I’m going to Inferno this year. I think I’ve missed only three editions in total ( I think). So I was thinking, maybe I should tell the story about how this all started? Inferno I mean:

-The story starts in 2000. In April 2000 Borknagar released “Quintessence” which introduced Lars A. Nedland and Asgeir Mickelson to our ranks. But Simen was already more and more busy with Dimmu Borgir and our efforts to fit a tour into his schedules gave no result. We managed to play only two festivals that year, it was the Summer Rocks in Budapest- Hungary and Wave Gothic Treffen in Germany.

Borknagar 2000

Sometime in August or September (I think) I ran into Jan M. Jensen from Radar Booking in Oslo. I already knew Jensen from the Quintessence release-party which was at the Mars Club where Jensen was the booking agent.

We stopped to say hello, and Jensen also asked if Borknagar would be available for a concert he was setting up with 4-5 bands on stage. At this time it had become a fashion to call every concert with more than 4 bands a festival (and it still is). I think the concert- date crashed with one of Dimmu Borgir’s tours, because I didn’t have to check any calendar to turn it down. But then I responded: “Why don’t we find a suitable date and set up a proper festival, with at least two days and maybe even two stages?” And the snowball was rolling.

The cooperation between Radar Booking and myself may not seem necessary today as Jensen is the main hard rock and metal booking agent in Oslo. But in 2000 Jensen was working to establish Radar Booking as an independent agency. I brought all my band-contacts into the cooperation and Jensen had all the knowledge about contracts and logistics and already knew Rockefeller.

We soon had another meeting about this and I believe one of the first things we did was to present the idea to Rockefeller. The main selling points was a bit innovative and in retrospect the main reasons why this festival still exists:

-Choosing Easter as the date has been seen by tabloid media and Christian fanatics as our attempt to provoke, but our sole focus was to set a date where we could also attract and audience from out of Oslo. It was no solution to have this festival in summertime, and we also saw the Easter vacation as the perfect opportunity.

-In order to not loose money from this, we proposed a deal to all the bands where we would split the earnings between the bands. This also helped convince Rockefeller that we knew what we were doing. I later learned that 95% of the festivals in Norway run with a deficit and that Inferno #1 was only the second festival in history to not loose money the first year. And all this is thanks to all the bands the first year that accepted this deal.

With Rockefeller on board we had the walls, now we needed content. I chose to bring in some good friends in the project:

I called Lars F. Hansen and he liked the idea. He also offered to help set up the web for the festival, which was important even in 2000! He still does.

I asked Asgeir Mickelson to work with design for all this, and he still does.

Inferno- design by Asgeir Mickelson

I also asked Lise Myhre to help us out with the promotion, and for the first edition of Inferno she contributed with the best know metal chick from Norway, NEMI.

Jan M. Jensen also brought in some important contributors to the crew, and there was also a whole lot of friends who contributed with volunteer work, and the first edition of the Infernofestival turned out to be a big success.

This was the start of the first Infernofestival in 2001, it was 2 days, 22 bands. Next I will tell about the second edition in 2002, about ups and downs,  the increased negative focus from tabloids and my departure.

———–Jens

Artisan – Borknagar – ICS Vortex  – Sarke

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