Dimmu Borgir...

So last night I went up to the Forum in London for an evening of Norwegian metal - Dimmu Borgir with support from Sahg and Enslaved. It was awesome. Being in a room full of smiling, excited people wearing black makes me happy. There is nothing ironic about my love of this music and of this subculture. For me it's always been intertwined with the horror genre as a whole, and Dimmu Borgir are the perfect representation of that.

I like the atmosphere at metal gigs too. There's a general friendliness and a positive energy that's hard to find anywhere else. Here all the aggression is in the music. Like when a girl dropped her phone as the band played one of their biggest hits, and about 20 people stopped what they were doing to help her find it. On the tube back from Kentish Town everyone was sharing gig stories and swapping recommendations. I overheard someone say how rare it was that you find yourself on a tube with a huge group of people you have something in common with.

Even the bands came across as warm-hearted and friendly between songs. Dimmu Borgir played a whole chunk of new songs, and when lead singer Shagrath asked the audience what they thought, it didn't come across like fishing for applause. It sounded apprehensive, nervous even. It sounded like he genuinely wanted peoples' opinions, almost as if he expected a serious of well thought out constructive responses instead of the roar of approval that followed. This made me smile too. It humanised them, made it clear that behind the make-up and theatrics there were people making art.

Mostly I get annoyed with people filming gigs on their phones (I don't get why you can't just enjoy the actual experience and capture it on real life brain memory), but I am quite happy to find said footage on Youtube the following day to post on here.



I was at the front on the left somewhere - right next to the speakers which is why I can't hear anything today.

I promise there's a short film diary for last week coming soon, honest...