There have been many different version of the Triskalyon legacy. Changes were due to memory loss, emotional games and personal pride. But this is the true story. This is how it really went down. No bullshit, just as best as I can try to remember and with the help of ex-members. For the sake of making a list, here are the members and bands that were part of Triskalyon. The members are listed in order of joining. The bands are alphabetical. There are various things that could not be remembered, therefore, ??? were placed.

• Virkelig Død/Virkelix (Alexandre Julien – Montreal, QC, CA/Edison, NJ, USA)
• Der.Walsch/Lansquenet (Aurélien Esnault – Angers, Pays-de-la-loire, France)
• ??? (Laurent – France)
• Iskyros (Eric Bryant – Culpeper, VA, USA)
• Thanatos (Hunter O’Rourke – Culpeper, VA, USA)
• Hellmallets (Bob Decca – Culpeper, VA, USA)
• Gaeheln Tuhlv (Dániel Czakó – Miskolc, Hungary)
• Massacre (Austin Bennett – Culpeper, VA, USA)
• Armaggedon (Adam Stergis – Culpeper, VA, USA)
• ??? (Egypt)
• Darklink (Phil Altobelli – Elizabeth, NJ, USA)
• Suhrim (James Shepard – Warrenton, VA, USA)
• Peine (Mike Lachaire – Edison, NJ, USA)
• LCR (Louis-Claude Roux – Pays-de-la-loire, France)

• Azag-Thoth (Suhrim)
• Darklink (Darklink)
• Death Kvlt (Thanatos, Gaeheln Tuhlv, Hellmallets, Massacre, Armaggedon)
• Gallia Fornax (Lansquenet, Peine)
• Havarax (LCR)
• Mortifier (Iskyros, Thanatos, Hellmallets)
• Sinful Dimentia (Iskyros, ???)
• Terrorist (Iskyros, ???)
• Throne of Mortality (Virkelix)
• Unkwiss (Lansquenet, ??? Laurent)
• Vision Éternel (Virkelix)
• Vision Lunar (Virkelix)
• Vision Pariah (Suhrim)
• Vision Solitude (Virkelix)
• Vision Sufferance (Virkelix, Peine)

It was August 2006 and I had moved into my grandmother’s house in Montreal forless than a month since late July. That whole past summer I had been working on Throne of Mortality material, some Projection Mina stuff, and some stuff that would eventually become Vision Sufferance but wasn’t quite there yet. I was operating this forum called Street Metal Forum that had been active since March of 2006, and was established to discuss Les Legions Noires. The forum co-founder was Der.Walsch from Unkwiss, who lived in Angers, France, and was equally a fan of the LLN. We had talked of doing a modern circle, and release everything on tape, or for free download, but nothing had come of it until the late summer, after I had recorded a tribute to Mütiilation by Throne of Mortality.

Another forum member was Iskyros (Eric Bryant), who played guitar in the band Mortifier and I recall them having a rehearsal video cover of “Freezing Moon” by Mayhem. That was the first time I “saw” them.

We got talking together and he was also interested in doing a circle. So in August of 2006 the idea of the circle had begun taking shape. As Iskyros’ band’s name was “Mortifier”, he wanted to have a record label named “Mortification Records”. The name was his idea. So we pre-planned to release all the Triskalyon demos on Mortification Records. Der and I came up with the name “Triskalyon”, after seeing a flag by the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, which to us at the time, symbolized what we believed (for the little we actually knew of the movement). At that specific moment, for that brief month, I was interested in racist movements, and even if musically Triskalyon did not reflect that, we had a little bit of it in our images. The other word combined was the city of Lyon in France, which was apparently the most violent city of the country.

The first three official bands in Triskalyon were Throne of Mortality, Unkwiss and Mortifier. Mortifier guitarist Thanatos (Hunter O’Rourke) also joined Triskalyon, bringing along his newly formed, then solo project, Death Kvlt. As did Hellmallets (Bob Decca) who played drums in Mortifier. Other circle members were naturally added due to their band affiliations, though not always active. ??? (Laurent) was the drummer in Unkwiss, but he never actually knew he was part of the circle, we just needed more names to look bigger. Such was the same situation when Gaeheln Tuhlv (Dániel Czakó), who lived in Hungary, became the first drummer in Death Kvlt. Der.Walsch was the “graphic designer” of the circle, and he created the fist Triskalyon logo, which was simply the three 7s crossed together. I remember asking Howard Change and Saquib Malik to join the circle with their band Black Albatross as Howard and I had been in Throne of Mortality together, but they never joined.

At the time I was in the early stages of working on the second Throne of Mortality EP, Morbid Depression, even though the first, Monumental Dedication, wasn’t out yet. But with new drummers now part of the circle, I was hoping to finally get those done. Unkwiss was working on an everlasting demo, and Death Kvlt would be the first to finish their demo. “Vemotic Death” was released at the end of September and for some reason was self-released, rather than on Mortification Records. It really should have been on the label, but no one can remember why it wasn’t.

This was also the beginning to form the ideas behind the “Visions”. It was thought back then that the Black Legions side projects were all named “Project” something. It was later discovered that the word “Project” was only added while describing the side-project, and never part of the actual logos or official names. But I came up with using the word “Vision” to describe each solo/side projects, as part of Triskalyon. The first of these was “Vision Sufferance”. I knew I wanted to use the name, and I had a three songs that I had been jamming on clean guitar. I recorded the first of these on October 1st, and a second one on October 2nd. That same night I was discussing with Der, and we thought that releasing cassette tape demos was going to be difficult, and why not take advantage of the digital world we were so highly pushing for. He created the first album cover for Triskalyon that night, in the form of a printable cassette tape cover, but for digital release. This was the first Mortification Records release (MT001), and it marked the beginning of the Triskalyon Visions. I honestly cannot recall where this was even “released”, because at that time we had no website, and we hated myspace. We were completely against that! I think I had even deleted the Throne of Mortality myspace page by this time… But I do know that we were using Creative Commons to copyright our material.

The next morning (on October 3rd) I was at work, (I worked at Van Houtte café back then, so black metal!), and the Daniel Bélanger song “Dans un spoutnik” came on. It featured the lyrics “Six milliard de solitude”. I decided I would create my new side project, “Vision Solitude”. We were going to be like the LLN, and have so many different side projects, and it didn’t matter how they came out because we were doing it all together, and we would rise or fall all together. So in the next two days I kept practicing the third of the clean guitar songs, which was called “Solitude au loin” when recorded on October 4th. I mentioned many times, that song should have just been released on the Vision Sufferance demo, but we were so “release happy” then, and I wanted to release a shit load of material. And that’s exactly how Solitude and the next, Vision Lunar, came about. I was coming home from work on the late Friday night of October 6th, and it was a full moon. I realized that I just had to make something dedicated to this beauty that inspired me tremendously. And so I did, that very same night, I wrote and recorded the song, sent it off to Der, and the next morning, I had an album cover for a release (though the release date was sometimes set back to when it was recorded).

In October a few things started happening. I guess you can say we wanted to expand. We gathered a new member, ???, from Egypt. We had met him from the Street Metal Forum, and he didn’t even played an instrument. But he was willing to do “something” for the circle. I remember that he used to show us pictures of his new body cuttings regularly… and I really wasn’t down with that. Part of this “expansion” was creating a website to host our releases and have good band pages. I had very little website experience, all I had done was The Slopin Fairy 7 website, the Throne of Mortality myspace, the Street Metal Forum, and two more forums before that “Dracula – My Blood” and a lost one of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but I really had no experience. I was a big fan of Wikipedia and there was a website I was often visiting called the Alfred Hitchcock Wiki. Wiki sites were built with the inter-connectable database. You could click on a word and it would take you to a page about that, in an encyclopedia manner. I liked that, and I thought it could become very useful for the circle, as we went on and would do more side projects with connecting members. I tried my best to understand MySQL and other such database things, but back then it was hard to find a free web hosting company that allowed you to upload that sort of database on it so we were very limited to how the website looked. From what I remember, it was very ugly. The website included member biographies, pictures, when we were able to get some, discography, and drawings that I was making. I distinctly remember how painstaking it was to add images on that site, and trying to keep the right aspect ratio and looking for ways to break the limits of special characters in letters (for French accents). Somehow the site lasted for a couple of months, but we had to change servers a few time. The last of the servers used was http://www.triskalyon.ifastnet.com.

Sometime during October, Mortifier ended and Iskyros formed Terrorist with Baily, who was not included in the circle (why not is a question to be asked). Iskyros was also part of Sinful Dimentia, however I am unsure if that band was ever included in the circle. Death Kvlt was expanded to a full line-up to play shows. Hellmallets became the drummer, and Massacre (Austin Bennett) joined on bass. Death Kvlt added a second guitarist Armaggedon (Adam) during November and actually played some shows.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5648567029674813826#

Massacre dyed his hair bright blue in November and for some of the members in the circle, it wasn’t representing well. After a few days of consultation, and with the realization that Thanatos had stolen a “Sturmwolf” song for his demo, Death Kvlt was kicked out of Triskalyon. It was done in a very immature way, and this is principally because everything was done digitally back then, due to the distance between all members. The way we kicked them out was done by simply removing them from our website. All their names and bands were deleted. I took the liberty to announce this to Iskyros, who would himself leave not long after and take Terrorist with him.

The second Lunar demo, “Lunar Sky” was released in November. I decided it was time for a cleanup and stripped the site of the names of ??? (Egyptian dude) who was not doing anything at all and ??? (Laurent dude) who was apparently still in Unkwiss but too busy to do anything with the band. At the end of the month I went to New York City to sell Christmas trees with my cousin. Right before I left I recorded the third Lunar demo, “Black Moon”, and pre-set its release for the full moon in early December. While in NYC I met this bum who was walking around at 3 A.M. asking people if he could draw something for them for 10$. I started talking to him (a bad habit to pick up during the cold nights of the city) and I told him I had a few bands. He offered to draw me a logo for one of them. For some reason I chose Vision Sufferance. He took a side from a pizza box and in two minutes he had drawn a logo.

I ended up coming back home to my parents house in New Jersey in mid-December due to arguments with my cousin. I didn’t get right back to music because I didn’t have all my equipment, that was still in Montreal. I would get it back on Christmas when we went up to visit the family and I packed my shit and brought it back to my parents place. 2007 was to begin a brand new version of Triskalyon. We weren’t going to stay in the underground, we wanted to get into the indie scene.

Early January was the beginning on an intense phase of creation for me. Not that the previous four months had not been. They definitely were, but I was writing more poems than songs. This time I would write almost exclusively music. The full moon was approaching fast, and I needed a new Lunar song. In a moment of pressure I wrote and recorded what would be the landmark of Triskalyon; Luna Borea. This opus was recorded and released on the same day, and right away it started to gather a new following. Shortly after I began writing new material for Sufferance and started recording ethereal ambient pieces with which I was unsure what to call. Der.Walsch actually suggested we collaborate with these songs under “Vision Funeral Doom”, but I was completely set against that and created Vision Éternel.

The only members in the circle then were myself and Der.Walsch and it didn’t seem right to have so many bands listed but only two members, and people already had trouble understanding what a circle was. What we needed was also a new website and look. I set myself on designing a new website, myspace and regrouping new members, while Der took care of a new banner.

So on January 4th I took a photoshoot outside my parents house, and on the 5th, the Triskalyon Myspace was born. We wanted to get new fans, and this was the best way. I started adding people, and also looking for potential new members. Of course the first person to be considered was one of my closest friend, Darklink (Phil Altobelli). It was also during this time that Jeremy Roux redesigned the three 7’s logo for us.

Phil Altobelli considered me a genius composer, and wanted to collaborate with me on just about everything. But what he was bringing in the circle was his self-named classical ambient guitar project. Right around this time I also decided to change my artist name. The Norwegian theme of Virkelig Død was growing old and I wanted something that would represent my French heritage. I decided to keep the Virkelig, but switch up to a Gallic name. Virkelix was chosen based partly on the Asterix character, and all the Gallic names ending in “ix”. On February 4th 2007, Phil came over and we did a photoshoot because I needed a picture of him for the website.

Der and I were still running the Street Metal Forum, and we were on a quest to destroy all fake LLN pages on the web. We knew all the members of the Black Legions were against that (except Mütiilation who had his myspace page), and we wanted to help out. We tried everything from nice messages, to threats, to official emails to the myspace team, to get all the pages deleted. It was truly hopeless because a day later, the people would recreate them. One of the people I messaged was Suhrim (James Shepard). He was very nice about our implication and deleted the page with no arguments. He even joined our forum and continued to help with the LLN research. He was so cool that we asked him to join Triskalyon. He had no active band, but right away started working on Azag-Thoth.

Other bands that were asked to join were Dark Forest (from western Canada), A Forest of Stars (from UK) and Havarax (from France). The Quebec band Monarque was also invited, and was almost in, when we realized that all he wanted was to be part of Mortification Records and didn’t appreciate our other philosophies. Havarax did not accept right away, but did eventually give in in early February. LCR was also in Epidemia Mortaliis, but after some discussion we opted not to include that band nor its members into the circle.

There was so much stuff that was about to happen, and I’m sure things changed multiple times a day. On January 13th I recorded “Luna Maria“, which would be released in early February. I was hoping it would be as huge as “Luna Borea”. The Vision Éternel EP “Seul dans l’obsession” was almost finished and I was planning a music video. I was recording multiple Sufferance demos, some of which used an Agile guitar lent to me by Darklink who had recently completely given up electric guitar. Suhrim was working on Azag-Thoth material, and was starting up a side project, Vision Pariah (the first non-Virkelix Vision in the circle).

second website was http://www.freewetown.com/triskalyon

Finally on February 14th, everything came together. The website was launched accompanied by the new myspace look, and the first Vision Éternel EP was released, with a music video for “Love within Narcosis”. The website was originally meant to have two versions; a motion-filled flash website and a hi-html website. I created a mock-up of what I wanted the flash site to look like but I really wasn’t that good in programming, and the only thing that grew out of this was a revolving Triskalyon logo intended to be on the index page. The logo would turn in a clockwise motion until it was clicked, whereupon it would spin super fast in a counter-clockwise motion, as if the 7’s or scythes would slash the page open into the flash site. Alternatively you could click the html version under the logo to take you to the other version of the site. None of this happened and instead I only used a motion logo on the index page of the html site.

We were ready for promotion. I started adding as many people on myspace as possible and asking people to review the albums. I was even asked to do an interview for Dark Angel Promotions with this loser Jussi Gough. She was supposed to be our manager, and used to call me every night to talk about what was new with the bands. Finally we decided to do an interview, which she ended up never posting! That was one of the things that upset me deeply. I was starting to find out that people weren’t always there to help you, even if they bragged about all they could do for you. I was starting to see the the bad side of the industry. But we were actually getting good plays and a good amount of new fans daily, all due to my own promotion. It was great.

We also wanted to expand into playing shows (a shows section would be added on the website). This was actually only started because Suhrim had landed a gig to play at the Freedom High School Talent Show in South Riding, Virginia, on March 10th 2007. I was excited for him, and though I couldn’t go down to Virginia to see him play, I was hoping that he would do Triskalyon justice. His set only consisted of one song, a Slayer cover of “Raining Blood”. We wanted to set up shows where more than one Triskalyon band would play. But in the end that was the only Triskalyon listed concert to ever happen, and it also happened after the circle was abandoned.

Der.Walsch also decided to change name. He became Lansquenet, and with this change, announced that Unkwiss was dead, but that Gallia Fornax would be his new endeavor. He had been working on Gallia Fornax for some time but it was now that it became a serious releasing idea, and he asked me to join the project. GF would be the first inter-Triskalyon members collaboration. I had intentions of playing bass mostly for this dark folk ambient project, and bass was not an instrument I considered myself good at. In fact it would have been the first time I was going to record any bass at all (Soufferance wasn’t using bass at that time). So I decided to create a new persona for this bass playing member of the circle, at the same time it would give us one more in the bank!

Peine was created for this purpose, and I took an unused photo of me and inverted it to make it look like someone else. Who knows if people actually believe it or not, but within the circle everyone was aware of it and they didn’t care. It was even a running gag between Darklink and I. But I didn’t want Peine to only have one band, Gallia Fornax, so I made up this story that Virkelix had quit Vision Sufferance and that Peine had taken over the continuation of the music.

With all these new bands in the circle, I started working on a compilation “Triskalyon Promo Pack“. It was supposed to feature one or two songs from each of the bands in the circle. But Suhrim would leave around the same time that LCR joined and Darklink left, to my great disappointment. The compilation ended up only coming out much later in the year, even though it was worked on last in March 2007. The only bands be on it were Vision Lunar, Vision Éternel, Vision Sufferance, Vision Solitude, Gallia Fornax and Havarax, leaving Azag-Thoth, Vision Pariah, Throne of Mortality and Darklink off.

There were some people making accusations that Triskalyon was an NSBM circle and that we were spreading hate messages (a band from Montreal called Trigger Effect were mostly the ones saying it). Although there were some political involvement in the early beginning of the circle, by now it was all gone and I didn’t want to be represented like that. There was no hate in my music, it was all emotions of love and pain. Anything satanic that was written was phrased as to be deciphered into poetry, like Paradise Lost! I realized that the Triskalyon banner was probably doing some of the talking for us, and I changed it just a little bit to take out whatever that logo was in the middle.

Late February was continuing in productivity, Havarax finishing up its third album “No Access to the Divine”, Gallia Fornax’s keyboard tracks were done and it was up to me to compose and record the bass and guitar material for it, and Vision Lunar was recording some of its most emotional songs. Those two songs in question would be a direct cause to the ending of the circle. I had written “Eternal Song and Mother Song” and they were incredibly important to me, and I felt it was the direction I wanted Lunar to go! Even though Suhrim had left the circle, I still showed him everything I recorded and we stayed very close. He said the songs were inferior to previous Lunar material; such as L’esprit dans le ciel. I was speechless, I was hurt and I thought my whole idea was shit, since I valued his opinion so dearly. I believe that I ended writing new material at that point and wasted no time in telling the members of group that I was considering quitting and ending the Triskalyon group.

Lansquenet advised me to wait a little bit and see if I would feel the same, but I was already heading into a depression and there was nothing stopping me, my musical life was connected to my personal life. I told him that Gallia Fornax would no longer be in my priorities, and in fact I didn’t even think I’d ever finish recording the material, and that he could do whatever he wanted with the demos I sent him. And he did, instead of releasing the planned 45 minutes full-length album, he created two 15 minutes eps, the first with just keyboards, and the second using one of the better recorded bass/guitar demo I had sent him.

On my end, I decided to end things with a personal joke. All through out my experience with black metal, the majority of the people I met had always hated Faith No More. So I recorded a Vision Lunar cover of a Faith No More song, “Pristina” and released it as the last Vision Lunar demo on March 3rd. The two Gallia Fornax extended plays were released on March 5th, along with an official post on the Triskalyon Myspace titled “The End of Triskalyon”:

Well after a short but creative eight months, Triskalyon has decided to let the dust collect upon itself. Virkelix felt that emotions were not distributed well among fans, and therefore parted from the glorious group. Soon after Suhrim followed, and Lansquenet agreed to do the same.

This is a painful step for me as much as I assume it to be for the close workers I had been with for the past months, but like an ex, it must be put away. It was a very personal musical experience for me, but it seems we were the only ones to understand it. So to part officially, is only for the few that have participated in listening to our creations. I do not think that I will come back to this phase again, however sometimes girlfriends give it second tries. I am however not looking forward to it, or planning anything about it for now.

As far as the present and future, Gallia Fornax has officially released its two demos, on the label and as part of the circle, and they will be put on the website for download later today. I also have a couple dozen of unreleased tracks that I may, or may not put out as a farewell. If they do not come now, perhaps they will when the time is right. This all depends on the few of you who perhaps care.

For my future musical plans, there are none for now. To have made nine releases in six months is mentally and emotionally draining. It felt like taking a hard, long, forcing shit and afterwards you feel drained and empty. These dedications to past loves who have left me have been interpreted in different ways for everyone, but take it from me that they were all about a single girl.

I part ways with all fans for now, and bid you pleasing listens to our past creations, and hope you will perhaps find our future projects.

Take care- Virkelix

I was crying that day. It really felt like part of me had died, like in fact a girlfriend had left me again. All this energy that I had put into this monument was now worthless and the realization that so little people cared was just too much for me to digest. I was considering releasing the Triskalyon Promo Pack as a farewell, but opted against it, it wasn’t necessary, and a lot of the Sufferance material would be forgotten. I didn’t work on anything at all for three months, which seemed like an eternity for me at the time. I just worked as much as I could at my job and tried to forget. What got me out of this depression was when I started writing new Vision Éternel songs in late May 2007.

In February 2007, Black Sand and Starless Nights broke up and posted a farewell message on Myspace. I was really upset by that news. I was likely influenced by it when I wrote Triskalyon’s farewell blog post.

April 18th 2007 created http://www.triskalyon.co.nr to act as link to http://www.freewetown.com/triskalyon

April 24th 2007 (possibly a little earlier)
changed site to http://www.triskalyon.50webs.com
possibly because freewebtown was blocked everywhere?