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We’ve been to hell and back for you this month.
And by hell, we obviously mean Bergen, the Hole in the Sky festival and the Tsjuder and Taake concerts.
Things started going wrong as soon as we crossed the border. Everyone keeps talking about how Sweden has the world’s highest taxes, but have you been to Norway? We paid €10 for a pint of lager, €18 for coffee and sandwich and €20 for lousy road diner microwave pizza. And there were road tolls. They were €2,5 each. No wonder it’s the richest country in the world, we’ve put at least one Norwegian computer consultant through college in taxes alone on this trip. All this anger is suddenly making a lot of sense.
About halfway there the landscape changed into Wagner opera. We were literally Frodo and Sam approaching Mordor. When the fog hit us it was almost a bit over the top, even for the home of True Norwegian Black Metal. Then came the tunnels. They shot straight through the mountains with no space for opening the doors. Listening to Dungen and Träd, Gräs & Stenar all the way there didn’t help.
For a while some Norwegian youth nationalist turned Jeepers Creepers on us. They bit our tail for a few kilometres before they sped up alongside us, flipped us off and disappeared into a tunnel. Our last tunnel led us inwards and downward for a full 45 minutes before we saw the darkness on the other side. It turned out to be Hordaland, home of Burzum, which was so fucking scary we seriously reminisced about how well off we were in faggy Stockholm.
Bergen was like the Rio De Janeiro of the north and we saw that the seven mountaintops we’ve been hearing about in lyrics. Unfortunately we stayed at the YMCA with bible quotes on the walls. We shared a room with a socially starved South African who simple would not shut up about the apartheid and a bunch of Koreans who snored like a György Ligeti symphony. The South African immediately asked whether they were from North or South Korea.
At Hole in the Sky we met two Italians who had come to Bergen to see the last Taake show (more on that in the Taake interview). Later we started talking to a guy who turned out to be the lyricist for Ragnarok, the band that Hoest just started singing with and he took us backstage. We entertained ourselves by guessing who was who without the corpse paint.
Seeing Tsjuder live really woke up the Viking in us. They had their goat-based logo backdrop, looked solid and the sound was mind-blowing. We’ve been reading “Where’s Tsjuder when you need them” in live reviews over and over and expected nothing but greatness. Their third album, Desert Northern Hell, is also out now.
Dark Essence were extremely friendly and even accepted our foreign kronor at the merch tables. We bought some records to get them signed and headed over the big event, the Taake going away concert. The two most out of place people there were two tiny Japanese girls in extreme BM outfits.
What followed was the best concert ever. E.V.E.R. It can’t be described, it was like seeing something that hasn’t been invented yet. There was a Destruction cover and Grutle Kjellson from Enslaved did a guest performance, as well as men in beards and chain mail suits from Helheim. The timing was incredible and Hoest looked like a fit, rabid wild boar.
Someone else who just recently got his blood curled in the streets of Gothenburg was Frost. We hear that a fan was so overcome with satanic awe when he saw his hero in the street that he asked some friends if they could approach the super-human drummer. When they started to crowd in on him he freaked out, ran into a cafe and appeared to be looking for a back exit.
Good news is the universe stopped fucking Craft over. Their sordid third album is in stores now. It’s all well-played, nihilistic BM, with too the point lyrics that go well with this months theme.
Necrolord is showing album sleeves at Höganäs Museum in Gothenburg for a little while longer. Idle minds and hands are the devils playground, but something unholy must be eating Necrolord too, even though he is working 14-hour days right now. Every painting takes him about three weeks to finish. He doesn’t use computers, but instead every bit of his paintings are made hand. In total he’s done about 130-140 in his career. Some of them have been featured on the sleeves of Bathory, Dismember and Mercyful Fate. We recently heard this story about how the Bathory sleeve came about. The painter scheduled to do it ended up asking about €10.000, and Bathory were still young and struggling. So equally young and struggling Necrolord ended up doing the sleeve instead. The first batch was then misprinted in bright yellow, and right now you can find Yellow Goats on eBay for about €200. All hail shitty printers.
Watain Horror Film Special
It is seven years since Watain crawled out of Satan’s cunt, in the cursed year of 1998. And right now they are writing material new for their third full-length album, recordings are planned to start early next year. That’s why we asked them to make a list of their six favourite horror films. Apart from these movies, Watain also recommends the new Dissection album.
1. Venom—Alive in ’85, 2. Nosferatu (the first) 3. The Devil Inside Her, 4. Nekromantik I, 5. The Beyond, 6. The Exorcist
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