Ain Soph
Kshatriya

"It is we who generate.

In pain, we generate joy

The joy of our strength, of our triumph."

(...)

We have not banished death

That man must face to be worthy of life

We have assaulted death

And with a round dance around the earth

We drag it confusedly into our adventures"

(Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, 1917)

What better way to introduce a work of high conceptual and artistic value like "Kshatriya" than by using the quote recalled by the musicians themselves to represent what remains to this day their absolute masterpiece.

There is a before - and an after - "Kshatriya" in the career of Ain Soph: "Kshatriya," published in 1988, is the first work printed on vinyl by Ain Soph (when previous works circulated on cassettes) and represents the apex of the esoteric investigation of the capitoline collective before new stylistic paths are undertaken.

If previously the intent had been to transpose actual magical rites into music (cultivated in solitude and forged within the four walls of home), "Kshatriya," which finally enjoys a professional guise, seems to shine with an additional philosophical effort: while retaining the theoretical premises on which previous works were based, Ain Soph's discourse sets itself at a more courageously advanced outpost aimed at a critical reading of society, history, and man, ultimately constituting itself as a fervent message of hope for a possible path of redemption (a message that, due to its complexity, probably remains beyond complete understanding to this day).

Apparently in coherence with the precepts that animated the original culture of industrial music (that is, to consider contemporaneity as the terminal phase of man's evolutionary journey), in truth, Ain Soph's path goes in a completely opposite direction, nourished by the thoughts of Nietzsche and Evola: a journey that surpasses the more properly nihilistic component of industrial culture in view of a typically Evolian cyclical conception of history, according to which the current context of moral and spiritual decay must be endured with great inner firmness in anticipation of the advent of a new historical phase. Hence the origin of the title of the work that directly refers to the warrior caste of the Kshatriya, the highest evolution of man, "the realization of the Absolute-Individual". At the heart of it all lies the necessity, for man, to free himself from the chains of civilization and commonly accepted values (progress, equality, pacifism, etc.), principles that, according to the (controversial and not always agreeable) vision of ours, have irremediably led to the current materialistic degeneration of the human being: "The time has come to disperse these mirages belonging to mankind. Action must start from the individual. Each of us is called to prove worthy of the title of Individual."

Magic (because we are always moving on this plane) is the noble practice of purifying one's self from all that is futile and constitutes the main obstacle to this process of elevation (leading to the transfiguration from human to divine, to the identification of the self in God): "In particular, Self-sacrifice must be understood as the elimination - or killing - of all that in the self has no force or value that can exist even to the self itself, namely to its mind. These elements, in reality ephemeral, include, among others, good and evil, right and wrong, what is lawful and what is not."

And it is interesting, for those in possession of the recent reissue published by Hauruck!, to read the bitter notes that the same musicians jot down about twenty years after the release of the work: "Twenty years ago we glimpsed the dusk and hoped for the advent of the Kshatriya, today a starless, dark and obscure night is enveloping us. The fire of mediocrity has consumed every flimsiest hope, a demonic avalanche has now set in motion and destroys everything it encounters during its dizzying descent: it's useless to try to stop it or to hinder it - a vain enterprise. Let it take its course and then start rebuilding... building on the ruins of what will no longer be considered a civilization but an epoch of decadence. (...) Today we no longer need Kshatriya but hermits who, detached from the mud of today, preserve and pass on the fire of tradition."

Even more interesting is to observe how Ain Soph's journey (speaking of a before and an after) will continue "backward", namely "from the Kshatriya of the age of heroes to the slave-man of communist regimes", the much vilified mass-man: a coherent, very coherent path that will see a radical change of course, both stylistically and conceptually, in works like "Aurora" and "Ottobre", which will first turn towards the shores of folk-singer ballads, and later towards those of post-punk and electrified rock.

What has been, has been; what will be, will be, but "Kshatriya" remains to this day a great work, among the most intense and significant in the entire ritual-industrial universe. This truly unique work finds few terms of comparison, perhaps only faintly comparable to works like the contemporaneous "Christ and the Pale Queens Mighty in Sorrow" by Current 93 and "The Fruits of Yggdrasil", conceived just a year before by Sixth Comm & Freya Aswinn. However, I reiterate that any comparison is misplaced, given the originality of an ensemble that has always been beyond any artistic compromise, even before commercial ones.

The Ain Soph, even in this circumstance, remain technically poorly equipped musicians, yet they miraculously manage to nail every single note contained in the work, the most balanced and formally correct of their discography. The most mature from a compositional point of view, and the densest in nuances from the point of view of the moods described (incandescent sparkles of an exhausting internal struggle, made of cynicism, disenchantment, desolation, but also of heroic impulses, spiritual elation, steadfastness, in full symbiosis with the neo-folk culture emerging in the same years - and for this, the work will be deemed seminal within the scene and appreciated by many glories of apocalyptic folk).

And so, alongside the mournful notes of a piano and the desolate and solemn singing of a soprano, we find sudden explosions of distorted strings and organ at the edge of noise; the obsessiveness of percussion and dark chanting mantras; a gloomy ambient electronica and disorienting drones; finally, the belligerent advance of industrial assault plots, inflamed by an unprecedented declamatory attitude: a journey articulated in five highly heterogeneous episodes and including texts in Latin, English, and Italian.

And if the ritual matrix remains rigorously intact, there is nevertheless a greater attention to the listener's fruition: a premise that elevates the entire work from an elite mystic exercise to the noble status of artistic avant-garde.

And then, what better way to complete the discourse, if not by quoting what the Ain Soph themselves shout to us in the intense title track:

"Loyalty is stronger than fire

Rise, resurrect

Create form and order

Standing among the ruins

Choose the hardest road

Forge our courage

Reborn even in the blood

Strong with our honor

Kshatriya"