Inferno Fest 2024, Vol. 2: Four nights in Oslo and “a hell of a lot of bands”

Photo of Arthur Brown by Zach Johnson

Inferno Festival 2024 | 03.28–31.24 | Rockefeller Music Hall, Oslo, Norway

-of Montreal, “A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger”

In my previous article, I exhaustively outlined my travel experiences during our recent expedition to Oslo, where I covered my very first international metal festival (it was also my first trip overseas, for that matter). If you’ve always wanted to romp and stomp at one of the many legendary European rock and metal festivals but were intimidated by the amount of preparation involved, I recommend giving that article a read first.

Before getting into my experiences with this year’s lineup, it is important to note that Inferno Fest is not just a concert festival. In addition to the many, many shows held on all four nights of the fest, there is also a variety of daytime programming held in the conference rooms of the official hotel of the festival, the Hub. An art exhibition was held on the first afternoon, and subsequent days featured seminars and scholarly lectures examining the sociocultural impact of heavy metal (“Metal: A Genre Prone to Hate Speech?”; “Metal Community and Subcultures in Slovakia”; “Breaking Barriers: Women in Metal Music”).

There were organized hikes and sightseeing tours focused on the history of black metal as well as Oslo’s broader cultural heritage, including a tour tracing the painter Edvard Munch’s life in the city. There were also two film presentations included as part of the fest: the first was a screening of the 1922 silent film Nosferatu, featuring a live score performed by Void ov Voices, an experimental a cappella group formed by Mayhem frontman Attila Csiha. The second was a documentary (Tears in Battle/Hearts of Steel) covering the heavy metal band Manowar’s famous 2019 performance in Svalbard, a remote, glacier-filled archipelago located over 1,200 miles north of mainland Norway in the Arctic Circle.

A cavalcade of interesting people also led several workshops addressing topics of interest to both metal fans and musicians. Voice actor and musician Sebastian Croteau, widely known for his work in the video game industry, gave a seminar on extreme voice acting techniques (i.e., how to sound like a demon—he treated me to a demonstration outside the entrance of the hotel!). Post-metal musician Kathrine Shepherd, who records under the name Sylvaine, gave a seminar on harsh vocal techniques (“The Banshee Within”). The American actress Jessica Pimentel, known for her role as Maria Ruiz on Orange is the New Black, also gave a talk on her experiences in the film and music industry—she fronts a New York groove metal band called Alekhine’s Gun, and is also featured on some Brujeria songs!

There were also several talks that were specifically catered to music industry professionals (e.g., “Navigating Through the PR Landscape in 2024”; “Diversifying Revenue Streams: Beyond Music Sales”; “RL or AI: That Is the Question”, which was focused on how AI tools will affect album artwork designers). [Editor’s note: Any band who would use AI to create their album art in lieu of paying an actual artist or photographer can go straight to Hell, and I don’t mean in the cool, heavy metal sense of the word.—JG.] A digital version of the festival’s 2024 handbook is available online, which outlines the programming in detail, as well as the lineup for each night of the fest. Because I did not personally attend any of the conference activities, I will not describe them in detail, although many people I met told me they viewed Inferno as one of the most valuable annual networking events for those in the “allied professions” of the heavy music industry—musicians, graphic designers, photographers and videographers, industry professionals, tattoo artists, etc.

So without further ado, it’s time to get down to business and nerd out about metal!

Thursday, March 28th: A well-mannered evening of traditional music from the Nordic people

I checked into the Hub hotel around 3:00PM the day before the fest started (or 15:00 for our international friends; the 24-hour clock is standard in Norway, as it is in most of Europe). As I noted in my previous article, the jet lag was rather excruciating at first. I had been awake for almost 24 consecutive hours before arriving at the hotel, and because Oslo is 7 hours ahead of Central U.S. time, my sleep schedule was completely out of whack for the first several days of the trip. My first afternoon in Oslo was spent sleeping, getting curry from the food court behind the Rockefeller, exercising in the hotel gym, and then sleeping again.

I tend to be an earlier riser while traveling, which jet lag certainly factors into, so I found myself routinely waking up at 6:00AM or earlier most days I was in Oslo. Consequently, I tended to prioritize filling my morning and afternoons with as many tourist activities as possible, in the hopes that I would be tired enough to get a decent nap before the fest started.

Every day of the fest was scheduled similarly, with “pre-shows” beginning at one of the area nightclubs (Goldie, Vaterland, Rock In, Kniven), around 1:00PM or 2:00PM before the main acts kicked off at the Rockefeller at 4:30PM. Due to my compromised sleep schedule and deteriorating sanity, I was struggling enough to make it to the main acts of the fest, so I did not attend any of the pre-shows. That said, the first day’s pre-shows at Goldie featured three American death metal bands I was quite familiar with: Vomit Forth, 200 Stab Wounds, and Signs of the Swarm. (As a rule of thumb, you can usually identify which bands in the lineup are the Americans based on how violent their names are, whereas the Scandinavian ones usually have a name that sounds like a dungeon in a Medieval fantasy RPG.)

For my first pre-show tourist activity of the day, I decided to go on a sightseeing boat tour of the Oslofjord. I decided this spontaneously while out on a jog along the harbor, and multiple crew members of the boat mildly chastised me for wearing running shorts in the winter. Norway is famous for its harsh winters, although I was there in late March and did not personally find it to be any worse than it usually is in the Midwestern U.S. at the beginning of spring. While you will often find Americans shoveling their driveways wearing shorts and flip flops, based on my interactions, I got the impression that Norwegians took a highly pragmatic attitude towards weather-appropriate attire and generally viewed wearing anything less than pants, a stocking cap, and a parka as something only naive tourists do.

Following the boat tour, I rented a bicycle from one of the many Oslo Bysykkel docks throughout the city and rode to Frogner Park (i.e., Frognerparken), a large public space located in the Frogner borough in the central west end of Oslo. It is essentially Oslo’s equivalent of Forest Park in St. Louis, although not nearly as large. The park is famous for its many sculptures of naked men, women, and children in a variety of poses, the work of Norway’s preeminent sculptor, Gustav Vigeland. The central square of the park consists of a series of stone staircases leading to its main monuments: a monolith composed entirely of naked human figures, and a large stone circle with a male and female figure contained within (“the wheel of life”). Frognenparken also contains the Oslo Museum, which contains several free exhibits outlining the history of the city. For roughly three centuries, Oslo was known as Christiana, in honor of the Norwegian king Christian IV; it was renamed Oslo in 1925 as a tribute to its historic name during the medieval era.

After finishing my sightseeing for the day, I managed to get a small amount of rest at the hotel, which I followed up with yet another bowl of curry from the excellent food court behind the Rockefeller. From what I could tell, the most popular choices for fast casual food in Oslo were, in no particular order: sushi, tacos, curry, burgers, and the Norwegian version of pizza, which is more like a pastry with melted cheese and toppings, usually without tomato sauce. Consequently, those expecting every food stand in Norway to be slinging Lutefisk and boiled potatoes will be pleasantly surprised with their options for a meal on-the-go.

I arrived at the Rockefeller around 6:30PM, just in time to catch the tail end of a set from Orm, a Danish black metal band. The main acts of the fest were staggered, and as one band finished their set at the Rockefeller’s main stage, the next band would start a few minutes later at the John Dee, the much smaller stage and bar area next door. I quickly found the John Dee to be much too crowded for my preferences—my point of comparison for the crowd-to-space ratio would be a sold-out show at the Sinkhole in St. Louis—so I mostly spent my time inside the Rockefeller proper. The Rockefeller is a very spacious venue, which I would place somewhere between the Pageant and the Factory in St. Louis in terms of size. Like both of those venues, it has a large balcony area, and I found myself switching between the main floor and the balcony frequently.

A very notable feature of the Rockefeller: there were two bars on the ground floor and a bar on the balcony, and even the John Dee had a bar both inside and outside the staging area. The lines for drinks were never long, and although I heard many people from other parts of Europe complaining about the alcohol tax in Norway, I never paid more than about $12 USD for a beer, which is more or less what I’m used to at a place like the Pageant or the Factory. I found myself mostly sticking to the economically-priced Ringnes, which is basically the Norwegian equivalent of Budweiser, Yuengling, or Miller (although much better tasting, in my opinion!). The bartenders were also incredibly polite and friendly, which is compliment I would extend to the entire venue and fest staff as well.

Due to me arriving a few hours after the main fest sets had started, I missed a few of the opening bands: Konvent, a Danish sludge/doom metal band; and Keep of Kalessin, an “OG” Norwegian black metal band who—get this!—have something of a Viking theme to their music. Although I wasn’t there for their set, the surprise hit of the evening was, according to our videographer Zach Johnson, Nakkeknaekker, an incredibly energetic and charismatic death metal band from Denmark. They are early in their career, having only released two demos so far, so clearly a band to keep on your radar!

I would say the lineup for the first evening of Inferno, as with subsequent evenings, generally struck a good balance between older bands and newer ones. As is often the case in metal, some of the newer bands are still heavily rooted in the sound of the artists that were foundational to the genre in the ’80s and ’90s, and I would say the first evening mostly consisted of bands that were more “traditional” in that sense. Lineups in subsequent days offered a bit more variety and were consequently more fun for me, but it made sense that the first evening of this long-running Norwegian metal fest would skew more towards acts that are more overtly in the “trve kvlt” style of death and black metal.

Nordjevel, one of the main acts at the Rockefeller on the first night, certainly fits that category to a tee. Although they are a more recent band, having released their self-titled debut album in 2016, they certainly sound and look like they had just stepped out of the basement of Helvete in 1991, complete with the obligatory corpse paint and spiked gauntlets. I can’t deny the catchiness of their riffs and the energy of their performance (which even included pyrotechnics), and without a doubt they were a fun and terrifically Norwegian choice to kick the festivities off.

Before going further, one thing that will definitely catch an American off-guard at Norwegian metal fest is the unheard-of discipline and civility of the crowds. I saw little to no moshing, and not even much in the way of headbanging—barring a few major exceptions, nearly every band seemed to be greeted with a room full of crossed arms and thousand-yard stares. From speaking with Norwegians and other Europeans, Norway’s famously mannered approach to concert etiquette is an extension of the country’s general tendency towards introversion. I personally found it to be a refreshing change of pace, although it was rather uncanny for me, of all people, to be one of the most consistently animated and loud people at a metal show.

After Nordjevel, I caught a few songs from Crypta’s set at the John Dee stage. At the risk of being repetitive in my analysis, I would say that Crypta, a band from Brazil whose members are all women, are a rather traditional throwback to a particular style of extreme metal, here being the “blackened thrash” sound that bands like Sepultura and Sarcafago pioneered in Brazil in the ’80s. Though they are without a doubt highly energetic and charismatic in person, your mileage with them will highly vary depending on how much you enjoy the rather specific style of metal they are paying homage to. Although I certainly think there is a place for retro bands that harken back to traditional styles of rock and metal, I tend to feel a rather overwhelming ennui creeping in when seeing bands like this.

Despite my frustrations with the sometimes conservative nature of heavy metal, I have to admit that some things never go out of style. I will enthusiastically count Candlemass in that category, the next act on the Rockefeller stage after Crypta. This long-running Swedish band, who recently celebrated their 40th anniversary, is possibly the most world-renowned doom metal group after the style’s original trailblazers (i.e., Black Sabbath). Although seeing them live is not an especially rare occurrence—they tour quite frequently and tend to be a mainstay of European heavy metal fests—there is no denying the sheer fun and rockstar energy of this band, buoyed by the rapturous, soaring presence of vocalist Johan Längquist. After a day spent half-delirious from jet lag while trying to mentally convert kroner to U.S. dollars, I needed that traditional fist-pumping, rock and roll energy. (Three songs into their set, I went back to the hotel and fell asleep.)

The other two acts of the night, who I was clearly unconscious for, were San Diego’s most famous (and possibly only?) deathgrind band, Cattle Decapitation, and Kampfar, another prominent figure of early Norwegian black metal. I saw Cattle Decap for the first time when they were touring with Amon Amarth in fall 2022, and they always put on an amazing show. A bit oddly, they were scheduled to play on the much smaller John Dee stage, which caused the room to become so packed that the photographers were forced to wrap up early.

Friday, March 29th: The God of Hellfire vs. the Undertaker

In what was to become a distressingly regular occurrence during the trip, I woke up around 3:00AM on Friday, and, unable to fall back asleep, decided to while away the hours until the hotel’s breakfast bar opened at 7:30, the daily event that served as the linchpin of my time in Oslo. I went for a foggy, early morning run along the Oslo harbor, and nearly traumatized a fellow jogger by waving a friendly greeting to them. (According to the experts I consulted, greeting a complete stranger is something of a foreign concept in Norway.)

After breakfast, I decided to visit Akershus, the old medieval fortress located on the outskirts of central Oslo. During the Nazi occupation of Norway (1940-1945), the fortress was used as a prison and execution site for Norwegian resistance fighters. Today, it houses the Norwegian Resistance Museum, which documents the horrors of occupation and the eventual liberation of the Norwegian people. I cannot do a topic of such gravity justice in a single paragraph, but suffice it to say, visiting the museum is a rewarding yet emotionally draining experience, one that placed me in a highly contemplative mood the rest of the day.

Although none of the acts booked at Inferno Fest (to my knowledge) have been guilty of this, there is no denying that White supremacist and neo-Nazi groups have used black metal as a means of recruitment for many years. Although this phenomenon is hardly exclusive to black metal, or even extreme music in general, it’s impossible to deny this association, and the important philosophical questions it raises about whether one can truly enjoy extreme art with a clean conscience. Again, this is a serious topic worthy of discussion and one I cannot adequately address in a single article.

I recall a conversation I had with a member of a St. Louis black metal band who happened to be playing a tour date in Stockholm. He told me he went out of his way to take selfies at the grave of Jon Nödtveidt, the founder of the band Dissection, who served a seven year prison sentence for being an accessory to a homophobic murder committed in 1997 and died by suicide a few years after his release from prison. When I asked him about his apparent hero worship of a convicted murderer, his response was that he “doesn’t get into the politics” of it, effectively dismissing a hate crime that resulted in someone’s death as a mere trivia question.

That kind of apathetic, juvenile nihilism is quite common among black metal enthusiasts, and some may argue it is essentially built into the experience. Settling the eternal debate of “separating the art from the artist” is beyond the scope of this article—sadly, there will always be people who will reduce an entire country’s history to a single piece of its popular culture, who will travel overseas and gain absolutely zero insights or personal development from the experience. Also, their music really, really sucks.

For the second day of the fest onward, I decided to skip the John Dee acts and stay entirely within my comfort zone at the Rockefeller. The first act of the evening was (with one major exception) the act I was most excited for in the entire fest: the inimitable Arthur Brown. Brown is widely known for his antics as a theatrical “shock rocker,” predating acts like Alice Cooper by years and Marilyn Manson by decades.

I have to confess that, like many, I did not know any of Arthur Brown’s material besides his iconic hit “Fire.” In its current incarnation, Arthur Brown’s band consists of three significantly younger men who are more than capable of matching his oddball energy. The music was semi-improvised, meandering, and absolutely not metal, and I loved it for it. Against all logic, at the age of 81, Arthur Brown is still wearing a flaming headdress and declaring himself “the god of Hellfire.” He is truly an inspiration to us all.

The next band on the Rockefeller stage was Vltimas (pronounced “Ultimas,” except it is too kvlt for the letter “U”), a supergroup consisting of original Morbid Angel vocalist David Vincent, original Cryptopsy drummer Flo Mounier, and guitarist Rune Eriksen, who played for bands like Mayhem and Aura Noir. True to its members’ pedigrees, the band does sound instrumentally like a technical-minded Florida death metal band, with the major catch being that David Vincent now dresses like the protagonist of the 2005 video game Darkwatch and sort of sounds like the guy from Volbeat but with a hernia. I overheard some people discussing how the vocal style wasn’t to their taste at the breakfast bar the next day, but because death metal is inherently goofy, I did not find the goofiness of a sixty-something guy dressed as the Undertaker talking about “canceling weakness” or whatever to be that much of a deviation from the norm.

The next act was a polarizing one, to put it mildly. Carpathian Forest is, like many of the other acts at Inferno this year, considered one of the mainstays of Norwegian black metal, having arrived on the scene a few years after the most famous bands had been established. Their major innovation was implementing elements of hard rock and punk into their music, a style that is commonly referred to as “black ‘n’ roll.” As their song titles and themes suggest, they have a rather odd sense of humor, to say the least.

The set began and ended with guys in hoodies and masks awkwardly bearing the Norwegian flag, and handing out miniature flags to the crowd. (I couldn’t help but feel how unbearably uncool it would be for any American band to do something similar.) Throughout the set, we were treated to a PowerPoint of extremely weird images of the singer, Roger Rasmussen (AKA “Nattefrost”), including him coughing up blood, being intubated, and being surrounded by COPD medication. I wish I could provide even a shred of context for this, although my guess was that he, at some point, was dealing with a serious medical issue and was inspired to do a cryptic and gross photo shoot based on those experiences.

He complained about having to speak in English and greeted the non-Norwegians in the audience accordingly. (“Welcome to Norway, I hope you freeze to death.”) A few songs into their set, he started ranting about how all of his friends had committed suicide, before the band launched into a cover of “All My Friends Are Dead” by the famous Oslo hard rock group Turbonegro (who are something like the Insane Clown Posse of Norway in terms of their cult following), which he dueted with his twelve-year-old son. Yeah, it was weird, but I can’t deny I was entertained. Natteforst is also apparently a Marilyn Manson-type in that many people in attendance had rather nauseating rumors and anecdotes about his personal life to share.

As a nice palette cleanser to that ick, the last act of the night I was able to catch was Solstafir. I have been a fan of this Icelandic post-rock band for a very long time. (Despite having a population of less than 400,000 people, Iceland has a disproportionately large concentration of some of the best musicians in the world.) Solstafir’s music is poignant, beautiful, and thoughtful, much like watching the aurora borealis from your balcony in Reykjavik, I imagine. (One song into their set, I went back to the hotel and fell asleep.)

At the risk of sounding repetitive, the headliner of the evening, Gorgoroth, was another “traditional” Norwegian black metal band. Again, I was asleep by the time they played, although Zach did tell me their performance was of a piece with the general dryness we observed from many of the Norwegian bands, i.e., you are more likely to see them standing relatively in place without a lot of movement, energy, or banter, in contrast to the “rockstar energy” of a Swedish band like Candlemass. I will admit this is ultimately a stylistic preference, and because Gorgoroth and similar bands are consistently booked at international metal fests, I am optimistic I will have a chance to actually see them someday when I am able to stay awake past 10:00PM. | David Von Nordheim

Nights three and four of the fest will be covered in a later article – stay tuned!

0:00 –  0:35 – Keep of Kalessin

0:36 –  0:39 – Cattle Decapitation

0:40 – 0:45 – Konvent

0:46 – 1:03 – Crypta

1:04 – 1:27 – Candlemass

1:28 – 1:56 – Nakkeknaekker

1:57 – 2:13 – Nordjevel

2:14 – 2:40 – Arthur Brown

2:41 – 3:08 – Vltimas

3:09 – 4:00 – Carpathian Forest

4:01 – 5:57 – Solstafir

5:58 – 7:00 – Gorgoroth