Managing Black Metal Festivals

This chapter examines black metal festivals in both Norway and North America as distinct Dark Events, exploring the ways in which organisers, artists and tourists navigate the complexities of the greater musical genre and corresponding scene. Utilising interviews with key insider personnel, such as musicians, promoters, photographers and record label owners, who are directly involved in the production of Black Metal experiences, this chapter brings forth some of the key thematic elements that are involved in managing and producing these types of events. These thematic elements include logistical challenges, dealing with activism and censorship and the processes of creating unique and immersive experiences with devoted audiences. This chapter also covers the adjacent issues of fully immersive morbid and transgressive experiences steeped in extremity that involve provocative stagecraft and pilgrimages to sites of death associated with the particular Black Metal music scene. Specific examples and discussion provide illustration of Black Metal’s general ethos nested in controversy and the implications that this creates when managing the respective events. Ultimately the chapter presents the growing experience of immersive Black Metal festivals as locations where death, identity, controversy and business intersect in very unique ways.