[Editor’s note: jonestown report music editor Joel Roston conducted this interview with Death Potion, a sound artist from the Netherlands, in October 2025. The recording entitled Q 042 is available here.]
How did you become interested in Peoples Temple?
I have seen Jim Jones’ picture every so often since I can remember, but I never really felt the urge to find out exactly what the story behind Peoples Temple and Jonestown was. That changed with the 1997 release of the album Seasons in the Size of Days by the metallic hardcore band Integrity. The last track on that album, “Burning Flesh, Children to Mist,” included a 14-minute excerpt from the infamous Death Tape. I think that started it for me.
It wasn’t until many years later, that I started recording various forms of industrial/ doom/ noise music, and I searched for mostly shocking and bold samples to make my music complete. That’s when I stumbled upon the Death Tape again.
What were you hoping to learn or explore by creating this album?
I know I am certainly not the first to take samples or even to include the entire tape, but my intentions were not (as in some other cases) for pure entertainment or shock value purposes. My added sounds are there to contribute to or complement the original content, for dramatisation in a certain way. I wanted to explore the possibility of creating different emotions through one sound.
Did creating this music change your perspective or transform your outlook on the Temple in any way?
Yes, it did. I researched everything I could find about November 18, 1978. And I quickly learned that the media arrived at fast, tunnel-view conclusions that are way too easy because there is much more to it. It’s way more complex than I was led to believe at first.
For example, I don’t think of Jim Jones as an evil man anymore. I think his intentions with Peoples Temple were noble and pure. In my opinion, he wanted to protect his people from all the evils of the modern society. But clearly something went terribly wrong.
My take on it is that he must have started to suffer from a severe anxiety disorder or something which would explain him building up his drug habit fast, and at a certain point he slipped into psychotic/schizophrenic episodes. These episodes made him feel suspicious towards just about everybody, thinking “they” were out to get him. And in his mind, the arrival of Congressman Ryan and his entourage was proof that his prophecy has come to pass. The rest is history.
Did creating this music change your perspective or transform how you view yourself or your life in any way?
My music reflects exactly how I feel. It is my way of dealing with everyday life, which I personally don’t experience as happy most of the time. I have always felt uncomfortable as long as I can remember, like I didn’t belong. Hell, I didn’t even want to belong. I still don’t, to be honest. Through my sounds and art, I show my frustrations, my grief, my sorrow, my loneliness, my desperation, my love and my hate. It serves as a constant reminder that everything around us is fake. The internet only made it worse. People create their own truth for their own personal gain.
My message, then, is, go burn your computer, smash your smartphone. The noise that makes is the only real thing that you’re gonna get out of it anyway!
Only noise is real. For me, noise is the purest form of music. It is stripped down from all the rules that musicians lay upon themselves (or are forced into) by using chords; a system that, as I see it, is pre-chewed to please the masses.
I am not here to please.
Apart from the Q042 album, have you explored any other aspects of the Temple, or do you have any plans to create more work related to the topic?
I recently discovered that Peoples Temple made hundreds of tape recordings, including Jim Jones’ sermons in California and meetings in Jonestown. First I want to dive into those and then, who knows….
TBC.