Hi! One thing that struck me while reading about Dreaming is how easily many bands could hide behind the language you're using - collapse, emptiness, dispossession, nihilism, transcendence. These words have become almost fashionable in extreme music. At what point does philosophical language stop being insight and become decoration?
Greetings, Iron Backstage webzine! It's a pleasure to talk with you!
Like any other musical genre, the metal universe has its cliches and words emptied of meaning through careless use. Words like "collapse" or "misanthropy" commonly appear because they sound good, shock people, or seem profound, not because someone actually stood before something that crumbled. I think the line between reflection and decoration will depend on the listener and the context in which it appears. In Dreaming, we didn't arrive at the word "abyss" simply because it carries aesthetic weight, but because we were trying to describe what remains when you remove, layer by layer, everything that was imposed on you, and what we actually found had no pretty name. Aesthetics are part of the message of any work, just as we use dissonant or harmonic chords as needed. It's fair to use words with the same intention. I think philosophical language stops being reflection the moment the artist can't explain the concept without resorting to the jargon itself.
LITOSTH has always seemed less interested in individual suffering than in collective failure. Most extreme metal still revolves around personal demons, personal trauma, personal rebellion. Why are you more fascinated by mankind as a species than by the individual?
I had never thought about it from that angle, but you're right. Maybe we attack the collective more because we experience problems that stem directly from it, war, ego, envy, hatred. Treating only the individual wound without naming the mechanism that produces it offers relief, but no resolution. Humanity as a species built systems of faith, morality, and purpose that promised meaning, and we ask what remains when those systems finally give way, whether the price is worth it.
The title Dreaming initially suggests possibility, imagination, perhaps even hope. Instead, the album appears to advocate the exact opposite - the death of illusion itself. Was the title chosen as irony, contradiction, or something more hostile?
Maybe an unintentional irony, it wasn't planned, but today we understand it as a title that mocks hope. Dreaming is illusion, the seduction of endless possibilities without the weight and demands of reality, it's the perfect tool to keep us obedient and motivated. Religion, meritocracy, the pursuit of complete happiness, all of it is a dream. A utopia weaponized against us.
Many artists describe their albums as journeys. The track sequence on Dreaming feels less like a journey and more like a controlled demolition. Did the conceptual structure exist before the music, or did the philosophical framework emerge gradually during composition?
We're always caught between chaos and the methodical. Compositions emerge almost simultaneously and complete each other, I think the theme and feeling of the songs come from what we're experiencing and thinking at the time. Normally a composition is something that builds and takes shape as we mold it according to our intent. In Dreaming we may have gone the other way, everything is more spontaneous than on previous albums. The theme didn't exist beforehand, I think it only revealed itself at the end of the process. "Controlled demolition" is a perfect description.
There seems to be a recurring distrust of imposed meaning throughout your work. Religion, social expectations, moral systems, success narratives - all appear to be treated with suspicion. Is this rejection born from personal experience, philosophical study, or simply observation of the world around you?
I'd say all three at once. In Cesariana we spoke about the lie that life is a blessing, that we're born into different circumstances yet sold the illusion that we can change them, that justice or meritocracy exist. Dreaming is, in a way, a continuation of that thinking. This distrust didn't come from a book, it came from watching the world operate. Philosophical study gave language to something that observation had already revealed. And personal experience confirmed what observation suspected. When you grow up inside a culture that blends religion, work, and guilt in specific ways, you develop an early sensitivity to the systems that control people without them realizing it.
A dangerous question perhaps: when a band consistently explores collapse, negation and futility, how do you avoid becoming predictable to yourselves? Is there a risk that nihilism eventually becomes its own orthodoxy?
I don't think so. As long as the process stays honest, as long as each album demands genuine investigation rather than confirmation of a stance already taken, I think the risk stays in check. When we talk about these themes, we process them, or at least try to understand them. Maybe we're still on this subject because we haven't healed from it or understood it deeply enough. But Litosth was born to make music freely, we've flirted with other themes before, and perhaps our struggles in the future will be different ones, and we'll have no trouble at all talking about them.
Extreme metal often claims to be "dark", yet much of it is surprisingly comforting. The listener leaves with familiar enemies, familiar narratives and familiar conclusions. Dreaming seems to deny that comfort entirely. Do you believe art has an obligation to unsettle rather than reassure?
Metal has a playful, fantastical side, almost childlike, and I enjoy that comfort too, but for what Litosth wants to say, doing it any other way would be dishonest. The final result of Dreaming makes it clear, even to us, that its purpose is not to please. I think it's our most difficult and necessary album, like a heavy film you're afraid to revisit, but you know you enjoyed it and it mattered to have watched it. I don't think art necessarily needs to disturb, but I'm drawn to art that does. I think art needs layers and room for interpretation, so that at some point the listener has an epiphany about what's being said.
The album is described as stripping away faith, morality, purpose and aspiration. If all those structures disappear, what remains that is genuinely human?
That's the question the album asks without answering. And I believe that absence of an answer is part of the album's experience. I don't know what remains of the human when systems of meaning fail, maybe we truly are just collective beings who need those systems. This isn't the end of the conversation, maybe it's only the beginning of one that most people would rather not have. But I still prefer this honest uncertainty over any answer that would make us feel better than we should.
LITOSTH have never felt particularly attached to genre boundaries. At this stage, do you still think in terms of "black metal", "death metal", or "extreme metal" when writing, or have those labels become largely irrelevant to the creative process?
Labeling Litosth's music has always been very difficult for me, and I prefer it that way. I try to compose everything organically and honestly, letting ideas flow from whatever is in my musical vocabulary, and what comes out usually sits somewhere between black metal and melodic death metal, though you'll find elements of doom, gothic, and even something epic and symphonic at certain moments. When I compose, I'm not thinking "this needs to sound like black metal", I'm thinking about how the theme demands the music to sound. Our music is only possible because no genre is there to limit the decisions.
Looking at the current extreme metal underground, there seems to be a growing appetite for intellectual presentation - philosophy, literature, theory, symbolism. Do you think this trend has produced deeper art, or merely better vocabulary?
I tend to prefer simpler, more direct bands. There are exceptions, bands that arrived at philosophy because they needed it to articulate something that ordinary language or simple musicianship couldn't reach. But there's a lot of appeal to exhibitionism, verbose lyrics and music that's pure technical virtuosity without meaning. Songs with no room to breathe, maybe a reflection of the immediacy of social media and the world today. I prefer art that leaves space for the listener to bring their own subjectivity and fill in the gaps, the one who needs to sink into the thoughts and reach an epiphany is the listener, not the artist. We don't have to spell everything out, a true artist should never underestimate the capacity of whoever will consume their work.
Your collaboration is split between music and lyrics. Has there ever been a moment where one side pushed the concept somewhere the other fundamentally disagreed with?
I'm responsible for the music, the lyrics fall almost exclusively to my partner Wendel Siota, though I've contributed to a few as well. I don't think there's ever been any friction, and very rarely have we changed our minds about something. As I mentioned, I like to let things flow organically and surprise us with what comes out, as if we were looking into a mirror for the very first time.
Some of the most enduring extreme metal records are built on tension between opposing forces: chaos and order, despair and defiance, destruction and creation. Dreaming appears almost completely committed to downward movement. Was there ever a temptation to leave a crack in the wall - a glimpse of something beyond the abyss?
Absolutely. I think in some passages of other lyrics we've even shown a degree of optimism on specific points, but I agree that on Dreaming everything just kept going down. A crack of light would be comforting, but I think Dreaming was born not to offer comfort. The downward movement isn't performative despair, it's fidelity to what the concept demanded. If the album is about the collapse of everything that was imposed on us, inserting a moment of light would be a betrayal of the argument. Not because light doesn't exist in the world, but because that wasn't the feeling of the album.
A scene-oriented question: you've been active long enough to witness several generations of underground extreme metal come and go. What qualities do you find increasingly rare among younger bands?
Forgive the pun, but a lot of young bands "dream" too much. They deceive themselves with a glamorous past that isn't coming back, or chase the unattainable image of already established bands. They idealize shows, albums, photos, they crave likes and recognition more than they crave making music. Maybe there's a lack of more sincere motivation, the desire to let loose, to protest, or simply to have fun playing music. That's what I miss in newer bands, spontaneity, the feeling that the music was once played in a garage before it was ever recorded.
The album's language suggests a rejection of modern success culture and its endless demands for productivity, positivity and self-optimization. Do you see Dreaming as a reaction against contemporary society specifically, or against something much older and more fundamental in human nature?
I think the obsession with success is just the current version of a mechanism that has existed for centuries, the idea that suffering has an individual cause that can be corrected through effort or the right kind of faith. We already spoke about this in Cesariana, the lie that life is a blessing, that even if we're born into different circumstances we can still have the future we want, that justice exists and can be reached. Dreaming goes a step further, it's not just modern meritocracy being dismantled, it's the entire framework of meaning that humanity built to make existence bearable. The toxic positivity of Instagram and the promise of salvation from a medieval cathedral are variations of the same mechanism. I think what the album refuses isn't a current phenomenon, it's a tendency of the species.
Imagine someone listens to Dreaming and concludes: "This album offers no solutions whatsoever". Would you consider that a misunderstanding of the record - or the most accurate interpretation possible?
I think every work of art wants to make you feel something, to reflect, to smile, to feel afraid, to feel hope. I think Dreaming intends to make people feel frustrated, like a film with an open ending that gives you no explanations. I'd be satisfied if, just like with an open-ended film, the listener gave it their own ending, filling in the album's gaps with their own subjectivity. If someone listens to Dreaming and feels like they walked away empty handed, it's because the album worked.