### Paroxsihzem - Krag

#### 23/11/12 || Averatu

Paroxsihzem hail from Candanadia, must be from far north where the sun don’t shine much because these guys are a bunch of morbid sons of Satan. Now they’ve released a self titled album to spread the cheer to all the boys and girls. After listening to it, I decided to have a bit of a chat with vocalist and purveyor of lyrical pessimism Krag.

Global Domination: You’re from Candanadia, which is somewhere in the first world? What the fuck have you got to be so morbidly depressed about?

Actually, I’m typing to you from a broken down cellar with this IBM 5150 I dusted off. I would say pessimistic is a more accurate term to describe our outlook and the themes we use in our songs. When you confront the darkest corners of your mind, re-evaluate all your values, and look at the world under a microscope, you no longer understand what optimism is.

IBM 5150? I’d rather catch pneumonia and die. Peavey 5150 on the other hand. I use the Frankentop, my trusty hand-me-down laptop, battery literally popped long ago, fan died a while back so I made a stand for it out of egg trays, and I’m on power supply number 3.

Sounds like you have your shit together!

Immolation + Gorgoroth = Paroxsizhem

Haha, Well me and Impugnor listen to a lot of different types of music and have different tastes so our influences come from all over the place. We weren’t inspired by those bands in particular so that’s just coincidence. Paroxsihzem is just influenced by dark, chaotic and morbid music.

Even dubstep?

No dubstep at all, just pure dark and morbid music.

My neighbor has a massive stereo subwoofer set-up in his van, and treats us to a free club night every weekend when he gets home at 3am in the morning, so I don’t really have a choice.

My first language is Afrikaans, and in Afrikaans Krag can mean power and might, and also electricity as in Engrish.

Amazing.

Smartass. What does it mean to you?

I’ve just been used the pseudonym Krag for years – for my artworks and other projects. It’s just seem to stick with me and its not too far off from my real name.

By the chatter on the interwebs it seems your album is creating quite a stir. How long did you work on it?

The vast majority of the Paroxsihzem album was written around late 2008-2009. After some recordings we revisited it, re-recorded, re-worked it in 2011. Also after getting in touch with Matt from Dark Descent Records we decided it would be best for V.K. to mix and master the album for the most punishing result.

And you must be terribly upset that a fair few people seem to be happily consuming the oppressive darkness of Paroxsizhem?

Its pleasing to know people are getting into it..Dark Descent is an amazing label and its given Paroxsihzem the opportunity to spread around the globe infecting minds. We wrote and constructed the music the way we wanted. Not everyone is going to like it, but that doesn’t matter to us at all.

What would be the situation as far as gigs go? How the heck do you go about capturing the atmosphere of the recording and reproducing it on stage?

We plan on playing live in the near future as we now have a complete line-up. As for capturing the atmosphere of the recording – the music itself will take care of most of that. But we have much more planned out. I guess you will just have to wait and see..

Have you had a hard time finding members? We sure have, no drummer for 4 years now.

We’ve mostly kept it between myself and Impugnor since 2007 as we did not want to rush to find new members. Our first drummer Robin lived in Australia, so we knew we would have to seek someone closer if we were to do live shows. In 2011 after getting in contact with more people here we asked Axaazaroth/The Desolate One (Nuclearhammer) to play drums for us, he agreed and not even a month later Impugnor joined Nuclearhammer as the 2nd guitarist. Now in 2012 we have a new bass player, Orpheus who had been a long time friend of NH and was very interested in the Paroxsihzem material.

1 Who’s Vanya? It’s the nickname for Ivan in Russian, like Bob for Robert.

Vanya is actually a codename for the AN602 hydrogen bomb, which is the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. Most people might know it as the “Tsar Bomba”.

Your bio says you draw on “non-fictional embodiments of humanity”. How does this apply to “Vanya diese Zar Bomba”?

Well we use tangible events and non-fictional inspiration because its a closer relation to humanity. Its a true reflection of the world, no speculation or abstract interpretations. This is all real, all actually happened. A more morbid portrayal of humanity in the end.

Yea, like watching a WW2 documentary, the ones in black and white with some old British guy narrating, you realise just what a disease humanity really is. They used to show them on public TV here when I was a kid.

You’ve been compared to Mitochondrion all over the place. Both being from Candanadia, but I find them to be more of a morbid grind experience, where you guys have a much darker angle.

Well, “Archaeaeon” came out just at the time as we first started writing the full-length Paroxsihzem material, and they did influence us in a certain way. Not directly in how they sounded, but with the intense atmosphere and uniqueness of it. Which I think in the end it helped inspire us to try new things, to really come up with something different and to experiment.

Is there something in the water up there that makes you guys wanna cause a massive worldwide manic depression pandemic?

Maybe its the fluoride. Or maybe its the sickness of ignorant optimism. Paroxsihzem is an experiment and you are all the test subjects witnessing it motion. No one is safe.

I see you’re from South Africa. I’ve heard the crime is pretty bad there in South Africa? I remember a friend saying people used to break into his house even when he was home and steal TV and shit – or that most people would have huge gates/fences guarding their homes. Did that ever happen in your area?

Every day. Smash and grab, as in sash window, grab stuff. When a vehicle is hijacked, the driver generally does not walk away. The worst would be Plaasmoorde, whole families in farming communities wiped out.

Sounds pretty depressing. Now tell me, how much more depressed are you after listening to the Paroxsihzem CD?

A little. I used to be a sad goth, many many moons ago, my depression threshold is pretty high. It takes a trainwreck of cute puppies to get me down.

A sad goth? Fuck. The CD should have mentally took over your motor functions and forced you to commit suicide or you should have spontaneously combusted after hearing the 1st notes!

I think it could have that effect on most people. It really is a fucking dark album, the soundtrack played in the Futurama suicide booth.

Tell me some voodoo rituals you guys practice?

Africa is a very religious place, people get accused of witchcraft a lot, and you frequently hear about a guy in a rural area getting arrested for relations with his goat. As mentioned elsewhere, we have the Tokoloshe, which is a midget troll that goes around raping woman in the middle of the night, and we actually have lions roaming the streets. OK, the lions in the streets is a common misconception, but I was in Botswana a while back, we stopped for petrol(gas) in a small town, and a herd of elephant just moseyed down the road. I almost fudged my pants, the locals were like “pfft, damned elephants, get of our lawn”. The only ritual everyone seems to practice is weed, except me.

And finally, what can we expect from Paroxsizhem in the future?

Well this is only the beginning.. since this CD has been done for some time we have already begun work on many new songs. Expect nothing but pure demented Paroxsihzem darkness. These new songs will either be used on a split or the next full length CD.. we shall see how things go. Of course we also plan on playing live next year with the full line-up as well. If you want to keep up to date I would go to the Paroxsihzem Facebook since thats the site we update the most.