Every step I take incites a symphony of cackles from the lunatics seated in the pews. Where do I sit? Should I sit? Why am I even here?

I last saw my girlfriend two hours ago. She was talking to a black-haired boy wearing spats and violet cape. Who was he? Does he work here? Of course he doesn’t. It’s a musty old European church. No one works here but fake monks and tour guides. Still, someone had to have seen him. I mean, her. Who am I looking for, again?

This was supposed to be my vacation. Our vacation. Europe and all the trimmings, plus a stop by Norway just to see if it actually existed outside of my scrapbooks of the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics and Age of Empires II. Turns out it is really there, and so is my present hangout Bergen Cathedral, Grand Central Station of the Damned.

I decide to ask somebody in the congregation. My eyes turn first to a skinny Finn disguised as a mailman. Maybe he actually is a mailman. I don’t know what to believe at this point. I’ve been watching Sunn 0))) debase music for the better part of five hours now. At this point, my brain isn’t much more than soggy oatmeal strained through a grimy rag of cheesecloth.

“Where is Lindsay, your… eminence?” Stupid Michael! Six years of Nordic language studies and you still don’t know the proper epithet for a Scandinavian mail carrier. I pray he doesn’t notice.

He doesn’t. He only smiles as his mailbag grows a gaping fanged maw and recites a hell-born couplet: “The woman rests in valleys bare, breath begone but purity spared.”

I wake up hours later in a hotel. Not the hotel, the one Lindsay and I checked into yesterday. This one’s much better. Clean toilets, three-star view. I could get used to this. I roll to the left side of the bed, but Lindsay isn’t there. I only see two LPs called Dømkirke, both with ivory-etched covers and the degenerates from Sunn 0))) on the back in full Free Masons-meets-Addams Family garb. One record is standard black vinyl while the other is marble gray.

There’s a Post-It on the gray one:

Hey man, sorry about last night. We just wanted to get you hyped for the new live LP we were recording at that spooky-ass cathedral, but things got a little out of hand. Here are two copies of the record as a sort of we’re-sorry-we-kidnapped-your-girlfriend type of thing. They’re only available on vinyl, but at least you have two colors to choose from! If you wanna tell your friends about the record, send ‘em over here and we’ll hook ‘em up for the low price of $17.77 per record. Again, sorry about the kidnapping. No hard feelings?

<3<3<3 Sunn 0)))

I reread the note a few more times, then crumble it up and toss it in an empty ashtray. Jeez, those Sunn 0))) bastards really know how to jerk my chain. I chuckle, shake my head, and wonder where I should go to scout for another girlfriend. But one thing’s for sure -- I ain’t going to anymore Norwegian churches.
10th Anniversary Grimmrobe Demos shows (TMT News):
10.10.08 - Los Angeles, CA - Safari Sam’s #
10.12.08 - Portland, OR - Berbatis’ Pan
10.15.08 - New York, NY - Knitting Factory $
10.16.08 - Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church

# John Weise

$ Thou, Tony Conrad