On April 8, 1990, Euronymous (real name Oystein Aarseth), guitarist for Norwegian Black Metallers Mayhem, broke
into the apartment of the bands singer, Dead. Euronymous found dead lying in a massive pool of blood, shotgun at
his side, staring with unseeing eyes at his own brain.
This we know because the first thing the excited guitarist did was rush to a nearby store for a disposable camera.
He then took a series of grisly pictures. All snapped out, Euronymous picked up pieces of Dead's shattered skull
which, at a later date, he would make into a necklace. He also pocketed several pieces of Dead's brain which, it
is alleged, he later ate. THEN he called the police.
On August 10, 1993, Euronymous, wearing only his underpants, opened his front door to fellow Norwegian black metaller
Varg Vikernes, AKA Count Grishnackh, pictured left. Varg proceeded to stab Euronymous a total of 24 times, mostly
in the back but at least once in the head.
"Bam! Through his skull. I actually had to knock the knife out, it was stuck in his skull and I actually had
to pry it out..." bragged Vikernes from his prison cell. "I hit him directly into his skull and his eyes
went boing! And he was dead!"
The puppy dog-eyed Vikernes has since become something of a pin-up boy for the racist right. The Internet boasts
several websites which consist primarily of photographs in which Vikernes poses moodily looking for all the world
like the evil brother the Hanson boys never had.
Vikernes isn't exactly finding jail heavy going.
"It's too nice in here," he moans. "It's not hell at all. In this country prisoners get a bed, toilet
and shower. It's completely ridiculous. I asked the police to throw me in a real dungeon and also encouraged them
to use real violence!"
In between working on his solo band, Burzum, and designing Nazi T-shirts, Vikernes finds time to give extensive
interviews in which he boasts about his familial connections to Vidkun Quisling - the fascist collaborator who
ruled wartime Norway on behalf of the Nazis and who sent many of the country's Jewish community to the gas chambers.
Overflowing with pseudo-spiritual gobbledygook and seething Semitism, Vikernes is tediously obsessed with the absurd
concept of "racial purity" and has even gone so far as to state that looking into brown eyes is like
"looking up an arsehole".
"The guitar is a European Invention, like the synthesizer," babbled Vikernes in a recent, typically uncritical
interview. "However, the music played on the guitar is mostly nigger music." Vikernes then goes on to
sneer at the "primitive, degenerate, subhuman mentality" this "nigger music" (i.e., everything
in your record collection) allegedly promotes.
Varg has now turned his back on satanic metal (which he regards as tainted by "non-Aryan" influences)
and renounced Satanism in favour of the ancient Viking religion of Odinism. This has, hardly surprisingly, gone
down well with his new-found neo-Nazi fanbase.
On Saturday 12, 1997, Norwegian police arrested five members of the self-styled Einsatzgruppen neo-Nazi terrorist
organisation (named after the wartime SS murder squads). They also seized sawnoff shotguns, bulletproof vests,
dynamite and a war chest containing 100,000 Norwegian Kroner (about £15,000). The money had, allegedly, been
supplied by Varg's mother. The police claimed that the group were planning to use the money and weapons to bust
Vikernes out of prison.
The excesses of the Norwegian death metalheads and the scene's ongoing dalliance with the racist right are well
documented in the recently published book, Lords Of Chaos (Feral House). In it we also learn of the activities
of a bunch of American fans of the Florida band, Deicide. These high school dudes, styling themselves The Lords
Of Chaos, burnt down, in quick succession, a supermarket trailer, a Baptist Church and a tropical bird aviary.
One of their teachers then interrupted them in the act of throwing a tin of peaches through a school window. So
they later went round to his house and murdered him with a shotgun. Police claimed that the lovable lads were also
planning to steal Mickey Mouse and Goofy costumes and then wander round Disneyland "shooting black tourists
with silenced handguns".
In lords Of Chaos we learn of the numerous church burnings and grave desecrations that blighted Germany, France
and Scandinavia (and, on at least one occasion, Britain) when the black metal scene was at its zenith. And we meet
characters like Black metal fanzine editor Bard Eithun, who stabbed and kicked a stranger to death in an Oslo park.
And nerdy Hendrik Mobus, a German satanic rocker who strangled a fellow student to death with electric flex.
Lords Of Chaos also takes the lid off the network of neo-Nazi death metal fanzines that have flourished in the
wake of Vikernes' imprisonment and subsequent elevation to status of 'racial hero'. Hellhammer (real name Jan Axel
Blomberg), drummer with Mayhem (who are still going, despite their bereavements), told the authors, "I'll
put it his way, we don't like black people. Black metal is for white people." And the book also reproduces
a particularly noxious polemic from a group calling itself "Wiking Hordes" (sic) which advises "all
true black and death freaks" to boycott the Asian, South American and South European "dick sucking pigs"
who allegedly "trade the true Aryan North European and North American bands!" The flyer then advises
its readers to "fuck them up the ass" and ends with the hysterical slogans "DEATH TO FALSE METAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and "DEATH TO ALL NOT-ARYAN PEOPLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (sic).
Another black metal flyer featured in Lords Of Chaos consists of a collage composed of Nazi flags, an upside down
cross and pictures of Charles Manson, Varg Vikernes, Euronymous and Adolf Hitler (whose head, bizarrely, has been
placed ontop of the body of a winged demon). The accompanying text reads, "Wake up, whites! Christianity is
a joke! Christians and Jews idealise mentally retarded individuals... Jesus Christ was a mentally retarded homosexual...The
only good nigger is a dead nigger..."
And we learn about Norwegian band, Darkthrone, who seriously embarrassed their British label in 1994 when they
released the following sleevenotes: "We would like to state that 'Transylvanian Hunger' is beyond criticism.
If any man should attempt to criticise this LP, he should be patronised for his obviously Jewish behaviour."
Faced with label disapproval, a press backlash and a distributor's boycott, Darkthrone soon caved in and issued
a press release which claimed that they were "absolutely not a political band" and attempted to explain
that "the word 'Jew' is frequently used instead of 'jerk' or 'stupid' in Norway."
This pathetic apology failed to mention that the artwork for the album also contained the prominent slogan "NORWEGIAN
ARYAN BLACK METAL" and that drummer Fenriz had previously claimed that, "We are fascist in outlook..."
And you thought that black metalheads were just Goth's with attitude?
Although Satanic and occult influences in rock can be traced back through Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling
Stones (all the way, in fact, to 1920s bluesman Robert Johnson), the genre of satanic or black metal started in
the late-1970s with the Newcastle band, Venom. Although regarded as shocking at the time, Venom's image - all bumfluff
'taches, studded wristbands and spandex jump suits - now seems hilariously dated, more Viz than The Book Of The
Dead. Venom were nonetheless a massive influence on the death metal scenes which soon flourished on both sides
of the Atlantic.
Sweden produced Bathory (who liked waving swords and posing in the woods whilst dressed in Conan The Barbarian
style furry knickers) while America gave us Slayer and Deicide (the latter's main claim to fame being the demented
gibberings of lead singer Glen Benton, who once boasted an inverted cross burnt onto his forehead and who quickly
developed a full-blown persecution complex about "the Holy Ghost" which, Benton claimed. was continually
trying to destroy Deicide with evil Christian "magick"). Just how serious most of these musicians were
about their 'Satanism' is a moot point. To Christian Fundamentalists who, in one way or another, have been hounding
rock'n'roll since the 1950s, everything that falls outside their narrow and bigoted reading of the Bible (including
all other religions) is, by definition, satanic. It is doubtful, for instance, that the Sunday school teachers
who recently garnered headlines by telling their young charges that Diana Spencer was burning in hell, have any
rock music in their record collections - never mind CDs by Impaled Nazarene or Marilyn Manson.
Satanism is a movable feast. Many of the bands shoehorned into the satanic category, like Britain's Inkubus Sukkubus,
are in fact pagan. Others - like Cradle Of Filth, Marilyn Manson and Christian Death - are influenced more by the
philosophically coherent Satanism of Aleister Crowley and Anton LaVey than by the Hammer Horror shock-Satanism
of the 'true' black metal bands. And while Manson styles himself the Anti-Christ Superstar, and Christian Death
delight in releasing record sleeves showing Jesus Christ buggering a naked woman and Cradle Of Filth issue a T-shirt
featuring a masturbating nun on one side and the slogan 'JESUS IS A CUNT' on the other, only a total ignoramus
or a born again Christian would attempt to lump these sensationalist antics in with the racist rantings of Varg
Vikernes and his ilk. But it happens.
Art-goths Cradle Of Filth spent their recent tour of France having to defend themselves against unfounded allegations
of involvement with the far-right after the makers of a French documentary about neo-Nazism gratuitously used a
clip from a Filth video to illustrate a point about Nazi rock music.
But while it should be made clear that the black metal scene is by no means inherently racist, it is also true
that its dalliances with racism and Nazism didn't start (or end) with Varg Vikernes.
As early as 1988 the Swedish band Bathory were including neo-Nazi imagery in their sleeve artwork and making thinly
veiled references to the SS in their lyrics. In the same decade, the American band Slayer attracted a substantial
Nazi-skinhead following. This might have had something to do with the band's use of a Nazi eagle for their logo,
their habit of referring to their fans as 'The Slaytanic Whermacht' and the release of a gleefully voyeuristic
lyric entitled 'Auschwitz-The Meaning Of Pain'. Slayer singer Tom Araya also told NME about his admiration for
General Pinochet - the murderous fascist dictator of his native Chile.
Nor is it possible to entirely disassociate black metal's Satanism and paganism from it's current Nazi tendencies.
Varg Vikernes' pathetic ideological slide from shock-horror satanic rocker to full-blown Odinist race warrior was
obviously facilitated by Satanism's amoral elitism and its oft-avowed hatred of those it regards as 'weak'. Nor
do you have to search too far through the literature of those espousing a return to pre-Christian religions before
coming across references to the 'virus' of Judaeo Christianity - language that might just as easily come from the
mouth of a full-blown Nazi. The Satanism and paganism, of some, if not most of those involved in the black metal,
pagan and satanic rock scenes is either a gratuitous shock tactic or a profoundly held religious/philosophical
belief no more absurd, dangerous or worthy of censorship than the mainstream views which the metalheads seek to
subvert. But when those views shade into racism, when Satanism becomes fascism, what then? Would we be right to
censor the death metal Nazis?
Tiziana Stupia runs the Bristol label, Misanthropy. Misanthropy release records by Burzum and Mayhem.
"My personal Philosophy is anything esoteric, mysterious, occult, y'know?" she explains. "All the
bands come from the same angle, y'know? Basically we don't like idiots."
How do you define 'idiot'? "Well, y'know, the people. The artists that I work with, they have to be individual
and they should possess a certain amount of intelligence..."
Is there anything you wouldn't touch? Anything you'd back away from? Because of the politics perhaps?
"Uuuum! Pfft! I'm not really sure. I wouldn't promote, like, a totally Catholic kind of music, a church music.
In general I'm quite easy-going. As long as it doesn't offend me personally and not much offends me, otherwise
I wouldn't work with Burzum, heh heh!" So you don't have a problem with Varg's anti-semitism?
"No. I don't. Actually, on September 14 we have a compilation CD coming out which is about freedom of speech.
I'm here to promote artists and music and 1'm not here to scrutinize their personal viewpoint. I really don't care
what they personally believe because you can't ask everybody your political opinion, y'know? I mean you just can't
do that, jah? Because that defies the whole point of art. The CD is called 'Presumed Guilty' and it has, like,
a witch on the front being burned because this is a total witch-hunt here. Everything gets like blown out of proportion
all the time and if you don't agree with the populist left-wing opinion of today then obviously you are a witch
and 'witch' is interchangeable with 'Nazi'."
This is a view which is echoed by several of the websites dedicated to Burzum, one of which (http://www.anus.com
- I kid you not) claims that Varg's music "stands as a testament to the sharing of human ideas through the
meta-logic of inspecifically (sic) articulated contextual ideas..."
This is bollocks.
The same writer also claims that "regardless of what anyone thinks of the artist, his work must be considered
in isolation".
And that, frankly, is even bigger bollocks.
Most of the black metal scenesters interviewed for this article were insistent that the Vikernes/Euronymous story
was "old hat"; that the current media interest in the seedier side of black metal, whipped up by the
publication of Lords Of Chaos, was merely raking over old ground.
However... in February this year, Jon Nodtveidt, singer with Swedish death metallers Dissection, was arrested in
connection with the death of an Algerian man in Oslo. Last month, Nodtveidt (along with the head of an organisation
calling itself the Misanthropic Luciferian Order) was convicted of murder. Other charges included drink driving,
grave desecration and the possession of firearms. And, as you read this, MTV Germany is showing, on heavy rotation,
a video made by 'dark wave' band, Rammstein. The video uses footage of the 1936
'Nazi Olympics' shot by Hitler's favourite director, Leni Riefenstahl. The extreme rightwing publication. Junge
Freiheit, is, hardly surprisingly, delighted.
"If the mystical and irrational, the desire for anti-Enlightenment reflection and living transcendence,"
it waffled, "find their voice in youth culture, (then) the western aesthetic consensus has been breached."
Meanwhile, interests in death metal appears to be undergoing a revival in the wake of the publication of Lords
Of Chaos. And the murderer, racist and idiot ooze-monkey Varg Vikernes continues to be the pin-up boy for every
fuckwitted, knucklegrazing, self-loathing Nazi reptile in Europe.
For a long time the only toehold that overtly racist politics has managed to maintain within rock music has been
in the ugly and easily ignored gruntings of the self-styled White Noise bands and their tiny audience of pig-ignorant
boneheads. Anybody who regards rock music as something more than just a commodity-as something life affirming,
radical, empowering and righteous - should be alarmed that the virus of racism has spread and has taken such a
firm hold in black metal.
To label all satanic musicians as Nazis would be facile. To launch a witch-hunt against an entire genre would be
ridiculous. But racist musicians, wherever they are found, should be boycotted by everybody
promoters, publishers, distributors, critics and punters alike. The wishy-washy liberals and the art-for-art's-sake
Varg fans are wrong. There is no space for these scum in our music. That isn't censorship, that's discrimination
against shit. And if the result is that Varg Vikernes finds it slightly more difficult to peddle his genocidal
gibberings to his idiot fans then tough. Let the fucker rot.
Last word goes to a death metal scene insider (who, for obvious reasons, has asked to remain anonymous
[because he doesn't exist.- Rainer]).
"You see the photos of these guys and they all look really tough and really scary. Most of them are these
skinny little Norwegian guys - usually with little or no education - who've never even seen more than a couple
of black people in their lives. It stems from ignorance monkey see, monkey do [A perfect
definition of this article - Rainer]. And when they start spouting fascism and racism it's because it's
really easy to do that sitting in an apartment in Oslo. Take any of those guys and put them in a Washington DC
housing project at midnight on a Friday and we'll see just how much their Satanism is going to protect them. Chances
are it might not do much for them at that point."
Now that's something we'd love to see... [LOL - Rainer]