Salem

Here is another piece of history that Vikernes probably would prefer to be forgotten about - when he tried to kill Ze'ev, frontman of Salem, with a mailbomb. The following text was written by Michael of Salem and he gave me permission to publish it here.

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The story goes back to 1988 when we released our second demo "Destruction Till Death" - the first one was never officially released - and we sent it to many Metal magazines that were around at that time, the magazine METAL FORCES from England, one of the biggest at that time, gave us a great review and compared our music to Sodom.

Euronymous contacted us and asked for the demo; we already knew Mayhem since our vocalist got the first album, so we sent it and we have been in good contact with him. He also wrote to us that he is going to start his own record label - Deathlike Silence - named after a Sodom song and also said if we ever wanted to release an album he would like to do so along with an invitation to leave Israel and to come over to live and play in Norway.

Later on in October 1990, a third demo came up - "Millions Slaughtered" - about the Holocaust. Euronymous was first in the thanks list, then a letter from Varg comes in and he was asking for it. We didn´t know who he is and sent him the demo as we sent it to anyone else.

Then he wrote back that he likes the music but why have we been not writing about Satan and wars in our lyrics and some other things I can´t remember; it was a childish letter. He was 15 back then. We told him to grow up, then a hate mail from him came back that said: "Hail Hitler, hail Genghis Khan and hail Saddam Hussein and shame that the last one didn´t finish the job and kill all the Jews." (He was sending bombs to Israel during the first gulf war in 91). We sent him a letter with a big FUCK YOU in it and forgot about it.

Then a policeman came to our vocalist telling him he was sent a mailbomb to his address, he never got it, it has been found at the post office before that on x-ray. We have all been freaked out, he at first didn´t remember why he was sent such a thing - because it was sent many months after the original letters from Varg, but he remembered eventually and told the policeman the whole story, showing him the letters and gave it to him as evidence. I believe it was sent to Interpol also and later we started to hear about all the church burnings and about the murder of Euronymous.