Aarni (not to be confused with the Austrian Oaf) can be taken to signify the Shadow archetype of Jungian analytical psychology and the demon Choronzon of Hermetic parlance. ‘Aarni’ has a Hebrew Gematric value of 262. Used as a prefix in Finnish the word can have a number of meanings, for example “ancient untouched forest” and “will-o-the-wisp”.
Aarni has apparently always existed, but the current incarnation’s story began in the autumn of 1998 ev when M.·.M.·. suddenly began solitarily developing his vague musical ideas further. He got telepathetic messages from the unicorn dolphin elder of Sirius B, who begged M.·.M.·. to reawaken the ancient Xothian aural technology tradition called aarni. Soon after choosing to comply with the demands of these psychotic transmissions, Comte de Saint-Germain appeared to him and immediately joined Aarni. When the two gentlemen conducted an unsuccessful necromantic ritual at Moominpappa’s cenotaph, a third member’s addition to the band took place: Doomintroll. Simultaneously the first letter of Mahatma M’s surname semi-accidentally flipped over completing his mutation into Master Warjomaa. The fourth band member does not really act as a “proper” musician but seems nonetheless to partake in Aarni’s creative processes. For Mistress Palm seems in fact composed entirely of artificial, phlogiston-driven rectoplasm and due to her apparently incorporeal nature can only exist on a computer’s hard disk.
Some sources (mostly people who like to call themselves music journalists) have described Aarni’s music variably as ‘almost orthodox doom metallish Lovecraftian-Jungian Kalevala avantbarde’, ‘progressive doom metal’, ‘Yanni with distorted guitars’, ‘primitive black metal’, ‘underground progressive rock’, ‘repulsonic metametal’, ‘shit’, ‘melanchthonic dumb metal’, ‘savantgawd submusic’, ‘space doom metal’ and ‘original as fuck’. The band itself occasionally uses terms like ‘Chthonic Hybrid Musick (pronounced “moo-sik”)’, ‘Antinomian Music’, ‘Maybe Music’, ‘Noise For Futants’, ‘Shroom Gumbo’, ‘Functional Music’ and ‘Dream Torrent Music’. Confused? Join the club!
Rant King 