Doctor Livingstone‘s excellent adventure from hardcore punk to black metal button-pushers continues with Triumphus Haeretici, their second LP for legendary French label Osmose Productions. If you’re unfamiliar with the Montpellier-based band’s blasting attack, then saddle up to new video “Dancing With Horses.” Then stick around for a full interview with this bizarre collective below.
Black metal is often a serious and evil type of music. In this video, people are wearing masks, playing with party supplies and melting plastic lightsabers. Do you think it adds anything to the music or presentation to do this?
We’re very serious about not being serious when it comes to honouring archaic and farcical imagery that gangrened this musical genre, and its purpose most of all… No, it doesn’t add anything to our music, it’s just another declension of our chaotic creativity.
The video looks like a birthday party— is it someone’s birthday? If not, are they celebrating something else?
Yes, certainly. We celebrate the upcoming victory of six over seven in a parallel world through recreational representations and colorful metaphors.
Doctor Livingstone’s new album, Triumphus Haeretici, is a raging black metal album. What inspires Doctor Livingstone’s writing and performance?
We draw inspiration from what surrounds us, from what can’t be seen but what pervades and stimulates us. The music which accompanies our writings is a virulent, harmonious, aural disarray, it’s the copulation of our respective musical backgrounds, all this shaken together has given Doctor Livingstone this peculiar identity.
Triumphus is supposed to be listened to as a whole. Was there a theme or message you sought to convey?
We propose our listeners a Path to be followed, there is more than just blast beats and distorted guitars on this album, we invite you to pay attention to the whole play ; the decorum and the shade. Triumphus Haeretici is the discharge of our most intimate reflections and conceptions.
What is the next chapter for Doctor Livingstone from here?
The next chapter is to leave our homes for good and to tour the world, to rekindle the flame every night on stage, to regurgitate the music that died on our album, to meet our audience and to embrace the unborn.
