Norwegian Queercore Punks Conversion Therapy Are Out to Normalize Queerness

Conversion Therapy is a queercore pop punk band out of Norway, and they’re looking to change how their culture sees masculinity. Consisting of Jørn Hagalid, Nils Frisk, Liam, and Kristoffer, the band has members who come from Norway’s indigenous Sámi population. That population, the band says, is still stuck in very traditional gender roles.

Conversion Therapy set out to help normalize queerness in Sámi culture through their love of punk rock and trap music. OFM’s Julie River sat down with the band’s vocalist, Jørn, and their bassist, Liam, to talk about their music and challenging traditional gender roles in their own culture.

So I’ve been listening to the new EP; I really like it. Can you talk a little bit about what your influences were on this?

Jørn: The influences for this (are) probably different, new trap punk artists. Of course my main influence when writing songs would be Green Day and NOFX in terms of melody and themes.

Liam: Jørn is the main songwriter and the vocalist. I do most of the production and the recording. So I think a lot of the songs are a combination of Jørn’s old-school punk rock—well, not particularly old-school, but, like, early-2000’s punk rock kind of sensibility—mixed with the modern productions that I like which is anything from Lil Peep to some lo-fi stuff like Powfu, The Front Bottoms, Blink-182, Magnolia Park. It’s all over the place with this EP.

I would love to be able to say that early 2000s wasn’t old-school, but unfortunately I think that’s where we are right now. (laughs) Now, you talked in some of the stuff you sent me about challenging the concepts of masculinity in terms of Sámi culture. Do you find any challenges in being this queer-oriented band coming from that sort of space?

Jørn: I don’t know how it is in the U.S., but in the very north of Norway, where a large percent of the population is indigenous, the culture there is really masculine because the culture of things to do are based on you’re a woman you do that and a man does that. Plus it’s a typical rural mentality where you know your role in the society. So that’s why we wanted to showcase that, even though you’re born into this small community of people, you can be different from the norm that you grew up in. There’s even gay Sámis, even though Sámis is a really small percentage of the Norwegian and Scandinavian population.

So, the traditional gender roles, is that just Sámi culture, or is that Norway in general?

Jørn: That’s Sámi culture, mainly.

I don’t have a lot of experience with Norwegian culture, but in the U.S. we kind of have the idea of that region of the world being very progressive and tolerant. But you’re saying in Sámi culture, that’s not the case?

Jørn: No, because Norway is also a very liberal democracy. Most things are tolerated. We have our issues in Norway; don’t get me wrong. But most things are very liberal. And then when you get out to the rural areas, not only, like, the Sámi areas, but the Norwegian rural areas, you get difficulties with being outside of the norm. I think that’s a universal thing, probably.

So have you faced any particular challenges in being this queer-oriented band where you come from?

Jørn: Well, yeah. In the process of making this band, we started reaching out to newspapers. And when we started this band, we got in a lot of local newspapers up in the north, and what I didn’t really fully think through is that my grandparents saw all of those reports, all of those writings of us in the newspaper, and one of them—I have two of them alive—and my grandma feels really really sorry for me. And I don’t think my grandpa wants to talk to me anymore. So it has some ramifications. I don’t know if that’s related to the Sámi thing or just an old generation thing.

Oh no, that’s a shame! I’m sorry that happened! So what do you hope for the future of this band? What do you want to accomplish with this?

Jørn: Just (to) normalize the gay and Sámi thing. I think it’s important. The Sámi gets a lot of attention in Norwegian media because it’s different still to many. Then, I think the queer aspect of it should get some attention, too. So I guess that’s one of them. And then, also just to make people like sad songs again. I think sad songs are really important to people.

Liam: I think the dream would be to have some kind of influence on some younger people as the artists we listened to had on us. Like I got through a lot of tough times listening to sad music and listening to punk rock and if I could kind of pass that on to the next generation that would be incredible.

What’s been the response to the EP that you’ve put out so far?

Jørn: Well, we got a lot more experience than we anticipated, so that’s good. People say nice things; we get nice responses, but that’s of course the people we know, mostly. I don’t think they would dare say anything else.

Liam: I think most of the media attention that we’ve had has been mostly on the political aspect of the band rather than the musical side. So we’ve not really had much critique. We’ve had really good response when we’ve played live, people dancing in the audience, singing along, even having never heard us before. And that feels really good. But yeah, we’ve had some quite positive response from the EP, I think.

The songs are really varied, so I definitely feel like there’s different groups of people reacting to different songs differently. Like my parents really love our song “My Worlds Collide,” and they said they’ve been sending it around to their friends, and everyone’s listening and loving that song, but that’s one that’s done the worst on playlists, where it’s like “Slave” and “Poison” and “Bleeding Oxygen” have been picked up on quite a lot of playlists and music blogs, and younger people seem to really like those songs.

The band name, Conversion Therapy, I wanted to talk about that a little bit because that’s a very punk rock name for a band. Why did you decide on that?

Jørn: That is because we thought it out as a gay band. We were really, early in the band, making progress where we just decided that, if we’re going to write songs, it has to be at least a little gay themed. And there’s a lot of talk about conversion therapy both in Norway and in Europe.

Liam: The U.K. especially.

Jørn: Yeah, so we thought that would be a really fitting name. We wrote songs in Norwegian for a couple months, and had our name in Norwegian, and it was really cool in Norwegian, so we just translated it into English, basically.

Liam: Yeah, it was kind of on our minds. And I was thinking a little bit about how some of the oppression to Sámi people has been in Norway; they try to kind of wipe out the culture, and to me it feels a bit like conversion therapy, like what they did to them to try to convert Sámi people into Norwegian people. So it felt fitting on both fronts. And just as a bit of a “fuck you” to conversion therapy itself.

Would you like to add anything else?

Jørn: Just pester your local clubs to book us in the U.S. I’ve never been to the U.S.; I want to go see the sights in the U.S.

Is there anyone in particular you’d like to go on tour with in the U.S.?

Jørn: I would love to go on tour with Eminem, and Rhianna, and Green Day, preferably. (laughs)

Liam: For me it would be Hot Mulligan or PUP, maybe the Front Bottoms or Mom Jeans. I love all that kind of music coming out of North America.

Jørn: And Justin Timberlake, I would love that.

Liam: (laughs) And Lady Gaga, of course.

Jørn: Of course.

Liam: Something I would like to add: I think this EP is really us kind of finding ourselves musically. We go through a lot of different genres all linked into what we feel is punk, or at least alternative music and stuff we really love, but I think we have found ourselves now. And the EP was recorded like a year ago now so it’s been quite some time in our world that those songs have been sitting there. And we’re working on new music now; hopefully we’ll have some new stuff coming out soon.

Jørn: It’s really great!

Liam: Yeah, I’m super stoked on it. I’m so excited to record more and start getting it out there. We’re going in a bit more of a traditional punk (direction) now, more in the lines of “Slave” and “Poison” than necessarily the rest of the EP, but still with some elements of those other songs in there. So yeah, I’m super excited to get more music out there and show people what we found when we went looking for ourselves.