DNL is the bilingual, internal magazine for the Department of English (University of Aarhus, Denmark)



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The department's website

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Insidiöus Törment

 
The IT release party review has finally arrived:

Dodging bullets - the Törment is for real?

So you have probably seen the pictures from Insidiöus Törment’s “Re-debut: Live at Die Budi Kate” release party and you have definitely heard the myths, wouldn’t you say it was about time that yours truly handed in the article, he promised to write months ago? The thing is that although the two DNL Rock reporters, Roy “Raw” Fogde and Anders “Omen” Olesen, had brought both pen and paper to last year’s greatest rock event, all the beer and metal helped turning the memories of the evening into a hazy mess. However, one memory stands out and refuses to leave this reporter’s mind: the fact that Insidiöus Törment still holds the crown as the mightiest event makers in Århus. The band had invited the press for a little get-together where they showed us a video recording of last September’s concert in Uni-parken, served drinks and snacks, and made a great fuss over us in general. Wicked tongues might claim that all this was done in an attempt to take the edges off the journalists’ questions (especially the impressive multimedia show could have lured the attention away from the press conference), but this reporter is pretty sure of their good intentions, and knowing that metal is all about honesty and street credibility, it seems hard to believe that Törment would try to play such a trick on us.

Honesty?
This honest and straightforward attitude already showed its mighty head during the first question of the evening. We wanted to know whether the title of their new album “Live at Die Budi Kate” had anything to do with all the “Live at the Budokan” albums out there. Mortor, who hasn’t been playing with the band for a while but who is in the line up on the live album, did not beat around the bush and answered matter-of-factly that the difference between their album and the Ozzy, Dylan, and Yngwie Malmsteen albums lies in the fact that their album was recorded in Aalborg and not Tokyo, thus adding a western vibe to the recording. Honest and straight to the point, but when a reporter from one of our rivals, RevelationZ Magazine (www.revelationz.net), wanted to go into further details, the band refused to comment on the matter. This seemed a bit strange, but we learned later that evening that the exact same question was going to be used in a competition where a bottle of Jägermeister was up for grabs, so, naturally, they did not want to give away the answers too soon. They would much rather talk about how they hadn’t tried to improve the sound on the album by adding extra guitars in the studio, for instance, and it was quite obvious that the band took pride in this detail, but as Scream explained to us; there isn’t much point in mending the sound when you are 8 people in a band. You already have all the sound you need – ‘it’s more a question of removing certain things’. When you listen to the album it is quite clear that one of these “certain things” has to be the noise from the audience, which seems to have been edited out of the final product, but Killer reassured us that all alterations were done ‘in the spirit of metal’ (as he put it). O.J. did, however, still claim that people would be able to identify their own voices when listening to the album at home, and he even went on to say that the album was a regular “hjemstavnsalbum”, meaning that their large herd of followers were almost just as audible on the CD as the band itself.

I am willing to bet that no one in the room noticed that something was somewhat askew here. That something wasn’t exactly as it should be. But DNL Rock’s two reporters, who have been around the band for way too long, sensed immediately that there was some incoherency in how the individual members of the band answered our questions. It could have something to do with the fact that a lot of the old members had returned for this special event only and therefore hadn’t had enough time to form a common ground with the rest of the band, or it could just be that all of them could not concentrate properly due to all the excitement that surrounds a new release. We decided to throw another curve ball at them…just to test their loyalty towards each other. We wanted to know if there was any truth in the rumours we have heard about Ronnie Gamboa attending both David Bowie and Jean Michel Jarre concerts, and if such an interest was compatible with a job as the drummer in one of the finest metal acts around. It was interesting to observe how quickly Jake “The Scream” reacted and proclaimed that it was a well-known fact in metal circles that Gamboa’s nickname was in fact “No Metal”. The question and Scream’s response did not seem to please the drummer, but Killer and O.J. backed him up and presented us with a vague story about Ronnie’s unknown brother Lonnie who apparently isn’t interested in heavy metal. Till this day, the question remains unanswered.

Hair and ladies
The DNL Rock editors had heard the gossip about the band breaking up but did not give it much thought since the story allegedly emerged for the first time on the discussion board www.torment-talk.de – a site which is well-known for its lack of reliability. We had, however, noticed that a significant part of the original line up had left the band during the last couple of years. The band told us not to worry since they saw Insidiöus Törment as a heavy metal big band where future members were always kept in reserve, and in order to avoid pulling a Genesis, they made sure to maintain a tight member policy. In theory, they explained, it is possible to leave the band, but in real life it is a whole other matter. I have even read somewhere that they grow their own members, so a never ending flow of hero metal should be ensured for the next decade or so. But what’s the story about O.J. then? The members of Törment have never been afraid of wearing wigs and using hair extensions, but when the last longhaired member decided to cut his hair some time ago, he was immediately linked with more modern bands like Linkin Park and Evanescence. The reason for this can be found in the fact that while the other guys still steam of the eighties, O.J.’s new hairdo took him straight from the eighties into the new millennium, hence the rumours. It was obvious that the band was extremely tired of this old story, and without hesitation they all confirmed that O.J. wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, he only cut his hair because it kept getting into his eyes when he was playing the bass or the ukulele at gigs. Scream was able to elaborate on the story, and it turned out that the hair came off during their tour in the States where O.J. suddenly grew frighteningly attached to the cartoon character Prince Valiant.

Since DNL Rock has always cared a great deal about fashion, we decided to stay in that department for a while. We wanted to know if the band was aware of the fact that the whole deal about Scream’s obsession with wearing leather and showing off his stomach smells a bit too much of Judas Priest’s Rob Halford? The interview went fairly wrong here. Scream grew solemn instantly, turned himself towards Roy (who had been brave enough to ask the question), and answered harshly: ‘It smells like every man smells. It wasn’t you that my girlfriends invited back to their place the last time I checked’. I have seen some crazy stuff during my years with Insidiöus Törment, but I have never seen Scream like this before. We decided that it was best to leave it at that, so we started chatting about the new album again, just to loosen them up. Dave “Steel” Steel confessed that he was overjoyed with the final result, even though he was not able to be there, and Killer, professional as always, tried to force the interview back to its starting point by suggesting that integrity and honesty still formed the backbone of the band. “What you see is what you get” seemed to be the main point in his argument, even though he did not say so directly, but he grew all proud and masculine when he stated that although the band had improved their songs tremendously and had become better musicians in general during 2003, the lyrics would still be the same, and they would still say the same things between numbers during concerts. He was absolutely certain that this approach would please the fans, as they would know exactly what to expect when going to a Törment gig. This also means that what you hear on “Live at Die Budi Kate” is the same as what you will hear at the concerts, and there should be plenty of opportunities to see this marvellous band in action in 2004.

The future
But what holds the future for our favourite metalizers? Scream revealed that the band planned to compose another song for their “Space Trilogy” which currently consists of two songs (“Space Marine Death Machine” and “Moon Trooper, Trooper of the Moon”). RevelationZ asked why they were so fascinated by space, and the answer was, apparently, plain and simple: ‘there is more metal in space than in any other place’, as O.J. revealed to us, and thus adding more fuel to the fire in these “life on Mars?” days. ‘Space is very cold and very far away’, Killer added. To our surprise, the band also informed us that songs about the Jurassic period and vegetarianism (even though Mortor claimed that no heroes were vegetarians) were in the making…or were they? Finally, they wanted to integrate their website (www.insidioustorment.com) more in their quest for stardom (we are still waiting for that Rudi Pöller bio), and there should be a board game ala “Diamond Hunt” (“Afrikas Stjerne”) coming out soon (but probably around Christmas).

By now, the band was very eager to end the press conference, so, unfortunately, we did not have time to hear about the band’s plans of joining the Lichtenstein 2016 Olympic Games campaign, or who they thought would win a fight between Bakhtin and the Space Marine Death Machine. The public was allowed in, and our session with this magnificent metal act was over, so we went to the bar for the new CD and some brilliant German beer, and while we were admiring the beautiful artwork on the cover and drinking the beer, a video footage from the concert in Aalborg appeared on the screens in the room. It was very cool, and if that wasn’t enough, the band decided to play two acoustic versions of two of their latest hits: “The Duke of Lichtenstein” and “Prometheus Unbound”. Good stuff!

posted by Anders at 09:43

 
This is the end…

So with this being my last day as a member of the infamous DNL- crew, I figured I would use this last chance for some shameless self-promotion. Historically speaking, that is afterall what a lot of the past articles in this magazine have been about. And I don’t mean that in a negative way. As a member of the DNL crew we embraced that particular trend years ago, which resulted in DNL Bars, rather silly articles, lots of pictures, for some reason mostly of people who were somehow were connected to the DNL gang, or people who just looked funny. Okay, maybe an unfair generalization, but you get the picture. But anyhow, we have had our fair share of fun doing the magazine.

I joined the crew in April 2002 with the firm belief I could somehow reinvent myself as a reincarnation of Spike from Press Gang, and maybe meet some chicks. Which is really why guys do anything. And you might say “No I like to do things because I feel a social responsibility”, and I might say “yeah, right…”. Imagine my dissapointment when I realized the gang consisted of Erik Arent, Kasper Thaarup and Anders O. While they were all a bunch of strapping young lads, none of them possesed the devilish good looks of Lynda Day from Press Gang or even Andrea Zuckermann from 90210. Later these guys were replaced by Christopher and Kristian, but still the babe-ratio was at a dissapointing big, fat, lonely ZERO. It was soon realised that I was not quite the prolific writer I had hoped, so instead of writing features on student politics or anything relevant, my job was primarily to edit and layout the stuff other people wrote, help make whatever sillyness there was to be in the magazine, come up with ideas that never materialized, try (unsuccesfully, I might add) to blackmail Marianne into writing something about the Fagudvalg, bitch and moan about people who didn’t submit articles to our otherwise VERY flexible deadlines, try to impose a bit of cencorship on whatever ideas or pictures people came up with (only because I thought I could, being senior editor an’ all…) and finally just hang out and be groovy in a John Kalodner kind of way. (Yes, there may be ONE Aerosmith fan laughing at that joke.)

Anyhoo, before I get way too selfindulgent, I better get to the point of all this. Now that I will hopefully soon go on to my sidefag at the Department of Goofing Around and Eating Sandwiches, I hope that some of YOU will step in and continue making this magazine. Kristian isn’t getting any younger either, so I hereby take in on me to pass the torch on to new generation of DNL editors, so the magazine will still be around when we’re dead or unemployed. And as you may have noticed, there haven’t been any girls in the DNL crew, which I think is a mistake since it would at least offer some sense of variation to the magazine. Even if you’re an angry feminist, there should still be a place for you at the Department magazine. But a magazine of only editors and no journalists is also bound to suck, so I also hope people will start writing more stuff. I’m very much looking at you people from the Fagudvalg. If nobody cares about what’s going on at the Department, I could be because people don’t know what you’re doing? Just a thought…
So, that’s basically it from me. I’ve heard that it’s a good idea to finish by quoting somebody else, so let me just end with a quote from Jim Morrison: “I don't know what's gonna happen maaan, but I'm gonna have my kicks before the whole shithole goes up in flames....All Right, All right!!!!!” There you go, couldn’t have put it better myself.

Keep on truckin’

Roy Fogde
(2002-2004)
posted by Roy at 16:21

 
and don't forget...
that Eforen will host one of this year's biggest events in a few weeks (not this Friday, not the next Friday either, but the Friday after that). Yes sir, 'Re-Debut: Live at die Budikate' is ready to be sold! For more info go here!
posted by Anders at 11:58

 
Don't forget to pick up your copy of the new DNL at Anglia.

And don't forget the DNL-Friday Bar on November 21.

If you do, we know where you live....
posted by Roy at 15:10

 
We received this piece of rather dubious rock-journalism from our corrospondent in the University Park:

The Day The Torment Was Real

I remember it as if it was yesterday. I was down on my luck, I had lost my faith in rock. The last week had claimed the lives of great rock icons such as Johnny Cash, Warren Zevon and, ehhh, John Ritter. I remember thinking “Only the good die young”, like that old Iron Maiden song. Then I thought about “Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter” which cheered me up a bit. Then I thought about the band Slaughter, and I was as depressed as before. Maybe even more. I myself was on the rebound from a nasty cold, coupled with a near fatal hangover. I looked out of my window to see if I could catch a glimpse of what was going on in the park, I hadn’t seen or heard anybody, but there was an eerie electricty in the air. Like a silence before a storm. Seing as how my window faced the wrong way, I had to make way out to the bathroom to take a look at the park, but all I could see was some ducks making an exodus from the park. The ducks, like most dolphins, can sense danger and had decided to flee before the TV*2 show later that night. But because of the duck’s airborne nature, as opposed to the dolphins, not many of them end up in tuna-salads . As exciting as it was watching these mighty creatures being hounded out of their natural habitat by Steffen Brandt, I knew that I would have to make my way out of my fortress of solitude and into the University Park to examine what was going on and experience what the buzz was all about.
There was a buzz in the park. People where whispering things to each other, and some of them were just making weird buzzing noises. “What is this?” I asked myself, surely it was not only the 75th anniversary of the university causing this commotion. I was also rather sure it couldn’t have too much to do the band playing on stage 1, Red Garnet, who was, ahem, there playing. I went up to the bar where girls were dressed like space-age playboy bunnies in order to get some answers. “But haven’t you heard? Insidious Torment are going to play in 30 minutes!” Their second show following their re-debut in Aalborg. The questions were many, “Is the torment for real?”, “Will heavy metal float?”, and of course, “will they suck?”
The moment of truth soon came, and Killer took the stage and burst into a 30 minute guitar solo. Some people called it equilibristic, some people called it sublime, and others yet again called it soundcheck. The crowd went wild, and was increasing fast. The rest of the band, who that day was performing as a quartet, entered the stage and lunged into both timeles classics and new songs as Moon Trooper – Trooper of the Moon (Part II of the Space Trillogy). A fellow journalist noted that they had a very intellectual expression in their lyrics, and right she was. Classic tales were covered in the lyrics, ranging from Promtheus giving fire to the humans in the brand new song Heathen, to The Great Cocks of Rock N’ Roll . Not only was it a great concert, it was also a learning experience. Many a mind was expanded, and before the concert was over every head had been banged, every stage had been dived, every Johnny Cash had been saluted, every beer had been emptied and our collective faith in rock music had been restored.
Oh, and I guess TV*2 also played later….

posted by Roy at 22:23

 
Yessir, another issue of DNL is currently in the making. Actually it is in the preparation stage og the initial part of the beginning of the making, and as always we would VERY much like YOU, or one of YOUR FRIENDS, to write something interesting, inspiring, insipid, insidious og indisguisably clever for the magazine. It could be your way to the short-cut to the stars. I'm sure we all agree that DNL is always pullitzer-material, and with YOUR help THIS year can turn out to be the year of DNL!!!



Love, Spike...
posted by Roy at 15:05

 
Insidious calls...(no umlauts allowed here either)
Be sure to check out Insidious Torment as they will rock the blocks when Aarhus University celebrates its 75th aniversary in Uni-parken. They will take the stage (stage 1 that is) about 15.30 (Danish time). Oh, it's on the 13th of September.

Also: The new album Re-Debut: Live at Die Budikate will be coming your way shortly. Beware!
posted by Anders at 12:51

 
Totally wow-ish
Since I'm leaving this department right aboooouuuut....now...I felt like going through the picture archives. Here's what I found!
posted by Anders at 14:47

 
WOW Again

Not only is the new issue out, it's also rather brilliant! Apart from the usual shameless self-promotion, it also features the first article written by a female since, basically, the dawning of ages. If you read the editorial you will notice that we are looking for a new member of the DNL family (and any member of the Hanson family). You too could be a self-promoter! So just get cracking and go to the next editorial meeting (in the new semester), or contact any of the DNL crew members.
posted by Roy at 13:06

 
Wow!
A new issue of DNL is out now! Get it at the Department of English (University of Aarhus). Excellent reading material for the summer holiday!
posted by Anders at 14:39

 
More pics
There are new pics for you to look at here!

The new issue of DNL will hit the streets in the beginning of next week!
posted by Anders at 12:34

 
Stay tuned!
A new issue of DNL will hit the streets in about a week or so. Look forward to more Törment, the return of Sjef Sjerard, movie reviews and much much more!

More bar pics will be uploaded in the near future (read: next week).

Enjoy your exams!!!
posted by Anders at 12:18

 
Events in May
Click here!

Have a nice weekend. We'll post some new pictures soon (probably after the last bar)!
posted by Anders at 18:58

 
More Pics

Pictures from the highly succesful DNL Bar have been uploaded - have a peek!

Thanx to all the people who showed up - you rawk, but not as much as the lo-ve-ly bartenders though!
posted by Roy at 11:07

 
Pics
Pictures from the beer test and the metal bar have been uploaded.
posted by Anders at 15:59