Do you feel like an outsider, both personally and in the metal scene?

“[...] So we had a shot of vodka while listening to De Mysteriis…I left him [Euronymous] on a very high note and I’m really happy that I did that meeting and had that last conversation. In retrospect, he was looking like he was turning into a different kind of guy that we never got to see, but that he probably realized himself that he could only go so far with this total extreme approach. Maybe he needed to make some friends in different places and not only appeal to the most extreme people.”

Someone told me that English was introduced as a regular school subject in China and Japan only last year. He was serious (and like half Chinese).

“For Maniac, it was that or dying. Getting kicked out of Mayhem was the necessary wake up call to get his shit together and live. Because if he had stayed in Mayhem, he would be dead now.”

Emotional and historic game against Argentina. Really well done.

“I think the biggest, at least most lasting, contribution was to bring De Mysteriis…to the black metal fans and artists of that day, because the riffs and general musical quality on that album was so highly influential to the rest of us, that it made us try harder as well. Not to mention that the guitar riffs on that record laid the foundation for a sound that a lot of other artists would be very influenced by. If you think Emperor was influential, where do you think we got it from?”

“Euro was driven. He was always there with diehard ideas. In times of much distraction, he was always there. He was always encouraging people to listen to anything extreme of any genre. I think it was sad to see all the people coming into black metal after he died. I think many of them thought that only black metal was real and didn’t have much perspective and shunned other styles. It was very bad for black metal, actually, that a lot of copy bands without any backbone came out of those people.”