Luleå Scenereport

By Sven Kajsajuntti

History

The Punk and Hardcore scene in Luleå can be traced back to the late 80´s, at least in that sense that, through the time passed since, you could make connections. Though there probably existed bands earlier than this, the beginning of the 80´s mostly belonged to the socialistic coloured progressive music.

The punk wave of the early 90´s bred loads of bands of wich some realesed tapes and apeared on but the real explosion came with breakthrough of the hardcore and SE movement. What feels like millions of bands started, while some made their scene globally, like Breach and Raised Fist other superb band like Second Unit and Strict were more a local affair. For more history see this.

The scene was strong with shows on weekly basics or with people travelled 300 kilometers one way to Umeå, a gloomy monday night to watch some overhyped American band. Fanzines were made, shirts and stickers were printed, but the scene died, cuz the commitment ended and like these periphery parts, the scene was drained when people moved south.

For years you´d be lucky to see a punkband on stage once every half a year, but a few bands continued to carry the banner, and bands like Kranium, The Dead ones, Chaotic Disorder, Pöbeln, Smackdown etc still made their noise with love and passion.

In 2003 some people moved back, while some where in the process of going, but for the time being, joined together in the desire to have something real to do, and to awake Luleå from its musical and cultural coma.

This was the beginning of Luleå Hardcore, that has over the last six years put Luleå back on the map as a town with good shows and at least not an embarrassing amount of quality bands. Also the now defunct punkrock club Teenage Lust were quite active, focusing on mainly punkrock and garage.

Luleå Hardcore

Luleå Hardcore is an organization,that despite the name, doesn’t only deal with crust/punk/hardcore shows. Musically LÅHC has put up mostly everything from pure deathmetal, to emopop through ska/reagge to even opera and bluegrass, though mainly of course we deal with the music closest to our hearts. But we arranged other stuff as well as, movienights, graffiti exhibitions, workshops, lectures, screen printing, documentation, help to selfhelp according to DIY principles, distro, private partys. We work for an equal and from capitalism liberated world and don’t tolerate expressions of racism, fascism, sexism etc. But in order to “change the world” we need to have a strong ground in our local area, and a good organization of things.

Now we have our own place situated at Föreningsgatan 7 wich contains rehearsal rooms and a venue for shows/clubs/meeting and other social and political activities. In general the situation, in the sense of venue´s, in Luleå is quite well, there are a few bars that is possible to arrange at, and some other places which, like the very extensively used Lillan, that has great resources to have basically any activity in. So in the matter Luleå has a real good ground for music.

We arrange shows one – five times a month depending, all in the manners of DIY culture, and if you wanna play here, give us a mail and we will see what we do.

The Bands

First of we have to name, the oldest punkband around Chaotic Disorder, that started out in the early 90´s and has brought some fast chaotic rawpunk/Hardcore in the veins of Mob 47. Doesn’t play to often though unfortunately. Another over-a-decade running band is Kranium. A furious attack of old traditional Swedish käng, like it sounded back in the days when bands like Asocial, Crudity, set the standard, and of course they realized the greatness of Disclose long before the 2000 hype! Kranium has released two 7´s. Once Again makes sure that the sound of the old school hardcore is not forgotten, and has intense straight-to-the-point mosh songs and released a 7 inch some years back. Some members of Once Again can be found in Pitcommited, the name of the bands very much sums up the music as the drumming sets the feet on fire, and Revera, that deliver their hardcore with much weight and angst bringing melodies combined with some desperate vocals. Dodeskaden has some records that never seems to see the light of day, and are, for a Luleå band that is, quite active on the touring front. They aren’t afraid of playing unconventional d-beat, with ska/reggae beats and some racing anarkopunk styled parts. Avskyvärld is another proof that the-real-deal-käng is to come out of the north. No melodies ala Tragedy is ever to be found on these attacks almost never over half a minute. From the darker regions of the soul comes Begravelsenatt, a frenetic grindcore/crust attack, with not much to spare for humanity. To difficult to pronounce She Sells Seashells By The Shore combine the raw and desperate with the childish and improvised. A band that has declared its death, but still shows that they can be more active as corpses than alive is the energetic Earth Died Screaming mixing old schoolHC with Japanese/Swedish d-beats! Among the risig forces Slagfält is definitly woth mentioning,fast hardcore not unlike Seein Red and *** Slagfält share some members with melodic punkrock act Crazyness. Another new band on tha coming is Kollaps; mid-tempo d-beat punk with dual vocals. Its true that most band from here are d-beat hardcore and the most hardline d-beatband of them all is Dispose wich sounds similar to a band wich sounds similar.

Other bands still active, but due to some members has permanently or temporarily moved south is long going punkrockers and seriously underestimated Avgång 77, all female punkrock constellation Hondjävul .and dirty rockers The Groovies.

Finally, the man and the myth of Värmedyna – only to be experienced in Luleå!

Well this is not every band existing, but those ones that do have some regularity and from time to another make some form of creation. For a list of bands from Luleå-go here.

Political action

The political/anarchist scene where once strong as well, but suffered the same situation of relocation of people, and hasn’t really recovered. Unfortenetly. The Anarcho-syndicalist union still holds the banners at labourday, but has at the moment not the strength nor the people, to be anything else than merely surviving. The naziproblem that parts of southern Sweden has had risen, it not to be found in Luleå. Maybe that’s too bad, maybe we would need them to light some sparks and get rid of them once again as we did ten years ago…? Feminist and queer groups occasionally do stuff, but they have a nice club once in a month called Make Out.

On the top of the world

Finally, Norrbotten is always the place in our hearts, and even though its a harsh love its the best and most beautiful part to be a part of. We can’t offcause do as much shows/actions/things as people in the south due to were few in numbers but what we do up here then becomes so much better, more giving and do render an bigger impact on society in general. Basically it makes us great, and that we are very proud of! Together with northern Finland/Norway, the north will rise and the autonomous Lapland/Norrbotten will be the heaven of earth!

More than it already are!