Cathartic black metal horde Abduction discuss darkly electrifying fifth album 'Existentialismus' and monumental Fortress Festival set

With its visceral yet ghoulishly entrancing blend of icily corrosive riffing, weightily bludgeoning, obsidian-hued groove and sumptuously unfurling melodic intricacies, it’s small wonder Abduction’s fifth, genre-twisting opus ‘Existentialismus’ ranks among some of the most mesmerising new records the UK extreme metal scene has ever witnessed. Having long sourced inspiration from the darkest facets of the human condition since first coalescing into being as a one-man project back in 2016, the past nine years have seen visionary founder A|V evolve and progress his delectably sinister craft into the stuff of brutal, eerily transporting brilliance. Together with a close-knit collective of likeminded musicians who’ve each played a pivotal role in bringing these dark visions to fruition, the tremendously anticipated weekend of Fortress Festival 2025 saw the UK black metallers showcase the most monumental manifestation of their sound to date. Still buzzing from an epic main stage set that centred on a complete playthrough of electrifying new album ‘Existentialismus’, frontman A|V reflects on the principles of creative inspiration, catharsis and the meticulously crafted process of preparing for a show of this magnitude…

DARK MATTER: First off, congratulations on a fantastic set. From your side as a performer, how would you describe the experience? It certainly is very intense stuff.

A|V: Intense is definitely the word to describe it. I mean, it's a really big stage, so it's a great opportunity for us to play. We've gotten some big shows before, but that's probably the biggest crowd we've ever played. It was like 1,800 people or something, and I'm honestly just so happy to be here. It's wonderful to be able to do this stupid music where everybody seems to be in a fucking weird corner of the world but comes together on this weekend to enjoy. It's fucking beautiful. And the show went really well.

DM: Yeah, and with all those visuals on the big screen, it was an incredibly immersive experience too. All of that footage and imagery must have taken quite a while to compile. Did you have a team that you worked with to help you out with that?

A|V: No, we pretty much do everything ourselves wherever we can. Jack [Armstrong] our guitarist put those visuals together, so he's the one to credit for that. We knew that we had the screen, and I also knew that a lot of the other bands would not take advantage of that and just have a logo or, you know, something just static. And I was like, yeah, we can do better than that, so we put the time and effort in and Jack has really pulled it out of the bag. We had a conversation about what kind of vibe we wanted for each song, and he's really pulled it together.

DM: Yes, I definitely recognised bits of the lyrics here and there, and there was one piece of footage that I found particularly haunting. It was kind of a loop of a woman who was very obviously distressed, cowering in the corner of a room. Whereabouts was that taken from?

A|V: It's some kind of old asylum footage, but I don't actually know where it was taken from. We’d need Jack here in order to answer that question but, as you saw, there’s a different kind of vibe or mood for each song on the album and we tried to do our best to represent visually what that is. Now the album’s out, this is like the first official presentation of the new album with all the visuals and where we’ve played every song in the correct order.

DM: In previous interviews, you've talked a bit about the process of getting into your stage persona which obviously incorporates a mask, which I understand is made up of various animal parts.

A|V: Yes, it’s actually latex castings of animal parts. It's a bit impractical to get the sheep jawbones and the fox’s coccyx or whatever it is when we’re out on tour. So it's something that's designed by my drummer’s partner who is kind of a full-time weirdo sculptress artist. She's cool as fuck. People tend to either love or hate the mask, but they can go fuck themselves. For me, it represents something, and it works.

'Existentialismus' (2024)

DM: And through that, it feels almost as if you’re transcending into something, or perhaps somewhere, bigger than yourself.

A|V: You're absolutely right. I think black metal has always been about something bigger and reaching beyond and feeling something with more gravitas than just the mundane of day-to-day life. It's an escapism, and that’s what Abduction has always been about. I portray myself as a character in that search for something bigger, but putting stuff together for this new album, it's definitely more like, real world stuff. Then the challenge is how do I do the real world stuff without it being really explicit and not magical? Because you couldn't sing about like… Well, the second track’s about the fucking trenches and the meat wave tactics of Russia and Ukraine. You can't really think about that without it just appearing to be obviously about that. So the challenge is, how do you put something together that fits the theatrical stuff in a way that feels bigger, but is actually inspired by real-life stuff?

DM: That makes sense because, for a lot of black metal bands, catharsis is a big part of what they're doing. And I think when the music is coming from a personal place of self-expression that, in a way, is the purest form of art.

A|V: It's this kind of balancing act, isn't it? Everybody loves the theatrics and the storytelling and stuff that's over the top and a bit outrageous, but at the same time, everybody attaches parts of themselves to it, like a real, emotional response. That's what really carries the music. So how do you meet them two in the middle? That's the eternal dilemma.

DM: And in terms of the new album, the thematic aspects of it seem to explore human civilisation’s dependency on technology, together with the numerous societal problems that has created.

A|V: Yeah, we've made things easier, but caused lots of problems in the process. You look at the mental health epidemic or numbers of various poverty figures and things like that. You've got this Western world where everything is shiny and awesome and easily available and instantly deliverable and yet, at the same time, you've got some of the biggest problems in history. I don't like to get too political with it, but I kind of said with the album like, I lived in the city and now I live out in the countryside and that's the juxtaposition for me. So in the city, everything is Just Eat, everything is two seconds away and everything's dirty, it's instantly thrown away. But now I live surrounded by green and people work hard and create things that last, and that just doesn't seem to be the case for everybody living in the city. We've got this throwaway society nowadays.

DM: You’ve also previously referenced some of the philosophical writings that influence your work. Maybe you could discuss some of that in more detail?

A|V: It’s very much the classic 19th century existentialist philosophy. It's Nietzsche and it's Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn. Those are the main three. Russian and German, miserable bastards. *Laughs* It's a really pompous thing to talk about, and this is why I previously made a point of saying I’m not philosopher because you just sound like an arsehole. But you read these things and these observations of humankind and predictions as well, and they seem to predict a lot of stuff that is arguably coming true in terms of things like the death of God and where that will lead society. This is something you can almost measure and the theme to take away from all of them three is the idea that we need to suffer in some way. Suffering is growth and I don't mean like, Catholics self-flagellating kind of thing. Struggling is growth and that's really what learning is all about. I think we're all just here to kind of acquire things and get better as people and the best way of learning is by struggling with something, and that’s the opposite of the world we live in right now. The world we live in is: what you think is OK and what you think is what exists. And it's like, no, that's not the fucking world. That’s a very egocentric way to look at it. You know, we all gotta live together and compromise and struggle with things, and I think that's what those kind of people teach you.

DM: I was also interested to talk to you a little bit about how the writing process works. I think you mentioned that it's something that you do fairly spontaneously, without too much premeditation.

A|V: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't sit down and go, this will be the next album, right? I have things set up at home and it’s all very haphazard and some things are broken and there are things that actually do work and then things that I can plug into other things. I like to have this fucking weird little set-up. If it was an art studio, it'd be paint everywhere. But it's music so just cables everywhere and tape players plugged into old preamps and things rerouted into something else, and I just try and create something out of that. The rest of the guys in the band like laugh at me because they've got like, brand new laptops and brand new software. I just prefer to build things as like, little pieces and I feel like I know roughly what an interesting song structure should be like, and if something's gone on too long, you should change it to something else and where things should repeat now and again, and spotting things that are going to be a good hook. It's really not a very complicated process, but it does change very often. The final recording is something like version number 300 of something I originally started off with, which was probably just me tapping on a table or something.

DM: Finally, what’s next for Abduction?

A|V: Over the summer I'll put some ideas together. I've got a rough plan to do that for what will end up being the next record. But there's no pressure, there's no time limit on it or anything like that. We're just enjoying this attention that we've had from this album at the minute, really. In terms of plans just up until December, we've got a few shows around Europe. We've got two big fests in Germany, and hopefully there’ll be a couple of things outside of that. I think next year will be the year for maybe bigger shows and touring a bit more with other bands. This year we've just got it [the album] out. That's the main thing. We've got it out and it's doing alright, so we'll just capitalise on that for a bit for now.

'Existentialismus' is out now via Candlelight Records