Norwegian black metal is a genre whose history is fraught with controversy and full of murder and church burnings and all other manner of awfulness.  So, naturally, Norway has now given twenty of its diplomats “a black metal crash course,” according to this report:

“The objective is to show Norwegian culture in all its diversity. In the musical field, it goes from (Romantic music composer) Edvard Grieg to black metal,” its deputy head Steinar Lindberg said, adding he hoped to repeat the experience.

“In Italy, Japan or France, young people are learning Norwegian to decrypt the lyrics. Black metal is an export product and it’s important that future diplomats are interested in it,” he added.

Of course, I’m only kidding about the looming shadow of some assholes from twenty years ago being a good reason not to teach this stuff to Norwegian diplomats. Really, I guess Norway deserves a pat on the back for being so chill. So, y’know, three cheers for Norway.

On a semi-related note, my favorite part about the article where we found this story is that they opted not to use a photo of a member of Emperor or Mayhem or Enslaved, but, rather, a picture of Ronnie James Dio, who was neither Norwegian nor a black metal musician. Oh, the mainstream media. So lulzy when they try to cover metal!

-AR

Thanks to everyone who e-mailed us about this.

So if you’ve previously traversed these here interweb waters before, chances are you prolly know who our-very-favorite-first-half-of-2008-discovered-math-metal band is; that said, the dudes in Benea Reach are bringing the progressive aggressive strength in a major way as well, Nordic styles…and whoah, look at that — their recently-released album Alleviat, just officially made my top-10 list of 2008!! How thpecial…

The vocal (screaming) style is often Meshuggah-reminiscent (with a throaty hardcore backbone, especially on their 2006 debut album, Monument Bineothan), and there is indeed singing here and there as well, allbeit predominantly ambient and in the background…but the music itself feels a bit more straightforward and organic than the aforementioned Swedish metal maniacs — before you cry boring, let me remind you that while simplistic is almost always a disappointing attribute of a band, simple is most definitely not.

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