Widely touted as Norway’s most exciting new musical export, south-coast punks Honningbarna are a young, fiercely political beast. Building their reputation on an intoxicatingly feisty live show, the four-piece are headed up by school-boy-styled singer and manic strummer of the most unlikely of punk instruments – the cello – Edvard Valberg. Having learnt about his musical leanings last time out, this time GP changed the record for our second interview, sticking to the band’s big new record deal, and their chief subject matter: aggressive and borderline revolutionary politics. Valberg took time out of a hectic recording schedule to tell us what it’s all about:
The unlikely fusion with EMI, set to kick off fully with the launch of their second album, produced by the team behind The Hives and Refused in March 2013, is a source of some controversy for fans of the notoriously independent four-piece. Behind the scenes, Honningbarna themselves judged on more than a name. “When we went through the process of talking to indie and major labels”, Valberg recalls, “it meant a lot to us. The people we work with really matter. At the end of the day, it was sort of who was the most enthusiastic, what’s the team, how much do they want it, do they share our views. EMI just worked the best. You have to have some mutual respect for record companies. For us, we’d never sign a deal with a major label where they owned our music. We pay for what we do ourselves, they’re more of a distribution partner. We feel like they can’t say much about us sharing our music for free, for example. That’s part of the package.”
Like all of Honningbarna’s previous material, we can expect the new album to be a pulsating Norwegian-language crawl through some hefty politics, channeled towards the impressive live shows. The live shows, in fact, remain a balancing act, pointedly crisp and quick-fire, and full of energy. “We’ve thought a lot about our shows”, Valberg explains. “The risky thing about having political lyrics is it can become too preachy. There’s nothing more irritating than wanting a performer to shut up and play his music. I’m not at a concert to listen to the trip experience, or a funny episode from that day. It’s not bad stand up comedy. We need to keep the energy up, to explode in 45 minutes. That’s what punk should be. We’re never going to be a band that plays two or three hour sets. I get bored. I don’t understand why bands do that. After 45 minutes or so, you should stop while you’re having fun. Maximum power. We’re exhausted after 45 minutes anyway. We’re fucked in the head. We like it that way.”
Alongside the frantic shows, through, imagery and volume is far eclipsed by sheer political bitterness. “It’s actually quite funny, in Norway people always say to us ‘why are you so angry?’ They never ask us that outside, they ask what we’re singing about. That describes a difference in mentality. A lot of Europe is quite rough and cynical, people understand anger.”
There are particular issues that Honningbarna hold dear, specifically, for example, the Palestinian problem, emphasized by the band hanging a Palestine flag at the back of the stage for every one of their shows. “Israel and Palestine is something that’s very easy and very complicated at the same time”, Valberg suggests. “It’s getting handled like it’s very complicated, and it is for the people. When we release our album in Germany, nobody would work with us unless we removed Fri Palestina from the album. In Norway, one of the biggest newspapers wrote about the song and it became a really commented-on article. It’s difficult to discuss this kind of thing. People can’t tell people who criticise Israel from people who hate Jews. It’s obviously a very different thing. They can’t separate the politics and the religion. You get called a Jew hater for having a palestinian flag on the stage. That’s good in a way; it’s very easy to defend, but at the same time it gets a lot of people going, thinking about it. It’s still provocative. We’d lose a bit of our point if we weren’t provoking. If we provoke people to think for themselves, and that’s very powerful.”
“I care what people think, but not as much if someone goes after me for hating Jews. It says more about him than it says about me. It’s not a misunderstanding, it’s just stupid. It would hurt more if it came from my mates. There’s scary shit going on in the comment boxes around the internet. People don’t say it to your face. I don’t want to put myself in the victim position, I always just defend what I believe in. Therefore I can expect people to do the same. If I can do, I don’t see any reason why other people can’t. People don’t need to defend my opinions for me.”
If Honningbarna are angry about international issues, though, they might even be more so about Norway’s own social status. Goldenplec knows little about Scandinavian politics, but to Valberg it hinges on smugness: “There’s basically the same problems in Norwegian politics as everywhere else. Norwegians are quite subtle and shy, but at the same time very, very proud of ourselves, what we’ve done with social democracy issues for example. The thing is that we are so proud of ourselves but we do actually do a lot of bad stuff. We export a lot of weapons, we went to Afghanistan, we’re a member of NATO, we buy climate quotas. But we’re still so full of ourselves. We have lots of racism. Nobody wants to confront it, but it’s still there, whispered. It’s the kind of society that can create people like Breivik.”
“We’re all for having an open society in Norway. Some of that’s really good, but some people, even though they hide in internet comment boxes, hide out until they explode. Breivik paralyzed Norway. The shame is it should be a real wake up call. The right wing racist party plummeted after it happened. But three months later it was climbing again. We should be trying to tackle racism and islamophobia rather than going back how we were. The love that spread after the tragedy was really strong. We felt that, we stood together despite political differences. We had to talk about these problems, but it sort of disappeared very quickly. That’s a shameful thing.”
It all starts to sound a little like that word Valberg was desperately pushing to avoid: preachy. But then you realize Honningbarna put their money right where their socially-embittered mouths are. “We don’t drink on tour. Money that should go to beer goes to charity. Normally Wikileaks of Free Tibet. In that way, we’re part of a charity, but Honningbarna is our political project. It’s working far better than we expected. There’s nothing more provoking than people on your side giving bad arguments. We define ourselves together with the people who listen to us. It’s much more organic and much stronger than if I became a member of a political party. We discuss the politics at band practise. We don’t always agree, but we tend to find a consensus.”
Such anger looks set to take the band around the world, no doubt exposing Valberg and co to a whole load more of the politics that’s come to define them. “The plan is world domination. I’d never go to the States if it wasn’t for the band, as States just don’t appeal to me at all. I find it vulgar. But we can do it in Norwegian. Sigur Ros have an imaginary language. We’ve got real shit.” In terms of style, anger, pulsating live set ups and the unlikely twist of that abrasively-bowed cello, it’d take a brave critic to suggest otherwise.