I don’t know where to begin, so I’ll go loosely in order:

The trip to Oslo was a tedious one, as expected. We flew Lufthansa, on a very nice plane. Suprisingly nice, for the cheapness of the tickets. The food, though... microwave pasta that felt like a sack of soggy laundry in my stomach. After many hours of flying and a brief and confusing layover in Frankfurt, we had finally arrived in Oslo.

The 30 minute bus ride into the city was beautiful and scenic. So much lovely wilderness, mountains, forests, with a few sparse and humble looking houses here and there... I wonder if the folk who live in those little homes realize how fortunate they are, or like if most people, they take it for granted or dream of "better" things. I’d give anything to have a house there.

Walking from our stop to the hotel was a bit of a shocker. The city had changed so much since 2006. Back then, it was pretty even for a city. This time, though... the first thing I noticed was the ironic lack of Norwegians. Immigrants seemed to outnumber them 4 to 1 on the streets. Graffiti covered EVERY (I’m not exaggerating) available space, no matter how old, beautiful, or revered the building. There were more beggars as well, and hordes of roving prostitutes (all from other countries). Crime and drug use have gone up quite a bit as well, and now there’s gang activity (also non-Norwegian). Several Norwegians I talked to at the Inferno lamented about these things... It is a goddamn shame, and had me deeply angered - despite the fact that it’s not even my country. And before anybody says anything, I know a large number of legal immigrants to any country are simply looking for a better and more peaceful life. But as for the others - Why even bother leaving a scummy hellhole entrenched in poverty if you’re just going to do your damndest to destroy and defile any host country generous enough to take you in?

Anyway, we roamed around much when not at the festival. We visited some familiar places and some wonderful new ones as well. On several occasions we even saw Gaahl of Gorgoroth walking around the city. I found a shop called "The Pentagon." I came away with a decently priced Swedish police coat, and an East German DDR army uniform. They had a great selection of WW2 artifacts... I found a replica WW1 German helmet and an authentic SS parade helmet (with retouched paint/ decal) that I badly wanted to add to my militaria collection, but I didn’t have enough space in my luggage and they were far too expensive.

There isn’t much to speak of about the first day of the festival...

On the 2nd day...
Skitliv was the first band to play. Fucking terrible. That’s all.
Tristania played this night as well. I love their music, but the performance wasn’t all I’d hoped. Their new singer did a good job, though it’s certainly different from Vibeke. Her voice is good but not nearly as operatic and haunting as the former singer. Østen Bergøy seemed far too nervous for as talented as he is. He’s easily got one of my favorite male clean vocal stylings. Hell, I wouldn’t know the meaning of "stage fright" if I could sing like that.
Behemoth played a great set, though Nergal spit blood all over my new German jacket (I had seriously just purchased it the day before). I was cleaning all of the blood off of my face and coat in the men’s room and at least 4 people asked me if I had been hurt.
I missed my chance to be up front for Gorgoroth, which I sorely regret. They sounded great, and they had a really kickass stage set-up. 4 completely nude people (2 men and 2 women) with black bags over their heads had been crucified on stage behind them.

On the 3rd day, the day we played, I spent most of my time before the performance practicing backstage with the other guys (unplugged of course). The performance went much better than I had expected. I was forgetting lyrics left and right before going on, and was completely prepared to just improvise where I had to. However, when it came time to play, everything came screaming back into my brain right on time. I remembered everything, and the entire band did a kickass job. Easily our best. The fog on the stage had me dried out and wheezy a bit, but I didn’t care. It was a hell of a time. We got a MUCH better response there than we ever have here, that’s for damn sure. After we played, the curtains closed and we headed backstage with the equipment. A tech/crew girl who helped us set up the instruments before we played caught me on the stairs backstage after our show and said she really enjoyed the set, especially our last song (Destiny Revealed). That was pretty cool. Throughout the night and the next day several other people from other countries came up to me and complimented the set. I met some pretty awesome people.

I spent most of the last night hanging out in the VIP room chatting it up with David and Lerin and the other guys. I had the amazing pleasure of watching David spill the last 1/4 of his first beer right onto his crotch. As the night progressed, it became packed with all of the black metal giants present at the festival - Gaahl, and King of Gorgoroth were back there. Nick Barker was there, and the singer of Shining and Frost. It’s rumored that Abbath of Immortal was spotted in the venue. We handed out 50 recordings of our CD to many patrons of the concert, musicians, and media people.
I skipped out to see Shining near the end, but the room was FAR too packed. They were even disallowing people to enter before long because it was too full. I had a very narrow space from which to watch, between two amps. I must say, Shining’s performance was a sight to behold. Their music is great, and the performance (combined with the live sound of their music) was chilling. The vocalist cut himself to ribbons on stage with a razor and flogged himself repeatedly with a whip, and brought some other guy on stage and sliced his chest up. That was... surreal.

On Sunday, it was time to head back. We checked out of our hotel and walked to the Central Station. We had to hang out there for a couple of hours and wait for the train... While we were there, some 60 year old black lady turned around and commented about us speaking English. She talked to us for about an hour about her life, music, and astrology. It seems she was born in Georgia and spent the last 28 years living in Norway. It was odd to hear her slipping from a thick Georgia accent into a near perfect Norwegian accent at random times. That was... interesting. Memorable, at least.
I really didn’t want to leave... things seemed to slow down when it came time to board the train that was bound for the airport. The train arrived, and something caught my attention. I saw two people who had been at the festival, a scruffy looking young guy and a pretty young lady. They were standing there by the train kissing, and embracing. I was wondering what the hell they were waiting for, and it dawned on me. One was getting on the train, bound for God knows where, and the other wasn’t. They must have met at the show. I could tell by the occasional glimpse at their faces that they hated parting, but the train wouldn’t wait. That stuck with me on the flight back to Germany. I wonder if they’ll meet again.

The layover in Frankfurt was an experience. We were basically stranded there from 9:00 pm to 9:00 am the following morning. I tried desperately to sleep on a row of chairs, but could not. The next flight took us to Chicago, and lasted about 9 hours. There was another brief layover and a flight home. I got back at around 5:30 pm on Monday, and hadn’t slept since around 8:00 am Sunday, and even then I’d only had about 3 hours of sleep. And let’s not forget the time differences... I was awake for about 2 days straight. Needless to say I was delerious. BUT, it was heavenly sleeping in my own bed after laying on a fold-out and potentially mite infested and blanketless cot for a week. Oh, and shaving and showering. God, awesome.

All in all, it was indeed an adventure. I saw faimiliar faces, met some new ones, gained new perspectives, and feel like a stronger person because of the experience. I’d recommend something similar for everyone. One thing the average American needs is a chunk of time outside of the proverbial "bubble."

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I had an interesting, amusing and disturbing dream the night before we left. In it, I was at the hotel, and my legs were itching all over. I thought it best to be rid of them, so I pulled out a knife and quite easily cut them off at the mid-thigh region. And then, for some reason, I used the knife to remove half of my face. I just made a cut, put my fingers into it, and peeled the left half of my face right off. I was thinking about taking the left half of someone else’s face to replace it with, so I could have 2 faces, but before I could find anyone my face had completely healed. It was strange. I saw it healing in a reflection - the tendons, muscle fibers and skin slowly spreading and layering and returning to normal over the removed half.

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Anyway, the sooner we can record some new stuff the better. I hope we keep up with this pattern of churning out better and better stuff with each new song. The future recording session will easily put to shame the last one, which I’d say is a damn fine pattern.