In order to let you know a little more about us I picked out some of the most frequently asked questions in interviews and made them up with additional information. I did most of the TMLHBC interviews, this means that opinions stated hereafter are in my responsibility.
Can you tell us more about the name 'The Moon lay hidden beneath a Cloud' ?
Being romantic we thought it's a beautiful sight in the nightsky, it happens everywhere on earth, maybe even on other planets - and it will never disappeare. But besides that there's a deeper coherence to be found.
First of all it describes a phenomenon in nature - if the moon lays hidden beneath a cloud it can be overwhelming to some, they feel stronger when looking at it, inner spirits are evoked. Others might feel frightened or thrilled at least. Thus, according to the personality and the mood of the visitor, the phenomenon causes various emotions. This is what music provokes in the listener's soul as well, so one can see the name 'The Moon lay hidden beneath a Cloud' as a more complex description of our music, also because it hides an allegoric meaning: The moon, the cloud and their constellation to each other stand for a deeper significance as well, but I won't deprive people of their phantasies.
Why did you chose 'Arthur's Round Table' as your label's name?
Wandering around in Britain, we visited the 'Arthurian' places - Tintagel, where Arthur's or Uther's castle is suspected, Glastonbury, where he's said to be buried as well as the grail, in Cornwall he's under each stone and in Winchester we saw the big Round Table in the great hall of the castle. All these places are very impressive, and slowly grew the idea of naming our label 'Arthur's Round Table'. This allowed us also to gather other Knights around us in freezy winternights and get to higher levels over some glasses of wine (or beer in our case...).
The artwork on the CDs is very plain and free from any needlessness; but why do you not give any informations like tracklists or lyrics on the CDs and vinyls?
The small surface of the CD reduces the artistic possibility enormously - think of the good old vinyl covers, some even caused tactile joys ('sticky fingers' of the Rolling Stones - zip Mick's jeans...). For us it is important to give a visual impression of the audible content - lectural informations had to be reduced to a minimum, and as we allways intended to issue a book one day the lyrics had to stay aside for a while.
The reason for not giving any tracknames is a different one; tracknames are labels for they reduce a piece of music and lyric to a small useful word. Along with the word comes the imagination to the listener. This is easy to remark in looking at the catchy titles of many songs. Once the title is there it diverts the imagination of the listener and thus deprives him from letting his mind flow around the music and get his own - uninfluenced - impressions.
What inspired you to do this music?
It's hard to comment upon his own work - the influences obviously came with our personal interests.
Of course we were driven by emotions, fears, hopes and disgust as well, but we never did any music or singing on purpose, music can't be 'intended' if it should seem real. One must let it rise by itself, compulsion is never good for creativity. I'm not talking about inner compulsions such as mental illness or compulsions from the society, like hard life conditions - these factors may even enhance creativity.
You sing in different languages?
Every language has a certain sound as you speak it; some are very rough with many sibilants, like German, some Slavic - others are smoother and have more vocals that enease an intonation, like Latin and Italian. The difference is audible if you compare medieval chants in Latin, English and Old French, even though most texts of that time are Latin, the language of the educated - i.e. those who were skilled enough to record something for the posterity in writing at all. This means it was mostly used by scientists and clergy, most documents were written in Latin and it was spoken all over the world and the only way of communication for the elaborate classes and it is conserved by the church to this day. Nevertheless Latin was reserved to a very small part of the population, and the every-day poetry was often in rough dialects that are very hard to pronounce nowadays.The fact that most medieval lyrics are in Latin was very convenient to me; but also some Old French and Middle High German lyrics were nice to sing in their original version.
Taking the original version of medieval lyrics where ever possible, was logic to me as the poets must get honoured and the originality needs to be kept.
I also liked to experiment with different languages - rougher themes demanded a rougher language, like Croatian in ART VI. Unfortunately I never made it to do an Italian song, but that will change in the future.
You have a very strong medieval component in your music and lyrics. Why does this period fascinate you so much?
Our interests were mostly turned towards the every-day life of the simple people; of them we don't learn at school, but their lives are often much more thrilling and explorable than those of famous personalities. While doing the lyrics I tried to imagine as identical as possible, led by specialised literature, what the perception of those people must have been like, a difficult enough enterprise for a child of the late 20.century - who can imagine the voices of the wild animals at night of that time - and even worse - the fear they caused in the peasants souls?
In reading myself through the epoch I found some interesting coherences that are worth taking a closer look.
The medieval period expresses a great morbidity that's entailed by the situation of the 'society' at the dusk of the Middle Age: People had just come over the invasions of the eastern tribes, the Roman Empire saw it's decline and Europe was left to it's own; local spirits and ways of thinking could establish again, the circumstances resembled the periods before the roman conquest.
This feeling of being isolated and the lack of scientific knowledge must have caused the unique ways of perception these people must have had.
They lived under a mystic spell; if the harvest was ruined by droughts, floods or locust invasions and the subsequent famine run down the population or diseases mowed them all - they had no other explication but a supernatural one. Death was everywhere and a single soul didn't count.
Even the everyday-life, if uninjured, was full of mystics - people lived mostly in small villages, they were peasants and thus relying on "God's" grace concerning the weather, the soil and all kinds of pests. Life was reduced to the village, no one could travel to the next spot; the huge woods between settlements gave shelter to wild animals and gangs of robbers and murderers. So the village was encircled by danger and mystic and thus isolated and left to it's own fate. Sometimes their despotic lord or his catchpoles visited the village to injure the peasants, then they had to suffer a lot, they were his bondmen - already this fact is unimaginable to us today.
Pure fatalism and religiousness helped these people through life. They had no pictures, no flashy colours (imagine - no advertising on walls, no magazines and obstrusive TV spots), their clothes were brownish rags, for soap had to be made at home, and people had one working dress and one festival dress. Most of them slept with the animals on straw, in default of a useful heating. Everything had to be self-made, even music was reduced to the human voice and some self-made 'instruments', and if some jugglers found their way to the village from far away, it was a great feast.
Who can blame these people for trusting in supernatural things? They had no explications for sudden death - doctors didn't exist (luckily) and so they developped their own medical treatment, aided by recipes handed down over generations, they explored the substances given by the local nature and they got skilled. These wise women and men had a certain status in the community, they practised some magic and hocus pocus, and some of them might have been charlatans, but I'm sure most of their deeds were successful - otherwise the people had removed them from their postions.
Then came the influence of the church, they worked their way into each house and mind, oppression started, freedom of thought (!) was cut and the poor sinners had one more threat to suffer from. Freeminds were persecuted, the perverts in Vatican /Avignon raged without restriction. What the church did to our people's souls and bodies was much worse than Hitler or Stalin could ever have done by several reasons; the inquistition murdered 9 million people, of which over 6 million females were executed for heresy or 'witch craft', and many others were side-victims of the church, massacred during mass hysteria, or driven to suicide. Though the worst was not the physical suffering people had to cope with, but the life-despising seed they implanted to our ancestors minds. The bad seed grew and even nowadays we are struggling against narrowing morals and inhuman ways of thinking.
Why did Christianity become so important in the Middle Ages?
It fit the poor 'sinners' lives perfectly as it derives from an oppressed people itself. The mentality and fate of the jewish people - the 'creators' of christian philosophy, had a great influence on the later philosophies of the church. I'm not supporting the antisemitic vague in stating the church's philosophy as deeply judaistic; after occupying on several theories of psycho-analysis and the many ways of creating deities by human minds during their quest for the 'grail', one must get to the point of realising the throughoutly jewish origins of Christianity; this is even established by jewish atheists themselves: A male, unique God who suffers for his believers is the main figure; he expresses a real weakness and turns suffering into joy. This is his message, a message that perfectly fits all oppressed souls, as it gives a certain importance to their wasted lives, and it secures a furthergoing oppression by any despotic ruler, thus it's not revolutionary at all.
But along with this comes the disdain of life as such - no joys or strenght needed nor wanted, all emotions need to be suppressed. And the protagonists of the forbidden 'sins' (the female gender in general f.e.) need to be erased or scorned. Psychoanalysers of the last decades opened some astounding views on the typical male roots of Christianity being influenced by the specialities of the jewish socieity, to the contrary of pre-christian maternal cults and religions.
Of course there are many more interesting details on these theories, but I am considering the extensive disdain of life in general, implanted by the Church.
Considering all these points, one must say that the medieval period was also the period of the Church, it's zenith of power. With the reformation the influence diminished a bit.
Very fascinating and strange to us nowadays is the structure of medieval society - nothing was then as it is today: a static class system supported the feudalism, one was born into his class and couldn't escape it, so there was no prospect of self-realization, so why think any further? Life was short and strictly regulated - and it had no real value. One could get sentenced to death easily or even get killed by the lord for fun without consequences. Political perception was long to come and the struggle of everyday life did not allow any deeper thinking anyway. Of course there have allways been exceptions, but the average person had no choice at all, right the contrary - they were played off between ruler and clergy and worn down like human material, that's what they were in fact.
But the medieval period is also fascinating in it's artistic outbursts; clerical chants, sung in an acoustically brilliant dark gothic church is an uncomparable experience, it freezes your skin and heart.
The gothic period lived on the imagination of '... suffering here and now in order to be with the redeemer after death'. From this philosophy derives the morbidity in architecture, music and even painting. Everything is tall and narrow, pointed arches give shelter to pale, gaunt, sad looking statues in gloomy aisles, everything seems to suffer [...and long for death ]. Imagine those churches illuminated by candles only, in a dark winter night! And then - if you add some Gregorian Chants and frankincense - one can easily imagine why people were impressed by the church's appearances.
The spirit of that time can easily be recognised by comparing the baroque period to it - gothic music and architecture is morbide, longing for death, darkness and mystic. Baroque is the contrary, according to it's contemporary situation of the society. Unfortunately many emperors (especially in Austria) thought they'd seem more impressive in tearing all 'old' buildings down and replacing them with the bombastic baroque style. This has deprived later generations from an important part of their history.
But the medieval soul was not allways despising lust and life, to the contrary - in the beginning, when the woman wasn't oppressed so much and morals weren't cut by wanton popes, people's lives must have been quite entertaining - bath houses had their high hours already in the afternoon, everybody met everybody and within time mayors had to reduce the activities, as venereal diseases took over whole towns, such as Basel 1219. Then came extreme restrictions against physical joys and the other gender in general, pronounced by evidently impotent pope Augustinus, who, a horny rascal in his youth, was taunted by a dissatisfied concubine in public, as he failed, and thus turned into a woman hater; all this is chronicled by his contemporaries (more amusing details about clerical deeds can be found in the book of Deschner, listed in The Book of Lyrics). From that moment on the whore-houses florished and the business was best when clerical meetings took place - like the Concile of Constance 1414 - 1418 (where Jan Hus was burned, see under ART III | 5) 2000 whores took care of the clergy and the nobles. The wives had to stay at home.
Slowly grew the feeling of obscenity being fixed to sexuality, and thus sexuality being 'dirty' - another relic to the present.
The Middle Age was everything - dark and glaring, poor and dissipating, chaste and lascivious. People knew they were dancing on a volcano, war was going on everywhere, the plague stroke several times, natural disasters were extraordinarily frequent and sometimes even succeeded each other - and no one had an explication - so what is better than freaking out? Religious and other fanatisms rose and the human psyche showed us several outbreaks that definately would deserve a closer look..
This here is of course only a short glimpse into the past - many more factors would need to be considered to get a sufficient idea about the coherences of the circumstances of medieval life.
I could go on with this for ever - there's no end to the fascinating realms of the medieval world, but I must recommend further reading in either the lyrics part or some of the books I added to the bibliography in The Book of Lyrics.
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The medieval period was undoubtedly a unique one and has influenced us more than we think - the foundation-stone to our society was layed in that period, our way of thinking derives from the morals our ancestors got forced upon that time and - last, not least, the beloved Church still infiltrates European societies and increases it's might in missionaring other continents unrestrictedly.
Are you religious in any kind?
Hmmm - looking at it superficially I'd say '...no, not at all' - but then - what is 'religion'? I'd say 'no' to a religion that demands total subjugation and belief in a certain dogma, or even worse, a certain person. All religions are structured and created by humans (mostly males, by the way) - so they must be false. How can a stranger give me a guidance through my own life? I know myself what is good for me, religion in that sense is mostly for weak people who need this 'Führer' to help them along.
I'm not referring to my opinion about the Church - there is enough evidence in the appendices to the lyrics concerning religious themes in the book. Here I'm only considering the postulate of religion as a spiritual construction.
Of course religion can be substituted by something else - as we simply remark with the extreme esotheric boom these days, even a politcal movement can take over the function of religion. People lose their directions and so they need a help. Sadly enough, many of them are just too lazy to make up their own mind, it's easier to follow a 'ready-made' aim in life. I was brought up neither religious nor oppressed - thus I never learned how to obey to authorities - what sometimes caused me problems at school but also strengthened my free spirit.
But life in full disdain of transfiguration of any kind is hard and cold - we're born naked and this we stay to the end - so we need a certain feeling of inner warmth and primary faith, we're also tormented by the ultimate question of 'where from and where to?' During the quest for this 'grail' people have developped many mutating aims of life. I would even say that life feeds from this awareness of the certain and unescapable end of all existence and the human fear of unimportance, that drives people to all varieties of 'lasting' deeds, we all want to become immortal. - a hardly attainable target, to the fortune of Bergen...
I get nearer to my inner spirits as I wander through nature, experiencing a forrest with all my senses, barefoot, sniffing as much as possible, hearing even the dew dropping, touching the soil or embracing the trees. This may sound funny, but if you explore it in your own way you will remark a certain change. Without defaming anyone I'd even state that you're too far off your inner self if you find absolutely no attraction in diving into nature. The described feeling may even get cultivated, and one may find special spots, places of strength or peace without any help from specialists. Indicated places hardly do their duty as the individual is driven by a certain need of feeling the demanded power immediately - this mostly destroys everything and the feeling one had was born of imagination. This fact and my disbelief in authority prevented me from following some natural rites executed in groups. I explore the 'territory' each time anew, thus I have clearer sight on all small things - ingenious acts are canalised motorisms again.
Of course I practise certain "rituals" - but I work them out, according to the subject and accurate circumstances.
Rituals - practised in the right way - are the missing link between our conciousness and our further backlying unconcious "layers".
This habit forces me to think it all over to the detail and then lightens my mind even before I start with any ceremony. In the end, as I succeed it gives me the feeling of personal strenght - as I stepped through it without any help and got to the point fully alone. So no directing dogmaticians needed nor wanted….
Even though I'm a very rational person, I have two sides in me - and when the anima is comming up it needs it's nursing and satisfaction - maybe realizing and avowing this is rational, too.
Do you have a 'message'?
'Do what Thou wilt!' Aleister knew where (and what) life was - right here and now, not elswhere or later on. Life is unique, it happens only once - as long as I can't remember that I lived before, reincarnation wouldn't help me even if it existed.
I think that oppressive judaistic philosophy (see above) of a better life after death, indoctrinated to the western world by the church over millenniums, is even embodied in our society of the 20.Century - what are we headding for? Safety, pensions, we struggle for a life that's supposed to happen later on; thus we sublimate urges and canalize them towards consumption, feeding mammon takes all our energies. Who can enjoy a simple afternoon underneath an old tree - who can hear the stories he tells? We lost our ground, life is speeding up - death is much sooner to come - even though we live longer.
What happened before TMLHBC?
Curiously enough I had my fist appearance on stage in Sicily - right in the very deep center where the 'special families' rule and where judge Giovanni Falcone was blown up in the road in spring 1992. There in Serradifalco, near Caltanissetta, I sang together with Rita Pavone (the Italians might know...) and some american singer, who's name I forgot, some romantic and cabarettistic duetts during an open-air town festival. That was really an odd and funny start, the music was neglectable, Rita, who's a very nice noble lady, asked me to sing some tunes as I knew the band who supported her. It's a nice memory that keeps me smiling as I think of it.
1986/87 I was singer in a band, we did all kinds of cover versions from our heroes and some own pieces, the whole had a very harsh 80ies touch (Joy Division, early Death in June, early Cure, New Model Army, Cassandra Complex, Sisters of Mercy), we only did one concert on New Year's Eve of 87/88. Then I moved away to study and the band split into several session groups. At the university I met Albin who tried his best in painting that time. After two years he left the paint aside, bought himself a sampler and a little later we started doing sessions with Andy, an old friend of us who once had joined one of the mentioned session groups as a bass player. With us he did the guitar and some strange noises.
The sessions had a very wicked spirit; we got together, switched the tape recorder on and went along. Somehow allways some great, moody pieces came out in the end, everybody was astonished when listening to the tapes. One of those pieces is on the ART I, number 10. As we started to rehearse the 'unrehearseable' and prepare the music for concerts and the studio, the spirit was fading and the whole thing lost it's charm and attraction to us. Nevertheless we did two concerts in 1991 as LAA, one in Austria in February, and one in Switzerland in March, together with The Legendary Pink Dots. The musical reductions we had to accept in order to do practicable live-shows and the recordings in the studio, dissatisfying for the same reason, diminished our joy of continuing, it was impossible to conjure the feeling of the sessions.
As Albin and me lived in Vienna already that time it was hard to keep the sessions going, our guitarist was situated eight hours away, on the other side of Austria, and as we wanted to go ahead with music we did it as a couple. ART I was born.
What instruments do you use? Do you also use medieval instruments?
We use electronic equipement, such as sampler, tape-loops and effect processors, as well as acustic instruments and medieval ones, such as shawm, hurdy gurdy, rebec, recorder, Hexenscheit, timpanis. We also built some of the medieval instruments ourselves - the hurdy gurdy and the Hexenscheit were constructed during summer 1992.
Which are your musical favorites?
Music is life to us and so we like many different styles; all periods of industrial & experimental, apocalyptic folk and 80ies goodies is our main direction , Alzbeth allways has some classical CDs on the tray, but according to the mood she wants some special traditional music (like Portugese Fado, Italian, Russian, Croatian and South American folkmusic) or some usurping metal that moves your inner organs.
You're both Austrian - so how did the collaboration with World Serpent come about? They seem rather anglophile with their issues.
ART I was finished by ourselves. Being in London we passed by their office in Greenwich to ask whether they'd do the distribution for England, as we had one for the continent already. After having heard some tunes on the CD, they wanted to distribute it all over the planet. We agreed, as we liked their bands anyway and annulling the other deal was no problem
Can you tell us about your colaborations with other bands?
Fate was momentous when we met Lina Babydoll at our first concert in Nevers. We had some beers there already - what caused the vexation of the organizer - and went on as he was with us in Vienna many times. There happened the wicked sessions of 'A Night in Fear' a title that doesn't describe the time we had - we were rather thrilled by the fear of running out of beer... He had brought some elkish sounds from Sweden and we added a few Viennese tunes plus voices - the profund influence of Deutsch Nepal is obvious on the CD. Recording with Lina was great fun, we even banged the bottles that were emptied on track 1 of ART VIII.
The vinyl 'Madhr' together with the Hybrids was intended to be issued at Weißenburg, were a concert of the two bands was planned to take place in a beautiful church.
Unfortunately we had to cancel our participation, as the restrictions from the church's side prevented a senseful act (in the end the church put on a dress-code as well, no frankincense etc.…). The recording was very easy - they took our sounds and made them up and so did we. It was very funny as I recognized Sandy's sounds we used for our satanic song on their 'Ein Phallischer Gott'as well.
'Die Weisse Rose' together with Les Joyaux de la Princesse and Regard Extreme was done under a rather black star, unfortunately, as I do like the music on the CD. Eric got to know me in Vienna and he asked me if I could speak some german words on his CD.
Back in France, he sent me a tape and then asked me to do more, two poems plus one song of Lale Andersen and one of Zarah Leander. As I adore Zarah, I couldn't refuse. Time passed and I never got a definate reply to my questions about the remuneration and the number of releases, he even lied to me about important facts. After a final discussion in Esterhofen the battle in the press started and in opposition to all statements I haven't seen any recompense to this day.
How can we imagine your concerts?
On stage we try to create a certain atmosphere that supports the music.
Banners, torches, no artificial light - just the flickering fire, sometimes hidden behind a veil of fog, this all gives a dark and odd impression that lasts. We are very static and martial, the gravity of the music and the voice is weighing on the audience . "The singer is positioned in the front, her strong appearance supports the mighty impact." so it says in a magazine.
Playing in front of the audience was allways great pleasure to me, I like the tension that builds up during a piece or even during silence, if the people and me look in each other's eyes.
As we prefered to play in special places, such as churches, old buildings or even caves, things that were not allways realisable, we didn't do many concerts. Here I give a list of the few:
May 13, 1995, Nevers (France) 'festival des musiques ultimes' together with many Swedish drinkers, Tony Wakeford and The Legendary Pink Dots. Nevers was maybe the best we ever did, in a beautiful old theatre with wonderful statues, great stage and sound engineers, really elaborate - a good start with an enthusiastic audience.
Only one week later, on May 20, we played in the medieval prison of Moudon in the Swiss mountains. Moudon is a really pittoresque village, fresh air, dark hills, like centuries back. The sound was very poor there - but still it was very rustic and heartfelt.
Another great site was the old fortress by the Rhine in Mainz, were we played an open-air-concert at the Beltane festival in May (Beltane is May 1.) 1996. With us were Hybrids and Mother Destruction. The audience was great again and I could even see the moon hiding behind a cloud while I was singing - a fact that made the atmosphere almost transcendental.
Chemnitz, on October 11, was a new experience as we never had been to eastern Germany before and we even discoverred that the Allys left some houses intact, so it wasn't the concrete jungle we'd imagined, right the contrary - the concert place was a sympathic old brick building, stage and sound excellent (the best stage sound I ever had) and the organizers were all brave people.
Only Angelo (Kirlian Camera) didn't want to play before us, even though the contract stated us as headliner (poor italian macho-boy) and so they left without doing their duty. Hekate had a good gig with us and Lina , who played the next day with PAL, was there to hold our hands and some glasses of beer, so nothing could go wrong really.
Few days later in Gent, we were overwhelmed by the town, the whole place is like a flemish museum, almost unreal. The club was tight and it must have had 40 degrees as we went on stage, but the audience was with us - even though Diamanda Galas played up the street the same night (sure she wasn't alone either...).
Next was Jönköping on November 19, together with Roger's bards, Arcana and Raison d'Etre. The place was very nice and the audience extraordinary - many of them were Cold Meat musicians and so it was funny for me to see Chelsea (Ordo Equilibrio) swaying to the music and Mortiis crossing up in front of the stage, he was quite destroyed that night, like all of us after the concerts - must be a real phenomenon in the scandinavian way of carousing, very exhausted and enjoyable to me, as I have some vicious Belo Russian blood in my veins. If that mixes with other life-saps - such as some good decent drinks, it can lead to a very excessive outcome...
Leipzig 97, the 'Wave & Gothik Treffen' was of course totally different, huge events demand different expectations. The organisation was obligingly nice and the Moritz Bastei, were we played on May 18, was definately one of our best concert places - as part of the 16.century fortress it was a storage place for weapons once, huge vaults of bricks that gave a strange impression, like a prison or camp - one could even smell the rotting armour-oil they used to keep the guns going. The acoustics was very dense and the sound engineer a real God, he was an elderly guy who absolutely knew what he does with his hands and ears, that's very rare unfortunately. The audience was dense, too, the place was totally overcrowded but everybody seemed to be alright. Another good thing about Leipzig was that we met many friends there, the party went on all three days.
And feasting continued during the Cold Meat festval in Waregem on July 25, where we played and celebrated together with many scandinavian drinkers again and PAL - and even BDN rose from hell.... The sound was less agreeable but the audience was enthusiastic again, and for us the hotel-parties were most remarkable, and so they must have been for 'Madame', as Lina called the exhausted keeper of the hotel.
Esterhofen was chaotic on Helena's day (August 18) - the billing was a strange mix: Les Joyaux de la Princesse, Telepherique, Yasnaia, Con Dom & Grey Wolves and TMLHBC. As the french had to rehearse their accurate drumming (...) the audience had to wait outside the building until 11 pm (!), Sandy of Hybrids/Yasnaia was quite annoyed that they were booked together with the English (for political reasons) and we were last to play at 4 in the morning, so we changed the lineage. The sound on stage was the worst I ever had, sometimes it even broke off - thanks again to the hardcore punk sound 'engineer', people were steadfast but tired at 3 in the morning - who can blame them ? Nevertheless the hotel site was as pittoresque as can be - an old mill by a creek in the middle of the countryside, we wandered around in the deep night, lead by far away bonfires and the pale moonlight, a very weird place.
Are you moving on dangerous political territory? You used runes and give a militaristic impression on stage with your outfit, tank camouflage nets and banners...
What is dangerous political territory? This word already implies that we live under a certain censorship - in an open society political statements can't be dangerous. But as we are all moving further towards egalitarianism every year and the beloved political correctness takes over the world wide ministery of control, things might have changed.
Personally I (Alzbeth) consider the restrictions from the far left against a certain scenery and it's artistic protagonists, whether musicians, poets, painters or even ethnologers, as a much too far gone freak theatre - it's enough now.
Luckily TMLHBC never really suffered these political violences, and this might clear your question to a certain degree, but we had problems caused by the threats from the directionless (they're not even left if one takes a closer look) but militaristic mob.
As many of you know arbitrary banning and even violent attacks happened too often to other bands of all musical directions. I'm not discussing the artistical value of certain entertainments, or the meaningfullness of using certain symbols to support the music (or vice versa) - that may get debated elsewhere; this here is more about principles.
The parasitic chaots inform the police - normally their purest enemy - to ban a concert for it's 'dangerous symbolisms' whereas some streets further down a rapper-circus goes on and the chief-belcher summons to rape all women and kill the whites...
Do we want this? No!
What perspectives do I get from a state or society who prohibits certain books, old Germanic symbols, even the free word is handcuffed, what a shameful sign of incapacity for handling the past or even free-thinking individuals.
Needless to mention that violent and humiliating graphics or statements against women (the majority of the population) are the order of the day. Exchange one single humiliated female body with that of a black or recognisable jewish person - and keep the picture as it was - hell will break out in your postbox and you'll get torn to court.
I think the people in the audience are old enough to take a look behind the symbolisms and outfits of certain bands; imagine what would happen if every message of musicians was taken as an invitation to follow certain orders, how many babies would get roasted by Satanists? How stupid.
Strangely enough the artistical mutants, as mentioned above, may pronounce freely whatever they want, especially if they belong to a 'socially oppressed' part of modern society; that's what the socialistic riots of the late sixties donated to us..
Of course we can suspect some very mighty international lobbies behind this kindergarden (that's what it is in fact - the nanny from far away telling the infantile governments what to do).
Most of the pressure to prohibit the above mentioned relics of our european history and culture comes from the world police across the big water, nominal from mighty organizations who's interests are in keeping the 'Germanic tribes' under WASP control (wasp - white anglo saxon protestants) by the aid of the jewish refugees.
The jews play a special role in this deal: First they have an enormous control over the american society in owing leading financial groups, newspapers and other important media. Thus they can easily influence the public opinion and economy; concerning this, one must ask who helps whom in this pact.
Nevertheless, on the other hand the surviving jews are declared as existing victims of the Nazi-Regime and thus the best public prosecutor against a Europe that's regaining strength. I'm mentioning Europe, as all states, except Britain, of course, who managed to arrange the 'clean slate' after the war (I'm sure the Bank of England or Lloyd's insurance had some incorrect profits out of the refugees' fate), seem to have to pay enromous sums nowadays for all kinds of businesses during the war - I wonder when the Americans will pay for Vietnam or Yugoslavia or all the other, hardly mentioned states of Africa where the US and their organisations keep their hands on all businesses, whether political or economical..
But rumouring about international conspiracies won't change anything.
Slowly the gate to artistical freedom is closing. It is very hard to remark during everyday life, but it happens.
It's more than time to put our foot into the diminishing gap to stop this narrowing of our horizon.
Last, not least - can you comment on your releases? You also did some nice badges and shirts?
In the beginning we wanted to release CDs only in cardboard covers, as they seemed a much nicer packaging for our music.
The many canals of distribution disenabled us to continue so and reasonable digipacks did not exist that time; we even had to add the disliked barcode to the covers.
Nevertheless we had some limited cardboard editions with ART I, II, and III., as well as a special box set with CD, MCD and poster for ART XI.
The vinyls had some special covers, too; ART IV and ART VII have embossed cardboardcovers, the first with a poster. ART V is even sealed, ART X is a picture single and - last, not least - ART VI has beautiful clear vinyl with the Croatian shield inside the vinyl's center (so it's a picture LP, technically spoken).
The artwork of the covers was very important to us - all texts are handwritten by Alzbeth, the cover of ART I is entirely done by her, except for the couple itself on the front page - the woman who grabs the shy knight is Aelfgifu (or alternatively spelt Ealdgyth) of Northampton, Queen of Wessex (c.1030), who was the man-crazy wife of three Anglo Saxon kings and lover of several Danish invaders and kings and - as can be seen on the picture - obviously took what she wanted.
Deriving from the cover artwork were all other itmes we did - such as shirts with the cover-images of ART II, III, VI, XI as well as the crowned skull logo of TMLHBC. All shirts had armprints, and some of them had additional backprints - ART III, VI, XI. We did a beautifully embroydered patch of the crowned skull logo, and several badges with the images of ART II, VI and the crowned skull and - moreover - postcards of ART III and the crowned skull plus an additional large poster with the knight of ART XI.
Finally - with the Book of Lyrics, edited by Alzbeth, one could romantically say - the Round Table is completed with 12 items, standing for 12 Knights.
http://web.archive.org/web....ttp 
Austria
