Metal Hammer (UK)

ÅRABROT

Having beaten throat cancer, Årabrot’s irrepressi­ble frontman, Kjetil Nernes, had to rediscover his roots to find a new way forward

- WORDS: KEZ WHELAN

Norway’s noise rock deviants stared death in the face, and triumphed.

Despite his laidback, unassuming nature, Kjetil Nernes is a man of steely determinat­ion. Having helmed the Norwegian noise-rock outfit Årabrot since 2001, the guitarist/vocalist was dealt a devastatin­g blow when he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014. Rather than throwing in the towel, however, Kjetil persisted to not only overcome the illness, but also embark on a successful European tour and record The Gospel, which enjoyed the most positive critical fanfare the band had received yet upon its release in 2016. And to make matters even more stressful, Kjetil was followed by a film crew the whole time for the almost uncomforta­bly revealing fly-on-the-wall documentar­y, Cocks & Crosses.

“I got used to it actually,” he laughs nonchalant­ly. “I think that at that point, my life was so odd anyway that it didn’t matter if I had a camera on me or anything else, really. Nothing really mattered. It was strange the first couple of days, but after that I forgot about the camera, which I guess is why the documentar­y came out the way it did, because I was just being myself that whole time. The director said that the deal was that he’d make this documentar­y, and I’d get all kinds of perks, like footage and photos and whatever else, but the thing was that it was his film, and I would not be able to see it before it came out. So I saw it for the first time at Norway’s biggest film festival, the Norwegian Internatio­nal Film Festival, and it was the opening day, and it was even in my old home town, Haugesund, so it was chock-full of people and I was just sliding down in my chair. I got really self-conscious, but it came out really nice and I was happy with it. It’s a very different kind of rock documentar­y; it’s more about life, really.”

Indeed, whilst ostensibly focusing on the creation of The Gospel, Cocks & Crosses has a much more intimate, philosophi­cal bent than your average ‘rockumenta­ry’, using Kjetil’s experience as a springboar­d to explore themes of mortality, creativity, mysticism and even what it means to be human.

“The documentar­y definitely made an impact on people being interested in me, as a person, and us, as people and as artists, and also this place,” says Kjetil, referring to the Dalarna, Sweden-based church studio where the band now record, “which gives the whole project a very different vibe. It kind of opens up our lives really, much more than in the past where it’s been more vague, and maybe more dangerous in a way? Like, people wouldn’t know who we were and it was just this crazy, loud, freaked-out music.”

Cocks & Crosses may dispel some of the mystique surroundin­g the band, but it also paints Kjetil as a far more fascinatin­g character than anything our twisted imaginatio­ns could have produced, and provides an unflinchin­g snapshot of his state of mind at the time.

“The thing was, The Gospel was like war, you know?” he muses. “I tried to make the record sound like war, because I was at war with myself, and obviously after you go through that kind of life-threatenin­g experience, it’s a big explosion. After the big bang, you have that silence; like after a gunshot, you have that kind of big silence, and I was wondering what to do for a long time, what to do with that silence, and I think for some people maybe you would just be silent for a while, or else you try to fill that gap or that void with something else.”

Finding himself “in the middle of that big silence, with the explosion still ringing in my ears,” Kjetil sought a different kind of creative release, and set off on an English tour with writer (and Hammer alumni) John Doran in May 2015, augmenting John’s whimsical spoken-word set with his own unique guitar drones. Bombing around the English countrysid­e in John’s car (“England is not that big, but it took us ages to get from place to place, it was ridiculous,” he groans, “we were driving seven to 10 hours, it was almost like America. You know, it has to do with traffic and shit like that…”), the pair bonded over their shared passion for bands like Slayer, The Residents,

The Stooges, Wire and Killing Joke.

“I decided to fill the gap with some sort of… well I’ve called it love often, but it’s not really love, it’s more like going back to the roots in many ways, going back to the rock music that I love,” Kjetil smiles. “The trip where me and John travelled in that car all around England, just listening to all of this music, we were almost like teenagers again. We went back to all of this stuff that we just love, and it felt really good, it was like coming back to life, and I feel like this record is definitely me coming back to life.”

The record in question, is Who Do You Love. After the harrowing portentous­ness of The Gospel, there’s a noticeably looser, more joyous feel to this new one, with Kjetil tapping into that teenage enthusiasm and using it to create some of the most immediate, visceral music of his career.

“A lot of the ideas for this album, musically and thematical­ly, came from the tour with John,” he agrees. “We met a lot of fascinatin­g people and also I heard so much music. There were

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