Interview with Antipope

Hi guys! Can you tell us about the inspiration behind your new album “Rex Mundi”? What led you to choose the Cathar Crusades as the basis for the concept?
Mikko: I’ve always been a huge fan of concept albums in general. I think one of the most important experiences that shaped by taste when it comes to creating an album was Cradle of Filth’s “Cruelty and the Beast”, which showed me how you can create a whole world peopled with individuals in a metal context. Soon after that Dream Theater released “Scenes from Memory” and, not long after I discovered Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”. Ever since I wanted to create something similar, an album where everything is linked both music-wise and lyrically. But as I always write the music first and only then the lyrics, in the past I had not felt that I had such an assortment of songs in front of me that were interlinked strongly enough. That’s why previous Antipope albums are more like “theme albums”. This time, when I started to listen to the songs, I felt that there was a story there, something tragic, grandiose, bloody, even romantic. Through my day job as a historian I came across some texts connected to the Albigensian Crusade and Cathars, and I immediately felt that the music we had composed had some kind of connection with those events that took place 800 years ago. I had previously been aware only of the general outlines of Albigensian heresy and the efforts to quench it, so I purchased a whole pile of books and started to educate myself about what was going on back then. And as I discovered historical individuals who participated in the Cathar Crusade or were accused of heresy, it was rather easy to come up with the narrative of the album, which is told from both perspectives, from the side of the Crusaders and of those labelled as heretics.
In and of itself, Cathar Crusades and the whole issue of suppressing ways of thinking and modes of being as heresy is a perfect theme for an Antipope album! We have dealt with these kinds of themes pretty much on our every album, but “Rex Mundi” was the first on which I kind of let myself go as a historian as well as a musician.

How does “Rex Mundi” differ from your previous releases in terms of musical style and approach?
Antti: It’s more of a full-blown concept from start to finish with a story that a listener might follow through by listening to the songs. Also, it’s much more technical than the previous releases since the early days. Faster and angrier to boot.
Mikko: Yeah, I think so too. I wanted to explore kind of classical influences on this one, and because of that there are some more technically challenging passage on this album. Technical complexity or “shredding” has come and gone in Antipope’s music when ever it suits the message that we want to tell through our music. This time around, it was all about creating a bombastic and dark atmosphere.

Can you walk us through the songwriting process for “Rex Mundi”? How did you create such an intricate and complex album?
Joni: I think complex songs and thematics just came naturally when we were writing “Rex Mundi”. We wanted to make a deeper and more complex album after our previous one, “Apostle of Infinite Joy” (2020), and “Rex Mundi” was kind of next step. There was a period when we were looking for the right atmosphere for this album and our demo songs were all over the place. About the demoing process itself, most of the time we wrote songs individually and then Mikko revises the final demos.
Mikko: Writing an album always starts in a place of extreme insecurity and feeling lost. That’s why it’s rather common for us to write a half a dozen songs that will most likely be discarded once we find the style that resonates with the current mood. As I write most of the material, it is typically up to me to say that “ok, this is the direction where we will go”. To cause as little frustration as possible to other songwriters (Antti and Joni), I try to make up my mind as quickly as possible. I guess with “Rex Mundi”, when I had written the 10-minutes long song that ended up becoming the title track of the album, ‘Rex Mundi Aeternum’, it became clear that we are going towards this mixture of heavy metal and symphonic black metal. And as we had right from the start the idea of making a proper concept album, I think we wrote the songs more or less consciously in such a way that they would form a soundtrack for a story – which nobody knew at that point what the story would be about.

How did you go about selecting the 11 tracks that made it onto the album? Was there any difficulty in deciding which songs to include?
Joni: We had like 13 or 14 ready demos to choose from, if I remember correctly, but ultimately it was pretty clear which ones belonged to Rex Mundi and which ones didn’t. When we knew the concept for the album then the songs that didn’t fit were easy to distinguish from the rest.

How does the concept of “Rex Mundi” inform the lyrics and themes explored on the album?
Mikko: “Rex Mundi” stands for “King of the World” in Latin. Back in the Middle-Ages, and maybe today, too, there were people – Cathars included – whole flouted around the idea that the material world was created by Satan to imprison immortal souls in human bodies. And Satan, of course, was the King of the World – Rex Mundi. Some more radical Cathars said that the Roman Catholic Church and the pope were servants of Satan. That obviously was something that the pope did not very much appreciate.

Can you speak to any specific challenges or obstacles you faced during the recording process for “Rex Mundi”? How did you overcome them?
Joni: To be honest we didn’t have many challenges; the whole process went pretty smoothly from my perspective. We had good demo material to work with, instrument recording proceeded swiftly, vocal recordings were done with confidence. We found really good artist to paint the album cover and some extra material for the booklet. I can’t comment much about mixing and mastering process, but I feel Mikko handled those steps like a pro as well.
Mikko: For me, I think I was more aware of particular tasks and skills I had to acquire for this album. “Rex Mundi”, being our 6th album was just one part of the journey, but there were some significant changes too. For myself, I started to explore a more traditional heavy metal singing style right around the time we were writing “Rex Mundi”. There was a lot of experimenting and discovering new singing techniques and to use all that knowledge and new skills was somewhat of a challenge when you start recording new material. I think Antti, who acts as a producer during the vocal recordings, was a bit unsure about how to approach my new style of singing.
Tuska E.: The recording process was pretty smooth. Mikko instructed me to not get too prepared with the songs beforehand. We agreed that I would pretty much just sit behind the drumkit, and we would see what happens after pressing the rec button. And it worked just fine. I´m very satisfied with the drum tracks overall.

What do you hope listeners take away from “Rex Mundi” after they’ve experienced the album in its entirety?
Antti: I hope listeners have enjoyed the ride.
Joni: Hopefully they like what they’re hearing. And if not, they can fuck off!
Mikko: I think “Rex Mundi” will show everyone that heavy metal is far from being dead, and that black metal can influence other genres and it doesn’t have to stay in the confines of trve kvltism.

Press release mentions that you’re not bound by any singular genre. Can you speak to some of the different genres and influences that inform your sound?
Tuska E.: My influences for my playing and what sound I like come from traditional heavy metal and black metal. I think you can hear those influences a lot in Rex Mundi.
Mikko: It’s the same with me, heavy metal and black metal are my biggest influences. I think I also bring a bit more progressive edge to what we do due to being inspired by the 70s prog bands and 90s Dream Theater – not that I can play that technically!

In what ways has Moribund Records supported Antipope’s creative vision and helped bring your music to a wider audience?
Mikko: Moribund Records has helped us a lot to bring our music to new audience, for sure! They also trust our vision 100% and have given us complete creative freedom, which is fundamentally important with a band like Antipope – you never know what we come up with next!

Looking back on your musical career so far, how have you evolved and grown as a band? And what does the future hold for Antipope?
Antti: When you do everything on your own there’s always new things to learn and understand in the process of creating music. To improve one’s capacity to make things better the next time around. I think the growth is quite holistic since we do everything ourselves from writing to production. As for the future, I’m sure we’ll have new tricks up our sleeve for the coming release.