Nordic Fest fellowship

Jim (Once Dead, the Crucified + more), I and Devon (Once Dead, Fasedown + more)






And behind our bad as attitude, hehe:
I met tons of cool people at Nordic Fest as usually. It's so cool with all the fellowship at these festivals, and I believe we can have even more intense fellowship at the Christian metal fest's. That's one of the things that's on my heart these festivals. This fellowship is very special. I whole lot of these people is traveling around on the underground Christian metal festivals in Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, England, USA and so on. ...Like I do :)
Above: Upper left corner is Adam from England, some great Danes and Daniel from BobFest, Sweden.
Below: Johan from Crimson Moonlight. Sick metalhead!...?...Or one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet!
...And Jokull/Ravn/Raven from Frosthardr playing with a new member of the nordic metal family.
An awesome weekend at Nordic Fest. Hanging out, enjoying the good spirit and fellowship, working as crew and making 20 interviews for the Intense Extreme Radio, which will be up at the 1st of January 2008! Positive, Extreme and Brutal Metal 24/7!!

Nordic Fest venues and seminars

One of the cool things about Nordic Fest is the venues. The concerts are held at SubScene, owned by SubChurch. The SubScene room and stage is also where the SubChurch is.Merchandise and hangout was at the SubCafé in one of the other underground atmospheric rooms at SubChurch.
Accommodation is at the Holy Riders Cave. A huge metal gate into a stone mountain outside of Oslo City. The MC Club, Holy Riders, is now using the cave. But if a war breaks out the cave will be used as shelter for the citizens of Oslo. This is an awesome place.
Above: My Danish friend Martin Svinth...
Below: Robin from Admonish is doing one of the seminars in the cave.

He talked about walking in Gods call for your life. Here's my view about what he said.
1) Walk as an action. If God tells me to move to the States it requires that I DO IT if I wanna serve Him. Makes sense!
2) Be there with my mind. Not only walk physically. Be there with integrity, interactivity and a will to learn from the people I meet.
3) Be there with my spirit. If I feel God's calling me it's not just enough to walk in His call. If I don't invite God to walk with me it makes no sense, and this is where many Christians suddenly go wrong. To be a Christian (a Christ follower) requires a daily relationship with Christ my Savior, God my Father and the Holy Spirit who creates me every day.
Pastor Bob's seminars are always great and extremely useful for a daily relationship with God. Make sure to meet him at one of the festivals if you haven't or listen to his Broadcast at sanctuaryinternational.com

Nordic Fest

Another GREAT year at Nordic Fest in Oslo, Norway!!
The 6th year of the festival, and the 3rd time that I'm attending.
Again there was a lot of awesome bands playing. One of them was Mortification from Australia. Steve Rowe (on the picture below) is a living legend and miracle. Doctors has proclaimed his death a couple of times (cancer + more) and he's still doing concerts! Steve Rowe has done an amazing job for extreme metal for more than 30 years. He did some cool testimonies from the stage and proclaimed that he wouldn't stop doing concerts before he fell dead on stage. Though he didn't move around and had a cup of tea beside him on a table all the time, it was awesome to meet him. I welcomed Mortification when they arrived and they are such cool guys.
My American friends from Once Dead played as well. I saw them at Cornerstone California two month ago, but here at Nordic Fest they really had the right crowd. Once Dead has got members from Vengeance/Vengeance Rising, The Crucified and Fasedown. Ooool sKuuuul thrash!
The bass player from Dalit => longest hair + longest beard at the festival! Very cool doom metal:
Pål Dæhlen (Frosthardr drummer) is the Nordic Fest main organizer and the man behind Nordic Mission. Nordic Mission metal distribution had its 10 years anniversary at Nordic Fest this year!

Friends in London

We spend a few days in the London area where I had a good time with the Englishmen and the people from the Glorious Undead Church!
On the picture above I'm standing with Cameal and Melany, whom I had a great time with. I've met Cameal several times before at BobFest, NordicFest, DestructionFest and EndtimeFest. He's a cool guy and his parents opened their house for me to stay. They've got a very comfortable couch. Pastor Bob married Cameal and Melany about half a year ago and it's cool to see them together! Great finally to meet and hang out with Melany who's actually from the States. Her brother Jason is living in Nashville and I know him very well. Melany and Jason played in the American metalcore band LoPhat.
Some very cool people from the Glorious Undead Church .A cool couple from Czech.Great metalhead from Brazil.

Doom metal and devotions

When the Meltdown Festival ended Sunday I moved in with these two cool folks for a couple of days. They are the parents of little Jasmines mom, and Ian from My Silent Wake/Ashen Mortality/Seventh Angel/Paramaecium/Century Sleeper.
I was honored to get the guest room where John PROUDLY showed me his train landscape that he's working on, which was half of the room :) . Very cool. This picture shows 1/4 of the landscape.
Margery and I had a good talk about death metal, black metal, doom metal and goth metal. I couldn't think of a better place to stay!

I really admire Margery and John and how they cling to Gods grace and everyday fellowship with Christ, which has made them who they are. In the evenings the 3 of us had some great
devotions. Shared God-experiences with each other, read a captor in the Bible, talked about it, then read in 4 devotion-books and prayed together.

I love it when Christians can share life like Christ wanted it to be. Like a family, brothers and sisters where we focus on the awesome things we've got in common instead of what we disagree about.

...It was cool hanging out with 'em, and we talked till after midnight every evening (I was always the first who went to bed).

Babysitting with Jeff Scheetz

I met a whole lot a cool folks at Meltdown. Two of the people that I spent a lot of time with was Jasmine (7month) and Jeff Scheetz.
Jasmines parents were on the Meltdown crew.
Jeff is one of the best guitar players worldwide when it comes to big 80'/90'metals guitars. If you don't know him but know Joe Satriani or Steve Wai, it's in the same category. Jeff did a cool "little" gimmick about six month ago, where he broke the Guinness Record of "Most guitar players playing together". He gathered almost 1900 guitar players and lead them in "Smoke on the water" :P

Meltdown Festival

A cool little retreat metal/rock festival outside of Birmingham just across the boarder to Wales. Less than 100 people which makes it great for fellowship. Everything is within this cool castle. Lots of small corridors to get to the rooms. One room for eating together, one room for café and on room for rock worship and seminars by Pastor Bob and Jeff Scheetz.
Every time I've been to a festival or just meeting great people, I always wonder why I nearly didn't take any pictures of the folks I got to know. I met a whole lot of cool people at Meltdown. One of them is Doogle from Scotland:
The concert"hall" before we build the stage:
And in action:
My top 3 concerts of the weekend:
- Jeff Scheetz ( myspace.com/jeffscheetz )
- Ignited ( myspace.com/ignited )
- Back Pocket Prophet ( myspace.com/backpocketprophet )

Nashville folks in Denmark

I had to fly from Nashville to Denmark to meet these two cool people:Decon and Becki Ryan travel around doing worship concerts with a deep vision of bringing the Church back to love. Here you can listen to their music: www.myspace.com/beckiryan

Next time, I'll meet them in Nashville. Looking forward to that!

The CORE group

This is the four friends who'll be the core group together with me for putting up the Green Light District Festivals. I'm proud to be working together with these folks!
David, Jonas, Levi, SimoneWe're having the Metal Festival same place as last time, but in a different way. One change is, that we're moving the stage to this room, that you see above. It will change into a CRAZY scenery with a thick underground metal environment. It's gonna be an AWESOME festival with lots of fellowship, metal music and seminars by Pastor Bob!

Be there!! : May 30th to June 1st 2008.
www.myspace.com/greenlightdistrictfestival

Silent Highway album

My best friend, Morten Storgaard just got done recording his solo album.
He's a great musician and I'm looking forward to get your album, dude!Early morning..?
Recording the last ideas before going to the studio a last time.
The album will be out December the 1st. www.myspace.com/silenthighway

A visit in MY church

It was so cool to visit my church again. It really feels like home when I'm there in Århus Valgmenighed.
Great fellowship, great worship and great teaching. I reached two services and it was cool to be able to hang out with so many awesome people and friends again. We always eat together in the church building which is very cool. The building was a ware house before we bought it. When it was just purchased I helped putting up an underground music/art event called Silverspeak Ground. It was VERY underground, dark, cold and dusty. Metal music, electronica, post rock, spoken words and all kinds of art as paintings, photos, poems cartoons + more. This church really understands how to help people walking in the specific vision that God has giving them.

It was so good being back in my own church again, but while I was there I also felt a deep peace in WHERE I LAY MY HEAD, MY HOME WILL BE. God is good!

Chill out with Danish friends

It has been great be see a lot of friends and family in Denmark. I spent a couple of weeks in Denmark and it was cool to be home for a bit. Very relaxing though a had a lot of appointments and meetings to do.

Here's 4 of my good friends:Morten/Mrtn (x-classmate from Social worker/deacon education) Brian/Bimmern (from Barricades)Lars/Gammellars (from Barricades)
Jonas/High Tower (my cool nephew)

Visit from Germany

Mathias from Germany took a couple of days off to come to Denmark and visit me. It was my first meeting with him and he's a great guy!Mathias is working with Christian metal ministry in Germany, so we've got a few things in common. His main event is the "Hard Rock Halleluja" metal concerts in North Germany.

Check it out on myspace.com/hardrockhallelujah1
This year they're having 5 Christian metal events with bands, teaching and fellowship.

Childhood home

This is the view from my window where I grew up. A village right next to the beach and forest area, with a few fields and only 700 inhabitants. A tourist village with 20-40.000 people on a good Summer.My parents moved here to Fjellerup when I was just born. I lived here the first 10 years of my life. Then my family and I moved to Nepal in Asia for 3 years, which was the very best years of my childhood. Now my parents are living in the same house and it's always a blessing to come home and relax :)

Hanging with the family

I'm now in Denmark where I'll be for a couple of weeks until the 1st of November.
It's great hanging out with the family again! I love my family; and on the other hand I'm really glad that I'm going back to the States again because of my the work there with Sanctuary.
I haven't had any homesickness but I especially longed to hang out with my nephew Jonas! We're buddies!

Going home...

Going home after a niiice and blessed week in California...
Coming home to the overview sight of Nashville by night...But the weird thing is that I've now been here in the States for almost 2,5 month!
Next Thursday the 11th I'm jumping on a plane towards Denmark. The 2,5 month seems like 2,5 weeks or less. Hard to believe that I'm already going to Denmark again, but I'm looking forward to hang out with my Danish Family and friends again!

I'll only be in Denmark for a couple of weeks. Then I'll go to Meltdown Festival (metal) outside of Birmingham, England, the first week of November. Then it'll be Nordic Fest (metal) in Oslo, Norway, the second weekend of November.

And then back to Nashville, TN, after a month in Europe.

Cross over road bridges

YEAH! How cool is that! .....?
There's just something fascinating about the creativity if the roads here: In Denmark we use bridges to cross water..! :0) ...Or cross ONE road.

Great days in California

As mentioned before I had a blast staying with the Emerald families! We were 10 people in the house and had a awesome time together. One the picture below we're metal jamming in the living room. I'm playing Davids black old Gibson:
Youth of the house. Andrew is a great musician. He's cool sister on right and his girlfriend from England in the left of the picture. Good to hang out with a European! :)
..Aaaaand the kitchen were miracles are happening. A great place to hang out and talk. And eat!

Larry & Laura

These two beautiful people blessed me SO much during the whole week in California. Pastor Bob and I stayed at their peaceful house from Tuesday to Tuesday. There was a lot of people in the house but it was such a peaceful and blessed time.
Larry is the vocalist for Emerald and a great guy!
You can't mention Laura without mention her amazing cooking!! I can't even describe it with words :0) She is my substitute mother when I'm in California => not bad!

Thanks for EVERYTHING you guys!

BloodGOOD

This band ended the whole festival by closing it at the Sanctuary Stage.

I'm not a big fan of '80s heavy metal with the big tenor vocals like Michael Sweet's from Stryper or Bruce Dickinson's of Iron Maiden, but I respect those guys and bands for what they've done to the metal genre in the early days, and it was very cool to meet a lot of those people here at festival.

This year the theme for the Sanctuary Stage was the old school metal, to celebrate the 20 years anniversary for the first Christian metal festival in world history, that Pastor Bob and Sanctuary put up in California, named Metal Mardi Grass :O)



Bloodgood is one of the first bands on the scenes and is still delivering a great show. ...And I must confess that, of all the concerts I saw at Cornerstone, they did the most impressive show! They are awesome, cracking jokes all the time, great musicians (though it's not my genre), great positive energy all over stage and they reach fare beyond the edge of the stage! The guitar player from Stryper, Ox Fox, is now playing with the Bloodgood which is VERY good. B-)

...And Less Karlsen is in his 60's!! Awesome energy and very animated! He's the "silver"-long-haired guy on the video (shot with my phone..).

Cornerstone California Saturday

This first year Cornerstone California was a two days festival with heavy tunes on 5 stages.
There was a whole lot of great concerts on Saturday as well!

Emerald, the guys I stayed with, did their concert today. I was told that one of the songs they did they wrote almost 30 years ago. That's old school metal! On the picture below you see the guitar player David whom I hung out with the whole week in California:
Once Dead played at the Sanctuary Stage as well, and they were the band that I looked the most forward to see. Aggressive thrash metal done by musicians from Vengeance/Vengeance Rising, who were the first band in world history to record vocal-growl in metal. And they were Christians... Once Dead pictures below:It was also good to meet Glen Kaiser again. Last time I met him was at Sommer Oase in Denmark 2,5 month ago. And cool to see my friend Jim Laverde play with his band Barren Cross. His band started playing heavy metal in the early 80's. Big hair metal!

Besides the bands at the Sanctuary Stage I also went to enjoy some of metal core at the other stages. This day Showbread, Underoath, Project 86, Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster + tons of other bands played. It was the first time I heard Maylene And... and they were really good! Metal core with a crazy live show AS WE LIKE IT :p

Here's a picture of Showbread at one of the main stages: