Product Description

"When we’re on the road, all we watch is VBS, and our favorite series is Norwegian Black Metal." (Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters) Documentary photographer Peter Beste has spent the last five years working in the milieu of the Norwegian black metal scene. This scene, with its notorious events of murder, church arson, and self-mythology, is absolutely sealed to outsiders. The international black metal fan base is one of the most devoted, fanatical, and proprietary in the world. Beste’s access and insight into this world is unprecedented and has yielded an amazing photographic journey, along with a very popular documentary series on VBS.tv, also available on YouTube. Beste, together with Johan Kugelberg, noted writer, editor, and collector of documentary photography, has brought the images into a hermeneutic narrative that makes for a compelling experience along the lines of Anders Petersen’s Café Lehmitz, Ed Van Der Elsken’s Love on the Left Bank, or William Klein’s Life Is Good and Good for You in New York.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34236 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

About the Author
Peter Beste has had solo exhibitions in London, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Osaka, Austin, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Oslo, and Bergen. His work has appeared in Vice, Spin, The Fader, American Photo, The Face, London Observer, Dazed & Confused, Graphic, XXL, Mass Appeal, Revolver, and many others.

Customer Reviews

A Big Book for Extreme Music
First off, what a deal Amazon has on this. Pretty much half off what a person would pay in the store.

Anyway, like the other reviews here, this book is no slouch. It's meant for the coffee table and if you don't have a coffee table then it garners an extra seat on the couch. When people visit they have to sit next to the large front cover of Nattefrost holding up his inverted crucifix. It's definitely a conversation starter.

I've been a fan of this sub-genre of metal for a while now. I'm not going to lie and say that I've liked it or even knew about the "second wave" when it was happening. I was happily listening to my death, thrash, and classic metal albums at the time. But, when I finally did discover it, I found a new form of extreme music that paralleled my tastes at the time (around 1996).

Pros: Peter Beste's True Norwegian Black Metal captures some of the most memorable photos of the scene throughout the years. My favorites are in here and it's nice to have them on hand and just sit and look at the various photos in detail. There is additional information and old reviews/interviews with the Norwegian black metal alumni near the back as well as a tribute to ex-Mayhem vocalist "Dead". I was expecting to see Dead's body (Dawn of the Black Hearts) but alas, it was nowhere to be found. I'm neither disappointed or elated.

Cons: There is an index with page numbers and names of individuals and/or bands, but a lot of good the page numbers do when the pages have no numbers printed on them! That's probably my only gripe.

Objectively, looking on the scene then and now, my opinion remains slightly mixed on the scene's ideals, chest thumping, and rebellion. On one hand, some of the pictures such as Kvitrafn of Wardruna standing in Bergen is one of the most sociological telling pictures of the 20th century. The look on the woman's face passing on the left side is priceless next to Kvitrafn's grim countenance. The lone pictures of single individuals amidst forested backgrounds, vast plains, or in front of large mountain ranges hints at an even more darker, and to a certain extent, the lonely place where these musicians dwell in their minds and hearts. Cut off from the world and insignificant when compared with the majesty of nature, they emit a feeling of solitude which only the strong-willed are able to withstand.

In other parts of the book though, we see the less majestic to the point of the absurd and just plain sad. Nattefrost seems evil and armored for battle in most of his photos. But in one (almost candid?) shot we see him lying in his bathtub, shirtless, grasping a bottle of booze, yet still trying to ham it up for the camera even though his persona has been whittled down to little than a drunken buffoon. Unfortunately I have to say that as much as I love Immortal, Abbath hams it up for the camera even more. I'd much rather see Abbath in a more grim mode ala Pure Holocaust than say...At the Heart of Winter (which is an awesome album, but the band photos...meh).

That's about it. I love this book. Frontwards and back. I'm looking forward to sharing it with my metal buds who I know will appreciate it as much as I do.

Keep those horns raised high.

Beautiful, disturbing--a must have
I'm sure most black metal fans are familiar with Peter Beste's True Norwegian Black Metal. We've seen the selections that are online, and maybe you've been lucky enough to attend one of the shows. I haven't.

Just got the book today after preordering it. It's amazing. The book itself is quite large and impressive. The quality of the paper and binding is good in my opinion. There are many more photographs here than what you may have seen online, and as a whole they are really impressive from a aesthetic perspective. I like the choice of quotations to go along with the work. Also includes some older photos, letters and articles documenting the Mayhem story as well.

You owe it to yourself to buy this. It's definitely a nice thing to have in your collection for anyone interesting in Norwegian BM. $40 bucks well spent!

Black Metal receives an appropriately artful treatment
Peter Beste has made this book an essential photographic record for fans of the genre and anyone interested or curious about it. Although the inherently extreme nature of black metal symbolism makes for an easy target this collection presents the subject matter through crisp, stunning visuals and an overall volume that's made with class and objectivity, if perhaps some enhancement of the philosophy behind the music with several grand quotes. This book also includes a great timeline of the black metal genre as well as a collection of tabloid-style newspaper and magazine (Kerrang, for one) feature articles regarding the "bad old days" of Norwegian black metal.
If you've listened to black metal for years, are just starting, or are curious about the genre, go ahead and pick this up. It's well worth every dollar of Amazon's reduced price tag.