All language subtitles for Helvete - Historien om Norsk Black Metal 1 [eng]

An extremely important ingredient in black metal has always been mystery.

Exploring darkness, death and evil, really.

A rather deep abyss to descend into.

There is a lot down there that most people are hardly prepared to face.

It's about damn powerful things. Big, disturbing things.

It can end in tragedy, total chaos or total triumph.

Norwegian black metal is world famous.

We have Ibsen, Kittelsen, Edvard Munch and Norwegian black metal.

Black metal is part of the Norwegian DNA, whether you like it or not.

-What is this? -It has become a religion.

It was special young men who found each other.

It made a very strong impression. This was my music.

I probably had a feeling of being part of something new.

It was absolutely king!

It became more and more extreme. It was quite extreme from the first moment.

The start of the extreme metal scene in Norway is Mayhem.

Mayhem is in a way patient number one.

Replacement, chaos, people took their lives, people died.

No other Norwegian band has inspired more kids around the world

to start with music than Mayhem has.

They are probably the most important band in Norwegian rock.

I've not been here ...

Damn it! Over 30 years.

It was raw. It smelled just like ... I recognized the smell.

When you have not been here for 35 years and look out the window ...

Suddenly you get such a déjà vu.

That view there ... A place where you've been standing a lot, right?

For several years, and then not in 30 years, and then suddenly you do.

It's a little special.

Moved to Vevelstad in 75.

It was a completely new residential area.

We had moved into one of the first blocks that was finished.

A deposit was paid in a kind of condominium.

It was an entrance for people who did not have much of a span.

Mutter'n bought a house there. She was then 25 years old.

I was seven. I was such a key child.

I locked myself in when I got home from school.

People in the blocks where I grew up, who were older than me ...

We were interested in music and started bands.

The coolest was the vocalist, then the soloist, rhythm guitarist,

and the lowest on the ladder was the bassist. It was me.

Let's see if there's any other shit left of us.

Here! Yes!

I'll take a picture of it.

First we were called "Shoe Iron".

Then came the idea of "Black City".

I thought it sounded like glam rock, so I wanted to get them involved in something else.

I asked a Finnish lady. "What does 'Black City' mean in Finnish?"

She said: "musta kaupunki". Kaupunki was a bit long,

so we ended up with "Musta".

Then we got Kjetil Manheim, the son of the principal at the school, on the team.

That was when we got this rehearsal room.

Before that, we drank Coke and talked about how big we were going to be ...

... in a boys' room in a block of flats. Down here, things started to happen.

I remember that we were already a little quarrelsome in primary school.

Discussive, right? We had an edge, we had some friction

with what was going on around us. People were interested in sports.

People were interested in pop music, a lot ... The same NRK programs.

Interest in rabbits has grown strongly in recent times.

I was not interested in it, and neither was Jørn.

We were not involved in that thing. Maybe we were the ones who were a little different.

Now I see something else there too. There.

This is our first guitarist. Jan Erik Pedersen.

Jørn and I did not share the ambitions of the others.

We had some other ideas, so we let them know that this is not working.

We wanted to explore places that were more aggressive and shocking.

We continued in the rehearsal room, but only Jørn and I.

We tried to find people we could play with.

That summer I was going to audition for a band in Ski.

They had sent a friend to show me where this was.

It was Øystein.

We talked together and we enjoyed the same kind of music. He played guitar,

and he knew some of the songs we rehearsed here, me and Manheim.

I asked him to come try out.

The next day he arrived at the premises. Plugged in his Peavey Bandit.

It is known for insane feedback. He had pedals with poor contact.

So it howled and howled like hell.

We played half a song.

Looked at each other, and me and Øystein just ... "This is it!"

It was a huge feeling of happiness. Like taking three miles in slow motion.

I still remember that very clearly.

Such important days in life that are like that ...

Moments that define the rest of life.

Then we started hanging out all the time.

Øystein was my twin soul. Blood brother.

Completely different from me. Like night and day.

I liked everything that was fermented, he liked everything that was ...

He was healthy, he trained and was super good at school.

I was so good at school, Jørn was not so busy with school.

-Eystein had top marks in everything. -He had a different upbringing than me.

His parents were different from mine. He spoke very nicely.

Defendant parents with first name.

It was so damn formal all the time. Even at home.

Sunday dinner every Sunday. He called it advice. Council meetings.

There were two different worlds. It was yin and yang.

Maybe that's one of the reasons why it turned out the way it did.

That we were not equal, so we added something to each other.

Øystein spoke the same language as us about where we wanted to be with music.

This with hunting for something that went in an extreme direction, we agreed.

Later we got on board vocalists who were completely in line with that.

Billy was the first vocalist to join Mayhem properly.

I needed something angry.

I was looking for something that could give me that ...

That joy, I would say, by just ...

Me and Øystein were at a Dio concert in Drammenshallen.

Then we see a guy who has a Venom spine.

Such a sewing mark on the denim jacket.

By the band Venom from Newcastle. They had hardly heard of anyone.

Øystein and I were the only ones I knew who liked the band.

Outside Drammenshallen we hear behind us:

"Venom!"

Then we turn around, and there are two black-clad guys

with long hair, and they also had big Venom back marks.

Then it was like ... "The tribe!"

There was no one else. It was just us!

When Venom came, it was also groundbreaking.

They continued the first thing I felt when I heard Motörhead.

They perpetuated the angry "fuck off" attitude.

But at the same time it was metal.

Black metal!

Venom "coined the phrase" first -

- by calling his music "black metal".

Yet there was a bit of rock'n'roll at 45 with satanic spotting and ...

Fandom violence all around.

Where Black Sabbath had previously sung about Satan -

- and the stuff there, then he was always such a "bad guy".

One should be afraid of him.

Suddenly Venom comes and sings that Satan is cool.

He's really a fucking cool guy.

To evoke an aura around the band that is special and can seem occult, -

- was the common denominator for black metal in the 80's.

We knew deep down that this was image.

But we wanted it to be true.

So we took it a step further.

That was what they were focusing on, already in 1984.

That things should be ugly. "It must then be possible to make the music for Venom" -

- "much uglier."

"And much faster!"

If this is the worst thing you have ever heard, then you are absolutely right!

It was the cinema hall in Ski. It was such a competition.

It was a dolphin final in the NM in rock.

Then all bands that signed up could get a chance.

Then we grabbed it and signed up.

We were supposed to be extreme. When I look at it today, it is very innocent.

We had choreographed a show beforehand.

I was going to smash my bass on the stage floor.

It was supposed to be a grand finale.

When the time comes for it, song number three or whatever it is, -

- then I grab the bass and look down at the floor ...

It looks like such an expensive ship floor.

It suddenly looked damn expensive just before I had to crush the bass.

At that moment ...

... I break the bass on the knee instead.

I discovered that this does not work. This is getting too expensive.

Øystein mooned the assembly.

It was like the statement we had.

It was a bit like that ... "fuck you!" We came in last place of all the bands.

We had reached the goal that we should be so sluggish, ugly and ugly -

- and ugly.

Fuck you!

We wanted to shock. Maybe a little more than any youth.

The starting point was the aggression against society and the authorities.

I grew up in a free church environment. Did not have much left for the church.

It is difficult for people to understand how monotonous, gray -

- and oppressive Norwegian society was.

Rauland in Telemark, a mountain village with about 1500 inhabitants.

In Rauland, they only cover our one Norwegian television channel.

-What do you like to watch on television? -Cartoons.

And then I watch the Monday movie.

-Do you see the detection class too? -Yes, sometimes.

I grew up in a small village called Rauland.

There was snowmobiling, skiing and football.

I had no interest in that, but my father had a fun record collection ...

... which was a forbidden area, but you did not stay away.

It started there, with Black Sabbath.

I still remember the hairs that rose when I heard -

- the first Black Sabbath record that was "Paranoid".

"What is this? It's absolutely amazing!"

But then they started moving on, and I bought "Ace of Spades".

"Damn it! It's brutal!"

And punk, of course. Sex Pistols and all the usual bands.

Especially the second wave with Chaos UK, The Exploited and all this.

It was damn so extreme.

When Metallica and Slayer released their first records,

a mix of new wave, British heavy and punk, the list was made.

It was an expression that appealed to me somewhat insanely.

Then they began to look for what was even further down.

Then they got hold of fanzines about all the underground bands.

A whole world opened up.

That's how I got into the underground. I bought an ink in '86.

A fanzine, like the one under the counter.

The fanzines were amateur magazines printed on A4 sheets and stapled together.

Black and white. There were addresses of the various bands

that had been written about. Bands that do not have record contracts.

Then you order demos and send money in the mail.

Suddenly you have a bunch of demos, maybe 20-30 pieces.

Then there is someone in Singapore, the states or Sweden ...

... who is eager to record some of the demos.

And then I'm jumping on some of his demos. Then you change.

We found that there was a circle of like-minded people in every country.

We had a nascent, aggressive music movement, I would call it.

Some called it thrash metal, some called it black metal.

Death metal ... Dear children have many names.

We got a lot of cool music.

A bunch of people around the world who might have been seen as weirdos.

But we knew where we had the music, and we knew what happened ...

... long before the record companies released records three or four years later.

I had a cassette player with a recording function.

Then we recorded the first demo. "Pure fucking armageddon".

In 1986.

Page A is page "fuck". Page B is page "off". "Fuck off!"

We know no one here likes it.

Every time someone from outside came by, we were told

that everything we did was just nonsense.

No one wanted to hear what we were playing. We could just put Norway behind us -

- and look beyond and say "shit in Norway".

That we said we were investing internationally was just the way it was.

There were no venues here. No record companies. Nothing happened.

Here we had to work personally to spread the music.

We were lucky because an enthusiast in Sarpsborg, Jon Kristiansen ...

"Metalion" had Slayer Mag.

He interviewed a bunch of bands in ink. In Germany, England, Italy ...

He had contact with record stores that sold his magazine.

He was good at distributing abroad.

He picked up Mayhem early and was -

- important for Mayhem's spread in a young underground environment.

I bought the magazine, and there was an interview with Mayhem.

Then I thought: "Damn, it's a Norwegian band!" The address was there.

It was easy to get in touch, and we became good friends.

Øystein was fantastic at it. He had pen pals all over the world.

"Singapore! Do you think so, or? Singapore!"

That made his day, that. "There are so many extreme people out there."

"Absolutely wonderful to get in touch with everyone."

It was not so careful whether it was black metal or death metal.

Death metal had arrived, black metal was a record with Venom.

That concept had not come completely.

The genre was not so careful, it just had to be extreme.

Everyone wanted to surpass each other. Everyone would be the most extreme.

I had heard the Necrophagia demos. Killjoy's vocals ...

It was so ridiculously expensive that I had to try to surpass it.

I had not played much, I was just harrowing on the brute's guitar.

I recorded it on an old cassette player.

I made three or four songs, call it what you will, and send it to Øystein.

He had a one-man band called Septic Cunts.

He sang and played guitar on that tape.

It sounded like ...

It was so extreme.

I got an answer from Øystein. A six-page letter.

"That tape was ..."

On the next page: "Huge! You have to sing with Mayhem!"

I thought, "We have to have this on our record."

"This is all over the top."

We knew we were a little too extreme to be commercial enough

for record companies, so we turned it around and thought

it was commercial, but no one else understood.

Thus, it was a kick in the ass to start your own record company.

Going to the studio was a pretty high threshold for us.

We had no sponsors. We managed to scrape together money.

I think Jørn scraped together 90%, because he had a job.

I looked up Yellow Pages in the telephone directory.

I found Creative Studios in Kolbotn.

It was cheap and close.

We called in and booked studio time.

He asked where our snare drum was.

We were a bit like, "What do you mean?"

He did not have a reggae snare drum.

"I think you've misunderstood, we do not play reggae."

It was hard to explain, so I said we should just hook up

and get started.

He put the settings on the instruments in relation to each other.

I do not think he did much more than that.

It was perhaps a blessing, in retrospect.

Had he known what he was doing, it would have been completely different.

This was completely "pure".

I was very curious when I came into the studio.

I did not know Maniac before.

In what way does he approach music?

I was very excited. I was so nervous that I almost twisted my pants.

I was not a musician, I was. The others were at least musicians.

I did not play anything. I played a little mouth harp.

I was nervous. Completely sweaty, and everything tightened.

Then the vocal cords also tighten.

I could not get down to the way I had used my voice ...

... as I sat relaxed in the living room. It became more high pitch.

I remember that. I remember sitting behind the drum kit.

Sven Erik just clinked and screamed.

I thought, "OK, it works! I'm driving!"

Billy just sat and gaped.

-"What is this?" -"What is this?"

So there were some pig howls of another world.

It was not something anyone had heard before.

It was like that ... It was ugly! That was bullshit!

It was just like that ... "There it sat! That's how it should be!"

It was the last piece that had to be done to make things extreme.

We found a printing house on Nordstrand called Unitor.

We gave them the assignment. We came up to the office and tore up the first eska.

A pink record cover just laughs at us.

It was so damn distasteful. It should be blood red!

From blood red to pink, there are two completely different colors.

The cover looked damn good.

We who were opponents of hairspray metal and pastel colors ...

It could not have been much worse, but at that very moment -

- we just had to think that this is even more distasteful, -

- so we just go with it. Instead of sending everything back -

- we turned our own thing in our own head -

- and thought that this was going to be damn distasteful and yeasty.

So fermented that it turned out right. Sometimes yeast is right.

This was correct.

It's cool when you're finally on vinyl and have done everything yourself.

It's a little cool.

I was not prepared for that when I got the vinyl.

I hung up and heard the creaking of the pin against the vinyl ...

I suddenly heard that it was completely crystal clear sound.

Almost got a little shocked at how good it was.

It was absolutely magical.

It was not so damn much kind word, that is. Nobody liked it.

I do not remember anyone saying it was good. Actual.

Thor-Rune Haugen wrote in Puls at the time, I think. He said:

"I'm not sure if this record should be played at 33 or 45."

"But anyway, it sounds like" -

- "Captain Hook fingered Margaret Thatcher."

That was the whole review.

It was like ... "Yes! Absolutely King! Fantastic review!"

It is not black metal as black metal was.

But it is a very important precursor to it.

I would argue. It made sure other bands did the same.

In the surrounding areas, sort of. There was a guy on Kolbotn ...

... who started with music at the time, and he's become very important.

It was absolutely insane! The Deathcrush album is ...

I think it's the rawest.

Deathcrush sets a standard.

It's simple, raw, brutal ...

It was the incredible soundscape. Very much twisted.

Sounds like the bass is upside down.

Both heavy and extreme things.

I really liked the riffs and the sound and the whole package.

It sounded like the hinges had worked well. Totally toppers.

That it was Norwegian, it was ... absolutely great!

It helped start something that developed into

what everyone knows as the Norwegian black metal today.

That's how it started. Not necessarily the way it ended.

It was a little more than we had expected. It took a while.