Guitarist Ivar Bjørnson was just 17 years old when his extreme metal band Enslaved toured the U.S. for the first time. He and bassist Grutle Kjellson formed the band as teenagers in 1991, and by 1994 they’d released two albums. Their unique approach to Norwegian metal caught the attention of hardcore icon Peter Steele, who allegedly had a copy of their second album, Frost.
At the time, Steele’s thrash metal band Carnivore had reunited. They played several reunion shows through the mid-90s and had a few lineup changes until Steele’s death in 2010. But in 1994, Enslaved’s tour manager was allegedly friends with Steele, and put Bjørnson in contact.
“[Steele] was really nice, super friendly,” Bjørnson recalled in an October 2026 interview with Metal Hammer. “Some weeks later came the offer: ‘If you want to hang out for another month after the tour, you can support Carnivore.’ I was like, ‘Umm, I think I need to go back to high school.’”
Ivar Bjørnson Regrets Not Taking Peter Steele Up On his Offer to Support Carnivore
Declining an offer to support Peter Steele’s band on tour sounds like sacrilege for a metal musician. While Ivar Bjørnson recognized the unfortunate lost opportunity, he also admitted that 17-year-old him had a point. Being a teenager on tour in a foreign country was a pretty good reason to decline.
When asked if he regretted the decision, Bjørnson immediately said yes. “Then again,” he added, “I was 17, so we were barely allowed to go on tour in the first place! And we’d already stayed two weeks longer than we were supposed to.”
Bjørnson continued, “We made up a story that we were staying with a friend in Dallas, but we actually spent two weeks touring Mexico. I didn’t tell my mum about it until I was 26.”
That 1994 U.S. tour had a few other interesting experiences for the teenage Bjørnson and Kjellson. Beyond the offer from Peter Steele and secretly touring Mexico, they also found themselves in a wickedly uncomfortable van. They often had to resort to underage drinking just to fall asleep. They would frequently drink vodka as a way to lull themselves to sleep in the horrible van. However, that ritual backfired when the van broke down one night.
“Our van broke down while we were driving through the Bronx, so we were told to stay in the van at the garage,” Bjørnson recalled. “When we broke down, we were already quite far into our nightly ritual of getting dozy. At some point, it was like, ‘Where’s Grutle?’ He was running around, with no t-shirt, screaming, ‘I’m Santa Claus!’ Some of the other guys had to go get him.”
Photo by Per Ole Hagen/Redferns
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