As one of the world’s most groundbreaking metal masters prepare to release a brand new album (see the video below for a sneak peak) we look back to the creation of one of extreme metal’s most influential albums. In 1990 it would perhaps not be as noteworthy were it created in the West, but behind the Iron Curtain, in what was then Czechoslovakia, it faced the threat of arrest and even imprisonment. GUY STRACHAN spoke to BIG BOSS of ROOT about the making of ‘ZJEVENI’

Although ‘Zjeveni’ sees its 25th anniversary being celebrated with a deserved re-release courtesy of the I Hate label and the debut album of long-standing Czech black metallers Root is rightly held up as one of the early foundations of the second wave of black metal, the band’s leader and vocalist, Jiří ‘Big Boss’ Valter, is today less than keen to discuss the work. “You must know I’m 63 [years] old and I forgot a lot of things from that era,” he says by way of a preface to his email interview, “and now we prepare and work on [our] tenth album.”

The son of a university professor, Valter grew up in a musical household in the town … Read More