1349 @ Hulen

On Friday night I went to see a black metal band called 1349 (and why are they called that, children? Well, 1349 was the year that the plague wiped out 2/3 of Norway's population - fun factoid for you). I went rather early because I wanted to make sure I got a good spot, but as it transpired, I could have turned up three hours later than I did and I'd still have been at the front. Made friends with a nice German guy though, and chatted a bit to some rather inebriated Norwegians.

I'd been standing in the front row for about 15 minutes (after the initial 3 hour wait when there was only three of us there, so we found a table and sat) when one of the stage hands brought out a bucket of water and plonked it on the ground in front of me. Realising what it was for, I turned to the German guy and said grimly 'If you like your eyebrows, this is probably a bad place to stand'. Sure enough, another ten minutes passed, and Frost wandered through the crowd carrying a flame torch. We watched expectantly as he meandered up the steps onto the stage and peered into a cup which had been placed on top of one of the speakers. After a moment of contemplation he took a mouthful, turned to face us, and:

It is rather difficult to take a decent picture of someone when they're in grave danger of setting your hair on fire. That flame shot right over my head, so I was ducking when I took the photo and therefore not really paying attention to where I was pointing the lens!

After that piece of fun, which resulted in myself and a couple other people being covered in whatever flammable liquid he was using/spit and therefore having to avoid smokers for the rest of the evening, the show got started.

Singer Ravn

I'll spare you all the pain of having to watch a video of them, because they're certainly an acquired taste, but the show was good fun. I feel the sound could have been a bit better, but I was in the sort of mood where loud and slightly discordant worked just fine, and I bobbed around quite happily in a not particularly black metal sort of way (my brain hurts if I headbang too much).

It finally let out at about 1am, which meant we ended up walking most of the way back home, and then doing our best to avoid the night fare man on the tram (60kr - expensive!). I saw him grin as we flung ourselves off at our stop though, because he knew that we knew fine well we would have been the next people he collected money from.