PUISSANCE is one of few bands that known not only for music but also for the ideology they spread. Even more, sometimes people don�t care about PUISSANCE�s music, but they can waste hours in debating about band�s misanthropic philosophy. This spring PUISSNCE has released so long awaited brand new MCD Hail to the Mushroom Cloud and this outfit is their first "normal" album since "best of"-kind release War On. About the same time mainstream metal magazine TERRORIZER wrote that PUISSANCE are "...more spectacular musical Pearl Harbours in the History of metal and Industrial..." together with ATARI TEENAGE RIOT, MAYHEM, MARDUK and THROBBLING GRISTLE. I�m not sure if it�s a big honor to be mentioned together with commercial black metal fakes like MARDUK or MAYHEM, but the fact that METAL publication has mentioned the band together with THROBBING GRISTLE tells us that another milestone is crossed and commercial metal showbiz is going to explore the field we all used to call "industrial underground". Will Puissance ruin this tiny world like Cradle of Faggots ruined black metal scene or they will become legends like BATHORY for black metal or above mentioned THROBBING GRISTLE for industrial? Time will tell. Puissance is a mutual work of Frederik Soderlund and Henry Moller. They both are known for various side projects and if you want to dig more music from Frederik and Henry I can recommend you two pretty hot albums from TRIPWIRE (drum�n�base + PUISSANCE) and OCTINOMOS (fast black metal). "The PUISSANCE era started with the release of two industrial tapes recorded during 93 and 94, which led to the signing to the well-known Swedish label Cold Meat Industry." Later this Swedish duo appeared on a double EP compilation together with ARCANA and other 2 bands. It was a sign of upcoming full-length album. May 1996 has brought to us Let Us Led, enveloped in a luxury digipack. In April�97 CMI has released 7'EP Totalitarian Hearts. Those who didn�t want to buy this limited edition rip-off had to wait till the beginning of �98 when the band released full-length album suitably entitled Back In Control. Their new CD brought new sound. The music became less industrial and more orchestral and neoclassical. In fact, the band continues to move in this direction even today. The third full-length Mother Of Disease was released in 1998 and it was published by young Polish label Fluttering Dragon. The success of the album made possible some sort of "Best of PUISSANCE" album entitled War On. It was unleashed in summer days of 1999. Year 2000 has brought to us new wave of radiation from Chernobyl, global cyanide pollution of Europe, mass ritual murders in Africa, new wars and new MCD from PUISSANCE. In fact it�s their first MCD and as I already told its named Hail to Mushroom Cloud.

You have released your totally new MCD. Why MCD? As far as I know it�s the first time when PUISSANCE releases a MCD. You don�t have enough material for a full-length? Mother � is less industrial and more orchestral than your previous releases. What about Hail To The Mushroom Cloud? Describe the sound of your new album.

We do have plenty of material, so there is no need to worry, the mini-CD is meant as a concept album, someone wrote that it was dedicated to the atomic bomb and its effectiveness, that's not my words though, to some extent that statement may be slightly valid, but the concept of the miniCD is really quite different. It is more of a spiritual side of Puissance and the main idea is to depict the atomic bomb as a deity, not really as a weapon. Musicwise we have been experimenting with some new ideas borrowed from Tripwire which is another band I�m involved in, the new stuff has been described as a mix between Wagner and PORTISHEAD, which is more or less accurate I guess.

I wanted to ask you this question very long time ago. Why did you decide to leave Cold Meat Industry? I know that PUISSANCE wasn�t ordinary band for CMI, they have promoted you much better than many their other cults. And at the same time Fluttering Dragon doesn�t look very professional to me, I hardly can find reviews of your CDs in press.

I don't know why people ask that question, but I�ll paste an old answer from a recent interview: "Well, I don't know, we have answered this question a few times now, and I don't know why people keep asking it, I've been on many labels and CMI is just one of them, not much better and not much worse than others, it's just a label that prints records for artists that want to be there, we decided we wanted to move on and so we did, we choose Fluttering Dragon because it was a smaller label but had some potential, we still think it does. So PUISSANCE leaving CMI was not about artistic freedom or money, if it was about anything it may have been lack of communication or speed, but mainly it was just something that we felt it was time for." Well that�s what I said last time someone asked about CMI and I feel more or less the same now, regarding the things you say about our current record label I can agree that Xak on some occasions have been acting a bit strange, but somehow he seems to do a decent job anyway, I know that distribution is not his strong side, but I think that may change in the near future. But what I do like about Fluttering dragon is the speed and ignorance, we could put basically anything on the cover of an album and have it printed in less than a month, that�s the kind of things I like about a label, I don�t care too much about how many records he sells.

Your new album is dedicated to the atomic bomb and it's effectiveness. But atomic bomb isn�t very effective. Look at Japan, look at Belarus (Chernobyl)! This weapon is very spectacular to watch, but it isn�t very dangerous. People can live even after that. For example, biological weapon is much more brutal and perilous � you get absolutely dead cities full of equipment, factories, and buildings... Chemical warfare is good one as well� Look at dioxin hysteria last year a couple of kilograms of this shit put all Europe in panic. Why did you decide to choose atomic bomb as a symbol for your new album?

I beg to differ, the atomic bomb is tremendously effective and I would take you up on the offer to indeed take a look at Japan. Well in Japan there are the two nuked cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I guess we all read about that in school, and I think most of us know that they still have problems with it, there are deformed babies born there still today just because of the bombs dropped 50 years ago, and let me assure you that not very many of the houses that were around before the bomb was left standing afterwards. We must also consider that the bombs dropped on Japan were merely fireworks compared to the big ones we have today, if you were to drop one of those on a city or even a small country I can promise that nothing would be left, the big modern bombs aren't atomic bombs though, they are hydrogen bombs and burn with ridiculous high temperatures and destroy everything, compare a normal atomic bomb 10.000.000 degrees core temperature to the staggering 400.000.000 - 800.000.000 degrees produced by a hydrogen bomb, I know that both of these temperatures defy belief but nonetheless I think there may be some relevance in mentioning this, and keep in mind that hydrogen bombs cover a much larger area and have far greater impact larger blast center and also are usually dropped in clusters, say for instance 12 of them dropped by one missile then spread over a huge are and detonated at a designated altitude for maximum impact. There is nothing more violent and brutal than a hydrogen/atom bomb and that is the reason we decided to write a tribute to them, but once again I must mention that we didn�t write the miniCD to the bomb itself or its effectiveness (which I think sounds silly to do), no we wrote it for what the bombs represent, and for me they represent the ultimate transgression, the tamping of godly fire and the key to total power (at least total power to corrupt), for me they represent mankind�s attempt to control gods finger and govern with the terror presented in the old testament of the bible. The bombs themselves are nothing, but what they represent is a quite a horrible/beautiful thing, I know that it's debatable whenever genetics or nuclear arms are the biggest threat to divinity or whatever you would be defending in a discussion, but really I don�t think that matters. In closing I feel I should respond to your mentioning of bioweapons, well they sure seem effective but I don't think they look very fun, and besides you can very often find a cure for an illness or disease even if it would probably take some time and some people would die along the way, but try stopping a 400.000.000 degree flame with a vaccine, I doubt that even a really good sun-tan lotion would do much good in that situation.

You are very happy that mainstream metal magazine for teenagers called you as musical Pearl Harbour together with shitty mainstream techno band ATR (they write music for MTV, cooperate with commercial crap like Beasty Boys or may be even Madonna!), sold out pathetic ex-cult BM band Mayhem (that lost all their old fans and try to make some cash on it�s old glory), and Swedish clowns Marduk (this band is known for totally dumb music, all their albums sound the same and you can�t find any difference between their first or last outfits). Don�t you think that such fame and such "Pearl Harbors" will make you fans believe that PUISSANCE also wants to be one of those sold-out commercial bands from magazine covers. Swedish (or even American) Grammy Awards is the goal for Puissance as an underground industrial band?

Yeah I do like it, I like it a lot, I think it's very nice being listed with THROBBING GRISTLE, who were an innovative band and way ahead of it's time when they started out, and I do like being listed with ATARI TEENAGE RIOT, because they were one of the first bands to start out on the new breakbeat/techno punk wave which is not just quite interesting music but also has some nice lyrics some of the time, I have an old DHR compilation on which they seem a lot more crazy then we�ve ever been, I also like being mentioned together with MAYHEM since they started the whole new wave of Black Metal, and I like much of the stuff they did, I still think De Mysteriis Dom Satanas is one of the best Black Metal albums ever made, and in closing I think it's great to be listed with MARDUK since I respect Morgan as a musician and think he is one of the few persons who write interesting music nowadays, I myself have no trouble telling the difference between different MARDUK albums I may not agree with all his ideas but he�s really ok and besides he�s a personal friend of Henry so I guess I better say something nice about him. I'm not aiming for a Grammy award, I don't know why you would think that since you were complaining about us choosing a small independent label in one of your first questions, if I ever were to win one though I guess I would think it was a great opportunity to say something about how fucked up this world is and how much I hate it and the people who live on this planet. If our old fans leave us because of my attitude, well then they cant have been paying attention to what I say in my lyrics because PUISSANCE has never sworn any allegiance to any scene or to anyone, we always do what we like and say things like we want, and from what I hear from our fans it seems that its that they like about us, not the fact that we are part of any underground or scene.

The last question. It�s about your ideology. You want to see Earth dead. You want to destroy the civilization. It�s easy to destroy; it�s easy to be a critic. It�s easy to die in the name of� But it�s really hard to live in the name of� It�s hard to build your own. People who destroy usually don�t have ideas what do they want to build. If you don�t care about your own lives why don�t you get guns and fight with the system you hate? Why don�t you try to build your own "perfect" world? Why don�t you try to find the cause of degradation of this world? You have nothing to loose but your own lives. Or all the words about death are nothing but "trade mark" for underground market?

I'm not sure where to start on this question, you ask a lot of things in a pretty random order, I guess I could start off by saying that PUISSANCE have never been interested in building a functional world or attempt to make any sense of the one we already live in, our goal is simply to explain how we feel, you are right it's easy to be a critic and it is indeed hard to try to build something, I would have to say that building a perfect or even reasonably functional world is not just hard, it would be quite impossible. I know that many people disagree with me and say that we have to try to make this world a better place but I can't really see any point, it seems to me that history has proven those people wrong so many times, and besides history I know myself well enough to say that no world would ever satisfy me, I am a greedy and self-centered asshole who care much more about myself than of any system or other people, I don't have any moral values that I wouldn't trade in for money or fun, I have no idea of how a perfect world would look and doubt that anyone else has either, because what is perfect for you might not be perfect for me and vice versa. If you believe that you can build such a place you are welcome to try it, but don't count on any help from us, we don't believe in building, even if you were to build a paradise you would still have to figure out where to put the toilet, if you make a world of silver someone is bound to steal it, I hope you get my point, people are driven much more by egoistic needs than the common good, that is why all political systems fail and always has, as soon as a system is working smoothly someone is bound to find a way to exploit it for personal gain. We all make mistakes and we all produce a lot of garbage, we all lie sometimes and we all want something more once we have everything we have dreamed of, if things weren�t like that we would probably still be living in caves, and we would probably be a lot more mentally sound than we are in this stressed environment that we have produced. Me try to build something beautiful? well sure I�ll build something but it won�t be for mankind, I�ll instead write a beautiful song about what I believe in, or paint a beautiful picture of a personal dream or experience, but build a society or even pay the least bit of attention to politics? Not me! I couldn�t care less about what politicians do and how this world is run, I have no time for it, and it doesn�t interest me the least. I care about my immediate surrounding and my own life that�s all I have time for, and that�s all I'm gonna do, I know I can�t go back to living in a cave, I am to spoiled with modern things like musical instruments computers and television, but I can live as I was intended to in the sense that I pay less attention to the abstract world of liars and politicans where everything is debatable and the only thing that matters is winning, instead I�ll spend my time on things that matter to me, like my music. Sure I hate people, I hate the human race much more than I love myself, and I know that is a sad truth, but it�s just me I guess. And the day that this world becomes too much of a burden and real life (as you would probably call it) comes knocking on my door, and when I feel so stressed by seeing people pass outside my window or walk across my TV screen, that day I will try to blow to world up, and I hope it turns out to be just as easy as you said, I am not a brave person, I would never say that dying for something is easy, I know my limit I think the final decision to die in the name of global human extinction will be pretty hard. I don't believe dying is easy, but I'm sure it's a lot easier than wasting my whole life debating useless crap with politically involved men with large egos and small penises who are the ones who are more willing to sacrifice your dream of a perfect world than to admit that they are wrong about even the smallest most trivial detail in a discussion. Id rather blow myself and the entire world up than find myself acting like the filthy whores of journalism, who would sell anything true or not just to have their name printed on the first page of a shitty magazine. I�d rather tell all people who like my music to go to hell than to try to please them, don�t get me wrong, I think it's good that people like my music but I would never change my ideas or my music to please them, if they like it they like it for what it is. And that�s the way I wonna keep it. I write my music about things I feel strongly for, and I truly believe that mankind is a waste of life, and I do believe that people are disgusting and should be killed. Its not very strange that I feel that way, just look on the way people act.

One more� Do you have any news about your side projects? When do you plan your new PUISSANCE album?

Yeah, I just released the new OCTINOMOS album on Baphomet records and Hammerheart records, if any of the PUISSANCE fans who read this are into Black metal at all you should buy it, it's the equivalent of PUISSANCE as it would sound if it was metal. Also I have my TRIPWIRE album out on Fluttering Dragon, buy that one too since it's not like any of my previous bands/records, maybe you�ll end up hating me or maybe you�ll like it, only getting the album will tell. As far as PUISSANCE goes we are working on our next full-length album, which is soon ready, but first we are releasing the miniCD and then a box with our demos. When those two things are out we�ll release the new full-length album.