The international supergroup Parfaxitas has already stunned audiences with their debut masterpiece, Weaver of the Black Moon. Although physical copies will be released on May 31 via the revered Terratur Possessions, the album dropped even earlier online. Parfaxitas is the glorious brainchild of Azlum/Nero, known for Merihem, Oculus, and Manetheren. Azlum, who handles guitars in Parfaxitas, hails from the United States. The same applies to Parfaxitas’ bassist, who is also Azlum’s bandmate in Merihem, Suffering Hour’s YhA. They are joined by Whoredom Rife’s K.R on vocals and B.Einarsson of Sinmara and Slidhr on drums. These two artists represent Trondheim, Norway and Iceland respectively. I can state with conviction that there has never been a better black metal offering created, entirely or partially, on American soil. The overall result, interestingly enough, sounds very Norwegian insofar as it encapsulates the essence of authentic black metal. Yet, it is also quite individualistic. Indeed, Azlum has woven his own universe through the six sublime compositions he presents here.

Fan support for Parfaxitas should be expected to continue to snowball. It is safe to say that this dangerous group has not only proved one of the top emerging outfits, but also one of the best around in black metal period. We were thus honored to have the opportunity to speak with Azlum himself. We know that members of the enigmatic Terratur clan can be reluctant to give interviews, so we were especially grateful for this rare opportunity.

Could you please tell me about the origins of Parfaxitas?

I met Bjarni through his bandmate Ólafur Guðjónsson.  Oli and I had been friends a handful of years before Bjarni and I connected for music. I had formed Oculus and Merihem, and I had Manetheren. I decided I wanted to do something a little bit more, not ritualistic, but closer to my perception of black metal. So that’s what this project is.

Bloodthorn is my very first band that I ever discovered as a teenager — K.R is from Whoredom Rife and also from Bloodthorn. I asked him to do vocals after I’d made the music, and he said yes. By the way, I wrote the album in seven days. It was composed of pure hatred for another individual that I was living with at the time. The music just came, boom, right out.

The bassist is also in Merihem, but initially he wasn’t supposed to be in Parfaxias. We had another bassist who isn’t really in any other bands. He kind of just changed his mind at the last minute, so I asked YhA, and he was like: “Yeah, cool.” And then, he said he was going to play a fretless bass, and I was like: “Oh yeah, do it.” — Because how many black metal bands do you see that use fretless bass?! I can probably count maybe a couple.

After that, it took a couple of years to get everything organized with the delay of Covid, the pressing plants, and stuff like that. But after we had all of the music done, it was pretty much smooth sailing.

Did you know K.R before you asked him to be a part of this?

Kind of, yes. My drummer for Manetheren, Thorns, who’s also in Darvaza, was close with my former drummer from Oculus. So, they would go to Norway frequently to play shows when Bornyhake was still playing live with Darvaza. So, there was one night they were drinking, and he texted me: “Ah, I’m hanging out with K.R.” “Tell him I say: ‘What’s up?!’” He had sent me a message on Myspace maybe 10 years ago because I did a Bloodthorn cover with my old band. So, yeah, I just connected with him, and we just kept talking. And I just floated the idea. He liked the idea. He said it was unique to him.

All of the performances on this album are obviously incredible. But since I wanted to talk about vocals a little bit, I’ll say that K.R’s performance blows me away. So, I was wondering: Did you communicate with him about your vision, or did he just kind of listen to what you prepared and throw down his vocals?

I did because I wasn’t sure how they were going to turn out, if you know what I mean. I basically told him I have a more deep sort of, not death metal, but sort of in-between approach. So, that was the original sort of idea I had for it. I just was like: “Go ahead, and try something.” And he did it, and it was perfect. You know, he did this howling and these sort of agonizing shrieks every once in a while that were just perfect. And he was also accompanied by Brage from Misotheist. He’s on two of the tracks.

That’s awesome because Brage is obviously fantastic. He’s another one of the genre’s best. Who wrote the lyrics?

I did.

They’re amazing!

The source of where I got my lyrical content came from The Book of Sitra Achra. So, that’s where I got my inspiration.

So, just to clarify, you even composed all of the drums yourself?

I composed the whole album itself with the tools that I had, and I just tossed them to Bjarni. I said: “Take this, and make it yours.” It was really important to me that each member didn’t just play what I wrote. I didn’t want it just to be me telling people what to do. I wanted it to come together and make something that we felt resembled the actual vision of what black metal was to us. And that’s what this album is to me.

How was the production process?

It was all over the place. I did my own guitars. I reamped them with stuff like Guitar Rig. The guitar stuff was just done from my own computer. I didn’t go into the studio or anything like that. All of our stuff was sent to Garðar from Sinmara. So, he mixed and mastered it. He also added some stuff to it that wasn’t on the initial recording, which I thought was awesome. YhA did his bass through his bassist for Suffering Hour. They went to his house. I think he recorded there. And then, K.R did his vocals with Brage. It took him a while to figure out where to go because he didn’t have access to a recording space at the time with everything that was going on. So, he eventually hooked up with him, and he recorded it. And like I said, it was amazing. I loved it. I was blown out of the water.

Ole is obviously a truly outstanding label owner and everything, so I was wondering: Could please tell me about working with Terratur?

It’s been pretty smooth. Communication is perfect. He’s always really quick to answer. He’s been pretty helpful. We worked together to find stuff for the layout. I forgot if he pointed me to Robert or not. He was just really great to work with. I would not want to work with anyone else.

And how did you team up with Terratur?

That was K.R. He basically shopped it to Ole, and I reached out to him and he told me he liked it.

Robert A. von Ritter obviously did a wonderful job with the art and Kontamination Design, who Ole uses a lot, did the layout — he’s a fantastic musician as well, Paweł, or “Sonneillon.” Is there anything that you would like readers to know about the cover?

Oh yeah, it was brilliant. It is a hand-painted mural. To me, the actual art is a representation of Naamah, who is Lilith’s sister. She is the “Weaver of the Black Moon.” And she is basically destroying a Roman city in the picture. The artwork was so perfect for what we wanted. Robert was a really good guy to work with. A brilliant artist.

I got really excited obviously when I first heard the first released track by Parfaxitas, “Thou Shalt Worship No Other,” on Terratur’s previous compilation [TERRATUR COMPENDIUM MMXXIII] last year. Did you receive a lot of great feedback from that, a lot of interest, a lot of great questions?

No, actually not really. I didn’t really announce it. On my personal Facebook, I did, you know, with the people I know. And I’ve told a handful of other people, like Paweł Marzec was very aware of the project and music.. There were some people who knew, but I didn’t get a lot of feedback because I didn’t really post about it. All I could do was share the link. I couldn’t share the artwork and stuff. So, I was like: “I’m not going to post about this too much because there is a thing called too much promotion.” Especially if you aren’t sure ‘when exactly’ the release is coming. We didn’t want to flood people with too much and not be able to give them solid release details. This being put on pre-order, I have been seeing a lot of stuff. I’m very humbled by it. I guess I wasn’t really expecting it, but it’s well-received.

Are you working on new material yet?

Yes. I have just started. It’s taking a while just given the fact that I have two other projects. I have a handful of other guys who want me to work on other stuff. It can be tricky to make the bands sound unique and different from each other, especially when you’re playing similar genres. So, I have to be careful when I write what.

So, do you plan to play live?

I think it would depend on where and whether it was a one-time thing or touring. It would really depend on everyone’s position because everyone has a main band that they play in. YhA has Suffering Hour, though that’s on hold right now. K.R is always doing something with Whoredom Rife. Bjarni, I know Sinmara is still actively playing shows. I’m not entirely sure how often, but he does play in Slidhr and a handful of other bands. So, it could happen, it might not. But I think it depends on the circumstance. If it’s a really big festival or something that has all these bands that I’m big into, and I sort of feel the energy just looking at it, and say, “This is black metal to me, I want to be involved in this,” then yes, I think I would want to.

Ole should book you for Beyond the Gates next year.

That would be great.

The black metal world is so small. You’re obviously from Minnesota, and you’re part of the pool of the elite few who constitute black metal’s best, so you’re working with artists from abroad, Norway and Iceland. And in other bands, you also collaborate with members from other countries. Thorns, for example, is from Italy. So, yeah, basically most of the black metal artists worth listening to are connected due to collaborations and whatnot. Would you like to say anything about your group of spiritual brothers?

The musicians that I play with are all brilliant. They’re all people that I look up to, and some of them are younger than me. I like playing with the people that I respect. It’s not about getting large or being noticed, it’s just playing music that I really enjoy with the people that I enjoy. Playing with K.R, playing with Marko from The Stone, playing with Honza (also in The Stone) in Oculus — just various people that I play with that I respect so much. And to be able to share this vision of what I perceive black metal to be with people who also have that same vision is really important to me.

Is there anything you want to say about your other projects?

Well, Manetheren is just kind of stagnant right now. That’s my eldest project. I greatly respect both Beast and Thorns, and I think when the time is right maybe Manetheren will have some new material. They’re both rock solid human beings that I owe a lot to.

I am trying to write new stuff for Merihem, but that takes a little bit of time because it needs to be very chaotic, and it can be trying to make it still sound different from everything else. The other guys want me to do something since I wrote that album, Incendiary Darkness, like six years ago. Each of these albums has taken a pretty long time.

I’m probably not going to work on anything for Oculus for a while because we just released Of Temples and Vultures. I loved it. I really enjoyed making it with those two guys. Honza is a really fucking brilliant drummer, who is too humble for his own good. I remember he said: “Oh, just so you know, I’m not a drummer.” And he sent it to me, and I was like: “What the fuck are you talking about?! What do you mean you’re not a drummer? This is some of the best fucking drumming I’ve heard in a long time.” He’s a technical drummer. When you think of black metal, even though I don’t really consider Oculus to really necessarily be that, you don’t think of drums like that. They’re very-very technical. There are parts where you listen, and I’m like: “Fucking christ…” I was just impressed.

The same thing with Bjarni. I think he’s done amazing stuff. For the first track that he did for the album, “Breath of the Thoughtless Light,” he was busting out some fills, and they were brilliant to me.