BIOGRAPHY

”A Study in Coordinated Whiplash”
wrote The New York Times October
2008, after one of SHINING’s pounding
concerts in Manhattan. Norway's NRK
Lydverket were equally impressed with
SHINING (not to be confused with the
Swedish black metal band bearing the
same name) after their performance in
Oslo as part of the Øya Festival the
same year, stating that SHINING was
"Norway's best band right now".

These typical encounters between audience and the band’s no-mercy attitude, coupled with five critically acclaimed studio albums, are what has put SHINING in the very forefront of experimental extreme music.

SHINING's latest and fifth album Blackjazz was recently released worldwide 2nd Feb 2010. Their new born musical Frankenstein creation, the hybrid between Free Jazz and Black Metal, was quickly picked up by the leading press around the world: Even two weeks before the release of Blackjazz, Time Out New York announced that with Blackjazz SHINING was to become one of the "Stars of 2010". The rest followed suit, resulting in immediate jaw-dropping reviews in The New York Times, Allmusic.com, Popmatters.com, and top score in almost all Norwegian papers. Important magazines from all sides of music have rushed in to publish interviews and articles, including Metal Hammer, Alternative Press, and Pitchfork, and a full 2 page special feature in Terrorizer. In February, Blackjazz became the album with THE absolute best average score in Metacritics.com of all albums released that month! In Norway,

Blackjazz debuted at #9 in the official bestseller list of all albums, and the first printing was sold out from the label within only three days, resulting in immediate urgent re-ordering to meet the explosive demand for the genre-defining album.

During their impressive 10 years career, SHINING have performed at all key industry events such as CMJ festival in NYC, SXSW in Texas, Eurosonic in The Netherlands, The Great Escape in UK and by:Larm in their hometown of Oslo. In addition to the exposure that the band garnered from these key events, the band has toured Europe, USA, China and Japan.

After releasing two albums as an acoustic jazz quartet in 2001 and 2003, SHINING shifted musical direction towards a more art-rock oriented output, and their two next albums “In the Kingdom of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster” (2005) and “Grindstone” (2007) were wildly lauded by every website, blog, paper and student column under the sun. Both albums won the Alarmprisen (Norwegian Grammy Award equivalent), Grindstone was picked as the #1 album of the year in Norway´s second largest national newspaper, while the UK based alternative music magazine Rock-A-Rolla rated “Grindstone” as one of their best 30 albums of 2007. The album was also hailed by such varied media outlets as The New York Times, The Wire, BBC and Terrorizer Magazine amongst others.

SHINING's shift in musical direction became ever more apparent when they were selected to tour Europe in 2007 with Norwegian black metal pioneers Enslaved and fellow extreme metal hard hitters, Keep Of Kalessin. This tour would result in a mutual musical respect and admiration between Enslaved and SHINING, which would culminate in the two bands
composing and performing a one-off special collaboration: A 90-minute written musical extravaganza that saw both bands (10 members) performing together on-stage at the Molde International Jazz Festival. The Armageddon Concerto performance entitled “Nine Nights in Nothingness – Glimpses of Downfall “ was extremely well received and, due to popular demand, has just been performed again as the main headlining act for the 2010 Roadburn Festival in The Netherlands (Tilburg, April 17th).

After the intense workload of the Molde concerto, SHINING went to work on what would become Blackjazz. Munkeby himself comments “the compositions are more compact, the arrangements more hard-hitting, and the mood more desperate, sinister, aggressive and violent”.

To match his vision of combined musical aggressiveness and catchiness, Munkeby teamed up with the perfect accomplice for the ominous Blackjazz mission: With his technical prowess and extensive musical knowledge and experience, renowned producer/engineer Sean Beavan (NIN, Marilyn Manson, Slayer) joined forces to further elevate and intensify the new direction of music.

As one last Sin Soldier added to the already impressive list of Blackjazz accomplices, Sean Beavan’s long time co-schemer Tom Baker (NIN, Marilyn Manson, David Lynch etc.) mastered the album at Precision Mastering in Hollywood, and added obliterating and stinging power to the already punishing mixes, thereby putting the final nail in the coffin.

With “Blackjazz” now completed SHINING moves onto the next phase of their already accomplished mission. A new label and another shift in direction means a whole lot more shock and awe.