Doom 94, a Novel About Extreme Times & Music in Post-socialistic Latvia

Jelgava

Doom 94 (Latvian: Jelgava 94) is a coming-of-age novel by Latvian writer Jānis Joņevs. It tells a story about young people living in post-socialist country in the 1990s. They search for their own identity in the world of alternative and extreme music as their country is on similar growing pains. Since 2016, this book has been translated into 9 languages and a movie was released in September 2019.

Doom 94 (Jelgava 94)

The novel Jelgava ’94 introduces us to an atmosphere in which the young fourteen-year-old character of the novel goes through changes similar to the system and values ​​in Latvia go through. He finds himself and his country separated into two entities. 

One of which, the personal, enters the world of adults, and the other, the society, becomes an independent state. Both of them are confronted with the challenge of surviving the moment and making the best of it.

The author brings us through his adventures in the music world, through avant-garde and rebellious genres. At the beginning it is about alternative and grunge music, about Kurt Cobain and his violent death, as a symbol of the ultimate rebellion against conformism and commercialization.

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As the action takes place, the author and his friends penetrate into the world of bold, faster, more aggressive music. The characters are vivid, real people of blood and flesh. They experiment with the opportunities given to them by the small and limited environment. They are influenced by the epic and “greater than life” stories told in the music they listen to.

The reader learns about life in the city of Jelgava and the state of Latvia. But he also learns about the “brutal” bands from this country, like Alfheim and Dark Reign, the first black metal bands in Latvia. The storyline of the main character is becoming more and more rapid, as is the music that the main character is listening to. 

New Kids On The Metal Block

As the action in the book develops, the author is influenced, as strange as it may sound, by the softer death metal bands. The occasional mention of heavy or thrash metal bands is only from a historical point of view. 

His ears are accustomed to noise, and those bands are like pop music to him. Parallel to that the protagonist engages himself in the world of black and doom metal bands, with occasional mention of extreme, grindcore and industrial metal bands.

At the end, the author finds himself in the present time. We as readers are transported to another time and another millennium. The author himself feels like a stranger in that world. The world that defined him as an individual is gone.

 

Doom 94 - Wikipedia

Some new death-doom metal bands from Latvia appear, such as Frailty, but the author can not identify himself with them. He meets old friends, but those meetings are also misplaced and unnatural.

It’s all about the music… and pains of growing up

The story of the main character is an emotional story of the growing and painful experiences it brings. The author has quite an authentic style and way of storytelling mixing personal experiences with an odyssey of ​​fierce bands and extreme genres.

In the book we get to know many bands from the author’s native country, Latvia, like the more classical  heavy metal bands Skyforger and Huskvarn, the band from the very city in which the action is taking place. There are, of course, the black metal bands Alfheim, Dark Reign and Maze of Cako Torments. Further, doom/gothic metal bands Heaven Grey, Frailty and Grindmaster Dead, with admixtures of Latvian folk music. Last, but not the least, we would also mention a metal/grindcore band called Tabestic Enteron, which is also from Jelgava.

Jelgava'94 (LVA) — Boston Baltic Film Festival

This work can serve us as a kind of roadmap through the metal scene in Latvia, but also the wider scene of northern Europe and their bands. Asphyx, Hypocrisy,  Dies Irae, Amorphis, Unleashed, At the Gates, Demilich and other famous death metal bands from the English-speaking world are also present.

But if there is a genre that dominates the book, apart from the dominant presence of death metal music in the first part of the book, it is definitely black metal. Mayhem, Mortiis, Satyricon, Immortal, are some of the bands and they are all from Norway, a country in which this genre is especially nurtured. 

The Finns Beherit, as well as the lesser-known Latvians Nahash and Pocculus are also present. Here are, of course, the doom metal bands, again from the cold north, such as Tristitia, Nemesis, Unholy, Celestial Season and many others.

Through all of this abundance of bands and genres that were and are still present in those parts of Europe, we realize how rich this music scene is and it is almost completely unknown to most people of the world.

Jānis Joņevs

The author Jānis Joņevs is a true storyteller! Dialogues are masterfully built, easygoing and with no doubt will entice you into the author’s world. Apart from the music scene, the author also introduces us to many of the cult music places and concerts in Latvia. Finally, with the last chapter, he testifies to the breakdown of the metal scene in his homeland, where the dominant subculture becomes marginalized.

Dettaglio figura - Siena Art Institute Onlus

But this is not just a book for metalheads or for those who are interested in the history of music, it is also for anyone interested in an authentic, simple, unpretentious, and witty story embedded in a post-socialist country. 

For its universal value, it is said that after the publication, the book became a national bestseller, won the awards for the rookie of the year in Latvia and the European Union Literature Prize for 2014.

The text is very layered with references to the history and culture of Latvia and the city of Jelgava, the city that was most damaged during the Second World War in Latvia. It is a story of a young man, stormy and rebellious, about growing up in the gray “communist” buildings in the time, immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

The young man in the book stands alone, with his faithful metalhead companions, against the family, society and the world. His index finger and the little finger erected high upwards so as not to become “adults,” conformist, ordinary, boring. Whether the protagonist and his friends succeed in it, remains to the readers to convey. We wish you a nice “listening” and … stay brutal!