Reclaiming Wlad Drakksteim's Lost Kingdom (Interview)

In 2006 I was living in Brooklyn and I asked someone at a record store if they had anything by Prurient, who I'd heard about but had never actually heard. The guy said he didn't but 'the Prurient guy owns a record store, on 3rd St in Manhattan. at the back of Jammyland, down the hole'. So I went to this reggae store called Jammyland and sure enough in the back of the store there was a small hole in the floor with noise blasting out, and I descended a ladder and was in a small black room face to face with an intense young man behind the counter named Dominick. We got to talking and he was serious, peculiar, and very funny, and Hospital became my favorite place in New York for a couple of years. Dom was putting out a ton of great music of his own and of others, and I got a crash course in both noise and black metal. Specifically I got pretty into Branikald, Bone Awl, Ildjarn, Skuggeheim, and Beherit, all of whom I still enjoy.

In 2007 I was playing guitar in Thurston Moore's band, and while touring the west coast we stopped at Zion's Gate, a big metal and reggae shop. Thurston and the bassist, Matt Heyner, were both big on black metal at the time and both pulled out a cd by Vlad Tepes called March To The Black Holocaust and said to me 'you need to get this, it's essential and not easy to find'. So I brought it home and instantly fell in love with it. I loved the whole vibe, it felt very noisy and punk, but moreover the songs were amazing, just epic.

One of the things I loved about the arc of the Vlad Tepes catalog was: the more sophisticated the playing became, the worse the recording quality was. Like this increasingly stunning band was just being buried alive; or like they were in too much of a hurry to get down what they were doing to bother with decent audio. I loved how the last song on their very last album ended with this sound in the background, getting louder and louder, which you eventually realize is the sound of a knife being sharpened, until it takes over the mix and - the song ends. And that's the end of the band! Such high drama. They were really not fucking around.

I got into black metal at a time when social media was really starting to rise, and the prevailing attitude seemed to be 'reach as many people as possible', and I loved that black metal seemed so secretive, so hidden. You really had to make an effort to access it. Something about that felt good to me. I didn't really know anything else about the culture; if I thought hard about it I felt like an interloper, but I didn't care, I just liked the records and tapes and cds. I was happy to enjoy it in isolation, like artifacts from another planet.

In 2008 I got the idea to make an album of acoustic guitar music that might expand some parameters of acoustic guitar. Side two is an 18 minute track of acoustic guitar going through a wall of amps and doing feedback overtones in C; side one was all 'straight' acoustic guitar, including a cover of 'Drink The Poetry of Celtic Disciple' by Vlad Tepes. It seemed their masterpiece, and I thought that transcribing all 12 minutes of it for acoustic would be challenging, fun, kind of funny, kind of badass, a little bit 'fuck you'. Hopefully not silly. It's an incredible piece of music and I wanted to do right by it. Even though I figured Vlad Tepes (were they even still alive?) would definitely never hear it. I released the album 'Canaris' as a cd, the first release on my new label, Capitan. The people who normally bought my music liked it, I think, while mostly not commenting one way or another on a Vlad Tepes cover.

Around 2013 I got an email from Wlad Drakksteim. His manner of writing was distinct and unusual, almost poetic, but what he said was: he had heard the cover, and liked it, and wanted to include it in a cd reissue that would include a couple of VT covers. Needless to say I was stunned, and flattered, but moreover had the feeling like it wasn't real, like I was communicating with a myth or a ghost. We wrote each other more. He asked if I had any other Vlad Tepes covers (!) - I told him I'd always wanted to cover 'Ravens Hike'. He kind of chuckled and said that it was based on an old Breton song. I ended up recording a not-very-good version in a studio in Australia while on tour. He included both in the compilation.

In 2015 he emailed and said he was going to take the train from Brest five hours to Paris to see me play. Could we meet for dinner, I asked? We met that night and I was breathless. He walked in and no, he was not in corpse paint, etc - he was a neatly dressed, composed French man. Dinner was surreal, very intense. I felt like we really bonded. It felt like a remarkable meeting. 

We met again at a show in Rennes in 2018, and at the Invisible Festival in 2019, where he and I had a little jam session with Thurston Moore. Last time we met was in 2022 in Rennes. He wanted me to go in the studio with him at midnight, after a Come show, but I was too tired and had to leave early the next day. 

He's become a friend. I hope we can maybe make music together at some point, but if not that's ok too. In this sense, he's like a number of musicians I've befriended over the years. I admire his work, and respect both his legacy and the privacy that's obviously important to him and I think part of that legacy. I think it's great that he's working on new music as VarvLoar1476, and would love to hear a whole album, but again it's fine if that doesn't happen. I play in a band called Codeine, who made music from 1989-1994, at which point the main songwriter, Stephen Immerwahr, stopped making new music. As a fan of Steve's songs, I wish he would make more, but I'm also okay with it being a small slice of time and body of work. I guess I feel the same way about Vlad Tepes.

–Chris Brokaw

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The Black Legions. Les Légions Noires. The mythical LLN: a sub-underground circle of bands, solo projects, and collaborations based out of the Brest area in France throughout the early-and-mid '90s (though it has roots that date back as far as the late '80s). Incomprehensible band names, a unified and heavily Xeroxed aesthetic, a con-lang called Gloatre, and countless larger than life stories ranging from demos recorded in a French castle to an ambient song based around a recording of a microphone being inserted into a (living) rat, the LLN was a whisper on the Internet for years, relegated to nerds and forum-goers (like yours truly) alike. Bootlegged tapes which were supposedly and originally limited to single-and-double digits, made for friends and compatriots only (along with properly released material on the obscure Embassy Productions) made their way onto the Internet and were met with curiosity and obsession alike. Though the LLN proper dissolved almost thirty years ago, the library of works this small handful of artists made, ranging from the rawest of black metal to the most terrifying of ambient and atmospheric recordings, remained a central source of intrigue to many.

It was Chaos (a proper noun) which drove the LLN. Chaos, Satan, and the Evil that both resulted from and fueled the aforementioned. Though the LLN is synonymous with its de facto leader Vordb (also known as Vordb Dréagvor Uèzréèvb, Thörgammaton Blackvomit, Vórdb Báthor Ecsed, Avaëtre, and, most recently, Vordb Na R.iidr), it was Vlad Tepes–named, of course, for the famed masochistic, murderous despot–who made the LLN's most breathtaking and memorable recordings. With progressions so beautiful and sinister that former Codeine drummer and Come frontman Chris Brokaw went so far as to record an entire twelve-minute epic ("Drink the Poetry of the Celtic Disciple") as a solo acoustic guitar piece, Vlad Tepes was a bit of an anomaly in the largely anti-musical LLN (save a few equally as beautiful projects. Where did you go, Lord Aäkon Këëtrëh?). When compared with Belkètre's more atonal moments and Brenoritvrezorkre's partially improvised chaos, the black metal found in Vlad Tepes' discography was melodic and, for all intents and purposes, beautiful, but the intent was certainly not there.

In interviews, Vlad Tepes was more interested in evil and the romanticizing of it, but, most importantly, they were interested in maintaining an air of mystery, both avoiding direct answers and keeping their own identities shrouded in confusion and uncertainty. Even now, the human names for Wlad and Vorlok Drakksteim (at the time assumed to be brothers, but have since been revealed to have been "artistic brothers" rather than actually related) are rumored but never confirmed. During a time of conflict and pugnaciousness in the black metal underground by artists and budding journalists/zine writers alike, it was in Kill Yourself Zine that what would now be called a "doxxing attempt" was made against the Drakksteim duo, featuring full names and mailing addresses alike (this was also done to Vordb!). In return, the infamous rumor has it that Vlad Tepes both threatened to kill Full Moon Productions proprietor/Kill Yourself Zine editor Jon and also mailed him a box filled with dead rats. Evil. There are so many more Vlad Tepes stories that either are or are not true, and the A Catharsis for Human Illness discography box set lays them all bare in a comprehensive zine (if you can find a copy), but rehashing the past is not why we are here today.

Vlad Tepes went the way of many demo-only black metal projects in the '90s: they got tired and subsequently broke up, apparently in or around 1997 (complete with never-before-heard demos which date that far, at least according to Vordb's now-defunct Kaleidarkness site). Then, nothing. The years came and went, the rumors and legends becoming more ridiculous over time. I mean, a microphone in a rat? A castle? Who is to say whether or not these are real, and the artists behind the legends are none too willing to reveal the truths or lies behind them. The LLN is an anachronism in that sense: its creators maintain their credo and remain in the past, never willing to let Modernity take what they crafted.

It was a great surprise to see someone who was supposedly half of Vlad Tepes in an Instagram post over a decade and a half after my obsession with the LLN first began, let alone a photo with Sonic Youth co-songwriter and black metal obsessive Thurston Moore. There was even a photo of Wlad jamming as part of a guitar trio with Moore and the aforementioned Chris Brokaw. Though this happened a couple years after a band-sanctioned reissue series on French label Drakkar Productions (and later on Black Gangrene Productions), an LLN-related label dating back to the Circle's heyday, a clear photo of someone who was essentially a ghost for two decades at that point was… it was unexpected.

Suddenly, everything was available again. No more bootleg LPs I happened upon at Metal Haven and eBay, and it was all at the hands of a reactivated Wlad Drakksteim (Vorlok has yet to be heard from, and it is unlikely that we will ever have the privilege). Now semi-newly active with a new project he calls VarvLoar1476, Wlad returns to reclaim the throne he never got to sit in back in the '90s. In a very rare new interview, Wlad discusses life beyond Vlad Tepes and what it was like to return to a kingdom he abandoned.

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What made you want to come out of underground music retirement? What was it like "resurrecting" the Wlad Drakksteim identity?

Hi Jon, first of all thank you for this interview. I generally don't respond to the many interview offers I receive because I don't think I have anything interesting to tell about my distant past. All the questions I usually get asked are about the Vlad Tepes/LLN (Les Légions Noires) era and all the fakes going around... Guys, this was all 30 years ago! It's time to let go. There is no (legitimate) information that is not already available today to those who are eager to know.

Well, what made me want to come out of underground music retirement? I think it was around 2012/2013. That was the time when I really (belatedly, even though I already knew something like that was happening in those years, but not to that extent) discovered all the Internet buzz that grew in the 2000s, all the bootleg madness, the prices madness, the lack of respect. All of this made me decide that it was time to properly collect all of Vlad Tepes' works and publish them as they could (should?) have been published to the faithful in due time, even though it really wasn't the idea 15 years earlier. Times are changing and we have to adapt.

This was around the same time that Drakkar released the 2013 Vlad Tepes reissues. With the exception of War Funeral March and the March To The Black Holocaust split which resulted from the Embassy Productions deal, the other releases came from shitty cassette copies. I assume that these reissues were endorsed by Vorlok Drakksteim but it was not clear to me (to be precise, I have not had any contact with him since 1997, and to anticipate the questions that I am always asked, there's no reason, everyone has their own path in life... That's all.). These editions came out while I was working in parallel on my own reissues. So I contacted Drakkar and we agreed to release the “good” reissues a little later.

So I remixed all my 4-track masters and everything was released the following years by Drakkar & Black Gangrene. Another reason was that I found Vordb again after 15 years of losing contact when he launched his first site Kaleidarkness. All of the above initiated a new time of emulation for me.

The identity of “Wlad Drakksteim” never disappeared for me. It was always hiding in a corner of my mind despite everything that was happening in my life, we could talk about my own psychology but that would touch on very personal points which must remain only mine.

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Did you ever actually stop making underground style music since Vlad Tepes' ending?

Yes, after the circle ended in 1997, I stopped any active creation of music and art in general because I no longer needed it. All of this was interrupted, but still hidden in the back of my mind, as I explained above. I had a few unused riffs that survived the end of Vlad Tepes and bounced around in my mind for years, some that I eventually played in my later project VarvLoar1476.

I created the latter when I was working on my old Vlad Tepes masters. Coming back to these old pieces reignited the little flame that was hiding in my mind, so I started composing again from 2013 until today and so on... Drop by drop, like a poison slowly paralyzes its prey .

What continues to interest you about black metal?

I'm not really interested in Black Metal any more than the other styles I grew up with. I'm still on my old classics and I don't make much effort to move away from them. The only Black Metal that can interest me today is that made by people with whom I am in contact and who know how to explain their approach, their sincerity, the goal of their music and of course, the music must touch me. On top of that, the world is too big and cannot be fully explored. I let it come and I take what can impress me, Black Metal or not.

But if your question is why do I play this kind of music? That's what I do. I don't tell myself that I play Black Metal. It's not important anymore and I'm not here to tell people what to do. Humanity is a self-made and self-destructive species, so be it.

You have a new project that has a few demos up on Bandcamp and a new split release announced on Those Opposed Records. What can you tell me about VarvLoar1476?

It's not that new, I created the name around 2013/14, when I was working on Vlad Tepess reissues. “Varv Loar” simply means “Morte Lune” (Dead Moon) in the Breton language, it fits perfectly as a spiritual continuation of what I have done on my previous projects. As explained above, creativity came back to me so I started recording some stuff without a real plan, using old unused riffs, creating new ones, hence my low production rate. As for Vlad Tepes, I don't do that for others, neither fame nor glory. This project doesn't have any ambition other than my own expression, an interface for my relation to my surroundings and my feelings about it, for my own sake. Anyway, I am making it freely available to the few interested. I've been asked a lot about physical releases, maybe one day if enough material is recorded some sort of compilation of it all might come out if I don't die first... Who lives will see. I still have a lot of rough material to record but I'm just following what I think needs to be done. The last track I made,
"Noyant Les Masses," was requested by Ur Èmdr Œrvn from Avsolutized [and Arkha Sva, among many other projects] to appear on the split-CD N.O.I.R. III which was released recently with Those Opposed records. So, Ur being an old friend, I prioritized this for him.

Overall, this project is the reminiscence of that “Wlad Drakksteim” part in my mind that will never go away. Composing, recording for it is like going into a trance, like a journey through time where nothing else matters. I always come back purified from these sessions, these are transcendent rituals to my condition of being organic trapped in a physical sum of atoms and electrical reactions... Or what we can call the soul, which is beyond all this matter.

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VarvLoar1476 released a re-recorded version of Vlad Tepes song "Frozen Dead's Kingdom." What made you want to revisit this song in particular?

Around 2015/2016 I was in contact with Rebecca who ran her online Metal clothing store called Hellcouture (she still does in fact). At the time, she was making one-shot clothes for Vlad Tepes. At one point she had the idea of putting out a compilation of the bands she was doing merch with and she asked me for a Vlad Tepes track.

Instead of giving her another old thing, I decided to make a new version of "Frozen Dead's Kingdom". In the end, the compilation was never released but that's another story. Still, the song was finished.

I chose this track because it's the first one I composed entirely for Vlad Tepes, without older riffs. Additionally, I felt like the original Vlad Tepes releases didn't deliver the full potential of the riffs due to the "exceptional technical recording conditions" we had at the time in 1994. I was satisfied with that point with the new recording, it represented very well the sounds I wanted it to render in 2016.

How do you view the work you created in your youth? What do you strive to create now?

My youth was a complicated period, a permanent struggle against myself and the world around me, feelings of hatred, sadness, loss, an alignment of the plates of Reason which provoked the meeting of the members of the Circle, then Brothers, in our same dissonant feelings, provoking an emulation leading to a spiral of destruction of the limits imposed by, you name it, humanity, society, religion, the state, the family... This is how my work was created to express what I was experiencing, avoiding my self-destruction. This spiral ended like a star collapsing in on itself to a black hole when all my confused feelings collapsed into oblivion. A monster slain, a catharsis.
It took me many years and a lot of stepping back to deal with it all again to finally master it and everything it meant to me. But as twisted as it may sound, it was a solid foundation for the person I am today and what I have been striving to create for over three decades now. It's a well-balanced mix of all the feelings that burned in me at the time but adding my experience to it and making it stronger. But my only desire is to follow what the cosmos has in store for me. So no one knows, but whoever survives will have to endure it…

Though I know he is a rabid black metal fan, I was surprised to see your photo taken with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. How did you two meet? Were you happy to see this photo of you published?

I have a friend in Brest, namely Arnaud Le Gouëfflec, who discovered during the 2000s in New Noise magazine that Thurston Moore was a big fan of the "Légions Noires, a BM collective based in Brest in the nineties." At this time, Arnaud had never heard of these Légions Noires even though he lived in Brest for two decades. He unsuccessfully tried to find clues about them for many years until he met one of my acquaintances at their respective daughters' school fair. Around the conversation, they came to talk about Black Metal and Arnaud's obsession for LLN, always running in the background of his mind for years. Mind which exploded when my acquaintance told him he knew me! Arnaud finally found something hot, a contact, mine (never underestimate what can happen in school fairs...). It was in 2015. So I met a stressful man at first but meeting after meeting, we talked and exchanged a lot about music and many other topics until today (We even recorded a strange project together this year as a four-men chaotic orchestra. To come some day, sooner or later...).

At one time, Arnaud being the organizer of “Le Festival Invisible'', a music/art festival about outsider artists taking place every year in Brest since 2005, asked me if he could organize a meeting between me and Thurston Moore and kill two birds with one stone hit, by having Thurston play at the festival. This is what happened in November 2018.

Of course, I don't like being exposed publicly because it goes against my approach, anyway you can't control everything. But who knows? Is that really me in these pictures… Ha ha!

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I understand you recorded music as a trio with Thurston Moore and Codeine/Come's Chris Brokaw. Will this ever see the light of day? How did this project come to be in the first place?

No, we just jammed together as old "garage teenagers" during the above-mentioned meeting, nothing was recorded except for a few private video excerpts of the session and some pictures, but not worth being released. Nothing to see, move along.

How did you get back in contact with Vordb? What is it like creating music together now as opposed to the LLN days?

I found by chance his early Kaleidarkness website so we could get in contact again after 15 years. Then we exchanged a lot but didn't create much together. The few we recorded were finishing a Vzaéurvbtre piece begun in 1995 and a Vèrmibdrèb one from 1996. But I guess that we acted the same as 20 years earlier, except that the hardware wasn't anymore a Fostex 4-tracks or some tape recorder. Not much more to say about it…

What are your thoughts on current black metal? Do you pay attention at all?

Not really except for very few exceptions. There is certainly some worthy stuff around, but I don't search for it because my feeling is that the "underground" (if this word still means something) is drowned under tons of garbage. Everyone today seems to have a "Black Metal" project, uninteresting, just kill yourself and save me bandwidth, it's being years since the train passed, you missed it. Invent something else, something new before the internet/social network era sterilizes every creativity, rebel against your time!

On the other hand, the easily available stuff is mostly popular, commercial plastic-sounding and boring cash-grabbing nonsense. I already have plenty of old meaningful stuff to listen to everyday 'till my death and beyond (and some more recent too, but a lot less...) so I don't need more. I'm conscious that I sound like an old fart, but I'm grateful for being from my generation and not from what came after... Poor kids.

I was once told you were to join the now-defunct band Zépülkr [Editor's Note: Zépülkr is now known as Sépulcre] on drums. Was this true? Did you ever end up recording anything with this band?

I never played drums for Zépülkr because I'm an untrained drummer, but I did vocals, guitars and lyrics for the late album Héritrage Posthume, then Khräss stopped the project. He told me years ago that one of the goals of this project was to pay homage to his influences (naming Vlad Tepes and Peste Noire among others) and to get a collaboration as a cherry on the cake. Finally, he got Famine helping on his first album Nécrofrancie and myself on his second and posthumous album.

Vordb has told me he hasn't been in contact with Lord Aäkon Këëtrëh for some time–similarly, are you in contact with Vorlok at all?

Not at all since 1997. And not searching for it. He lives his life, I live mine and that's perfect this way. We did what we had to do together and we parted ways with no hard feelings.

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The A Catharsis for Human Illness box set came with a pretty extensive zine which tells the full Vlad Tepes story (which is why I'm not asking you about that band). That being said, what was revisiting the Vlad Tepes days like for that project?

This box is well named. Vlad Tepes was a catharsis and, as I exposed earlier in this interview, it doesn't represent the happiest part of my life. So coming back to it was like some exorcism. I also had the goal to settle all this, for me but also for the devotees by delivering thems the best aspect of what it was as Art and music, a testimony for each and every one of them. I know today against all odds, through many messages I got since, that this music left a strong impression on many people. So this is my mark of respect to them. That being said, the Vlad Tepes matter is clearly settled for me now.

There are many tales and legends surrounding the LLN, and sometimes even fake bands made by trolls or misinterpreted by superfans from LLN-obsessed places like the streetmetal forum (if you ever saw that). What has it been like watching your old antics become something larger than life? Do you pay attention to things like this?

It was partly why I decided to reissue my projects properly. I could have chosen to let it be in the hands of unrespectful or greedy people. But ask yourself, if it was yours, what would you do ? Leave it like that or take it back ? I choose to handle it back and you know the rest.

About the tales and legends, where's the fun without some mystery?.. Some were true, some not…

What in your opinion makes music evil or evil sounding? What records would you consider evil or evil sounding?

Odd question... The tritone chord!

Joking aside, it depends on what one considers being evil. That's a matter of point of view. To quote famous Black Metal examples : Immortal's first album (their best by far) sounds cold and evil to me, but Abbath seems to be the warmest and most friendly guy around. Similar to Darkthrone, some evil sounding incredible stuff, but Fenriz is so lovable and fun, ha ha. Well, in fact, evil is lovable. What's important is what you bring as an artist, what you express, what your goal is. It also depends on the listener's receptiveness. It has to match on both sides and then, sparkles happen!

Talking about Metal and evil, Bathory's The Return...... comes first in my mind. Music spectrum is so wide in the feelings it can provide (and it clearly shouldn't be bordered on evil)... But to answer the question, I could quote such opposite works from Ahpdegma, Diamanda Galas, Slayer, Zero Kama, Deicide, Sister Iodine and go on and on... Some Black Legions projects too, ha ha…

The music you made in your youth has left quite a legacy with many "wannabes" and soundalikes trying to capitalize on the Vlad Tepes sound and aesthetic. What would you say to these people if you were given the chance?

I would tell them to identify their limits, to ask them why they stick on being "wannabes" or copycats. Ask them what their goal really is and explode it all! Transcend it and make it yours, express yourself, don't be a mirror, break it

Or maybe they just can't... Sorry for them. My advice then would be for them to be eco-friendly and kill themselves... And save me bandwidth once and for all!

Here I will leave the floor open to you: is there anything you would like to say that we haven't covered already?

The floor being opened, I'll get directly to my cave and record the next VarvLoar1476 piece (or not), witnessing the world's collapse, waiting for it to end at last.

Thanks Jon.

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Vlad Tepes material is available mostly aftermarket, but can be found at a variety of distributors. I recommend checking The Metal Detektor or Discogs. VarvLoar1476 CDs are available exclusively from Those Opposed Records.