DET SVARTE ALVOR / Darkest Sincerity .. or .. The Black Seriousness

The following text is a translated transcript of the program showed on Norwegian television a while back.

The Cast is presented like this,

Beginning ..

Satyr running up the stairs to the old Mayhem-rehearsal place - now rehearsal place for several different bands - In Oslo ...

C: It is mostly about music, about Black Metal; a style where the Norwegian bands has been leading the last years.

(Satyricon playing)

(church sitings)

C: It is also about a new type of crime, with background in strong, anti-ecclesiastical attitudes. And it is about young people, seeking to the darkest, most gloomy thoughts and symbols we know. Some of these, call themselves satanists.

Title - DET SVARTE ALVOR (Darkest Sincerity / The Black Seriousness)

(watching Immortal getting ready for concert - they walk down the stairs of GARAGE PUB (Bergen) - playing)

C: The band Immortal from Bergen, doesn't see themselves as satanists today. - They play something they call "Holocaust Metal". They compare their shows with a theater - themselves, they have the roles of demons.

(in the pub - daylight still Garage)

D: When we go onstage, we go on stage to spread .. cold, and to shock, and to get out aggression .. and to do a fucking raw show.

AB: We do things onstage which you normally do not see done. It's as simply as that; we shock.

C: Is this an image, a role, or is it serious?

D: Let's put it this way .. I wouldn't call it an image, as long we work so fucking much with it as we do. But .. We have never gone out and said anything we do not stand for. We do not write about satan and god .. and all that other crap all the other ones write about. - I think most of the people come to our concerts to see what it is all about.

AB: Yeah

C: But the parents are frightened?

D: Yes AB: No

D: Some of them - but we haven't had any trouble with that. AB: Yeah...

D: But we don't give a shit - we do what we want.

(concert again - still Immortal)

(Satans Bibel - Satan's Bible; Anton Szandor LaVey)

C: Most of the ones who play Black Metal has looked through this book, by Anton LaVey.

(Anton talking)

C: Anton LaVey started the Church of Satan in California, in 1966. Here [referring to what is happening onscreen] he is performing a marriage. He wanted to rebuild the strong and proud human being, and to free it from the christian withered "next-love". Through rituals, we wanted to conjure forth the dark instincts in the human being. Even though it may not go deep, LaVey's type of satanism has influenced the Norwegian Black Metal scene.

(shadow of Ihsahn - Emperor)

I: A satanist .. it is very hard to define who is a satanist and who is not. It is more a category you must set for yourself. There are many different attitudes and ways to pratice satanism.

(LaVey again ... then Ihsahn)

I: I am a satanist. - I can't point my finger at anything concrete Why I am a satanist, except to look at my own attitudes and thoughts - also my own moral values. If anyone else wants to call that satanism, nor not, is up to them. But then again, it isn't important to me what other people wants to categorize me as.

(song - Hymne til Satan / Inno a Satana (the lyrics are the same as in the sleeve))

I: You can't play Black Metal without a satanic basis/foundation.

(holding up the Emperor LP)

I: It is that the whole thing is based on.

C: Must the message be evil?

I: Yes, if not - it isn't Black Metal.

C: Why is darkness, melancholy, and death so fascinating?

I: Well .. It is something I find appealing - emotionally appealing. I cannot answer why.

(showing Ihsahn's room)

C: Like this, can a boys-room look like in this "Heavy-Rock" enviroment.

C: But isn't he afraid to become very melancholic/sad, and ill from all of this..?

I: I am not afraid of it .. you see it coming. The expressions just go on, and .. one starts to live more and more by those thoughts and feelings. In the end, that is all that is left - but nontheless .. it is so important to me that I will never take any absence from it.

C: Do you have many friends?

I: No. ... Not real friends. Relatively very few.

C: Do you think that is ok, or what do you think about that?
I: Yes, it doesn't bother me. I am on a completely different level than the others. It is very difficult for people like myself to communicate with all the other "ordinary" youths .. to us there isn't any value or meaning in what they do - they have another reason for living than we do. - They are what I would catagorize as "soulless people"; they are too involved in/engaged with simple materialistic things.

(song - still Inno a Satana) (man turning off the stereo)

J: They have within their enviroment carried it long way. They are well known outside the country. If it had been a band which belonged to another style, had had another public, these guys would have beeen often to see in music-magazines and music-periodicals... They have been doing a serious musical basis-work. They have obtained their own expression, and for this work, and their experience, they received "The local youthculture scholarship" in 1991. And that was an encouragement and a stimulant to keep on with the serious work that they had started.

(picture of Emperor - song .. Inno a Satana)

C: But the band developed after a while into Black Metal direction, and now three of the members are charged with, and sentenced for burning churches and other crimes.

J: When it has come forth afterwards, as a part of the image to this band, these boys, they have been involved in philosophical or ideological directions that most of us take absence from. I can imagine that public persons in the municipaility and in political organs have questioned themselves: "What were we helping to do at that time?".

(Haugen plays piano)

J: Grieg has written a song called "To a Devil", and Klaus Egge has written so called devil music. Wagner, or Faust, reappeares in the opera literature from hundreds of years back, so to involve themselves, a little, in these mystical powers and to fetch some inspiration from there for their musical work - is not so special for These boys [I think he means .. that it didn't first start with Black Metal - it has been done for centuries]

(Ihsahn's room)

C: Now three of the members in your band are inolved in criminal cases. What does this mean for the band, and for you?

I: It has both negative and positive effects, really. Of course it will make much complications and stuff with consideration to imprisonment - and that it will be a diffucilt time for the band in that period. But we have also gotten a very big publicity at home and abroad, so that gives us a bigger area to spread our thoughts.

(showing magazines+)

C: So, is that positive?

I: Yes

C: Do you think it's ok to burn churches?

I: Personally I wouldn't have done it because of the consequences it could have had for me. But what others do .. I think that each individual should decide their own destiny. The reason why I haven't got a personal connection to this is that I haven't the need for the phyiscal destrictive. And in that way I have a little different direction than maybe others in the same enviroment in Norway, because maybe I think a little more in the spiritual level.

(in bookshop)

C: Do you have Anton LaVey's "The Satanic Bible"?

A: We haven't got that book anymore; we had it earlier, but because of all the church fires we have chosen to cut that book out.

(showing church fires - mentioning churches that has been lit)

(in church with Kris(now Garm) of Ulver)

K: The church is Norway's authority number one .. and to burn a church shows the Norwegian people some kind of protest. - It shocks people.

C: What is wrong with the church and christianity?

K: Christianity is a weak, inconsistent, pathetic religion - made for weak people.

(song from Ulver)

K: Christianity doesn't have a meaning, as a word at all, compared to what it once was and represented. We have to remember that christianity mainly was a force-adjusted religion in Norway, and as the sons of Odin, we see it as our duty to take back that which once was ours. We have chosen to adjust ourselves after the martial, proud, strong god idols our pagan ancestors had.

(Ulver music)

[lyrics ... :
I do not wish for a saviour
I do not lack a father
I do not need a crown of thorns
To be a king!]

C: You play in a group whose name is Ulver (eng:wolves). What is it that you want?

K: We want to spread "Trolskhet" (the old eerie feeling of trolls and elves?) and old Norwegian thoughts to our listeners. We use our music as a way of reflecting a fairytale age. The fairlytale age's belief, and not least it's superstition.

C: Would you call this satanism?

K: No, absolutely not. It has nothing to do with satanism at all.

C: You are not engaged in that?

K: Well, I have had my periods (looking down to his ring), but it is not what I use in connection with the band. But I have, of course, been interested and involved in more satanic music earlier, but that has now changed, so ...

C: But do you have any contact with bands who use more satanic lyrics and a satanic message?

K: Absolutely.

(interview with Hellhammer - Mayhem)

C: Some say they're very attracted to the dark, but it's not like that with you..?

H: It's not like that with me.

C: You are there because of the music?

H: Yes.

(Hellhammer playing drums)

H: I have been into many other styles of music within the 12 years [he has been playing] too. It hasn't only been Black Metal the whole time. And today, I don't just play Black Metal; I play many other styles too.

(Kris from Ulver in record store - holding up Darkthrone's "Under a funeral moon" LP)

C: The band Darkthrone is after many people's meanings the front Norwegian Black Metal band. The group Mayhem is also well known. The album "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" was recently released in memory of Øystein Aarseht/Euronymous, who was killed in August last year.

H: There are different sides to satanism as well. I am not a satanist myself, so I can't really say anything special about it.

(Mayhem: "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" - Satan's mysteries - inside playhall)

H: It's our last vocalist Dead (Pelle) who wrote the lyrics. It can be very difficult to understand them, really. He was a pretty special man. He committed suicide a couple of years ago. I know this much that one of the lyrics, "Freezing Moon", is about to make people listen to the song and commit suicide. - Not that that is My purpose with the music at all...

C: So you didn't mean that serious, or was it a encouragement?

H: Those are the lyrics - Pelle meant it of course. But I don't go consistent into getting people to kill themsleves in that way. Even if I gladly see that my enemies die; that doesn't matter to me.

C: But aren't you afraid to encourage people to commit suicide, don't you think that is wrong?

H: Pelle would in any case be very happy for that. (slight laughter)

(pictures from graveyard)

(showing fanzines)

C: This music enviroment has its own network, a simple printed matters, work as contact-magazines for the different bands. All these magazines are published by Norwegian youth, but they are written in English, with thoughts for interested readers all over the world. And the magazines are mostly about music. They present new and old bands, and what they stand for. But there are also other reading materials here; LaVey often turns up. This can get us to wonder how big the iunterests are for him, and for occult questions in the whole.

(pub)

C: Have you tried to practise any magic, ritual magic, before?

K: Well .. heh .. No, nothing directly occult.

C: LaVey writes alot about that.

K: Yeah, I have of course experimented with ouija-boards and so on, a couple of years back, but nothing in excess of that.

(people with ouija-board)

- I call heaven's highest hights, and hell's deepest abyss: I ask, can anyone hear me? ...

C: Very few of those we spoke to were involved with rituals, in excess of little but play at the boys room.

(showing fanzines)

C: Another disreputable ritual magician also turns up in these magazines: Aleister Crowley.

(in bookshop)

C: You sell alot of Aleister Crowley here, who buys these books?

A: It is a certain type of people, you can see them when they arrive; they are usually dressed in black - then I know which shelf they are going to.

C: The shelf for magic?

A: Yes.

(showing Crowley books)

C: But the acquaintance with Crowley and his ritual magic, or his form for satanism, doesn't seek deep in the Black Metal enviroment.

(showing fanzines again)

C: Back to the underground magazines, the so called fanzines. Here we meet the occult Hitler, and we meet women prestend through so called sadistic art.

K: When it comes to these fanzines, the main role is to spread the smaller bands' message. But they are also attitude forming, and again function as entertainment for the readers; and those who read this are people like us. It's obvious that much of the material in a 'zine can be manipulating, and infuence youth, yes.

C: But you don't see that as unsafe..?

K: No, not really. I see that as the readers' own responsibility.

(at Carcass/No Place To Hide concert - Ravn from Mysticum selling demos)

C: Kris and the others think it's new-recruitment, and increasing interest for the Black Metal genre. And outside the concerthalls, they have found a market for their articles. They have little sense for young teenagers "play-satanism", but they are good to have as customers.

- Boy w/Cannibal Corpse shirt translating for the commentator.

C: Sepultura - what does that stand for?

- Boy w/Sepultura shirt: Grave.

C: Pantera - what kind of band is that?

- Boy w/Sepultura shirt: Death Metal.

- Girl w/Entombed shirt: Entombed .. I think it means "buried" .. or .. it means "buried" - and it is a Swedish band. They don't play much on the satanic image - they are more themselves, and they play very good.

- Boy w/Morbid Angel shirt: Morbid Angel? The vocalist there is more or less a satanist, but it isn't exactly satanic thing ..

C: But you like it?

- Boy: Yes, I like it. And I also have a picture I can show .. (shows back print of shirt).

(showing "Zonen", Stavanger...)

C: In Stavanger in february, the band Gehenna - or Hell - was going to play in the activity house "Zonen" [The Zone]. The church's city commission protested. "The message reminds too much of fascism," they said.

O: The war as an ideal - skulls as symbols. The strong shall conquer the weak. There are many ideological features in fascism which obviously has its parallel, spiritually said, to the satanic movement. And to make the satanism's fascism visable is very important, because it will also put many other people, not only christians, in positions to understand that satanism is a dangerous direction which is important to gather and fight against.

(Gehenna live)

S: It was much writing about this concert, and the persons around it, in the papers. Therefore we held an extra-ordinary meeting, where the management came up with the press release that they took strong distance from symbols and lyrics which mentioned satanism.

(Gehenna live)

C: Zonen has made a decision - are you satisfied?

O: Yes, I am satisfied, because now Zonen has established themselves as an anti-fascist, anti-satanic zone in the city.

C: But shouldn't a community have room for many different opinions?

O: Yes, they should, but the space in this case have to mean Will to cooperate with all powers who wants to defend life. Satanism and fascism isn't willing to defend life; it has life as their major oponent. It states death cult and death as its highest value, it states that the strong shall suppress the weak. And this is misunderstood tolerance, if anybody think that this shall go uncontradicted.

(in record store - Bergen)

C: In Bergen there has been many church fires. But there are devided opinions to whether there is a satanic enviroment in the city or not.

E: Enviroment? - No. You can find one or two who sits at home reading "The Black Book" for themselves, but if you mean an assembly of three or four, the answer is definately no.

C: But do you think it's dangerous?

E: No! Ok, It has showed a few bad examples, one shall not deny that. But that were five to eight people who exaggerated their role. All these things gets dangerous if you go too much into yourself, get pointed as an outsider. But the religion in itself .. to the degree you can call it a relgion, the enviroment is generally completely harmless, and today they are at any rate harmless, because today nobody dare to touch anything with it.

(music .. Ulver)

H: The most important thing to me, is to do what I want for myself. - That's what I do anyway.

I: Generally I want to get away from the general society, and maybe go to a smaller one where the surroudnings suit me. Just to live in my own world.

C: But it will have to be electric guitars there?

I: That probably has to be there, yes.

(Ulver - "Ulverytterens Kamp")

The End

DET SVARTE ALVOR

The Credits...

  • musikk - Norsk Black Metal og Arvo Pärt "Stabat Mater"
  • kamera - Geire Åge Jensen
  • lyd - Berger Bergersen, Jon Ekstrøm
  • redigering - Tor Sannerud
  • elektronisk lyssetting - Trygve Ø. Andresen
  • produksjonsleder - Anne Berit Østerholt
  • regi og programoppleg - Gunnar Grøndahl

    • G3 NRK 1994

    DET SVARTE ALVOR

  • music - Norsk Black Metal and Arvo Pärt "Stabat Mater"
  • camera - Geire Åge Jensen
  • sound - Berger Bergersen, Jon Ekstrøm
  • editing - Tor Sannerud
  • electronic lighting - Trygve Ø. Andresen
  • production leader - Anne Berit Østerholt
  • directing and programming - Gunnar Grøndahl

    • G3 NRK 1994

    This was last edited 29th november, 1995