The Moon Sisters are more magical than ever. Since their CVLT Nation introduction just short of a year ago, these beautiful ladies have transformed Sisters of the Black Moon into a thriving culmination of mystical treasures. Not only does their vintage shop continue to fill with unbelievable threads, but with the revamp of their official website, they’ve also formed some amazing collaborations, allowing their brand to expand and take form tenfold. SOTBM are now proud connoisseurs of organic apothecary and sanctuary items, metal-wielded, crystallized jewels, and custom-made regalia; working with and selling exclusive designs from artists and designers such as Ovate, Onward Into The Future, Alchemy, Heyoka Leather, and Irinalaaja. Stunning editorials by family friend Alexandra Valenti, who’s been by their side since the very beginning, are also a staple to their realm of shadowy eccentricities. These women truly do seek to create a world for their work to live in. And man, do I want to live there, too. But what is most magical about SOTBM is that in creating this world, it has become a sanctuary for like-minded creators, artisans and connoisseurs of shadowy delight. It’s yet just another manifestation they embody, emphasizing the inter-connectivity of humankind.
Wet Earth | A CVLT Nation Mixtape curated by Amy Miller0
Posted In Avant Garde,Black Metal,Doom,Features,Mixtapes,Music,shoegaze
Bare flesh entrenched in the moist soil of hidden wood; thick, clouded air and a soft mist of sweet water. Bask in this naked moment; in the heat of passion with a lover on wet earth or the comforting complexities of solitary enchantment with all that surrounds. Kneeling in reverence and ecstasy; feminine divinity. Bow in worship of everything and nothing. Invoke sanctity, invoke divinity, invoke indulgence and ascension; give birth.
Over this past year, CVLT Nation has become a sanctuary for writers and artists alike whom are dwellers of the deep. We saddle up on our pale horses de Profundis and ascend. This mixtape is an ode to the mother of creative inspiration and manifestation; wet earthen woods.
Stream Wet Earth
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Photo courtesy of © Iris Szylack.
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The flesh is but a vessel; a vessel that transposes space and time when evoking other-worldly manifestations through art, ritual, and exaltation. In the pits of darkness, we soak up the energies entering and exiting our wounds. When the spirit overwhelms the vessel with mania and awe, when we have exacerbated all of our energy into merging the internal and external, we transcend. This is where Matthew Stone‘s body of work makes its presence known.
“Like a flame burning away the darkness, Life is flesh on bone convulsing above the ground.“
Children of Culture | Jack Of All Trades: Little Swastika0
Posted In Art,DIY,Mixed Media,Painting,Photography
- © Little Swastika
Cultivation of surrounding primitive cultures, evolution through self education, and complete spiritual ties to the flesh; these are all things that Marc Riedmann, better known as Little Swastika, manifests. He came into his own at a young age, and from starting out on a swiss army knife, I think it’s safe to say he’s certainly come a long way in his arts of the flesh and otherwise, as today he is viewed as a prodigy amongst the body-mod culture. While he has evolved into 21st century tattooing techniques, he still maintains a love for reverting to traditional means of tattooing. The DIY approach has really been all that he’s known, and the “‘build something new and then have a go at it’ approach is something,” he says, “I find deeply fascinating…” This do-it-yourself, street lifestyle he grew up knowing reflects in his work and seems to be responsible for his entire aesthetic; an aesthetic which comprises ornate and detailed imagery with raw, sketchy lines and technique.
Tattooing and body modification can be viewed as mere extensions upon the soul, and our means of merging the material with the spiritual. In some cultures, the swastika represents creation, which alone is the sole reason we are the beings we are. If we do not create, we cannot destroy, and if we cannot or will not destroy, we refuse to fully live.
In some way or another, we all have forces within ourselves that are screaming to get out and eventually they find their own ways of escaping; sometimes intentionally, but often without our knowledge. This is the beauty of cultivating and exploring our unconscious through means of creation. No matter which form it takes, art and the process of creating are our means of communication with ourselves and thus the world around us. While interviewing illustrator Mia Calderone, she expressed to me that answering some of the questions was very therapeutic and “strangely, I understand my own work better now!”. Some see this as salvation, and salvation itself takes on a myriad of forms all its own.
Of course, it should come as no surprise that Mia’s representation of the infamous dark and carnal Hebrew character Lilith is what initially drew me in, as I find salvation in evoking and embracing both spiritual and carnal aspects of my life. Thriving off of the energies of sexual expression and religious culture, I found Mia and her work to be quite intriguing.
CN: First off, what attracts you to creating dark imagery?
MC: I have never considered my drawings dark exactly, but I am attracted to the fragility of the human form. What I am most interested in is exploring the mortality of our form and the dueling thus caused within it.
CN: When and why did you start creating?
MC: This is a difficult concept. We all strive to achieve mastery as soon as our consciousness allows for the awareness of it. We crave it as means to implant ourselves in the minds of our society and its generations to come. Because of our need to imprint on each other, we create constantly without awareness. I started creating illustrative work with the awareness of its intent sometime in my early teens as a means to communicate spiritual and sexual frustration that could not have been properly addressed otherwise, considering my catholic background and location.
The demons of your unconscious walk the earth and devour your unborn children. They emerge from the old dead willows, whose branches mimic serpents and thorns, your cold, brittle bones as you sleep and indulge in intoxicating habits, as you manifest your lustful desires, as you worship, as you ascend and as you rot.
It is a recurrent theme within underground arts to evoke and celebrate these demons. German-based illustrator Cynthia of ThornyThoughts Artwork has captivated these beings so beautifully, in the perfectly obscure, albeit enchanting way. Perhaps this is what has made her so popular as an underground artist; working with bands such as Urfaust (prominently), Carpe Noctem, Der Weg Einer Freiheit, Aosoth, Arvakh, Merrimack, Self-Inflicted Violence, Slumber, and Yhdarl. Not to mention her upcoming collaborations with Xasthur, Secrets Of The Moon, Witchslave, Atoma, Foscor, Ketzer, TotalSelfHatred, Trimonium, and Tsorer.
Cynthia’s creative process, in itself, seems to be a reflection of the images protrayed. Instead of adding a medium on top of a canvas, she creates these prolific pieces through the destructive process of etching lithographic plates. A previous interview sheds some light onto why she is so gravitated towards this method:
“It’s an attempt to turn negativity into productivity. To me it’s a way to process what’s gnarling and murmuring inside my head, and etching is the perfect technique to me since working with needles and acids is physical work as well, kind of violent…together with music on headphones, getting dirty in the studio…it’s a perfect nondestructive way of swimming in my drama for a while, haha!… and in the end it’s all banned into the metal, and I can kind of put it away.” (MAS)
And Dimensions Beyond…
CVLT Nation interviews
Wolves In The Throne Room.6
Posted In Black Metal,CVLT,Features,Interviews,Music
- Photo by Alison Scarpulla
WITTR have always been a favorite here at CVLT Nation, so it was only a matter of time before we were able to snatch an interview with them! Once I was offered the chance to write the interview, I jumped on the opportunity. WITTR was personally the first group of underground metal musicians that were able to transport me directly into the vastness of nature, allowing me to truly get lost in an ethereal trance. This album, I feel, is the epitome of their great works and I was more than excited to delve right in to conjure up this collection of inquiries and couldn’t wait to hear what drummer Aaron Weaver had to say.
CN: Let’s start off with discussing the album itself. At first open, the music of Celestial Lineage personally brings to mind atavistic ceremonies in the forms of shamanism and worship, then cannibalism and primitive hunting, exiting in a slow submersion of death and ascension. Is this album an ode to ancestry, or perhaps an homage to the birth of life?
AW: Those are definitely all images that do appear on the record. We are very image based with our song writing. All of the songs began first as pictures and concepts, and then we write the music around it. There is definitely a flow on the record from a very worldly place to something that is much more celestial, something that is more oriented towards the stars, the sun and the moon, and dimensions beyond.
Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath: The Sacrificial Rites of Hermann Nitsch.5
Posted In Art,Mixed Media,Painting,Sculpture
Not many artists have the reputation of receiving several court trials and three prison terms for their work. At age seventy-two, Austrian born artist, writer, and composer Hermann Nitsch reigns king of blood-drenched, ritualistic art performance, and has been awing/shocking crowds with his religious, pornographic, and grotesque work since the early 1960s. He has a knack for incorporating slaughtered animals, red fruits, music, dance, and active participants to satirize religious rites. “He is only holding up a mirror to his detractors’ own hang-ups with religion and the weird, antiquated ceremonies inherent to their beliefs.” (Vice) Do not confuse his views on religion, however. In his interview with Vice Magazine he states, “I am fascinated with religion of every era and every culture. I respect them all, without belonging to any of them. I only have religious feelings for life, nature, the cosmos, and eternity.” Provocation has never been his intention, he says. He is simply fascinated with the intensity of it all; the aesthetic process alone gives him an artistic high. Today, it is often discussed that his work may also exemplify cultures’ fascination with violence, as Nitsch is known to have grown up during World War II. Because of this, he despises politics.
There is very little known, historically, about artist Manuel Orazi, other than the fact that he was an Italian born lithographer known for his works in newspapers, book covers, opera posters, and the covers of sheet music in France between 1883 and 1884. Most notably, however, in 1895, he collaborated with author Austin De Croze in creating the grotesquely aesthetic occult calendar entitled Calendrier Magique; an art nouveau calendar of black magic. With Orazi’s typical work showcasing elegant young women in dainty attire, creating this piece was a bit unexpected. According to Cornell University, it is “a rare piece of occultist ephemera, printed in an edition of 777 copies to commemorate magic for the coming year of 1896. Each double page spread mimics the Christian calendar in some respect (name days, iconography). The document is at once a spoof and an attempt to chart the year of magic. Its surviving interest resides in the extravagant and compelling illustrations, especially the full-page right hand plates, by Manuel Orazi.”
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