closer "The Way Is the Grave."

I spoke to C and Nixil bassist and backing vocalist Aurora about antifascism in black metal, the occult, the band's visual elements and From the Wound Spilled Forth Fire, which is out August 25. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

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Before we get into the record itself, let's talk about the state of black metal. Nixil is avowedly antifascist in a time when lots of bands feel compelled to pick sides—what prompted you to stake out that ideological territory, and how does that reflect what's happening in your music?

C: At least for a couple of us, we've been in the fight against fascism for a long, long time, most of our lives in some cases. Some of us have been involved in anarchist organizing and stuff like that. It's just obvious—fascism is insidious and totally asinine. The whole concept is just mind-blowingly stupid, and the fact that it's rearing its ugly head so obviously and without fear these days made it feel important to us to state outright that we don't want anything to do with that. It's so insidious in black metal culture in general. People are either indifferent to it or "pro-it," but really a lot of people who say they're pro-fascism are just trying to be fucking dumbass edgelords because it seems edgy or scary without looking at what the real ramifications of that concept are.

Aurora: It is scary, though, but it's not aesthetically scary; it's life-threateningly, universe-threateningly actually scary. Something we've talked about a lot is that folks don't tend to take things to their logical conclusion. [They] can sport these symbols and walk away scot-free without recognizing that it actually has a huge impact on people's lives and safety and the future in general. I do want to say we don't talk about politics overtly in our music at all. That's kind of why, at least for me, it's felt important to say that we're a group of antifascist people. There's a lot of cryptofascist imagery with music and gross dog whistles, and people don't come out one way or the other, or just say "we're apolitical." Thematically, our music and art are officially "apolitical," but it's not about politics; it's about self-defense, and that seems like a no-brainer to me. Fascism is fucking bad. People who espouse an image like that also aren't necessarily the type of people who end up on top if fascism does take over.

So as far as the thematic underpinnings of the new record, what are you all working with?

C: Most of the lyrics and imagery are based on my spiritual and magickal practices, which, broadly, are termed chaos-gnostic. There's a strong association with what people call anticosmic satanism, but I don't use those terms overtly mostly because so many black metal bands do and don't know what the fuck they're talking about. It's just a big veneer people put on. I choose to express my gnosis and understanding of this work through terms that are not painted in such common structures. Every song sans "In Thrall," which that is directly cursing those of the fascist milieu, all the other songs [on From the Wound Spilled Forth Fire] are based on experiences I've had in doing this work. Aurora: As a person who doesn't write the lyrics, something we tend to fall back on is that the concepts are really about liberation—whatever that means—and breaking through systems of oppression, whether they're esoteric, spiritual, literal political systems of oppression or even the things within ourselves that hold us back. That's kind of the concept of our first single, which was "Collapsing the Poles."

I wanted to ask about "Collapsing the Poles" specifically, because at first I imagined it being something like a colossal revival tent collapsing on itself.

C:The symbolism inherently the magnetic concept. It's the idea that everything in our world exists on a spectrum, and in order to move freely, realistically you need to be nothing instead of an identification with something. So the idea is collapsing the "as above, so below" concept into a nothingness instead of always being a reflection of the universe around you, or of God as a demiurgic existential concept. Basically, in this work, you recognize that, at all times, you are a reflection of that concept until you start breaking it down and attempting not to be it anymore. That's what "Collapsing the Poles" is supposed to entail. It sounds like Nixil has had some shifts in lineup. How did this play into recording From the Wound Spilled Forth Fire live, where everything is kind of happening all at once?

Aurora: We've always recorded live. We did with the first album, too. I think it's kind of hearkening back to most of our punk backgrounds—the idea of having to do single-tracking to a click just doesn't really flow for us. We also identify ourselves as being a live band. Our live shows have always been the most important piece of all of it for us, where we connect with folks the most and engage with the music the most, so being able to harness that energy in a studio space has always really been important. We worked with Jay Robbins on this album and the last album. He's got this super beautiful punk-rock pedigree from being in Jawbox. As for the lineup change, the four of us—myself, C and our drummer [guitarist] Shane—have been together since the beginning, and our new-not-really-new guitarist Alden has been with us pretty much since we first started playing live. It was a really natural kind of synchronistic connection. He's pretty rad.
I recently interviewed James Plotkin about his music and mastering work. What was he able to do for this album's sound?

Aurora: Having been in a bunch of bands that have recorded in various ways and put things out on vinyl, he is the person that I always go to for mastering because he knows how to do bass so well. That's never lost on vinyl, and for me, that's been super rare, being the bassist… He's a super-prolific and amazing musician. Working with J. Robbins vs. James [Plotkin], they have such a different energy. J. in the studio is very laid back and kind of just does whatever and will throw out ideas, and before [recording] the last song on the record, we ended up doing this in-studio ritual with some things that happened to be lying around, and he was involved in that, and it was again very synchronistic. Working with James, mastering is a lot more of a technical procedure or process skill—he just is so good at finding little nuances and bringing things out.

One important part of the album is how it's presented to the public. How do you work on the visual aspect of your releases, and what will it look like when you take this record on the road?

C: The visual aspect just kind of came to me at one point. I painted the cover art. It's also a visual representation of everything that the album is about.

Aurora: I'll say, too, that there's an insert that our drummer Key did, and our guitarist Shane is a photographer and videographer—he did a shoot with Max Cavalera for Decibel, I believe, and there's a crazy outtake photo that Max wasn't in, when was prepping the space with smoke, and for whatever reason [Shane] doubled [the exposure], and having doubled it you could see all these figures coming out of the smoke. That's what became the back cover of the record. The four of them [the other members of Nixil] are all very prolific visual artists.

C: We all work together really well as far as our visual art… we didn't approach this record's album art saying, "this record is going to be about fire, and all the visuals are going to be fire;" they just kind of synchronistically came out that way. That's always how we've worked—we have a strong connection to each other, and through connection to the other side, that which is bigger, we are offered synchronicities that help us move forward and express ourselves in that way. As far as live, we have changed lighting a little bit to reflect the color scheme of the album art. Other than that, we've played with some ideas, but nothing is finalized yet.

Aurora: We have always tried to create a really dense atmosphere live using fog, light, weird color, shadows that kind of thing. That's always been important and will continue to be. We have some other grand ideas, but we'll see how that pans out.

What do you have on the calendar for the album release and this coming fall?

Aurora: We have our record release show in Baltimore—we're opening for Sacramentum and Crossspitter, and I am very, very excited about that. I'm a huge fan of Melissa Moore and all of her projects, and also Sacramentum. I guess it's their first US tour, so that's gonna be pretty rad. The actual record release weekend, August 24 and 25, we're going to be up in Rochester and New Jersey, [and we have] a nine-date tour of Northeast starting at the end of September going into October.

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From the Wound Spilled Forth Fire releases today via Prosthetic Records.