Maskinskog

I'm playing black metal music again. The band I played in during my high school years is reunited and has been developing and rehearsing stuff since April 2017. In January 2019 we are going to the studio. I'm so excited I can hardly stand still!

Maskinskog consists of the following members:
Lars Blikstad Galaaen - drums
Ulrik Borg - bass guitar
Steffen Bengtson Fujita Hasleberg - lead guitar
Gunnar Høgstmyr (myself) - vocals

We even have a logo, designed by the great Peter Horneland, whom I have written about in an earlier blogpost.

As much as I like reading about the Viking Age (or perhaps exactly for that reason), I am thoroughly sick and tired of norsecore. If I hear another metal song about bloody vikings and fjords and mountains and longships and valkyries, I fear I am going to destroy something. Even the pretend-Satanism of the early scene is preferable to the mangled folk tones and long-disproven 19th century Romantic myths of heroic blonde berserker fighters in horned helmets. So we are not bringing axes on stage, we are not wearing chainmail, we are not waving flags.

There should be a place in black metal music for the things we are not proud of, for doubt and ambivalence - for aggression, yes, of course, but also isolation, confusion and dodgy liminal states. More importantly, there should be a place for experimentation, for making mistakes and learning from them. Otherwise we are stuck repeating the 1990's forever and nobody wants that.

Expect updates as soon as we have the songs recorded.