True Norwegian Black Metal

"When we’re on the road, all we watch is VBS, and our favorite series is Norwegian Black Metal." (Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters) Documentary photographer Peter Beste has spent the last five years working in the milieu of the Norwegian black metal scene. This scene, with its notorious events of murder, church arson, and self-mythology, is absolutely sealed to outsiders. The international black metal fan base is one of the most devoted, fanatical, and proprietary in the world. Beste’s access and insight into this world is unprecedented and has yielded an amazing photographic journey, along with a very popular documentary series on VBS.tv, also available on YouTube. Beste, together with Johan Kugelberg, noted writer, editor, and collector of documentary photography, has brought the images into a hermeneutic narrative that makes for a compelling experience along the lines of Anders Petersen’s Café Lehmitz, Ed Van Der Elsken’s Love on the Left Bank, or William Klein’s Life Is Good and Good for You in New York.