Alocer Christus

Christopher Ropes, also known by his noise-making alter ego Alocer Christus, is a busy guy. Besides fronting two power electronics acts he is a pious devotee of more occult style religious practices, accumulating a vast amount of knowledge. I recently had a chance to ask him a few questions about his art and the ideas behind it.

1. Could You tell us your name and a little bit about yourself? 

My name is Christopher Ropes and I'm a 41 year old fan of most art and music. I've moved around a lot and am now living in New Jersey for the second time, this time with the love of my life. The most relevant facts about myself are that I'm a devout Satanist and I believe all existence is The Grand Work Of Art and all individual works of art reflect some facet of this.

2. Your music, specifically Nighttime in The Abyss, is very much informed by you spirituality. How would you describe your spirituality? Is your music evangelistic in purpose? Or is it more spiritual and cathartic?

My spirituality is very complex. It is a form of ascending Satanism that eschews all violence, whether internal or external, material or spiritual. My music is not really evangelistic, though I do like sharing my soul. I do not attempt to proselytize but neither is it purely personal or cathartic. I consider the music a series of progressive reports from the front lines in my own quest for truth. Some of these reports are deeply religious and some are cathartic but ultimately the goal is is always to reflect where my Self is at any moment in time. I hope that, in this way, I capture the timeless through the temporal.

3. Why the pseudonym Alocer Christus? What does it signify? 

Alocer is something of of a guardian spirit or patron demonic entity to me and represents to me the beginning of my occult search. Christus is, I believe, an accurate and yet controversial depiction of the end result of of any occult life well-lived. So this name is my spiritual Alpha and Omega.

4. Your new project,Abizu, has a very strong personal bend to it. Why the change in direction?

To be perfectly honest, it feels just a spiritual as Nighttime in the Abyss, the main change for me has been the willingness to tackle examples of the spiritual as manifested in the concrete rather than in simply abstract ideas and concepts. I do not feel there is any true gap between the spiritual and the worldly unless one lives a life that divorces the two and I've been seeking balance in that very area of my life, so I've attempted to bridge them in Abizu as well as make work that is even more explicitly devotional.

5. Do you feel that power electronics/noise/experimental music can convey feelings of love as accurately as can convey feelings of nihilism and negativity. 

I absolutely do. I am not sure if you've ever heard the album "Territory" by Immaculate:Grotesque, but it is the first album I have ever heard in the realms of noise to tackle more tender feelings, possibly not positive ones but certainly not savagely hateful or aggressive ones, and it did an exquisite job. I hope to accomplish some of that with my work as well.

6. What was your first experience with experimental music? What sparked your creative genesis towards the avant-garde? 

Honestly, almost all credit for that can go to Celtic Frost's "Into The Pandemonium." Prior to that, I was a teenaged metal snob who listened to nothing else and that opened the floodgates to having a much broader outlook. Many metal purists were disappointed but for me it was an awakening. Years late, I discovered things like Merzbow, Masonna, Sutcliffe Jugend, Whitehouse, the more radical Current 93 material and, very importantly for the blackened direction of my work , Abruptum. And I'm still seeking farthest frontiers of musical expression, which leads nicely into the next question you posted.

7. What do you think of the term "anti-music?" 

I hate it. If someone wants to refer to what they want to do as anti-music or anti-art and be all Dadaist or whatever, go for it, but Marcel Duchamp's anti-art is proudly displayed in art museums. I don't even consider canned, bubblegum pop bullshit to be anti-music, and there is nothing I've discovered that is such by virtue of extremity. I think labeling something as anti-music or anti-art is a foolish attempt to limit what those things are capable of and the only time I use terms like that is in jest or to describe something in a sarcastic way to an individual whose mind is closed to the avant-garde.

8. Where do you think experimental music is headed and do you think your music has a place in that journey? 

The wonderful thing about any experimental art is that if you look at it historically, much of it seems inevitable, but like a good film or story, as much as where it goes makes perfect sense, the attempt to predict it is doomed. It will take any number of visionaries all working and possibly being undiscovered for decades to determine where this craft is headed, all I can say for certain is that I'm excited to see where it goes.

Do I feel my stuff is part of where it will go? I certainly hope so, though I'm not certain or egomaniacal enough to say definitely.  I think some of my compositional techniques as well as the many ways I attempt to manipulate the human voice could lead to true geniuses expressing themselves in ways I cannot dream of. If even one person is slightly inspired to create something of lasting value from my little stabs in the dark, I will be honored and bursting with joy beyond words.

9. Any music that you're currently digging? 

Listening to Xiphoid Dementia on headphones as I answer these questions. Also Whorid, COMPACTOR, A Murder of Angels, Serpent Ascending, the most recent Behemoth album, and tons of Masonna.

10. Could you cue us in on any upcoming projects? New recordings we should look out for? 

More work on Abizu and Nighttime definitely. And my love, Stephanie, and I will be collaborating under the moniker Cult of Bastet, hopefully recording very, very soon. And I have a 2 CD album out on Altar of Waste using just my Alocer Christus name as well as a split cassette being released this summer with Kanibal Hymn on Cthulic Dawn productions, a split I've been dreaming of for decades, since he was working with the name Terrorgoat. He is one of my all time favorite music idols as well as a dear friend.

11. Any final words? 

Create art or anti-art or whatever you want to call it because in this way you participate in the life of Divinity and become identical with God and Satan. Lastly, in the words of a mentor of mine, "Lucifor-Christos, the Soul of God, have mercy upon us."