Buzz Bands: BIGBANG aims for a big splash

It isn’t as if fans at the Silverlake Lounge never heard an epic guitar solo, but some were surprised on a recent weeknight to see Oystein Greni’s — played after he hopped atop the bar at the Eastside club. “We’re from Scandinavia; we’re allowed to be weird,” the singer-guitarist for the Norwegian trio BIGBANG says good-naturedly.

Not that the band’s roots in Oslo — where they were stationed for six albums over the last decade-plus — have given them much else in the way of traction. Greni and bandmates Olaf Olsen and Oyvind Storli Hoel moved to L.A. in September and “got severely punished,” the frontman says from his Echo Park home studio. “It’s like going to a weird school. You’re so naive and blue-eyed. ... There have been many people here who talk so much and do so little — it seems you can make a good long career out of eating lunch, drinking coffee and talking to people.”

Still, the trio that played to thousands in their homeland remain undaunted, releasing their “Wild Bird” EP, paying dues in small clubs and readying the September release of their debut U.S. album, which will mix new material with old. Therein lies another hurdle. BIGBANG’s sound could loosely be described as classic rock played with skate-punk ferocity, but comparisons are all over the map: the Allman Brothers, Bad Company, Rush, the Byrds, to name a few.

“Most American bands are very aware of their demographic, and we’ve never worried about playing to a specific genre,” Greni says. “I love all kinds of music ... and a good song is a good song.”

||| Live: The trio plays tonight at Crash Mansion, Wednesday at the Silverlake Lounge and Thursday at the Viper Room’s pre-Coachella party.

||| Download: "Wild Bird" from the trio's EP of that name.

-- Kevin Bronson

Photo by Jan Erik Svendsen