Stylistically Incipit Satan would prove something of a one-off, and following its release the band would undergo a period of significant reinvention, with Infernus taking a backseat in the creative process and Tormentor departing altogether, apparently due to a conflict of personalities with bassist King, among other things. It was King, in fact, who would now take over writing duties along with new drummer Einar “Kvitrafn” Selvik. Allowing two newer members to take the creative reins was a surprising move—and one that would have some implications in later years—but it is one that Infernus stands by today.
“It was because they were high on spirits [sic],” he explains. “They wrote music and so did I, but I did not feel comfortable delivering my material at that time. I think that it’s the ultimate duty of someone writing music to know your limits…. So I didn’t feel I could stand behind what I was writing at that time, and coincidentally that fell into a situation where those people could deliver. As it had been before, only this time I let others contribute more material, which again isn’t a big deal as long as the albums can deliver…. It’s never important to have complete control, as long as you know the result is going to be good.”
King and Kvitrafn’s compositions would see the light of day on 2003’s Twilight of the Idols (In Conspiracy with Satan), an album which (aside from the now-traditional nods to Nietzsche and Bathory in the title) bore little mark of Infernus, aside from his characteristic guitar playing. An extremely vicious-sounding record, Twilight practically tears from the speakers the second it starts, pushing everything into a wall of noise, before spreading its wings, retaining a single-minded approach while nonetheless gradually revealing the subtleties within the assault, thanks partly to its unusually clear production. The album also highlighted King’s distinctive writing style, something which may owe much to his unusual musical background.
“Everyone was into metal when I was a kid,” explains King, another generally polite but serious individual whose lightning-fast speech and high-strung manner set him apart from both Infernus and Gaahl. “When I got older I got tired of metal and started getting into jazz, but noisier stuff, like avant-garde jazz. When I was twenty-two, twenty-three I was offered to do my first Gorgoroth album and that’s how I got into that sort of music. I already knew people in the scene, but I was not that interested … and I’m still not that interested actually. There are a few good bands around, but as a movement I don’t see myself as part of it.
“Twilight was my first attempt to try and create an album and I’m still proud of it. I realized that because I had all this background in jazz and skills musically… I mean I liked the expression, the rawness, the atmosphere, but I also saw how many other directions it could take, that most of the musicians were not able to take. [I wouldn’t say] it’s a jazz influence, it’s about how you are able to use harmonics and how you are able to create moves and I still think there’s lots of unexplored fields and moves that can be put in this sort of music, to make things progress. Because you should never repeat yourself, it just gets boring for you. It’s important to change, develop, and go somewhere. We had to take the band somewhere from the past though, so you also have these old Gorgoroth things in there too—I had to learn all the old songs to play live as well. But I never think when I make music, it’s more about getting the album to work, it’s not like a conscious choice, it happens by itself.”
Twilight was well received by both press and fans, many of whom hailed it as a return to form, and the album put the band on the road to even greater success. As things transpired, however, a single show the following year would give an even bigger boost to the band’s profile.
In February 2004 Gorgoroth traveled to Kraków in Poland for what is now an infamous performance, little knowing that it would boost the band’s profile immeasurably. Taking place at a television studio known as Studio Krzemionki and recorded by national TV station TVP, the event was arranged by native label Metal Mind, who already had a history of filming extreme metal bands at the location for DVD release. An unusually elaborate production, the show made for an impressively morbid spectacle, featuring four naked and hooded mock-crucified models (two male, two female), burning torches, barbed wire, banners depicting the Sigil of Baphomet, and a large amount of animal blood and sheep heads.
The show would probably have made an impact on its own, but was quickly elevated into something more significant thanks to the massive furor it caused within Poland, with heavy press coverage in the days that followed. More pressing than the contrived shock of the mainstream media was the fact that the authorities were contacted even before the show came to a close. The result was the arrival of the police, who confiscated the tapes of the performance the very same night, leading to a full criminal investigation, with the band and promoters accused of causing religious offense as well as mistreating animals.
The latter charge had few legs to stand on—no pun intended—and the band quickly distanced themselves from claims of animal cruelty (particularly Gaahl, who later explained that he rarely eats meat for animal welfare reasons), explaining that the heads were bought from a butcher, and not the result of some unusually large ritual slaughter. The blasphemy charges were taken rather more seriously, however, with the heavily Roman Catholic population taking particular offense due to Kraków’s status as the home city of then-Pope John Paul II. Incredibly, the band were ultimately forced to appear in court (not for the last time), though they escaped any punishment due to their ignorance of Polish law; the promoter was less lucky, receiving a heavy fine. On the plus side, the tapes would eventually be returned to Metal Mind, and ultimately released on DVD under the title Black Mass Kraków 2004.
“Basically I think it was just some woodworkers, carpenters working there who really had a relatively good day at work, putting together parts of wood for props,” Infernus told me in an interview for my fanzine Crypt shortly after the trial. “One clever mind of them probably thought that this should be an opportunity to earn some easy cash, so found some antique paragraph of blasphemy law that you probably have in England and we have in Norway, that they actually don’t use anymore, and referred to that law and called in the local police. So I think it was originally economically motivated … by these fifty-year-old men, who felt that we were stepping upon their religious feelings. Which of course is nonsense. Then of course later on it became something which the public dived into, the local bishops made comments on it and so on. I think in the beginning we were not intending to make such a hassle about it, nor would the Catholic church, from their point of view, see any benefit in making so much hassle about it.”
News of the incident spread worldwide and marked the beginning of a run of controversy that would ensure Gorgoroth’s reputation as one of the most notorious metal bands on the planet. With the Kraków incident still fresh in people’s minds, Gaahl found himself in court again, accused of assaulting and torturing a man in his house over a period of six hours. The trial received a great deal of attention, due both to Gaahl’s near-celebrity status and the rather sensationalist nature of the case, which included, among other things, an allegation that Gaahl had given the man in question a cup to bleed into, so that the singer, or the victim (the story varies), could drink the blood, a charge Gaahl denied by explaining that he was merely wishing to keep blood off his carpet. Gaahl was sentenced to both a hefty fine and jail time, partly because—as the media soon discovered—this was not his first interaction with the penal system, the vocalist having served several previous sentences for similarly prolonged and extreme uses of violence, reportedly causing long-term injuries in at least one of those involved.
Like other controversial black metal figures before him, Gaahl began to attain something of a cult status, his seemingly mythic qualities reinforced by a brief but austere appearance in the widely viewed documentary film Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (2005). Another U.S. documentary, True Norwegian Black Metal (2007), added further fuel to the fire, playing heavily on Gaahl’s
intimidating interview manner, while also including an inaccurate narration that described him living in seclusion (when in fact he had a flat in Bergen), and saying that as a child he had only one classmate, who later killed himself (in fact he had attended a regular school, apparently the same one as bandmate Infernus). “The school story is completely out,” Gaahl laughs. “They tied four stories into one, four different stories with four different people.”
Gaahl’s memorable appearances would paint him as a powerful and intense individual, boasting not only charisma but a dark and otherworldly personality. This is not an inaccurate portrayal, as Gaahl certainly is an unusual individual with a lot of presence. What such appearances don’t convey is his surprising warmth and good humor; in fact, of all the people interviewed in this book, probably none laughed as frequently as Gaahl. Indeed, when speaking to the man himself it can be hard to picture the extreme and violent person described in these trials.
“I have extreme differences,” he replies thoughtfully when I put this to him. “I despise violence. I can’t even watch action films. But when it’s needed, it’s needed. Since I react and trust so much in my own feelings and emotions, I guess that’s one of the reasons I can seem so different. I think that’s the answer.”
Gaahl maintains that far from being an aggressor, his acts of violence have only occurred where justified. As he told UK newspaper The Observer, “Everything deals with respect… The way I think of it is that you have to punish … or teach… anyone that crosses your borders so that they won’t do it again.” He also asserted during our interview his belief that he (along with other members of the black metal scene) has been unfairly persecuted by the Norwegian authorities due to the nature of their beliefs and music.
“Varg would never have been sentenced to twenty-one years if not,” he asserts calmly. “As a young man he would have received twelve or eight years. I don’t think I would have been sentenced at all [for the assaults], I would have gone free, especially the last situation. When someone comes with a weapon to your door, it would be hard to persuade the police that, ‘Oh, I didn’t think of using the weapon!’ [But] of course they played on all the clichés… If you saw his first explanation—which of course the police ‘lost’—I apparently had a stone altar in my living room with twelve disciples in a circle, standing round, and we were going to sacrifice him. Of course this [statement] had to be destroyed as it would have killed the whole [case for the prosecution], but that was one of the first rumors that went round from the supposed witness. It was more of a charade than anything—my underground friends discovered before the trial who sent him.”
As Gaahl explains, the incident was not an isolated event, but linked to his previous incarceration. “The two biggest sentences I received are linked to each other,” he sighs, “but there’s other ones that are separate and are just ordinary fights in a way. I’ve been to prison four times and I have been sentenced about fourteen times.”
It seems safe to say that such a number would be considered fairly high by most people, even by Norwegian black metal standards. “Naaaaah,” he laughs. “People run to the police whenever I do anything. I’ve always been under attack. The thing is, if you continue to win, people have a tendency to go to the police. I think it would be quite a normal amount in an area like this … it probably deals with a lot of my friends in a way, and also the surroundings. There’s this idea that people should not be different. [Though] it might be one of the reasons, I don’t think black metal has so much to do with it. Maybe long hair.”
As it turns out, much of Gaahl’s conflicts seem to stem from his earlier years and his self-confessed involvement in gang activity, rather than any feuds relating to the black metal scene. Such personal conflicts also appear to have played a large role in the controversial views he held in his youth, views he expressed in a now-infamous 1995 interview in Polish zine Holocaust that has recently resurfaced. In this short but memorable feature, Gaahl expressed admiration for Hitler and the ancient Roman emperors, and stated, “There are always someone to kill or curse, especially subhumans (nigers, mulattoes, muslims and others!) [sic].”
In a 2008 interview with Götz Kühnemund of German Rock Hard magazine, Gaahl explained how such a mindset had been built up, and ultimately, it seems, destroyed: “In the early ’90s, there were all these different youth gangs in Norway and one thing led to another. I was involved in gang fights and had false friends … there was no political disposition—not with me nor any of my friends. But you had to profess allegiance to a certain group if you wanted to defend yourself and not get your ass kicked … I’ve always had friends from different cultural backgrounds, hence I was exposed to different ways of thinking from the get-go. That’s probably why I’ve never developed a deep set of political beliefs. But there have definitely been changes and an evolution in my thinking. I’m a different person today.”
“I guess it had a lot to do with friends and surroundings,” he explained in a more recent interview with me. “There were a lot of wars going on and it probably put more into it than was needed. Because it was not like one had this as a big agenda, but of course one speaks against the one that you confront, so it’s easy to get into the topic in an interview…. I did have friends with different heritage, so it’s not like it was one-dimensional in that sense, but there were different groups and you might focus more on what is your enemy at that point and that’s the way things are easily put out into the world. That’s maybe why I’m more known for Gorgoroth, because it is attacking someone, attacking a point of view. War gets attention.”
Gaahl was not the only one whose appearances in court attached greater infamy to Gorgoroth. Sometime later Infernus and a friend were hit by rape allegations relating to an incident at his property in 2004, where a woman claimed to have been punched and raped by the two men. Both Infernus and his codefendant were found guilty in a 2005 trial, but proclaimed their innocence and appealed the sentence, claiming the sex was consensual, the result being that Infernus’ conviction was changed to “gross negligent rape”—the judgment essentially being that he did not take part in any rape but should have been aware of it and prevented it. Ultimately he served 120 days for this and illegal possession of firearms.
By now the mounting notoriety of the group was proving too much for Nuclear Blast, and the label dropped the band in late 2004, something of a relief to both parties, it seems.
“I think both we, and Nuclear Blast, are celebrating every day we are not having to do anything together,” Infernus told Crypt shortly after. “They basically gave us hassle all the time. They were standing in our way. It culminated in the last era, but it was more a mentality problem of some of the people working there. It wasn’t any big thing they did, but the point is that they didn’t do anything to support us, as they should have done. They also gave us some hassle due to some of the mongose [sic] moral views upon things which they, first of all, shouldn’t have any views upon.”
The stresses surrounding the unit appear to have had a far-from-detrimental effect on the band’s creativity, with 2006 seeing the release, via Regain Records, of one of the group’s finest efforts yet, an album entitled Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam, Latin for (with a slight translation error) “For the Greater Glory of Satan.” Featuring Frost on session drums, with all music composed by King and all lyrics written by Gaahl, the album perfected the approach introduced on Twilight, retaining the wall-of-noise style while making a noticeably greater use of dynamics.
Ad Majorem was also notable for being the first Gorgoroth album sung entirely in English, although the contents of the songs have remained somewhat suppressed since Gorgoroth keep their lyrics unpublished, even going so far as to legally challenge fan sites that list them.
“In a way I think it was more of an ego trip ’cos I wanted to separate Trelldom and the other bands I work with,” explains Gaahl of the choice to deviate from his mother tongue. “I think it is also to help me separate, since lyrically I have defini
tely made the Gorgoroth lyrics more into Trelldom lyrics, dealing with a lot of the same topics. It deals with a lot of runic and heathenistic topics, it deals with everything that can be … I probably should release these lyrics sometime, as I am very satisfied. Even ‘Carving a Giant’ … I would have to write a book if I were to describe all the connections in that song. It deals with the mystical and sacred realm of myself. I don’t even know how to describe the [use of the word] ‘giant’ without feeling that I didn’t succeed in putting the whole aspect of the ‘giant’ there.”
Whether or not listeners were able to entirely comprehend the messages communicated by Gaahl, Ad Majorem was a hit with fans and critics, and the band established themselves as one of a very small number of black metal acts capable of achieving commercial success without watering down their sound or message. Indeed, all three members claimed to be dedicated Satanists, albeit with three very different interpretations of what that entailed.
Despite this common ground, all was not well within the group. Even in 2005, when I first met the band in person, the distance between the three men was striking, with Infernus at one point making the surprising admission that he had no idea of his bandmates’ personal music tastes. Perhaps inevitably—given such strong, eccentric personalities—the cracks were beginning to form and the three soon found themselves embroiled in a lengthy internal battle, one sparked when Gaahl and King moved to “fire” Infernus from the band in late 2007. Citing his lack of creative input and a disrespectful manner toward session members and other creative partners, the band also stated in interviews that the move had been prompted by Infernus’ support of the pro-hard-drugs “Never Stop the Madness” campaign and recent rape allegations. However, Gaahl confirms that such problems predated the release of Ad Majorem and indeed caused much deliberation regarding the release of that album.
“It was a really, really difficult decision to release it as a Gorgoroth album, but due to time and haste we decided to do it anyway,” he explains. “We were actually in contact with the record label with the concerns around it. I regret more the mixing than the actual release though, because I definitely like Infernus’ touch to the guitar, and if we had to use another guitarist it wouldn’t have the same edge to it. Maybe it would be better … but it wouldn’t be the same.”
Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult Page 35