Cover art for Peter Beste's "True Norwegian Black Metal"
Over the past seven years, Peter Beste has taken numerous trips to Norway to shoot black metal musicians. At first, he was treated like any photographer, but gradually he was embraced by the members of the scene and invited into their inner sanctum. Bands that are ordinarily secretive and reclusive, including Darkthrone, Carpathian Forest and Gorgoroth, scheduled private sessions with Beste, during which they explored and exposed their various obsessions with paganism, nature, satanism and misanthropy, turning their most profane and blasphemous expressions into haunting and beautiful works of art.
(To read more about "True Norwegian Black Metal" and hear the Headbangers Ball Blog podcast with Peter Beste, click "more")
Recently, Beste compiled some of his best photos into the fascinating and revealing coffee table book "True Norwegian Black Metal," which comes out May 22 on Vice Books. The volume features 208 pages of inverted crosses, ghastly corpse paint, spikes, snarls, devil horns, blood, fire, ice, forestry, disgusted neighbors, eerie fog, dark caves, severed pig and sheep heads, ardent fans and explosive live performances, all artfully composed and expertly shot.
To prepare for the birth of "True Norwegian Black Metal," Headbangers Ball Blog conducted a podcast interview with Beste about the contents of the book, his initiation into the black metal cadre, his background as a photographer and some of his most memorable experiences hanging with heroes, villains and legends of the genre.
Check below for an audio stream of the Peter Beste podcast interview:
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