CMU Approved

Approved: Ondt Blod

By | Published on Tuesday 4 March 2014

Ondt Blod

It’s the surprise discoveries that really make showcase festivals like Oslo’s by:Larm, which took place last week.

Finding myself with 30 minutes to kill between performances by Veronica Maggio and Emilie Nicolas – both of whom were very much on my lists of acts to see from the outset – I made use of the staircase connecting the large Rockerfeller venue to next door’s basement, the altogether more intimate John Dee, to catch Ondt Blod.

Their name translating as ‘Evil Blood’, the band hail from a small port town about as far northeast – and away from the usual musical hubs of Oslo and Bergen – as you can get in Norway. Tucked away up there they’ve developed a powerful hardcore sound and a live show that they used to take complete control of that small room.

In complete sonic contrast to the pop I’d been watching (and would immediately go back to watching afterwards) upstairs, it was thrilling to see the quintet arrange themselves like a wall along the front of the stage and thrash out a short, aggressive and energetic set that had everyone in the room enthralled. Singing in Norwegian (and a specific regional dialect, at that), I have no idea what frontman Aslak Heika Hætta Bjørn was so angry about, but as he leapt down into the audience and threw himself around with the group of fans roaring each word along with him, it was no less infectious.

The band released their debut EP, just called ‘EP’, through Loyal Blood Records last year. Listen to ‘Frykt Og Avsky’ (‘Fear And Loathing’) here:



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