Black Easter at Inferno metal festival
Inferno metal festival has grown from a two‑day experiment in 2001 into one of the world’s most respected extreme‑metal gatherings. Founded by Jens Fredrik Ryland and Jan‑Martin Jensen, the festival quickly established itself as a cornerstone of Norway’s metal scene. The festival is drawing fans to Oslo every Easter for a concentrated dose of black metal, death metal, thrash metal, and doom metal. Except for the Covid pandemic years, Inferno has run annually and is now the oldest metal festival in Norway. Over the decades it has expanded far beyond its original format and has been adding club nights, international partnerships, tattoo fair an art exhibition, and the globally recognized Inferno Music Conference.
With attendees from more than 50 countries and a reputation for spotlighting both legends and rising acts, the festival has become a cultural institution that celebrates not only extreme music but the vibrant, international community surrounding it.
Taking photos at the Inferno is not just about capturing bands on stage. It is also about documenting one of the most welcoming and tight‑knit communities in the metal world. Behind the blast beats, smoke machines, and relentless energy, you will find a family of fans, volunteers, and creatives who lift each other up and make even the darkest aesthetics feel inviting. On the last day of the festival, I wore a t-shirt with the text “Free hugs”. It is somewhat different when grown men with long black leather coats, long black hair and corpse paint comes in for a hug. But wearing a t-shirt like that you have to deliver. (A sidenote is that mainly men ask for hug when I wear that t-shirt).
At the festival, the music is extreme, but the sense of belonging is even stronger. It is typical in Norway that people do cross country skiing, spend time with their families or such during the yellow Easter, but the festival goers that visits Inferno choose to spend time with their black (metal) family instead.
I did photography during the festival in 2026, and every picture becomes a tribute to that shared passion. I had two camera houses (Pentax K-3 II and Pentax K-3 III) with each their lens, a Pentax DA* 50-135 f2.8 and a Sigma 18-35 f1.8. The camera house with the Sigma had a microphone so I could record videos as well. Beforehand I imagined I would use the wide-angled lens the most, but I was wrong. Even though I listen to lots of metal I had not heard of that many of the bands in advance. I had an open mind on discovering new bands, and they sure delivered.
During the festival I realised that Doom metal probably is not my cup of tea, but there were several black metal, industrial metal and industrial black metal bands I liked.
On this page I display some of the pictures I liked the most, but two more articles with pictures of The Kovenant and Kanonenfieber will be published with good pictures.
Use the right and left arrow to arrows to browse the pictures.
