No intelligent being will disagree that, in various respects, France has culturally set the gold standard. It feels superfluous to say that for France’s contributions to the visual arts, architecture, ballet, opera, classical music, cinema, theater, philosophy, literature, cuisine, fashion, and so forth, we all owe the country an enormous debt. Of course, as sadly fiery current events unfold, I wish the French people safety and send my prayers for the preservation of their heritage sites. In my view, such physical destruction can only be regarded as tragic and never as a solution. That stance, however, might not sound very “metal.” Speaking of which, upon reflecting on the need for more true cultural emissaries, I naturally thought of the exemplary Mr. Michael Berberian — the founder of my favorite record label, Season of Mist, conceived in Marseille but now an international powerhouse. Berberian represents the French spirit at its best, so please join us in our celebration of the land of innovation with Mr. Berberian himself. season of mist, Lisa braultWorking with French visual artists: “I pride myself in that I can go to any fine art museum on the planet and be able to recognize about 70% of the paintings […].”Season of Mist’s roster has boasted heavyweight bands from all over the world, such as Norway’s Mayhem and Florida’s Morbid Angel. Berberian even has the pleasure of collaborating with ex-Gorgoroth’s Gaahl through Gaahls Wyrd — this unlikely sweetheart was famously featured in our very own True Norwegian Black Metal (2007) documentary. Granted, the Season of Mist family also includes a network of cover artists, graphic designers, and videographers, whose involvement has been invaluable. Because Mr. Berberian identifies as an art snob, he has been in a special position to scout out the most suitable talents to visually translate his musical releases. This refined aesthetic judge confirms, “I pride myself in that I can go to any fine art museum on the planet and be able to recognize about 70% of the paintings and the painters without having to look at the labels.”Although Berberian, sensitive to complexities, is not one to stereotype or make sweeping generalizations, he acknowledges that French image-makers tend to be artists in the most genuine and uncompromising sense, prioritizing integrity over commercial interests. Mr. Berberian states, “I love working with them, because they are creative, and they have a unique flair. Of course, I don’t impose on musicians in terms of which artists they should work with. But, for example, I can tell you right now, Gorguts’ new album is going to be a collaboration with a French artist called Dehn Sora. He’s one of my favorites, so I’m really glad about that.” As far as non-French bipedal wonders who have worked with Season of Mist are concerned, I’ll emphasize that the German-born, Peruvian-raised, New York-hating scholar and artist Jose Gabriel Alegría Sabogal deserves much recognition. The same can certainly be said of photographer NecrosHorns — this half-Italian, half-Colombian perfectionist from Panama, who resides in Sweden but seems to always be flying around the world due to insanely high demand, is an Old Master of our time.Berberian gives a shout-out to the exhibited David Thiérrée, whose achievements can be appreciated in the book Owls, Trolls & Dead King’s Skulls: The Art Of David Thiérrée (2017), “He does Lord of the Rings-esque drawings by hand, which are so meticulous. He’s done artwork for Mortiis and Ihsahn. He’s one of my favorites, and he’s one of the artists I like working with the most. He’s really funny as a person as well.”I bring up the Renaissance man Gornoss whose videography has left this perpetual complainer, meaning yours truly, deeply impressed. Berberian comments on his fellow countryman, “Gornoss is a discovery — he was not really a name in the metal scene at all. He was just working with local bands. When I met him, I found him as a person and as a character. It was really interesting. And we started with a Cryptopsy video [‘Malicious Needs’], which was really sick… It was deranged. I was like, ‘Okay, that guy’s good.’ Then, I gave him Holissstik, and he did the video for ‘The Rhythm of Silence,’ which is one of my favorites. It’s absolutely stunning artistically; that video is great! Now, he’s doing three videos for Heilung.” I know that Holissstik’s driving force, the brilliant Tor-Helge Skei, and the main voice showcased in “The Rhythm of Silence,” the phenomenal Martyna Halas, were thrilled with the incredibly nuanced and gorgeous result. The delicacy with which Gornoss interpreted Martyna’s poetry, as well as the lines of French rapper K-rip, continues to blow me away. French graphic designer Adrien Bousson handled the artwork for Holissstik’s miraculous debut, This Endless Solitude, while the aforementioned NecrosHorns shot Holissstik’s promo photos. Unfortunately, the unstoppable NecrosHorns dislocated his ankle while visiting Tor-Helge before immediately flying off to capture the revolutionary Venom and, en route, meeting with Lifelover’s venerable Kim Carlsson. The signing of the genre-defying Holissstik, by the way, really demonstrates SoM’s superior taste and tireless will to bring audiences the very best.(If I may indulge my tangential impulses, then I’ll say that because geniuses think alike, Kim recognizes Tor-Helge as one of music’s leading pillars of truth. Kim is of relevance here, since another one of his photographer/videographer friends, Livja Pjetra, grew up in France and is a gem of a creator, whose soulful approach instantly entranced me. Pjetra’s Paris-based ally Andy Julia may be referred to as an additional leader in his field — his skill has been solicited by Louis Vuitton, Moynat, Guerlain, and other prestigious names. Andy has joined forces with members of the Season of Mist team, like Heilung and Sylvaine.)A brand defined by professionalism combined with iron balls…Season of Mist is now celebrating their 30th anniversary, hence we eagerly await the upcoming documentary Season of Mist: 30 Years of Chaos & Commitment, directed by Ana Danilović. Season of Mist’s history actually traces back to Berberian’s college days; this intellectual holds his master’s in economics. Berberian counts 1996 as the year of his brainchild’s founding since that’s when he released his first record. However, his involvement in the perilous realm of music began in 1992 when he was hired by Decibel Storm as a writer and concert promoter. The first gig he booked was for none other than the bigwigs Samael. Berberian officially registered Season of Mist as a company in 1999. When establishing his brand, he employed a risk-taking strategy to sign Mayhem, for example, comparing his willingness to pay a hefty price for the glory gained to how French giants like Dior use overly extravagant fashion shows as a PR move, as explained in conversation with Metalorgie. Berberian sold his possessions, turned on his smooth talking skills, and moved in with his parents in order to pull off this “Grand Declaration of [Sonic] War” against mediocrity and weakness.Mr. Berberian’s success becomes even more commendable when one considers that, as he reminds us, “France is a very hard place to build a business.” The high taxes, bureaucracy, postage costs, heavy labor laws, short work hours, have all posed challenges. Berberian summarizes, “It was an extra struggle. […] The weather and the food can’t be beat, and France is obviously a holiday destination for a lot of people, but that doesn’t help with your business.” Berberian’s tenacious character has certainly served him in advancing and attracting those in need of a label with personality; as he clarifies, Mayhem, for one, did not only ink with him for the money but because they clicked as people. In other words, while Berberian is known for his kindness and generosity when appropriate, his French bravado has meant that he’s not afraid to earn respect by giving a deserving knucklehead of a frontman a punch when such presents itself as the logical course of action. Indeed, a physical blow from this revered boss can only be perceived as an honor.I will note that while France has spawned various esteemed black metal labels over the years, none of Season of Mist’s peers have really “made it” in the way they have, not nearly — obviously, achieving the status of a major label allows Season of Mist to arrange more and better opportunities for their musicians. Berberian reflects, “When we started, there were a bunch of French labels that were really successful. There was Osmose, Holy Records, and Adipocere. Osmose helped create black metal already with Immortal, Marduk, and all their signings. Holy Records (with Septicflesh, Nightfall, Orphaned Land, and all of their bands) were really pioneers of the underground scene. They were the first one to do gothic metal, so they really helped create the genre. But maybe they were more artists than businessmen, and that’s why they were super influential and made an impact historically.” (The mark of a good and successful person is how he speaks of his current and/or past competitors.) Family affair: “They say, ‘Never work with your family.’ Well, I did exactly that, and somehow it worked.”Mr. Michael S. Berberian’s father, Sir Michael H. Berberian, a sound guru, is a rock-star in his own right, having worked with the likes of the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds — he was even present at Woodstock. Michael H. Berberian has assisted with Season of Mist in various regards; he has lent his wisdom as an advisor and his mastering expertise to the label’s acts. He is even credited as a director of Mayhem’s European Legions: Live in Marseille 2000 (2001). Berberian the Elder’s influence has aided Mr. Michael S. in his own ability to communicate with producers, as he famously did for Jaime Gomez Arellano’s 2018 remix and remaster of Mayhem’s Grand Declaration of War (2000). The father moreover instilled a love of classical music in the son, and thus the latter still attends classical concerts often enough. Obviously, classical is a great tool to help a discerning ear recalibrate, and, of course, many of Season of Mist’s groups have incorporated classical components — I find myself reduced to gushing mania by Jahreszeiten (2009), which owes to SoM’s fabulous 2022 acquisition Nargaroth and hilariously yet beautifully explores the “mental illness” that is “love in a classical notion.”The label legend shares, “My father actually lived in the US, and he didn’t really have the French mentality when it comes to work ethic. He’s really the one who pushed me to open my US branch in 2003, because he kept repeating, ‘You can’t pretend to be a worldwide label if you’re not present in the biggest market in the world, which is the United States.’ So, that’s why, very early on, when I was 26 or 27, we opened the US branch. I had only just finished my studies two years before. I had no idea what I was doing. So, he really had this kind of mentor role in helping me develop, not in taste, but in how to actually run a company, because he had built companies his whole life. He was really able to help me.”Berberian the Younger also credits his growth to his ex-wife, Sabiene Goudriaan, “My wife at the time was my first employee and became a part-owner of the company. She is Dutch, and she had that Protestant work ethic. ‘You need to be the first one to open the office and the last one to leave; the devil is in idle hands, and you need to work harder than anybody else.’ I was just a French ‘let’s drink coffee, talk to girls, smoke cigarettes, and party’ guy. So, that work ethic is something that I learned from her and through the mentorship of my dad and his past business experience in the US. They really gave me the drive to do this. They say, ‘Never work with your family.’ Well, I did exactly that, and somehow it worked.”Concerning work ethic, I must stress that Season of Mist’s North American publicist, Mr. Will Yarbrough, is the best I’ve ever worked with by far. As the diligent journalist (and victim of ennui) I am, I have decided to put that theory to the test, and my findings are that Will’s buttons can’t really be pushed, and he has a perfectly diplomatic answer for everything. With all stars like Mr. Yarbrough and superb organization dominating within the larger whole, it’s no wonder I’ve heard more than one band say that after signing with Season of Mist, they realized that their previous labels were really just engaged in child’s play. The divine Mr. Nordhus of Green Carnation (who, to be clear, as the gentleman he is, did not have any criticisms of other labels) hit the nail on the head during our last chat, “[…] he’s just an amazing professional and human being. […] He’s giving us a lot of time. So, I’m just wondering how it’s possible for him to do such a great job for all bands, because Season of Mist is a big label—They have lots of bands.” While I know that Mr. Yarbrough loves Green Carnation very much, Season of Mist treats all bands like they are ultra-special because, in fact, they are.Mr. Yarbrough, our paragon of politeness and efficiency, joins the conversation:“Working for Season of Mist is the best job I’ve ever had. I’m proud to work for a label that is uncompromising in its vision and dedicated to supporting its artists. That mindset comes from Michael. He is always pushing us forward while staying true to our principles.”Pride without prejudice: “I think it’s healthy.” Season of Mist has more than proved a label that isn’t limited by genre, but, at the same time, their obvious success with metal titans cannot be underplayed. Berberian addresses the cultural awareness promoted by the movement, “The Greek black metal scene sounded very Greek, and they called themselves ‘Hellenic Black Metal.’ Same thing for Moonspell in Portugal, who call themselves ‘Lusitanian.’ What is Heilung but a celebration of their ancient pagan European roots?! Mawiza is indigenous. Orphaned Land was mixing Palestinian and Israeli music and components far before the global conflict that we have now. There’s been an element of taking pride in where you’re from in metal, like you have in football and the Olympics. It’s something that I’ve always really liked about the metal scene; I think it’s healthy. […] A part of the metal scene has been to try to be a little bit intellectual in your lyrics and in regard to history. If you’re a Norwegian band, you have a ton of history to celebrate. We have a French band Seth, who did a whole piece about the French Revolution [La France des Maudits, 2024], the good and the terror of it.” Season of Mist has reissued classics by Enslaved, who has won more Norwegian Grammys than any other outfit, and supported their co-founder, Ivar Bjørnson, in his joint project with Einar Selvik of Wardruna. As the beloved Mr. Bjørnson told me, “It’s a misunderstanding that discovering and going into your history is something that will make you hostile: It’s quite the opposite because if you feel secure in your own identity, it’s much easier to understand people with different identities, I think.”That said, we touch upon the hugely talented Viking War Trance entity Eihwar, who hails from France and takes a more fantastical than historical approach. Berberian praises the very different atmosphere of fun that they cultivate, “They just want to make me dance and play catchy music with a very hot girl [Asrunn] who’s absolutely giving it all every night and trying to get the crowd to dance as much as possible. So, that feels like a breath of fresh air.” While one might venture to call them escapists, Asrunn and Mark do seem like a brainy pair, having charmed me with their eloquence during a conversation, facilitated by Mr. Yarbrough, earlier this year.Upon my prodding, which I hope wasn’t too indelicate in the American sense, Berberian kindly gives his view on France’s current health, “It’s really sad to say, but if you look back about 100-120 years ago, Paris was the absolute cultural capital of the world. You had the Bataeu-Lavoir with Picasso, and everything that was going to become modern art was happening in Paris. Impressionism after classicism and then modern art, everything, was happening in France; Van Gogh and everybody lived in the south of France. You had Cézanne and Renoir. In classical music, you had Debussy, Satie, and Ravel. It was happening in my country. ‘What the f—k happened?!’ is the question that I have, because when you go to le Louvre or d’Orsay, you realize that, after the Italians gave us the Renaissance, again, the cultural center of the world was France.”(I will add that a lot of intelligent souls feel that the faultiness of modern mental wiring has resulted in the degeneration of art globally, and thus many are rebelling against the usurpation of beauty by the objectively ugly as well as the lack of skill involved in crafting pieces as a thought-provoking and emotionally stirring black rectangle I recently spotted at an esteemed auction house, with an estimated worth of $200,000-300,000, beside a lovely out-of-focus photo that had the charm and memorability of a pair of gray sweatpants in the eyes of Karl Lagerfeld. The most low-brow and scammy has already long been marketed as what’s high in an apparent ongoing fit of jealous rage.)The pessimist in the room asks Mr. Berberian if he has any special reasons for hope, and he wisely responds, “Look, if there’s one thing that I know from history, it’s that history is cyclical, and that doesn’t apply only to France, but it has proved the case in a lot of European countries. France was destroyed a few times by battles, by revolution. It’s always been a country that has had crises. But if you look, for example, at the field of artificial intelligence, some of the highest engineers at Meta, or with Musk, or at Google, are French. There is something about French creativity, our ability to create new trends and think ahead. We always were arrogant enough to think we were leaders of the cultural world, or the engineering world, pointing where it was supposed to go next. And we haven’t lost that. We’re having a dip right now, but I wouldn’t discount our ability to rise up. I would say the same applies to England and Germany, for example. We’ve already spent 600 years destroying each other with battles, and we’ve lost many. And every time, we come back. So, I’m still confident that’s something that might happen.”In the midst of fears, the loftiness of great thinkers obviously provides a refuge. Therefore, I inquire about Mr. Berberian’s recommended authors. He begrudgingly confesses, “I should not say this, but I really like Jean-Paul Sartre’s writing, even though he was a despicable human being. His works and Camus’ are must-reads for anyone.” I’m so glad that Mr. Berberian admits this, as despite finding Sartre intolerably annoying at times, I also believe him to be one of the most rewarding minds. Oddly enough, Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr (1952) is probably my favorite offering by him, as I’ll take Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) over Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (1943) any day, but I digress… Mr. Berberian adds, “Going a little bit back in time, one of my favorite books ever is Chateaubriand’s Mémoires d’outre-tombe [1849/1850]. That’s probably, for me, the best piece of literature ever written. There is also Stendahl.”“In the modern world, what could I say? I like this French writer Houellebecq. Except for the Americans of the Beat Generation, I haven’t found people with writings as unhealthy as his, but somehow that makes him very interesting; he’s probably a French version of Bukowski.” I’ll mention that ex-Mayhem’s Maniac, whose triumphs Berberian was responsible for unleashing, reminds me of a beatnik (despite the fact that I love him and loathe the beatniks), though he told me and the unsurpassed Kark from Dødsengel, “I think I owe the beatniks NOTHING and Eliot and Pound everything, haha.” On the topic of brutally sick Frenchmen, I express my fondness for Bataille, and Berberian, in turn, suggests Under the Sun of Satan (1926) by Bernanos. Huysmans, who converted to Christianity, also excelled in the art of making readers unwell, turning even paint color into a matter of painfully grave importance, and should be on your bookshelf. Unfortunately, since I dwell in the past, the neurotic behind In Search of Lost Time (1913-1927) is my vote for the greatest proof of French literary supremacy, but this isn’t about the obnoxious New Yorker’s opinions, is it?Although Mr. Berberian clearly loves his country, that has not compromised his objectivity. Our aesthete of honor causes me to clutch my figurative pearls when he hits me with the following (mostly) provocative statements, “I prefer an English garden to a French garden. The French garden is a little bit too far out-of-touch with nature. But the grandiosity, the pomp, the Rococo of the French castle is unmatched. Undeniably, Paris is a beautiful city, if you can avoid the trash-can fires… I don’t know if I don’t prefer a little bit more of a German, more minimalistic, approach to the French exuberance, but that’s just a question of taste. My taste in architecture would be more geared towards simple things. My favorite kind of architecture, for example, is Japanese, and that’s the opposite of the French. The beauty of Shinto — that’s more my taste.”Thug-life in Marseille: “I don’t want metal to be tame.”Upon my humble request, Mr. Berberian offers some words about his hometown, “Marseille is one of the oldest cities in France, and it was founded by the Phocaeans. It’s always been a city of trade with the rest of the Mediterranean. So, it is as much French as it is Moroccan, or Portuguese, or Greek. It isn’t really the case anymore, but it used to be very-very multicultural and a melting pot of everything Mediterranean, good and bad. And that makes it dirty and slightly dangerous. It makes it a little bit corrupt… But it makes it vibrant, alive, and exciting. It used to be one of the best going-out places I’ve ever known. And the people are loud and exuberant, but you can count on them. There’s no fake friendship. People live with open doors. I have quite a beautiful place, and the people just come over all the time, and they don’t warn you — they just come and go. It’s the opposite, for example, of a Protestant mentality, where you have to plan months in advance to have dinner. Here, things are managed by spontaneous phone calls, and you’re going to have 10 people over at your place. I love these aspects of Marseille. Everybody has a love-hate relationship with that city, because there are bad sides of it, like the inherent corruption, which has been going on for centuries… I’ve never seen that level anywhere else. But on the other hand, the warmness of the people is something that you don’t see in a lot of places.”While admirably maintaining that pedophile musicians, for instance, should go to hell, Berberian champions freedom of speech and individual expression, defending his artists like the top gun he is, “I’ve been running this company through all the trends, and there’s one thing: My artists are allowed to speak their minds. Who am I to tell them what to think?” Berberian continues, “I don’t want metal to be tame. I don’t want metal to be safe. I actually want personalities.”The post ‘I Don’t Want Metal to Be Safe’: Season of Mist Founder Reflects on 30 Years of Heavy Music appeared first on VICE.