Saor, live at Inferno Fest 2024. Photo by Zach Johnson.
Inferno Festival 2024 | March 28th – 31st | Rockefeller Music Hall, Oslo, Norway
We have finally reached the grand finale of our multi-part coverage of Inferno Fest 2024, a diplomatic mission to push the boundaries of the Arts STL’s heavy metal journalism far beyond the confines of our usual comfort zones of Pop’s and Red Flag. This article is a direct follow-up to my previous article summarizing the first two nights of Inferno Fest, as well as our companion piece outlining travel tips for those interested in attending Inferno in the future, so be sure to check those out as well for some additional context.
With that said, it’s time to slip on the battle vest and grab an ice-cold Ringnes for one final trip to the Rockefeller.
Saturday, March 30th: The one with Dimmu Borgir
Friday was a huge night for me, having rediscovered the joys of 8 consecutive hours of sleep thanks in large part to melatonin. (As with any medication, I realize melatonin does not work for everyone, and in some cases may have some unpleasant side effects, although I did find it extremely helpful in normalizing my sleep schedule while in Norway.)
Feeling well-rested and having enjoyed a hearty meal of avocado toast and eggs at the hotel’s sublime breakfast buffet, I decided to spend my afternoon at the Edvard Munch Museum, located near the Oslo harbor. It is difficult to underestimate the influence of Munch, Norway’s most celebrated painter, on not only the country’s arts and culture but on its national character as a whole. The Munch Museum, with its unique staggered appearance, is dedicated not only to displaying the artist’s famous works, but also documenting his life in Oslo and the technical details of how he created his artwork, which spanned multiple media.
Munch’s most well-known paintings are famous for their portrayals of melancholia, despair, and isolation. A common theme in his work was a profound yearning for love and human companionship contrasted with a gnawing anxiety that these relationships may ultimately leave one bitterly disappointed and alone. This is exemplified in Munch’s painting Love and Pain, which depicts a man and woman in a lover’s embrace as the woman seemingly prepares to bite into the man’s neck, literally draining him of his essence. There is, of course, Munch’s most renowned painting, The Scream, the inspiration for which came when, as Munch was partaking in an evening stroll along the Oslo fjord, he was suddenly gripped with a nameless, existential terror he could not articulate into words.
The Scream is on display in the Munch Museum, although for preservation purposes, the museum has an elaborate shutter system in place to prevent the original painting from being exposed to light for longer than a few minutes. There is a separate viewing room that contains not only the world-famous Scream painting, but also the same work in different mediums, such as a black-and-white sketch. Whichever version of the Scream is on display rotates every 10 minutes or so, with the other versions being blocked from view behind a shutter. Needless to say, the room becomes quite packed when the “original” Scream is visible!
As was evident in the programming for Inferno Fest, which included a sightseeing tour of some of the artist’s favorite Oslo haunts, Munch is well-loved by the heavy metal community in Norway. Much like black metal itself, Munch’s art exemplifies the delightful paradox of Norwegian culture. How does a country famous for its brutal winters, whose great national artist produced works so naked in their portrayals of despair, whose most iconic contribution to rock and roll culture revolved around teenage arsonists destroying medieval churches, also consistently rank as one of the happiest countries in the world? I can’t help but wonder whether the almost cartoonish embrace of darkness in some Norwegian art also indicates a willingness to engage with the unpleasant realities of the human experience, leading to a greater appreciation of the simple pleasures of life and resilience against misfortunes when they do occur.
Anyways, that’s enough philosophizing for the time being. Walk with me through the clouds of Marlboro smoke and the food trucks serving Norway’s very Norwegian approach to pizza as we enter the Rockefeller for Night 3 of Inferno Fest. As tends to be the case for any multi-day music festival, the lineups substantially ramped up in their excitement factor on each night and Saturday’s lineup was arguably the best so far. As on the previous day, I decided to only attend the sets at the Rockefeller’s main hall instead of the much-smaller side stage, the John Dee, although there were interesting acts playing both stages throughout the evening.
The first act of the evening was Saor, a band which, like many black metal projects, revolves around a single person. Scottish musician Andy Marshall handles every aspect of writing, recording, and producing his albums, including playing every instrument, and then recruits a group of other musicians to fill out the lineup when performing live. This is often considered a major “flex” among black metal enthusiasts—and truly, could any other music subculture besides black metal give rise to such an aggressively independent approach to creating music? I have to confess that I did not catch Saor’s set, but I do enjoy their (his?) albums a lot.
The next act on the Rockefeller stage was Orbit Culture, a Swedish band who sound like what deathcore would be if it pulled more from Scandinavian death metal instead of its American equivalent. Orbit Culture have earned a reputation for their reliably high energy live performances, and we will certainly be seeing more of them stateside in the years to come—they were recently tapped as one of the opening acts for Slipknot’s upcoming US tour, in addition to headlining an upcoming US tour of their own.
After Orbit Culture was Me and That Man, a Gothic country music project featuring Behemoth’s Adam Darski, better known by his stage name Nergal. This being the only country/folk act in the lineup served as a refreshing palette cleanser, as did other non-metal acts throughout the fest, such as Arthur Brown on the previous night. I spotted Nergal casually hanging out at the bar at one point after their set, without an onslaught of fans swarming him, which may be credited to the more relaxed attitude that Europeans have about heavy metal celebrity culture. (The famous Norwegian introversion might have something to do with it as well).
The final two acts of the evening—Borknagar and Dimmu Borgir—were certainly the heavy hitters among black metal devotees, with Dimmu likely being the heaviest hitter in terms of crossover appeal and international renown. Inferno Fest was actually founded by a member of Borknagar (Jens Ryland), although Borknagar does not play Inferno every year, so this was still a special occasion for many in the audience. I have always felt that Borknagar is the kind of band one gets into when they have already listened to the most famous acts in the genre and are looking for something a bit more polished and mature. Their music is nowhere near as flamboyant as the most famous names in the genre, but the musicianship and songwriting prowess is undeniable. So while perhaps not as visually stimulating as spiked gauntlets and pyrotechnics, it made for a surprisingly grounded penultimate performance of the evening.
The Rockefeller was filled to capacity for the final act of the evening, clearly the most anticipated of the fest. Although one would imagine seeing Dimmu Borgir, who are famously from Oslo, perform in Oslo, would not be that rare of an event, the band has been in a state of semi-hiatus since 2018 and have only made the occasional one-off fest appearance in recent years. Their appearance at Inferno 2024 had all the markings of a “special set,” with the band reaching deep into their back catalog to play some rarely played tunes from their earliest days, and even some former members taking to the stage at certain points.
“They played ‘The Insight and the Catharsis’ with their old bassist Vortex, keyboardist Mustis, and drummer Tjodalv and it was nothing short of magical,” said Leighton, a Rhode Islander and Dimmu Borgir scholar I befriended in Oslo. “Easily one of their best tracks. Vortex and Mustis were the secret ingredients to their success back in the early ‘00s. I knew that they were going to do something special for that show, and getting those guys back on stage, even for one song, made being a sardine in the crowd worth it!”
It was hard to describe how iconic it felt to be in the heart of Oslo, hearing Dimmu Borgir, a band so quintessential to introducing me to the weird and wonderful world of black metal in my formative years, surrounded by the new friends I had made throughout the previous three nights. I had to send a recording to my mom and remind her of the time she almost grounded me for buying a Dimmu Borgir album (Death Cult Armageddon), which prominently features a pentagram on the CD art, from the Slackers in Belleville, IL. Reflecting on the interconnectedness of the world, the friendships I had made and will continue to make through this particular pastime, I felt truly at peace. Takk, Dimmu Borgir!
Sunday, April 1st: Humppa!
On Sunday afternoon I visited the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History (i.e., Norsk Folkemuseum). The museum is located on Bygdøy, a peninsula in western Oslo that contains several cultural attractions, as well as forested areas that make it a popular destination for nature walks. Although I did not have a chance to visit it on this trip, Bygdøy is also where the famous Kon-Tiki Museum is located, which houses the titular wooden ship that Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl used to sail from Peru to Polynesia in 1947.
The Folkemuseum is one of the world’s oldest “open-air museums,” housing a collection of authentic Norwegian buildings representing various periods of the country’s architectural history. Over time these buildings were dismantled, transported across the country, and painstakingly reassembled within the museum’s sprawling campus. Visitors to the museum can walk among these miniature villages and learn about the different periods of Norwegian history on display, a collection that includes everything from farmhouses from the late Middle Ages to tenement buildings and gas stations from the early 20th Century.
The most famous landmark in the Folkemuseum is the Gol stave church, one of many beautiful medieval “stave churches” that can be found throughout Norway. Most metal nerds cannot resist seeing these sites of cultural significance without making an off-handed joke about arson. I will say that the duality of seeing this beautiful piece of architecture in the afternoon, defying the elements to stand for over eight centuries, to then go to a music festival where people are selling records with album covers prominently featuring a stave church being burned, was certainly, well, thought-provoking.
On the last night of Inferno, the first two acts on the Rockefeller stage were Misþyrming, who hail from Reykjavík, Iceland’s largest city (their name roughly translates to “mistreatment” in English). Although I did not arrive in time to see them play, I think they have one of the best discographies of any modern black metal band. Probably as a quirk of living in a country full of more volcanoes and glaciers than people, I have always found Icelandic metal bands to nail that uncanny, existential atmosphere that draws many people to black metal in the first place, largely avoiding the played-out anti-religious and pagan themes that have been done to death at this point. They were followed by the British band Winterfylleth, who, yes, are paganism-themed, and despite my complaints in the previous sentence, are also very good!
The first act I caught on Sunday was Cynic, one of the many iconic bands that emerged from the Florida death metal scene of the early ’90s. Along with contemporaries like Atheist and Death, Cynic was famous for incorporating elements of progressive rock and jazz composition into their music, making them much closer spiritually to a King Crimson than a Cannibal Corpse. Cynic only released a single album in the ’90s, the cult classic Focus, although they would later reunite 15 years later and have released three albums since. To commemorate their debut album’s 30th anniversary, they have been playing the entirety of Focus on their most recent tour.
Cynic had the impeccable concentration, posture, and headless guitars that usually signal to the audience, “oh, I’m about to see some jazzy, proggy shit go down!” I know this approach to heavy music is not to everyone’s tastes, but much like seeing Arthur Brown on the second night of Inferno, I found the departure from the usual metal shenanigans highly refreshing. I was grateful for the opportunity to finally see them; they had recently co-headlined a US tour with Atheist but the closest date to us in St. Louis was at the Bottleneck in Lawrence, KS. (Note to Season of Mist and other tour organizers: Off Broadway in St. Louis is the perfect spot for that kind of tour!)
The penultimate act of the fest was the one that I was anticipating the most: Finntroll, the greatest troll-themed polka metal band that Helsinki has ever produced. (Okay, it’s humppa, not polka, but close enough.) To me and many others, Finntroll represents the very essence of what makes Scandinavian metal so appealing: take the unique musical history of the region, launder that through the nastiness of black and death metal, and then tie it together a cultural touchstone (in this case, trolls) that makes it immediately, undeniably Scandinavian. I simply adore it.
Finnish bands in general are notorious for their goofy theatricality (after all, it is the country that gave us H.I.M.) and Finntroll is certainly no exception. Every member of the band was wearing rubber troll ears; the guitarist was wearing a top hat and vest with no shirt, Slash-style; the singer stalked around the stage and his presence was really the very embodiment of a troll. This was probably the one band at the fest, more than any other that, through sheer force of personality, permeated through the legendary Norwegian introversion. (Believe it or not, there was even a mosh pit!) It was truly a fantastic note to go out on, and whenever I reflect on my time at Inferno 2024, I know it will be their performance that ultimately stands out.
The very final act of the fest was Taake, who are one of the more critically acclaimed bands from the “second wave” of Norwegian black metal (i.e., they emerged a few years after bands like Emperor and Mayhem had become famous/notorious). At that point in the evening, I was pretty exhausted from four consecutive days of tourism by day and heavy metal by night, so I opted to skip Taake and go for a beer with one of the friends I made at the fest instead. Frankly, I was also put-off by the knowledge that the singer for Taake is well-known for doing and saying stupid Nazi bullshit. When you spend enough time at a black metal festival, you start to realize that there are people in this world who act like the popularity of Korn and Slipknot is the greatest atrocity ever inflicted upon mankind, but they will enthusiastically defend Nazi bullshit. I frankly have neither the time or patience for any of that, so I went and had a beer instead!
The last night of Inferno was not the end of my Scandinavian expedition—the next afternoon, I left for Goteborg, the second-largest city in Sweden after Stockholm and a beautiful destination that is as worthy of documentation as Oslo. (Read my first article in the series for some more insights into visiting Goteborg.) Having had the time to document and reflect on my experiences in Norway, I feel like I have emerged on the other side a bit wiser, a bit more worldly, and much more appreciative of the things that are important in life. In short, it was everything I could have hoped for from my first trip overseas.
As anyone who has read these articles can tell, I had some strong reactions to certain “ideologies” that are inherently present, if mostly implicit, at an event like this. I want to reiterate that while I am not shy about my own opinions and beliefs, I was treated with nothing but kindness and consideration by the event staff, the festival organizers, and the other attendees. I am immensely grateful to Inferno and its organizers for giving people like us a destination and an excuse to step outside of our own corners and bond with like-minded individuals from across the world. I met many great friends over the course of my stay in Oslo and I hope to meet many of them again at either a future Inferno or another one of Europe’s many legendary heavy metal festivals. Farvel for nå, og takk!
Note: I would like to thank the organizer of Inferno Fest, Runar Pettersen, for his help in providing our team access to the fest; Zach Johnson for his tireless efforts at recording and editing video for the fest’s many performances, and for being an excellent travel buddy in general; and to our editor-in-chief Jason Green, for his help with what turned out to be a much larger undertaking than anything I’ve submitted to the site previously! | David Von Nordheim
