“NOWADAYS IT SEEMS THAT EVERYTHING IS TURNED UPSIDE DOWN AND LIED ABOUT” – PETRI ILVESPAKKA (DIABOLI)

The living embodiment of an uncompromising underground artist, Petri Ilvespakka has been crafting authentic Black Metal art under the Diaboli banner by the most primitive and prudent means imaginable for three decades. Possessed of a singularly spirited, unswerving and dissenting demeanour, the fiendish Finn disconnects from a world of twisted inversions to disseminate the orchestrated conquest of Northern Europe by the international banking mafia in conspiracy with their perpetually-lying political and mainstream media facilitators; the systematic stripping away of innate European cultural identities and our inexorable death march towards a soulless, rootless, monochromatic global totalitarian technocracy; creating the majestically defiant and arcane ninth Diaboli full-length, ‘Pagan Gods Rise’, on a non-existent budget; and the unstoppable nature of an endangered species with nothing left to lose.

If ever there was a time to return to a simpler way of life, this is it. Have you managed to locate yourself in a remote, rural living (and creating) space in the majestic Finnish countryside, far removed from urban decadence and the countless plagues of modern life?
“Well, I moved to a rented apartment tens of kilometres outside of a big Finnish town recently, and even here in the countryside, you find those so called ‘anti-fascists’, multiculturalists, or retards more likely. Those ‘anti-fascist’ commies should all have been executed 100 years ago here in Finland when there was a chance.”

What kind of emotions – if any – do you feel when looking around you at the pathetic state of the modern world, specifically Northern Europe and your own native land? Anger? Apathy? Sorrow? Disbelief? The rate of change taking place in society, people and nations is accelerating and things are getting worse with each passing day…
“I am just amazed at how much politicians can lie and do harm to their own country and get away with it without going to jail, and how much lies it is possible to spread on mainstream media every day. Finnish politicians are dumb, narcissistic, bribed sheep who bow down to the EU and do what the international banking mafia tells them to do, just like everywhere else. The Finnish national debt is now about 130 billion euros, so they have to do what the usurers tell them.”

Ukko is the Finnish god of the sky, weather, harvest and thunder. You call upon him to ‘protect us from the hordes of the foreign tribes’ and ‘grant us rain in the summer season to fertilize the soil, to bring us crop’. If the ancient pagan gods you have evoked on the ninth Diaboli full-length were to arise from their perpetual slumber and return to the transformed Northland of today, they could not be impressed with how subservient, weak and spiritless modern European man has become, with no respect for their own culture, floodgates open at the borders and idolising imported, fraudulent gods from the Middle East?
“No, they wouldn’t be impressed at all. Technology, better living conditions, drugs, media and other things have made people lazy, arrogant and selfish, and they are completely enslaved by money, which is created out of nothing by the banking mafia, ironically. Europeans are told to hate their own tribe and turn the other cheek to savages who rape their children, sell drugs to them and spit on their faces. That is the unfortunate reality, orchestrated through the EU by a group of people who hate Whites.”

Are you resigned to the fact that the battle is lost – that the forces implementing and coordinating so much unnatural change in the world cannot be defeated – or is there hope that the long-lost ancient knowledge, wisdom and pride of olden days can be reawakened, rekindled and harnessed to turn the tide?
“I would hope so, but as things get crazier each day I don’t think there is much one person can do, unfortunately, not by voting anyway. And the technology is transforming the West into a China-like totalitarian big brother state. They are trying to get rid of cash and replace it with digital currency, and that would completely make us slaves. Klaus Schwab (WEF) is talking about putting a microchip into people’s brains and 6G is in the works; who knows what that will bring?
“The national banking system would be the first step. If a country is not in control of its central bank and creating its own money, then there is nothing people can do. That country is a slave to the international banking mafia who pull the strings. Abraham Lincoln created Greenbacks and got killed; JFK was in a process of ending privately-owned Fed (Executive Order 11110) and got killed. Hitler started immediately to create Germany’s own money, which was a great success, and confiscated Rothschild property, and the Jews are still mad at him and tell lies about him almost 100 years later.”

Revaluation of the past, Disposal of modern lies, Ancestral blood revived, Pagan gods rise’. History has been either airbrushed or completely whitewashed. There are of course two sides to every story, however, so why are we forced to only look at one?
“Well, the Jews, or Khazars, or whoever those bearded paedophile hustlers really are, own the mainstream media so they can write whatever bullshit they like and most of the sheep will believe it. ‘War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength’, like Orwell wrote. It seems the brainwashing is getting worse in the 21st century. Before the lies were forced only on several topics, like holohoax (homicidal gas chambers, the number 6 million, gas vans, lamp shades made of human skin, shrunken heads, which all have been admitted to be lies by the Jews themselves), nowadays it seems that everything is turned upside down and lied about.”

An unprecedented migration of people is taking place across the world and it appears to be orchestrated. Is this the Great Replacement gathering pace, the systematic dilution of native cultures as the ratio of ethnic V non-ethnic peoples living in western / northern societies changes irreversibly, or should we accept that this largescale shift is natural, random and coincidental?
“There is nothing natural, random or coincidental about this. The European Union was formed in 1952 as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) to orchestrate White holocaust in Europe after WW2, step by step. I voted no for the EU back in the day but that didn’t make any difference as one can see.”

Are we witnessing the deliberate stripping away of national identities in the west and north? The EU seems to be waging war on the unique culture of its member states, instigating an all-out attack on tradition, history, patriotism and nationalism. What is so wrong with taking pride in – and safeguarding – the culture of one’s own homeland? Should every ethnic group not have the right to treasure, celebrate, practice and defend their innate, indigenous identity, values, culture, heritage and traditions?
“Of course. Europe, Japan, India, China (or what’s left of it after the communist takeover), Africa, the Middle East all have their own culture, traditions and things and rightly so. Even European countries are much different from each other. A trade union would have been the best option, at most, for the EU, which was spoken of at first, but now even a blind man can see that the EU was formed to destroy Europe. Germany and France both have over 5 million muslims, for example – why is that? That makes no sense. They don’t belong to Europe as we have seen in the last ten years especially, they belong to the Middle East.”

The changes are becoming more evident in every neighbourhood. As trouble brews on their own doorsteps, have people perhaps had enough? There appears to be a backlash, a groundswell of anti-immigration sentiment in Europe – with Sweden, Italy, Hungary and Poland leading the way. Are failed immigration and integration policies inevitably causing widespread turmoil and discontent?
“A lot of people are sick of the immigration policy but they are enslaved by mortgages and money in general, so they can’t do anything, even if they wanted to. Also the ‘democratic’ system is designed in a way that you can’t change things by voting. Plus, the damage is already done in most European countries so I’m afraid we have to hit rock bottom and start all over again and get back to basics – whether it will be by war or some other disaster – or Whites will just disappear, tolerate themselves to death.”

Blessed with a refreshingly raw, analog and underground character, ‘Pagan Gods Rise’ is a timeless work that could have been recorded three decades ago when Diaboli (as Sigillum Diaboli) was setting out on its cursed journey. How important is it to you to keep alive the original spirit and ethos of (Northern) Black Metal?
“That is just the result of not having any money, having to record for a zero budget basically. I recorded and mixed the album by myself for free and professional mastering cost about 25 euros, so the recording budget for the album was 25 euros. There are some good experimental Black Metal records, like ‘666 International’ by Dodheimsgard, but they are few.”

While many artists use metaphors and symbolic scenarios to obfuscate their intent, Diaboli tends to be more direct and straight to the point lyrically. Using the power of words, are you deliberately attempting to provoke or do you simply prefer to speak from the heart, call it as you see it?
“‘In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’ Unfortunately, this is the reality as everyone in Europe can see now. I bow down to no one and I have nothing to lose so I don’t really care.”

What caused the seven-year delay between starting and completing the recording? Is it because you don’t believe in rushing things but prefer to wait for natural bouts of inspiration and creativity to arrive?
“The material was so different musically and lyrically that it needed to ripen for a while and see how it turns out.”

By its very nature, Black Metal should be primitive. Diaboli rejects ‘progress’ and modernity. To what extent is ‘Pagan Gods Rise’ a back to basics or back to roots recording? Do you still use the same recording techniques, methods and instruments that you did back in the beginning or (in terms of equipment rather than experience) have you changed or added much to the process?
“The recording process has been basically the same for the last 20 years, I have recorded and mixed the material and then it is mastered by somewhere else. I don’t record with a computer because then I would have to buy one for that purpose only, and learn to use recording software, and that would be a waste of time. I have been using some kind of analog or digital recorder for the last 25 years or so. First I had a 4-track cassette recorder to record demos, then an 8-track recorder and then a 32-track recorder, which is just about good enough. The thing is starting to fall apart because of age, though, and I don’t think I’ll buy a new one after that.”

One of three tracks presented in the Finnish tongue, the striking and majestic ‘Kuoko’ is a haunting, malevolent and unorthodox offering, even by Diaboli standards. What provided the inspiration musically and lyrically for this song?
“Reading about the subject inspired the lyrics, and the lyrics inspired the music in that case.”

Predating Clandestine Blaze, Horna, Behexen and almost everybody else by quite some distance, Diaboli is one of the longest-running and -influential Finnish Black Metal entities and was born in and around the same time as your neighbours Emperor, Enslaved, Satyricon, Immortal, Burzum and not all that long after Darkthrone and Mayhem. All these Norwegian acts have since chosen to travel along a different (more commercial and mainstream) path. How disappointed are you by how Black Metal has evolved over the past 30 years? Or do you completely distance and disassociate yourself from any perceived ‘scene’ or movement?
“Yup, I was playing Black Metal when those bands were still reading Donald Duck. I don’t really bother myself with the commercial aspect. If you operate in the music business at a level where you earn a living from music, you can’t write lyrics about certain topics, like holohoax, or the tours and money will end, that is a fact. Every music genre gets watered down and commercialized to make money by the Jewish music business at some point. You just have to stick to your vision. I don’t care if I sell 5 or 500 cds, I have been basically making Black Metal for free for 30 years and I don’t complain at all. If you are truly an ‘artist’, if we can use that word, you do it whether you get paid or not. You have an obsession to write songs and create that you can’t escape, and it seems to stick with you until the day you die, unfortunately. In this digital age, you can easily record music by yourself and release it for free on the internet if nothing comes up. Underground bands won’t make a living with their music, anyway.”