Norwegian Black Metal A Documentary

after our premiere in Toronto we were invited back to Norway to screen our documentary at the Bergen International Film Festival the section in her film about church burnings and Satanism had been generating some controversy here so we weren't exactly looking forward to meeting with the press what we were looking forward to was hearing what the Norwegian customs officer had to say about metal this time around we just kind of walked right into the country [Music] [Music] do not film headbangers journey the controversial movie about sickness and death and violence reactions being so far why did you choose that focus on Bergen almost all of the was it easy or difficult to get people to communicate with you on this topic some of the bands to feel that you portrayed the Norwegian black metal scene only it through the criminal stuff that happened not through music we did an interview with the newspaper ba is kind of the main like tabloid newspaper in Bergen ba has been a bunch of BS actually in the case of our movie and so tonight we have a screening of the film at the garage which is the main metal hangout in Bergen with a hundred 200 people there and we're gonna do a question and answer afterwards who I think give our perspective and try and set the record straight [Applause] important writings in the tablet press about the whole allegiance section has only been about black metal church burnings and you feel like you maybe become a victim of the things that you say about heavy metal are constantly being stereotyping because there are people in Norway right now there's so much more than those incidents yeah yeah I think this is the most important question tonight I think first and foremost what I want to say is that our intentions in coming to Bergen and filming in Norway was no way to paint all Norwegian metal bands in the same in the same ways I'm moving myself in opposeth magazine I still growth in the Talmud church burnings were early nineties and with your film it's interesting and I learn a lot from it but still you know question church burnings if you allow someone in your film to crush the church's Semitic groups doesn't that imply that you need to give some room to debate what do you choose just to select someone the problem with a 90-minute documentary is you can never quite cover all of the details you'd like if I had my way our film would be 8 hours long so now that we're back in Norway I have the opportunity to go deeper into black metal and its relationship to Norwegian culture hopefully this will give me a better understanding of why the church burnings happened and their impact on Norwegian society there was a moral panic around Satanism and was very much a media driven event I think very much a media driven phenomenon that Satanism was sort of engulfing I Youth watched society was watching and the police was watching so there was an ostracizing of black metal fans who who wore the uniform it acted as a kind of like fruitcake magnitude because it would go out all these fruitcakes and enraging papers you know I sleep in the coffin in the woods you know do you play an instrument no this is not relevant which kind of pissed off a lot of the bands including us especially people are laid up our [ __ ] old churches like thousand-year-old churches they don't really realize this is actually hidden churches before Christianity so they [ __ ] yourself in the ass by doing that of course I may admit people don't think much about it support the church because they're like or tradition or Christian it is one of these things that works which backfires you said if you look at all the black mass of people around the world and there's a real small group here in Norway trying to make a statement by burning churches and maybe a few killings were yeah it happens but I don't think that that's represented for the entire black metal scene in the whole world I think is good promotion for your band that's what that's what I think his history is kind of the music you know that's not good it made like metal a real name I think but nowadays Norwegian black metal is bigger than ever and I think that's mainly because of the music [Music] Norwegian black metal history is rooted in the early black metal movement of the 1980s bands such as venom merciful fate Bathory and Celtic Frost forged a new direction in the history of metal one that was raw primitive and definely anti-christian although this first wave was short-lived in Norway a group of young musicians were determined to revive the black metal spirit there's never been much interesting happening in the musical scene in Norway most of the bands were sort of imitations of foreign things and you had the region record companies looking for the region d'Ivoire and then suddenly there's this whole genre of music it's being given a whole Renaissance in Norway and it actually becomes a sign of quality to be from Norway artistically at the most important thing that happened in the 90s was Scandinavian black metal all the ground had already been laying by death metal and grindcore really super fast drumming screeching vocals but they also tried to get back to a more primitive fiery spirit summons using keyboards and a lot of choral vocals and a lot of imagery of the natural wilds the whole second way black metal thing was going back to the primitive while still being sort of pompous I mean you had the great deal of punk and rock'n'roll but you also had like room for vogner or some classical stuff it's very very epic and floating in a way it's not really that hard hitting and you know beating it is not that a prompt this is really the song approach eventually [Music] you [Music] norway has a population of four and a half million people and is ranked number one on the United Nations quality of life index it's home to the Nobel Peace Prize and since the discovery of mass of offshore oil deposits in the late 1960s Norway has become one of the world's wealthiest countries so how is it that this place became the home of metals most extreme sub-genre black metal pressure to form of course it's important to conform they start through socialization through through kindergarten and school that you should be part of a group that you shouldn't stick out too much that you shouldn't make too much noise that you shouldn't protest too much it's not really a culture where opposition is valued well there's a vital power here is a kind of my say a business conformism following in a stream of general morality and not fashioning your own morality depending too much on the others and that's why I'm also saying that perhaps black metal is the sort of the ultimate moral form of anarchism because it says you have to have faith in yourself my aggression comes definitely from the morality and this civilization what you're supposed to do all the rules you must follow being respected by the rules I mean how you're supposed to live supposed to get a job to reproduce get a family that's the main reason I play metal music - that outer aggression there the metal scene in Norway is challenging the social democratic ideology in Norway in a very interesting way because the metal scene is well representing a kind of very individualistic ideology my lyrics they all come down to being about the single individual standing up against you know big mighty force you know it can be an institution like the church or it can be you know against whatever kind of force that is working against the individual people in the scene playing this kind of music you that's very high being able to stand for what you believe and think for yourself instead of following all the transom basically was created because we didn't fit into the rest of the metal scene we don't stand for socialism we don't stand for democracy we stand for the individual and the strongest survival they don't fit into the overarching the region narrative you see because the Norwegian narrative at Norway is that a Norwegian culture and society can only produce good deeds and good thoughts and these are people who demonstratively want to be bad hatred is the feel of black metal I'd say and always being you know in in opposition and that means if I have to turn myself or turn on things I've created I'll do that as well and there's no one safe I'm kicking in every direction a lot of young people today they want to oppose to something that to Authority and maybe the churches has been linked too much to the authority and that has maybe been saw the reason for opposition against the church you because blackmail is Satanism it's a there's no other answer I mean for black metal more than any other genre of metal the lyrics just important as the music yes music create a feeling that if the lyrics are a kind of half-hearted and not evoking a satanic thought then it's not black metal though even you know the song was probably different from death metal but it initially I think it was something about it having to be you know having at least having some kind of satanic ground my only goal is to procreate Satan the main goal in all would have to be able to remove the word Satan from every man's tongue and just become it Satanism in a way is about not trying to conform to whatever the mass demands at any one particular point in time and space Satanism doesn't believe in a literal devil Satanism believes in the idea of Satan or Lucifer as an emblem or at most a personification of the dark force that our creative force in nature seems to connect to a life force an energy that is of a rather dark kind people want to feel alive but alive in a certain sense at the expense of others it's parasitic life this kind of black metal which draws a lot on on Christian and anti-christian symbolism is itself an integral part of Christianity it shows how it how dependent it is on Crisanta the inverted cross nothing could be more Christian than that how do you see Satanism being portrayed in black metal first of all the concept of Satan and the Satan as being evil the Satan that is in the tradition after John Milton as being the rebellious figure who opposes the unjust ruler but also he is still evil and the importance of overthrowing the ethical norms of society what do you think that the appeal of satanic imagery within the context of metal is well I would go with rebellion it was associated with revolt with the rebel they became Satanists because that was the only form of a position left the vacant slot because the parents have been against the Vietnam War they had been pacifists so what was left for them well nothing except Satanist because I had not been taken one of the easiest way to achieve a reaction is to use words or symbols that are the opposite of what is normally accepted and of course so-called the satanic symbols or satanic words is you know it's very easy to create an reaction I mean I would define Satanists must being part of a philosophical path towards something else this may sound like a cliche but discovering did you know the dirty parts about yourself and and life in general may you know how to be a more perceptive human being I would not categorize myself as a Satanist I haven't done two years I feel I'm personally way beyond that what I am proud of is that as a very young person I took a stand and made up an opinion about something [Applause] [Music] [Music] what makes the Norwegian seem special in the history of metal is that unlike any other scene whether it's the San Francisco Bay the Bay Area thrash metal scene whether it's the the Florida death metal scene or the Gothenburg death slash thrash metal scene is that unlike any of those movements the culture and the place is incorporated into the music and the lyrics and the imagery and that's totally unique in metal most metal is about rejecting your own culture rejecting your own society and it becomes just a celebration of you know individualism and and rebellion I don't like this piece of the puzzle damn it and that's a nice sort of cheeky way of trying to run brand your own thing of course a bit but it you know it might work I mean if Santa Claus comes from Finland might not say that black metal music comes from Norway justification I guess in the rest of the world an idea of Norway as being extremely exotic I mean it's so code and it's mountainous and the climate is so horrible and it's nearly devoid of people and then you have the rich in Norse mythology of course and all of this can easily be sort of fed into black metal music most religions are in very proud of their Viking heritage and the metal scene look upon this Viking history as important and believe the region's to be closely related to the Viking mythology when we started out in 91 we as every other band needed to have some some angle at what we were doing the satanic thing didn't work out for us we felt that we needed to do something that we could stand behind 100% and we were trying to find a common ground main Gertler and we found a common fascination for northern mythology the whole lyrical counterbalance label is kind of based upon not the Viking heritage but more of the Viking and mythology I mean the ideas they had for instance Odin as a part of your individual consciousness as your wisdom while for example Thor he represented your strength the gods in the north mythology are so much more interesting than the Christian God because they embody both good and evil they're unpredictable in the way which certainly the god of the New Testament is not so they're easier to identify with I find it hard to believe that there is anything positive to gain from this attempt at reawakening the Norse gods I think they are soundly dead and would not be awakened obviously at the time 1,200 years ago they did not show religious belief that did nurture society in this country but I think they are not no longer capable of that Christian influence has been strong on all parts of Norwegian social life but very very few actually a tenth Church so it's an extremely secular ice country with people formerly belonging to the church adopting its symbols culturally but it plays very little real role in people's spiritual life I want to kind of look behind the kind of childish Christian description of the myths and I was trying to pick up books about this very strong individual religion very different from the bigger religions of the world like Christianity Islam where there is one God there is a lot of rules and there is one leader the religions or the Vikings form or based upon advice as instead of rules individual freedom and so on I think the emotional and physical power represented in the Norse gods is attractive it can perhaps be more personal because it has not yet been appropriated by the establishment of society which Christianity has 4000 years in this country for me it's a good thing because it makes me feel anchored in a way it's rooted I'm not into it because it's better than something else or it makes me feel superior to something it just makes me feel connected to something and especially when we've been singing in the hallways and stuff let's get given very special sense of belonging to something [Music] [Music] [Music] I think that what happened says a lot more about the the need for young people to belong perhaps it says just as much about that to me as it does about the act of burning a church which is a symbol of religion and is making a parent I guess a religious statement I think it says as much about people's social lives and the need for an identity and and struggling to find what they believe in yeah and I think I think the young people today they need something to believe in and when I when I was young we we we believed in a better world we believed in peace we believed in I think young people today it's so difficult for them to have something to really believe in and maybe this was this was a result yeah and maybe it was also the result of that the church in a way tailed we didn't give you the faith but anyway [Music] this is being recorded right now for our DVD extras so what I would like to hear I would like to hear just comments from people just not questions but just comments I think it should be longer that's my biggest complaint of your reuniting too short it's been much longer [Applause] [Applause]

Channel: Rod Stoned Shooter

Views: 109,639

Keywords: Black Metal, Metal, norway, music, music video, Documentary, Norwegian, Death Metal, rock, Gorgoroth, Gaahl, burzum, mayhem, Venom, Bathory, Mercyful Fate, Hellhammer, Mayhem, Darkthrone, Immortal, Emperor, Satyricon, Vikernes, Euronymous, Faust, Heavy Metal, leather, boot, Metallica, slayer

Id: 7FtfFUWTp0g

Length: 24min 41sec (1481 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2018