The title may be a tad misleading. I'll say it's first about OR, then about Norwegian black metal although Will Sheff will work as the glue that holds it all together. First up, I really like this video trailer for "The Stand Ins", i.e. the coming album by Okkervil River:

Big Trav! Hee. I love the bit where Jonathan sings part of Will's recorded vocal in "Lost Coastlines" there. By the way, where did the documentary on OR go?

I also just found this post from a Norwegian magazine, where Okkervil apparently did more press than in Sweden; Will speaks about Norwegian black metal, especially on Varg Vikernes, a pathetic figurine who is responsible for burning churches and murdering a fellow musician. Will's words:

Calling somebody like Varg Vikernes a psychopath is almost flattering. That's what he wants everybody to believe. But the truth of the matter is that he was a dumb kid who wanted to impress people and disconnected from reality enough that he got himself into deep shit. Now I think he probably deeply regrets it. He's now constantly trying to get out of prison, constantly trying to get his sentence shortened with good behaviour, but the fact that he is propagating so much neo-nazi rhetoric in jail all the time [...] He's trying to come up with a new term for it, so it doesn't seem as connected with naziism [sic].

Apart from having made up a new word, Will obviously has a point; Vikernes is plain stupid and disturbed, not insane. For those who do not know of it, the Norwegian black metal scene is quite singular. As its base, you've got young males uniting through simple, loud music - nothing new there - but then, somehow, they all lose the plot by bonding through satanism; I'm not saying that's more or less wrong than people forming christian bands, it's the very same thing. My problem is when violence and nazism gets involved, which often has been the case with leading Norwegian black metal people such as Vikernes and Rob Darken (who is also known for posing in #9 in this rundown of the most ridiculous metal picture ever). There is even a Wikipedia entry titelled "National Socialist black metal" which is a genre I didn't know existed. If there are pictures of bands corpse-painted, wearing the SS uniform, I don't want to know because I've laughed enough at that picture of Rob Darken already.

Black metal satanists and nazis. I'll let Clay Davis from "The Wire" speak my mind: