Surrounded by dramatic coastlines, covered in rainforests and a perfect place to gaze at the Aurora Borealis, the natural phenomena of Norway will take your breath away. But don’t forget, the Land of the Midnight Sun has also produced plenty of jaw-dropping music over the years, too.
You could draw the Scandinavian country’s musical history back all the way to the Viking Age, while composer Edvard Grieg’s 19th century chamber creeper “In the Hall of the Mountain King” is an ominously, hummably iconic classical piece that’s been referenced in films and even the metal scene. Yet when most metalheads think of Norway’s musical landscape, they’re probably dreaming of the defiantly brutal sounds of black metal.
With that in mind, we asked out readers to weigh in on the greatest extremists Norway ever produced — the bands that still make you scream for joy, Edvard Munch-style.
These were the top picks, ranked accordingly.
Dimmu Borgir
Revolver readers showed up to confess that they’ve been bowing at the altar of Dimmu Borgir’s “Mourning Palace” for decades.
Since forming in 1993, the group have specialized in symphonic grimness, progressively-pounded rhythms and a mix of English and Norwegian screeches from lead vocalist Shagrath — this forever portaling listeners towards a spiritual black dimension like no other.
The band have slowed the pace in more recent times, releasing just three album across the past 16 years, but the fans remain devoted to Dimmu.
Kvelertak
Though the lion’s share of this week’s poll favorites are pulled from the dourest, most brutal parts of Norway’s black-metal scene, plenty of readers also give a hoot for headbanging owl enthusiasts Kvelertak.
Indeed, while an ebon extremity flows deep in the veins of the group, another part of the appeal is the feel-good, punk-n-roll punchiness that also pulses through their mighty catalog. From the early days, through to their Endling, Kvelertak have managed to weave virulent blasts and beer-spittin’ rawk into one cohesively heady brew.
Though they’ve often sung in their native tongue, and have infused their songs with local lore, they’ve also connected with legions of metal fans around the world — including visual and musical collaborators like Baroness’ John Dyer Baizley, Converge’s Nate Newton and Mastodon’s Troy Sanders.
Mayhem
Honestly, what black-metal list would be complete without these lords of chaos? The genre as we know it today would not exist without the foundational musical intensity and extracurricular notoriety undertaken by the members of Mayhem.
Their early history is complicated, to say the least — pocked with murder, suicide, cannibalism, church burnings, extreme ideological divides and more — but the shock of those events is also, paradoxically, what put the band on the radar for many curious metal listeners around the world. And then, of course, there’s the music.
From the icy primordial blasts, terror-trilled guitar lines and animalistic screeches of Deathcrush and De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas — each song sounding as if transmitted through a half-broken boombox blasting at the bottom of a cursed water well — and into the modern age, they have stood the test of time as one of the genre’s most unrelenting forces of nature.
Emperor
Before becoming black wizards, Emperor’s Ihsahn and Samoth met as teenagers at a blues-adjacent youth music seminar. Super wholesome beginnings, for sure, but the legend of Emperor is one of metal’s most extreme — another scandalous lineage marked with murder, arson and controversy.
Though Emperor’s music was inspired by the groundwork lain by Mayhem — case in point, “Ye Entrancemperium” off 1997’s Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk credits late Mayhem guitarist Euronymous as a co-writer — they soon made a name for themselves with their uniquely frightening, paganistic, symphonic black-metal fury.
Darkthrone
Going by the votes, it’s clear than many extreme-music fans have a hunger that only Darkthrone’s music can sate.
Formed in the mid-Eighties as Black Death, but quickly reborn as Darkthrone, the longtime project of multi-instrumentalists Fenriz and Nocturno Culto has taken some wild pathways over the years — some more controversial than others.
From early death-metal experiments, to the bleak-blasting lo-fi fuzz of their Nineties period, to the gutter-punk crustiness of their early Aughts output and beyond, the partnership has both honored and defied fan expectations at every turn — their middle fingers raised high, either way.
Love them or “hate them,” they’ve done it all on their terms.