One of the significant crystallizing moments in my teenage life was the first time I encountered the work of Mz.412. It was the Summer of 1998 when I was regularly tuning into the local college radio stations in the NYC area searching for local metal programs. One night I picked up a program airing nothing but bizarre ambient music, with layers of ritualistic drums and obscure samples. I quickly grabbed a cassette tape and recorded the whole program. Unfortunately the host couldn’t be bothered to name the artists and tracks he played, only mentioning that his selections came from a Swedish record label called “Cold Meat Industry”. For the next few weeks, I would play the tape over and over, enthralled by these occult sounds. During one of my aimless travels around the Greenwich Village, I stumbled upon Bleecker Bob’s Records, a place that I had heard much about from fellow metalheads but couldn’t pinpoint. It was in here where I played my tape and was handed a copy of Descent Magazine, Volume III. The editor was journalist and up-and-coming musician Stephen F. O’Malley. Knowing my familiarity with metal, I was told to read the interview with this band called Mz.412, then and there, while the clerk pulled out a record featuring a brightly burning church titled Burning the Temple of God. As “Deklaration of Holy War” played throughout the shop something in me lit up. This is what I’d been looking for, not just musically, but aesthetically and metaphysically. It was from there on out that I devoured everything I could from Mz.412, Cold Meat Industry, and the Post-Industrial genre in general. Over the next two decades this music and art has held an important role in my life and inspired me to contribute through my own endeavors. So it is with a sense of respect and honor that I present this interview with Henrik Nordvargr Björkk, the mastermind behind Mz.412.
Continue reading INTERVIEW: Infernal Affairs with Henrik Nordvargr Björkk of Mz.412
