ASSOCIATE EDITOR KORY GROW: HAVE IT NORWAY

Last week, I traveled to Bergen, Norway, to interview black metallers Gorgoroth for Revolver’s May issue. I’ve been to Bergen before, to attend Hole in the Sky 2006, so I knew how to have a good time—imbibe beer early and often and crank “local music” like Enslaved and Immortal. And so it wasn’t long after deplaning before my girlfriend and I found ourselves on the streets, visiting record shops and bars.

On the way to Apollon, which has the city’s best metal selection, and where I bought a bootleg of Dead’s last recordings with Mayhem and Deathspell Omega’s Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice on vinyl, I passed a bar called Inside. They had a flyer up advertising a concert with a couple of bands whose names were in an undecipherable black-metal font; I mention this because it took me forever to figure out how to Google the main band—and it turned out they aren’t even on Google. That band was Slavia, an upstart Bergen group that plays thrashy black metal and wears thuggish ski masks (and if you squint you can see the bassist’s Taake tattoo). They sounded overpowering, especially their drummer, who is actually Italian (ATNBM: Almost True Norwegian Black Metal?) and he played what seemed like a nonstop blast beat. The next night I stumbled over to an indie-rock concert in a cave(!) that used to be a bomb shelter. Apparently Gorgoroth has played there but hated how the smoke from all their fires—because, you know, you can have torches onstage in Norway—just hung on
the ceiling.






The next day, I visited the Fantoft stave church, infamous as the first church burnt down by black-metal bands in 1992. It has since been rebuilt. It’s on a big hill that’s an absolute bitch to climb, especially if your Iron Maiden T-shirt size is XL. All I could think is that for someone to commit arson here, they must have really, really hated religion. Really.






When I was doing my Gorgoroth interviews, Gaahl told me that even if the church hadn’t been burned down, it was doomed from the start: the pews had runes inscribed in them at the time the chuch was built, around the year 1150, that said something to the effect of “The white Christ will never enter here.” Whether that’s true or not, I’m not one to question Gaahl. Also interesting was that the trees all bore carved graffiti dating back to the early ’70s—one of them said either Faust or Fausto. Could this be the chickenscratch of Bård G. “Faust” Eithun, the original drummer of Emperor?





The best non-music-related side of Bergen is the fish. I had fresh salmon and sild (pickled herring) for breakfast, a prawn smørbrød (open-faced sandwich) for lunch, and monkfish for dinner. All was delicious, and very expensive, since the U.S. dollar is shit right now (remember that at your election primaries, kids)—also, everything in Norway costs at least twice what it does in the States. A bottle of Coke costs about $4.50! Nevertheless, I also had some delicious reindeer and mussels. As for food I didn’t eat, I spotted a sign in a Burger King window that read: “Angry Whopper: Can you handle the angry?” No, I don’t think I can. The “Angry Whopper” contains jalapeños and “angry onions” (or, as we call them, onion rings). Not very appealing at 2 in the morning with a stomach full of pilsner. Then again, maybe it was pilsner and Angry Whoppers that pissed off black-metal bands so much in the first place.


Smørbrød

Angry Whopper!





By Kory Grow