A survey of Totschläger: a saintslayer’s songbook by Abigor. Chapter I
The Old Conception of Black MetalDISCLAIMER I: This survey was written by The Old Conception of Black Metal with an intention to publish it in print. Pre-orders are open, we’re looking forward to 100 pre-orders which will be collected during June–July 2022, to see if there is a necessity for the survey to exist on paper. If we do not collect the mentioned amount, all the pre-orders will be canceled and the money refunded. Sponsors may contact us via tocobm@protonmail.com
DISCLAIMER II: Some information presented in the survey has never been revealed by Abigor publicly. Following a number of reasonable standards of journalism on the night of May 28–29, 2022, which was one week ago (now is the night of June 5–6), we provided the main characters of the chapter with its text, and invited to make comments. As of this writing, no comments followed. With a few additions to the original version, we publish the full text of the chapter here.
Totschläger is the latest full-length record by Abigor. Its eleven pieces are presented in nine audio tracks, lasting circa 51 minutes. The first chapter of our survey was supposed to deal with observing the “dress” of the music — the artwork, design and typography — particularly of the vinyl release. Unexpectedly, but necessarily, this observation led through a deeper understanding of the creation of Abigor’s earlier work — Leytmotif Luzifer — consequently blowing the text into a longread with traits of a detective story. Thus, we will have to publish the design and typography review later as a separate chapter, since its length has turned out to be as voluminous as that of the artwork. The music chapter will be the third one. As to the concluding chapter — the fourth — we invite Abigor band members and all the names mentioned in this survey to write it themselves to be added to the body of this survey and to be published by us.
Chapter I
Guided by the nameless
By design and musically, too, Totschläger has strong bonds with Leytmotif Luzifer (hereinafter as LL), the band’s 2014 album. Not only it was declared in broad terms in the press-release on the World Terror Committee (releasing record label) bandcamp:
…this is the same fully developed outfit here which brought you the powerful wall-of-sound assault of Leytmotif Luzifer — and maybe, this is the best way to superficially describe Abigor’s 2020 recording…
but the suspicion for that was as well provoked by the album cover — the manner of painting, as well as the design patterns, closely related, left little doubt that the work had been done by the same hand(s) and eyes.
We start with knowing something about the LL cover (described later), and perfectly nothing about that of Totschläger. There are no album credits at all on LL, and in the whole Totschläger design the only names we find are the band members’ old seals: PK, Silenius and TT. (The seals have been occasionally appearing since at least as early as 1998 Structures of Immortality 7-inch.)
None of the band members were ever known as painters, hence it seemed natural to perform a sort of an investigation to find out who had done what in the layout. The course of investigation is presented here as it progressed, even though it had started from an unlucky point and went with a number of detours.
Seek?—Look around.
In the end of 2013, when it was already known that Silenius was somehow back in Abigor, Summoning revealed on their facebook page that the original painting used as the LL front cover was twice taller than TT himself, i.e. the size of the painting was approximately 2×3.35 meters.
Such huge a painting would be a problem to hide. An artist who is capable of creating art of such a scale would hardly resist the temptation to display it publicly. Knowing not if it had ever been exhibited, it was still obvious that the painting had remained at least for a while in a sort of a basement-gallery: the walls on the photos indicate the basement, and the floor being clean and polished links to a public space.
Additionally, on the right in the second photo some lamped stands are seen, presumedly the stands with information for the visitors. But miscellaneous combinations of image-googling the painting or its fragments with or without keywords brought no luck — zero additional information could be found.
For a moment it seemed the gallery was the Kasematten in Wiener Neustadt (a small town 40 miles south from Abigor’s current hometown of Vienna, Austria) but the walls in the Kasematten and on the photo with the painting showed architectural differences, and a further research did reveal that the Kasematten gallery was opened a few years later than the photographs had been taken. For a while, our investigation only proved that the sole purpose of the painting’s existence was to appear on the LL cover. But, honestly, could it be possible that it was painted by any of the band-members?
The painting provoked more questions. For example, why were some paper notes glued to it?
(These paper notes could also be seen on the earliest demonstration of the LL cover.)
Or, why was the lower half of the painting unfinished, and used in that very state on the album?
In the past 8–9 years a few names appeared in Abigor’s and TT’s media in connection with the visual aspects of the band’s releases. Francesco Gemelli and Brian VDP, both mentioned just once — their collaboration with Abigor was primarily within the clothing department (designing a hooded zipper); an examination of a larger scope of their work suggests their primary tool is the computer rather than a painting brush.
Irrwisch was probably involved in Abigor’s activities more than once since he belongs to a circle of band members’ friends, but only a single piece of evidence is at hand — in the booklet to Höllenzwang, the 2018 Abigor album, where he is mentioned among the initials of other “supporters”, namely DZ, LFK and RK. (With the help of TT’s publicly open friends list on facebook we correctly decode one name of the right person out of the three, who will help us soon.) Still, again, Irrwisch is also of the computer gild, rather than of that of the painting brush.
Finally, Mr. Ben Zodiazepin (Ben Havlicek) was mentioned many times in the past eight years as an executive in the layout and typography department: his is the “brilliant work of layouter”, he is the one who “put all possible time & energy in the layout of LL and many other visual bits & pieces done for Abigor in 2014”, he also contributed to the aforementioned zipper, and his was the “ongoing layout support”— all in connection with LL-related products. Speaking of the 6LP box, TT says “the huge research work of Mr. Ben Zodiazepin” could allow them to use “each and every original font used in the old CD booklets”. And the Höllenzwang album booklet says it was “visually realised by Ben H”. Additionally, Ben uploaded a fragment of the Totschläger artwork without the logo and title, and in the highest resolution available online. It suggests that he at least had access to the source materials for the album design.
The unrelated to Abigor examples of Ben’s work though do not reveal anything close to paintings of 2×3.5 meters in size, as those are mainly digital photography and not too big linocuts — the latter linking to a possibility of his involvement in the smaller illustrations which accompany the lyrics in the LL and Totschläger album booklets.
Thus, we consider it a fact that Ben Havlicek created the typography and compiled the layouts of some of Abigor albums, but we have neither 100% proof that he did it for Totschläger, too, nor that he was or was not the painter of the covers’ artworks.
“Wood quarter”
Imhotep zine no. 11 contains a series of deeper interviews with Abigor. Addressing this source was the turning point in the investigation. In the chapter “666 — the temptations of Luzifer” TT says:
From bandphotos to cover to booklet illustration, everything was done in a monastery in Austria’s “wood quarter”.
Google-translation of the English wood quarter into the German Holzviertel did not help. Assuming that by wood the German-speaking mind of TT meant Wald, and googling Waldviertel — voila! — we discovered a location in Lower Austria. Adding the keywords monastery, kloster and keller (German for monastery and cellar) to the google-search we discovered the name of the monastery — Benediktinerstift Altenburg (Altenburg Abbey). Adding the right name deciphered from the initials in the Höllenzwang booklet to the name of the monastery we found what we were looking for and even more.
The brochure Paul Troger & Altenburg (Stift Altenburg, 2012) tells us everything about the creation of the cover of LL. (It is in German, but an online image-to-text service can help with extracting the texts and then — google-translate.) A painting on the cover is actually a model reconstructing a fragment of a fresco in the Altenburg Abbey. This model displays the stages of the fresco creation as it was performed by Paul Troger back in the eighteenth century. The current model was created by Andreas Gamerith (of whom a lot is written on the Stift Altenburg website) who is, as becomes clear now, the author of the LL cover.
Before returning to (or proceeding with) Totschläger, let us summarize what we know about the LL cover now. First there was a huge fresco, created in 1733, called (on Wikipedia) The apocalyptic vision of St. John:
A fragment of the original fresco scenery depicts the story from the Revelation 12:7–9. What is known as the LL cover is a creation-reproduction model (maybe 1:1 in size) showing the process of painting of a fresco with its upper part being almost finished, the middle part still in the making, and the lower part being just sketched with carved outlines for the upcoming painting process. This explains why the bottom part appears unfinished, and probably explains the nature of paper notes glued to the model — suggestion is they provide information on the process of painting and describe the state of the fresco layers because these papers appear on the borders of adjacent layers. The model was created for an anniversary event of the original fresco painter Paul Troger back in 2012.
It is impossible to say when exactly Abigor members got acquainted with this particular fragment of the fresco. It could happen anytime. Look at this 1968 two-shilling postage-stamp. (We found it on the date of publication of this chapter of the survey, when the remaining text had been written already for a while.)
The process of “dressing” LL album becomes clearer:
- There was a fresco creation-reproduction model, and it was publicly exhibited — first time presented to the public on May 1, 2012.
- Later, in July 2012, the brochure was published by Stift Altenburg with information on Paul Troger and his process of fresco creation. The brochure was co-written by Andreas Gamerith. There is no doubt Abigor members saw the brochure. Maybe they visited the exhibition in Altenburg, too, or even joined one of the few guided tours there when Mr. Gamerith explained the fresco creation process to the general public.
- In September 2013 the instrumental preview of the songs from LL was revealed together with the sketch of the cover not yet fully photoshopped as you may see the small paper notes on the fresco model there. (This may seem unimportant, but probably it is, and will be explained later in the Chapter II of the survey — the fresco model was photographed with a Canon PowerShot S95 and that photo was used for the cover.) The title of the album was revealed together with the instrumental preview (ever since it was unclear why the spelling of leytmotif had been chosen from the Turkic languages, while Luzifer stayed in German);
- The vocals were recorded in February 2014 and, theoretically around that time the illustrations for the booklet should have been created.
- In/by the end of April 2014 the illustrations for the booklet were ready and were scanned.
- On May 25, 2014 Abigor returns to Altenburg for the album photo session, shot with the same Canon camera (the date may be wrong, but there is a few unconfirmed evidence).
The booklet of Totschläger has individual illustrations placed against the lyrics of each song, just like it was done in the LL design. We don’t know yet who made the illustrations for any of the two albums, but assume that collecting more information on LL may help.
We do not know either when exactly the illustrations were created, for neither of the albums. What is clear is that the illustrations for LL were at the band’s disposal by the end of April 2014 — just before the album was sent to the pressing plant as one of the images from the series was printed on the vinyl label. (It is also not known if the artist created them based on a rough mix of the album, or the lyrics, or just descriptions provided by the band.)
At this point going through reviews on metal-archives.com and comments in facebook provided the following information which seals the written above. And it proves the investigation started from the wrong end, and it would have been wiser to address the Metal Archives and facebook earlier.
In January 2015 TT posted a photo of a picture made in the style of LL booklet illustrations. In the description he writes “Great gift I got from the man that did LL’s artwork (cover, booklet & labelprint)...” In the bottom left we notice the name of the artist: A. Gamerith. Imagine, how seeing this before would have made our research easier.
In the comments he adds: “he’s actually art historian specialised in baroque sacral art” and “therefore we had access to the many studies (of movement and light and such) and sketches, which I often (in most cases) prefer over the pompous ‘finished’ full colour frescos and paintings…”
A Totschläger reviewer writes: “I actually thought that the cover was designed by Eliran Kantor, but on inquiry the band informed me that it was ‘only’ designed by an acquaintance of the band who paints and restores frescoes.”
End of story. There shall be no doubt Andreas Gamerith did paint the image used as the Totschläger cover.
Photography
Let us take a break from the cover and check the band photos. There is a certain similarity in the one used in LL and the other one in Totschläger.
The LL band photo was taken in the Altenburg Abbey. There were suspicions that on this particular LL photo the band members were photoshopped into the original abbey interior, but probably the doubts were wrong. (In the 2022 re-release of LL some yet unpublished photos from the abbey were announced, by the way.) Anyhow, why go to the Altenburg Abbey for the photo session is more-or-less clear from the LL overall visual context.
With Totschläger it is different. Again, we call into question the band members’ actual presence at the spot, which is about 870 miles away from Vienna, in Kensington Gardens, London. And the choice of the location — the Queen Caroline’s Temple — remains a mystery: seems like nothing in the context of Totschläger hints neither to the Queen, nor to her Temple in Kensington Gardens, nor to London. Generally, it looks like just another cool spot to pose for a metal trio, which, if true, would be a complete surprise, as it is not in the manner of Abigor to resort to random solutions. (Hopefully the band will reveal the meaning behind it in the last — the fourth — chapter of our survey, which they are kindly invited to {co-}write.)
Triumph of mind over vengeance of matter
While Andreas Gamerith’s work appeared among the choices for LL seemingly by accident, the cover for Totschläger is a suspected commissioned work. And of a smaller scale, as the size of the original painting may be approximately 75×50 centimeters.
If we knew what had come first in the album imagery manifestation — the complete lyrics or the finished visuals — the following story was more coherent.
Let us take TT’s own words as a starting point. Imhotep no. 11 interview:
When I listen to black metal, I take the cover, insert sheet, whatever, and even if the lyrics aren’t printed I look at the artwork right through the last note of the album.
Invisible Oranges interview published on October 23, 2014:
There should be coherence, ultimately a golden thread running through all the aspects that make an album. Ideally there’s unity, formed by the lyrics and the visual part, by the sound, language, mastering, band pictures, everything has a certain task. As opposed to other artforms, in black metal this is vital for the work…
Out of our lack of deep expertise in painted works and mythology, it seemed right to just “dismantle” the cover into plots which appeared on the surface, and juxtapose them with the lyrics. The connection wasn’t clear, thus the readers may arrive at their own conclusions and write back to T. O. C. o. B. M. a message with their clarifications.
(The words in bold are the links between the lyrics and layout.) A naked body, half-hidden behind a fiery drape (the color is mentioned in the song title “Scarlet Suite For The Devil”), same color as the flaming skies behind. The drape does resemble the clouds through which the characters of LL cover fall, too. The body is leaning backwards, as if falling on its back (“Fall from the tower into bottomless tombs” {the song “Silent Towers, Screaming Tombs”}, “To the realms behind the gates of sleep where gods fall, titans wail, saints weep” {the song “Tartaros Tides”}).
Whose is the body? The press-release says the album’s patron is “the father of archaic violence, the son of an ever-raging rebellion, the divine figure breaking the chains, devoted to the satanic virtues and forbidden paths”, “the glorious first murderer”, “the gruesome slayer”, Cain himself.
The cover makes us rightfully wonder why Cain is holding a jaw of an ungulate (mammal with hooves) in a stretched-out hand. (“Not every bone is prone to putrefaction” {Flood Of Wrath}) Searching references to jaws in the Bible brought three verses which may relate to our research:
[Proverbs 30:14, New American Standard] There is a kind of man whose teeth are like swords And his jaw teeth like knives, To devour the afflicted from the earth And the needy from among men.
[Proverbs 30:14, New American Bible] There is a group whose incisors are swords, whose teeth are knives, Devouring the needy from the earth, and the poor from among men. — the application of jaw is questionable.
[Isaiah 9:12, NAS] The Arameans on the east and the Philistines on the west; And they devour Israel with gaping jaws. In spite of all this, His anger does not turn away And His hand is still stretched out.
[Isaiah 9:11, NAB] Aram on the east and the Philistines on the west devour Israel with open mouth. For all this, his wrath is not turned back, and his hand is still outstretched! — again, the application of jaw is questionable.
[Judges 15:15–16, NAS] He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, so he reached out and took it and killed a thousand men with it. Then Samson said, “With the jawbone of a donkey, Heaps upon heaps, With the jawbone of a donkey I have killed a thousand men.”
[Judges 15:15–16, NAB] Near him was the fresh jawbone of an ass; he reached out, grasped it, and with it killed a thousand men.
Then Samson said,
“With the jawbone of an ass
I have piled them in a heap;
With the jawbone of an ass
I have slain a thousand men.”
In his review of Totschläger Colonel Para Bellum of Blackdeath writes quite confidently the jawbone refers to what is written in Judges 15:15 “He [Samson] found the fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and struck down a thousand men [the Philistines].” He also suggests that “although the official press release mentions Cain, this persona is most likely a kind of composite character.”
The composite nature of the main character on the cover is partly proven by the fact that he is wearing the crown of thorns, which (the crown) is also reflected in the lines “Reaping father // Thorn-crowned murderer // Guardian of the unlight”. Although we find no explanation as to why Cain would wear a crown of thorns, a speculation would be that the “crown” is a symbol of his superiority, and “of thorns”— because the returns for his offering to God were of no regard.
Another image of a character wearing the crown of thorns is found in the booklet — the songbook of the album subtitle — against the lyrics of “The Saint Of Murder” (links to Cain, indeed), but in that picture the character has horns under the crown which aren’t found on the album cover. (An assumption: could be the illustration in the booklet was made earlier than the cover, and by a different artist.) So we can only guess if these are two manifestations of the same character, or merely two different characters.
The lyrics of “The Saint of Murder” offer no obvious link either. The word thorn is to be found once more in the lyrics, in the line “I am the thorn in your side” (in “Flood of Wrath”), but a crown in such a context would mean to start a strange visual contemplation, though not too foreign to acrobatics which the characters in the illustrations in the booklet sometimes perform.
Neither the fiery drape nor the flaming skies are reflected in the lyrics. Although the flaming skies is a normal biblical image. Fire in general is to be found in two meanings in the lyrics: the fire inside and outside. Inside: “unauslöschlich brennt ein Feuer in uns” (Eng.: a fire burns in us inextinguishably) and “Doch halte aus — dass nie vergeht die Flamme” (Eng.: {but} sustain—for the flame in you to not fade out), both in “Orkblut (Sieg oder Tod)”. Outside: “From the pits into the fire” (in “Nightside Rebellion”), “pilgrim’s fiery path” (in “Tartaros Tides”), and “Between the stars of burning angels” (in “Scarlet Suite for the Devil”).
Looking at the complete cover painting when the LP gatefold or the CD book is open, (or turning the gatefold/CD book around) we see seven couples walking on a murky surface which resembles ice and water at the same time — a surface perfectly still, the reflections of the (probably dead) couples in it undistorted because there are no waves on the surface — an untroubled water surface amidst the flaming skies. (Partly irrelevant, but: “Pale corpses emanate light // Without remorse and without fear stride ahead” {in “Guiding the Nameless”}.)
Maybe the skies aren’t actually skies, but the bottom (south) of Hell, and the location of the scene is “murky Tartarus, far, far away, where is the deepest gulf beneath the earth, […] as far beneath Hades as heaven is above earth” (Homer Iliad, book 8, line 15). Note that Tartaros is mentioned in the lyrics of “Nightside Rebellion” and in the song title “Tartaros Tides”.
Who are the couples? The closest one appears like Adam and Eve disgraced by everything they had to be disgraced with. The lady from the following couple holds her head like Venus in Botticcelli’s The Birth of Venus, and that couple seems to be the only one from the seven who have their genitals covered. We can only make empty guesses, and would rather avoid it, and leave it to the creators of the artwork to comment if they agree to do so.
No links to couples are to be found in the lyrics, but among other possible keywords let us take walk, water, movement, dead and reflection. The lines referring to the meanings of these keywords (but not necessarily to couples in the cover) can be “Your soul set free — walk with me” (in “The Saint of Murder”), maybe “Pale corpses emanate light // Without remorse and without fear stride ahead” and “Guiding the nameless, guiding the dead // Leading the speechless into strange worlds ahead // […] // Onward to shores” (in “Guiding the Nameless”), “On Charon’s ferry // we navigate on pilgrim’s fiery path // Through nethermost waters….” (in “Tartaros Tides”, although no ferries in the painting), “The endless sea” (in “Flood of Wrath”), “We march into the night” (in “Terrorkommando Eligos”), “Through circling dimensions we roam” (in “Silent Towers, Screaming Tombs”).
In the aforementioned review Colonel Para Bellum writes “according to a cunning design idea, [the jaw] migrated to the backside of the release”.
The trick — if there was any — did not work equally well on CD and vinyl due to the proportions of the “packages”. The symbolism behind hiding the jaw and the walking couples is unclear, and, if there had been any, it wasn’t fulfilled well.
Illustrations
We avoid talking about the illustrations to the songs, as they’re “hidden” in the booklet and shall present a more intimate observation, private to each listener. We may only say that some do not relate to the lyrics as good as the others, like the illustration to “Guiding the Nameless” which made no sense to us in connection with the lyrics. But the misunderstanding could be explained by our mere lack of expertise in mythology at hand, necessary for such a review.
Still, we want to know who created the illustrations. Unfortunately, it is hard to be sure who did them for Totschläger. It could be Andreas Gamerith again, but the style differs too much from the cover painting and from the illustrations in the LL booklet, so it is hard to arrive at any confidence.
An assumption is that the illustrator was Joseph Olynyk of Nigrum Serpentis. He did contribute visuals to Abigor several times. The Quintessence “compilation” CD (EAL066, 2012) has one of his illustrations, although his name was mentioned only in the Avantgarde Music vinyl release (AV999, 2016). In 2016 he contributed to the band’s backpatch. And in the booklet to Höllenzwang he is credited for providing “additional art”.
His usual technique differs from what we observe in the Totschläger booklet, and there could be any reason for that, especially when the concept of the album dictates the performance. It is the details in the faces though which hint at his authorship. Compare the face of the demon from Quintessence to the five faces in Totschläger.
Resolution
It appears as a highly thought-through approach which Abigor apply at choosing the artworks for their albums. A rare artist could boast of such an adoring, and caring, and meticulous relation to his output manifestations. Abigor deliver an exemplary artifact (and not only with Totschläger) of what a music album visual presentation must be, and we see it as a very high (battle)star to steer. Meaning not by the visuals themselves, but by the approach and the connection to music they accompany. Otherwise, if any band fails to follow such a path of devotion, “Fatima’s next job could be in cyber (she just doesn’t know it yet)”.
The end of Chapter I
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Continue to Intermezzo I (on patreon), Intermezzo II, Chapter II (design, type, typography)
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This survey was written by The Old Conception of Black Metal with an intention to publish it in print. Pre-orders are open, we’re looking forward to 100 pre-orders which will be collected during May–July 2022, to see if there is a necessity for the survey to exist on paper. If we do not collect the mentioned amount, all the pre-orders will be canceled and the money refunded. Sponsors and questions may be addressed to tocobm@protonmail.com
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