J.R. Preston does not make black metal for people looking for a tidy version of the genre. With Tjolgtjar, he speaks to listeners who are tired of polished, commercial versions of heavy music and still want something stranger, rougher and more personal from the underground.
That is where “Alleluia” sits. Released through Brazil’s Cianeto Discos, the nine-track album moves through black metal, older heavy metal instincts, long structures, cleaner vocal turns and a heavy fixation on riffs. Its opener, “Return of Tjolgtjar”, runs for more than thirteen minutes and sets the terms early.
For Preston, Tjolgtjar is aimed at “other lost souls” who still reject what he sees as a fake version of art. “If you hate regular stuff, if you’re someone who doesn’t like the way metal’s been going for twenty years, which is a fake version of art made by the walking equivalent of Pepsi, maybe you’ll like Tjolgtjar,” he says. “The right folks are already listening.”
Across this interview, Preston talks about “Alleluia”, the role of riffs, Catholic memory, South America, the current state of black metal, and why he believes underground listeners in Africa may connect with Tjolgtjar’s work.
“Black metal doesn’t have any riffs nowadays. Without riffs, it has no magical or spiritual power.”
“Alleluia” moves through a lot of ground across its nine tracks, from straight black metal attack to heavier classic metal touches and cleaner vocal turns. When you were writing it, what held the whole record together in your head?
What holds it all together is the magical realm of riffs. Black metal doesn’t have any riffs nowadays. Without riffs, it has no magical or spiritual power. I channel this music through me. It’s an openness to the ultra-terrestrial realm and a hatred for the leather pants fashion show that black metal’s corpse became. Prolific reviewer Mitchfynde called “Alleluia” a “total Armageddon of riffs.” I think that’s the best way to sum it up.
The decision to go full-on riff-crazy turned out to be the right one. Like I said, the right folks are listening. Tjolgtjar’s “Alleluia” was number 9 on the Top 25 Best Albums of 2025 list from Never Stop the Madness Radio. It made other top lists as well, including the number 1 spot on Metal Mitch from cult label Sylvan Screams’ Top Albums of 2025 list. I don’t think it would have made these prestigious cult lists without the riffs. You have to understand: there was no press involved at all. There was just the album, existing, floating like a ghost, calling out. Please excuse my long-windedness. This is the only interview I have done about the album.
The opener “Return of Tjolgtjar” runs for more than thirteen minutes and throws the listener straight into the deep end. Why did that feel like the right way to begin this album?
Tjolgtjar albums start off with the most inaccessible songs. I refuse to put an accessible song first on a Tjolgtjar album. Thirteen minutes long with 100 riffs, ever-mutating, defying every commercial convention, a magical boundary line repelling the normals? That’s an album opener to me. I’m trying to throw the listener off a 100-foot cliff to their doom, not just throw them into the deep end. I’m shooting for complete ego-death. Better start flapping your wings on the way down and see if you can fly through the rest of the album!
There is a strong sense on “Alleluia” that the songs are allowed to change shape when they need to, instead of staying locked into one idea. How do you know when a track has gone far enough and when it still needs one more turn?
I have no way of answering this. I am using my body to channel music. The riffs just come and keep coming and when they stop, I stop. The structure of the song is in the aethyr. It’s really rough when I’m laying down the drum tracks. It feels like I’m auditioning for a prog band every time. I have to stop and say, “What the fuck am I doing here?” Which is the same question I ask myself every moment living on Earth, so it feels natural.
“I was an altar boy in three Catholic parishes. Pretty funny, eh?”
The title track feels like a good window into the record because it brings several sides of the album together in one piece. What made “Alleluia” the right title for the release?
Growing up Roman Catholic. I heard “Alleluia” being sung by the priests and the parishes. In fact, I probably heard that three-line refrain of “Alleluia” more than I heard any other piece of music, period. I was an altar boy in three Catholic parishes. Pretty funny, eh? The Tjolgtjar song “Alleluia”, on the other hand, would have been the album opener if I was normal.
There is an older metal spirit running through this record, but it never feels like simple nostalgia. What parts of older black metal and heavy metal still feel alive to you, and what do you want to push somewhere stranger?
Metal will always be in my heart and soul. I have been a fan since I was a little tiny kid, and I got to see the rise and fall of every band you can think of from the 80s through the 90s. Black metal has been dead a long time. I’m only channeling its spirit. A ghost of black metal exists. It is a ghost now.
I mean, anyone reading this, please analyse this shit for a second. Look around you. The big companies, the big festivals, the big advertisers, they’re selling you something called “black metal” and it isn’t even close. If the one remaining member of Mayhem plays “Freezing Moon” in front of an AI art banner, to 10,000 people at a festival brought to you by Bud Light, does that mean black metal is a viable form of art?
It’s not like anyone is doing K-pop numbers out here. The biggest band in metal is Metallica. That ain’t gonna change. Everyone wake up, get a life, go to a library, research history, get interested in bigger subjects, and stop being so god damn stupid and focused on nostalgia. The world is different and worse now, and it’s because of nostalgia. I don’t live in a memory of the past. I am a channel for the spirit, the music, the art in the aethyr.
Is metal truly alive when no band can reach the money levels of a Metallica? I don’t think so. It’s just a trip down memory lane, and it provides fun for regular folks. Metal is like a theme park with 100 rides. The rides aren’t making any money, but they’re happy to hear the laughter of the riders. When the rides break down, it’s time for a different ride, and when the people stop coming, the park will close.
It’s just a silly theme park at this point, in Europe and the USA. I suppose that I’m the guy who opened a smaller theme park 40 miles down the road from the major North American metal park, where you just hang out with goats and look at dinosaur bones and all that kind of stuff. And there are no rides at my park, just a magical experience. Everything man-made seems dead now. Music is just scraping by with the money of artists and dedicated labels and writers. It’s not the same business it was. It doesn’t matter. Mother Nature has the best music.
“Black metal’s ghost has a home in Brazil.”
This release came out through Cianeto Discos in Brazil. How did that collaboration come about, and what did it mean for this album to be handled from that side of the underground?
South America has always been friendly to me. They still carry the flame. Even if the scene up here in the North is dead, the torch is still carried in the South. They are instantly possessed by the Devil if the right riff hits their ears.
Black metal’s ghost has a home in Brazil. They refuse to let the ghost pass on. I respect them for this reason. The ghosts, the spirits, the angels and the demons are there. The aliens are there and the humans are channeling, like me. The aethyr is alive and well.
I’m in the USA, where the whole gimmick is just advertising. We’re a fucking robot. Everything is just imitating a movie or a fashion magazine. Nothing is truly real. We don’t even have country music anymore up here. We are the joke of the world. We have no fantasy, no wonder. We have no magic, only silly storylines, some very, very low-level spells from pro-wrestling-style wizard characters for a demented voting bloc. The real people up here are all suffering under the yoke.
In Brazil, there is magic. I never dreamed South Americans would be so good to me. I don’t know how to explain how much it means to me to be accepted by them. It is a magic thing for me. I think we are connected. I’m grateful to my friends and supporters in Brazil and Peru.
Without the help of labels in Germany, Brazil, Canada and Peru, I wouldn’t have made it this far. I know I’m not popular or anything, and certainly you can’t call what I devoted my life to a “career” because there wasn’t any money in it, but I sure made it a hell of a lot further than my high school guidance counsellor told me I would!
“I think that Africa holds high the true spirit of the underground.”
AFRICA.ROCKS reaches a lot of listeners who may be discovering Tjolgtjar for the first time through this interview. For someone coming in cold from African metal scenes and underground communities across the continent, what do you hope they pick up first from “Alleluia”?
Magic exists in Africa. The ghost of old black metal haunts there. I’m not sure you can get more underground than the stuff I’ve done, from Tjolgtjar to Enbilulugugal and all the stuff in between. I know that my music will connect with the right people in the underground there.
I know this interview was focused on “Alleluia”, but Tjolgtjar also released another album since, entitled “Thomas”, which leans a little more to the atmospheric, keyboard and melodic side. It’s not as much of a riff apocalypse, but it is still Tjolgtjar. Check that one out, too.
I’d like to add that I am extremely grateful to have the opportunity to be interviewed by you, Joel, as you have been a huge part of the underground for a long time. I have read a lot of your stuff over the years. It’s cool to be here.
I think that Africa holds high the true spirit of the underground. Give me a little bit of your time. Tjolgtjar’s catalogue, for the most part, is available for free on every streaming platform like Spotify or YouTube. You can even stream it from my own label, Illinoisan Thunder. Sit down, lie back, turn up the headphones, absorb the riffs, and feel the black magic.
Buy/Stream Alleluia on Bandcamp.
