Feel the Love of Norwegian Black Metal
A Sami shaman
BY DANIEL HARJU
Different music correspond to and confirm different moods. Wandering around a frozen dark landscape feeling a bit ”icy” and “stiff” (a natural temper due to climate as our dear friend Baron Charles Montesquieu would have said), I felt a sudden urge to immerse myself in black metal.
As I started to dig with my icepick (in) this the darkest of dark music, I found a lovely documenary by photographer Peter Beste called True Norwegian Black Metal. His five episode documentary produced in 2007 for VBS.tv (Vice Magazine’s web-TV site) mainly focuses on Gaahl (or Kristian Eivind Espedal), the enigmatic leader of Bergen-based black metal band Gorgoroth. Beste has also published an excellent book of photography on Norwegian black metal evildoers called True Norwegian Black Metal: We Turn in the Night Consumed by Fire.
If evil Norwegians who burn churches, decorate their live shows with animal carcasses, kill their bandmates, express love for nature and practice ancient nordic shamanism makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside, I suggest you read Michael Moynihan’s and Didrik Soderlind’s Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground, a well-written story about a most enigmatic music scene.
In the documentary we get to spend some intimate and rather sweet moments with a very intense Gaahl sitting in his isolated mountain cabin sipping red wine and talking about those feeble minded Christiains. He also shows his paintings and takes the film crew on a not-so-lovely hike up an evil-looking Norwegian mountain. The highlight comes at the very end, when a laconic Gaahl says it all! Enjoy these five short episodes:
January 7th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
bravo! burn a church and feel the chipper warmth of a satanically crackling fire on your hands! Boil some goats blood on the inferno, mix it with spice, orange rind and cloves for an unusually demonic glog! Hear ye, hear ye, all hail black metal!
January 8th, 2009 at 10:20 am
be careful what you wish for sasha
January 9th, 2009 at 2:05 am
I’ve been snowed in somewhere one time in my life. It wasn’t really a big deal or anything, but I went out to take a walk along the road, (which was really the only place to walk because there was 3 or 4 feet of snow everywhere else.) and it was really one of the most awesome things I can remember. The snow had turned the forest into a desert. It was just this blank, pure, white, slate of nothingness and it was so beautiful and sparse and spiritual and just, yeah, awesome. Anyways, I also happened to be doing a project about black metal at the time and I have to say that I felt like I really understood what black metal was all about on that walk. I bet those dudes were pretty scared hanging out in the middle of nowhere with some dude rumored to torture people, but as it turned out, he was nothing compared to a walk in the winter forest.
January 9th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Oh Olof, I am just blessing festive blood-infused, whimsical wishes for the holidays!
Also, Colin, I went to the snow recently, but it was in this pine cabin decorated with Americana themed mistle toe and christmas decorations (read: flag wearing santas!) and there were literally festive icicles dripping down the sides. The Main office (where you check in) was decorated like a giant gingerbread house with candy swirls and seemingly edible trim, and it was sort of ridiculous. I think there was even an angelic statue in one of our windows, no doubt to bring light into the dark recesses of winter. In the next town over, called Blue Jay, pillows of soft snow blanketed peaceful lit houses; there was even a street called “Sugarcone!”
However, I will say, when the wind blew at night and it was dark, and snow rose up to the window sills, and the trees (which know everything) would omisciently and imperceptibly sway in their grandeur I can say, nature’s force is inimitable, and far more frightening than any dude who was rumored to torture people.