“IT’S VERY DIFFICULT TO PENETRATE THE 3D-BUBBLE INTO REALITY SINCE THERE’S A CONSTANT WAR BEING WAGED AGAINST HUMANITY TO KEEP US DUMBED DOWN WITH INDOCTRINATION, CHEMICALS AND LIES” – STEFAN SANDSTRÖM (LIK / EHLDER / Armagedda)
As tormented and prodigiously-gifted young upstart Graav, he was in a former life pivotal to one of Black Metal’s most compelling and influential chapters: Armagedda. Today, expediently insulated from the spiritually and physically debilitating ills of a ruinous modern world he vehemently rejects, whilst living off-grid in Sweden’s northernmost and remotest land, Stefan Sandström / Graav has against all odds put the finishing touches to the forthcoming sixth LIK full-length recording. Far from the maddening crowd, here in splendid solitude is a genuinely trailblazing and inimitable Black Metal torchbearer – an authentic and indomitable essence who is the living embodiment of unconventional and uncompromising.
The Swedish language lends itself particularly effectively to Black Metal. As well as being phonetically potent, when you engage your native tongue with LIK, EHLDER and Armagedda, it also adds an additional layer of mystique and might to proceedings for those of us tuning in from other lands. Through your music and specifically by choosing to channel your dark art through the dialect of your ancestors, are you celebrating and promoting naturally-ingrained culture, customs and clan – values and traditions that are coming increasingly under attack in a new world order designed to uproot and disconnect us from our past?
“I wouldn’t say I view myself as a fanatic towards our cultural heritage these days, but it seems to have a greater importance to me than I think. It might be because I’ve been living off-grid in an old log cabin for almost two years now. No electricity or running water and the pendulum clock on the wall don’t really have a purpose besides that I rewind it every week for the pleasant sound of it. Time doesn’t control me as it used to. Sure I have some clients I do work for, but my jobs today are completed in an old-fashioned way. Trading, or cash straight down in my pocket, and just the way I’m living today are my silent protest towards this circus-society and to honour the old natural way we used to live.
“It’s still enjoyable for me to learn more words of our dialectical language from our area and to practise old cooking art or fishing methods. Sure, I celebrate some holidays but mostly in my own ways. Traditions are the dead’s way of controlling the living, so I only give it half attention since life is just as important as death.”
Living this way, do you feel more connected to your homeland and ancestors and perhaps more attuned to your natural state than you might otherwise be? Have you successfully managed to insulate and shield yourself from the omnipresent poison and anti-human treachery of a phoney modern world, whose ‘comforts’ and ‘conveniences’ are but traps and tricks? Do you feel free and liberated here in the solitude of your log cabin or has your freedom still been taken from you by virtue of the fact that the outside world has fallen and you cannot return to it?
“Homeland doesn’t matter anymore but ancestors’ genes and thoughts are in my blood. My area of Sweden differs a lot from the south of Sweden and it has always been that way. Of course these parasites want to corrupt ALL folks, so they are also aiming at us up here. Unfortunately these lazy, brainwashed people without spirituality up here, they want to globalise the North too. And I’m sure they’ll succeed. But I’m not in their game since the ‘Mandela Effect’ is about two realities in the same 3D life and we’ll experience Tellus differently depending on what kind of frequency you’re tuning into. And I choose the higher and thus ain’t that affected by them.
“I feel free because I choose it in my mind. But my mind also chose to put my body outside society and in this state I do more good to family and friends since I’m not only more harmonic but also more attuned to what really matters. By meditating and sending positive energy to loved ones, it sometimes has a more powerful effect than just spending time together.
“The spirit realm is a peculiar part of the physical and it does reflect this 3D. But it’s not a playground. For example, if your silver cord between your body and soul gets cut while astral projecting you will be lost from your body and your body is left as an empty vessel. Demons love to lure you out to do these soul journeys and then cut you loose so they can inhabit your body. But this is surely common knowledge for us westerners, right?”
Ha, as you know, the only thing that’s common knowledge in the west is the avalanche of indoctrinating and dehumanising propaganda transmitted onto us by manipulative mainstream media, entertainment, science and education. The true nature of reality is concealed, not by accident but by design. How did you teach yourself to astrally project and where do you go during these journeys?
“Intentionally, I’ve never taught myself to actively astral project, but I’ve experienced it three times. It started when I was 17 and had a relationship with a demon and I followed him but I saw that a light being was monitoring those meetings from a distance. In hindsight, I believe that no harm could have happened to me because of my guardian that was with us in the background.
“In a sense these journeys felt more real than reality itself, with vibrations and colours, and I believe I was in the second heaven where the spiritual battle takes place, but I also got led aside into dark corners and carried out some horrible acts I was persuaded into.
“This happened to me for a reason. I’m certain of it. Today I’m striving for the light, joy, love, harmony, etc. but I can’t deny my darkness and I don’t want to. It’s too important and if I can’t dwell in it and express myself through it, I’d probably become a mass murderer due to lack of sanity. Balance between light and darkness is the key to discovering what path you should take.”
What prompted you to ‘get out’? I take it you feel nothing but revulsion for the life and the Sweden you left behind? Where did it all go wrong for Sweden, and for the west in general? Is there any dissident sentiment in the air or has the battle (not that we put up much of a fight…) for control of man’s minds, thoughts, perceptions and actions already been lost?
“Sweden was lost when the Rockefeller Foundation founded feminism and women voting, since before they could only tax half of us (the men) and by letting women work they also got hold of our children by putting them all into their ‘teaching’. Sweden has been lost for a very long time. The authorities are trafficking children in our underground tunnels and if I die soon in an ‘accident’, you know it’s not an accident.
“It also went wrong when we rejected our Creator, our Source, our Home… The darkness has its grip and that grip has become our half life. If I were normal, I’d choose the Light but since I started to dig early in the darkness it’s hard to stop now.
“In my teens, I realised I don’t belong here, so back then when I discovered ‘Svart Metall’ I felt that death and darkness was a better place than life. That was my first ‘get out solution’ but it was satisfying since it was more of an escape but at the same time I discovered an unclean spirituality that really helped me escape 3D reality.
“Nothing is lost! Maybe forgotten! But we have the spirit within and we can fight against all this filth. When we get older we realise that our life is a battlefield. Every day is a battle but some choose to battle over the remote control and others choose to battle against the jews.”
And let us not forget that these same jews will have complete control of what we are likely to see and hear when we push the buttons on the remote control anyhow! They are pushing our buttons and controlling us in exactly the same manner. Who, what or where is the Creator you refer to? Are you talking about the source or essence of life itself? Neither the fairytale narratives of Abrahamic religion nor of science (we are a fluke that evolved from primordial ooze) make sense. If you consider the anatomy, symmetry, complexity, biology, perfection and capabilities of the human body, it seems obvious that at least the vessels our spirits fleetingly occupy were engineered rather than evolved…
“To clarify: when I refer to ‘the jews’ I mean the zionists; the cabal; most of banking and the media; and those child-sacrificing religious sects that follow kabbalah. I don’t throw every jew under the bus so it’s foolish of me to use the term ‘the jews’, but since many of these devils are jews, it’s easy to fall in and fall back to prejudice since it has served a purpose to mankind through all its existence. I’m not even anti-semetic since there are no jews left with Hebrew blood. There are only Kazarian fake jews left, who have no title left to Palestine.
“Well yes. I’m neither from a monkey nor from Africa. I wouldn’t be surprised if we races are created / hybrids from different races outside of our solar system, not least since all our different blood types don’t make sense if we are all ex-monkeys. But that’s not my most important question, but rather asking: what’s the purpose of living and what is waiting around the corner of death?”
That is the ultimate question, really. Maddening existential matters have perplexed mankind since time immemorial and serve as the source for much of the art we create. Are we essentially spiritual in nature and do we coexist in this physical, earthly plane alongside demonic, nonhuman entities disguised as humans? Is death the end or a gateway to a transformed state of being? Could it be that this reality we are experiencing is a simulated one? Have you managed to find any answers or make any meaning of it all?
“All I know is that there is a reality more real than this one we’re living in, and that is waiting for us. It’s reachable today, here, but it’s very difficult to penetrate the 3D-bubble into Reality since there’s a constant war being waged against humanity to keep us dumbed down with indoctrination, chemicals and lies. But still it is here that we choose whether you want to live with the light or away from it after passing. It’s about what mindset you have and what frequencies you desire to attract.”
In a former lifetime, or an earlier chapter of the prevailing one, you co-created one of the most compelling, influential and enduring Black Metal records ever. You had just turned 20 when, inspired by the original antagonistic spirit of true adversarial BM, the third Armagedda offensive was recorded in October, 2003. Often imitated but never equalled or bettered, ‘Ond Spiritism: Djæfvvlens Skalder Anno Serpenti MMIV’ still stands apart as a landmark Black Metal moment in time. How much of that spirited young man of almost 22 years ago still exists today?
“Armagedda was / is a channel for Graav to flourish and (the true) LIK is also a channel for Graav to live the darkness. Nothing has changed. But it’s not up to me or A. It’s about the Spirit.
“The Spirit still exists and if I died today that Spirit will still exist. It has existed for thousands of years, so what we do here doesn’t mean anything in the end.”
Interesting that you mention Graav in the third person. Why is this? Is Graav more than just a pseudonym or recording name? Where does Stefan end and Graav begin, or are you one and the same?
“Back in the days when Armagedda and LIK were formed, I lived fulltime as Graav and it almost ended my life. I chose to separate myself from this alter ego and only step into Graav when my raw aggressive darkness can’t be dealt with within my own boundaries. Perhaps it’s a split personality disorder, but it’s widening and makes my life more broad, so I’m very grateful of how Graav affects my life … even though I sometimes have memory losses.”
How does living off the so-called grid and particularly having no electricity affect your ability to create music? Have you had to improvise and adapt to a whole new way of approaching your musical creativity? Is the process slower or faster? Are there more pros or cons?
“It’s a lot more complicated and a slower process today but in the end it’s more beneficial to my creativity when it comes to quality. Some day, I might invest in a solar panel, so I can at least record acoustic ideas through a laptop and a mic. But since I have free access to Nordvis studio I don’t have any urgency with that need.”
Is this (Nordvis studio) where you recorded the forthcoming new LIK material? You posted a couple of hate-fuelled and overtly anti-Abrahamic demo tracks – ‘Kampsång Under Svartsolen’ and ‘Vi Skall Bestå’ – on Bandcamp a few years back, but nothing publicly since. I believe you are collaborating with Darker Than Black Records, possibly for a full-length release. Can you provide any further information on these activities? It feels like LIK is ready to go to war…
“I have been solo since the release of EHLDER – ‘Nordabetraktelse’ (2019) and have recorded some seven or eight albums in total since then. So, no, I recorded the new LIK album with my own equipment. The new LIK will be released on Sken (‘blaze’) Records and I’ve ended all collaboration with DTB and Sonnenrune Records, since I wanted to work more locally. H. Möbus has been a rock and very supportive of my art and he has my respect. But times have changed and I needed to move on.”
Armagedda returned unexpectedly and triumphantly from indefinite hiatus in 2020 with the perversely degenerate ‘Svindeldjup ättestup’. Nobody outside of yourself and Andreas saw that one coming! What are the chances of more Armagedda material appearing at some point in the future?
“Armagedda are pronounced dead, but beyond death there is also life, so who knows?”
[Listen here to ‘I Ögonblicket’, the opening track on the forthcoming new LIK full-length]