The Norwegian metaljazz quintet Shining sound as if they enjoy the end -- like the concert endings of anthemic rock songs, where a band is thrashing and bashing with huge finality as the audience claps and yells. A large proportion of Shining's music milks that feel, so it must have seemed especially weird for them to attempt a live internet show, with no ugly fans sweating and feeding the roil. But they made something real/unreal out of it.
The occasion was the 10th anniversary of Shining's "Blackjazz" album. Call vocalist-saxist-guitarist Jørgen Munkeby an appropriator if you want, but he displayed real affection for Trane-Shepp tenor-sax skronk, even if his interpretation rang a lot more Nordic -- Shining's blackjazz showed deeper kinship with black metal than with mid-1960s American "energy" jazz, retaining the black revolutionary energy but freezing the flow. Improvisation? Not so much.
Known to have performed from atop a mountain dam, Shining maintained their atmospheric obsession by setting up inside the old heavy-water plant at Rjukan, memorialized in the 1965 Kirk Douglas movie "The Heroes of Telemark" as the site sabotaged by the WWII Norwegian resistance to keep Nazis from exploiting its nuclear capabilities. So: massive machinery looming in mist-enshrouded shadows, with steam jets and high-tech lighting effects. Nice.
When not in finale mode, Shining wheedled and lurched with an unusual combination of heft and jaggedness that might have owed something to Ornette drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson or '90s nuevo-avanteer Greg Osby. With lanky Munkeby screaming and guitars crunching through solid-state amps, though, a listener was more likely to flash on Swedish prog-metalmen Meshuggah or Florida deathsters Morbid Angel. But burning cold, like dry ice. "Let's see if you can headbang from your couch," sneered Munkeby, and the remote intercontinental audience certainly complied as these five nervous assault troops filled every inch of the soundscape, keeping the blastbeats and counterpoints smart and tight until they loosened up the noose with a long cover of King Crimson's "20th Century Schizoid Man." Yep, that came out a half-century ago and still sounds modern.
The static exertion fit the times; I hope Shining felt our lonely applause. To make it feel more like a live event, I shoved a $100 bill into the shredder for drinks and parking, and stood outside my bathroom waiting for the previous guy to come out. Same as at a club, he never did.
* * *
The concert remains on YouTube here. The first 32 minutes of smoke morphing in a soundless void are quite beautiful, but you can cut out of that and skip to the music anytime.
* * *
And: Somebody tell me why Shining still have a thing about the number 1375. Everybody knows that was the year Danish-Swedish King Valdemar IV died, and he was kind of a bastard, but is that all there is to it? Munkeby says it's Kabbalistic. Metalheads want details.
* * *
NOTE: During the pandemic, many musicians took to the Web for concerts that did not involve in-person audiences. This was a good example.