Ring the Alarm and not a Sound Is Dying

My name is John Doran and I write about music. The young bucks who run VICE’s website thought it would be amusing to employ a 40-year-old man who misses yoga because it’s raining.

In case you were wondering or simply too lazy to use urban dictionary, ‘menk’ is Scouse/ Woollyback slang for a mentally ill or educationally subnormal person, and is a shortened version of mental. As in, “Your Sergio Tacchini trackie is sick la, look at that menk Doran, he can’t even afford a Walker trackie. Let’s hit him with a brick and push him in the canal.” RING THE ALARM AND NOT A SOUND IS DYING The trouble started before I even got to Heathrow. Stuck between underground stations outside of Acton Town, my cell phone rang. “Hi. Yes? This is Necrobutcher from Mayhem.” I was on my way to Oslo to do a feature on the True Norwegian Black Metal overlords. My idea was to take them to Helvete Records – now a nice Vietnamese bagel shop called Vårt Daglige Brød (translation: Our Daily Bread) – 25 years after the release of Deathcrush and photograph and interview them in the basement next to the original BLACK METAL sign, which is still on the wall. At their best, Mayhem are unbeatable and even at their worst (that kind of industrial BM period they went through with Grand Declaration of War), they’re still capable of opening a portal in reality that transports you to some place outside of yourself. It’s not what I’d describe as a nice experience, and it’s not a place that you'd necessarily want to go, but it is a profoundly moving sensation nonetheless. When I was younger, there was a girl who lived near me who climbed up a pylon and received an electric shock so severe she had to wear special underwear and a wig for the rest of her life. This is kind of how I feel after watching Mayhem. I told the magazine they were a forward-looking group of musicians who had stronger avant garde/experimental credentials than anyone else in their field, and that I thought it was time to forget all about the murders, suicide, skull jewellery, arson, political extremism, and to simply concentrate on the music. In return for my flight I had written a long feature on the history of the band and the solidity of their left-field musical credentials for a Norwegian paper. It was a very lengthy feature, and before I got to the long coda where I commanded people to stop talking about the murders, suicide, skull jewellery, arson, and political extremism and concentrate on the music instead, I recapped the band’s history—including all the stuff about the murders, suicide, skull jewellery, arson, political extremism, and whatnot. I can tell something’s up immediately, but ask nonchalantly about meeting him for an interview. He says the idea is “bullshit,” that they have too much to do, that they are spending the rest of the time before their by:larm festival gig rehearsing: “There is no time for an interview.” “Damn.” I say. “So I can’t meet you?” But this is not exactly what he means: “And now on top of everything else I am told it was you who wrote that feature on Mayhem that is in the paper today. Well? Was it you?” “Er, yeah…” I say, nervously. “Well, well, well,” he says. “Well. Well. Well.” I start to ask him what was wrong with the feature but he cuts me off immediately. “Well, well, well.” There is a very long pause. I inhale. He starts again: “Well… Well… Well…” He concludes: “When you get off the plane in Oslo, you’d better give me a ring. You and I need a very long and serious chat about this feature that you’ve written. Tag tag.” As soon as I get to Heathrow, I phone my friend at Metal Hammer, Jon Selzer. He is oracular when it comes to negotiating the minefield of modern extreme metal mores – he could write the Debrett’s Guide to Death Metal Etiquette if he so wished. “Jon," I ask, "would you say that Necrobutcher was a reasonable man?” He replies: “When I first met him he was a bit grumpy but he’s a sweetheart, really. What did you do?” And then it dawns on me: “Well, I’ve just had a feature published in a paper in Oslo and I said they were like the Village People in Hell.” He tells me: “I have a personal rule of thumb not to compare True Norwegian Black Metal bands to iconic gay disco acts in print, but that’s just me.” When I hang up, I take a handful of diazepam. I’d normally wait until I was at the gate, but sometimes you just have to get stuck in. On the plane I can’t keep my eyes open and drift immediately into a strange dream where Necrobutcher is my guide across a glacier. We get almost to the other side, and then he callously pushes me into a crevasse. I wake up gasping for breath just as we are touching down in Oslo. After registering at the hotel, I go to my room and get my laptop out. I have an online chat with my friend Manish about the pickle I appear to be in. As happens in nearly all situations where clear thought is needed, we end up playing the conjoined bands game instead. “Stayin’ Alive In Leipzig?” he suggests. “De Mysteriis Dom Saturday Night Fever” I counter. “You Make Me Feel Mighty Real by Sylvester Anfang,” he says landing a body blow. “Wolves In Cerrone’s Room?” I say tremulously. “Anything by Sheila B And Darkthrone,” he adds, near triumphantly. “Rufus And Chaka Khanate,” I say mounting a spirited defense. “It’s Raining Mayhem,” he says, clearly winning. “I’m Every Woman (In Xsathur’s Basement),” I say realizing all is lost. “That’s just upsetting,” he says and signs off. While registering for the by:larm conference I ran into a Norwegian journalist friend who, even if not currently a friend of Dorothy’s, has certainly been on nodding terms with her in the past. After I explained my situation he said, “What?! Man, what is he talking about? He’s such a nice guy but he’s being so pretentious. He parties with everyone. We used to party.” He starts roaring with laughter: “There was this one time when…” But he checks himself and stops laughing immediately: “Ah… no.” I’m in danger of starting to whine about this: “For fuck’s sake – what am I going to do? The Village People aren’t even gay… everyone knows that. Only one of them was gay. It was the Construction Worker. There is no fucking way Necrobutcher is the Construction Worker of Mayhem. He’s more like the Native American, right?” He shakes his head sadly at me: “Stop being pedantic.” Everyone I speak to says exactly the same thing: Necrobutcher is a nice guy but he takes the band extremely seriously. I try getting word through to him via numerous mutual acquaintances. That night at the hotel the fire alarm goes off at 3 AM. Some fucking music industry prick smoking in his room, no doubt. It happens every fucking year. Fucking animals have no idea how to behave in someone else’s city. No standards of conduct. Standing out in the freezing cold on the pavement with a bunch of cross-eyed drunks chain smoking, I remember my first ever time in Camden’s Roundhouse when it re-opened after refurbishment in 2006. I went to see the Chemical Brothers and just ten minutes before they were due on stage the fire alarms went off after someone smoked a joint in the toilets. The venue disgorged onto Chalk Farm Road and hundreds of middle-aged ravers blocked the traffic as, one-by-one, they all came rocketing up on their pills. You should have seen the commotion when the fire engines turned up. A crowd flocked round them roaring, undulating in ecstatic waves in time with the sirens, with everyone trying to get closer to the lights. The poor firemen were hugged by about 50 people each between the tenders and the door to the venue. “I love you fireman!” I heard one saucer-eyed al fresco raver yell in appreciation. The next day word eventually got back to me that the problem wasn’t with the feature, but my pitch. They don’t want to do the interview with me because I’m trying to make them have their photo taken in Helvete. I might as well have asked them to pose in a graveyard with guns and knives. They pass on a message that they’re still trying to get away from this and they want their press to only be about the music and they don’t want to be reminded about the death of their friend again. I spent the next two days watching and writing about extreme metal, topped off by Mayhem on the last night. It’s an astounding show but it ends up kicking a hole in the side of my head and the next day I can barely get out of bed. I had wanted to go to the Edvard Munch museum, but instead I spent the rest of the day staring at the wall of my room until it’s time to leave for the airport. I think about ringing Necrobutcher up to apologize but, really, there’s no point and the damage is done. I was the one offered the chance to make this point about their music but I was too disingenuous to do just that. I can’t tell him this was a case of crossed wires, when I’m exactly what he thinks I am. Some people claim they go abroad to have insight into themselves or to find themselves. I’d pay good money to remain in ignorance, I really would.

Previously: Menk, by John Doran - Und Tanzt Den Adolf Hitler… Und Jetzt Den Jesus Christus

Photo by Fredrik Klingenberg