Interview with Chris Barnes (Six Feet Under, ex-Cannibal Corpse, etc.) which speaks for itself.

Your interest in the occult, mythology and ancient magick has been a fundamental inspiration over the years. How has your interest developed over time and how integral to your art have those things become?

Beginning at the age of twelve, I started delving into hallucinogenic/mind-altering substances, which lead myself into Ordo Templi Orientis, (O.T.O.) Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Thelemic Magic(k), Enochian Magic(k), Tasseomancy and Necromancy.

Proscriptor (Absu)

Source: http://rushonrock.com/2011/10/03/interview-absu/

"It’s interesting the ego, because we all have it, and I do have an ego, of course, but I try to push it aside, I try to guard it. I discovered something about myself, it’s ego that stops us. As Nelson Mandela said, “We’re not afraid of the dark, we’re afraid of the light in ourselves.” The ego is the thing that says, “What’ll they think? What if they laugh at you?” Then you say, to hell with it. Have no fear, then you’ve gotten rid of the ego. It’ll always be there, it’s the burr under the saddle that keeps you moving, you have to have an ego; but if it dominates you, it can destroy you. We can do what we want if we have no fear and anxiety. And if it doesn’t turn out well, it’s okay, who’s to say?"

Anthony Hopkins

Source: http://www.thedivareview.com/Slipstream ... rview.html

"Bill Gates is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology," Steve Jobs told author Walter Isaacson. "He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas." "He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger," Jobs added.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/ ... pped-acid/

Steve Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Origan, at a time when Timothy Leary was telling the students across the country to turn on, tune in and drop out. Jobs did after one semester.

"The time we grew up in was a magical time. It was also a very, you know, spiritual time in my life. Definitely, taking LSD is one of the most important things in my life, and... not the most important but right up there."

Steve Jobs

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khEOTcE3Iyo (6min48sec to 7min20sec)

"After thus having driven the great man into loneliness, you forgot what you did to him. All you did was to utter other nonsense, to commit another little meanness, to administer another deep hurt. You forget. But it is of the nature of the great men not to forget, but also not to take revenge, but, instead, to try to UNDERSTAND WHY YOU ACT SO SHABBILY. I know that this also is alien to your thinking and feeling. But believe me: if you indict pain a hundred, a thousand, a million times, if you inflict wounds that cannot heal -even though the next moment you no longer know what you did —the great man suffers for your misdeeds in your place, not because these misdeeds are great, but because they are petty. He would like to know what moves you to do things like these to smear your marital partner because he or she has disappointed you: to torture your child because he does not please a vicious neighbor; to look with scorn on a kind person and to exploit him; to take where you are given and to give where it is demanded of you, but never to give where you are given with love; to give another kick to a fellow who is down or about to go down; to lie where truth is required, and always to persecute truth instead of the lie. You are always on the side of the prosecutors, Little Man."

Wilhelm Reich, Listen, little man!, 1945.

Steve Jobs had begun to drop acid by then, and he turned Brennan on to it as well, in a wheat field just outside Sunnyvale. "It was great," he recalled. "I had been listening to a lot of Bach. All of a sudden the wheat field was playing Bach. It was the most wonderful feeling of my life up to that point. I felt like the conductor of this symphony with Back coming through the wheat."

Taken from Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacman.

In late 1972, there was a fundamental shift happening in American campus life. The nation's involvement in the Vietnam War, and the draft that accompanied it, was winding down. Political activism at colleges receded and in many late-night dorm conversations was replaced by an interest in pathways to personnal fulfillment. Jobs found himself deeply influenced by a variety of books on spirituality and enlightenment, most notably Be Here Now, a guide to meditation and the wonders of psychedelic drugs by Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert. "It was profound," Jobs said. "It transformed me and many of my friends."

Taken from Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacman.

"I have experimented with LSD, but I also look to friends that I know... I was friends with John Lilly, I don't know if you know who that man is?"

Jeff Bridges.

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45runBTe56I

Talking about your early interest, you were the first to take really dark matters in quite a serious way. Do you still have that interest in dark matters?

I think it is perfect for this type of music. People always say “the devil has the best tunes”. Honestly, I think it’s such an excellent marriage with extreme music, all the death metal, black metal, speed metal, thrash metal. We always said it’s sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll and Satanism (laughs). Not everybody wants to feel safe. Not everybody wants to listen to Elton John. There’s a lot of people out there that want something different.

Cronos (Venom)

Source: http://www.lordsofmetal.nl/showintervie ... 82&lang=nl

Hahaha, we got your point. Although this guy wasn’t a musician either, he probably influenced the career of quite a few musicians. We are talking about Timothy Leary, a man who is linked with the invention (or at least the ascension) of LSD.

Well, he didn’t actually invent it, it was invented many many years ago... yeah... people taking drugs, well... at the end of they day you have to be careful, because I think a lot of people used to take a lot of that in the ‘60s, but it’s not so popular now, you know... And I don’t really think it works with black metal. I think the way this culture works is very different to the way bands used to act in the ‘60s, when it was all about getting stoned. Now everyone wants to sort of understand the business, make good albums and play good shows. I’ve been to a lot of concerts where I’ve seen bands who were on drugs or maybe very drunk and I don’t think it makes a very good show. I thinks those guys are so crazy from what they take that they think it’s a very good show, but I think that for the crowd who are watching the show I think it’s very boring. So I think today’s bands don’t do this, you know.

Cronos (Venom)

Source: http://www.metalfan.ro/en/interviuri/in ... -5804.html

"I crashed wherever I could, and did whatever came to mind, and there was a point in there when I hooked up with Dave Mustaine of Megadeth. We became friends; he was strung out on smack and crack and he lived in the same neighborhood, so we hung out and wrote songs. He was a true, complete fucking maniac and a genius riff writer. We'd hang out, smoke crack, and come up with major heavy metal riffs, just fucking dark and heavy as hell. Sometimes Dave Ellefson would join us; we got along great, we wrote some great shit. It got to the point, in our drug-fueled creative zone, that we started seriously entertaining the idea of my joining Megadeth. Guns was in a holding pattern, after all, and I was high enough to consider all kinds of bad decisions. Dave Mustaine is still one of the most genius musicians I have ever jammed with, but still, in my heart of hearts, I knew I couldn't leave Guns."

Taken from Slash, the autobiography, p. 162.

"We all had our moments at the Star Club. One night, Tony Iommi is so out of his skull on dope that he decides he’s gonna play the flute, but he’s lost his sense of distance, so he rests the flute on his chin instead of his lip. So for the entire song he’s just standing there, blowing into a microphone, with the flute nowhere near his mouth, and the audience is going, What the fuck?"

Taken from I am Ozzy, the autobiography.

"In spite of all the arsing around, musically those few weeks in Bel Air were the strongest we’d ever been. For me, Snowblind was one of Black Sabbath’s best-ever albums – although the record company wouldn’t let us keep the title, ’cos in those days cocaine was a big deal, and they didn’t want the hassle of a controversy.

We didn’t argue.

So, after we’d recorded the new songs at the Record Plant in Hollywood, the name Snowblind was dropped, and our fourth album became known as just Vol. 4. We still managed to get a cheeky reference to cocaine in the liner notes, though. If you look closely enough, you’ll see a dedication to ‘the great COKE-Cola company of Los Angeles’.

And it was true – that album owed a lot to cocaine. When I listen to songs like ‘Supernaut’, I can just about taste the stuff. The whole album’s like having someone pour a couple of lines into your ears. Frank Zappa once told me that ‘Supernaut’ was one of his favourite rock ’n’ roll tracks of all time, because you can hear the adrenaline. We were flying, y’know?"

Taken from I am Ozzy, the autobiography.

"I start to come down, but after a while I start to realize I am still having auditory hallucinations. The lyrics of the music we listen to always pertain to the conversation, and I start to feel like the fire is talking through the music."

Trip report from someone on Mushrooms.

Source: http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=85666