Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult

by Dayal Patterson

  During his incarceration, Vikernes consistently denied his guilt and stated that the interview had been a hoax carried out for promotional purposes. By March, he had been released by police due to a lack of evidence. In fairness to Vikernes, it should be pointed out that he still vehemently denies that this interview had any impact on others within the scene. During the aforementioned 2010 Metal Hammer interview, he stated:

  “This is what the rats want you to believe, in an attempt to make me look like the bad guy, but the truth is that not a single soul was convicted because of that interview. I had to spend six weeks in custody and the Old Funeral drummer had to spend a night [under] the police arrest, but nobody ratted anybody out at this point. The police had no success whatsoever because everybody kept their mouth shut…. Further, it was actually Euronymous’ idea, and we did it to promote his record shop and black metal—because he was in dire financial troubles. My motivation was the same; I wanted him (Euronymous) to afford printing more Burzum albums. The first print had long been sold out, and he [couldn’t] afford printing more records. In this respect it would have been a huge success, if only Euronymous hadn’t closed down his shop a week later, because his parents didn’t appreciate the attention from the press. That’s what I spent six weeks in prison for … In the end I have to say that those who accuse me of lying can just go fuck themselves, because all the police interviews still exist. I have read them several times, and so have my many lawyers, and the rats can tell as many bullshit stories they want to, but these interviews don’t go away, and they all confirm my story a hundred percent.”

  Almost immediately after Vikernes’ release, Kerrang! ran a now-infamous exposé on black metal, interviewing both Euronymous and Vikernes. The latter was featured on the cover in an equally notorious picture, hair down over his face with two large knives crossed over his chest, above a headline that read “ARSON … DEATH … SATANIC RITUAL … THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT BLACK METAL,” beside a smaller picture of a corpsepainted Emperor. The article included some basic errors, including the consistent misspelling of Varg’s pseudonym, but nonetheless proved to be nothing short of dynamite.

  While the article was presented as a tabloid-style exposé and was heavily critical of the Norwegian scene, it also gave it a huge dose of publicity, pouring gas on an already steadily burning fire. Those within the movement were encouraged by the coverage they were receiving in what was then the world’s biggest rock and metal magazine, since while the article focused on Mayhem, Burzum, and Emperor, it also mentioned a number of other acts including VON, Darkthrone, Master’s Hammer, Impaled Nazarene, Rotting Christ, Beherit, and Profanatica.

  Most importantly, the article provided an instant gateway and guide to the scene for many who would become fans and even practitioners themselves. It’s not hard to see, particularly in a pre-Internet age, the magic that these mysterious, criminal, corpsepainted devil-worshippers held for some of those reading, many of whom were undoubtedly curious to discover exactly what this “new” music actually sounded like.

  “Arson…Death…Satanic Ritual…” Kerrang’s memorable Norwegian exposé in 1993, featuring Varg and Emperor on its cover, introduced a new legion of fans to the genre.

  The interviews themselves were typical of the time in their callousness, boastfulness, and drama, particularly in the quotes from Vikernes, who described the Aske record as a “hymn to church burning,” commenting, “It’s saying, ‘Do this. You can do this too.’ And we convert the souls of kids with our music…”

  Later, in a quote that Vikernes argues was taken out of context, he states: “We support Christianity because it oppresses people, and we burn churches to make it stronger. We can then eventually make war with it. Human beings are worthless and stupid … they’re not supposed to think. They’re supposed to follow a god or leader. I support all dictatorships. Stalin, Hitler, Ceaucescu … and I will become the dictator of Scandinavia myself. I’m a Viking and we’re supposed to fight … The only negative thing about [murder] is that when you kill someone they can no longer suffer.”

  Euronymous was quoted somewhat less than Vikernes, but nonetheless made an impact with his words: “I don’t care if people die, even within my own circle. I have no feelings left … We are but slaves of The One With Horns. We are a religious people, and total obedience is a fundamental concept for us. I’m a piece of dust in the whole cosmos, compared to Him. What happens to us doesn’t matter. If I had great enough reason to kill, I’d gladly serve twenty years in jail.”

  As it turned out though, it would be Vikernes who would end up serving time for murder, not Euronymous.

  19

  DEATH OF A LEGEND

  NORWAY PART III

  ON THE NIGHT OF August 9, 1993, Varg Vikernes undertook the long drive from Bergen to Oslo with Snorre “Blackthorn” Ruch, a copy of his Deathlike Silence record contract, and a collection of weapons, including knives, axes, and a baseball bat. Arriving at Euronymous’ apartment at around 3 a.m. on August 10, Varg rang his doorbell, and having woken Euronymous, persuaded him to open the door and let him in, using the contract he had brought as a pretext while Snorre remained outside.

  Having gained access to the apartment, Varg attacked Euronymous (who was still in his underwear) with one of several knives he had strapped to his body, repeatedly stabbing him, mainly in the back, but also in the neck and head. At one point Euronymous ran out onto the stairwell, screaming for help, where he passed Snorre (who was apparently so shocked by the sight of his bleeding bandmate that he blacked out), but his cries were in vain and he would soon die of his injuries, his body abandoned and found on the stairs a couple of hours later.

  In interviews, Varg has stated that he killed Euronymous at the scene; indeed, on his own website he states that Euronymous died instantly after a knife wound to the head. However, during the fracas a lamp was broken and Euronymous fell upon the shards, with this accounting for many of the twenty-four puncture wounds found on his body.

  “I’ve read the scripts from the court,” explains Manheim. “Øystein had scars all over his underarms, [a] lot of stabbing in his back, even if [Varg] had stopped there, he wouldn’t have bled to death. But in the struggle, defending himself or running away—in his underwear, woken up in the middle of the night—what killed him was that one of the lamps broke, and the glass from that Øystein stepped on, and cut the main artery in the foot, and was lying there for several hours bleeding to death.”

  Vikernes claims that Euronymous was the first to attack, as he stated in an interview with Metal Hammer two years after being jailed: “I turned up at 3 a.m. and we started to talk angrily, and he panicked and tried to attack me. I just threw him on the floor, and he got up and ran to the kitchen to get a knife. And I thought if he were going to have a knife so could I.”

  The body of Euronymous is taken away, August 10th, 1993. Translation: “Øystein Aarseth was, as one of the most notorious/well-known satanists in Norway, questioned a number of times by police after the many unsolved cases of church fires.” Verdens Gang newspaper, Norway.

  If the details surrounding the attack are hazy, so too are the motives for the murder. Vikernes has always maintained that Øystein was actually seeking to kill him and that the murder was a pre-emptive act of self-defense, as he revealed in the aforementioned Metal Hammer interview.

  “Well the guy I murdered, he tried to kill me but obviously he didn’t manage [laughs], so I killed him instead. It wasn’t what I would call direct self-defense, because he was no real threat there and then. I could have beat him up and kicked him out in the street, but I killed him. If I didn’t kill him then, he would have tried again. There was no point in giving him a second chance.”

  In our interview in 2010 for the same magazine he repeated this story. “I knew he planned (not just wanted) to kill me, and today I know that several others knew as well (because a few of Euronymous’ former friends have told me they knew too), so I have no regrets. What goes around comes around. M
y plan was in fact to beat the shit out of him, so to speak, but when he tried to get hold of a knife things took a more dramatic turn. I know I could have done things differently, but I don’t think the end result was too bad.”

  On his own official site (among other places), Varg explains that Euronymous had telephoned Snorre while Snorre was staying at Varg’s flat and that he had listened in, hearing Euronymous explaining that he was planning to kill him.

  “Maybe,” says Snorre, “but in any case if Øystein said he wanted to kill Varg, it would be like he could say he wanted to kill anyone, without there being any pressure behind it. But then I think there might be some aspects of this conflict that I didn’t catch before all this happened, there might have been other threats or incidents I don’t know because I could care less what people say or think about each other.”

  Whatever the exact situation between the two parties, it was this one call that appears to have acted as a catalyst for the murder and dragged Snorre into the unhappy mess.

  “It was mostly due to me being in Bergen and receiving the phone call that triggered the event,” he confirms, “and that Varg didn’t want to do the drive alone made me the natural person. There was a third person [who won’t be named here; suffice to say that he was in the black metal scene but not a known musician]. At one point he was supposed to drive the car but then he came to his senses and said never. He provided an alibi for some time but later confessed that he knew what would happen … that’s the big thing that makes the whole case switch one way or the other; both me and the alibi knew what was going to happen, but still Varg tends to say that it was an impulsive act of self-defense.”

  Indeed, in court Snorre would condemn both Varg and himself to jail time by stating that the two were driving to Oslo specifically so that Varg could kill Euronymous, thus contradicting Varg’s claims that the event was unplanned, which would have made Snorre a wholly innocent party. For his part, Snorre had lost his close friendship with Euronymous by the time of the killing, but certainly had no particular ill will against the man, and seems to have been drawn into the affair due to his somewhat fragile condition at the time. While his explanation below may read as an attempt at justification, it’s worth pointing out just how open he is when talking about the matter, making no attempt to avoid blame for what happened.

  “My story is that I’m already traumatized from before that,” he sighs, referring to an incident in his childhood, “and I guess that’s one of the reasons that I was going along with that at all… I was really stressed out at that time to say the least…. I hope no one thinks that I had an intention or anything to gain from killing Øystein. It was not my idea and it was not my intention but I got dragged in it ’cos I was in the apartment when Varg flipped. Me and this third person were trying to calm Varg down and get it under control and just say, ‘Wait,’ but he was so wound up and wanted to do this so we got dragged into it. Fortunately the third guy did not get any severe punishment.”

  Generally, those interviewed for this book believe that Euronymous was not, in fact, planning to kill the Burzum main man, but concede that Varg may well have believed this to be the case. Manheim comments, “We have no reason to believe that Kristian would not believe [any threats made], he was young, a loner, a strange guy with all these issues.”

  Euronymous had frequently made death threats in the past—once even telling the long-serving and highly respected metal journalist Malcolm Dome that he would not “live beyond the weekend”—and perhaps Varg was just the first to be aggressive or paranoid enough to take the threat at face value. Euronymous had already been before the courts for attacking a man at a bus stop with a broken bottle, and at the time many rumors still surrounded the deaths of Pelle and an attempt on another man’s life, namely a Polish fanzine writer Euronymous claimed to have attempted to poison.

  “We have just heard that he has moved to Chicago,” he once told Slayer Magazine. “Unfortunately, the poison we gave him wasn’t strong enough to kill him… But we also know that the poison caused him pain and that he suffers a lot from it, and in the end he’ll also probably get cancer… if we don’t kill him before that. He’s going to die.”

  Whatever the truth about that story, there’s no doubt that the relationship between Varg and Euronymous had soured dramatically as the year progressed. Varg was becoming increasingly interested in right-wing politics, while Euronymous had a history of involvement in communism. Varg was increasingly disillusioned with Euronymous for his lack of activism, and was also unhappy with his contract, believing that Euronymous owed him money—something his Mayhem bandmates say was very possibly true. Euronymous had never been particularly business-minded with either Deathlike Silence or the Helvete store, which had been closed at the start of the year following pressure from the police and, apparently, Euronymous’ parents.

  In fact, a major rift had opened up between the two musicians following the two Varg interviews, his arrest, and the subsequent media exposure in Norwegian’s national press. Varg was now famous throughout the country and beyond, and many have suggested a growing rivalry between the two. Even Snorre, in his interview with Slayer, explained that there were many possible motivations for the murder, explaining that the two men shared many qualities and concluding that one of the reasons was simply that “murder is more extreme than arson,” and that Varg had only “burned some churches while Bård had killed a man.” In a recent interview, he told me:

  “I think Euronymous and Varg found really good ways to manipulate each other. They both got really conspiratorial and started talking about surveillance and burning churches, and Euronymous was a very kind person but suddenly he started to act very [much] the opposite to compensate. So he became unpopular with everyone around him for some years and it of course escalated in the murder.”

  Certainly it’s clear that Varg’s dealings with the media and the authorities were something that Euronymous was becoming uncomfortable with, as were many others in the scene who were now under heavy police scrutiny. In the documentary Pure Fucking Mayhem, Anders “Neddo” Odden of death metallers Cadaver and later Satyricon and Celtic Frost explains: “[Øystein] Aarseth was fed up with all the pranks and the attention that Vikernes drew to black metal and Helvete. He thought Vikernes commercialized it. He didn’t want any publicity. Øystein wanted it to be a closed cult system, unknown to outsiders. I met Aarseth in the summer of ’93. He told me that he wanted to create a black metal movement that was based on the Hell’s Angels. As such, Vikernes had to go because of the commercializing. Vikernes had good reason to take this seriously.”

  Ironically, any plans Euronymous might have had against Varg may have also sprung from fears for his own safety. Varg was certainly a man capable of direct action, having apparently led the church burning to a large extent. It’s also interesting to note that in later years two Israeli metal acts, Salem and Orphaned Land, have claimed that Varg sent them mail bombs in the early nineties. Curiously, Euronymous’ own fears appear to have been accentuated by a visit to a clairvoyant who predicted his death, seemingly at the hands of Varg. During Varg’s trial, a Swedish woman named Ilsa Raluce Anghel, who had been in relationships with both Varg and then Euronymous (another apparently divisive point), described the following:

  “On August 6, I got a call from Aarseth. He was furious about a letter Vikernes had written. He had had enough of Vikernes’ shit-throwing and wanted to get rid of him. Aarseth asked me for advice: should he kill Vikernes or collect enough evidence to get Vikernes convicted for several church fires? He had closely evaluated both options. If Vikernes was to be killed, Aarseth would travel to Bergen and electrocute him with an electrogun. Some of the evidence of arson was to be gotten from Saida Anderson, a famous Swedish psychic. The fortune-teller said she had ‘seen’ several pieces of evidence which would convict Vikernes of up to four church fires, but she also said she could ‘see’ Vikernes getting twelve years in jail. Upon hearing this, Aarseth was scared stiff. He s
aid Vikernes would never receive such a sentence for arson; to get twelve years he had to be convicted for murder! Aarseth contact[ed] me twice more in the last days before he was murdered. He gave the impression of being in a hurry. It was very important for him to do something before something was done to him.”

  “He wanted Ilsa’s advice,” Mortiis confirmed in a fanzine interview of the time. “Either he was going to go and get C.G. first, or to get technical evidence against him for burning four churches.”

  Regardless of where the blame falls, when the news about Euronymous’ death was reported, it hit the scene hard. While some had become disillusioned with Euronymous, particularly the members of Mayhem, a large number still considered him a close friend and mentor, an opinion many hold today. Paranoia also hit the Inner Circle, with fears that the attack had come from a rival scene, such as that within Sweden or Finland, with whom there had been some quarrels.

  “Murder victim threatened by Swedish Satanic Mafia,” Verdens Gang newspaper, Norway, 1993.

  “How could I be comfortable with Euronymous being killed, reading about it in the newspaper and then not knowing who it was?” asks Darkthrone’s Fenriz. “I would still go to work but I would have a knife, and on my headphones would be Bonded by Blood by Exodus, all of the fucking time, to be in ‘attack mode.’… It was pretty unnerving. Then finding out it was Varg who did it … well it was not a normal day at work.”

  “His death was a surprise,” comments Infernus of Gorgoroth. “I went [to his place] three weeks before the killing and Vikernes called up and was in a splendid mood, leaving Euronymous with quite a confused impression, so I knew there were … issues. I was surprised [when I heard about the death] but I didn’t automatically think of Varg. There could have been many others involved.”