On 14 September 2024, Pagan Ulver stepped onto the Tremplin-L’Boulevard stage and became, by the band’s own account, the first black metal band to win first prize in the festival’s history. A year later, on 20 September 2025, they were back at the same venue in Casablanca, this time opening a bill with Katatonia and Gorod. For a band from Settat, working inside a scene where chances like this do not come often, the night stayed with Raven S. E. for all the reasons he lays out here.
“If someone had told me a few years ago that we would one day open for Katatonia, I honestly would not have believed it.”
“One of the most significant experiences for us as a band was the moment we had the opportunity to share the stage with Katatonia and Gorod during the L’Boulevard festival in Casablanca”, Raven S. E. tells AFRICA.ROCKS during our Rig Rundown conversation. “For a band like Pagan Ulver, coming from a small city like Settat and growing within the underground scene, this was something that once felt almost impossible to imagine.”
The first thing that comes through in Raven S. E.’s recollection is the shock of it. Not in a dramatic way. More in the sense of suddenly standing inside something that had lived much further away before.
“If someone had told me a few years ago that we would one day open for Katatonia, I honestly would not have believed it. They were one of those bands we listened to through headphones and on streaming platforms, discovering their atmosphere and emotional depth. To suddenly find ourselves in the same venue, backstage, seeing them in person, and knowing we were going to perform on the same stage that night, it felt surreal. It was like a shock to the mind, the kind of moment where you realise that something you once considered only a dream has actually become real.”
“Extreme metal in Morocco is still very underground, and opportunities like this are rare.”
That alone would have been enough to make the night stand out, but Raven S. E. keeps bringing it back to where Pagan Ulver come from and what chances like this mean in that setting.
“What made the experience even more meaningful was the context of the Moroccan metal scene. Extreme metal in Morocco is still very underground, and opportunities like this are rare. So when we arrived at the festival and saw the scale of the event, the stage, the audience, the international bands, it felt like a turning point, not only for us as a band but also for the visibility of Moroccan extreme metal. Being able to represent our scene on the same stage as respected international acts meant a lot to us.”
Of course, a night like that also brings its own pressure. Raven S. E. does not shy away from that part either. He speaks about it as something the band had to carry and use well once they were there.
“Naturally, there was a certain amount of pressure. When you share the stage with artists who have influenced generations of metal musicians, you feel the responsibility to give everything you have. But at the same time, that pressure becomes motivation. It pushes you to perform with more intensity, more precision, and more emotion. We weren’t just playing a show. We were proving that bands from our scene could stand on the same stage and deliver something powerful. That night also changed the way we looked at our future. Once you experience something like that, your perspective expands. You begin to think beyond the limits you once imagined. You start asking yourself: if we could share the stage with Katatonia today, what could come next? Maybe another international festival, maybe touring outside Morocco, maybe performing alongside other bands we grew up listening to.”
What comes through most clearly here is that the night stayed with Pagan Ulver for what it opened up afterwards. After that, the future did not look quite as narrow.
“In many ways, that moment gave us a huge boost of confidence and motivation. It showed us that the path we are following with Pagan Ulver is real and that the work we put into the band can lead to opportunities we once only dreamed about. It’s one of those experiences that stays with you forever, the kind of story you’ll probably tell years later and still feel the same excitement about. For us, it wasn’t just another concert. It was a milestone in our journey as musicians and as part of the Moroccan metal scene.”
For Pagan Ulver, that night in Casablanca left more than a memory. It gave the band a different sense of what might come next.
