Very excited to play Roadburn next year.
In a genre where «special» sets always means playing decades old records, makes it extra special that Roadburn wanted a special set consisting of a record made last year. A dream come true for yours truely for sure.
«An important thing to happen I feel, where a truly innovative and ground-breaking Norwegian Black Metal band DHG/Dødheimsgard Official gets booked to Roadburn. A critical tipping point perhaps for the genre if I may be so bold, and in my humble opinion.
Roadburn is well known for booking bands that push the boundaries of heavy music and their tagline, «Redefining Heaviness», amplifies their intent to do so. Yes we have seen minor and trad Black Metal bands or new fangled ones claiming to be, of all shapes and sizes play Roadburn before. Sometimes to my ears it’s felt that, some of those newer Black Metal acts are uninformed, newb outsiders, co-opting or «culturally appropriating» the genre for want of a talking point, rather than actual genre-shifting music. It’s all good. New stuff has to come out and be championed and Roadburn is essential for that. However, I cannot think of another true Norwegian Black Metal band that has had such a real and definite influential impact on the genre, being able to sit beside an act like Michael Gira of Swans or Steve Von Till from Neurosis and command the same artistic weight and merit as DHG.
All the while, throughout the years, Yusaf Parvez and his musicians (rather than characters and meme-geists that some of the old 90s Norwegian BM media fame seekers have become), refuse to become a tribute act resting on the laurels of an increasingly irrelevant past (ahem Dimmu Borgir etc). My criteria for using that term, «true Black Metal» about DHG is of course my own and there are those purists who will refuse to accept that the genre can ever be more than a very restrictive definition. It’s a «one false move and you’re out of the club» scenario for them. Fine, it’s your cake and you can eat it. However, as someone who has briefly been in Dødheimsgard, come into it from the outside and lived to tell the tale, I know without a doubt that the band has been and always will be from that true source. A listen to the album that they have been booked to play, Black Medium Current, and why it is such an important album for them to play in this context, reveals that they remain true to that spirit of individualism that made the scene what it was at the time (yes Kronet Til Konge was actually as late as 1995, but who with any little sense doesn’t put that album in the pantheon of the greats?).
As Kerrang said, they are «still throttling into the unhinged unknown» or Blabbermouth about them: «just as they have done since the end of the 20th century, Norway’s premier eccentrics are dealing with bigger ideas and grander ambitions than most». Black Medium Current does the unthinkable, it actually musically innovates and updates the genre in 2024. Not from the place of someone who wasn’t there in the early 90s but from one of the bands who defined it. That’s part of why the album has been on so many top 10 lists I reckon and surprisingly why the old guard have taken it to their hearts, perhaps including re-appraising the bands past, now they can see the red line through their creative arc? Of course you can ignore Black Medium Current and what it means. Stay hung up on the blueprint of spikes and leather your whole life if you want. I shamelessly love retro Metal. Nothing wrong with cosplay. But an Instagram camping essentials kit list does not a hiker make!
If we go back, it’s hard to even explain what a seismic impact Satanic Art and 666 International had upon their release, but there was palpable shock, awe and I would say a nervousness within the bands of their national scene. Like all truly great art it was then controversial and met with some kick back from the stuck in the mud traditionalist international audiences (if we think about the tour after 666 with Dimmu Borgir for example). Ulver, I would say, left the genre behind so long ago and if we take the example of say Enslaved, they have brought elements of retro Prog into their work, but isn’t it merely swapping one retro element for another (and I say this from a place of admiration for their work) rather than changing the game? I think about Deathcrush and the Conrad Schnitzler intro – Silvester Anfang and where we can see that influence of ideas better now in a Norwegian band of this era than in DHG? Fearlessness about genre clashing and embracing non traditional cultural musical references (ie things that are not acceptable or deemed cool) are what for me opens intellectual dialogue in a more effortless way than gestures about an artistic aesthetic or political ideology, no matter how genuine or worthy. Even scientific studies say music transcends cultural boundaries, louder than politics. But there too, unafraid to stare cancel culture in the face, DHG have played a controversial festival like Steelfest and taken the discussion head-on. As someone so rightfully commented on Roadburn’s page: «they have replied and explained why they played there. They are not a right wing band, whether or not one agrees with playing that fest or not seems besides the point.»
Vicotnik, of Indian descent, was wearing colourful makeup, sequined top and a skirt in 1999, shooting you with a wink and a plastic toy gun, and yet it’s only now that a dialogue about race, sexuality and/or gender in Black Metal is somehow ultra-modern?!
Perhaps I’m a grumpy old gatekeeper or still a niave fanboy without a clue, but I think it’s a brave and bold booking and I just wanted to express my excitement. To Walter and Becky and Yusaf I tip my hat. I have never hidden my unbridled enthusiasm for both Roadburn and DHG. Now two worlds collide in a way that makes my own sonic universe sit right. ALL WITHIN, WE WILL WIN!»
