Extreme steel: if the devil exists, this is his sound | The weekly country | EUROtoday

Satanism, burning of church buildings, murdered musicians… Few rock genres have been so reviled and have given as a lot play to the chronicle of occasions as excessive steel, a stylistic umbrella that has its biggest international energy in Scandinavia. The exhibition The onerous north (the onerous north) examines this uncommon sound phenomenon… at the headquarters of the Nordic embassies in Berlin! Organized by the 5 legations (Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland) that share a constructing in the coronary heart of the German capital’s Tiergarten, the intensive exhibition research their origins, their native variants and the success of bands like Entombed, Bathory or Mayhem. And with out sparing the trickiest particulars, which aren’t few.

“It was the Embassies themselves that contacted me,” explains Swedish journalist Ika Johannesson, curator of the exhibition, which may be visited till September 29. Author of the e book Blood Fire Death. The Swedish Metal Story, remembers how a motion created in the bedrooms of some Scandinavian youngsters conquered the world. “It’s very easy to denigrate it as something childish, something you should forget about when you grow up. But I want attendees to understand why this community is so strong,” she notes, declaring the connections of those sounds with literature, mythology or philosophy. She grew up inside the Gothenburg loss of life steel circle in the nineties. “It was a magical moment. Nobody understood what we were doing. At first there were very few women and you had to prove more than the men.”

With stops in the doom and the pagan steelthe exhibition focuses on the beginning of the two primary Nordic currents, ultra-aggressive daughters of heavy and thrash: first, the loss of life steeland later, the (much more radical) black steel. Using vinyls, fanzines, ritual objects, clothes and lots of memorabilia, the variations between the two are analyzed by way of rhythm, lyrics and perspective in direction of society. Johannesson explains: “In short, the death is collectivist and black is individualist. Many of the fans of black metal They live by the motto of the occultist Aleister Crowley: Do what you will, that will be all your law.

And so the problems came. Pelle Dead Ohlin, the lead singer of Mayhem, committed suicide in 1991. When his partner Øystein Euronymous Aarseth found his body, took photos of the corpse to use as promotional material, and distributed parts of the skull to a few worshipers. The atmosphere became even more clouded when Norwegian musicians were linked to the burning of churches, attacks that soon spread to neighboring countries. In 1993, things became even more unhinged when Varg Vikernes, the leader of Burzum, murdered Aarseth and became something of a myth. Johannesson had serious doubts about whether or not to include this genre in the exhibition. “He black metal It is provocation and violence, it wants you to react and feel disgust. The general reasoning for bringing in an artist was: if he received a sentence and served it, her crime is atoned. But if he continues to incite hatred, then she cannot be here.”

How do you explain the strength of extreme metal in these five nations that together do not reach 28 million inhabitants? “One theory is that it adapts to our climate, with dramatic changes between light and dark. Another is that we are a taciturn, introverted people, with a history linked to Protestantism that oppresses us, which makes these sounds an outlet for repressed feelings,” says the curator of the Berlin exhibition. Although, now, those guttural growls are no longer so indigestible. “People get used to it,” she concludes. “In the ’70s, Kiss was thought of very robust, which is ridiculous at the moment.”