Tumultuous Ruin talks 'Never A Night So Dark', Fash Creep, Skinny Puppy and Self-Sufficiency

The future needs leftist voices and artists with authenticity and a clear understanding of what is at stake and the vision to see their resistance goals reached, even as the struggle continues. It is inspiring to see people building coalitions or growing as creatives and activists in this dark time. 

One of my favorite people to talk to here and there is RH from anarchic black metal purveyor Tumultuous Ruin. Now the one person outfit has a terrific new EP out called Never A Night So Dark. 

Head to Ampwall and check out this fired up collection of benefit comp tracks (including an excellent re-imagined Skinny Puppy cover). It was great to finally interview RH and chat about surviving the undead corpse of empire. 

1. So good to do this at last! Been wanting to interview you for awhile and pleased the stars aligned. First up, can you tell me what the trajectory was like for both your involvement in black metal as a fan and then practitioner? How did your work mirror also your inner growth of awareness as a leftist? Like at what point were you like over Mayhem or something and discovered Panopticon kinda stuff, lol?

RH- Great to finally get to do this with you! I have kind of a weird trajectory as far as black metal goes. I mostly come from a punk background. Then I spent a lot of years on drugs, isolated, and not really seeking out new music. I still feel like I’m playing catch-up on all the years I missed out on. Anyways , a guy I knew from recovery was heavy into bm and introduced me to some of the standards- Mayhem etc. I quickly moved onto stuff like Wolves in the Throne Room and Panopticon. Then I discovered Dawn Ray’d and it was like “oh they’re doing the anarcho-punk thing but with black metal! Sign me the fuck up”.

Being from a punk background and growing up with Crass albums, I’ve always been more interested in radical political music. The way some bands are able to look at the world around us and boil it down into incredibly impactful and memorable lyrics is fascinating to me.

In regards to your question about my work reflecting my inner growth and awareness as a leftist- I spent a lot of years trying to escape from the world and myself. Now that I’m actually present in my life and in the world, it’s good to have an outlet like making music to deal with the abject horror that surrounds us. I guess it doesn’t require too much awareness to see that things are fucked up. Basically, we live in hell and Tumultuous Ruin gives me the chance to scream about it.

2. So let's talk the one person band thing. How has the experience been for you? You have managed to build a great network of allies in the underground all while keeping your art true to your vision. How has it felt to feel people recognize something in work that is such a personal extension of yourself? It is such an interesting time for networking in the underground. Like, Enslaved have an app (which is pretty dope). For all the perils and evil of technocracy,etc. or stuff like Spotify investing with Zionist AI to murder people, the discouraging stuff is also met with a good web of allies online trying to strive for a better comradeship and solidarity with the people. RH- Yeah it seems like the antifascist black metal online community has really exploded the last few years. It’s great to see. I just try to be supportive and help get the word out about bands I see that are carrying the message. Huge credit to the Antifascist Black Metal Network for the work they do. Of course, like you said, the internet and its overlords are a total nightmare. But on the other hand I’ve made a lot of friends online and gotten to meet some of them in the real world. 3. I LOVE the "Toward Their Chains" track. It has this like disso-DSBM vibe but also flirts with some alternative music kind of sad indie little guitar thing woven through the dirge effectively. And the drums are still so battering the whole time even in many of the slow, mournful parts. It really drives home the sorrow and relentless feeling of facing the oppression of the state. Do you think the consciousness is growing around the links between resource extraction, private carceral big business and the surveillance state? RH- Thanks! I was definitely trying to portray a sense of sadness and hopelessness. I guess that relates to the other part of your question- like, looking around at the average person on the street and realizing they’re so indoctrinated that they don’t seem to have any sense that this gestures around is not ok. It’s disheartening, to put it mildly. That’s what the song is about. But to be a bit more optimistic, it does seem like more and more folks, especially younger folks, are becoming more aware and connecting the dots. 4. What were the compilations that some of these EP tracks for Never A Night So Dark were on and would you like to shout out the original causes for people to find? RH- Yeah for sure. “Climate Chaos Manifest” is on the comp from Total Liberation Records to benefit Vegan in Palestine. It’s also on the benefit comp from Forest Summoner for Flagstaff Mutual Aid

“Toward Their Chains” is on the benefit comp ‘Bind by Root, Bind by Branch’ from the label Breath Sun Bone Blood to raise money for Trans Lifeline and Trevor Project.

“Smothered Hope” is part of the Fiadh Productions benefit comp ‘From Dreams to Living Things III’ which is helping raise money for Fawn’s Fortress Animal Sanctuary in New Jersey.

“Undead Corpse of Empire” was a new song for the EP but will be featured soon on a benefit comp from Ripping Nails Records to raise funds for Dhadjowa Foundation which is tackling the issue of black deaths in custody in so-called Australia.

Can’t say enough about these labels and orgs. All worthy of support. 5. What is your average "studio process" like for any given track? Do you feel like you kind of have a set way or standard for how you approach things or does it vary? RH- I definitely do not have a set process. I’m all over the place. Usually I’ll have an idea in my head and I just try my best to get that idea out. It rarely works out the exact way I envision it, but sometimes it does. The best stuff often comes from a more stream-of-consciousness type approach. 6. Yeah, sometimes you just gotta go with it. What made you decide to cover Skinny Puppy? They were such a radicalizing band for me, philosophically. I used to take acid at like 15 with my then girlfriend and just bug out in the woods in Woodstock listening to Last Rights. It made me feel a deep connection to the conversation between survival of the soul, the interior world and nature amidst the creep of industry that still rings relevant. RH- I had a similar connection to Skinny Puppy when I was younger and I still consider them an all time favorite. They definitely radicalized me as far as animal rights and being more politically aware. Plus the topics of inner turmoil, addiction, etc are something I relate to heavily. That string of releases they put out from the 80s through the early 90s are untouchable.

So, I’d been wanting to do a cover of ‘Smothered Hope’ for a while and it just really worked well with this EP. It’s been great to hear the response from other people that are into Skinny Puppy as well as black metal.

7. How has it been for you being in Los Angeles as the fascist creep has been really kicking into higher gear with ICE or the poor response to the fires and the demonization of the homeless? I remember when psych folk artist Globelamp first took my to downtown LA it was incidentally the day O.J. died and so all these reporters were outside the famous courthouse as we walked by and I had this like realization like ,"woah, I'm really here." Heavy trip. RH- I actually haven’t been spending much time in LA lately. I’ve mostly been traveling around living in a van in different areas. But yeah, LA is always kinda a home base and it’s where I mostly grew up. When i was on the streets, I spent a lot of time around the MacArthur Park neighborhood. Some of the immigrant folks around there took me in and fed me. So to see the recent ICE “show of force” or whatever at MacArthur Park was kinda infuriating. But cool to see that the folks around there weren’t having it and were 2 steps ahead of the ICE bastards.

The fascist creep is definitely ramping up everywhere. It’s hard to paint a rosy picture of what the future might hold. But seeing these pockets of resistance and folks throwing spanners in the works whenever possible brings me something resembling hope. To bring it back to the EP and the John Brown quote that the title is taken from “I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day”