Interview with Stephane Gerbaud, vocalist of Messalians, by Emmanuel Hennequin (Obsküre / Rock Hard / New Noise).

What motivated your first band experiences ? 
Stéphane Gerbaud : The goal was to escape from the absurdity of existence through the ritual, trance and ecstasy of dark ceremonies. Pushing my limits to the extreme and brushing close to the breath of death… a desire to absolve myself of my mortality. Officiating at High Masses, twisting souls, bringing them to the fear and thrill that one feels on the edge of the precipice, facing the eternity of the end.

Do you think there is a dichotomy of intention between Necromancia and Anorexia Nervosa? 
We were linked to a community of artists (performers, poets, photographers …) working around the macabre arts, fascinated by death, ruins and the occult. Our approach was fully artistic, multidisciplinary and spiritual.
The transition to a new name was linked to a more total commitment.
This new name reflected a refusal of existence but also a desire to explore madness as closely as possible. This permanent malaise, if allowed to be fully and authentically creative, was perfectly self-destructive too.

The exercise is not necessarily easy, but do you remember what you were looking for at that time, basically, through metal as a musical medium? 
To translate this permanent malaise in the face of existence. To gather the shreds to get a little feeling of life. Time does not exist for me.
The feeling of being chained to a physical body, a reality… feeling that the real existence is elsewhere and that art might allow us to reach it.

How do you think a vision of art can be concretized through Metal, what goes through what? What does it mean today?
I seek total art: it goes through the pluridisciplinarity and the junction of the mediums.
I also seek, in a very expressionist way, to communicate by fear, cries and lamentation.
This staging of the tragedy that is existence is probably close to the Theatre of Cruelty.

There are Nihil Negativum, the first demo of A.N., and the first album Exile. Do they represent for you some works of art or attempts at works of art? How do you judge these recordings, more than twenty years later? 
These are unfinished works. I always have in me these flashes and their intentions, which I translate through different arts, whether they be writing, photography or music.

People who know you a little, know that you are a man of letters. The growl has a masking effect on the lyrics, for the listener, unless one refers to a written text to follow the sound, while one listens (which is not necessarily the case in the ‘immersion’ experience). You’re the one who creates the lyrics and sings them. Was there not any paradox for you,  to encrypt the content using this vocal shape? Is there not a contradiction in doing so, I mean hiding the textual load? 
Staging tragedy requires the use of a mask. The mask is the voices, the different incarnations and summoned entities.
I do not avoid writing. I approach music in a multidisciplinary way. I write a long text that serves as a basis for lyrics, illustrations, all the work around the album. I draw on literature, cinema, theater.
The text builds the whole work and is not so far from the mask. It is also physically present and can be read apart.

At the time of Anorexia Nervosa, you met your fellow musicians in a rehearsal room then you experienced this direct relationship, both physical and collective. It was a moment of togetherness. Today, your new projects are prepared at distance. Your current musicians remain far from you physically. In your opinion does it change the construction of the project to the final creation of art? 
I prefer silence and solitude to the company of humans, probably because I still feel very strongly this strangeness in the world. I feel a little completeness when I am alone, deprived of fleshly envelope, facing the infinite cycle of nature.
This act, with artists to who I am bound by connections in the invisible, is of great human and creative intensity. Being connected in the invisible is essential to the creation of such a work.
Is there a greater risk of mutual misunderstanding in the work done remotely,  than in the music created together, physically, in a room? Does distance imply an additional risk of failure in the shaping of a collective art? 
It is a unique act and belongs only to us. Failure would only be linked to the fragility and ephemeral nature of our fleshly envelopes…
Our depraved souls sealed a pact. An opus will be released in 2019. The band is called Messalians. The Messalians was a Gnostic sect of the 4th century in Mesopotamia. Their vision of the world has always fascinated me.

If you had to pick three personal references that you consider as pieces of art in metal music, which ones would you choose? 
I enjoy a lot of things but I prefer not being attached to anything. I always feel frustrated and incomplete in the face of all human creations.
Parts of many totally disparate and assembled parts suit me better. I often prefer to attach myself to the intention of the work, rather than its form. This permanent dissatisfaction is for me the source of creative energy. I have inside myself the idea of works that I would like to read, see or hear: they are my primordial form of existence. To give them shape is to exist. ǂ