True Norwegian Black Metal | VICE

[CHANTING AND APPLAUSE] [HEAVY METAL MUSIC] IVAR BERGLIN: Gorgoroth may not be the most celebrated band to rise out of the infamous Norwegian black metal scene, but they are by far the most feared and controversial. With their abrasive sound, chaotic live shows, and well-publicized criminal convictions, Gorgoroth have spread their message of fear and hate across the world. At the center of the storm of controversy is Gaahl, Gorgoroth lead vocalist and arguably the most despised man in Norway. In 2005, Gaahl was charged with torture-like violence and served nine months in prison. His second incarceration for violent acts. The court claims he tortured his victim for six hours while collecting his blood into a cup and threatened to make him drink it. In January of 2007, when he was ready for release, photographer Peter Beste took us to Gaahl's hometown in Norway to get to know the guy Terrorizer magazine calls the most evil man alive. I'm Ivar Berglin, welcome to Norway. But the story of Gaahl and Norwegian black metal actually starts in Newcastle, England back in 1979, when a local metal band named Venom, responding to the rampant commercialism of heavy metal, decided to take their music in a darker, more extreme direction through satanic lyrics and imagery. This spawned black metal, a term coined by their 1982 album of the same name. From there, the door opened for bands with similar ideas and sounds. Bands like Mercyful Fate from Denmark, Hellhammer from Switzerland, and Bathory from Sweden. At the end of the '80s, a second wave of black metal surfaced in Norway. Bands like Dark Throne, Emperor, Immortal, and Mayhem perfected the black metal sound, taking the music's lyrics and stage imagery to even darker extremes. KING: We chose a different path. It was getting the music not as fast but atmospheric. It was also not as well-produced. It was more about the atmosphere the music created. And also the fact that we chose to have a satanic approach towards the lyrics and also combining those things to be an art form called black metal. PYTTEN: Euronymous called me, and I started working with him together with Varg Vikernes until '94, when all this stuff started happening to churches. IVAR BERGLIN: In the mid '90s, a series of crimes in Norway brought black metal to the attention of the mainstream media. The arson of over a dozen Christian churches and the *** of Mayhem guitarist Euronymous by band-mate Varg Vikernes, who stabbed him 23 times in the face, neck, and back. LARS NEDLIN: When it comes to the media coverage of the black metal in Norway, it all started with the criminal cases. I mean, it didn't start with the music when it comes to the tabloid in Norway. It started with the church burnings, with the murders and everything surrounding that era with Burzum and Varg Vikernes and, well, good tabloid stories basically. EINAR ENGELSTAD: I couldn't believe that they were that foolish. On the other hand, they had an identity because everybody was against them. When you're 17, 18 you believe in a lot of funny things. KVITRAFN: I'm not about to say if it's right or wrong. LARS NEDLIN: Then there's the music. And I think most of the bands today are centered around the music. But of course you have bands like Gorgoroth who have the ideology still very much intact within the band. There's a satanic ideology. GAAHL: Christianity is based only on stone, souls, and lives. And so, of course, every trace of them should be erased. [BLACK METAL MUSIC] IVAR BERGLIN: Gorgoroth basically means terror. PATRIZIA MAZZUOCCOLO: Gorgoroth is the ugliest sounding band within black metal. KVITRAFN: The energy you get from playing in that band really sticks out from everything else I've ever done. PATRIZIA MAZZUOCCOLO: If you're ever seen a live gig, you'd definitely understand. They're all extreme in the way that they look. And Gaahl, in particular. KVITRAFN: The whole makeup and spikes and flames and all of that is about putting faces to the music, really. And enhancing the things we are trying to express. KING: But when we present things to an audience, it's a message that's important, it's not the music. Gorgoroth is now three individuals, Infernus, me, and Gaahl. And everybody is very egocentric. KVITRAFN: It's a group of strong personalities. KING: But everything leads back to the our main agenda, it's spreading the word of Satan, or satanism himself. KVITRAFN: Well, to put it like this, we demand something from the listener. KING: The band is spreading fear. And we use that fear to actually create a change and also get our ideas across. LARS NEDLIN: There is one band that still is covered in the old-fashioned tabloid Norwegian black metal kind of way, and that's Gorgoroth. ERLEND ERICHSEN: Of course the media always like to focus on things that scares people. LARS NEDLIN: All genres, all music genres grow when there's controversy involved. PATRIZIA MAZZUOCCOLO: And I also believe that Gorgoroth like to flirt with the way that they're portrayed by the media. LARS NEDLIN: They serve a lot of things to the media in a way that makes it highly usable. GAAHL: It's very few people or bands around with a satanic message. So it's all about the music. It's not about the blast bass, it's not about how high the vocals scream or whatever. We are not about that. We are about the message. LARS NEDLIN: Like in South America, when you have riots breaking out. In Poland, where the tapes of the concerts that was filmed was taken by the police. IVAR BERGLIN: On February 1, 2004, Gorgoroth appalled the Catholic nation of Poland with a blasphemous display of satanic imagery at their most controversial show to date. KING: We had a lot of sheep skulls, as well as a lot of sheep heads on poles all over the front of the stage and four crosses. Up on the crosses were two naked men, hooded, and two naked hooded women. Covered in blood. The sheep represents the flock, and we represent the goat, the individual striving to go our own ways, not necessarily following the flock. GAAHL: The flock and the sheep, it's the Christian themselves that's chosen this word from the Bible. You have the goat, and you have the sheep. The sheep is the one that belongs to God, and the goat is the one that will be punished because they have a free will. IVAR BERGLIN: To get a better understanding of Gaahl and where he comes from, we travelled across Norway to the small mountain village where he was born and still lives today. KVITRAFN: Always been a lot of rumors about Gorgoroth and always a lot of rumors about Gaahl. And-- IVAR BERGLIN: Are they true? KVITRAFN: Well, no, of c-- well, maybe some. IVAR BERGLIN: I'm standing outside of Gaahl's house. Everything you see around us is owned by his family and has been so for generations. We're the first ever journalists to be here. And I'm quite honored but actually feeling quite scared. PETER BESTE: This town, I guess we could call it a valley, is named after his family. There's maybe five or six houses, each of which belong to a different member of the family. No other house as far as the eye can see in any direction. Closest town is about a 20 minute drive. ROB SEMMER: I mean the guy lives in complete isolation. No telephone, no nothing. I had to walk. His brother was the only one who had plumbing in the house. And his brother lived about a mile up the road. So every time I needed to take a *** or anything, I had to walk literally in ankle high mud because it had been raining for 72 days straight. IVAR BERGLIN: The first few hours in Espedal were nerve-wracking to say the least. I couldn't stop thinking about what could happen over the next couple of days. But after a few bottles from Gaahl's extensive wine collection, we all began to loosen up, laugh, and have a good time. IVAR BERGLIN: You know we're here because we're interested in the man behind all the spikes and skull makeup and-- GAAHL: Of course. This might be one of my problems. When I talk to journalists, I talk to them as persons and not as journalists. IVAR BERGLIN: To keep it personal, Gaahl asked if instead of doing a traditional interview, we could just put the camera on a tripod and talk. GAAHL: What to follow the false gods will do basically. You will be allowed to focus on the god within yourself because that's the only true god. The god within everything. That's the only thing that for me is worth calling god. It is the highest spirit of everything and not this control freak that's telling you you're not supposed to do this, you're not supposed to do this, you're only supposed to bow down and kneel before what I say. Don't think. It's more than anything else. God is within man. God is within nature, and nature will always grow. That's the force of all life is to grow. ROB SEMMER: He personally took us all aside and critiqued us on what he thinks we could change about our lives and ***. And it's like he met us like a day before. And the thing that was blowing all of our minds, and we all got together the next day and had these little huddles when he wasn't around to talk about it, was how right on he was. PETER BESTE: I think everyone was just speaking very freely, and, of course, the wine was flowing, and I think we all saw a special side to Gaahl. PATRIZIA MAZZUOCCOLO: There are many sides to him. I think there's many sides to every human being. And of course, we can all be a little evil sometimes. DAVID: The kind of character that he is scares people. How direct he is about what he believes in. ERLEND ERICHSEN: One single word me and Gaahl never will forget, and that's honest. The word honest. PETER BESTE: This guy that has a reputation of being a bad-*** and a satanist and all sorts of other things, the rednecks out there want to challenge him, or *** with him just like it would be in the States growing up if you were one of these kind of guys. So I think he gets people who will mess with him a little bit. And when he, as he says, when someone crosses my borders or steps on his foot, so to speak, that he teaches them a lesson. ROB SEMMER: We were walking down the road one day, and he showed me this little building, and he's like, that's my schoolhouse. He's like, yeah, between kindergarten and 18 years of age, I went to school there. And it was just me and one other kid. I was like, for 18 years you only went to school with one other person? And he was like, yeah and that kid lived like 45 minutes away. So when school was done, he had to get on a car or a bus to go home. Like I never got to hang out with him. GAAHL: Skol for-- [INTERPOSING VOICES] GAAHL: Having an excellent time. ROB SEMMER: It's one of a kind. GAAHL: I don't think of myself as someone who can paint. That's why I quit art school because you cannot go to school to become an artist. IVAR BERGLIN: I've seen some of the stuff you did before prison. It would be interesting to see something you did in prison. You and me talked about how an extreme situation it was for you. GAAHL: My whole process of creating is based on being away from people. I think this was the last one I did before I went into prison maybe. IVAR BERGLIN: Yeah? GAAHL: I'm not certain. IVAR BERGLIN: Gaahl rarely shows anyone his paintings. He doesn't sell them, and he hasn't shown publicly since 1993. So after days of asking, he finally let us take a look. GAAHL: I had an exhibition in '93, and then I just wrote completely ridiculous prices, way overpriced at first, because I didn't want to sell them. There was this person that wanted to buy it anyway, and I said, of course, that no, I have already sold it. So he didn't get it. I have hidden them away since then. IVAR BERGLIN: On our third day in Espedal, the rain finally let up, so we travelled to Dale, the closest thing to Gaahl's house resembling civilization. Yeah, Gaahl just told me that the water's about one and a half to two meters higher than it usually is because they've had 76 days of rain here in a row, nonstop. I made several phone calls to everyone from reporters to local police trying to get anyone to comment on Gaahl. I was met with excuse after excuse. It seemed like the whole town was afraid of him until I finally convinced one journalist that had followed his case since the beginning to give me a brief interview. MALE SPEAKER: [SPEAKING NORWEGIAN] PETER BESTE: The more recent case that he just got out of prison for was something similar. He was attacked, he beat this guy, held him down for a number of hours, I think tied him up, while slapping him. Supposedly squeezing his balls, singing to him pretty Norwegian lullabies while collecting his blood into a cup. The courts tried to say that he drank the guy's blood, or he forced the guy to drink his own blood, but Gaahl claims it was just to prevent it from getting on his carpet. GAAHL: All of them have been just self-defense actually. But that I've crossed borders. It's like with a painting. You don't stop until it's finished. IVAR BERGLIN: And you think your punishment methods have been effective? Of course these people aren't going to attack you again, but do you think you removed the sickness from their mind that would allow them to do this in the first place? Or do you think you just perpetuated it? GAAHL: Let's put it this way, if they were a bad seed, they wouldn't spread it. MALE SPEAKER: [SPEAKING NORWEGIAN] GAAHL: Just by saying no to someone, punish them enough. And someone, you probably need to cut to small pieces and sew back together. IVAR BERGLIN: From the day we met Gaahl, he kept talking about bringing us to a place that was very important to him. After three days of waiting on a window of decent weather, we threw caution to the wind and followed him blindly into the wilderness. Only three of us had jackets. Only two of us had boots. And none of us had any idea where he'd take us. GAAHL: Up there, it's this waterfall I was talking about. IVAR BERGLIN: Yeah, we can get across the river. GAAHL: I don't think so, but maybe we can walk up there and walk around. IVAR BERGLIN: Let's do that. GAAHL: It's quite a long journey though. IVAR BERGLIN: Let's see how long we make it. PETER BESTE: From the valley, he pointed out where we were headed, and it was this snow-capped mountain off in the distance. And I thought he was joking. It was quite far. ROB SEMMER: So I put on basically every piece of clothing I had in my bag. I was wearing a pair of Nike hi-tops with plastic bags wrapped around my feet. GAAHL: I have become what never fails, following in the footsteps behind me. I don't like to explain things to people because it's written in a way that it should open the mind of the listeners on tours. I have no interest in getting a flock of sheep that's just following me because I'm the same one direction, and they walk that direction. Then I would be just as bad as society is. So fear is necessary to separate the ones that's willing to be led. Or the one who choose to lead himself. IVAR BERGLIN: [SPEAKING NORWEGIAN] GAAHL: [SPEAKING NORWEGIAN] GAAHL: There's so many of the sheep character that's drawn towards it as fans. There's so many low-lifes among the crowd. There's so many just there for the music and nothing else. You don't perform black metal if you're not a warrior. Black metal is a war against what everyone knows. IVAR BERGLIN: [SPEAKING NORWEGIAN] GAAHL: [SPEAKING NORWEGIAN] IVAR BERGLIN: [SPEAKING NORWEGIAN] GAAHL: As long as nature is not allowed to rule by the laws of nature, there will always be king, and there will always be slave. ROB SEMMER: And at this point I just *** went into a panic, and I was just like, this is *** stupid. I don't know. He won't even really tell us where you're bringing us or why you're bringing us or what this is about. At a point, I was just like, I don't care what the *** is at the top of the mountain. You know what I mean? It makes no difference to me. We're going to jeopardize this whole entire project for some stupid *** nature walk. This is about heavy metal. This is about a band. This isn't Field and Stream magazine. MIKE: Yeah, man. MIKE: Well sit tight, and I can go get them. ROB SEMMER: I can't sit tight. I'll freeze. Seriously. MIKE: What do you want me to do, man? ROB SEMMER: I got to keep going. And I know, but the way down, even. PETER BESTE: Well, there's no choice at this point. GAAHL: The Superman. And the idea will always conquer or always rise above, no matter what, but you can not put down your sword because then you'll lose. IVAR BERGLIN: So do you get frustrated being a lone wolf, or do you like it? Being one of the very few people who is worthy of the title of a lead person? Is it lonely? GAAHL: I don't think that you ask me the right questions. I don't think you're focusing on what's being told. IVAR BERGLIN: Guide me.