As far as I remember, I started Godkiller in 1994. I don’t remember exactly how and why, but the idea was clear: I wanted to make a project on my own, I mean all by myself, all alone.
The very first demo, Ad majorem Satanae gloriam, was released in December of the same year. It was a mixture of death and black metal with already an evocation of the medieval era, as we can hear in the intro. Synths were already prominent, helping to create intriguing and dark atmospheres.
I’ve always moved quickly in terms of musical inspiration. The second demo, The Warlord, was released in February 1995, and showed an evolution towards a style that would become Godkiller’s trademark: black metal with medieval-inspired sounds.
The demo was a big hit in the underground scene at the time and caught the interest of Italian label Wounded Love Records (a division of Avantgarde Music). I signed a contract with them. The first release from this partnership was The Rebirth of The Middle Ages, in 1996. Once again, the record was an unexpected success.
As I said, I’ve always moved quickly in terms of musical inspiration, so the next album had to be different. On The End of the World, released in 1998, the tempo slowed down, the riffs became heavier, the atmosphere was less medieval-inspired, but still crepuscular, even more so. The lyrics dealt with personal, introspective subjects from a bleak perspective.
Finally, the last Godkiller album, Deliverance, was released in 2000. Once again, this album marked an evolution in style. The main characteristics of The End of the World were kept, but the medieval atmosphere was almost entirely gone, replaced by a more modern, cold and clinical atmosphere. The lyrics, consisting entirely of quotations from the Bible, showed the universal character of intimate suffering.
This last album was, in a way, Godkiller’s self-destruction, the point of completion as well as the point of no return.
Duke