The terrifying sound of Sectarium: thirty years later

It is not possible to tell the history of Cuban metal in the 90s without Sectarium, a band that managed to become known throughout the country during those years when the metal scene in Cuba was taking shape. Like their Cuban counterpart Cronos, another lineup from the center of the island, driven by Eric and Jorge Domenech, which had surprised Cuban metal fans with the extreme sound of their Funeral Epilogue  and his performance At the Alamar Festival in Havana at the beginning of that decade, Sectarium made an impact with their cavernous death metal and grind influences, but they also had their own way of moving in the spectrum of this music.  

The voice of Franto Paul Hernandez, who had already assumed the influences of death metal in his first band, Infestor, reproduced a storm. Abel Oliva, creator of Nekrobiosis, a musical laboratory also around the death sound, was inclined -like Franto- for the search of the less recurrent mixtures in the extreme field of that time: death, doom and sound effects like those of symphonic music, distortions and poetic atmospheres, all combined with the simplicity of rock. The drummer, Duvier Quirós, was a machine. 

In common, there was a curiosity for anti-conventional aesthetic practices and emotions, which was reflected in their music, but also in their literature, as in the horror literature written by Franto and Abel, and in the monstrous metal and wood forms produced by Duvier's artisan hands. Together, they breathed oxygen into Nekrobiosis when it almost disintegrated, and conceived a project closer to their interests in the dark imagination, Sectarium. Thus, this lineup took them into a terrifying sound. 

Duvier used to be a sheet metal worker in his native Caibarién. Franto and Abel had met at the University of Santa Clara, when they came from Sagua La Grande and Caibarién to study Industrial Engineering and Architecture, respectively. Although they had all been involved with the transformations of heavy metal into extreme subgenres, Franto had traveled through more intricate areas of that music. Perhaps, as Abel Oliva has said, because at that time the rockers in Sagua La Grande had a strong connection with Florida, and from there came waves like death. Perhaps also because of the musical exchanges between the devotees of these sonorities in the Villaclareño territory, interested in the most radical of the moment. Although Duvier, Abel and others in Caibarién were "strange birds", still in the early 90s heavy metal and some thrash predominated there. 

Abel Oliva (left), Duvier Quirós (center), Franto Paul (right), in Caibarién, 1990s. Photo: Taken from social networks.

Could music be created that was like reading a Poe story or an act of black magic? Sectarium did so, transforming into artistic expression the philosophies and feelings about the surrounding reality that its members shared at the time.

With a wild sonority, as a metaphor of an untamed soul, Sectarium was scary on stage. Both in Villa Clara and in Camagüey and Havana, places where they performed, the stories of the audience speak of the band's power. One of the band's concerts, the one at the Casa de Cultura on Calzada and 8, in Havana, under "a reddened sky", "a winter coldness" and "the breeze that moved Franto's hair in a spectacular way, who recited an intro as if possessed by the devil himself", continues to impress Dyango Pulido, witness of that and many other presentations of different exponents of Cuban metal. 

The lineup is not only legendary because of the early departure of its vocalist and bassist -as the band's biography states, Franto's murder on January 2, 1997, at the age of 27, in Sagua La Grande, paralyzed the group's spirit for a while and generated a climate of frustration and indignation within the Cuban metal scene-. The cult that has surrounded it is mainly related to the artistic and musical ingenuity of its members and the character that Sectarium showed on stage since its debut. Guitarist Manuel Varela, who joined the project in the mid-1990s, has also left his mark on the production and concept of the band. 

In 1994, the Caibarién radio station produced the demo God's Wrathwhich reflects the emergence of Sectarium. Through letters, cassette exchanges and interviews offered to Cuban and international fanzines -Franto had also created and promoted the fanzine Dissection-The band's members began to make their music known. The second demo, Larvaewas recorded at Koinonia Studios, owned by an evangelical church in Santa Clara, just two years after Franto's death. The relationships with producers there were strengthened during the decade, and allowed to count on a niche for the creation of an independent attitude. The group's new outburst at the end of the 90's was dedicated to Franto and his ideas that also permeated this new demo. 

The band's extreme sound caught the attention of independent producers who were interested in the region's metal, as was the case of American Line Prods, from Mexico. In compilations of the American..., as in the primordial Massacres From The JungleThe three editions of Sectarium, whose three editions were a sonorous showcase of what was emerging in this part of the world, also engraved the terrifying aura of Sectarium to the ears of the global scene. 

After emigrating to Switzerland in 2012, Abel Oliva remained from there giving visual form, recreating old songs and producing others with the original style of the band. In 2017, the CD Larvae of Godthrough Hatemetalrecords America. 

Under this impulse, which continues to this day, the sound of Sectarium has become audible and other Cuban lineups have also chosen to pay tribute to him. On the compilation LP The Cuban Wall of Deathby The Lucy Fer Music Factory company, was included the song Dethrone the Master of the band, re-recorded using Franto's voice. As a tribute to the demo God's Wrathwhich established Sectarium in the national and global metal scene in the 90's, the CD The Wrath of God brings that sonic darkness back to life in 2022. In this production, several Cuban metal bands perform classics from the lineup. 

The year 2022 ends with work on a new album by the group, Ab Infernumby Abel. With the exception of the well-known Dethrone the Masteris made up of recent songs, inspired by the band's most glorious era.  

During my research on the extreme metal scene of the 90's in Cuba, I communicated several times with Abel Oliva. As a guitarist, in parallel with Sectarium led his industrial doom project Godes Yrre in that decade. Franto did the vocals and keyboardist Ernesto Prida took over the recorded debut. Likewise, Franto gave life to      Spiritus, together with Manuel Varela, in 1996. The constant inventiveness of those who expressed nonconformity and dreams through extreme metal was precisely the pulse of that stage.

The reorganization of some of my exchanges with Abel aims to show, from his memories, how was the road to Sectarium, or what is the same, the universe from which emanates the mysticism of this Cuban band. 

Sectarium, extreme metal band from central Cuba. Photo: Taken from social networks.

***

-What do you remember about your meeting with Franto?

-It was through a colleague in Architecture who happened to be the drummer of Infestor. I don't remember the day or what happened, but I'm sure there was rum and metal... In general, there were few of us weirdos at the University of Villa Clara, so it wasn't very difficult to get to know each other. 

[Franto] wanted to follow (as I did) his own path, without caring what others would say. A silent and weird guy, for those who didn't know him. An inveterate reader, and an incredible metal connoisseur.

He took me down the path of the most extreme metal. But I was already a weirdo when I met him. Maybe at that point we were self-influenced. We didn't just listen to extreme metal, but to any project we found interesting within rock. Already at that time I was developing the seed of an industrial doom project...

Nekrobiosis: learning to make metal 

I was about to enter Infestor when it disintegrated, so I thought I would make my own band with friends from my city. From Nekrobiosis only I was involved in extreme metal, and shortly after that the drummer. The others listened to hard rock or heavy metal (...), so it was hard to convince them. When Nekrobiosis emerged, more young people in the city dared to start their own projects, among them Alien, which arose from the dissolution of Nekrobiosis.

At Duvier's house, which was the drummerwe used to get together to listen to metal.

[Nekrobiosis] was the seed, where we faced the problems of making and maintaining a band, teamwork, composition and arrangements. It was a laboratory where we learned to create.

Sectarium: dark, rebellious and extreme art  

At that time, just like today, everyone wanted to "sound like", and we wanted to sound like Sectarium. I have been and continue to be a proponent of experimentation; I have done and will do what I feel is right for me. Criticism (good or bad) I leave to the critics and those who listen to my music.

We were the only ones who had the "blasphemous" and horror as a center of inspiration; although we got there because of personal tastes and I don't think [it was] premeditated. The dark, perverse and uncertain has an extremely strong attraction for certain people, regardless of age. Perhaps we wanted to provoke in people the same emotions we felt when reading, for example, Poe. Sectarium draws more from horror literature and biblical questioning than from the purely satanic.

Franto was interested in Afro-Cuban religion, in terms of understanding its connection through rites with spirits and demons, with the "beyond". I was interested in spiritualism and its vocation to predict the future. We were interested in knowledge and that moved us to investigate. I am curious by nature and because of this I was always willing to go into some drumming or spiritualist session.

I think that more than a band, the Franto-Abel binomial had (I still have) an interest in making art beyond the mode of expression that art would assume. But above all to move ourselves and make catharsis with our nightmares. Those were hard times too, perhaps deep down there was a rebellious tendency. 

We discovered [Gustave] Doré in some old issues of The Bible and The Divine Comedyand we were extremely surprised with the dark imagination of this artist. Thus, we made him an icon of the band's visual art.

***

I think that more than style distinctions, the 90's were marked by experimentation. Although we had references, they were not as strong and marked as in the real world (outside of the island): no MTV, no magazinesno fanzines, no specialized radio, nothing. That gave perhaps a different touch to the initial bands. We used to say "it sounds Cuban" (and not for the better) when it didn't follow international patterns.

All of us who lived through those terrible years suffered and were influenced in one way or another. Perhaps the hopelessness and the lack of almost everything material was what drove the artists to have a special creative period. The exile, the family, the missing at sea, the lack of food, the repression, the family conflicts, an amalgam of situations and possibilities that set the inventiveness galloping wildly.

I think it was the 90's and the great crisis that contributed to the fact that, among so many shortages, many young people united around metal, also a way of expressing social rebellion, so long hair, t-shirts blacks and jeans tight were not well seen. Also influenced by emigration and feedback with those emigrants, as the wave of death metal in Florida began and many of those who left sent recordings to those of us who were in Cuba.

With that project, we could unleash our frustrations and anxieties without any restraint... when you are young dreams (or nightmares) keep you alive. 

The groups of the period 

Philosophical? None. Musical: Agonizer, pure energy, one of the best in Cuban metal. Cronos, a milestone in Cuban extreme metal. Symphony of Doom, depressive and different, the first (and only) doom band in Cuba. Destrozerfast, powerful, almost black metal without being black metal (shortly after Mephisto). Trend, symbiosis, excellent musicians. Combat Noise, a little later with their industrial metal demo and later career. For me these are the pillars of Cuban extreme metal, without demeriting other current or contemporary bands.

Sectarium, extreme metal band from central Cuba. Photo: Taken from social networks.

I already had a personal world created when I decided to make a rock band; I drew a lot as a child, I wrote short stories, I was interested in cinema (...). We read a lot of horror, fantasy, in my case also science fiction. Esotericism, history of the classics, pagan cults... In short, a mixture that must have influenced our way of thinking and approaching the music we made.

[In music] I was self-taught, albeit by classical methods. I think it was my passion for the grandeur and complex simplicity of classical compositions. Also my cinephilia and the sensations of the conjunction of images and music.

Reading texts by Eliphas Levi, Anton LaVey, Nietzsche... was a personal quest towards the inner self. There was an interest to go into hidden paths, to challenge the established and perhaps explore the world of the "beyond". 

In that world you can always take refuge, and for me it was the escape valve to other sorrows and misfortunes (...). I believe that what united everything was true. feeling darkand my search for dark, dark paths, in an immersion in nightmarish worlds, that self-imposed fantasy that still makes me daydream today.