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Metal is one of the most extreme forms of music ever invented. Once you're inside this tent, you quickly realize that the deeper you go, the more intense the music becomes, as people compete to see who can make the heaviest music in the universe. There are genres with names like power metal, speed metal, thrash, pirate metal, gothic metal, industrial metal, and metalcore.
You will soon, inevitably, encounter death metal, an American invention of the 1980s that features distorted guitars tuned down low and drums that sound like machine guns. Vocalists growl, time signatures abruptly change, and if you can make out the lyrics, you'll hear themes of religion, philosophy, sci-fi, and more.
There are offshoots too, each with their own spin on things. There's blackened death doom, death grind, gore grind, porno grind, even something called melodic black death war metal. Death metal has a Scandinavian cousin. It's black metal. It's also played fast and often doesn't follow conventional song structure. Vocal is shriek. Recordings may be lo-fi. Members tend to adopt pseudonyms and use makeup on stage.
And again, if you can make out the lyrics, you'll hear tales of paganism, Satanist praise, references to the occult, and anti-Christian rage. And unlike other metal genres, followers of black metal have been known to engage in acts of violence, most infamously the burning of churches. At the heart of the black metal legend is a true tale of suicide, murder, and possibly even cannibalism. What you're about to hear may seem impossible to believe,
But it happened. I'm Alan Cross. And do I have a story for you. This is Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry, episode 10. I call this episode: Black Metal, Death Metal, Death. That's a Norwegian band called Mayhem, formed in the small city of Langus in 1984. And they will be the focus of this crazy story of murder in the extreme.
Let's start with a little context. Heavy metal was born in the late 1960s. It quickly began to mutate and evolve into many different subgenres, with some adherents looking to push the heaviness as far as possible. By the early 1980s, we had something that was being called thrash metal, best exemplified by early Metallica and Slayer. There was also speed metal, which could be described as a blend of metal and hardcore punk rock. Think groups like Motorhead and The Exploited.
Thrash and Speed channeled rage and aggression and directed it towards conservatism in all its forms. Politics, religion, capitalism, and the overall status quo. Thrash was an invention of America, the UK, Germany, and parts of Latin America, drawing inspiration from Black Sabbath and groups in a class known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. This music was definitely extreme and very heavy. ♪
But as heavy and intense as thrash and speed were, some found ways to go even heavier and more intense. And what could be more intense and heavier than death? Death metal took speed and thrash to another place. Things probably got started in the late 1970s with an extreme metal band from Newcastle called Venom.
Other groups followed with names like Possessed, Autopsy, Morbid Angel, Obituary, and Necrophagia. Meanwhile, in Scandinavia, Norway specifically, another extreme scene was developing, and it was called Black Metal. Black Metal shared a lot with the other metal subgenres. Distorted guitars, intense vocals, a drumming technique called blast beats, and lyrical attacks against all areas of society.
Musical influences came from Black Sabbath, Motorhead, and the Sex Pistols. We can even add Kiss to that list, since many black metal bands adopted wearing black and white makeup on stage in a style known as corpse paint. But what set black metal apart from its brethren was its all-encompassing extreme hate for organized religion, especially Christianity.
The scene's ideology was loaded with satanic doctrines and convictions designed to spread fear, suffering, and sorrow. In fact, the original name for this music was Satanic Metal. The name Black Metal came from the title of a 1982 album by Venom, and by the mid-1980s, a lot of bands had adopted this style. It all became pretty apocalyptic. Death, war, authoritarianism, various global catastrophes, and natural disasters.
This was cut with elements of folklore and mythology, pagan beliefs, the distant past, deep introspection, self-harm, and even suicide. In the beginning, black metal bands rarely played live. For them, the most important thing was to capture their authenticity on record, which was also where the extremes of their sound could be preserved and studied.
Those who did play live treated their concerts as rituals, with corpse paint makeup, spiky black costumes, mock crucifixions, lots of animal blood, and even the heads and bodies of dead animals. If the goal was to shock and appear demonic, well, mission accomplished. This leads us to the band at the center of our story. Mayhem first came together in Norway in 1984.
At the heart of the group was guitarist Oystein Arseth, who adopted the name "Destructor" and later "Euronymous". He was joined by Jorn Stubberud, otherwise known as Necrobutcher, and drummer Katal Mannheim. In 1987, Mayhem recorded an EP entitled "Deathcrush", which quickly sold a thousand copies. Pretty spectacular for such a niche effort.
It did help that Euronymous ran an independent record store in Oslo called Hell that specialized in the most extreme music available. It was a meeting place for black metal fans who sometimes came by just to hang out in the basement. The walls were black and decorated with medieval weapons. There was a tombstone in the window. Hell was also the headquarters for a label called Deathlike Silence Productions, which released several records by like-minded bands.
A certain group of death metal musicians were also drawn to hell. Hanging out there turned them into black medallers. They called themselves the Black Metal Inner Circle, or so the rumor went. This was largely a made-up story by Euronymous to bait the media. It was, in short, kind of a joke. After a couple of lineup changes, Mayhem ended up with a new vocalist named Pelle Yngve Holen. He took the pseudonym Dead Holen.
And this is where black metal started to become really, really, really dark. Dead used to be in a Swedish band called Morbid. And he and they really were. Dead had an obsession with death. That may have begun when he was badly beaten by bullies as a kid. He suffered a ruptured spleen, internal bleeding, and other injuries which left him clinically dead for a time. When he recovered, that's when he adopted the name Dead.
He hoarded dead birds, geese especially, which he kept under his bed. He took a dead crow in a plastic bag with him on tour. And before going on stage, he'd open the bag and take a deep sniff, saying that he needed to perform with the stench of death in his nostrils. He wore t-shirts adorned with funeral announcements. He was extremely introverted and displayed all the symptoms of deep depression.
Dead would often hide himself in his bedroom for long stretches, sometimes engaging in self-harm. When he came out of that bedroom, he'd sometimes cut himself in front of other people so much that they'd have to restrain him. Dead got the gig with Mayhem when he sent them a package containing a letter, a demo tape, and a crucified mouse. Mayhem did play live, and Dead was determined to make each show as grotesque a spectacle as possible. Yes, there was the corpse paint makeup,
because he really did want to look like a dead body. For added effect, he would bury his stage clothes, leave them in the dirt for a few days, dig them up, and then use them for a show. One time, he asked his bandmates to bury him. On stage, Dead would sometimes cut himself. A hunting knife was preferred, but broken glass would do. And wherever possible, Dead would source out the head of a pig or a sheep, impale it on a spike,
and planted right there in front of the stage. Annoyed by people showing up to gigs pretending to be all death metal, Dead would throw those animal heads into the crowd. "If you don't like blood and rotten flesh thrown in your faces, then you can get out," he would say. So, yeah, there was something strange about Dead. Those close to him had the impression that Dead truly believed he was a creature from another world. He had a fascination with vampires and certain diseases.
He claimed that his grandmother was a white witch and sometimes tried casting spells of his own. And when Dad spoke about his death, he did it with real conviction. It's possible he suffered from something called Cotard syndrome, a rare condition where a person believes that their body is not that of a living human being, but instead is an actual corpse. He did speak of visions of blood being frozen in his veins.
By 1990, Dead and Euronymous were sharing a place. Then everyone moved out to an old rented house in a forest so they could write and rehearse material for what would be their debut album. But Dead and Euronymous weren't getting along on a bunch of different levels. Dead would often storm out of the house and disappear into the forest when Euronymous played music he didn't like. Euronymous would then run after him with a shotgun, shooting in the air. At one point, it's said that Dead stabbed Euronymous with a kitchen knife.
And it wasn't uncommon for a Euronymous to get fed up and say things like, "If you want to be dead, just kill yourself." So he did. On April 8, 1991, Dead was dead. Left alone in the house in the woods, he committed suicide in the house, first slitting his wrists and throat with a hunting knife and then taking a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the forehead, allegedly using a special shell he'd saved for the occasion.
Euronymous had actually sent him some ammunition as a Christmas gift. It was also alleged that Euronymous left him alone on purpose, knowing that Dead was terribly depressed and hoping that he would finally go ahead and take his own life. Dead left a note. Here's how it read. Excuse the blood, but I have slit my wrists and neck. It was the intention that I would die in the woods so that it would take a few days before I was possibly found. I belong in the woods and have always done so.
No one will understand the reason for this anyway. To give some semblance of an explanation, I'm not a human. This is just a dream and soon I will awake. It was too cold and the blood was coagulating all the time. Plus, my new knife is too dull. If I don't succeed in dying to the knife, I will blow the crap out of my skull. Yet, I do not know. I didn't come up with this now, but 17 years ago.
He left behind the lyrics to a song he called Life Eternal, instructing the band to do whatever they wanted with them. Some of those lyrics were, A dream of another existence you wish to die A dream of another world you pray for death To release the soul one must die To find peace inside you must get eternal I am immortal, but am I human? How beautiful life is now when my time has come A human destiny, but nothing human inside What will be left of me when I'm dead?
There was nothing when I lived. What you found was eternal death. No one will ever miss you." And yes, Mayhem did record the song. It was Euronymous who found Dead dead. So what did he do? Instead of calling the police, he immediately went to the store and bought a disposable camera so he could take some pictures. He even rearranged a few things so the shots were just right.
One of those photos ended up as the cover artwork for a Bootleg Live album called Dawn of the Black Hearts. NecroButcher, the bass player, didn't hear about the suicide until the next day. And here's how he recalled how the news was delivered. "Euronymous says, 'Dead has done something really cool. He killed himself!' I thought, 'Have you lost it? What do you mean cool?' He says, 'Relax. I have photos of everything.' I was in shock and grief. He was just thinking how to exploit it." And exploit it he did.
First, he claimed that Dead killed himself because he was distressed that black metal had become too trendy and commercialized. He allowed rumors to spread that he fashioned necklaces made from the shattered bits of Dead's skull that he wore and gave to a couple of friends. I can tell you that he put a bone fragment up for sale in 2018, claiming that it came from Dead. And most shocking of all was the rumor he gathered up bits of Dead's brain matter, made a stew, and ate it.
Is this true? Is this false? Hard to tell. But if Euronymous was looking to turn mayhem into the most evil band of all time, he did a pretty good job. All this was too much for Necrobutcher and he left the band, silently harboring thoughts that he had to kill Euronymous for how he treated dead and what happened after. He never got the chance because someone beat him to it, just as he was planning on hunting Euronymous down. That's coming up.
After the death of Dead and the apparent subsequent desecration of his remains in memory, Mayhem continued as a duo with Euronymous and Dremar Ketjel Mannheim. They were joined for a brief time by a vocalist and bassist who went by the name Occultus, but once he started getting death threats from Euronymous, he quit. In 1992, Mayhem started again on their debut album, something that they began writing in 1987. Three guest musicians were called in.
Attila Csar from a Hungarian black metal band called Tormentor, Snor W. Ruch, also known as Blackthorn, and Varg Vikernes from the band Burzum. He also used the stage name Count Grishnak. Now let's talk about this for a second. Varg Vikernes came from a well-off family in Bergen, Norway. The family moved to Iraq for a while when his father picked up a contract to work for Saddam Hussein's government on a computer program.
The family seemed to develop some racist views, something that rubbed off on Varg. He claims to be a distant relative of Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. He was also fascinated by neo-Nazi culture. He got deep into the fantasy worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien. When he got into music, he chose the stage name Grishnack because that's the name of an orc in the novel The Two Towers.
This extended to the name of his band, Burzum, which is taken from a passage in The Lord of the Rings. Burzum recorded several albums in the early 1990s, before Varg joined Mayhem in 1992. And on the side, he burned down churches. On June 6, 1992, a Norwegian church with roots dating back to the 12th century was set on fire. The following year, a Burzum EP called Ask appeared, with a photo of the burned-out building on the cover.
The EP came packaged with a cigarette lighter. The arson continued through 1992. Seven more churches were set alight, including one on Christmas Eve that year and another in which a firefighter was killed. Media attention was intense. In January 1993, one of Norway's biggest newspapers got a scoop.
Two of Vickernan's friends claimed to have interviewed him and brought the story to the paper. In this interview, Barr claimed to have been involved in some of the church burnings as well as once killing a man in Lillehammer. A couple of journalists paid a visit with a warning. If the cops are called, you will be shot. During that interview, Vickernan only identified himself as Count Grishnack. More details about the church burnings were revealed, and he made the promise that the attacks would continue.
Vickernens and his buddies thought that they were having a laugh, so they exaggerated things as much as they possibly could. When the story was published in that paper on January 20, 1993, blackmail got its first major mainstream exposure. Vickernens was arrested. Police found him through an address that had been printed on a flyer for a Bersam show. He was convicted on several counts.
Vickernens refused to admit anything, only to say that the burnings were not satanic, but revenge for Christians desecrating ancient Viking graves. He also said that the interview was a planned operation by him and Euronymous with the purpose of scaring people, promoting black metal, and promoting their music. Vickernens was in jail for a couple of months before being released in March 1993.
Meanwhile, Euronymous closed up his record shop, which by then had become the focal point of the Norwegian death metal scene, meaning that it was always being watched by the police and the media following the stories of the destroyed churches. Vigernes hated Euronymous for that, saying that he should leave the store open to capitalize on all the publicity. I ended up spending six weeks in jail for nothing, he said. Shortly after, a special church arson police unit was set up at a hotel in Bergen,
One day, after his release from prison, Vickernes forced his way inside the room dressed in chainmail armor, carrying two large knives and flanked by a couple of bodyguards. He demanded that these unfounded investigations into black metal be stopped. He gave everyone a Roman salute and then vanished. Meanwhile, work on the Mayhem album continued. It was to be called De Mysterious Dom Satanas.
On the cover was an image of Nadaro's Cathedral, a famous Norwegian church in Trondheim that had been built in 1070. Euronymous' plan was to celebrate the release of the album by blowing up that church that had been around for a thousand years. The cathedral was never blown up because Euronymous was murdered. By who? Varg Vikernes, one of the guys hired to record the album. ♪
Around the time the record store was closed, tensions began to explode between Euronymous and Vickerness. A power struggle had developed within Mayhem, and it appeared that Euronymous owed Vickerness a decent amount of royalties. The date was August 10th, 1993. Euronymous and Vickerness were always fighting about something, and things were not getting any better.
On that day, he and Blackthorne drove over 500 kilometers from Bergen to Euronymous' apartment in Oslo, allegedly to sort out details over a contract. When they arrived, Euronymous went upstairs to the fourth floor, while Blackthorne waited downstairs in the stairwell, smoking a cigarette. Vickernes' account of events of what happened went like this: When he knocked on the door of the apartment, Vickernes handed Euronymous his copy of the contract.
For some reason, Euronymous panicked and immediately kicked Vikernes in the chest. He then ran to the kitchen to get a knife. In the struggle, Euronymous was stabbed to death. Now, at some point there was a fight because Vikernes stabbed Euronymous 23 times. Two to the head, five to the neck, and 16 times in the back. His body was found outside the apartment in a first floor stairwell. Remember, he lived on the fourth floor.
According to Vickernes, Euronymous had lured him to the apartment and had planned to incapacitate him with an electroshock device and then torture him to death while videotaping everything. This, according to Vickernes, is what Euronymous had told some friends. Euronymous also allegedly wanted to regain some of the badass reputation that he felt had been taken from him by Faust, a drummer in another black metal band called Emperor.
Faust had become infamous for killing a man in Lillehammer. The victim, Magna Andresen, was stabbed 37 times and then repeatedly kicked in the head. Euronymous allegedly felt he needed to one-up that. So when he was ambushed at the apartment, Vickernes said he had no choice but to act in self-defense. But Blackthorne later said that Vickernes made the trip to kill Euronymous and that he was pressured into coming along.
He'd already been having mental health issues and had almost been committed earlier that summer and wasn't exactly in the best frame of mind, something that may have colored his testimony. As for all the wounds on Euronymous's body, well, Vickerness had an explanation for that. They were caused by some broken glass he'd fallen through during the fight. The one wound he didn't dispute inflicting was a stab to the head that was so deep the knife stayed in Euronymous's skull.
Vickernes and Blackthorne fled, driving back to Bergen. They stopped at a lake to get rid of Vickernes' bloody clothes. A few days later, on August 19, 1993, Vickernes was arrested. At his home, they found 150 kilos of explosives and more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition. The claim was that he'd planned to blow up the headquarters of Blitzhaus, a radical punk leftist anarchist anti-fascist group in Oslo.
One theory was that Vickernes needed to kill Euronymous first because he would have opposed such an attack on the punks. Vickernes denied all of this, saying that he was merely a doomsday prepper, stockpiling material for the inevitable day when Norway would come under attack. Vickernes' murder trial began on May 2nd, 1994. He stayed mostly silent. Other death metal compatriots, including Blackthorne and Faust, the drummer who stabbed that man to death in Littlehammer, were also put on trial.
They confessed. That disgusted Vickernes. He was determined to stick with the Black Metal Code. The trial captivated the country and beyond. Vickernes was portrayed as evil incarnate. Police may have bugged his phone and knew that when he went to Bergen, he was there to kill Euronymous.
A theory was floated that a third person was involved, someone who was instructed to stay at Vikernes' place in Bergen, making ATM withdrawals, renting videos, and otherwise making it look like he was at home, not in Oslo killing Euronymous. On May 16th, 1994, Vikernes was sentenced to 21 years in prison, which was the maximum penalty in Norway.
He was convicted of Euronymous's death, the burning of three churches, attempted arson on a fourth, and theft and storage of 150 kilos of explosives. On that same day, two churches were set on fire in solidarity and support by persons unknown. Blackthorne was charged with being an accessory and sentenced to eight years in jail. That same month, Mayhem's one and only album, De Mysterious Dumb Synthana,
was released featuring Euronymous on guitar and Vickerness on bass. Now though, Mayhem was down to just two members and the group broke up. So Dead is dead, Euronymous is dead, Vickerness is in jail, Blackthorn is in prison, Mayhem has broken up, and more than two dozen churches in several countries were burned in solidarity. End of the story, right? Not a chance. There's more to come.
With Mayhem out of the picture and Varg Vikernes in jail, the heat around black metal began to subside. The church burnings associated with the scene continued until late 1995 and then suddenly stopped. The music continued though. Necrobutcher, Mayhem drummer Hellhammer, and several other death metal vets, including a singer who went by the name of Blasphemer, reformed Mayhem, releasing an EP in 1997. They refuted Satanism but had no trouble with neo-Nazi philosophies.
An album entitled "Grand Declaration of War" was released in 2000. Three years later, a fan suffered a fractured skull when he was hit by a severed sheep's head that was thrown from the stage. Although there was internal turmoil and lineup issues, Mayhem ended up winning the Norwegian equivalent of a Grammy Award for Best Metal Album in 2007. Mayhem continues today as a five-piece with six studio albums, nine live albums, and four EPs. In 2021,
They were inducted into the Norwegian Music for Popular Music, the only black metal band to ever make it. There's still a record store in the site of Hell. It's called Nosebleed Records. Most of the original artifacts are still on display, and the store promotes itself as a black metal museum. Blockthorne was released from prison and began releasing new music. He still occasionally performs as part of a band called Thorns. What a mind job. Vickernet.
served his time in five different prisons, during which time he launched a group called the Norwegian Heathen Front, a pagan neo-Nazi organization. He also came into contact with other extremist groups, all quite Nazi in their beliefs. On April 8th, 1997, five neo-Nazis, one a former fellow prisoner who had escaped, were arrested and charged with planning attacks on several political and religious leaders in the country.
Part of their plan was to break Vickernes out of jail. Meanwhile, Vickernes made music from prison, releasing two albums of synth-based, semi-folk ambient metal. He also wrote a series of books espousing his political views, various pagan theories, and something he called esoteric Nazism. One of those books was sold through a Nazi organization called Heathen Front.
When he was transferred to a low-security prison in 2003, Vickernes made a run for it, carjacking a family of three as part of his getaway. When he was found, the car was filled with knives, a gas mask, camouflage, a GPS unit, maps, a compass, a laptop, and a mobile phone. He was later found with a rifle and a handgun. More time was added to his sentence. But then, in early 2009, he was released, serving almost 15 years of his 21-year sentence.
He reactivated Burzum and released three albums in quick succession before he was retiring the name. There has been more ambient-style music, along with a film entitled Four Bears, produced with his wife, which is based on the worship of bears during the time of Neanderthals and includes references to the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
In 2011, a far-right extremist named Anders Breivik carried out a mass murder attack that killed 77 people in two locations in Norway with a car bomb and a shooting spree. He left behind a manifesto. Vikernes was one of the people who received that document before the attacks were launched. Vikernes condemned everything but also wrote a sympathetic blog post claiming that the attacks were all part of some Jewish conspiracy.
He was investigated by authorities in France, but not charged with anything. But then, in 2016, he and his wife were arrested on suspicion of planning to launch some kind of terrorist attack. They were released for lack of evidence, but Vickernes was charged with inciting hate towards Muslims and Jews. He was convicted and fined 8,000 euros.
Meanwhile, his YouTube channel called Thulean Perspective, a place where he offered his views and theories, attracted a quarter million subscribers. Lots of racial hatred there. YouTube took it down in June 2018. Vikernes reactivated Burzum for two more albums starting in 2020 with The Thulean Mysteries. It was followed up in 2023 with the reincarnation of Odin. I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I
Varg Vikernes still lives in Norway and has a new legal name, Louis Cachet. That makes it easier to deal with the public and legal things. But he still goes by Varg Vikernes in his personal dealings. There's at least one book on the whole dead, eronymous, Count Grishnak mayhem burzum story called Lord of Chaos, although the author was sympathetic to Vikernes' political views. It was made into a movie in 2018, which is pretty gruesome.
It had to be if it was going to tell this story. Meanwhile, the black metal scene continues with a disturbing number of acts, some, not all, spouting racist ideologies connected to the rise of something called National Socialist Black Metal. There's also something called Red and Black Metal, which has Marxist and Communist principles. Interestingly, some anti-Muslim and anti-religious black metal bands have been born in the Middle East. There's even a sub-scene called Mesopotamian Black Metal.
Most, however, have gone deep into mythology and fantasy, creating a multitude of subgenres: ambient black metal, black doom, depressive suicide black metal , black and roll, black gaze, and symphonic black metal. All of it's pretty intense, but not all of it is racist or hateful. Varg Vikernes has gone down in history as the most notorious, most extreme, and perhaps the most dangerous metal musician of all time. Will there be more like him? We'll see.
You can catch up on all episodes of Uncharted by downloading them from your favorite podcast platform. Please rate and review if you get a chance. If you have any questions or comments, shoot me an email, alan at alancross.ca. We can also meet up on all the social media sites, along with my website, ajournalofmusicalthings.com. It's updated with music news and recommendations every day, and there's a free daily newsletter that you should get.
And please check out my other podcast, The Ongoing History of New Music. There are hundreds and hundreds of episodes that you can enjoy all for free. Join me next time for more stories of crime and mayhem from the world of music. Technical Productions by Rob Johnston. I'm Alan Cross.