A Life In A Church: The Roadburn Report.
By Kjetil Nernes
I wonder how much alcohol is permitted before an event evolves into some sort of viking orgy? Or a cowboy saloon where chairs fly through the air while the honky tonk pianist keeps on playing? Or a suburb with kid gangs in track suits with knives mugging poor plebeians for a trifle? How much beer before you start leering over at the neighbour tent at the festival camping, just waiting for the first and best chance to smash somebody’s face in?
I wonder how many litres of beer before a festival is turned into a battlefield…
I have attended rock and metal festivals since the nineties. There is no other place other than a metal festival where you can get a hearty hug from a big guy with tribal face tattoos and a Mayhem jacket. There’s no other place you can steer through a crowd to get a pint without being heckled by kids near the counter. There’s no other place it smells so much of farts and stale beer and bad breaths and sincere “hygge”.
I am well aware that this partly derives from the fact that rock/metal has lost its pomp. The drugs are different from a mainstream event. Or even altogether lacking. And a few beers usually don’t turn the masses into hooligans. The attendees are older and have more money at Europe’s many metalfests. The Altamont days are gone and most bands – including the black metal variety– meet at a consensual middle of the road. In 2025 what’s happening is somewhere else. Mostly in hip-hop and its subgenres. The rock and metal festivals are dad rock arenas where your “alternative” uncle Jim can feel free after a year at the office. The danger is long gone. Look at the indie bands, they hide their innocence behind veils of irony and stupid jokes. Tough tattoos apart, they often remind me of some of my old torpedo friends in Haugesund who are now in psych wards. Bloated from the recovery drugs, harmless like Roky Erickson. A hollow stare that will not cover the emptiness inside. The joker frontman, the incognito band…
Oh god, I fucking hate indie.
Fortunately there are a few - and I really mean a few – festivals that hover over the generic and fill the dad rock void with some meaningful music. Roadburn could have easily gone for the moderate, but has since the pandemic challenged itself and its audience by recreating the good old heavy. The plethora of metal bands have not entirely been swapped but fused with a healthy dose of experimental, electronic or rap or whatever else that kicks the ass. The festival leads the way into the future and it’s a brave and fun progression. A lot of old-timers in the metal community don’t understand. I asked Mayhem vocalist Attila to join me for Backxwash last year. He wasn’t interested.
Thursday:
Oranssi Pazuzu incorporates all these things to conjure up a type of metal music which carves out the path to the future. A psychedelic future that is. Oranssi Pazuzu is one of the very few new metal bands to actually recreate the old metal of the 80s and 90s and turn it into something fresh. It sounds like a soundtrack to another dimension but it also sounds like the northern winds and snow. Or the sonic equivalent of a rusty Russian shadow fleet vessel crushing its way past Helsinki through a frozen Baltic sea. The five shadows on stage could be anybody. The backline would suit Jack White’s band. This is not another boring metal show.
The Bug is another peer at the apex of his career leading us like Virgil through the hellish chambers of music. No artistic output – arts, literature, films – has smashed my soul to smithereens the way The Bug and his two frontmen did at Roadburn a few years ago. An absolute cleansing, a musical catharsis. I wanted to go straight home and burn my metal collection. Nothing heavy has made any sense ever since. I wrote The Bug on Instagram and said just that. I got fire emojis in return. ‘Fire’ is my favourite Bug album. I knew I was in for something different this time. At the Main Stage, The Bug is so heavy I see speckles of dust precipitate in an apocalyptic red dawn.
At The Body with Dis Fig an old auntie in a pastel-coloured flowery shirt spends most of the set trying to take a selfie of her own beer with the band playing in the background. She is seriously fiddling with the phone in one hand and the beer in the other. Roadburn is thankfully not the local satanist coven having a meeting in a cave in southern France. I like the familial aspect. I had forgotten how great The Body is. With Dis Fig on board they rise to the occasion. The last time I saw The Body was on a support tour for them in the UK many years ago. I had just two days ahead of the tour been told by doctors to come to the hospital immediately for emergency treatment. I had cancer in my mouth. I did the tour instead. We played those shows like they were our last.
Friday:
After the bass heavy success of Thursday things are moving slowly Friday. Midwife and Vyva Melinkolya barely touch us with feather strokes. I drift, I close my eyes. Buffalo Nichols takes me on a Jim Jarmusch-ride through Neil Young-guitar wonderland. I drift, we drift, drifting, dreaming... Dis Fig solo in the Hall Of Fame adds to the dreamy phantasmagorical afternoon. The sun is shining outside. I might be hungover.
I feel the insides of me move when Chris Spencer manhandles his guitar so it twangs. It’s like watching someone being assaulted on a dark street corner with NYC as a backdrop. Not 40s film noir but gritty rough 90s. Human Impact makes the impact the band name implies. But once I stop drifting half the audience is gone. I have seen the same thing with Unsane several times. They always start a bit slow, slightly unfocused, kind of out of tune. But then after a while you realise YOU are the punching bag in this scenario and you are up for a proper pummelling. The sound improves, the songs get better, the groove tightens… the people leave. Noise rock must be the most underappreciated musical genre. The furthest away from top twenty you can possibly get.
Division ten in the world of rock’n’roll.
Human Impact is so tight Gnod+White Hills feels like a Rorschach blotch smeared across the room. I try to a wake up to the sonic mental hospital called Thou on the Main Stage. I fly over the cuccoo’s nest. I’m in a taxi home.
Saturday:
Saturday’s lineup is strong and kicks off early with Witch Club Satan at one. They take black metal by the horns and brings it to its logical conclusion, a theatrical spectacle. It is metal for those not really into metal. A display of Untrue Norwegian Black Metal, a discipline for years spearheaded by Satyricon. Despite - or maybe because of - its apostate nature Witch Club Satan grabs us by the balls and puts on a no-holds-barred performance far more exhaustive than any other show this weekend. I find myself smiling. I’m impressed.
On the other side of the spectrum is Moor Mother. Moor Mother is a spiritual channeler, her moody brooding music delivers something of importance. She is a harbinger of truths, full of teeth and spite and gusto. I sometimes think of her as an Afro-American sociopolitical Current 93. I am not sure why, but I know I get the same hallucinatory sensation listening to those two bands on headphones while taking a walk through the woods at home. Moor Mother and Sumac at the Main Stage puts me through a wringer. It becomes apparent Sumac has a different story to tell. The two don’t add up. What could be a full 100 ends up at 50.
Roadburn 2025’s big surprise comes with an abbreviation. I found out about OXN from its Lankum link but also from a porn site. Not Pornhub, I’d probably get Scooter or David Guetta pumping dumb trance all over DJ Fuckboy. No, a real porn site with actual emotion and progressive ideas. Much like OXN. The connection to Lankum is obvious in the sonic output, beautiful darkness sweeps over the listener. Not much can be deeper and more mysterious than folk music. Not much can be heavier. ’O Death’ sets the tone and by the second song I know I’m up for something special. I have goosebumps for the entire five minutes of the beautiful ’The Trees They Grow High’. The Scott Walker finale almost brings tears to my eyes. This is my highlight of Roadburn 2025.
Near midnight the ghosts of indie music are returning and I feel a bit queasy. I wonder why Chat Pile is headlining the festival, or at least the Saturday of the festival. The room is as full as I can ever remember. Similar to Chelsea Wolfe last year. Chat Pile is some sort of noise rock version of Viagra Boys. The people love it. I go buy beers and do a shot of Jack Daniel’s on the way. The curious mix of the Bavaria beer on tap and the cheap American whiskey tastes like piss. Chat Pile keeps on pushing, they tell stories, the people rave. The beer is stale, it tastes like piss, not the verbal expression but the actual taste of urine.
Sunday:
As I check out of the hotel Sunday morning I realise my musical adventure is nearly over. I only have a couple of acts left on my list. Insect Ark is perfect at three o’clock. A wonderful dark somber atmosphere lay its mild hand over all of us in the Next Room. The expanded trio version with vocals to boot works well. It’s the best I’ve seen them.
I nearly give Swans’ lap steel giant Kristof Hahn a heart attack crashing into him in the backstage area. I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience but was a little taken by his uneasiness. I see Swans’ tour manager is looking over his shoulder too, fidgeting. The Michael Gira show is packed and should probably have been in a bigger room. I see some people leaving shaking their heads. I sneak in side-stage halfway through and see the elephant in the room is the singer himself. In a world that seems to be in peril, with strange weather, wars, economic instability and horrible politics, Roadburn has provided four days of hope and a feeling of communal congruity and stability in an otherwise unbalanced world. The disgraceful display of schoolyard bullying we see from some of our world leaders is something we should adamantly take a stance against and Michael Gira abusing his bandmate and crew over mere trifles before an open mic is nothing but an embarrassment. It should not be tolerated.
I pick up my bag and head for the train station. Frente Abierto’s metal flamenco (!) personally didn’t make the impact like OXN did but there’s a similarity in the output. It’s soul music knee-deep in folklore and generations of grief and love and heartfelt emotion. It’s real. Frente Abierto’s visuals show stark gruesome snippets of victims of the Spanish civil war, an atrocity that bereaved the world of one of its finest poets Federico Garcia Lorca. Very few can put words to love and tragedy like Lorca. This one goes out to you, Michael Gira:
Cada canción
es un remanso
del amor.
Cada lucero,
un remanso
del tiempo.
Un nudo
del tiempo.
Y cada suspiro
un remanso
del grito
(Every song
is the remains
of love.
Every light
the remains
of time.
A knot of time.
And every sigh
the remains
of a cry)
Kjetil is the vocalist, guitarist and songwriter of the Norwegian band Årabrot.
Listen to them on Bandcamp or Spotify.
A collaborative album between Årabrot and Hifiklub came out in April via Pelagic Records.
The new Årabrot single is called ‘Satantango’ and you can see the video here.
Catch Årabrot on stage:
May 9th Desertfest Oslo, Rockefeller, Norway
May 16th Desertfest London, Underworld, UK
June 20th Hellfest, Clisson, France
August 27th Arena, Vienna, Austria (with Goat and Graveyard)
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