This blog tells about the historical context and individual stories that underlie the lyrics of our new album ‘Angel of Carnage Unleashed’.

The concepts for the lyrics were developed jointly by DMB bass player Teemu Kautonen and author-anthropologist Dr Steven Parham, and draw on the well-known Finnish historian Dr Teemu Keskisarja’s book ‘Murhanenkeli’ (verbatim: ‘Angel of Murder’) as the principal source. The book deals with the social history of the Great Northern War of 1700-1721 from the Finnish perspective. For the lyrics, social history means that we don’t write about the adventures of kings and war campaigns; instead we focus on how individual Finns – either at the frontline or on the home front – experienced the ravages of the era.

In the previous post, we introduced the historical context and principal ideas underlying the lyrics of ‘Angel of Carnage Unleashed’. In this post, we explain why we chose the Great Northern War (1700-1721) as inspiration for the lyrics.

But first, let us explain what the album title means. Angel of Carnage – and the other synonymous expressions used throughout the lyrics – was a phrase used in the 18th century to refer to the many ills, such as plague, famine, and war, sent by God to punish people for their sins. War was thus seen as God’s punishment, delivered by Him unto the people by guiding the minds of kings towards bloodshed.

The chief reason for choosing the era of the Great Northern War is that it is perhaps the darkest period in Finnish history, and thus exceptionally appropriate as a context for a black/epic metal album.

The previous two posts explained the historical context of the lyrics of ‘Angel of Carnage Unleashed’. Starting with this one, the eight posts that follow address each song and lyric in turn.

The album opener addresses the forced drafting of Finnish peasants into the Swedish army.

Which thoughts would percolate through a common soldier’s mind when he considers what warfare does to his soul? Forced to arms and slaughter by God and King, violence changes everybody and reminds us that its perpetrators are, themselves, its most delicious victims.

Track 2 focuses on a forcefully drafted Finnish peasant in the Swedish army who is now chained to the Angel of Carnage and spreads the soldier’s blight of violence through a Russian countryside depleted by years of warfare. The dialogue between the Angel of Carnage and her instruments forms the album’s recurrent heart of misanthropy and unredeemed loss.

Track 3 focuses on nature being a soldier’s worst enemy. The lyricist Steven Parham, a British and Swiss citizen, explains his take on Finnish nature:

‘Writing lyrics about Finland’s natural environment is a fraught theme and teeters ever on the brink of cliché, especially in melodic death metal. To me, a non-native who has lived in this land of a hundred thousand lakes for over a decade, the seasons are fierce in their predictability, and harsh on the mind. Finnish nature must have been an army’s worst enemy, with plague and cold slaying more men than any human opponent; and this environment is innately heavy. To those subjugated to its whims, the Angel of Carnage lives in every single fen and forest – and she is not a humane force.’

Track 4 was inspired by the story of Matti Paavonpoika Piipponen, who was persuaded to join the Swedish army when he was 18 years old. He ended up deserting several times and committing crimes, including at least one murder (though the evidence was insufficient for a conviction). While he managed to avoid capital punishment, his fate might have been worse than death: he ended up becoming an army executioner, a loathed profession whose practitioners were social outcasts.

While history does not tell us whether Matti actually executed anyone using the breaking wheel – the most severe punishment in the Swedish penal code at the time – in this lyric Steven took the artistic liberty of assuming he did. The breaking wheel (rådbråkning in Swedish) involved the executioner crushing the convict’s body with a heavy wheel or a smith’s hammer. The executioner was expected to work slowly so that the convict stayed conscious for as long as possible.

Once all the men of fighting age have departed from a village, what happens when the Angel of Carnage appears at the gates of home?

We could not imagine a DMB album without a track about a witch. Somehow it felt like a quota we needed to meet, and the opportunity to bring this perspective to the savagery of the Great Northern War was irresistible. Hence, we asked Steven to develop a lyric involving a witch.

Track 6 is an epic story about the Battle of Napue in February 1714, in which the Swedish army suffered a catastrophic defeat against the Russians. The Swedish army consisted of many nationalities, including Swedes, Finns, Germans, Estonians and Latvians, but Finns formed the clear majority. In fact, the Swedish commander General Armfelt referred to his army as the ‘Finnish force’. In addition to professional soldiers, Armfelt recruited peasants from local farms. These new recruits were poorly trained and equipped: most of them wielded spears or only sharpened poles. This scene is the source for the inspiration behind the album cover.

When studying the Great Northern War, it immediately became obvious that the massacre at Hailuoto, a small island far to the north of the Sea of Bothnia that separates Finland and Sweden, would be one of the topics covered in the lyrics. This was an event of truly misanthropic proportions and, for us, black metal is the only genre able to make audible the depths of true human evil.

While the Russian army had not engaged in systematic atrocities prior to the Battle of Napue, after this battle they began to rob, rape, enslave, torture, and murder civilians across Western Finland. Merchants and other wealthy people decided to flee to Sweden.

The events described in the final lyric began when King Carolus found a fittingly pathetic death on his final, senseless campaign in Norway: on the evening of 30 November 1718, he peeked over the edge of a trench and got a bullet through his head. Since Carolus was the only person who wanted to fight in Norway, his death changed the war plan, and the troops were ordered to return home. General Armfelt wished to avoid fighting the Norwegians and chose to retreat across the fells in late December 1718.