You may find this surprising, but Inferno‘s latest cosmic nightmare album is…inspiring? The long-running Czech band scramble brains and reorient thought patterns regarding the self and the universe through large-scale, enclosing compositions. Although technically a black metal outfit, they carry the flag that mind-bending and atmospheric (albeit not quite avant-garde) acts before them weaved. It’s inhuman, distant, and ponderous music, far flung from inciting any optimism. Yet, The Anthropic Sophisms (On the Heights of Despair) discovers a reason to treasure one’s humanity despite said humanity being an overblown accident.
On their ninth full-length album, Inferno drive as large of a wedge as possible between their music and the individual as a main player in the experiential process. The Anthropic Sophisms is a process in itself. They interrogate the conceit that there must be a purpose, an order, or an end goal. Those are human constructs; tautological ones, at that. What purpose do they serve? They answer questions only posed so that said answers are not vacuous statements. The Anthropic Sophisms takes aim at the idea that we can make sense of the world if we find a pattern connecting everything. In Inferno’s eyes, that’s only the case because humans deem it as such. There must be a logic, and only we can deduce it because we are the central characters.
With this frame, a few possibilities develop. The rebellious randomness of Thought Industry strikes as a counterpoint, representing an absurdist approach, and on the other end is Tool’s mathematically-inclined persuasion ala Lateralus. Both, seemingly, are ill-fitting for The Anthropic Sophisms because humans are the lynchpins. Instead, the record asks, “What is reality if we are but a blip in it?” To that end, Inferno fixate on scope and time, looking past the riffs and climaxes for a naturalist view of atmospheric black metal. In the same vein that one can try to find the state in which water becomes steam, Inferno locate the exact note and second where transitions occur and build off of it. The goal is that transient state; isolating it, putting it under a magnifying glass, and watching it devour the world around it.
How this process presents on The Anthropic Sophisms is readily apparent, fortunately, in that Inferno have no interest in intentionally obscuring their explorations. The exploits are easy to parse even if they’re not obvious in nature. They lead without the promise of a satisfying conclusion. That, in itself, would contradict The Anthropic Sophisms. The crunchy riffs on “Circulus Vitiosus Deus (The Infinity Ravages All)” and the lulling disharmony on “With Raving Mouths They Utter Things Mirthless, Unadorned and Unperfumed” are merely two basally satiating excerpts that arise passively. If Inferno pursued them, it’d imply that humans can bend any experience to their preferences. They come about here, as with many of the most gratifying moments on The Anthropic Sophisms, in the same way that a grain of sand moves from one beach to another, without delusions of its greater importance.
That sounds disheartening, yet Inferno see it as a removal of shackles. Vocalist Adramelech says, “Once we accept that we don’t have to be something predetermined, we can finally stop trying to live up to some idea of who we are supposed to be. And I think there can be a great deal of freedom in that.” Our infinitesimal minuscularity liberates us to pursue anything. The phrase is simple on its face, however, The Anthropic Sophisms demonstrates just how small we are and how human ego dissolves when placed in a larger context. It frees us by showing us how little we control. Why worry?
Adramelech explained the concept in great detail to us. Read our conversation below and catch Inferno headlining Heart of Winter Festival in Richmond, Virginia, this January.
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You said here that, “We are trying to challenge the anthropocentric view of reality and look at humanity from a much broader perspective. Not as the ultimate meaning of existence, but rather as a temporary and accidental outcome of vast processes unfolding throughout the cosmos, without any inherent higher plan or purpose.” how did the musical approach you took on the album (atmospheric, intricate, and progressive) try to challenge that view?
I’d like to approach this from the musical side. I don’t think the music presents this concept as some kind of literal statement. Instead, it creates a space where these kinds of questions can naturally emerge. The expansive, atmospheric and progressive passages allowed us to work with a sense of scale, time, and a certain distance from the human being as the central point of the whole experience. We didn’t want to tell the listener what to think, but rather to pull them out of their usual perspective for a moment, in a way much like the universe itself does. I also think the character of the music fits into this very naturally. It’s quite dense, heavy and often dissonant. These elements carry a certain sense of unease, as well as the feeling that things don’t necessarily have to be arranged in a way that is comfortable or immediately understandable to us. We didn’t want to create music that would comfortably guide the listener through a clearly defined story. We wanted to create an environment where they could get lost for a while, where not everything has an obvious order or immediate explanation. I think that also connects with the way the album looks at humanity and our need to make sense of the world around us.
One of the important themes of the album is this human tendency to interpret reality in a way that gives our existence a special position within it. We naturally experience reality from our own perspective and then tend to project that perspective onto something much larger. But once we try to step outside of it, some things begin to look very different. Suddenly, we are no longer at the centre of the story, but simply one small part of a process that is incomparably larger than us.
In that sense, music allowed us to work more with a feeling than with a specific statement. The complexity, density, dissonance and gradual transformations of the different motifs can evoke something much larger than individual human experience. It isn’t about suggesting that human beings have no value. It’s more about recognizing that the value of our existence and some greater meaning behind it are not necessarily the same thing. Perhaps that sense of distance was the most important aspect of the album. It wasn’t about simple nihilism or denying the importance of humanity, but about trying to look at human existence from a perspective that doesn’t assume we are naturally at the centre of everything. But ultimately, what the listener takes away from it is entirely up to them, and that’s something we actually welcome. We don’t want to dictate a single interpretation or tell people what they should find in the music. If the album can provoke a feeling, a question or simply make someone look at things from a slightly different perspective, then that’s enough for us.
If we are temporary and accidental outcomes, does that instill misanthropic ideas in you (i.e., that nothing matters in our lives, and thus we shouldn’t attempt anything), or do you see it as liberating, that we’re free to make what we can of ourselves?
I tend to see it more as something liberating. I don’t think it automatically follows that nothing matters. Quite the opposite. If there is no predetermined meaning, or even some greater intention, that we are supposed to fulfill, then perhaps we are actually in a much freer position than we normally allow ourselves to believe.
I think misanthropy is still, in a way, a reaction from a human perspective. We are still concerned with humanity and its value; we’ve simply turned that perspective into a negative one. I find it much more interesting to accept the possibility that we may be neither the centre of the universe nor some kind of mistake within it. We are simply a part of it. Who knows… And I think that’s where a certain kind of freedom can emerge. We don’t have to justify our existence against some universal standard, or search for a reason why we are supposed to be here. The fact that we are temporary, and perhaps completely insignificant on a cosmic scale, doesn’t make our experiences meaningless. If anything, it means that their meaning isn’t something that was written for us in advance. In a sense, we create it ourselves.
So I would say the album isn’t a call for resignation, but rather for a certain kind of release. Once we accept that we don’t have to be something predetermined, we can finally stop trying to live up to some idea of who we are supposed to be. And I think there can be a great deal of freedom in that.
You also said that “our main focus was continuity. We wanted each composition to feel less like a sequence of separate ideas and more like a single, organic current in which motifs subtly transform and accumulate over time.” Were there any artists that influenced you in terms of what you wanted and didn’t want when you tried to achieve this goal?
Sure, there are definitely some influences that listeners might hear. But generally, if you look closely enough, you can find influences in almost everything. I just wouldn’t say that we ever approached it by thinking, “We want to sound like this band or that band.” What interests us much more is the way certain artists think about time, repetition, and sound itself. With Glenn Branca, for example, we found it inspiring to see how relatively simple musical material can take on a completely different character through layering and gradual shifts. With Swans, who work in a somewhat similar way, we are fascinated by how they use duration and intensity to the point where you gradually stop experiencing the music as a conventional song structure and start experiencing the process itself. That was much more inspiring for us on the new album than any particular sound or aesthetic associated with these artists. We don’t want to copy their methods. What interests us is what happens when you allow the music to develop at its own pace instead of forcing it to follow the traditional idea of a beginning, climax, and ending. We often tried to capture the moment when something in the music begins to shift almost imperceptibly, and then simply give it room to develop.
At the same time, these influences are useful to us as a kind of counterpoint. They show us how much music can carry without constantly having to introduce a new motif, melodic line, or dramatic change. Working with repetition, density, and gradual layering helps us find our own way of maintaining continuity without letting the music become static. So if I had to say what we took from these influences, it isn’t really a particular way of playing, but more of an approach: not being afraid of time, allowing a sound to exist for a while, and seeing where it naturally wants to go. Then trying to transform that principle into something that feels unmistakably ours.
Hopefully, we managed to do that. But, well… I’ll leave it to everyone else to decide how much they enjoyed exploring our soundscapes.
What were some unexpected findings you had while examining the theme of the album?
I think perhaps the biggest unexpected realization for us was how easily humans can create the feeling that we are at the center of everything based on our own limited experience. But the deeper we went into cosmology and ideas such as the multiverse, the more this perspective began to fall apart. Suddenly, humanity no longer appeared to be the culmination of some predetermined cosmic story, but rather a highly improbable and temporary product of an enormous number of processes that have nothing to do with us. And I think this is where the actual meaning of the title Anthropic Sophisms began to take shape. It is not an attack on humanity or on our existence, but rather a questioning of our need to place ourselves at the center of reality and to treat our own perspective as a universal truth.
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From what I gathered, you created a fictional universe for your previous album, Paradeigma. How has the universe developed further on The Anthropic Sophisms?
I think Paradeigma and The Anthropic Sophisms still exist within the same broader universe, even though each album approaches it from a different perspective. Both are concerned with questions about whether there is some deeper order behind what appears to us as chaos, and what place humanity, consciousness, and our perception of reality actually occupy within it.
With Paradeigma, we approached these questions more from the perspective of the relationship between consciousness, humanity, and the structure of the cosmos itself. The Anthropic Sophisms turns that perspective around in a way. We became more interested in questioning the observer himself and our tendency to search for order, meaning, and some special place for ourselves within the universe. Interestingly, this also brings the album somewhat close to certain Jungian ideas about a deeper connection between the psyche and the cosmos. I wouldn’t say that we were directly guided by his theories, but the idea that our inner experience and our perception of reality might not be two completely separate things is certainly intriguing to us. In that sense, the new album continues some of the themes of Paradeigma, but tries to turn them inside out and examine them from the opposite direction.
Your “shadow member” Spící hrdlo Antikrista once brought up an interesting point, “What if universes evolve as well?” How did that idea develop on The Anthropic Sophisms?
Hmm, that’s an interesting observation. I think this idea developed on The Anthropic Sophisms mainly through the realization that we had stopped thinking of the universe as something static, something that simply exists for us and in which our own evolution takes place. If we allow for the possibility that universes themselves might somehow evolve, then humanity is once again pushed into a much less significant position within the whole picture. Life could simply be one of many processes that happen to emerge in a particular type of universe, while the universe itself could be part of a much larger process whose meaning or outcome we have no way of determining or even verifying. This also changes the way we might look at evolution. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a predetermined movement towards greater complexity or some kind of perfection. It could instead be an endless process of emergence, transformation, and extinction. But that’s just an idea…And that’s important to The Anthropic Sophisms. We’re not trying to offer yet another grand theory about how the universe actually works. We don’t know that, and we certainly don’t claim to. We’re more interested in playing with the possibility that our need to see some kind of order, direction, or ultimate purpose in its development is simply another human construct. Perhaps we are just a very brief episode in a process that began long before us and will continue long after humanity no longer exists.
“With Raving Mouths They Utter Things Mirthless, Unadorned and Unperfumed” gets into industrial ambient territories, which is seemingly a new avenue for you. How did you approach composing that part of the track (the opening three minutes)?
I wouldn’t really consider it a completely new direction for us. We often work with noise, even if it doesn’t always come across that clearly in the recordings. I’m also a member of the ambient/noise project Monuments of Absence, which is firmly in the hands of the guys from Blues for the RedSun. We work quite extensively with noise-based compositions and different sound textures there, so this kind of approach is already very familiar territory for us in general. Our debut CD will be released by the Czech label Epidemie Records in November, so keep an eye out for it, people. We’ve also been incorporating various subconscious or barely recognizable sounds into our compositions since the album Paradeigma. It has become a fairly natural part of the way we work with atmosphere and sound. Interestingly, a lot of people assume that some of the sounds on the last two albums come from keyboards or synthesizers. In most cases, that’s actually not the case. They are distorted guitar sounds that we run through various pedals and other effects and twist and manipulate until the original source becomes almost impossible to recognize. So the opening of “With Raving Mouths They Utter Things Mirthless, Unadorned and Unperfumed” wasn’t really about suddenly moving towards industrial ambient. It was more about giving these sound textures much more space this time and allowing them to come to the forefront for a while, rather than keeping them buried underneath the music.
Inferno albums feel like transformative experiences, wherein you learn something more about yourself after processing it. Do you often feel this way when composing? How did working on The Anthropic Sophisms enhance your understanding of metaphysics?
I don’t think we experienced any major personal transformations while writing the album. It’s more that working on these subjects made us think about certain things differently. When I think about it, we really did dive quite deeply into questions about reality, the universe, and human perception. And the more we explored them, the more we realized how limited our own perspective is and how many things we simply take for granted.
I wouldn’t say that we came to understand some kind of deeper truth because of it. If anything, we ended up with more questions and started looking at some things from a different perspective.
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The Anthropic Sophisms (On the Heights of Despair) is available now via Debemur Morti Productions.
Heart of Winter Festival tickets are available here.
