Emil Lunden: Blasphemer to Believer
He wanted to forge the ultimate artifact of our unraveling age: black metal songs so steeped in malice that they might summon the demons. The Faust wannabe threw himself at Latin grammars to unearth lyrics to curdle the soul. He hadn't reckoned with the Desert Fathers.
Before he knew it, he was sleeping on a concrete floor and praying. He was received into the Catholic Church around 2014. Then other black metal performers followed suit: "Roman Catholic black metal" was born, a subgenre he describes not as satanic rebellion but as a Romantic yearning for a pre-industrial era of mystery, drama, and raw emotion.
Satanic verses: the origins of Roman Catholic black metal
In his youth in the early 2000s, Emil Lundin became obsessed with the idea of recording the world’s ‘most evil album’. The lanky, long-haired Swede formed a black metal band and set to work. He faced an immediate obstacle. In making history’s most nefarious musical creation, he could hardly use Swedish, with its sing-song tones.
Luke Coppen