I recently participated in a blog discussion with Matt Fanale of Caustic regarding Black Metal. Just a couple days later I read about the recent performance by Norwegian band Celestial Bloodshed (article here, but it’s not in English) one of the acts taking part in the two-day Black Metal festival “Nidarosian Black Mass” in Trondheim, Norway last weekend at Cafe Larssen . If you have a weak stomach, read no further. As Nathan Explosion might remark, “This is gonna be brutal!”

Norwegian Black Metal is the real deal. From church burnings to band murders (read up on the band Mayhem sometime if you want some historical perspective, in full gory detail, on Black Metal’s roots) the style is known for pushing the limits of taste as well the bounds of immorality. But this story takes the carcass. I mean, cake.

Celestial Bloodshed fashioned stage costuming traditional to what you might expect from such an act then enclosed it in a box with a deer carcass and left the clothing to marinate for four months in preparation for the festival. Hey, what better way to create an atmosphere of death and despair? It was quite a brilliant idea. Festooned in their pungent panoply the band took the stage alongside the propped-up carcass and within a rather short period of time the entire venue…reeked, for lack of a stronger term. Within about ten minutes the manager ordered the band to remove the carcass, believing that to be the sole cause of the overpowering odor. And while the crowd was apparently mesmerized by the sounds and the stench the adjoining Cafe Vivaldi – who happen to share a ventilation system with Larssen – were also up in arms about the odoriferous emanations.

Celestial Bloodshed were asked to step down and vacate the premises but defied the order and continued on with the show. And Black Metal has such a reputation in that particular part of the world that a mere club owner isn’t going to fuck with an act that does itself up in corpse paint and reeks of oozing death. The band went on to finish their set while Vivaldi was forced to close after every patron ran out in disgust.

In the words of our fallen local Metal Godfather, Earl Root, “That is sooo stinkin’ Metal!”

Literally.