Year: 2024
Label: Steinklang Industries

To be clear, this text is not a review. I can’t well enough review my own album, can I? Instead, this is a text exploring some of the themes and concepts of the album, presenting an overview of what Säkeitä esoteerisesta Euroopasta (Verses On Esoteric Europa) is about.

Dieux Des Cimetières is a neoclassical/martial industrial entity that has existed since 2017. Säkeitä esoteerisesta Euroopasta is preceeded by two albums: European Fire from 2020 and Stormens tidsålder from 2022, both released by Steinklang Industries – just as this new album. Prior to these, a number of mainly digital only demos were released.

The name and concept of the album were originally conceived whilst visiting the grave of Finnish visionary mythologist Sigurd Wettenhovi-Aspa. Aspa’s grand theory was that the Finnish people are direct descendants of ancient Egypt; that most all European languages and cultures have branched off from this Fenno-Egyptian root. Needless to say, his theories are not very scientifically tenable, but his was nonetheless a grand concept; one which on a poetic level sought to connect the Finnish identity to larger western currents, and give us a mythopoetical central place in the currents of Europe.

The original idea of the album was to explore weird and wonderful theories like this, and other esoteric undercurrents in European history. Over time, the lyrical focus shifted to a far more abstract and personal viewpoint. So you won’t find direct references to Wettenhovi-Aspa on the album. On a more superficial level of lyrical symbolism, references to H.P. Blavatsky, René Guénon, Giuliano Kremmerz, Mircea Eliade and Julius Evola are more prevalent. On a deeper level, the lyrics are a deeply personal look at Europe and, more generally, the world; a synthesis of past, present and future, history and myth. It seeks to offer a glimpse into the mythical, mythopoetical and esoteric subcurrents running through Europa.

A conscious decision was made to shift the lyrical imagery away from war, the stereotypical theme of most martial industrial. Where war and conflict had been central concepts on earlier albums, it felt insincere to write symbolic lyrics of war in a country enjoying peace whilst our brothers and sisters in Ukraine are fighting a very literal, real war. Instead, the lyrics are inspired by western esotericism, hermeticism, alchemy, traditionalism and myths from Finland to India.

One nod to more martial lyricism is found in the track Raudan ajan virsi: lifted from Finnish soldier and officer J.E. Sainio’s book Pohjan Pojat Virossa, a book detailing the involvement of Finnish soldiers in the Estonian war of independence 1918-1919, it is a heartfelt lament for peace from a man who had already fought in two wars. A hundred years later, the lyrics remain relevant – the old enemy from the east still encroaches upon Europe.

The album is structured around the a cyclical concept of eternal recurrence. Bookended by tracks called Teille, jotka uskotte and Viimeinen laulu, of which the first is a prayer to the sun, the latter a forlorn lyric to the onset of night, the album commences with dawn and ends in dusk. But already the second track is called Ragnarök, so the birth of a new day is immediately followed by a cataclysmic end. A few tracks later, Satya Yuga ushers the arch of the album through the night to the dawning of a new cosmic day. And so, the album consists of cycles within cycles in a rather Guénon like sense, mirroring the nature of the Kosmos itself.

Aforementioned Teille, jotka uskotte has lyrics adapted from Italian mystic Giuliano Kremmerz. Ragnarök on the other hand draws from Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine and various therein quoted passages of Hindu eschatology. Satya Yuga evokes Scandinavian and Finnish mythology. Raudan ajan virsi, already discussed above, is a cry for peace in an age of conflict. Within these is the Hidden Europa the album seeks: hermeticism, alchemy, tradition, mythology, and the bellicose tides of history. A hidden stream that flows through and beyond the temporal and the geographical, an emanation from the central pillar and tree of life that makes us what we are.

In terms of musical influences, it’s increasingly hard for me to single them out. European Fire was heavily influenced by seeing Triarii live on the first installment of Dark Waves On The Baltic Sea; that event was what really set the album in motion. Stormens tidsålder, on the other hand, was probably 75% written and recorded when I saw Die Weisse Rose live on the second installment of the same festival, but that helped me put the final pieces together. I really can’t say there would have been any single similar event for Säkeitä esoteerisesta Euroopasta.

I dislike the hubris of artists saying they are not influenced by anyone. Of course they are. Of course I am. But I think at this stage in Dieux Des Cimetières’ evolution, the influences are harder to single out and identify in individual tracks. They meld together and have their role in building what I hope can be identified as the abstract “DDC sound.”

But what is that sound? Well, I suppose that at least as far as Säkeitä esoteerisesta Euroopasta is concerned, it’s melancholic, majestic and orchestral combined with synthesizers reminding one of the classic Cold Meat Industry era; allowing for a certain “artificial” aesthetic as with the classics of yore. Percussions are present, but rarely in a very dominating role, thus emphasizing the neoclassical elements over the martial industrial. The atmospheres are permeated by forlorn melancholia, but never succumbing to defeatism: a solar path to triumph is always present in the tracks. Ultimately, the defiant evocation of Satya Yuga, calling forth an image of a new dawn behind the darkness of Kali Yuga, epitomizes the attiude of the album: antimodern but anti-defeatist, aiming for the sacral beyond the profane; the music mirrors this.

This, then is Säkeitä esoteerisesta Euroopasta: the result of a winding road that was embarked upon in 2022, reaching its fruitition two years later in the form of an elegant digipak CD.

It’s an album that, like its predecessors, is heavily influenced by the classics of martial industrial, and both is aware of and deeply respects the traditions of this fine genre, but does not limit itself to cookie cutter replication of the worn out tropes of it. Or, at the very least, that’s how I like to think of it.

I suppose that, in the end, it is for the listeners to decide if that is what Säkeitä esoteerisesta Euroopasta is.

Buy the CD from Steinklang’s webshop or from Dieux Des Cimetières’ Bandcamp. You can also stream it from Spotify. Learn more about Dieux Des Cimetières via Facebook or Instagram.