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The bonafide masterpiece of a new record by goth folk hero Current 93 (a.k.a. David Tibet) is about black ships flying in the sky, the return of Christ, and the Antichrist (in the form of Cæsar) battling for control of the universe. It’s beautiful, heavy, and scary. It also has guests like Ben Chasny from Six Organs of Admittance, Will Oldham, Antony, and British folk legend Shirley Collins.

Vice: Your new album, Black Ships Ate The Sky, is about the end of the world, more or less.

David Tibet: I do believe that we are living in the end times. I don’t know whether that will happen in my lifetime or not. In the Bible, Christ himself says that he has no idea. My feeling is that we are living in cataclysmic times and that things are getting worse rather than better.

Great. Now I’m scared.

It’s terrifying on the basis of people going through great suffering, things which are beyond the theological understanding of suffering. But I also have hope because all of this suffering will pass and there will be a new heaven and a new earth.

Like an afterlife?

I don’t really think about the afterlife, at least not in that term. I do think that we will all be reunited and I think that what we’re going through at the moment is a rehearsal for real life. So all of this is somehow a shadow play. There’s a greater reality to come and everything positive that we experience here, whether it’s love or joy or any of the clichéd emotions, any of those states that we seek for, are hints of what’s to come.

Now that I like.

JESSE PEARSON
Black Ships Ate The Sky is out now on Durtro Records.

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