“[...] But I’m pretty sure that whoever was hanging around Varg up in Bergen was definitely - if anything - on his side because he would have definitely manipulated those guys into thinking whatever negative thoughts about Euronymous. I seriously doubt that there was anyone there that even had any interest in telling him killing Euronymous was a bad idea. The years between 91 and 93, of the people involved in the black metal scene, everybody had developed such an extreme way of thinking that I don’t think that anybody really considered the actual level of how serious it is to kill someone. It was thought of way more in terms of like murder, death, to us that was just part of what the black metal lifestyle should be all about. With a bunch of people like that around with that type of mentality, nobody is going to stop anybody from doing anything. It’s insane.”

“Euronymous was part of burning the Holmenkollen chapel, and after that he said he was never going to do it again because he wasn’t that kind of guy. He didn’t want to be that guy who goes up there with matches. He just wanted to tell people to do it. He was so nervous when he did it because he realized that he actually could go to jail now. He was realizing that it’s one thing to be tough in your mouth, and another thing to do it in real life and get jail time for it. I guess he thought it was cool but at the same time he was very afraid. He actually didn’t want anyone to know he did it.”

“Suddenly I met him [Pelle] in Oslo, by the railway station. I asked him what he was doing there, and he told me he had bought a very sharp knife. I didn’t realise he bought a knife to use on himself. The thing was that when he killed himself, he tried with the knife first, didn’t get it to work, he tried to slit his wrists and then his neck, but it didn’t work out, and then he took the shotgun. That worked. I thought it was very sad, of course. I mean, suicide is such a waste and extremely stupid thing to do.”

“I wasn’t that pissed off at him anymore, because we actually had decided that we were going to carry on that summer. Before he was killed, we were planning the 10-year anniversary for Mayhem that was going to happen in the summer after, in 1994. So actually, it was a little bit shitty, because I was pissed off as fuck on him, and it would have made it much easier for me if I was pissed off at him when he was murdered. But since we had started to get back together and hang out a little bit…they weren’t happy days.”

“Philosophically, the black metal scene was getting really destructive. It had moved beyond the idea of making cool music and it had become a thing where the vision was that the music was just one part of it, and the other part was to basically wage a war against Christianity in general and just be as bad of a person as you could possibly be. We all knew that Varg had burned down a bunch of churches. Everybody knew that, but nobody was telling the police a thing.”

“If you light a candle in the darkness, you tend to attract a lot of strange people. The Helvete audience was a mixed group of people who wanted to be something - the typical wannabes - and people who really had something to offer, who had good projects and were making really good music. Øystein was building this thing around himself: he established the shop, went on with the label, signed on bands on the label trying to make some progress on things. There were of course people around that didn’t look at Øystein as the main figure in the genre, but most people did. I never looked at him in that way because we were friends since we were young, and he never was Euronymous when we met. We had some conversations around it; on why he was taking the role so seriously, but that’s what he decided to do…”