It was one of those last warm and sunny days of late summer here in Karlstad. I was full of pleasantness after a great day talking, laughing, ravioling and sipping wine with my cousin Līga when I finally got to one of the local film festivals that are sometimes held here. Excited to get some culture in my system I met my classmate Joakim just to discover that we kinda missed almost the whole thing. So we ended up hanging around on a beautiful piece of the earth near the river (google tells me it's called promontory) and in a moment of total honesty I confessed that I do not care about music.
Yes, I said that. And most of the time I really mean it. I know it is super stylish these days to identify with your favorite artists, but mine just happen to be writing books not singing. I like the sound of the silence as much as I like music. Anyways - to not care about music was something my new friend found utterly wrong and as a music loving person was dedicated to fix. And I must admit he succeeded a little.
Without a further ado I would like to introduce you to the great Swedish MIXTAPE I got as a result of my inability to keep embarrassing and totally non-fancy secrets to myself:
Because of the lovely fact that I have two Swedish friends here and Linnea (apart from being my second half of The Octopus) is also highly artsy, the mixtape was the beginning of getting to know music of my Erasmus homeland even more. It is funny how you can kinda puke in your mouth every time you hear something remotely lovey-dovey or too sentimental and then fall in love with something like this:
or this:
or even this!
For me the music I got to know along with my friends is now loaded with memories of the fun times we had here together. I might even get resistant to say I don't care about music. As much as I still like the empty spaces that silence gives for your own imagination to float around, I find myself loving the wonderful things that can fill those spaces too. It is kinda the same but very different.
If you feel like I am missing something else that totally rocks Swedish music scene and is important, feel free to share it to fix this wrongdoing! ;)
So long, long time ago I told you guys to ask me questions about what interests you about my Swedish life or anything else. Gatis asked me if Swedes appreciate and honor the metal music (and there was a question about Moomin trolls too, of course, but for that I have not much to say except that I actually met a person who thought Moomin trolls are depressive. He hadn't read the actual thing, just seen the animation film, so I guess that explains it.)*
Anyways, I have to mention right away that talking about metal or hardcore or death-like kinda music is my thing the same way I can remember the difference between pork and beef and all the other big animal meat. It just sounds like any other noise to me. Fortunately I have a Swedish friend Joakim who is very passionate about music and was very kind to answer my questions.
So here goes with our highly sophisticated Facebook interview!
E: Do swedes appreciate and honor the metal music?
J: Oh, definitely. It's quite a wide question to ask but if you look at the scene of Death Metal, in terms of originality I'd say Sweden is quite a leading country, especially when it comes to melodic Death. (bands like: Dark Tranquility, At The gates). The Black Metal scene pretty much belongs to the Norwegians, but generally i'd say the Death scene is ours. Some of my friends are involved in arranging the yearly festival Gothenburg Deathfest.
E: Oh, that sounds good! Scary for me, but my friend would love it! When is the deathfest happening?
J: Early in October I believe. Gothenburg is actually quite prominent for just the melodic death-scene and Stockholm for the more “raw” stuff. Bands like: Entombed (especially the old stuff), At The Gates, Nihilist, Insision. Dark Tranquillity, Dismember, Grave, The Haunted, In Flames (before they went big).
E: Oh, okay. But it's still hardly alternative, right? I mean, not that much people listens to that?
J: There are quite a few underground clubs to be found with small gigs being held in foggy “dark end of the street”-kind of bars. I think you can find at least 2-3 black-death metal gigs a week in both Gothenburg and Stockholm. Of course it's a slim genre you know but that goes pretty for any country with this music. You won't find it on the toplists. I mean bands like In Flames, which might be the biggest and most famous Swedish “death”-band, they have developed into something more mainstream and radio-friendly. Whilst bands like Nihilist went the opposite way, being a really early Death-group who only existed for a short while and really only made a few demos. Nihilist is considered to be like cult-heroes today and many of their former members play in more known bands today like Nicke Andersson of The Hellacopters.
E: Ohhhh, that's a good fact to mention! "the death scene is ours". Nice. Worldwide?
J: Well no, but Sweden had a prominent impact on the scene. But, y see Norway is in general a lot more christian than we are like stronger believers. (I dunno how it is right now today) but Christianity has been quite an important part in their schooling, they have to sing christian songs and stuff. I think that's why the black metal scene grew big, as a reaction to all the sort of forced Christianity. The Swedish death metal scene is more like a development from the earlier hardcore punk scene and a way to like make the music more raw and extreme i suppose. That's a sidetrack but what's really cool is the huge hardcore scene that developed in the upper northern Swedish towns of Umeå and Luleå (cities smaller than Karlstad) in the late 80's -early 90's.
E: Why is that cool?
J: Because a lot of those band became well-known, even internationally, most prominently Refused and Raised Fist. Such a small area of Sweden, we're talking like maybe a total local-population of like less than 100.000 people, for a few years really had like a world-leading era of hardcore-punk.
E: What could have been the cause of such cool outburst of this genre there?
Today they are to quite prominent student-cities, there's a lot of education going on there now. And perhaps a lot of that started in the early 90's there so a lot of young people got together, and then there's also have been quite a big nest for the Social Democrats party, with a lot of industrial working class up there... and our economy was a little shaky there in the late 80's-early 90's. This is just a speculation from my side, but not completely out of the blue as the hardcore-punk scene was very left-wing and straight-edge was a big thing too. I think the social situation locally created the music.
I myself am a great appreciator of the “heavier”, kinda Black Sabbath-inspired, and more “atmospheric” so-called; Doom(Drone/Sludge/Stoner)-metal, it's a kind of newly established “genre” of metal, and in my opinion Sweden right now is a strong producer for this kind of “era” with bands like: Cult Of Luna, Kongh, Ocean Chief, Moloken.
And now it is time for some examples in here!
This, in my friends words, is an early death metal. The second one, I mean, the first one, if you actually know this stuff, you'd have to know what that is, right?
The death metal of Entombed and Nihilist (linked above) has developed into a song that sounds so animalish-sweat like that blogger actually does not allow me to link it here (for real!) so - you can find it following this link.
This was it about the death-like music scene but I actually have had the pleasure to get a wonderful (and much more lively!) mix tape of the best of Swedish pop-rock music, so I might just tell you about that awesomeness too some day! Till the next time!
*I wrote this in English, cause I thought this could be interesting for maybe more than just my Latvian readers. In fact, I can imagine precisely two people that might not be horrified and/or bored by reading this! :D
