Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal

by Jon Wiederhorn

  EURONYMOUS: Although I was the one who found him and had to crawl through his brains to get into his house, I don’t think it affected me very much. Of course, he was a friend, but I know he wanted to die, and the only right thing he could do was to give his life to the darkness. It would have been wrong to prevent him from doing it. Besides, when I say I’m into death metal, I mean it! I hate when people say that they’re into death, and when it comes down to it they’re really just life-loving, humanitarian false trendies. Of course I took photos—wouldn’t you? It’s not every day you get to mess around with a real corpse. Unfortunately.

  NECROBUTCHER: Øystein called me and said that Dead had done something cool. I said, “What’s up?” Euronymous said, “He blew his brains out,” and I said, “What the fuck?” He told me about the pictures [he had taken of Dead’s corpse], and I told him, “You burn those pictures before you even call me again. You’re sick in your head.” I was completely angry and knocked out by grief. When somebody close to you kills himself, that’s the worst grief you can have because it doesn’t explain anything. It’s almost like a betrayal. You start to think, “Was there something I could do, was it something I said?” When somebody dies in a car accident, you can accept, “Yeah, he was in a car, they came off of a road, hit a tree, it was sad—but it has an explanation.” This wasn’t like that. So I was full of grief and was the only one from the band who went to Sweden for the funeral. My dear brother, Euronymous—the guy I met when I was sixteen and was together with every day for ten years, sharing information, talking about plans—his reaction to Dead’s death was a betrayal to me, and I got very pissed off. He didn’t get rid of the pictures, and he took advantage of the situation because now he could be the leader of Mayhem.

  HELLHAMMER: After Dead killed himself, the police removed the corpse, but all the blood and this shit was lying around the floor and the walls of this old house they were living in. I was there with Euronymous, and he took a piece of Dead’s brain and put it in some Mexican stew. It was just a small piece that had been lying on the floor. When Euronymous was eating Dead’s brain, that was pretty strange. I didn’t eat it because I really enjoy good food, and I wouldn’t destroy my senses eating this kind of shit. I don’t think he enjoyed eating it either, but he just wanted to taste human flesh, so he did. I think it was cool, but I would never have done something like that.

  NECROBUTCHER: After that, Euronymous moved to Oslo so he could be in a bigger city and present himself as the evil character he had always envisioned. He would rather have people fear and hate him than respect him. He wrote shitloads of letters to me the first year. I was still grieving after Dead’s suicide, so I wrote him back and told him to fuck off. That’s around the time he started the Helvete record store where he held these meetings with members of other bands.

  In no time, Helvete became ground zero for Norwegian black metal bands. Musicians in the so-called “inner circle” met not just to jam and hang out but also to share antisocial thoughts about politics and religion. After playing with Abbath and ex-Immortal guitarist Demonaz in Old Funeral, Count Grishnackh became a regular at Helvete, and when Mayhem needed a new bassist he volunteered to step in.

  HELLHAMMER: Dead’s death didn’t stop us. We decided to find a new vocalist, [Attila Csihar, who left after 1994’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, then rejoined in 2004 and continues to sing for Mayhem]. I liked Grishnackh from our first meeting: He was an intelligent guy. He stood out from other musicians. He was modest and polite.

  COUNT GRISHNACKH: In 1988 or 1989, when I had played guitar for a year or two, I formed a band called Kalashnikov, named after my favorite assault rifle. One of our songs was named “Uruk-Hai.” The chorus was “Uruk-Hai! / You will die.” We soon changed the name of the whole band to Uruk-Hai. As most Burzum fans should know, Uruk-Hai was the name of the High Orcs of Sauron [from J. R. R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy], and it translates as “Orc Race,” from Black Speech, the language of Mordor [the fictional city created by Tolkien]. I knew the drummer from an earlier encounter, when we were somewhere between twelve and fifteen years old, and he had put a loaded .375 Magnum revolver to my forehead on New Year’s Eve, because he thought I had called him “fatso.” I had actually called not him, but his friend, a “fatso,” and told him that. In 1989, I met the guys in Old Funeral, who were excellent and serious musicians, and we dropped the whole Uruk-Hai project. The two other Uruk-Hai members were already fighting over a girl, and we had stopped rehearsing, so it was not hard to put Uruk-Hai to rest. I played with Old Funeral for two years.

  ABBATH: I asked Varg [Count Grishnackh] to join Old Funeral when we needed another guitar player. He was very dedicated. At the time he seemed good to work with.

  COUNT GRISHNACKH: During the time I was with Old Funeral, the band turned from a really cool techno-thrash band to a boring death metal band. This was the reason I eventually left Old Funeral, as I wanted to play my own type of music.

  FENRIZ: Varg and me had a huge amount of mutual respect, but I don’t think anyone in the scene were close friends. That would be anathema—black metal people being friends. It wasn’t a cozy scene.

  HARALD “DEMONAZ” NÆVDAL (Immortal): Varg had a lot of passion for what he did, but he wanted to go by himself and do Burzum, and we did Immortal.

  COUNT GRISHNACKH: If people knew that Burzum was just some teenager’s band, that would have ruined the magic. For that reason I felt that I needed to be anonymous. So I used a pseudonym, Count Grishnackh, and used a photo on the debut album that didn’t look like me at all to make Burzum itself seem more out-of-this-world, and to confuse people.

  Although it arrived after the first wave of black metal bands (Mayhem, Darkthrone, Burzum, and Immortal), Emperor became a fixture of black metal in the early nineties. In the Nightside Eclipse rivals Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas as one of the best early black metal albums, a whirlwind of high-velocity rhythms, majestic arrangements, and atmospheric keyboards.

  IHSAHN: Samoth and I met in 1989 at a local blues seminar where kids come together from different parts of the country to get tutored and put together bands and have a go at playing the blues. Samoth was already in a band. He was fourteen. They needed a second guitarist. I had long blond hair and my jacket had Iron Maiden patches on it. So I joined his band. He was always good at tape trading, so quite early on he had a huge network around the world and [the band evolved] really quickly. We grew from heavy metal through thrash and death metal.

  FAUST: I knew Samoth from the scene and I was hoping and believing he would ask me to join as Emperor’s drummer. He started out on drums and I think that was an emergency solution because he is really a guitarist and not a drummer. What distinguished Emperor from the rest of the bands was that Ihsahn was an experienced synth and keyboard player. He could actually play, not just use it to create a layer of sound.

  FENRIZ: I think Emperor is kind of overly liked in the U.S. I mean, the whole Norwegian black metal thing really didn’t hit the USA until 1998, and the chronology and what counted was all jumbled up. Emperor was really from the after-wave, like Gorgoroth, Satyricon, and Gehenna. We, in Darkthrone, fed on the eighties international releases. When we made our two “black metal” releases as a whole band [1992’s A Blaze in the Northern Sky and 1993’s Under a Funeral Moon], the only Norwegian black metal we had heard were Mayhem, Burzum, Thorns, and Immortal.

  IHSAHN: We were in touch with other metal bands quite early. We went to meet up with Darkthrone and even sat in on rehearsals where they rehearsed for the [1996] Goatlord album that they originally planned to release after [1991’s] Soulside Journey. We had contact with the Old Funeral guys and some people who are now in Enslaved. The first time we got Ivar [Bjornson] from Enslaved drunk, he was twelve.

  FAUST: It was a chaotic time to say the least. When we did In the Nightside Eclipse [in 1993], the material was well rehearsed and tight as hell, but at the same time we had a very relaxed feeling to it all. We had no idea of
the importance of what we were about to record, nor did any of the other bands at the time who ended up recording albums which would later be deemed as seminal or legendary. The recording alone took one or two weeks. Ihsahn was seventeen years old at the time and couldn’t get into the bars so he just stayed in the studio working. I used to say that all the great vocal work on the album was thanks to his being underage because Ihsahn had so much time to work on it.

  As more bands entered the scene, including Enslaved, Marduk, Satyricon, and Gorgoroth, the power and influence of black metal grew; but the core of the movement continued to be controlled by Euronymous and Count Grishnackh, who served as the scene’s ambassadors. Euronymous’s approval could lead to an invitation into the “inner circle” and a deal with Deathlike Silence. Members of bands as far away as Germany (Marduk) and Japan (Sigh) sought approval from the black metal messiah.

  MORGAN “EVIL” STEINMEYER HÅKANSSON (Marduk): Marduk began in 1990 to make brutal, antireligious metal. Together, the message and the music became dynamite. Even though we weren’t from Norway, Euronymous was selling our demo tape in his record store. You knew everybody in every country that was connected to the same scene and you shared ideas and visions. Of course, I was part of the Inner Circle, but I don’t think that’s anything anyone should speak about even now.

  FAUST: I first met Euronymous outside a gig with Anthrax and Suicidal Tendencies in Oslo on the Among the Living tour. He and Dead were selling some Metallica bootlegs they had pressed themselves called Phantom Lord. I realized instantly who they were. They both made a tremendous impression on me and they both seemed like serious outcasts, even amongst the metal audience waiting to get into the venue.

  GRUTLE KJELLSON: When I met Euronymous back in ’91 when we started Enslaved, I thought he was a very polite and intelligent man. He and I didn’t necessarily share the same ideology when it came to Satanism and politics, but we shared the same love for Pink Floyd, the Residents, psychedelic music, and early seventies electronic groups. He was completely different from what you see in pictures and what you hear about. Yeah, he had an image because he was running a company and was trying to build a band and his record label. But in private he was polite and intelligent, a nice person and a cool guy.

  FENRIZ: The greatest misconception is people think we only listened to black metal and we didn’t have senses of humor. People without humor are garish company. Simply put, if you are a loner with no social skills that wants to sulk, it’s possible to make black metal, but you might want to choose another arena.

  AUDREY EWELL: What people don’t understand is these guys were really smart. There was a tongue-in-cheek aspect to what they were doing. People in their time didn’t understand that and took everything at face value, and that’s where so much of the black metal mythos actually came from—an inability to assess statements these guys made and see any sort of humor in them.

  FROST: Euronymous helped a lot of creative people meet and eventually form constellations. All the bands went for the best and only accepted the best, and challenged themselves. And the healthy competition fueled the quality of the bands.

  SILENOZ: We frequently visited Euronymous’s record shop and he always gave us advice. He guided us to the more evil and brutal side of metal. He sold the albums for very little money, too, so you usually came home with a stack of CDs and vinyl.

  FAUST: Helvete was the first real physical manifestation of something that was ours. Euronymous made the shop look really old, dirty, and dark. This, together with his magnetic force on younger metalheads, made the shop a place where guys into dark death and black metal could crawl into, discuss big topics, listen to music, and get drunk.

  GRUTLE KJELLSON: Euronymous was kind of funny. On the one hand he was a leader, but he was also very absent-minded. He could drive for hours and suddenly go, “Where the hell am I?” He was kind of a dreamer. He enjoyed a good laugh, you could tell stupid jokes and drink beer and have a great time.

  FROST: When people were gathered at Helvete there was this weird atmosphere that was almost palpable. I had no reference for it, no words for it, and then I felt it, and it was an instant connection. I belonged somehow to this thing, and I wanted to dedicate myself to it. The common denominator was the fascination with extreme music that brought us there in the first place. If you didn’t have an affinity for the music and the darkness you wouldn’t feel well in those surroundings.

  GRUTLE KJELLSON: Euronymous was very much into dictators, and outside the store he had national flags from horrible regimes around the world. One day we were sitting there drinking and a bunch of Iranians came in. They had seen the Iranian flag on the outside and thought it was a cafe. So there were twenty confused Iranians walking into a very dark room with dim lights and five people sitting there in black leather jackets.

  GLEN BENTON (Deicide): [When I met Euronymous] he was carrying a mace, but it looks like he stole the table leg off his mom’s kitchen table and put nails through it. He was wearing this cape that you’d buy at the dollar store during Halloween. They brought me backstage and they said, “Uranus”—or whatever—“from Mayhem is here and wants to meet you.” So I went out there and in his broken English, he said, “I did not have problem with you, but this band Gorguts [a death metal band that came out of the same nineties scene as Benton], they are not true death-metal/black-metal band.” I was just sitting there with a big shit-eating grin on my face like, “Yeah, that’s cool, man.” I really didn’t know the importance of the guy. To me he looked like another goofball fan.

  FAUST: As bands started recording great albums and became recognized as a vital force of music and ideology both within and outside of Norway, it became more important to Euronymous to maintain an image and wear a mask, especially to people who were outside of the inner core but still wanted to know more about the underground music phenomenon. This is not entirely Euronymous’s fault, but was merely a result of a group psychosis where everything became more serious, dark, and sinister. He was a well-read and fascinating guy, but I think Euronymous was caught in his own game, and we all know how that ended.

  Even today, members within the Norwegian black metal community continue to debate whether the black metal genre ever practiced or promoted Satanic worship. Most Norwegian metal bands were anti-Christian, but not all of them embraced Satanism. And those that did had varying beliefs in what the religion meant.

  DEMONAZ: When I started writing lyrics for the first Immortal album I didn’t want to write about politics or religion. I wanted to have something more evil and based on the Northern darkness and the inspiring black forests and the snow and winters that we have. I think it’s a little like Conan the Barbarian. His God is Krum, who doesn’t care about him, but still, he wants to have a relation to Krum. I have a relation to nature, to the dark path. I never sought God, I never saw Satan, but I saw the darkness that creeps over my house. Nature is everything for humans. We are bound to it. We need it. It doesn’t need us. And that makes it the power. That makes it the God.

  COUNT GRISHNACKH: Burzum had an occult concept, but it is more correct to say it was a concept built on fantasy magic. Everything with Burzum was out-of-this-world—even the name. When the Christians called the gods of my forefathers “demons,” “trolls,” “goblins,” and, not least, “evil,” I naturally felt attracted to everything that was seen as evil by the Christians. As most [J. R. R.] Tolkien fans should know, burzum is one of the words that are written in Black Speech on the One Ring of Sauron. As far as I remember, the last sentence is “Ash nazg durbabatulûk agh burzum ishi krimpatûl,” meaning “one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” The “darkness” of the Christians was, of course, my “light.” So all in all it was natural for me to use the name Burzum.

  DAVE PYBUS (Cradle of Filth): These guys in Scandinavia were taking the Lord of the Rings and Venom at face value. [We were from England], and the more we giggled, the more earnest and desperate they were to be taken seriously. />
  IHSAHN: That which in Christian eyes would be categorized as evil would not necessarily be seen as cruel or destructive in the eyes of those who are not chained to the narrow path of Christianity. Evil is more or less controlled by the beast in man, also known as free will. Satan is the personification of free will, individualism, and intelligence, so building one’s ideology on values categorized as evil does not make you a ruthless maniac. Just like the beast, one has to adapt to one’s environment.

  ABBATH: The Satan part of black metal has never been our true belief. We follow our own path. We don’t experiment with that kind of stuff. Maybe in the beginning we did, but we quickly found our own road where we were our own gods. But still the dark side of life is very important to us. We created Blashyrkh, our own hell. And that’s where we find inspiration—and it can be anywhere in nature. Blashyrkh is always following us. It’s just our thing.

  KRISTIAN EIVIND “GAAHL” ESPEDAL (GORGOROTH): [Satan] means opponent—as long as the world speaks in a Christian language. I have to be Satan—the opponent of this—the opponent to slavery basically, which the rest of the world is [bound by]. Therefore, Satan means freedom.

  COUNT GRISHNACKH: My hope would be that Burzum could inspire people to wish for a new and better reality in the real world and hopefully do something about it. Maybe revolt against the modern world by refusing to participate in the rape of Mother Earth, by refusing to participate in the murder of our European race, by refusing to become a part of any of these artificial media-created “rock-and-roll” subcultures, and by building new and healthy communities, where the Pagan culture—and magic if you like—can be cultivated.

  In addition to being a think tank to combat the evils of Christianity, the Inner Circle was a musical breeding ground that encouraged cross-pollination. Euronymous played a guitar solo on Burzum’s 1992 self-titled debut, and released it and its follow-up—1992’s Aske (which featured bass by Emperor’s Samoth)—on Deathlike Silence Productions. And Vikernes wrote lyrics for Darkthrone’s 1994 album Transylvanian Hunger and 1995’s Panzerfaust. But musical and artistic exchanges weren’t all that went down at Helvete, and over time, several of its denizens moved away from philosophy—and gravitated toward crime. While Euronymous was more of the spiritual leader of the group, Grishnackh held more radical views and believed in action over contemplation. To express his contempt for Christian culture, Vikernes advocated church-burning. On June 6, 1992, the Fantoft Stave church in Bergen was torched and seriously damaged. The remains of the building appear on the cover art of Burzum’s Aske. After conducting what he claims was supposed to be an off-the-record interview with a Norwegian newspaper about the crime, Vikernes was arrested for arson.