Nikolas Schreck

Nikolas Schreck is an American singer/songwriter, musician, author, film-maker and Tantric Buddhist religious teacher based in Berlin, Germany. Founder of the musical magical recording and performance collective Radio Werewolf, which operated from 1984-1994, releasing seven albums. Schreck is also the lead singer of the musical duo Kingdom of Heaven, whose album XXIII was released in April 2015. He has collaborated musically with American singer and musician Zeena Schreck, Australian percussionist John Murphy, NON, Death in June, and the British actor Christopher Lee whose first album Schreck conceived of and produced. As a solo artist, his song "Lord Sutekh's Dream" was released by German record label The Epicurean in conjunction with Schreck's May 28 2016 concert at the Epicurean Escapism Festival in Berlin. His books include The Manson File: Myth and Reality of an Outlaw Shaman (2011) Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic (2002) co-authored with Zeena, Flowers from Hell: A Satanic Reader (2001), The Satanic Screen: An Illustrated Guide to the Devil in Cinema, (2001) and the first edition of The Manson File (1988). His film appearances include the 1989 documentary, Charles Manson Superstar , which he directed, Usher, the last film of Curtis Harrington, and Mortuary Academy. He teaches Tantric Buddhist meditation.

Career

Schreck was the founder, frontman, and sole constant member of the magical musical collective Radio Werewolf from 1984–1993, whose recordings include The Fiery Summons (1989), The Lightning and the Sun (1989), Bring Me the Head of Geraldo Rivera! A Benediction in Four Movements (1990), Songs for the End of the World (1991), Witchcraft/Boots: A Tribute to the Sinatras (1991), Love Conquers All (1992) and 2012's compilation The Vinyl Solution.

Schreck is the author of The Manson File: Myth and Reality of an Outlaw Shaman (2011) Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic, (2002) co-authored with Zeena, Flowers from Hell: A Satanic Reader (2001), The Satanic Screen: An Illustrated Guide to the Devil in Cinema, (2001) and the first edition of The Manson File (1988).

In 1997, Schreck produced the first full-length album by British actor Christopher Lee Christopher Lee Sings Devils, Rogues & Other Villains which was released on Schreck's Wolfslair label.

Schreck's forthcoming series of novels The Dallas Book of the Dead was previewed in a reading broadcast on NPR's Berlin Stories in July, 2013. He directed the documentary Charles Manson Superstar and has appeared in several other documentaries and films.

Before his 2003 conversion to Tantric Buddhism, and his earlier renunciation of Satanism, Schreck was a prominent black magician who co-led the magical school The Werewolf Order with Zeena from 1988-1999. He worked closely in the late 1980s with Church of Satan founder Anton Lavey, although he was not a member of the Church. Schreck was a Master of the Temple of Set before resigning with several others in 2002 due to religious and administrative differences. In 2002, Schreck was one of the founding members of the Sethian Liberation Movement (formerly the Storm) which is currently located in Berlin.

According to his Facebook page, Nikolas Schreck's band Kingdom of Heaven will perform a concert at the Wave-Gotik-Treffen music festival in Leipzig, Germany on May 22, 2015. Kingdom of Heaven's first album XXIII was released on iTunes and Amazon on 10 April 2015.

Nikolas Schreck performed live in Germany for the first time since 1992 in a sonic ritual concert entitled In Her Thrall: Evokation des Ewig-Weiblichen at Tower Transmissions Music Festival IV in Dresden on 27 September 2014, collaborating with noted percussionist John Murphy. A documentary concert film of the concert, also entitled In Her Thrall was photographed by Boa Thor and released via Schreck's World Operations. Schreck's song "O, A Weird Flower!" from this concert was released on the Epicurean label CD "All My Sins Remembered - The Sonic Worlds of John Murphy" in June 2016.

In 2014, Schreck taught a public class "Sonic Magic in Theory and Praxis: A Two-Day Workshop for Magicians and Musicians" at the NK Projekt in Berlin, Germany, which was described as "a rare two-day course in the magical art of applying ritual magic, consciousness alteration and spiritual initiation to music".

Music

Kingdom of Heaven

In 2012, Nikolas Schreck (vocalist/lyricist) and James Collord (bassist/multi-instrumentalist) founded their musical collaboration Kingdom of Heaven (KOH) whose songs In Dreamland and Midnight in Cairo were premiered on a Nightwatch Radio interview in November 2013.

Kingdom of Heaven's first single The Ballad of Lurleen Tyler was made available via iTunes in December 2013, followed in March 2014 by a video for the song on the Kingdom of Heaven YouTube channel.

In May 2014, Nikolas Schreck was interviewed on the Green Tea Berlin radio program broadcast by Alex Radio and 88.4 Berlin which featured the European radio premiere of Kingdom of Heaven's song Enemy on Both Sides, which Schreck introduced as the theme to a non-existent James Bond movie

In March 2015, Schreck's Facebook page announced that Kingdom of Heaven will perform a concert at the Wave-Gotik-Treffen music festival in Leipzig Germany on May 22, 2015.

Radio Werewolf

Schreck founded the band Radio Werewolf in 1984. His theatrical ritual performances as the group's lead singer, billed as Rallies of the Radio Werewolf Youth Party, provoked controversy, as did provocative appearances on several television programs. Tension over the contentious nature of the band's music led to the departure of co-founder Evil Wilhelm from Radio Werewolf shortly after their participation in the notorious 8-8-88 Rally in San Francisco. Although there was hostility during the breakup, the band members later reconciled. Schreck's 1989 LP The Fiery Summons was the first Radio Werewolf album, although the previous formation recorded a still unreleased album in 1987.

Key to the bands beliefs about themselves was the existence of what they termed the "dominant frequency" or "alpha frequency." Schreck explained the band by saying "Radio Werewolf is a sound, a vibration, a certain frequency from another world. I just transmitted it. The bodies and minds of all the people who tuned into that frequency were the mediums that broadcast came through on. I only get credit for ”creating” it because I have a big mouth, I was in the front of the stage, and I was the one the media paid the most attention to."

Zeena Schreck served as Radio Werewolf co-director from 1988-1993, the group's most prolific period, which saw the release of their recordings Songs for the End of the World, The Lightning and the Sun, Bring Me the Head of Geraldo Rivera!, Witchcraft-Boots: A Tribute to the Sinatras and Love Conquers All.

In 2012, Radio Werewolf's The Vinyl Solution - Analog Artifacts, Ritual Instrumentals and Undercover Versions was released by World Operations. The compact disc, the first official Radio Werewolf release since 1992, compiles newly remastered re-releases of 12 ambient sonic magic tracks from Zeena and Nikolas Schreck's rare Radio Werewolf vinyl recordings between 1989-1992 as well as 2 bonus tracks never previously released to the public.

Video Werewolf

Schreck's 1989 documentary, Charles Manson Superstar, told the story of Charles Manson's life as well as interviewing him in San Quentin Prison. The documentary featured parts of an originally hour and a half long interview of Manson, as well as many photographs and video footage, of the Manson Family, Spahn Ranch, and other related topics. Also discussed were Manson's alleged ties to Nazi movements (which he denied) and to various Satanic movements. Other Video Werewolf releases include The Zurich Experiment, which documented Radio Werewolf's last public concert.

Writings

The Manson File

Schreck's "The Manson File" (1988) is a thorough study of the philosophy, music and spiritual ideas of Charles Manson. The book brings Manson's previously obscure ATWA ecology concept and his religious devotion to the Gnostic god Abraxas to public attention. Schreck posited that the demonization of Manson (and perhaps the martyrdom of Manson by other groups) is the result of media sensationalism.

In April 2011, Schreck's The Manson File: Myth and Reality of an Outlaw Shaman, a new and greatly expanded edition of over 900 pages was released in France as "Le Dossier Manson : Mythe Et Réalité D’un Chaman Hors-La-Loi". Schreck delves deeply into previously unknown aspects of Manson's life and the Tate-La Bianca murders to present evidence that the "Helter Skelter" theory put forth by prosecuting attorney Vincent Bugliosi had little if anything to do with the reality of the crimes. According to Schreck, the murders of Sharon Tate and the others actually resulted from conventional underworld rivalries between drug dealer associates Charles Watson and Jay Sebring, who Schreck contends was linked to the Mafia.

As of August 2011, the new version of Schreck's book became available in English format, on his personal website. A mass market edition was published in December 2011. Leading alternative culture source Metal Impact praised The Manson File, congratulating it on its comprehensive view of the subject, and for taking an academic stance, rather than the sensationalism of Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter.

Other works

Schreck's Flowers From Hell: A Satanic Reader was released in 2001. The book detailed the history of the use of Satan as a symbol, archetype, and deity in fiction throughout history, from ancient to modern times, and through several different cultures.

The Satanic Screen: An Illustrated Guide to the Devil in Cinema was also released in 2001. The book revealed a detailed study of the use of the devil (in all his various forms) in film media throughout its existence. In an interview with American Movie Classics, Schreck noted that: "I think people's ideas of the devil and of Satan in the 20th century have largely been shaped and dictated by imagery from the cinema. I've studied the black arts in history and practice for many decades, and I found that Satanism had been looked at in terms of literature and music but never in terms of cinema."

In Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic, released in 2002, Schreck and his wife Zeena explored the theory, history and practice of erotic sorcery and worship of the feminine in all of the world's religions. Presented as a ritual fusing of male and female, the book refutes common Western Satanic misconceptions of the left hand path by tracing its origins in Tantric Hinduism and Buddhism, and presents a crash course of magical exercises based on the Schrecks' own experiences as practitioners of what they term the sinister current.