⛧Euronymous Files⛧

You have seen the birth of Norwegian Black Metal, and surely you have had the opportunity to talk or know characters like Burzum, Euronymous and others. Can you tell us some anecdotes about respecting this experience? S: Just to give you an impression of how the times has changed, I can say a few word about a gig with Emperor and Enslaved back in 1992. This was the Celebration of Darkness Night in Askim, featuring also Algol, Infinite Decay and Detest. Only 5 tickets were sold. Euronymous was there with a stand selling items from his Helvete shop and Frost (pre-Satyricon) talked about his “secret” band with Faust (pre-Emperor). It was one hell of an afterparty though, I have especially great memories from meeting Euronymous at his shop, where he also sold Obscure Epitaph. I was 17 the first time I met him, and as he was a few years older than me, I have no problem with saying that he became more or less a mentor or visionary for me. He told me about the first church fire that was about to happen and asked if I wanted to join. It was supposed to happen all around Norway at the same date, but in the end only the Count actually did it.

For what we read or through interviews of those who knew Euronymous, they portray him as a person with a very clear and precise idea of ​​what Black Metal should have been. In your opinion, if he were still among us today, would he be the same person with the same uncompromising ideal? S: No, not at all. Time has changed. People changed. The scene changed. Even he seemed to changed towards the end, closing his shop, experiencing the consequence of actions caused by words…

"Euronymous was the guy who showed me prog. He gave me Klaus Schulze’s Time Winds, Tangerine Dream, all this stuff I liked. It blew my mind, every second listening to those albums. I was 14 or 15 when we would go to his record shop Helvete in Oslo with a packed lunch on the bus. He was a mentor musically and as a guitarist. The single most important thing as a guitarist was his masterclass. He stopped by our house, he had his guitar, I kept asking him all the time how do you get that sound. We were listening to the demos and he decided to take the guitar and show me. Everything good shaped from that."

source: Louder

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“I was lucky to get to know Euronymous, because I was such a small kid. Whatever esoteric, Satanic beliefs he had, he didn’t discuss them with me. All that we had in common was music and guitars. I remember going into his record shop and trying to impress him: ‘Do you have anything extreme?’ He was like, ‘Shut the fuck up! Listen to this!’ and gave me some Norwegian prog.” […] “I found out that Euronymous had been murdered by watching the morning news. It was horrible, but I’m glad that me and Grutle have been through this entire journey together. He had an even closer relationship with Euronymous; since they were [closer to] the same age, they could discuss vinyl collections and women and more grownup stuff. It would’ve been pretty bad if it weren’t for us being a duo and talking about it quite a lot. It was just a couple of years ago that Varg stopped bad-mouthing the people that were ‘on his side’, but there’s no side to be on in his case. It’s devastating because what he created was so unique and now it’s impossible to enjoy it."

Metalion: "Tell me how you feel about releasing a CD on DSP without the earthly existence of Euronymous?"

It: "I do not give a fuck about if people say that VOW* is a bunch of fuckin' peace lovers. If Euronymous could work with them I can as well!!! Euronymous stood behind Abruptum up to 100% all the time and he worshipped our 2nd LP. In his last letter he wrote to me that: 'Now that the cunt and his fuckin' Burzum shit is not on my label anymore we'll start to work for Abruptum real hard'. He would have been honoured to release our LP, just like he was when he released our first. Our 2nd LP belonged to DSP and with the release of it DSP went to its grave, in my heart. You know, DSP was going to release our first album before Burzum's first, but the cunt paid his LP himself and that's why it came first. Just like I admired him and Mayhem he admired me and Abruptum. We had big plans for live shows where Mayhem/Abruptum played together. Mayhem as support to the headlining Abruptum. That is proof of how much he believed in us and how his way of thinking was. Not "I'm the best" and "My band is the biggest". He blew life into Abruptum and gave us something to believe in. We were much the same and we shared many things, that's why I feel a bit splitted up nowadays. I do not have the same support from anyone that I got from him. I would like to say our 2nd LP is fully dedicated to his memory and I guess I have more reason to it than many others. So Grishnack must know he is dead as fast as he puts his face outside the prison walls."

Metalion: "Another Norwegian band we spoke with recently is Mysticum, hailing from Asker. A thing you might have heard is that Hellhammer wants to reform Mayhem with some Mysticum members. Ravn tells us some facts."

Ravn: "Well, that rumour was true. Hellhammer asked us about it, and we thought about it for a while because it isn't everyday we get a chance like that. But anyway, we said no and I'm glad for that. It would be so wrong to start up Mayhem with all those tragic happenings. And we have never been part of Mayhem, so it would be wrong taking honour in continuing Mayhem. Euronymous lives in our dark hearts forever! Hail Euronymous! I have heard some new rumours that Hellhammer will start up Mayhem with some old members of the band, that could be interesting. But they will never achieve what Mayhem achieved with Dead and Euronymous."

This would’ve been around spring ’91, when Slayer Mag #8 came out – the one with that legendary Euronymous and Dead interview where they lay down the law in terms of, ‘Black metal is like this, death metal is like that. And it’s a lifestyle.’ All this really resonated with me. I thought, ‘Fuck, I love what they’re saying here. It feels right.’ That interview changed my whole approach to music, my interests, and the direction I wanted to take. […] I never got around to playing him (Euronymous) my music. I was a little concerned that he might not be into it, so I kept dragging my feet a lot in terms of letting him know about the Mortiis project. I was literally terrified that if Euronymous told me it sucked, I wouldn’t want to make more music. I can handle a lot of criticism but, at the time – as an eighteen-year-old – I’d have been devastated if Euronymous said, ‘Dude, it’s shit.’ Because he was very honest and would’ve told me in no uncertain terms if he didn’t like my music. So, I think that held me back. I do recall entertaining this little daydream that it would’ve been fucking cool to release something on his label, but, at the same time, I knew it would’ve taken forever. Euronymous was always dealing with various financial complications. […] I’d just turned eighteen and thought I was going to prison; I had a police detective with a big beard staring me straight in the eye… and I’m like, ‘I am so fucked.’ I wasn’t raised in the fucking Bronx, you know. I didn’t grow up in The Godfather, nor have I ever been forced to survive on the street. I’m a middle-class kid! My parents paid for my first album, for fucks sake. So no, I’m not tough like that. They fucked me and then I had to fucking deal with it. You know, for years. People felt I’d snitched on Faust, but that wasn’t the case at all. It’s true that I did talk to the police because they tricked me. The motherfuckers tricked me. When it came to Varg, I had zero loyalty. I told them everything I knew, because he killed Euronymous. I even testified in court against that dickhead. Still to this day, I’m fucking glad I did that.

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Excerpts from the interview on Bardo Methodology #7

The following is part of a 2021 interview to Attila by the YT channel Over Music. Read below for the highlights, but definitely go and check the original video.

interviewer: "How was your relationship with Euronymous? Did you have a friendship relationship with him or he contacted you to work on DMDS and nothing more?"

Here it’s Metalion writing, but I mainly chose this excerpt because of the other names involved... to show where they stood on the matter.

[While writing Slayer X] Metalion: "The grief and anger affected everyone involved in the small Scandinavian metal world at the time. For instance, my first interview with Nifelheim is in this issue, contributed by a person called Shadow, aka Jon Nödtveidt from Dissection. In late 1993, the Nifelheim twins Erik and Per Gustavsson, It from Abruptum, Legion from Marduk, and Jon Nödtveidt all came from Sweden to visit me at my old place in Sarpsborg. They were all upset with Fenriz of Darkthrone, because he had asked Varg to write half the lyrics for Darkthrone's Transilvanian Hunger. To them, it looked like Fenriz stood with Varg after Varg killed Euronymous, like Fenriz approved of the murder. They considered Euronymous a brother, so what Varg did was treachery and then Fenriz working with Varg was a betrayal." [...] "On the second page of this issue's Dissection interview, there's a little handwritten note signed 'Shadow'. This was a message from Jon Nödtveidt to Varg and 'Hank Amarillo', a name Fenriz had used. It read: 'Be forewarned if the light takes you.' [...] and you could say it's almost like a death threat. He and I came up with that together. I didn't really have anything bad to say about Fenriz, but Jon and other people in Sweden were very unhappy with him." [...] "I also printed a short half-page article written by 'Mr. Death', which insults 'Cunt Chicken Christian Vikernes' [see previous post here]. That was mailed to me by someone that I decided should remain anonymous. The letter amounts to the second death threat in Slayer X against Varg Vikernes - yet the issue also contains the Burzum interview completed after the death of Euronymous. I admit that's a bit schizophrenic." "I think that I felt that Burzum was an important part of the scene regardless, because of the music. Most people I knew, though, were nearly unanimous in their hatred. I remember Jon Nödtveidt was concerned about giving space in the magazing to Varg; he didn't approve of that at all. He just shook his head, like: ‘Why would you?’ “

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I always felt that the lack of humor, the lack of irony and the fact that no, it's not a glimpse in the eye, it's almost like... I love the fact that someone was saying... instead of saying "Yeah we're gonna kill your babies... haha... only joking"... no, we WILL kill your babies! ...and I thought that the power of that and the strength of the lack of irony, the lack of glimpse in the eye was overwhelming in a great way and it made me - to express it in a banal way - made me really get this like "okay, this is no joke", you know... "This is serious". And I loved that, so that's how I perceived it anyway. [...]

Interviewer: "It's interesting when you're talking about black metal and the malevolence stare, and not messing around and kinda looking you dead in the eye and being quite... it's not entry-level music. It actually requires [...] there is so much complexity. A lot of people I think can't necessarily unpack it to get to the emotion and I think that's one of the problems [...] I wonder if people's ears were different in the 90s [...] Can you tell us a bit about that moment [...]norwegian black metal is a fascinating [...]what was this kind of moment like and what did it smell like and what was this world that you inhabitated at this moment.

Satyr: So a grew up in what we refer to as “the original norwegian black metal scene”. I'm one of the persons that was a part of both the musical and social circle that set the stage for what is, you know... now it's been around for 30 years or so I guess, so time flies and I guess what's the most frustrating part to me is that there are a lot of people that are very opinionated about the definition of black metal while at the same time not being there because we were so few and it's such a long time ago that, without mentioning names, there are so many bands out of this country that say "yeah we started in so and so and built from there and then we released" and I think to myself "No, you didn't". Because if you were there as you claim in your press release, I would have known [...] If they existed, we knew about them. [...] And then even worse now having people that are from a different country, from a different culture and different age group try and educate Satyricon on the definition of black metal... oh god, why do I have to listen to someone do this to me because they have no idea. The most influential person in the definition of black metal was without the shadow of a doubt Euronymous. Euronymous of Mayhem was the great ambassador for these philosophical thoughts and he was very much a salesman in the way that he would strongly exaggerate to get his points come across. So for example, a lot of things he said, you know, he didn't necessarily mean them literally but he would put them very strongly so that the message would come across, and he kept talking about - much like Edvard Munch - that it's not about being technical. It's about the feeling, it's about the atmosphere, so that's how you define black metal and he said "As long as it's dark and it's got the feeling, it's black metal". And then I remember having this conversation with him and other people back then many times but... I remember one of the conversations where it was just Euronymous and myself, I said "How far would you go?" and he said "Even some Diamanda Galas is black metal", and I said "No, that's going too far", and he said "No, no, it is", and he said "And so is some Mercyful Fate stuff" and he kept pushing and he said that "Listen, if it's got that feeling, that's what defines black metal and it's not corpse paint, speed or instrumentation. It's the feeling." So obviously I know that he was comunicating quite a few extreme examples but that was in order for his points to become clear to people, that this is really not about the bpm, it's not about corpse paint or no corpse paint, it's about that feeling, and then today we see that there are bands out there who have their spikes and their bullet belts, and they have their corpse paint and they play fast and they have their leather jackets and this and that and the instrumentation is there so people say it's black metal. Is it really? Is it really black metal? I don't understand that. How can it be black metal, because it sure sounds like what most people's idea about black metal is, but it has none of that feeling.

Euronymous didn't seem too emotional over the loss of his comrade, but we were all good at hiding our feelings then.  He was more concerned with his new idea: a black metal record store. In addition to his growing record label, DSP, he thought a record store would be a great way to "spread the black plague to the grey mass". I remember having a meeting about this in my hometown of Sarpsborg with Euronymous, Geir Brattelie and Stian Johansen (also known as Occultus and numerous other pseudonyms). [...] These two would become Euronymous' partners in the record shop. I came up with the name of the store, Helvete, which is Norwegian for Hell. Euronymous found a really big place in Oslo with a huge basement and a lot of spare rooms. It suited us perfectly. Not only would this be a good place for a store, but also perfect as a hangout for the Norwegian black metal community.

In the beginning we didn't have much of a selection, mostly second hand vinyl that we donated from our personal collections. The store became the meeting place for people in the scene, and was very important to us. People would come from far away just to hang out. Euronymous was always polite and talked to everyone about his visions of black metal. He talked about the first generation of black metal bands who just sang about devil worship, and he encouraged the new Norwegian bands to take it to the next level, and to truly embody what they were singing about. Many people were influenced by his words. Members of Immortal, Darkthrone and several other bands visited the store often. Musicians developed their concepts more and more towards what was to become known as "True Norwegian Black Metal". Darkthrone was always around the Helvete store. [...] In November 1991 Christian "Varg" Vikernes showed up on the scene. It was the weekend when Morbid Angel, Entombed and Unleashed played in Oslo, and the gathering at the Helvete store was incredibly big. There was this new kid there. I remember not speaking to him much, but Euronymous later informed me that this guy had his own one man black metal band called Burzum. It was later decided that Burzum's debut album was to be released on Euronymous' Deathlike Silence label. After Vikernes was introduced to our circle it soon became known that his mother was very supportive of him and his music. You can say that he bought himself into the scene with his mother's money. She funded Burzum studio recordings as well as the pressing of Deathlike Silence vinyl. A lot can be said about what would have happened if Vikernes' mother had not provided her financial support. It is obvious that she did a lot for her son in this regard and, as usual, money runs the world. [...]

After Euronymous was killed I went blank for a while. I was friends with both Euronymous and Vikernes and had written about their bands in Slayer. Imagine having your best friend murdered by another close friend. It took a long time to process any feelings and thoughts about this. I am still thinking about it often, and it has not been easy to deal with.

Last update: July 24th  2024

I guess this page needs a F.A.Q. to make things easier for everybody. So here we go...

“We take some of our biggest inspiration from punk, but not the thing about them not thinking about it; we use violence and chaos to create havoc and mayhem, but when it comes to everything around it, when you’re a black metal brat as myself, then you take a big impression from Euronymous. Besides the execution, he had been a guiding star, the guardian of anti-morality“ [...] “If you ever would tattoo anything like Christian people do with ‘What would Jesus do?’ then you should ask yourself ‘What would Euronymous do?’ “

Mayhem: ”A band that was great up until the death of Euronymous, after that I wish they would have let the band rest. Mayhem was Euronymous and what they do now is just fucked up. The “Deathcrush” mini LP is among my favorite Black Metal releases, and the tracks they had on the “Projections Of A Stained Mind”* were the best they ever did.”

source

Faust speaking to the Austrian ‘zine “The art of Necronomicon” in 1995.

I’m sure it was a tragedy to you when you discovered Euronymous was murdered, and now Count Grishnackh is facing charges for the assassination. What do you have to say about Euronymous, Grishnackh and the killing?

Euronymous was a great friend of mine. I often talked with him on the phone. He sure was a talented and innovative guy. I knew Euronymous and Grishnackh hated each other vehemently. But I never expected it’d end up like that. I even talked with Euronymous just 3 days before the murder. He told me a lot of plans to make black metal bigger, and probably he had some more ideas in his mind, but he took all of them to the grave. Now I’ve got new Mayhem’s CD and what can I say about it... I remember Euronymous told me the new album would be great, and now I realize what he meant.

Never seen this awesome picture before and had to share... and I’m SO FUCKING ANNOYED for that black mark. Like... WHY....