Interview: The Black Monolith

Date: 08/03/2025

Place: Athens, Greece

Ritual ambient with noise influences is not a very popular genre nowadays, so it is always a pleasure to see a new and upcoming artist release something in this vein. Such is the case with The Black Monolith, whose bona-fide debut album I've had the pleasure of reviewing a couple of months ago. As the project's name implies, it is a thick, heavy, colossally dark album, but one that reveals further (perhaps even softer?) nuances on every repeated listen. This made me very curious about the anonymous artist behind, so I established contact and used an unrelated trip to Greece to connect and sit down for an earnest in-person conversation with this enigmatic figure.

Now, as The Black Monolith is still a relatively new and unknown project to dark ambient audiences worldwide, I decided to do the perhaps obvious thing (I know, I know) and ask about its origins and where this colossal darkness comes from.

TBM: I was playing board games with my wife and some friends almost every weekend and we were trying to find some ambient music to play in the background to enhance the game. And I wasn't satisfied with anything I could find, so they half-jokingly asked me to write and record something myself and upload it to YouTube for our sakes and perhaps the sakes of others. That's how it all started.

As in the case of many a great artist, the answer turned out to be quite prosaic.

TBM: The thing is, I didn't really have any experience making this kind of music. I am a guitar player - a jazz guitar player more specifically - and I started playing when I was 12, which was more than twenty years ago, but other than writing some drone stuff for certain metal bands, I had never dabbled in anything remotely approaching ritual ambient.

And somehow, that spawned The Black Monolith out of nowhere.

TBM: I think it was March or April 2020, just when COVID first hit, that I seriously got into composing. It wasn't until September last year, though, that I got my main instrument, which is Lyra 8 by Soma Labs. That is when The Black Monolith truly starts for me; I admit that I'm not too fond of the earlier works nowadays, but it sounded cool at the time, and it fit the purpose that it was supposed to serve.

One has to wonder why the project was specifically named The Black Monolith, though. I admit that I had immediate associations with Kubrick and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

TBM: I actually don't know. It might have been inspired by Kubrick, as you say, but the name just materialised in my mind at some point and I knew that it fit perfectly. I tried to visualise a couple of other names, but nothing worked as well as the current one.

Speaking about the logo and the general aesthetic of the band, one can't help but notice that The Black Monolith draws a lot of its aesthetic from death and black metal.

TBM: That was a 100% conscious choice. Like many other artists in this field, I listen to a lot of extreme metal, and since I have a background in tattoo artistry and web design, I decided to make my own logo, so the influences are obvious. Despite that, I do think that the logo and the overall aesthetic connect well with the music itself and the spirit that I'm trying to conjure. After all, ritual ambient often comes from the same source and shares a lot of themes with black metal, and I'm no exception. I very obviously do not make space ambient, dark ambient or field recordings. The Black Monolith has an aggressive nature to it and I don't pretend otherwise.

One peculiarity of The Black Monolith is that there is virtually no information about the project on the internet, which is not uncommon for black metal bands, but is somewhat unusual for dark ambient. I correctly presumed that the mystery behind the artist's identity was an intentional choice.

TBM: Indeed. It doesn't matter who I am, The Black Monolith needs to speak on its own. I don't think it even matters if the choice was intentional or not. Not that I'm some reclusive monk or anything - I still do concerts, meet people, collaborate with like-minded musicians etc. I just think the music and the project are perfectly fine being evaluated on their own merit.

The Black Monolith certainly takes the road less travelled in making a harsh, ritual kind of dark ambient that doesn't immediately speak to the YouTube crowds who, it must be said, make up most of the audience nowadays.

TBM: It all stems from Swans.

I've heard dark ambient artists say a lot of things over the years, but this was a first for me.

TBM: Swans were my biggest inspiration when I was learning to play guitar, and nothing has changed to this day. The way they employ the same sections over and over again to induce a hypnotic state of mind is unlike any other band out there. I'm sure there have been other influences on my sound, but none of them conscious. Dig deep enough and you'll still find Swans in the core structure of any of my compositions.

For all the anonymity surrounding the project, there is one piece of publicly available information - the fact that the artist resides in Athens, Greece, where this conversation took place.

TBM: The superficial thing that makes all the difference when you come from the "global East" is that it's much harder to perform live. Suffice to say that most venues have absolutely no idea what kind of music I'm playing - and that goes even for after they've heard it! Even metal promoters aren't sure how to categorise you, or what kind of band to pair you with. Come to think of it, I've played with a stunning variety of artists. I've played with Sakis from Rotting Christ, but I've also played with some indie rock bands. I admit that I'm willing to change environments quite drastically to get my music out there, but at the same time it can be frustrating that no one really understands what dark ambient is.

Coming from an Orthodox Christian country myself, I was curious if The Black Monolith saw any peculiarities in the Eastern-inspired darkness vs. the prevalent Western kind.

TBM: I, like many artists from this part of the world, was raised an Orthodox Christian, and while I'm not religious today, it probably does influence me on a subconscious level. Some influences must have spilled over. However, I'd say I'm equally fascinated with both Western and Eastern strains of occult traditions. If you look at my track titles, you'll be able to deduce as much.

Speaking of titles, the debut (or shall we say, real debut) album was entitled Thee I Invoke, which begs the question about who is being invoked.

TBM: It's more complex than just paring it down to a single entity, but it's probably closest to the Bornless Ritual, invoking the Headless One, or akephalos.

For those who might be wondering, the Bornless Ritual is an ancient form of invocation practiced in early CE Egypt and is an important part of Thelemic tradition.

TBM: And it's not as clear-cut as it being God, an angel or a demon. I prefer to leave it at that - the curious reader will find his own path deeper into the topic.

At a more immediate level, another notable feature of the album is that half of the titles are in Greek, while the other half is in English.

TBM: The title is only decided after I've finished composing a track. You see, I think of my tracks as a wave, if that makes sense. So I just follow this wave wherever it leads, and afterwards I just try to find the best idea that seems to suit the track. And while I don't mean to degrade other languages by any means, I do think that some ideas just cannot be conveyed in languages other than Greek.

This one doesn't surprise me - even translating ancient Greek to modern Greek is an extremely difficult task in trying to capture all the sense of the original, let alone trying to translate it to other languages.

TBM: I've tried it on a couple of occasions, but after doing the translation from Greek to English, I just found the phrases somehow devoid of their true meaning. Sometimes it's the opposite - sometimes an English title doesn't work nearly as well in Greek. Take the second track of the album, There Is No God Where I Am. In Greek it just doesn't sound nearly as powerful. So I just choose the title that best fits the idea.

Just like the track titles, the album is quite heterogeneous in terms of sound as well. Thee I Invoke starts with what is basically a wall of noise, only to get softer and more nuanced over time.

TBM: Believe it or not, in the process of composing Thee I Invoke, I spent by far the most time deciding how to structure the tracks and in which order to put them. The curse of any artist is when there are too many ideas flowing around and they need to be put in a certain order. Trying to determine how to blend them, how to make the album progress... It can be neurotic. Ultimately, I've found that the loud-quiet-loud dynamic really works well for my creative process. You know, just like Swans. Michael Gira, I love you!

I promised on the spot that I would publish that last sentence in the interview. However, I wanted to know more about the live aspect of things, and where The Black Monolith sees himself in the range from complete recluse to touring musician.

TBM: Honestly, at this point I would play for anyone who books me. Not because I'm desperate to play shows, but because I feel very misunderstood in the general perspective of things and it's very interesting to me to see how different audiences react to this type of music. Not that there's a lot of people knocking on my door, but I'm working on several possibilities of playing internationally, so if the right opportunity presents itself, I will of course take it. There are several things in the works, but I am sadly not allowed to reveal any details until the ink is dry, so to speak.

Thee I Invoke was released by an actual label despite being a debut album, which is unusual for projects in this day and age, when labels and financial resources are few and far between.

TBM: Indeed, Thee I Invoke was released by Slithering Black Records from the US after being recommended by Joel from Insectarium, who also released on the label in question. Joel is a good friend and recently also a collaborator of mine, so I had full confidence in him, and it turned out to be a great fit.

As The Black Monolith is still quite a new project, I decided to repeat my sin from the beginning and inquire about the obvious thing - future plans.

TBM: There is a split album between myself and Occult Odyssey coming out on 20th March. I am also collaborating with two or three other artists, but I'm not yet allowed to disclose these projects as they haven't taken their final form. Likewise, there are plans for some live appearances, including international ones. Perhaps ironically for a project named The Black Monolith, everything seems to be quite fluid at the moment, not least my personal life, so we'll see where 2025 will take us.