Kråkesølv, Donkeyboy, Juliette Lewis, Ost & Kjex, Altaar, Kvelertak, Frøy Aagre, Karpe Diem, Enslaved, Teenage Fanclub @ Slottsfjell Festival
Tønsberg, Norway 16th-17th July 2010

Tonne One: Saturday (Kråkesølv, Donkeyboy, Juliette Lewis, Ost & Kjex)

Idyllic, historical, hilly, and a pier somewhat trampled by rich Oslo’ites as it is, Tønsberg seems to source many of Norway’s most known musicians, [...]

My Norwegian sucks. And those dialects, wow. But I’ve played Norwegian scrabble enough to know all the two-three letter Norwegian words that count as points. Putting this newly acquired skill to the test, I’m slowly comprehending this particular band’s lyrical charm, as the opening track, “MÅ ME STÅ” consists of this:
EG STÅR PÅ
EG STÅR AV
EG [...]

Finally I get to write about a band nobody’s gunna argue over, to you it’s either kronky senseless racket or, if you’re WIRE magazine-savvy, order determinable on plainly abnormal chaospheres. To those who find pleasure in dissecting or gauging how a modern piece abtractifies or collates pieces of those weird bands in past eras, say [...]

Split albums are a must in almost every hardcore band’s catalogue, and every hardcore geek has at least once bought a split 7″ or 12″ just for rare songs of one adored band, and then found the other side to be another casualty of bad pairing. When No Idea released Hot Water Music’s split, no [...]

Martha 3:14 recounts something about the impossibility of love for another unless one understands and accepts an original love, that is, love sent from above through the death and life of God’s son, JC. But if one doesn’t accept the original love, the Bible makes you believe that you’ll never fully have the capacity to [...]

“If you get bitten by a snake, make sure you bring the snake to the medic so they know what kind it is.”
-Second Lt. Svein Arne Henriksen
We’re on a bus transferring us from Oslo Gardemoen to the nearby military airport, seated in the back with about 40 Norwegian and Latvian military dudes. What a shock [...]

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I’m from the jungle — so floating epic hymns emanating from Aryan, Christian Northerners not only make me a bit scared, but also glad to not be Jewish. Think World War II. Under the scrutiny of Austrian-Jewish intellectuals outta the Frankfurt school, any sweeping, transcendentalising musics that attempted to lift emotions, Romanticism of the artist, Wagner, Stravinsky, would [...]

After consuming a kilo of heroin and laxatives that fateful day circa 2004, leaving Bergen on my first ever tour of Norway with a freshly acquired album Riot on an Empty Street playing on headphones, I was fuzzily convinced this album was written for me. Love lost, love forgotten, love-longing for a Norwegian boy, love-longing [...]

Name me one Norwegian nineties superstar or group that hasn’t turned into a zombie. Darkthrone doesn’t count.

This is the bravest Norwegian album I’ve heard all year, and Øystein Sandsdalen has humbled us into knowing that he’s a force to be reckoned with. Rather than be sidelined as Serena Maneesh’s second guitarist, or having taken the route so many bands in the same milieu have, that is, blatantly ripping Serena (which of [...]