Most black metal heathens recognized the name, …andOceans. The Finnish black metal group released numerous albums through Season of Mist and Century Media Records. Because their sound was diverse, eclectic and artful, they had found a niche in the black metal community as the group’s career continued, they headed down a digital-oriented, electronics path. Eventually, their inclination to explore worlds of electronica led to the group completely leaving behind the black metal tag. Thus, to signify the group’s ten-year anniversary, they shed their …andOceans skin, and morphed into Havoc Unit.
No longer content with minor skirmishes in the form of splits, Havoc Unit instigated total war in their first full-length, h.IV (Hoarse Industrial Viremia) via Vendlus Records. The said album’s title is enough to get your hamster wheel upstairs a-turnin.’ One could say you can’t judge an album by its cover; well, in this case you can. This title somewhat (there is no possible way to be fully prepared for this) gives the listener an idea of what to expect. HIV is a taboo subject, and Havoc Unit makes it their business to make no subject taboo. Much of their sound could wear the industrial tag, and Viremia…I have no idea what Viremia means, but it sounds repulsive. There are plenty of parts in that album that may bring about nausea or other feelings of sickness upon the listener.
There are vast layers of meaning in the lyrics, as well as layers in the music itself. A firm grasp on all the meaning and instrumentation would take an extensive review, and still many ideas would be out of my reach, so the only proper thing to do is allow band members Heinrich (keyboards) and Josef (vocals) to explain this complex gadget they call Havoc Unit.
Blistering.com: Why did you change your name from And Oceans to Havoc Unit?
Havoc Unit: Forget …andOceans! This is certainly not the same band with a different name. Havoc Unit is a new unique concept. The only connection with …andOceans is that some Havoc members used to play in it. Havoc Unit is a completely new formation with a totally different agenda. Havoc has nothing to do with any lakes and oceans in the woods.
The agenda is more like a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people. Instead of impartially providing information, this agenda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience. The most effective propagated information is often completely truthful, but also presents fact selectively to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the cognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience. The delivered information is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.
Blistering.com: h.IV+ [Hoarse Industrial Viremia] is a bleak, hateful album. Do you use Havoc Unit as a vehicle to express these negative emotions?
Havoc Unit: Perhaps but for us life is fun so we definitely do not limit our expression merely to these negative emotions. After all, we are no teeny-weeny punksters bounded in angst. We use Havoc Unit for channeling all our existing emotions and bizarre desires. It could be a clinical despise of everything, appreciation of cadaver stench or apprehension and love for the beauty in cruelty and torture, or maybe a plunge into transsexual nihilism, experimenting with mischievous drugs or just plain old sexual attraction to dead children. “h.IV+” deals with several topics in various perspectives. It’s not just fifty-three minutes of sheer aural violence. That would be pointless like hammering a dead pope. You have to ease and catch your breath every once in a while in order to get into the right groove of waving a hammer, so your victim doesn’t die of a single hit. Of course, the general ideology of the album is a declaration of puritanical hate targeted at pretty much everything, but the main theme is leaning on the world taboos.
But as announced, Havoc Unit is our test channel and we may use it for any purpose we come up with; anything from simple audiovisual expression or narcotics fabrication to a terrorist attack. Besides that, we are pretty positive and shiny happy people. Right on, rock n roll party holocaust!
Blistering.com: h.IV+ relates a blasphemous message towards religions. What message are you relying?
Havoc Unit: The message is that all religions are plain slavery for the blind simpleminded people. Bible, Talmud, Koran, Tao-te-ching, Veda and all other “holy books” are merely toilet paper! At least now, we know what they mean by “holy smoke,” haha. We strongly despise all religious people and otherwise submissive servants. If it were up to us, all that scum would be in concentration camps, even if it seems like the whole society is part of a modern concentration camp already. The modern man needs to wake up and smell the shit of this devolution-generation type of reality.
Blistering.com: Why did you use Arabic letters for the first song’s title on the promo version? What is your interpretation of this song?
Havoc Unit:The song title is “Vermicide” when translated to English. Vermicide is a worm killing substance and the song goes on about Arab armies of worms. So what do you reckon? If you’ve heard the song, you can’t misinterpret the message of love.
Blistering.com: I have seen many interpretations of your album title. What does this title mean to you?
Havoc Unit: The title h.IV+ [Hoarse Industrial Viremia] has several functions and can be interpreted from different points of view: Hoarse Industrial Viremia, Human Immunodeficiency Virus, Havoc 4+ [h-letter indicating Havoc, IV indicating number 4 and + sign indicating accession or 4+ indicating the four members + additional musicians [or just 4 of a kind if you’re in the middle of a poker game].
Blistering.com: In the liner notes, you allude to the album being a concept album. Is h.IV+ a concept album? If so, what is the concept?
Havoc Unit: Yes, it’s a concept album about the taboos in our contemporary society, and the deletion of orders and permissions, orthodox institutions and constitutions. It is the global virus spreading its wings over mankind.
Blistering.com: The artwork and track listing on the promo is different from the store release. Why did you make these differences?
Havoc Unit: There indeed lays several reasons behind it. We cannot give everything to the world at once. No way, dude! This is a step-by-step operation of manipulating the model world. Babies have to learn to swallow before they can spit. Our intention on releasing falsified and encrypted information was just to mislead the media into confusion. Propaganda can serve to rally people behind a cause, but often at the cost of exaggerating, misrepresenting, or even lying about the issues in order to gain that support. Maybe this was our anarchistic reaction towards the mass media and the lies of this world.
Blistering.com: Please explain the recording process for this album.
Havoc Unit: Recordings took place at two separate studios in several occasions and most of the editing was done at home sweet home. I guess we in total spent just a week in the studio premises. We weren’t in any hurry, so it was a rather slow completion, because it took quite a bit of time to create all the samples, noises, intervals and then put all the shit together. We also took our time developing a concept for the album. Finally, during last summer we headed to the studio for the mixing. So the process took almost a year, but the overall process from scratch to the final outcome took maybe over two years.
