Årabrot

"I walk 47 miles of barbed wire/ I use a cobra-snake for a necktie/ I got a brand new house on the roadside/ Made from rattlesnake hide/ I got a brand new chimney made on top/ Made out of a human skull/ Now come on take a walk with me, Arlene/ And tell me, who do you love?" Bo Diddley - 'Who Do You Love?'

Where does the story start? It starts with an explosion that puts us in close proximity to death and then, after that, there is silence. And what should we fill that silence with? How about the revving of a van engine, some transgressive surrealist poetry and Bo Diddley on the stereo...

Kjetil Nernes is a survivor. He is, for all intents and purposes, the Norwegian rock band Årabrot, who formed in Haugesund, Norway in 2001. After stalking the blackened, grimey European noise rock underground for years, a rupturing change came in the form of serious illness in 2014. After contracting a rare and aggressive form of cancer, he nearly died; but the lengthy, painful experience of treatment and recovery gave him the time and space to reconsider his entire life… including his artistic practice.

Speaking from the deconsecrated church in Djura, Sweden, where he lives with his wife, the musician Karin Park and their young daughter, he describes how the illness changed everything: "I struggled out of that period of extreme sickness by writing the last album The Gospel (2016). It was like a big explosion. Because after an explosion you have silence. And in the silence you realise that everything has changed. In that silence, the new record was written."

Founded in June 2001

Kjetil Nernes (songwriter, guitar and vocals)
Vidar Evensen (drums and visuals)
Stian Skagen (Electronics)