… I was in my apartment downtown Oslo in front of my PC. I had the tv on i the background, probably with some afternoon sitcoms running. Suddenly the program broke off into a “breaking-news”, and I think pretty much the first thing I saw was the second plane hitting WTC. The rest of the day I was glued to the tv, couldn’t believe my own eyes. And if anything can be said to have changed the world, this particular day and event certainly did.

This day changed things for me personally also. I was about to secure my position as core-crew with an “Event”-company here in Oslo, working for them as an independent. 9/11 completely kicked the legs from under the event-business and I pretty much lost my job after this.

And it didn’t stop there: A month after I was on tour with Mayhem in Scandinavia, Baltic and Russia. And we were crossing the boarder from Estonia into Russia as NATO started their assault on Afghanistan. And it made our trip into Russia a rather insane journey being stopped and controlled by armed police and/ or military every 5km after we finally got in. Of course, they already had a war going on in Tsjetsjenia at the time and Blasphemer ran his ammo-belt through the metal-scanner at the boarder he he. Aww, good ol’ times!

The last week has been much calmer, thankfully!

First of all, we have a new rehearsal-place for ICS Vortex. Sharing it with Sarke. Asgeir, Terje and myself went to set it up and rehearse a bit. Asgeir made this post called, well; “New rehearsing room“.

ICS Vortex- Asgeir setting up in the rehearsal-room

The big announcement of the week was that Borknagar is booked for Ragnarok 2012.

Asgeir presented two bands this week, first was Tjodalv’s new project Gromth, next was naming Confessor as one of his inspiration sources for drum-style.

Metal Hammer Germany have now shared samples from all the songs on the tribute to Metallica that both ICS Vortex and Borknagar played on.

Artisan – Borknagar – ICS Vortex  – Sarke