Wine, Conversation, & a Hike With The Scariest Guy in Black Metal

August 18, 2015 11:54 AM

Gaahl is the former vocalist for Gorgoroth, Norwegin black metal powerhouse and satanic ideologues. In 2005 he was sentenced to 14 months in prison for beating and torturing an intruder in his home. In 2007 Vice went to the remote Norwegian hamlet of Espedal (named for/owned by Gaahl's family for generations) to talk music, philosophy, painting, and get some insights into True Norwegian Black Metal.

After a dispute over possession of the band's name, Gaahl & bassist King left Gorgoroth to form God Seed in 2009.

In 2010 Gaahl accepted the award for "Homosexual of the Year" at the Bergen Gay Gala, stating "I don't need an award to be myself. But if this can help other people in the same scene as me, it's a positive thing."

Gaahl later had some things to say about the Vice interview, as well as his beliefs and art.

posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey (31 comments total)

these guys are like the Juggalos of Scandinavia, from the point of view of alt-culture publications
posted by thelonius at 11:56 AM on August 18, 2015

"an intruder in his home"? The link makes clear that the victim was invited to the house, and while the perpetrator claims that he was assaulted by the victim, it is not clear that the court accepted that claim. In light of the somewhat dubious claim that he passed out and woke up to find his victim tied to a chair, I am not sure that the quasi-self-defence story is that plausible.
posted by howfar at 12:05 PM on August 18, 2015

Between Gaahl and Varg Vikernes I kinda wonder what sort of weird shit is going on in the neo-pagan black metal community.

Obviously some of them are just putting on an act but some people really seem to believe the whole thing
posted by vuron at 12:10 PM on August 18, 2015

Gaahl claimed the guy invited himself, but yeah, given that Gaahl was convicted nine years earlier of "an episode of violence where he assaulted his victim for hours," I have no trouble believing the latest victim.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:11 PM on August 18, 2015

Hail Satan
posted by Maaik at 12:11 PM on August 18, 2015

Between Gaahl and Varg Vikernes

That's two people. Varg hasn't been relevant for well over a decade.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:12 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

"an intruder in his home"? The link makes clear that the victim was invited to the house, and while the perpetrator claims that he was assaulted by the victim, it is not clear that the court accepted that claim.

Yes, that bit is odd, as was the following:

Taking the stand in her son's defense, Gaahl's mother testified that she found the accusation of blood drinking particularly hard to believe.

"My son is a vegetarian and very fussy about food. He eats absolutely no innards. That is why I do not believe this at all," Gaahl's mother told the court.

But then "things to say" MetalBlast interview make it seem that there's a lot of show (and confusion) with black metal folks and the reporting on them and their acts.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:13 PM on August 18, 2015

The saga with Gorgoroth is pretty entertaining/ridiculous as well.

The verdict has been reached in the dispute over the rights to the GORGOROTH band name involving vocalist Gaahl, bassist King ov Hell and the group's estranged guitarist Infernus.

Infernus (real name: Roger Tiegs) filed a lawsuit against King ov Hell (real name: Tom Cato Visnes) in September 2008 claiming that King (the sixth bass player in GORGOROTH's history) went behind his back in September 2007 and secretly applied for trademark protection of the GORGOROTH bandname and logo, which Infernus had been using since 1992.

A posting on Infernus' MySpace page reads as follows: "Oslo City District Court has today [Tuesday, March 10] delivered a verdict on the main question in the GORGOROTH trademark case, which took place at the end of January 2009. The court has decided that King ov Hell's trademark registration #243365 of the band name GORGOROTH is NOT valid and shall therefore be deleted. The court states that King ov Hell and Gaahl excluded themselves from the band GORGOROTH when they tried to fire Infernus in October 2007. The court further states that Infernus cannot be excluded from GORGOROTH, unless he himself decides to quit. Infernus is very pleased, but not surprised, by this verdict. The remaining issues concerning financial matters and such are yet to be decided upon."

It should be noted that the track A Sign of An Open Eye linked in the FPP is actually from Gorgoroth's killer album Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam, which was written entirely by King ov Hell and Gaahl. In attempting to oust Infernus over his lack of effort, they managed to instead fire themselves from the band, hence the formation of God Seed.
posted by Existential Dread at 12:18 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Deiphago

Great fucking name.
posted by Existential Dread at 12:22 PM on August 18, 2015

In 2010 Gaahl accepted the award for "Homosexual of the Year" at the Bergen Gay Gala

Drew Daniel's cover of “Grim and Frostbitten Gay Bar” to thread ...
posted by octobersurprise at 12:23 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

what sort of weird shit is going on in the neo-pagan black metal community.

knitting, concocting new herbal tea remedies, staring wanly through the kitchen window.
posted by echocollate at 12:25 PM on August 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

Honestly, he seems like a really thoughtful guy.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:26 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've been enjoying Mexican black metal band Lluvia's new album Eternidad Solemne as well as basically all of Nihill's stuff. Currently waiting on a copy of Deathspell Omega's Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice. And they're all like French and stuff.
posted by Maaik at 12:27 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

In 2010 Gaahl accepted the award for "Homosexual of the Year" at the Bergen Gay Gala, stating "I don't need an award to be myself. But if this can help other people in the same scene as me, it's a positive thing."

This is so much less milquetoast and banal than the fucking GLAAD Awards.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:28 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Varg hasn't been relevant for well over a decade.

I can't think of Scandinavian black metal without thinking about Per Ohlin, an associate of Varg allegedly eaten by Varg's victim. A quarter century later, the jeebies still. "Sorry about the blood."
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:31 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

See, here's the part that creeps me out (from the Metal Blast article):

MB: Changing topics a bit. Thankfully, in most of the civilized world, Russia being the exception, the issue of homosexuality has stabilized. Now, metal has always been a bit of a macho-culture, even with a couple of murders of homosexuals by black metal musicians. When you “came out”, for lack of a better term, did you face the kind of backlash that gay people in the metal scene actually fear?
G: I think that when it comes to those murders it was only accidental that the victims were homosexuals. If people get too close to you and you don’t like what’s happening around you, a murder can happen! [laughs] I see it like this; Faust [ex-drummer of Emperor, convicted of murdering a gay man in 1994, released in 2003] and me have a good relationship. It’s just that when things come out in the media they paint this picture that shows an extreme anger against a certain group, but it’s usually just an accidental fluke whether it was a black guy that got killed or a gay guy that got killed.

Maybe it's a translational issue, but Bard 'Faust' Eithun's murder of Magne Andreassen has always been treated in this semi-casual way, notwithstanding his 14 year prison term. Like, "Oh, yeah, he just wanted to kill a dude, it didn't matter whether dude was gay or not." Varg and Faust are some serious sociopaths; I can't really listen to their music knowing what they've done and how they feel about it.
posted by Existential Dread at 12:34 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh! And speaking of black metal and gay rights (kinda, I guess this is halfway on-topic), but Schönesende (Matthew Bunkell of Light Bearer and Momentum's solo project) made his new album available online today and made this announcement:

The album is on a pay what you want basis. This record cost me nothing to record, as from writing to production this was a fully D.I.Y process, and I feel that it should cost you nothing to listen to and own. However, if you do wish to contribute any money all proceeds will be forwarded on to the Kaleidoscope Trust which work toward supporting LGBTA communities across the world.

So that's pretty cool. Way to go with the making excellent music and the helping people thing, metal guy.
posted by Maaik at 12:38 PM on August 18, 2015 [7 favorites]

So that's pretty cool. Way to go with the making excellent music and the helping people thing, metal guy.

It's the kind of thing that makes me feel like teenage metal me and teenage gay me are finally at peace with one another. Twenty-five years ago, that seemed like a really faint hope.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:19 PM on August 18, 2015 [12 favorites]

I imagine at least some of it was an act, but I was pretty sympathetic with him at the end of the interview when he seemed as tired of the Vice crew playing Blair Witch level bumbling journalists.
posted by Candleman at 1:30 PM on August 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

That Vice doc has always made me kind of mad. The dude at the end who was complaining that he couldn't catch his breath but also wouldn't stop talking. GAH.
posted by Maaik at 1:34 PM on August 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

Maybe it's a translational issue, but Bard 'Faust' Eithun's murder of Magne Andreassen has always been treated in this semi-casual way, notwithstanding his 14 year prison term. Like, "Oh, yeah, he just wanted to kill a dude, it didn't matter whether dude was gay or not." Varg and Faust are some serious sociopaths; I can't really listen to their music knowing what they've done and how they feel about it.

Dissection's (late) Jon Nödtveidt was also involved in an apparent gay panic killing. This is probably not a coincidence. Gaahl himself always just seemed to me someone trying way too hard to project and live up to the black metal image. Though I guess so were Varg and the early second wave circle from the start really.
posted by atoxyl at 1:48 PM on August 18, 2015

Also , Gorgoroth was best in its original incarnation, long before Gaahl and King ov Hell. So I'll side with Infernus on that whole thing.
posted by atoxyl at 2:10 PM on August 18, 2015

From the fourth link: "MB: In an interview that I had with Morgan Steinmeyer, from the band Marduk, on the topic of black metal, he mentioned that real black metal music is not defined by its sound but by its content. So, something can only be called black metal if it deals with the idea of Satanism, the Adversary, etc. while something like Immortal, dealing with dragons, winter, mountains, etc., would not, and should not, be seen as black metal. What’s your take on this?"

I know nothing about black metal music, and am unlikely to start listening...and yet, I am interested in the distinction here. Can someone here point me to a quick read on how black metal thinks of itself? And if Immortal (dragons, winter, mountains) is not/should not be considered black metal, then what genre do they belong to? What does the choice of costume/makeup/self-presentation reflect about its origins?
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:57 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

That's not the way most black metal fans or bands think of it. In fact the idea that Satan is the essential component runs pretty strongly contrary to some major traditions within the genre. I think it's true at the beginning a lot of bands were trying to take the theatrical Satanism of band like Venom to a more serious, scarier level. And obviously there are bands that are still into it at different levels of sophistication. But if there's a single person who has influenced the philosophy of black metal, for better and for worse, it's Varg Vikernes. And in Varg's conception black metal is fundamentally not Satanic but a neo-pagan völkisch romantic nationalist movement, with a tendency toward nature mysticism. This is the vision of black metal which spawned the whole range between the outright National Socialist subgenre - you'll find most of these guys write much less about explicit racism than about winter, mountains, mythology, and glorious ancestors - and American anarchist hippy black metal like Wolves in The Throne Room. As much as I regard Varg himself as (obviously) a terrible person, this strain of though is way more interesting than a bunch of middle-aged-men still trying to convince us to take their totally hardcore Satanism seriously.
posted by atoxyl at 5:18 PM on August 18, 2015 [5 favorites]

There are also clear musical signatures of black metal - sustained use of a blast beat, higher-pitched shrieking/hissing vocals compared to the guttural cookie monster more common in death metal and droning tremelo chords without the palm-muted percussive riffs of death and thrash. Usually (except in certain subgenres) there is less emphasis on technical guitar playing and solos than in other genres of metal and usually there is fairly to extremely lo-fi, mid-heavy production. It's kind of a "you know it when you hear it" thing, but you really do know it when you hear it.
posted by atoxyl at 5:35 PM on August 18, 2015 [10 favorites]

One more, sorry. That musical description is for the "second wave" of black metal and onward. The "first wave of black metal" refers to bands that don't sound like that or even necessarily all that much like each other such as Venom, Hellhammer/Celtic Frost, Bathory and (even though they sounded like a mainline heavy metal band with a particularly intense vocalist) Mercyful Fate. Calling this the first wave fits with the "Satanic subject matter is most important" notion, but even though it's second-guessing the guy who was actually there (in Sweden, in the case of Marduk) I'm going to say from a contemporary perspective this stuff is really more proto-black-metal or even just a list of bands that influenced the Norwegian scene.
posted by atoxyl at 5:56 PM on August 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

Gotta love scary synths / strings too. Not required but common. How does one categorize Old Man's Child, Thyrane, and Dimmu Borgir? There is such a thing as "Viking Metal" that shares similarities and quite a bit more emphasis on the woods 'n shit.

I was never much into the pure BM like Venom, Emperor, Burzum
posted by aydeejones at 8:01 PM on August 18, 2015

There is such a thing as "Viking Metal" that shares similarities and quite a bit more emphasis on the woods 'n shit.

Enslaved is a good example of this. They started off sounding more traditionally BM and have evolved into something a lot more accessible, take that however you will. I'm planning on seeing 'em again when they come through Atlanta in December.

Helheim is also really great.
posted by Maaik at 9:06 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

atoxyl: And in Varg's conception black metal is fundamentally not Satanic but a neo-pagan völkisch romantic nationalist movement, with a tendency toward nature mysticism. This is the vision of black metal which spawned the whole range between the outright National Socialist subgenre - you'll find most of these guys write much less about explicit racism than about winter, mountains, mythology, and glorious ancestors - and American anarchist hippy black metal like Wolves in The Throne Room.

On that note- the diversity of ways this manifests in black metal (from far-right NSBM to more-or-less apolitical celebration of nature and cultural traditions to left-wing anarchism) is reflected in the history of this entire current of thought. It has never been the exclusive domain of the far-right, even if that's (unfortunately) a widespread perception at this point in time. The most notable example of this was Gustav Landauer, who was a Jewish pacifist anarchist who also had a very Romantic, communitarian bent to his ideology. Landauer, of course, was the absolute antithesis of everything the Nazis were, and to call his philosophy "völkisch" at this point in time seems horribly wrong considering the connotations that word has today, but he was clearly influenced by those currents of thought, and took them in a direction which was very, very different from the fascist take on them- this article and this book discuss his thought in greater detail, for those interested in exploring it further.

In many ways, I see bands like WITTR and Panopticon as representing something of a revival of Landauer's current of thought, and I think it's an important and valuable development. To a great extent, this is ground that has been ceded to the far-right, and I think that's been a very bad thing, for lots of reasons which would take too long to get into right now- suffice it to say that I think the world would probably be a much better place if Landauer had been a more influential figure on the left than he was.

(As far as the general philosophy of black metal goes, I'd say the word which best sums it all up is "Romanticist." This obviously applies to the nature mystic type under discussion here, but I think it's also the case for the Satanist variety. I'd argue that there are indeed some forerunners of that sort of thing among the original Romantics- things like Baudelaire's "Les Litanies de Satan", for example. More generally, I think the entire genre reflects a broadly Romantic aesthetic and outlook very strongly, and that this applies even to the diametrically opposed forms of it- whether Satanist or unblack, NSBM or hippy anarchist, it all tends to be distinctly Romanticist, and IMO, that's the single thing that virtually the entire genre, as diverse in worldview as it is, has in common.)
posted by a louis wain cat at 1:22 AM on August 19, 2015 [8 favorites]

I'm not (at all) big on the Dimmu Borgir kind of synth/symphonic which is why my description looked the way it does. I'm okay with stuff like Emperor - they did have synths even early on - maybe early Summoning, etc. But yeah that's a whole branch.

I do like later period Enslaved. "Viking Metal" of course started way back with Bathory (fuck yeah this still does it for me every time) but seems to have gotten genuinely popular and more detached from black metal with the likes of Amon Amarth.
posted by atoxyl at 4:23 AM on August 19, 2015

Teeth Grinding
posted by Existential Dread at 12:58 PM on August 27, 2015