True Norwegian Black Metal-the book
The final result of documentary photographer,Peter Beste’s 7 years of sweat and blood will be released on 15th May this year.Peter Beste along with editor Johan Kugelburg, has packed a violent, brutal and extreme musical sub-culture by the name of Black Metal into 208 pages,in its true bloody,gored,evil form.
With written contributions of “Metalion”(Jon “Metalion” Kristiansen), the publisher of Norway’s Authentic Black Metal magazine ”Slayer” and photographs,artifacts etc…from his personal archives,the book promises to deliver intense experience not only to the blackened hearts of Black Metal but also to non-Black Metal fans,clearly portraying one of the world’s most secretive yet powerful and dark musical sub-cultures.
In the video below,Peter Beste proves to the outside world that there’s a lot more than corpse paint,inverted crucifixes and Nickle spikes to Black Metal.In fact it clears certain conspiracies created by well known giants in the heavy music industry regarding Satanists being posers. For example, statements made by Alice Cooper, in Sam Dunn’s “Metal-A Headbanger’s Journey” creates a very juvenile impression about Black Metal to the outside world.With his 7 years of experience in this dark,secretive,underground community,Beste provides photographic proof that Cooper’s statements are not universal.In his own words; “To me Gorgoroth is the epidemy of true,necro Norwegian black metal,with their spikes,their make up and not only that,their personal lives and the things they’ve done um….They walk the walk and they talk the talk….they may take the makeup off,but there’s much beyond that.”
Another important fact, Beste points out is how the roots of Commercialization have penetrated even this most impenetrable sub-culture,and still how bands like Gorgoroth and Emperor are able to prevail as the very few artistes to become succesful even amidst direct disapproval and condemnation.
“Every band tries to have an image so they can be memorable in the eyes of the public and sell records.Sometimes that image is created by the people at the record company.Sometimes the image is created by the band itself because it’s authentic and I find that to be a lot more convincing and honest and also be more successful.”
You can head over to Peter Beste’s official website where you can view some very powerful images of ”True Norwegian Black Metal”, bizarre as it may sound,alongside photos from Beste’s next musical interest “Hard core Huston Rap Culture”
May 7th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
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