VARG VIKERNES
THE BLACK METAL SCENE OF THE EARLY 1990S BOTH CREATED SOME OF HEAVY METAL’S MOST EXCITING MUSIC AND RESULTED IN THREE TRAGIC DEATHS. HERE IS ITS FULL, BLOODY LEGACY
The shop was so dark you couldn’t see your own hand stretched out in front of you. Burning candles made it feel more like a crypt than a store. The windows were blacked out. The walls were covered with the same dank, gloopy paint. Upon them hung a variety of medieval weapons and a few posters advertising metal shows. Out front, on the door to the street, the word “Helvete” was painted in blood red. This was the Norwegian word for Hell, descended from the Norse ‘Hels Viti’, meaning ‘Hell’s Punishment’. In time the name would come to be prophetic.
In the window was a tombstone made out of polystyrene. In the basement the words “Black Metal” were daubed upon the walls. This was a phrase lifted from the title of the really rather silly but hugely influential British band Venom’s second album. Everyone who frequented or hung around the shop used it to describe this new kind of heavy metal they were all so influential in creating. Raw, brutal, fast – but actually quite beautiful in places: glacial, in thrall to nature and old history.
Legendary British music writer Paul Elliot was working as news editor of the British rock bible Kerrang! at this time. Excited by the music they were hearing lurch out of the scene that revolved around the shop, fascinated even more by the rumours of bad behaviour that were surrounding the music’s creators, on 27 March 1993 the weekly magazine decided to share the story of what was happening in Norway via their magazine cover. “Arson… Death… Satanic Ritual…” roared the strap. “The Ugly Truth About Black Metal”.
“Looking back on it now, it was the most shocking story ever featured in Kerrang!” remembered Elliot. “What was going on made for good copy for the magazine and the bands benefitted from the exposure we gave them. Our story was sensational but not to my mind sensationalist given the seriousness of the crimes committed. Some great music came out of that scene and era. But it will always be remembered for the insanity and brutality of what those impressionable young men descended into.”
Without Helvete, there is no black metal. The Oslo record shop was where ‘The Black Circle’ or the ‘Black Metal Inner Circle’ would meet. A silly club name, more ominous than it sounds because of the events that would transpire, it was a group that included members of the black metal bands Mayhem, Emperor, Burzum and Thorns. They all had an interest in Satanism, but really their core interest was in pissing people off. At the heart of it all was the shop’s founder, Øystein Aarseth. He was better known as ‘Euronymous’ – guitarist, scene leader and a founding member in the band Mayhem. From
