Band:

Gothminister

BiografieGothminister is a character who started performing one man performance shows
in Oslo 1999.

But the idéa was born a decade earlier. His creator, Bjørn Alexander Brem,
born in 1974, had watched horror movies and written horror novels and dark
super hero cartoons since 1982 (the age of eight!). A character was
manifested already in early 90-ties in drawings and novels, and the first
pictures from 1998 were the early attempt of a aristocratic Minister of
Goth, yet without any distinctiveness, only a blury face, and no musical
concept for this one.






Brem played in different bands throughout the 90ties, (among these thrash band Conceptor and industrial metal band Disco Judas), but became infected with a terrible throath infection (probably caused by a terrible Norwegian winter wind) after a visit to the Norwegian Pub "Shadowpub", driven by the owner of the legandary record store Shadowland in Oslo. The infection lasted over a year, and Gothministers creator learned the hard way how you have to confront your darkness, not escape it. After attempts of comeback on scene during the illness, he was near bleeding to death on a scoundral liveshow with a band in 1999 (the show was stopped, and ambulance personel dragged the bleeding guy off the stage and drove him to the hospital for immidiate medical care and operation).The throath operation in 1999 had a lot of complications, and Brem thought he never was able to sing or perform again. Instead he started programming music on computors in his Dark Industrial Studios. Even if Gothministers creator had written dark and heavy music since 1989, it was during the long lasting disease which nearly caused his life, the first tracks "Gothic Anthem" and "Angel" were written for his new project Gothminister.






In 1999, the name Gothminister arose in Norwegian underground scenes such as the Volapük Festival; where a breed of experimental artists were allowed to expose themselves, among more established artists, writers etc. Gothminister saw the lights as an artist on Volapuk for the first time in
1999. The stage was placed inside an old house, occupied by brave souls who tried to earn money by arranging festivals so they could redecorate and live in the abandoned old houses. Many people had shown up to witness the man who claimed to have foreseen "the new gothic wave of the 2nd millennium". After a rather pompous introduction from the festival leader, shouting that "The Gothminister will become the greatest gothstar in the world!", the show started by turning off all the lights in the entire festival house. The Minister entered the stage from the 2nd floor, down a stair and through the
audience. The blue lights and way too much smoke showed the Minister only as a shadow and a silhouette with his trademarks; the long black frock and the top hat (see the pictures section). On stage was only the Minister himself
and a microphone, and music was pounding and screaming distorted from the P.A. system. After the show, people were pretty terrified, as they weren´t able to see much, only a dark silhouette, and some even commented that because it was impossible to see the characters feet in all the smoke, he
looked almost as if he was floating above the stagefloor. The sound was pretty obscure, as the sound engineer, mostly because of the mist, couldnt find out what made so terrible noice (it was a defect DI-box), so he had left his place. They found him in the cafe, sitting there drinking absinthe.
To questions on why he didnt fix the terrible noisy sound, he answered that "it sounds so bad that I am ashamed of being the soundengineer!"



Gothminister was lucky to get a better sound engineer at the Volapuk festival the next year, and also his face was more characterised. But Gothminister would soon expand from the obscure Volapuk scene, and was soon discovered by important people in the scene.




After meeting one of the owners of industrial club So What! in Oslo, Tom Kalstad, and a convincing one man performance show at a festival the same year, Gothminister signed to independent label Angel Productions. 2001 the EP "Angel" was released. The EP was sold on Shadowland and on some internet
stores, and sold quickly out the first 300 ex. Among strong characters in the Norwegian goth-scene, the EP was sent to goth cartoonist Lise Myhre, with a letter which thanked her for keeping the gothscene alive by her cartoon Nemi (a little goth chick who appears every day in one of Norways biggest newspapers, Dagbladet).She became a big fan of Gothminister, and to say thank you for the cd, she draw a guy with a Gothminister t-shirt in one of her comics (see the picture section), and this became a way of communicating. Later Nemi also had a Gothminister poster in her room.



Gothminister continued performing shows, and expanded them by using video on big screen with horror images, movieclips etc. He was helped out by Frederik Batlord Rolfsen, who earlier functioned as the manger and lights designer for Disco Judas. Batlord helped Gothminister build an internet website(www.gothminister.com), and did some light designing on the first shows just as a volounteer. Some times Gothminister performed all by himself, using a remote control for the strobelight and smoke machine, experimenting with TVs with videoscreens and using hangman puppets and different theatre effects.





It was obvious that Gothminister already at this time reached further than the national limits, as Sonic Seducer wrote an article called "Der Grosse Goth Star Der Welt".
Maybe at this time it only seemed like a big joke, but in fact, the name Gothminister grew rapidly, and the name had even reached the Goth movements leading historican music journalist and former editor of Zig Zag Magazine Mick Mercer, who was about to finish his new book "21st century goth". In
the book he hails the Minister as an "interesting Norwegian character with mysterious site Goth will save your life he says, like it saved his".



After a while, Brem realised that Gothminister needed more people on stage, and first of all, a keyboard player. The label manager of Angel Productions joined as Halfface in late 2001.After spreading this demo EP on a promotion tour in Norway and Germany, Gothminister was discouvered by Ann Frestad at Moonfog, and she connected Gothminister with the label manager of Tatra Records.



Earlier, Tatra had hosted electronic bands like Apoptygma Berzerk and Icon of Coil, and they were sceptical when Gothminister introduced his idéas of blending heavy guitars into the dark electronic beats and the pompous gothic moods. This involved more members of the live band, and after meeting Rico Darum in Oslo on a Devision gig, he and drummer Ted Skogmann/Superdead(bothex-members of Apoptygma Berzerk) joined the band and helped out the carzy guys in the Is It Art Studios? in Sweden; Goatfather and Sick with the production of the coming releases. After a lot of additions in search for a
bass player, Gothminister decided he wanted two guitarplayers instead, so he brought in Bjorn Aadland aka Machine, who had played with him in Conceptor, Disco Judas and different bands since the start in 1989. The band had now 5 members, but performed only one show at Dark City in Trondheim before a very small crowd, among them Alex from Zeromancer, who at that time was producing Norwegian band Gåte.






In April 2002 Tatra Records released the first single, also called "Angel". This was an improved version of the song released one year earlier on the "Angel" EP. This time Gothminister produced the song together with Rico Darum and Superdead in Das Bunker Studios in Sarpsborg. The third version, which actually was called "the Angel hope", ended up sounding so good that it was worth sent to mastering. Meanwhile, Gothminister worked on the B-side for the Angel single with producer Andy Moxnes, also from Disco Judas and Conetik (who toured with Zeromancer in Europe later that year). As Rico Darum recorded the guitars on Angel, Machine started from now on helping Gothminister out by playing guitars on "March of the Dead" and joining the main production theme of Andy Moxnes and Gothminister. The "Angel" single was very successful, and the song was very close to a hit on all clubs in Germany, reaching the top 10 spot in the DAC-charts, on its highest position above bands like Rammstein, Moby and Oasis.





Gothminister continued performing shows in Norway after the single release. In October the same year, the 2nd single was released; "Devil". This song was entirely produced by Andy Moxnes with Gothminister and Machine, as Rico Darum and Superdead pursued other projects for a while. The live band was
now only three members; Gothminister, Halfface and Machine. The Devil single showed more heavy guitars than the previous single, and it proved that Gothminister wasn´t a one hit wonder. The Devil single went straight into the DAC, on top 15 position.



Critics hailed the first single, but when the second single was released, they were asking for an album. The recording process was starting to slow down, and evil forces seemed to pull the strings, as one producer afteranother more or less went mad or depressive. The crazy guys in Is It Art?
Studios, who produced the Angel EP, had to take a long vacation after suffering from creative stop. Rico and Superdead became so dark and depressed after the Trondheim gig that they more or less disappeared from the project for a while.



Gothminister had to rely on Andy Moxnes, the only producer who hadn´t been affected so far. Until his studio with all the material and equipement one day started to burn. It was barely that the album was saved from a total destruction, as the whole house burned to the ground, except the appartement
with Andys studio. The process of making the album which should be called "Gothic Electronic Anthems", was beginning to become a nightmare.



And if that wasn´t enough, Batlords car one day broke down while he just went out for a minute to buy some stuff in a shop. The car was parked on the street, and was filled with a lot of GM videotapes and stuff. Suddenly Batlord heard a mighty bang. It was the car which litterally had exploded,
and melted down so the doors were impossible to open. Later Batlord explained that the explosion was caused by the cd player in the car. In that cd player was Gothministers demo for the "Gothic Electronic Anthems".



It was no wonder it took a long time to finish the album. Even the supposed photographer for the albumcover suffered from some darkness as time went by. Through Halfface, Gothminister suddenly met another photographer, Sandra Jensen. She specialised in dark and gothic picture art since beginning of
the 90ties, and was the perfect match for taking the album cover pictures, also involving a new character; Dementia Narcissus.





But it didn´t go as easy as expected. Gothminister and Dementia went on a dangerous character trip the automn 2002, letting the characters fight for position (as Dementia was born in mid 90ties she would try to hold her position); This involved vampyre games; beating each other, biting each others necks until they were bleeding, burnmarking with cigarettes and
things you should not even do at home. This was actually an improvised live performance show which could start on bars, in public, anywhere, anytime, just to get to know each other well enough.All in public, in front of a terrified audience. The character Dementia became a member of the live band in 2003 and developed the Gothminister image. Based on Brems idéas of the frightening beauty and romantics of gothic, along with the ideal of the superhero, she helped to improve the Gothminister make up and expression through her fantastic pictures, to what
he is today.





In coopration with Brem she also developed the image of Machine, Halfface and her own character Dementia, (in many different forms) as Gothminister now was a 4 piece liveband.




After finishing the production and mastering (in spite of a few more evil spells like layout master Atle Markussen losing his voice completely and having to do a serious throath operation!), the album "Gothic Electronic Anthems" was released in Norway the 24th of February 2003. Gothminister had
immediate success, performing a unique stage show at Bylarm in Trondheim which was sent on all the biggest national TV channels in Norway (watch a video clip on www.nrk.no/bylarm. Norways biggest newspaper VG wrote this about the show:



"As the artist Gothminister, Brem delivers a total goth package. The music is catchy, pompous, precise, industrial and brutal. In his company, to guilty parts; Machine on guitar and Halfface on keyboards. In addition Dementia, in different characters; as the vamp, the demon, the devil, the innocent girl, and in the end the angel. Gothminister is a poser of devilish style, a master of ceremony and a catalysator for the audiences fantasy and romantisism of death and darkness."



NRK Petre did a radio documentary, and followed Gothminister and his diciples on their way to commercial breakthrough. Radio Tango was the first mainstream radiostation to playlist an industrial gothsong; March of The Dead. Later followed TV-shows, magazine interviews and profiles, documentaries etc. and the new gothic wave of the second millennium which Gothminister had foreseen in 1999, was a fact. The hugely respected Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten wrote the day of the releaseparty in Norway: "Gothminister is the artist who has taken goth one step further". Gothminister has also been model for various fashion magazines, among them "Shape Up".






The debutalbum "Gothic Electronic Anthems" was released in Europe the 14th of April 2003, and recieved nearly 100 great critics only in Germany. Sonic Seducers Pee Wee Vignold gave the album 9,5 out of 10, and called Gothminister "The face of goth 2003". Walls of Fire on the net gave the album 5 out of 5, and called it "the electro gothic highlight of the year".
In England the Gothminister album was hailed as a fresh breath for the new gothscene, as the reviewer of Metal Hammers May Issue wrote "the undead are reborn". Gothminister fans arose all over Europe and all over the world; in the U.S, Canada, and even Australia.



On record Gothminister may still sound as a one man project, as Brem writes all the music, words, the vocals, the main guitars, does the main programming etc., though he is helped out by producers and guitarist Machine when it comes to details in guitar riffs and some co-production.



Live Gothminister is a full band with four live members:



Gothminister - voices, performance

Halfface - keyboards

Machine - guitars

Dementia - performance and art direction



Gothminister is one of Norways leading rock/performance artists with a must-see show with theatre, costumes, video and pyrotechnics (see the picture section).



Gothminister is here to bring back the respect for the gothic and to the gothscene, which artists failed to do during the 90ties.



His mission is to educate his diciples about the beautiness in the gothic world, and how to confront your own darkness in order to be inspired, creative and gain self esteem and respect, through HAPPINESS IN DARKNESS, and this message he will preach to people all over the world though his records and live-shows.


Quelle: http://www.gothminister.com/DiscografieAngel EP (2002)

Devil EP (2002)

Gothic Electronic Anthems (2003)
www

Reviews

Empire Of Dark Salvation - Cover
Die norwegischen GOTHMINISTER backen keine kleinen Brötchen. Ein Auftritt mit Pauken und Trompeten, noch fulminanter in Szene gesetzt als beim Debut.
Gothic Electronic Anthems - Cover
In der freien Wirtschaft wäre es ziemlich undenkbar, für die Konkurrenzfreiwillig Werbung zu machen. In der Musikindustrie scheint es anders zu
Happiness In Darkness - Cover
Das dritte Album der Gotenklamotte GOTHMINISTER macht wenig Hehl um die Intention: "Happiness In Darkness" ist nicht als anspruchsvolle Trauerveranstaltung angelegt.