@mikeyis2swag on Tumblr

mikeyis2swag reblogged

born-to-lose

the90smoviefox

᯽ Julia Stiles Behind-the Scene Polaroids for // 🎬 10 Things I Hate About You, 1999 ᯽

mikeyis2swag reblogged

shoutwiththedevil

theoriginalsupermodels

Thierry Mugler - Spring 1992 RTW

mikeyis2swag reblogged

man-kills-everything

guerrilla-operator

NINE INCH NAILS

Source: guerrilla-operator

mikeyis2swag reblogged

desperately0seeking

2.08.22

ASHES

About half an hour out of the city centre on the peninsula of Bygdøy sits Norsk Folkemuseum, a vast miscellany of buildings housing Norse cultural and historical items and traditions. Tom had gotten carried away with some locals the night prior and ended up at Norwegian kickons till morning, so it was just me and Louis who got a bus out to the open air museum around midday. The precinct contains dozens of buildings that have been relocated from towns all across Norway: a log farmhouse from 1238, 17th century sod-roofed lofts from the farmlands of Eastern Norway, a townhouse from 18th century Oslo, and, what I was most excited about, the Gol Stave Church. Stave churches, wooden medieval churches found mostly in Norway, have long intrigued me since naturally coming across them by getting into black metal. Church arson was one of the defining themes of the early Norwegian black metal scene, the finest metal scene there ever was. In 1992 Varg Vikernes, the man behind Burzum, burnt the Fantoft Stave Church in Bergen; a building that had stood since 1150. I recall looking at photos of the church as a teenager and never having seen anything like it: a shard-like structure, made entirely of dark-as-onyx pine logs, scale shingles like a skink’s skin, and serpent-style dragon heads protruding off each roof like figureheads of a viking ships. The burnt wreckage of Vikernes’ Christianophobic zeal can be seen on the cover of Burzum’s 1992 Aske EP. The Gol Stave Church was built in 1212 and moved to where I was walking around in it in 1885. Inside the church was hard and cold, and a mixture of Chrstian and Norse mythical ornamentations hung across the entrance and walls. I don't have close to the knowledge to understand how Christian and pagan ideas were in use contemporaneously and can coexist in the artworks and wood carvings of the interior, but it was very pretty nonetheless.

Burzum - Aske 1993

Edvard Munch - Aske 1895

Black metal, Norway's greatest export, was again on the agenda the next day. The aforementioned Vikernes was part of what Euronymous, Mayhem’s guitarist, called the Black Metal Inner Circle, a group of black metal musicians who were integral to the flourishing BM scene of the early 1990s. At the centre of this scene was Helvete, a record store & basement where the Inner Circle converged and schemed, operated by Euronymous. Not long before being murdered by Vikernes in 93, Euronymous closed the shop due to police attention. The shop was later reopened under a different name and the basement preserved. That shop, Neseblod (Nosebleed) Records, is still run today as a metal record store and the basement is open to the public. The basement was much bigger than I'd imagined, with multiple rooms of records, CDs, mags and shirts, all looking as though they’ve sat there since the 2000s and adorned with the levels of dust and soot one would expect to find in a basement. To get to the main attraction, the concrete wall with the words Black Metal scrawled across it that forms the background of many famous photos from that era, you have to walk down a passage festooned with band posters and photos, artworks and an odd mix of religious objects and weights. The weights would be related to the bench press that sits to one side of the last room of the basement. The bench press and some framed photos around it, belonged to Euronymous. Behind this a large Mayhem banner stretches across one of the room's walls. Another has a throne with a Venom poster (Venom’s 1982 album Black Metal is widely credited for laying the foundations for the genre, as well as lending its namesake) hanging above it. To one side of the wall with the markings on it stood a large black candle stick which I hadn't seen in my research, but the writing on the wall stood prominently, albeit faded compared to the famous photos. In Sweden I had a terrible time trying to post a record I'd bought to London, and my backpack was over capacity already, so I refrained from buying any shirts or records. I did buy a Darkthrone pin however, and I think Tom bought a Tormentor shirt.