EUROPE - OSLO

We awake to light but relentless snow. Well, Charlie and Mack awoke to the dust-eater promoter naked and doing stretches, first. What a country.

As soon as we set off, the van makes a constant EEE squeaking noise from what sounds like the back tire (we fear), the one we replaced after the blow out. The heating is not working up front either so the windshield is completely steamed up. Unable to see the road, Simon and Jack wipe the window with their hands. I curse the burst open cracks and gaps in my beaten boots - the van is very, very cold. Slayer is playing.

We drive around a bit and it seems it’s the brakes making the sound. We’ll be passing the Cliff Burton Death Zone and Roadside Memorial on our way out of Stockholm tomorrow. I put my seatbelt on. I don’t want to die in Sweden, I want to die in Tahiti.

Simon calls to the recesses of the van, ‘Morbid Breath: is Max Burger a good breakfast option?’ MB unanimously confirm it is. Through cold mist and snow, we drive to Max Burger blasting Disfear and Bathory as we journey in the snowscape. One Rode to Max Burger Bay. Once we get the obligatory heavy shit out the way, the entire van is singing Ricky Martin and Shania Twain. I get the chicken burger this time, pretty damn good.

We roll into sunny but chilly Oslo and pull up at Blitz, a squat institution. It’s an hour ’til it opens so we sit in the van. A gaunt, weathered, and ghost-white middle aged lady knocks on the window and asks what we’re doing outside. We tell her we’re playing tonite and her demeanour shifts, she tells us to load in.

 We follow Grandma Heroin into a huge windowless hall with a giant stage, dozens of anarchist banners and murals hanging from the walls, and the sour, familiar reek of last nite’s beer and fags clinging to the atmosphere. I stand in the vast empty space, proud that I will play somewhere that that fucking eternal nerd Varg Vikernes once wanted to blow up.

Strange squat kids run around doing odd jobs and speaking elvish to each other, all awkward and smoking strong, delicious hash. We watch tonite’s headliner Lowest Creature soundcheck. Just like Morbid Breath, they’re ridiculously tight, tone-wise and in playing and song writing. Fucking Swedes man. I don’t wanna whine, it’s up to yourself to get better and dedicate the time to develop and hone, but Jesus the fucking conditions of London - rehearsal prices, job schedule demands, etc. - do not lend themselves to band development.

Well, everyone’s got an excuse. And I like to think any sloppiness on my part just counts for charm. Repulsion were sloppy for chrissakes. But goddamn if I can’t but help feel like a slob next to these Scandinavians. I’ll just stand here getting drunk and contact hash-high, conversing in my head before grabbing one of these guys by the Aryan locks and yelling, LISTEN OLAF I WOULD PRACTICE MORE BUT REHEARSAL ROOMS ARE AT CRACK COCAINE PRICES, AND ALSO PRACTICING ISN’T ROCK ’N’ ROLL.

I do have a theory though. Masters and master imitators the Swedes are, they don’t always have the accidental, surprise element that gives things that extra ingredient. Everything they do is of the utmost competence, skill and execution. But often something is missing. That human spontaneity. You lose all those quirks and flakes of personality when you can play the shit out of your instrument like it’s the third language you speak. D- beat, for instance, was a great accident. Or like how Amebix wanted to sound like Killing Joke but had none of the skill or resources to do so and in their cider ’n’ glue attempts/ interpretations/distortions, they somehow spawned this moors-mutant thing instead, giving rise to crust. I don’t know, I’m probably just bitter I’ll never have the patience to hone my craft or whateverthefuck.

Courtesy of sound tech and inveterate hashhead Bjorn, Blitz has some of the absolute best sound I’ve ever had, on stage and off. After sound check, we hang around the hall, now dark and empty, stinking of hash, while GISM’s demented guttural warblings blast thru the PA. No one is here, the Norwegians pre-gaming at home since going out is so expensive, and Covid-uncertainty still a very real hangover. We wait on pizzas, of which I eat far too much.

Eventually, people trickle into the hall, some rockers our age and older, but many just youths of the squat, seeing what’s happening tonite. Some of them look to be teenagers. A very young, very thin, underdressed girl comes up to us to ask if the paper sign taped to her top is visible enough. The sign is in Norwegian but we can make out ‘Tourette's’. ‘I need to warn people becuz I keep freaking them out. OOHSHT! That means cheese.’ She waves her hands in the air and prances off. Cheese it is. Her and other Children of the Squat frolic and cavort about the hall.

I am in the full, ogre/oaf-like grips of a carbcoma as we take the stage. We grind slowly thru the set. We are all cold, tired, uncomfortable and stuffed full of pizza. The good sound from soundcheck has disappeared, I can't hear enough drums or bass, and only bits of Mack. A few kids dance, some even perform curious Norwegian interpretations of hardcore dancing, and everyone applauses us after every song.

After the show, Lowest Creature’s singer/chief anthropologist relays to us his many observations of Stockholm folk. ‘Don’t take any shit off them and their snooty attitude’ seems to be the gist. He even has a special term/categorisation for this sector of Swede, but I forget it now. Lowest Creature head out to see what Friday nitelife central Oslo has to offer (the squat’s outer neighbourhood is almost silent out on the street). I’m tempted to join them but know we’ve got an early start tomorrow and I got such back pains from sleeping on floors and sitting weird in the van, I just want to lie flat and crash out.