Noizze (N): Thank you for your time, really appreciate opportunities like this. Let’s start simple, how are you doing?
Dave Hunt (D): I’m alright ta. I’m actually managing not to be nervous so far. It’s all going to come crashing down around my ears any minute now I imagine but yeah.
N: Really? You get nervous before gigs?
D: Oh god yeah.
N: Oh really?
D: No I always get nervous before gigs. It’s one of the reasons I’m drinking.
Both laugh as Dave is actually drinking a non-alcoholic beverage.
D: You might expect that, even if you’ve been doing it a while, that from day one until the end.
N: It’s always interesting from a fan’s perspective. You get into bands and you big them up and you don’t think of them ever feeling nervous.
D: Maybe not. But we’re all pretty much more human than you might think.
N: What’s it feel like gigging again?
D: Really weird.
N: Yeah?
D: Yeah really strange. Because there’s a weird condition of familiarity and apprehension and novelty as well. So doing a gig, I’ve done that before. I’m fairly aware of how that works. Doing the sound check. This is routine stuff. But obviously, not having done it a while for very obvious reasons. It’s been more than 3 years or something.
N: Yeah, it felt like you were really actively gigging before the pandemic right up until the release of Endarkenment.
D: Yeah, we’ve never been like road dogs. We did things, we did a fair bit, gone to places, did some stuff. We did some pretty cool things not long before we did Endarkenment. So, in the not too distant past, at that time, we toured Japan with Watain and stuff. We did a headline tour before that. Not to sound at school but mum was dead proud!
Both laugh.
D: So ok it was time to do an album and we thought it was really good and obviously that’s just us saying that, me and Mick, but we did. We were thinking what do we do next? We’d done some pretty cool stuff and we had a new album, what’s next? OH! That’s what’s next!
N: Yeah that was a weird one, no one could have predicted that. Okay, we’ll touch upon the pandemic and then move on, cos we’re all done with the pandemic. Has it been a time to rediscover anything? What have you been doing during it?
D: For a long time, being scared to be honest. I suffer from health anxiety sometimes. That’s a thing that someone would be nervous about doing gigs and that um but I am subject to anxiety and stuff like that. A pandemic was quite an interesting place to be. So that was weird. But also, at the very inception of the pandemic I finished my studies, as I’ve been studying for ages. And at the end of that you have to do a thing called an a Viva, when you talk to experts about your topic, but one of the people in the Viva was from Holland and instead of flying out – if you do obscure bollocks that no one wants to talk about you have to get someone to come over from Holland to talk about it.
Dave Laughs
D: But we had to do it as a video conference. But yeah getting all that done and graduating.
N: Congratulations.
D: Thank you. But my partner in crime, Mick, his production stuff really took off, really ironically, really took off. In places like Russia funnily enough. And in Mexico… So yeah, as a result of that, that’s why he’s not here. He’s so busy with that, that he’s not around to do gigs any more. So to bring it all round. We had this album, that happened to Mick in the mean time, but we were left with this weird sense of unfinished business, because we would have expected to do some cool stuff with the tour around it but that’s why he’s not here today.
N: There’s also a rumour that this is the last Anaal Nathrakh show, what’s going on there?
D: it’s the thing with my partner in crime. There’s been various times, over the years, when we’ve been offered things and Mick couldn’t do it or whatever and I’ve always said no, no way then. Mick’s always said no, you go ahead and I’ve said no, we’re not doing that then. But now we get to this point where he just can’t. And because of that sense of unfinished business it seemed to make sense, if people wanted us to do some gigs, even if Mick couldn’t be there, then it’d be cool to do so. I wouldn’t want to do loads, but to get a sense of that unfinished business done. But I wasn’t sure if people would want that and to a certain extent, doing live shows and that, that’s an act of service. If people don’t want to come and see it then it’s not going to work. I was wary of the fact that people might not be receptive of it if Mick’s not around. OR, they might not give a shit and we’ve got a stand in guitarist and they really don’t care. They don’t really know us and they don’t really give a shit. But I didn’t know how to work it out between those two extremes.
N: That’s interesting.
D: So we approached this one… Okay let’s do it, see how it goes. If people want to see it and they understand. They understand that that’s the principle and they’re okay with that then maybe we’ll do some more. We’ll see what happens. But this could have just bombed. I mean Sigh are here and all of that and it wouldn’t have bombed but from our perspective it could have.
N: That’s interesting to hear from a fan’s perspective. It’s like we were robbed of the tour from Endarkenment so this is like great, thanks for bringing it back for us.
D: Well I’d love that that’s the way that it’s received as well but I don’t want to assume… People could have turned round and said well piss off, not interested. It’s not for me to go, ‘well you fucking should’, that’s not how it works. Basically, we’re not arrogant,
N: That’s only a good thing.
D: Well I dunno sometimes it helps not to be humble I think. But that’s who we are. Who I am. So it had to be something that’s in concert with the people – pardon the pun – in concert with the people who are going to turn up.
Interviewer laughs
D: But I mean the switch side of that is. You’ve heard of Immortal I’d imagine? Demonaz didn’t come out for years and years and years but Abbath was still touring and they were together in the studio. There’s a precedent for that kind of thing being fine but it would’ve been arrogant to assume that people would have been fine with it. Today’s gig is almost like asking.
“We were left with this weird sense of unfinished business”
N: Well hopefully today will bring up so much of the support for that and I believe it will. I wanted to talk about your support bands De Profundis and the almighty Sigh, which is their first show in the UK for 12 years. How much do you know of these guys? How excited are you to be playing with them?
D: Very much so. The De Profundis guys I didn’t know before, but I probably should be paying more attention to them. I should be paying attention to more underground bands but I just didn’t. I’m looking forward to checking them out, they certainly sound very professional, like a good bunch.
Dave Laughs
D: I’ll find out. Now with Sigh, me and Mick have been listening to Sigh since a long time ago. They’re selling some records tonight and it’s some of their earliest and one of their managers pulled out a copy and I was like “Oh that’s the one I’ve got!” and he was like “You’ve got this!?” Ghastly Funeral Theatre it came out a long, long time ago. So yeah I’ve been aware of them and respected their output. There was an intermediate period where I hadn’t been listening to what they’d been doing for a while but more recently I’ve been listening to stuff that they’ve done and I’ve really enjoyed it. But there’s also, Mirai, the singer, he works with, or rather to is to do with, the label that puts our stuff out in Japan. So we’ve been over that, so it’s an odd situation, where we’re put into a room now. We’re not friends, I’m not unfriendly, but we don’t know each other. We sort of smile a bit and say hello to each other and generally are enthusiastic but we don’t know each other really well. So that’s the basis that I’m coming at it but I’m blown away to be playing with them and saying that is very nice. I’ve respected what they’ve been doing for a long long time and they have an outsider perspective, which you’d expect as their Japanese, differences in culture and that. Their outsider perspective is interesting. But at the same time sound check earlier, they were playing early Venom.
Interviewer laughs
D: So they have an insider perspective as well. Generally speaking I’m chuffed.
N: You do both share an appreciation for incorporating other elements, maybe outsider elements into your music.
D: Yeah, neither of us are particularly orthodox. And to be fair, there’s nothing really wrong with orthodoxy, musically, if it’s done well enough. But yeah, it’s nice to have a bit of weird.
N: Definitely. So let’s get into Endarkenment. First of all, the concept, as a reversal on ‘Enlightenment’, the idea that we’re all getting more stupid or at least avoiding higher learning and I like that it’s so in your face about it as well. A line in one of the songs goes ‘Fuck you if you think I am wrong’ which really resonates with me as it does feel like nobody’s listening to each other nowadays. So what were some of your inspirations and what into this concept.
D: It’s interesting that you pick out that line actually as it’s meant ironically really. In some sense people have known more than they’ve ever known. I mean everyone has access to all the answers, not all but a lot more than we’ve had previously. But it seemed to me, not so much on an individual level, but on a level of society, there’s this denial, this turning away from, not just turning away from, this forceful rejection of any thoughtful approach of any outside perspective. This idea that anything could be thoughtful or nuanced, fuck all of that. People didn’t want to listen to that, they didn’t want any of that. At least that’s how we felt at the time. The original enlightenment was the dawn of reason, the moving away from superstition and all of that kind of stuff. It felt like that was being inverted. This ‘fuck you if you think I’m wrong’ is the, intended at least, I mean you could take it in different ways.
N: Oh yeah definitely.
D: You get something different out of it: good! I’m not saying you’re wrong but what I had at the time was. This rejection of the idea and not listening and having an enquiring mind to rational solutions and problems, that was what seemed to be being pushed out the door. “Fuck you. I’m right. I’m not listening to ya! Fuck off.”
N: Yeah, this need to tell people that you’re right and you wont listen to them.
D: Yeah, all debate seems to be people yelling at each other nowadays. It’s not necessarily because they’re angry, it’s because they think that’s the way the debate should be conducted. Manufactured outrage. People wrote about manufactured consent previously. That was definitely part of what was going on and now there’s manufactured hostility. Twitter exists only to make people angry. And so a lot of that was wrapped up in this thing but it’s one of those things we could sit and talk about over many pints.
Interviewer Laughs
D: But all of that stuff.
N: Yeah! Like I said, it feels like there’s so much to cover in such a little amount of time and we can only go so far into these interesting topics. But staying on this for a moment, is this a general state of affairs that you’d want to change from society?
D: Change I don’t know. I wouldn’t presume to know what would happen if any of it were changed. The Anaal Nathrakh perspective on it, as it were, is descriptive, diagnostic. It’s not saying something should be the case, it’s saying this is the case and you might not have noticed it’s the case and it’s very important, or at least, noteworthy that it’s the case. And that’s why we’re hopping mad about it being the case. But yeah in terms of being prescriptive, what ought to be the case…We don’t do that part of it.
“it’s nice to have a bit of weird”
N: Understood.
D: Which is kind of a cop out really.
N: And then I do remember some of the lyrics were almost instructional, in a second person: ‘you all deserve to die’, ‘Turn your eyes…’, but then there’s the line ‘who are you to judge…’
D: Perspective in the lyrics is a tricky thing because they’re not particularly written for people to be able to read. So perspective matters quite a lot. So it could be embodying the thing that I or we think is going on or it could be saying things to people on that because it’s adopting that perspective or it could be a person wounded by the conduct of others and responding to it. But I don’t necessarily tell you what it is at any given time.
Dave laughs
D: And it’s not because I’m trying to be confusing or obscure or anything. I’m not thinking about whether anyone will get it or anything when I’m writing. But be careful of thinking that I agree with anything I ever say.
N: I think that feeds in to this idea that the thing that we create is not necessarily what we are but is an entity that we perform and put on as part of the experience. I wanted to pick up that on the album there are several references to Greed, Pigs and desires: orgasms and masturbation etc. Whilst the album art is a pig with cocks in its eyes. Is there a comment on too much greed and giving to carnal desires here?
D: Not necessarily because those almost sound like criticisms. Again, it’s called diagnosis. Greed is there throughout and interestingly greed is almost coming back as an attitude. But yeah the carnal sex based stuff, that’s because I see that as a how lot of the mechanisms of society work. To some extent. Do you know the idea? There’s a famous quote: ‘sport is war conducted by other means’ well I would argue that ‘war is sex conducted by other means’ in some ways. It at least grows out of similar impulses, similar parts of the human psyche, that leads to, that level of conflict to sport and tribalism.
It is everywhere. Not necessarily in that way but twitter encouraging outrage and mutual hostility, there’s a sense that we’re encouraged. There is this look. Libidinous, is one of the song titles on the album but Carnal. Quite superficial, quite aggressive, uh thing. I know it’s an almost comically blunt way of putting it but it’s meant to gesture to that. I think we are, to some extent, almost livestock, almost intentionally isolated from community for example. Viewing the world through this prism of carnality and bestial instincts. So a lot of the art work and that is incredibly blunt, but there is an intention behind it that bears scrutiny hopefully. It’s just how you’re going to communicate that, fucking come out of with it. Put it right there in front of you.
N: I appreciate the bluntness of stuff. So which songs of the album are you most proud of? Are you most excited to perform?
D: Well we only have a certain amount of time to perform, so we’re only doing two from that album because of the rest of the set, and those are the ones I’m excited to perform. If we get a chance to perform in the future I might pull out some others. But as it stands, we’re only going to get a chance to do those two. But I think the one that sticks with me the most is the title track because I still remember doing the video for and it’s the name of the album and it’s probably the one closely intertwining with the rest of the album. It is central to the album so.
N: Great and quick last question. If we were also to open this up to the entire Anaal Nathrakh career, if we were saying that this is the end, what are your favourite moments?
D: 23 years, 6 words: go!
Both laugh.
N: Sorry.
D: Yeah, I don’t reflect on the past enough, to have a list or anything like that. There are moments… Listening to the first demo that we did… on a tour bus… with one of the guys kids who’s a sound guy now… because it was the first time playing our music who wasn’t me or Mick. OR the Domine Non Es Dignus album. The first time I went to New York, not to do with music, I just happened to go there, but I walked into Virgin Megastore in Time Square and it was there. And ahh man, it’s little experiences like that and it’s more about the experience relating to than the actual music. But I think the music is better for other people to draw from what they want.
N: Well we’re very excited to see you tonight. Hopefully this’ll bring more things for you. Thank you for your time today, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Really appreciate it, thank you.
D: Thank you.