by Kenneth Morton

Willow Wisp are local underground legends on the Los Angeles music scene. Defying the mundane since 1987, the band is well known for their innovative songs and demented live shows. Proving you can’t keep a good corpse down, a newly revamped and energized Willow Wisp played a tremendous show at the recent Appease The Beast 2 festival, opening for the likes of Master and Nifelheim. With charismatic new front man M6D6M6A mesmerizing the room with his stark presence and Toe-Knee performing the world famous Trash Can Murder Ritual at the end of the set, one could see that the Wisp have discovered new life in their band. Here is an interview we conducted with the band right after their Appease The Beast 2 show…

What year did you start Willow Wisp?
Toe-Knee: January of 87.

You’re been around even longer than Highwire Daze! Now isn’t it kind of weird to not be working with him anymore?
Toe-Knee: Yeah, it’s pretty strange. Actually we went through a big fuss after he got out of the band. He was leaving threatening messages on the hotline. I really don’t want to get into it – it was just childish nonsense. Basically, he wasn’t professional anymore. After a year of fighting and near physical fights – it was too much, man. You could only take so much before you have to eliminate something.

What made you decide to basically reform the band?
Toe-Knee: We’ve had the guitar player Ibex in the band since 2001 – he’s been in there for a while. Me and him are the mainstays – we actually write all the music and I write all the lyrics. And then Mr. Horrible, our bass player now, was in the band 2001. That’s another long story, but he’s back in the band again. And Eyajo used to be in the Astrovamps. And we have a side project called the Black Heroin Gallery, which also has Ibex in it. So we’re kind of incestual I guess. (Laughs) We’re all incestual when we stick together and fuck each other musically – in a good way – not a bad way. Not fuck over – just fuck.

How did you become involved with the band?
M6D6M6A: Well, I’ve been with the band for pretty much 361 days. Almost a year. I met then right before Halloween. I met them on Craigslist. I’ve been down in Hollywood for a little over two years. I’ve been a Black Metal/Death Metal drummer – I played with some bands in Whittier, but I’ve always wanted to be a vocalist. And about a year ago I found out I could do vocals. I put some stuff out there – they found me.
Toe-Knee: What’s cool is how we found him – I heard him singing a Satyricon song on Youtube.

So have you guys recorded anything with this lineup?
Toe-Knee: Yes. We have a CD coming out March. Anti Human Manifesto is what it’s called. All new songs – new lineup.
M6D6M6A: Most of the songs we played tonight from our set are from that CD…
Toe-Knee: …except for The Anatovist – our opening song is on Enmity – which is on Quadrivium Records – which is who is throwing this event.

Didn’t take a long while for The Enmity come out on Quadrivium?
Toe-Knee: Uh, put it this way – it was recorded and finished in 2005 and ready to be released. And the usual stuff for Willow Wisp – legal nightmares, numerous other unmentionable atrocities. And then it finally came out official two months ago. But we’ve changed so much since that. We’ve progressed. We’re like a whole new beast now.

What keeps you so passionate about this music after all of this time?
Toe-Knee: Well, my mom is a mental patient and my dad is an alcoholic. Good people – but you out them together and that made me. So that explains my mentality and my passion. Good, degenerate people make bad but passionate offspring. That’s a true story.

Where do you get the ideas for some of your lyrics?
M6D6M6A: Let me take this questions. When I came into the band, they wrote all the new songs for the new CD. Toe-Knee, as in the past, had written all of the lyrics. I did the vocal arrangements, but he did all the lyrics. I’ve taken the lyrics and run with them, because they are great – that’s why I feel so good about this band. You take a song like 7-7-3 – that’s our most Satanic song – our most Black Metal song. Some of the best lines are, “Rebuild every church and monastery in the name of Satan, Baptize every child in the name of sin, Hellfire is a dream.” Then we have a song like Prisoners of Technology, which would be our most different song off the CD. It’s about how technical has taken over our lives and will surpass us one day. I will say on the new CD, the main theme that people will hear is narcissism. There’s many songs where Toe-Knee refers to narcissism. That’s my favorite, because I’m very narcissistic, and I took those lyrics very much to heart. And that’s something people will hear on the new CD.

What does Satanism mean to you, if anything.
Toe-Knee: Okay, that’s a complex question. I could sum it up in one sentence – direct opposition towards normalcy and the mundane – disguised in the form of a big black mass of sinful shit stinking the planet up.
M6D6M6A: I may differ a little bit from Toe-Knee and most of the Black Metal community – not that it really matters. But honestly, I look more towards traditional Satanism and the fact that I really do believe in a God. And whether there is a devil or not – there’s some kind of evil force out there. Not that I’m saying I’m a huge participator in it – if I was, I’d probably be in prison right now. I’m not going to say I’m an anti-Christ or whatever. I certainly have some sick fascination and obsession with it – and when I get up onstage, I’m not faking that shit. I’m not going up there thinking okay; I’m going to try to put on the best show. I go up there and I’m a spectator as much as anyone else – but I feel that something does flow through me there. Traditional Satanism is something real to me, and I still have a lot to discover about it.

What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you while doing The Trash Can Murder Ritual?
Toe-Knee: We played here like two years with a guy names Andrix. It was right after I got done annihilating the trashcan in the crowd – people started throwing it around and going crazy with it. I didn’t see it, but Andy was onstage playing, and then my girlfriend said, “Yeah, I just looked over and he was laying flat on the ground – still playing.” They swung it around and flew in the air, hit him right in the face, and it knocked him out cold. There was a big dent it the garbage can where there was a blood splotch on it. As far as my finger, this morbid bad finger here. We played one show, and my hand went inside the garbage can and this sharp shard of metal went inside my knuckle and just ripped the whole thing back. All that was just a big chunk of metal – I could almost see my bone. It was massive bleeding – it was kind of cool – it was numb for a while. I think I have a super finger now. So I guess as far as my finger and Andrix’s head – that’s about the only thing. But a lot of people have me autograph it and take it home at the end of the show. I’m waiting for one to end up on Ebay one day. I’ve autographed about ten of them in my whole career, so they’ve got to pop up somewhere.

There used to be other things in the Willow Wisp show – like Air-Ick use to shave his chest and badly cut himself. Is that something you would ever want to do?
M6D6M6A: I mean, I obviously wouldn’t want to follow anything like him. Right now at this point, we’re just playing the songs and we’re letting everything happen as it does. We’re not necessarily incorporating anything too crazy. I think as of now, I’m down to incorporate anything. But hell, I’m going to say, I think we put on a pretty entertaining show as it is right now.

Why do you think Willow Wisp is so popular everywhere else except for the States?
Toe-Knee: I thought we were unpopular everywhere! (Much laughter) I look at it more as there’s little pockets of people all over the world that love us. There’s no distinction in any different country – state, town, whatever. We just have little sprinkles of fans all over the world. What I think is great is that we can still baffle people’s minds – and we’re just playing metal. We do our own thing, but somehow we have this unique ability to piss people off – confound them – piss them off and confound them all at once.
M6D6M6A: I’ve heard Toe-Knee say that if you can piss off a metalhead, you’re doing something right!

Do you have any messages for people who have been following Willow Wisp for a very long time?
Toe-Knee: I will say we will continue to morph into more interesting and exciting and Satanic monsters. We’re monsters. Sick monsters.
M6D6M6A: I feel the same. Every show is different. And we feel that shit. That’s the thing – we’re not up there going through the motions.
Toe-Knee: I can add that you have to really explore Willow Wisp. You have to really sit down and read the lyrics, because the lyrics are excellent. I think I would say with a conceited heart that they are, if not the best, somewhere within the top five of the best lyrics in the Black Metal genre. We’re kind of like the Black Metal Rush. The song structures are very odd but they’re there. You have to pay attention and really listen and you gotta really read and understand. It takes a lot of mind power to understand us. You can’t just look at it at face value – it’s not going to work that way. You gotta like dig in and study it. It’s like an anthropologist exploring ancient bones – you gotta dig into the marrow and just scrape it out. What made this thing? Why was this thing alive? Why did it exist? And how do we stop it?

Willow Wisp links

Willow Wisp: Their Official Myspace Page!
The Highwire Daze Home Page: Return to the Main Page!

Counter