There’s nothing like traveling now and then to broaden your rock and roll horizons. Every time I go to a new place, I check out the local indie shops and ask what are the good locally released CDs and who are the good local bands. Last winter I was in Bergen, Norway and my inquiries sent me back home with a stack of interesting CDs in my suitcase. But by any reckoning, the best of these was Brimstone’s Going Out EP, a five track CD of marvelous garage/psych rock. To me this disc recalls the mid 80s Australian scene, where the 4 or 5 track mini-lp ruled the landscape. Bands approached these records as their chance to deliver their best in a concise and direct package. Rather than diluting limited recording funds on a rushed, full length album, they’d leave ‘em wanting more.

Brimstone have done the same. Over the five tracks on Going Out there’s not a dull moment. Although it’s 25 minutes long, the disc ends when it seems to have barely started, and the only option is to hit the replay button. The constant across the songs is a sort of swirling guitar sound, but there’s lots of other 60s based production touches as well…tambourine, keyboards, sitar, the whole bag of tricks. The sound is full and lush, and it doesn’t sound much like anybody else today. Imagine a band simultaneously trying to sound like the Who, Pink Floyd and Died Pretty and you might be on track.

Bergen isn’t the easiest town to launch a band from. It’s got a couple hundred thousand people wedged into a gap between the mountains and a fjord. It helps that it’s a university town so there are plenty of young people, but the potential audience is small and when you leave town, in about fifteen minutes you are up in the middle of mountains and glaciers and not much else. Bergen is a proud city (in one record shop the owner went on for twenty minutes about how he despised Oslo, saying “THAT’S not Norway!”), and this filters to the music scene as well.

Brimstone has four members. Three of them, guitarist Rolf Edwards, bassist Biff and drummer Thomas Grunner, have played together off and on for quite a few years in a variety of projects. All are in their mid-twenties. Thomas’ 21 year old brother Øyvind joined the band in January of 2001 on guitar to round out the lineup.

Thomas had begun playing guitar at 8 years of age but switched to drums in his early teens. He’s played in bands making a wide range of styles of music – pop, techno, jazz, death metal and now psych. Biff began on bass in his mid teens and has a similar background to Thomas. Rolf began as a Led Zeppelin fan when he was around 12, and Øyvind was inspired to start playing guitar after hearing the Seattle bands of the early 90s.

Surprisingly given their current sound, Biff and Thomas began their playing careers together in a death metal band. “Norway and Bergen are like Jerusalem to all black metal fans”, says Biff. “A couple of years ago, Bergen was known for the big metal scene. Some guys started to set churches on fire, and some homicides were linked to that particular scene. Even today, metal fans worldwide come to Bergen to see where Emperor, Burzum, and Mayhem recorded their albums and where the churches used to be.” You’d never guess this death metal link from a drive through the picturesque countryside, but it’s certainly there.

Biff and Thomas had met Rolf out of the same scene and he joined their band in time for their first gig. But they began to lose interest and start trying other styles, going for more of an indie/pop sound. They formed a new band called Driftwood with a fourth member on vocals, although they now like to refer to Driftwood as the Band Of Disagreement, since they came unglued in the studio during recording of an album that featured pitched battles between themselves and their engineer.

In 1998 after the split, Thomas and Driftwood’s singer started another pop band, while Rolf and Biff formed a new band to play what they described as “road movie rock”. They named themselves after a song by 16 Horsepower called “Brimstone Rock”, but it was only a duo trying to make demo recordings. Biff was playing both bass and drums and Rolf was playing guitar and singing. Their inspirations tilted towards the sixties and American and British psych bands.

Wanting to become a performing band, the two began auditioning musicians. They tried drummer after drummer and guitarist after guitarist, but never found the elusive match they were looking for until one day Thomas came by for a casual jam, just to have a good time and talk about music. His band had broken up and he had a solo project going on, but he also didn’t have a full band. The three found that their musical views had swung more in line with each other during the time apart, and they decided to join forces once again. Perhaps it was a growing maturity as musicians, but the three all seem to feel that they had a lot more freedom to do new things. Says Rolf: “The sessions after Thomas joined turned out to be great opportunities to come together and jam without any limits and without any differences. Having no guidelines to follow, we were allowed to create music in a whole new way. The earlier differences were due to too many limitations musically, and too many guidelines. At the same time we had all discovered more of sixties music, so we had a new and equal foundation to build a sound and style. In a way that surprised us, our earlier differences were colliding into a joint sound.”

While Brimstone was still finding its legs, the three started a Byrds tribute band on the side. Calling themselves the Terrorbyrds, they featured Biff on bass, Thomas and Rolf doing the vocals and guitars, and Øyvind, Thomas’ younger brother, on the drums. This project lasted only two weeks but had great significance for Brimstone. Øyvind also played the guitar, and he turned out to be the man need to complete Brimstone’s lineup. A month later in February of 2001 they had their first gig.

“There are 2-3 excellent rock-clubs in Bergen. The best is probably Garage. It’s a small and intimate club, where all the local rock musicians meet.”

“We used to rehearse in an old empty swimming pool”, says Øyvind, “But the fire department kicked us out. For some reason they thought the swimming pool could catch fire. It was a beautiful place and we really miss it. At the moment we are sharing a place with a metal band. It’s a 45 minute drive so we are looking for something else, but it’s difficult to get something we can afford. We normally rehearse about 4 days a week and then it will last 5-10 hours. 90% is just jamming. 10% is rehearsing and song writing. We often play some cover songs and make our own interpretations.”

Compared to a lot of bands, this rehearsal regime is pretty intensive, but it probably has a lot to do with how lush and full the band’s arrangements are. Rolf describes the song writing process as follows: “One of us comes up with some basic ideas and then we will work on the song together. We use a lot of energy on the arrangements. Sometimes this will take months and sometimes only minutes. The lyrics usually come halfway through this process. We often play the songs in a number of different ways before we are happy. Then we record a demo to hear if we need to add something.”

The Going Out ep is the first officially released recording by Brimstone. They recorded it in a private studio shared by two other Bergen bands. Their budget was pretty limited – just enough for four days. But they prepared themselves rigorously to be in a position to work efficiently. They recorded 8 track demos of everything as a dress rehearsal before going in. “And the engineer, Arthur Skorpen, cut us some slack”, says Thomas. “We worked 15 hours a day, and Arthur slept in the studio. He smoked about 500 cigarettes and only ate a few candy bars and drank beer and coke during these four days.”

“We wanted to do 5 songs properly instead of making a low quality full-length album. When we selected the songs for the ep we tried to include songs that would show the band from different angles. We feel that the ep has more the feeling of a mini album than a traditional ep with one hit single and 4 b-sides.”

The band are pretty happy with the result they achieved, although some things had to be done differently than they’d intended going in. The original idea was to record live in the studio, but the studio wasn’t really equipped for this approach. “The result turned out pretty nice anyway”, says Biff. “We couldn’t have done anything differently simply because we couldn’t afford it. The next time we are definitely going to record live in the studio to recreate the live feeling. Reviews tell us that our songs work best live.”

Local reaction to Going Out has been very positive so far. They’ve had good reviews and considering they haven’t got any real distribution for the ep, it’s been selling pretty well, too. Critics have compared them to other Scandinavian bands with psychedelic influences like Motorpsycho or the Swedish group Soundtrack of Our Lives. But strangely enough, Brimstone primarily intended the ep for booking and promo and not really as a commercial endeavour. So it’s only available in a few stores and from the Brimstone website.

The comparisons make the band happy, though, because they rate Motorpsycho and Soundtrack Of Our Lives as among the best bands in Scandinavia, along with other Norwegian groups like The Jessica Fletchers, Emmerhoff & The Melancholy Babies, Lorenzo and Poor Rich Ones.

In an e-mail, the group gave me a song-by-song summary of the five tracks that make up Going Out:

““Magic Dragon” works as an introduction to the band. You may have noticed that we are not actually gypsies (this comment seems to refer to the legend across the back of the CD booklet that says the band of love and gypsies – Steve) but anyhow, this song is about a young man who is in love with a pretty girl. The problem is: he loves all pretty girls. He is the master of letting relationships go down the drain, but since Brimstone is an optimistic band, he is told not to worry, because love soon will come around again. It’s also a drug-oriented song…”

““Going Out” is a fine song about Brimstone packing themselves and a full backline into the “brim-o-mobile”, getting on the road again – ready to rock any city. We have a real romantic feeling about touring! We don’t have a CD player in our VW bus, only a “ghettoblaster” running on batteries, and every member of the band is responsible for composing a personal tape. It’s a competition to make the best tape.”

“Due to the fact that most people are working or studying throughout the week, they often feel like getting drunk Saturday night. We are not any exception; it’s just that we do it everyday! So when people get loaded Saturday night….they get a “Hangover Sunday”….a day filled with apathy. The only thing to do is to repair – drink more!”

““Hummingbird” is one of the first Brimstone tunes. It’s a love story.”

““Human Jackals” has probably the finest lyrics written by Brimstone, telling about greed, egoism, and hypocrisy. It’s about being able to sit on a mountaintop with your friends and have a good time, while watching and criticizing those human jackals (politicians, cops, money-makers and ordinary greedy and selfish people). The question is; are those people on the mountain acting any better? It’s a case of different values.”

The band has a big backlog of material ready to go once they have the finances in order for a full length album. They’re hoping that they can get a label to sign them and help pay for recording and promotion. They told me of two songs in particular to be watching for: “The Evil Maharaja” and “Apple Pies and Orange Skies”. The first of these is described as their most psychedelic song so far while the second feels like Brimstone’s idea of a hit single. They’ve also been working on a lot of new material, which they say is heavily influenced by early Genesis, King Crimson, and Emerson Lake and Palmer (dreadful influences in my book, but if the songs come out like Going Out I’m not going to complain – Steve)

“The most rewarding thing about playing in Brimstone is that we finally have found a line-up that has similar interest and goals”, says Thomas. “The chemistry is perfect and we work really well together. It’s rewarding to play the music we love and see the audience and critics go crazy with joy. The least satisfying must be the financial part. We’re all poor students with fewer opportunities to do as much as we want with Brimstone. The paper work isn’t too popular either…booking gigs, dealing with contracts, getting the CD played on the radio and so on. Norway is a very bureaucratic country and you have to fill in about 30 pages of forms to release a cd! And then there’s taxes and shit.”

Here’s another somewhat taller tale: “On our first tour in our brand new second hand band van we missed a road sign and ended up in a place that looked like Siberia. Unfortunately we didn’t discover this error until after a 2-hour drive on a steep mountain track. Without any living creatures, except polar bears (Norway doesn’t have polar bears – Steve) and reindeer, in the radius of many miles Rolf, the driver, suddenly noticed a little red lamp flashing. We pulled over and soon discovered a fountain of boiling water in the back of the car. We realized that the engine was situated in the back of the van, under all our equipment. We had to unload all the equipment in –20 degrees Celsius. None of us have any knowledge whatsoever about mechanical shit and “no service” flashed on our phones. We didn’t know what to do but suddenly there was a fierce cry from the stereo; Roger Daltrey screamed: “WE NEED WATER”. It was a sign from the Gods of rock. Unfortunately we didn’t have any good water, only beer, so we had to melt snow to get back on the road. After studying the map closely it turned out that we actually had made a little known shortcut and we managed to get to the gig in time.”

“The worst gig we ever did was in a small town called Grimstad. They announced the gig as a hippie-festival, but it turned out to be a disco for upcoming computer engineers. We left the stage when the ridiculous small crowd wanted to smash our equipment and us when we wouldn’t play Iron Maiden songs. They didn’t even pay us our fee. This miserable response was something we had never experienced before and it was a huge turn-off. Naturally we threw a TV out of the window in the backstage. A cliché, but at the time it seemed like the right thing to do…”

“Brimstone seems to gain most fans in bigger cities like Oslo, Stavanger, Kristiansand, Trondheim and Bergen. These cities have universities and the students have often the same interest as us; drink beer and listen to good music. Our best gig so far must be at Café Mono in Oslo. The whole Norwegian music industry is situated in Oslo and this gig opened a few doors for us. Great response, a wonderful night and many new friends.”

So there you have it, the Brimstone story to date. For now, you can get their CDEP off the NKVD website, and with a little luck, they’ll get a deal with a real label and there’ll be a more significant CD soon.