Negative Music

Norwegian blackmetal/punk act HAUST is back with their original line-up!

Haust orignated in Notodden 2001 and redefined the borders between punk and black metal with their 2008 debut album Ride The Relapse. The album was the first album to be released on Fysisk Format and went on to inspire a generation of bands, including Kvelertak. Members from Haust have also been prominent in bands like Okkultokrati and Outer Limit Lotus and guitarist Ruben Willem production skills has made its mark on bands like Kvelertak, Bokassa, Djevel, Ondt Blod, NAG, Sibiir and The Good the Bad and The Zugly.

With their debut album "Ride The Relapse" in 2008, the band showed the world how this negative force could manifest. Songs like "White Trash Extravaganza," "Success," and "Desperate Living" were inspired by the destructive car-culture of their hometown Notodden with its intense local mentality and anti-sophistication, as well as old horror movies and trash films by John Waters. At this time, the band consisted of Ruben Willem, Dag Otto Basgård, Pål Bredup, and Vebjørn Guttormsgaard Møllberg.

They released another album with this lineup, "Powers of Horror" (2010), which further elaborated on horror references with a title borrowed from the Bulgarian-French philosopher Julia Kristeva's essay on the abject, the disgusting, and the unwanted.

A few years after "Powers of Horror," Basgård and Willem chose to leave the band, and Bredrup and Guttormsgaard Møllberg joined forces with Henrik Øiestad Myrvold and Øystein Wyller Odden, recording the album "NO" (2013). This album had a dirtier and more punk production than the first two albums but maintained the strong negative energy.

On the band's next album, "Bodies" (2015), they added another new member, guitarist Trond Mjøen, who had already been playing live with the band for a few years. The band played for another year with this lineup until they suddenly stopped, and the band went on hiatus for several years.

In 2018, the band reunited the original lineup to celebrate the 10th anniversary of "Ride The Relapse" with a concert, and as a result, they decided to release a new album with the original lineup. This is the album "Negative Music." The album summarizes everything Haust has done and stood for in the last 16 years: negativity, death, and corruption are recurring themes, and the music is more aggressive, noisy and catchy than ever before.

With the first single, "Dead Ringer," Haust returns to the dark horror-inspired landscape from earlier. The myth of a dead ringer comes from stories of graves equipped with a string attached to a bell at the gravestone, and if the bell rings, someone has been buried alive. Ivar Nikolaisen from Kvelertak and The Good The Bad and The Zugly also contribute guest vocals as a helping hand to bring Haust back from the grave.

"Negative Music" looks backward to the first albums and forward to something new. Band members have had the opportunity to experiment with other music both as musicians and as producers in the studio, and this can be heard in the well-produced balance between the dirty and the catchy in both lyrics and music.

Haust is not entertainment for the masses, but we are here nonetheless. What you see is what you get. The audience is invited into the abyss to witness a self-destructive purification ritual. The driving, hypnotic riff in the song separates the wheat from the chaff and leads the rat pack into the music. We say like Yoko Ono: "Don't be afraid to go to hell and back."