John Darnielle, the man behind the Mountain Goats, does a great fake interview with black metal band Kult ov Azazel. (Whoever the hell they are. John, whose own music is a sort of twisted autistic folk, has always shown a strange affection for the darkest of metal.)
Disclaimer: the interview that follows never took place. We do not doubt that an actual interview with Kult ov Azazel would go pretty much the way all black metal interviews go: interviewer asks a question that indicates he’s part of the 1337 BM h0rdez [“Your sound recalls the early Spear of Longinus demos, but in a more necro and ultimately progressive way. Was this your intention?”], band goes directly into the script, remaining in character and, after the manner of a politician, on-message [“Yes. We felt that whereas others have shown the way and we must give them hails as brave warriors along the path to total war, yet must we carve our own grim visages into the stones at road’s end, as it were. Our second demo continued in this ripped vein,” etc], interviewer asks follow-ups whose main purpose is to assert that he has in fact managed to construe some sense out of what is essentially swords-and-sorcery gobbledegook [“Certainly. But don’t you think that what’s happened with the commercialization of pro-nationalist black metal has eliminated the weak, leaving a cleaner field for the few remaining, the discerning listeners?”], rinse lather repeat.
By the way, it’s pronounced “darr-neel,” not “darr-nell,” as we learn about 5:40 into this KEXP in-studio. The tone gets a little icy with Stevie Zoom, who clearly doesn’t like being corrected.
Bonus trivia: John’s wife Lalitree keeps both a LiveJournal and a blog.