Beste has earned the respect and trust of this impenetrable, suspicious and often elitist community. Beste's access and insight has been absolutely without precedent, resulting in an amazing photographic journey. Peter Beste has spent the last eight years working in the milieu of this insulated and secretive community. What started as juvenile frenzy came to symbolize the start of a war against Christianity, a return to the worship of the ancient Norse gods, and the complete rejection of mainstream society. In the early-mid 1990s, members of this extremist underground committed murder, burned down medieval wooden churches, and desecrated graveyards. It has its roots in a heady blend of splatter movies, heavy metal music, Satanism, Pagan mythology and adolescent angst. In the last two decades a bizarre and violent musical subculture called black metal has emerged in Norway. "True Norwegian Black Metal" will be issued on May 15 via Vice Books. A podcast interview with American documentary photographer Peter Beste about his book "True Norwegian Black Metal", his initiation into the black metal cadre, his background as a photographer and some of his most memorable experiences hanging with heroes, villains and legends of the genre is available for download from Headbanger's Blog (MP3 file 80 MB).
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