"Brand Builder. RiffMaster. Tape Trader/Label Owner. Misanthrope. Megalomaniac. Totalitarian Communist. Evil Genius. Perhaps a bit of a “wanna-be” Chemist/Scientist/Showman with some P.T. Barnum mixed in!?!  He may have been strangely flattered by my descriptions here. He did have a wicked sense of humor too, after all.

To clarify, these shouldn’t be read as insults to the dead.

I like to remember him as a friend and someone who was excited about the movement behind black metal. I knew him from the calls we did and the letters we shared. That’s one way of knowing someone, I suppose. Others have their own memories, I’m sure. In other ways, I agree with what [Mayhem bassist] Necrobutcher has said lately in the way he treated Dead’s death. I have a conflicts about that for sure.

As I said before, I have a lot of letters from the people involved, and what the sentiments were at the time. It’s interesting to read other interpretations or even people changing history, but that’s what happens when there’s a lot of obscure lore and legend to sift through.

How I like to think about Oystein is as the leader of the black metal movement in Norway. A man with big ideas who made a lot of them come true. He changed what people thought of black metal at the time and how dangerous it could be when done properly and at its most extreme. Most importantly for me, I liked the fact that he supported other scenes—and was in touch with so many different people across the world—as long as the vision was shared. He supported the scene by tape trading, selling music and generally creating interest and didn’t seem to care where the bands came from.

He left behind some pretty amazing music. De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas remains one of my favorite black metal albums of all time.

As far as the way I think about all the guys who are no longer here, they lived and died by the sword, and their own philosophy. I’m not one to judge, but it was good to know them, share thoughts during a youthful time of my life (and theirs), and do what we were all able to do to contribute to the black metal scene together."

Another thing is that they give most of its space to music and create a decent balance between that and more personal stuff - not crime. VV is given extremely limited exposure and in Harald Fossberg's book (666 Shades of Black), for example, he is almost a footnote (he was asked to participate, but obviously declined). I of course understand that some people who love his music might not agree with this, especially if they want a super comprehensive book on BM, but that guy has his own platform and says whatever he wants anyways. There are also things in his book where you previously had to dig a bit deeper or buy expensive boxsets, so I hope all of this information will reach more casual fans too.

Matías' book (Born for Burning) is also not bad, although I would have strongly advised against translating it himself. There are some grammatical errors and a lot of mistakes in general, so I hope they will fix that if they ever do a second edition.