THE WAY OF PURITY – The interview with Tiril and WithoutName

THE WAY OF PURITY is very strange band, because the woman with the predatory voice is on the front of this extreme horde. But first of all therefore, that they propagate very controversial message. Are they closer to satanic bands, or maybe are they closer to Christian crusade? You will estimate it.

How have I to understand the name of THE WAY OF PURITY? What is your way? What does a message is joined with the band?

The meaning behind The Way Of Purity is painful. The Way Of Purity is the sacrifice that every man should do to keep his own integrity alive. Life is a way, a quite long way when it comes to integrity, honesty, friendship, beliefs, marriage because everyday we have to give proof of our integrity in front of temptations. For most of the people is really hard not to betray their friends or partner, it is really hard to only eat vegetables, it is hard being 100% honest in front of interests…Well, I guess you understand what I mean. The Way Of Purity is the way that ONLY FEW can understand and only few can “walk on”. For all the people that betray, say lies, only think about sex or surface we are the fucking painful mirror. That's why we take 100% of our inspiration (in life and music) from animals…They never fail when it comes to integrity. People MUST HAVE concrete examples to choose their true way. The only thing we care about as long as trying to show people how horrible will be the end and that there will be no Jusus or Satan saving them from the wrath of the one who cannot be named. We want people to understand that is important, if they want to save this world, to completely remove unnecessary self-importance and deny the fucking ego. Some people on this planet fight for the truth and fight against the evil that is the main guide for self destruction in all human beings.

Humanity claims to be a “superior race”, based on rules that are about to fail.

The war against ignorance, money, death, disease is over. We are just trying to leave “something” for the “race” (as they call it) that will follow. We want “them” to understand that humanity evolved in darkness but some individuals did not.

Just wait and see.

From one side you use Christian symbols like the cross or the rosary, the prayer. And from the second side you portray the sado-masochistic scenes full of ritual behaviours, eroticism, blood and a pain… That is a bit the opposite…

Our vision of GOD is clear. God is the nature and gave us the great gift of understanding what infinity is. Humans are too “small” and “intellectually poor” to understand what infinite is. We are here to do a short “walk” and that's the strange thing. Many people take life like something that they deserved but this is a wrong attitude. Life is just a walk and god gave us this chance just for understanding what death is. Death is infinity and this is the only reason why we are here. Just think of everyday's life. Every action has a reason…So what's the reason of life? The reason of life is Death which is the only infinite and never ending “thing”. This is GOD for us. Jesus is the symbol of what we really fight against. Jesus represents MEN, Jesus represents religions like Satan do. We see many bands with inverted crosses, devils, satanic whatever talking about evil. If you really want to be evil you have to show Christ and not Satan. Satanists never killed millions of people, Satanists don't control masses, politics money like the Christian Church do. That's the real evil. You want evil? We give you Christ on the cross, yes. The rest you mentioned is the pure contradiction we represent.

On Myspcae you write that God and Satan are the same. And therefore the division – the good and the evil does not exist? I think that the good and evil is relative notion. For somebody the good can be evil for others.

I kind of agree with you. We just think that there's no Christ or Satan that will save us from the “casket” that we have created with our own hands. We say, that humanity is acting like a Virus, exploiting and devastating the planet but there are many people who fight for nature, earth, animals and would dream a different world, like us but they can be both Christians or Satanists. Our idea is that we don't really care about the religion you belong to as long as you fight for the same ideals we stand for and represent. Humanity (Christians, Satanists…whatever) just betrayed it's nature and God because became greedy, sick, dark and twisted. Everything on this world has a meaning…People don't understand this…Life is only for Death. What Death means is important. When we die we leave the place to someone else and that's what really matters. If we leave the “hell” to the ones that will follow we will fail. It's really easy to think of today and it's very hard to think for tomorrow. Human instinct is to reproduce, well the hell we are leaving will be paid by the sons of our sons…This in my opinion means auto destruction. People think that life is a gift…That's wrong life has a meaning and a value and they will have to pay for this and this has nothing to do with religion… Fuck it.

You made short movie “A Passage Through The Purity of Pain”, which announces the album “Crosscore”. Would you tell what about is the movie… For they who did not look the movie at yet?

The film has been entirely written by Susi and she had all the cool ideas. She directed us, the actors, she took care of the locations, clothes, tools…She's such a great artist and we really love her way to see things and to represent them in front of a camera. We provided all our lyrics, our music, our religious views and we just asked her to express them through the eyes of real fanatics. The main lines start from the personal story of a young girl who lived in a chalet in a forest of an east Europe country, during the early 70ies. Their parents were atheists, so that she wasn’t baptized and lived in a country hostile to religion, where her creed was mocked at. During a personal initiation rite, which roots are deep in the spiritual history of mankind, she ripped the pages showing christian martyrs from visual arts books, hung them on her room walls as symbolic witnesses, covered their eyes and mouths in order to conceal them her lack of the divine sign (the baptism) and to get not blamed for what she will tell them, who surely will negate her their forgiveness. After that she calls her god, just like she wrote in her diary: “I feel their eyes on me, they are calling me, can I decline their invitation? Father, mother I don’t hate you for my unbaphtized flesh. I have only one judge before me, he will be my father, my husband and my undertaker. I will eat his flesh and drink his blood tonight, and this will be my salvation. My path is my way towards purity.”

Then, she slashes her own arms’ flesh with a piece of sharpened glass, and lets her sin flow out, in the form of her blood. Her body is sick but enflamed by suffering, so she switch on a tape recorder and impresses her last and desperate lyrics..

Some decades after the fact, the tape is (un)casually rescued by a band which members have freshly celebrated a bloody oath (“In this world without faith, we live our crusade with a pure spirit in pure body, united by blood and our music”), and at night they find shelter in the isolated inn. While sleeping, the four men wake up as they hear an harrowing woman’s cry. They track down the sound origin, that comes from the little black wood chalet near the inn, where a wreath was placed on the ground by the girl’s parents, in remembrance of her death. They enter the place, cross themselves and look around at the disfigured martyrs icons on the walls. One of them pushes play on the old abandoned tape recorder. They freeze, as they hear an hoarse and suffering voice of a unknown being transmitting its delirium visions. Then they catch the recorder and escape from the place…So, after having been inspired by the mystic voice and lyrics, they decide the girl will be their only singer, and the phrase she wrote in obsession on the martyrs images will be the name of their band: The Way Of Purity. Then, they inform their manager about their decision, and invite him to a meeting with the new singer, adding the fact she is waiting, holding back the truth… So, he goes there and finds her diary. While he’s reading the words of solitary suffering written on it, he thinks back to her life and her path of rebellion and sacrifice.

Does the label Wormholedeath really insisted for female vocals? I mean the growling obviously.

Fuck labels, logos and everything related to that. They could not insist on anything…That's just in the film.

How do you qualify your music? I named it as Extreme Metal, because for me it is the connection of Death Metal and Hardcore with elements of Industrial…

We all come from different backgrounds (how many times did you read this?) so the sound is a mixture of different attitudes. Both guitar players played in hardcore worldwide known bands. I come from the new wave scene even if I played in a black metal band also. Our drummer play jazz and is a teacher. We are all music producers so we have the great chance to get influenced by many other musicians everyday. If you want some names: Christian Death, Sister Of Mercy, The Cure, Fugazi, Neurosis, Botch, Breach, Scarlet…

Where did you find actress to the movie from? The scenes from movie showed the naked women.

The actress in our movie is a famous porn star called Lena Cova and when Susi Medusa Gottardi (the film director) asked us if we liked the idea we said „yes…That's a good idea”.

Why do you cover faces by woollen caps on the movies and the photos?

The guys in the band just cover their faces because they don't care of showing people who the hell they are or how their crappy faces look like. Serious people don't care about haircut or piercing. Serious people care about the message that a band should bring until the end.

The balaclavas we use are a tribute to animal liberation front. It is a tribute for all these brothers who go in jail because have burned a fur shop…Our appreciation and support as long as our love goes to them.

And so who did sing in “Crosscore”?

Betty was the voice of the band but she was no more part of the project because she had some serious mental problems…Would prefer not to talk about this thing. The Way Of Purity is a complex entity, since we don't act like a “normal” band and the people involved are not the usual people you find in bands…The team is working really hard to push a message and that's what we really care about.

Tiril Skĺrdal joined with you at present. How did she become the member of THE WAY OF PURITY?

Tiril have been in the project since the beginning, She was not on stage but the band members asked me to cooperate on some ideas due to the lyrics.

Everything started because two of the guys from The Way Of Purity (bass player and guitar player) came too Norway to make some investigations on a legend they knew about. Of course I was a fan of the music too, but what really fascinated me was the unusual approach to the “band”. Instead of writing lyrics they really wanted me to become part of what they talk about and asked me to perform the cry of Liti Kjerst and film it. I have been long terms friends with the band members since that thing happened, so when the old singer decided to leave, we talked it over and decided that I was to be the new singer.

She as the one does not cover her face… Why?

Tiril chose not to wear a mask, she is proud of being TWOPs singer and Ish want to show people that she is the FACE of TWOP. She personally would not like to hide her face because this goes against her opinions on women that are forced to hide behind clothing .The decision was accepted because we respect her opinions and we believed that she would make a good front figure for the band, we also have a great respect and fascination for vikings, so why not show off the face of a Norwegian girl?

What are functions the other woman from THE WAY OF PURITY?

There is just one girl (beside Tiril) that is a session Keyboard player. Her name is LOSTmyFAITH.

Do you conceal your faces also on concerts ? How do your concerts look?

Yes, we wear balaclavas on stage too…Sincerely i don't know how our concerts look. I never watch crowd when I play because when I do it I closed in myself to let every note I play to become the universe. we don't care at all to be honest. I read some forums so that's what can I say…Some say it is shit, some say it is scary or diabolical some say it is magical. We don't know. When we get on stage we are completely out of reality so cannot describe it sorry.

What will you surprise us with new line-up?

We don't have a new line up…We just have Tiril on vocals, and she's the new singer. She is amazing.

Ok. I'm understand… Thanks for the interview! In the end I hope on some important message from you for readers of Metal Centre…

At the moment we are working on new lyrics and tunes…An EP titled “Biteback” will be ready around January we are cooperating with different people (for the songwriting) for the new album so it will be more various. Stielas Storhett from Russia and Rikk Agnew from USA are writing songs with us at the moment. We are also doing a lot of interviews and that's amazing because the big magazines keep us in good consideration and support our message. We are really happy with this.

“A Passage Through The Purity of Pain”:
www.susimedusagottardi.com
www.myspace.com/thewayofpurity