(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
BY LARS SÆTREN (text) kultur@nytid.no and CHRISTIAN NØRSTEBØ (photo)
[extreme metal] At the beginning of the 1990s, we became really familiar with the darkest part of the music environment here in the country. On the Day Review we received news of murder and church fire, performed by young men with black clothes and long hair who played so-called "black metal".Since then, Norwegian metal has become mature and powerful. For the seventh Easter in a row, you can experience artists who helped to scare the wits of an entire world at the Infernofestival, but also something more. For metal has taken the step out of the Norwegian forests and mountains, and settled at the negotiating table. In line with this, Inferno offers its own trade conference on Thursday and Good Friday.
Inferno-open Inferno Metal Expo will feature instrument clinics, photo exhibitions and signatures, while the Inferno Music Conference industry section offers panel debates and speed meetings so that the Norwegian and international metal industry can make contacts.
Cozy at the metal club
But first, we rewind a little. It's Friday and metal night at Club Maiden in Øvre Vollgate in Oslo. Inside the room, people chat over some glasses of beer, while others play Guitar Hero on a big screen. In no time, the innermost doors will open in the premises, to release the bands Manifest and Wyruz, who tonight are in charge of the live entertainment. In one of the booths next to the bar sits the girlfriend couple Karl Svensen and Camilla Westerberg, who warm up for a concert together with friends Ragnar Berger and Ron-Daniel Mardal. They are all in their 20s.
- Before we got together, I probably had a slightly different perception of both the music and the environment, Camilla admits.
- But when I'm alone at home now, I'm just as happy to put on metal as anything else.
- I have saved her, Karl laughs jokingly and happily.
- When I was younger, I thought metal was something dark and gloomy, but there is something in the image. Now the audience has become more diverse than just a few years ago. People are as different as outside the environment, but gather around the music, he toasts.
In the stall next door are some representatives from the slightly older guard. Mette Johnsen, Terje Kjernlie and Irene Andresen are in their 30s and have been fans since the start of the Norwegian Extreme Metal era. They have noticed that both the music and the fans have changed.
- In the beginning, the metal fans were outsiders. It was a kind of gathering point for…
She chews on it a little.
- erder nerds is probably a covering word. Now it has become more in – almost a bit trendy.
- Yes, now it seems like everyone likes it. Norway was in part a pioneer in extreme metal, and that may be one of the reasons. It has become more accepted, clean and has almost gained a kind of cult status, Irene adds.
- It may seem that the great artists think a little more about money than they did before, Mette says.
- Yes, for me the commercialization breaks a bit with what it really was, or as I think it should be. If you're a real metal band, you do not get rich. But the musicians are probably getting older, changing attitudes and views. Besides, they become better musicians, Terje adds.
Extreme metal has thus evolved. But how? Is it just a good mood again? Should not metal be a trembling middle finger in the face of the established? As a drummer and songwriter in what together with Mayhem is the Norwegian metal scene's most legendary band, Darkthrone, Gylve Fenris Nagell has seen the story develop from the inside.
- Metal is today perceived as living room clean and established. Where has the uprising gone?
- For me, the uprising has never been the thing. Rather, it has been a kind of atheistic wind-in-the-hair freedom and critique of organized religion. With press organized. The fact that you can have a faith is just fine, he emphasizes.
He claims the perception of metal as a rebellion is created by music videos, the rumor of Ozzy Osbourne biting the head of a bat and other elements of horror.
- There has probably been a fear associated with metal. In part, I can understand that. Metal fans think very well, and have a great need for marking in common with hip hop, which may provoke. But there is not much to rebel against in this country, says Nagell.
In Maiden's back room, metal veteran Anders Odden has stepped over the field beds that have been laid out for the occasion. He has a career in bands like Cadaver and Apoptygma Berzerk, and is also the driving force behind the Inferno Music Conference, and says that being interested in metal was more about sending around cassette recordings and reading fanzines than about lighting churches.
- The vast majority were there because of the music. But a small circle around Varg "Greven" Vikernes (convicted of the murder of bandmate Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth in Mayhem in 1993, editor's note) drove each other in a spiral of extreme and destructive actions. I myself perceived it as threatening. To me, the myth that has lingered on Norwegian extreme metal is something negative. It is a pity that everyone who starts a black metal or death metal band today is forced to deal with the negative sides of history, he explains.
Next to Anders, Sindre Solem has settled down. He is vocalist in the death metal band Obliteration, which is currently on record in May. All members of Obliteration are 18 or 19 years old, and two years ago the band was selected to play at the Inferno Festival on the basis of a demo. Sindre has noticed that metal still has a certain stamp among the people.
- People have become more open and understanding, but the church burner stigma still lingers a bit. There is no problem among metal fans, and the episodes in the 1990s are also considered something unacceptable and extremely internal to the environment. But positive things came out of all the media focus, because it made many people open their ears to the music.
Next generation
But more has happened with metal in Norway. Not long ago, the press barely wrote about Metallica once, while now there is a big article about Norwegian metal. The bands perform in contexts you could never imagine before, and the music has taken over the sales lists.
- Some call it commercialization, others call it success. The whole thing has become bigger, and with that, business has taken over for the underground. I do not see how it should be unnatural to be visible, if you are going to sell a product, says Espen S. Røhne in Indie Distribution, where he is responsible for sales for a large number of metal artists.
On April 30, Dimmu Borgir releases the album In Sorte Diaboli. In 2003, the predecessor Death Cult Armageddon went straight into second place on the VG list, and bassist Simen "ICS Vortex" Hestnæs believes simply that the progress is due to the band making good music.
- Some of our previous records became a breath of fresh air at a time when the rest of the metal began to become quite single-track. We had catchy riffs, which made the music available to more people. The melodies have been strong with us, but the later records have also been more demanding, he believes.
The host of NRK P3's hard rock program «Pyro», Totto Mjelde, thinks it is backwards that a band should not be allowed to develop as they want.
- Some of the metal bands have developed in other directions than people have been used to. They have probably become more accessible, but not worse. I do not think it can be called betrayal. The Ramones may have managed to keep up with three moves throughout their careers, but it is understandable that not everyone wants to do the same, Mjelde believes.
No trend
At the end of Maiden's bar room, the doors finally open. Sindre, who is also a DJ, spins some vinyl and takes some chords on the air guitar. Meanwhile, the room is filled with newly stamped with both short and long hair, and dressed in black as often as other colors. A beer and a few songs later, Wyruz strikes the first chords. There are grins and toasts and cabins with well-known hand signals throughout the concert, both in front of and on stage.
The concert kicks off with traction from both the band and the audience. None of those present are particularly quiet as the Hamar band rounds off the concert with the Slayer classic "Raining Blood". A little later it turns out that the Trondheim band Manifest has not managed to mobilize as many followers as Wyruz, which may be due to a longer journey. Manifest's more coarsely calibrated expression nevertheless seems to be what is needed to engage the audience, which is somewhat tougher after getting to the bottom of a cheerful number of beers. But the vocalist is as full of charisma as an angry freestyle wrestler, and starts traditional headbanging in the first place.
Anders has moved out to the bar. He does not completely agree that metal has developed negatively just because the market has grown.
- If it had only been bad metal bands, then the environment would have died out. I do not know anyone who does metal because it is hip. If metal had completely disappeared from the media in five years, it does not mean that the music is dead. The underground environment will still exist, he says.
- Even if someone has grown up, it does not feel like I am part of an established scene. For me, metal is something I am passionate about, and it becomes a lifestyle, Sindre believes, and rejects that metal is just a transient phase.
- The metal people have an expression: True. What do you put in it?
- It's about being dedicated, but it's not that easy to explain – what does "keep it real" in hip hop mean, for example? I think it's great that metal has become so powerful, but I hope there are other environments that are similar to what I grew up with, because it was something special, Anders remembers.
