By the way, from what I have heard Vikernes has left Norway which is a rather strange move for an outspoken nationalist like he is, isn´t it?
Anyway, until I have some new material to work with (thinking of that, what about the book he was talking about in the interview for Dagbladet? Guess I won´t need to hold my breath on it being published one day...?) I wanted to post a very short text that I have written some time ago, originally for some other purpose but since that never came to (and never will come to) happen, here it is...
*****
To give a (very rough) insight along the lines of an explanation of what might have led Euronymous to adopt the extreme image (he eventually became trapped in) in the first place - here is a quote from a very old interview (done in 1988) with him:
"What are your feelings towards religious concepts?"
"I hate religions as for they are responsible for many wars and inconceivable human suffering. I don´t understand how people can call themselves Christians after all what they have done over centuries.
The with hunt: millions of people have been burned alive; it´s one of the most painful and slow ways to die. It´s impossible for us to imagine the suffering these people endured - they were lucky if they died asphyxiated from the smoke of their own incinerated flesh. It makes me furious when I think about what all these Christian bastards have done. Now they act like if nothing of this ever happened and if you tell them about it they say, "Oh, it was a long time ago". It´s like if a Nazi was coming to tell you "Hey forget about the millions of Jews we gassed, it was a long time ago." It doesn´t surprise me that some people become Satanists to oppose Christianity - this ideology advocates you to do what is the most natural within each of us."
This is far away from the total evil-and-death-worship he came up with in later interviews. It´s of course highly speculative, but - maybe he created his image around his views on (organized) religion in general and Christianity in particular by taking the violence and disrespect towards people of other beliefs and the negation of individual freedom found in fundamentalist religious views and took it to the utmost extreme - to present some kind of "mirror" to these people - to present them a view of their own evil within.
(Translation of the quote by Sam.)
7 comments:
Excellent blog, probably the only place I've found online that actually makes a real case for Euronymous instead of deriding him with childish insults. That French interview was great as well.
Thanks a lot!
"When the day came one single church was burned. Nobody did anything. Everybody just had a big mouth, everybody "oh that´s cool" - nobody did anything. And basically that is because these Heavy Metal guys were, and still are, a bunch of wimps who play Heavy Metal because they are not capable of doing anything else...probably...just a bunch of losers.
Hahaha. Maybe it was due to actually caring about MUSIC rather than pranks.
I generally like this weblog a lot, and I am grateful you put it up; but I must heavily disagree on the view that Euronymous just adopted an image and got trapped in it.
Though the Euronymous who spawned the Norwegian scene seems to be another person than the one featured in that French interview, I know such a change in one person is perfectly possible, for I have known cases I consider somehow comparable, if you will.
Euronymous appeared more extreme when Dead joined in, both being against political, “false” Death Metal (see the interview in Slayer #8 or its reprint in Rites of Eleusis); he was totally amazed on Dead’s behaviour (“Wierd is not the right word, I honestly think DEAD is mentally insane (He knows I am writing this!) Which other way can you describe a guy who does not eat in order to get starving wound? or have a T-shirt with funeral announcements on it? I've always wanted to have a guy like that in the band.” Source: Morbid Mag #8.), and was possibly influenced by him.
Furthermore, Metalion knew both guys, I suppose you know he made them join forces, so to say. Metalion pointed out that Euronymous “was always telling what he thought, following his own instincts to the true Black Metal stuff like corpsepaint and spikes, worshipping death and being extreme.” (Lords of Chaos, p. 39.) Metalion knew Euronymous for a longer time than the members of the scene Euronymous created, and is far more reliable on what Euronymous was about than Mayhem members like the drummer pretending Euronymous called himself a fascist after finding out communism wasn’t extreme (it is known that Euronymous stated theoretical communism was undesirable and worshipped dictators like Pol Pot and Stalin), the original bass player repeating the Cunt’s lie about Euronymous wanting to kill him (Necrobutcher had stopped talking to Euronymous because of the photographs of Dead’s corpse, and people who were still in contact with him, like Faust, suppose this to be rather unlikely), and so on. It is also still possible to be like the Euronymous known through later interviews and still be nice and normal towards your parents, in case you like them, that is; so Kjetil Manheim’s conclusions aren’t necessarily right either. My sources for these statements were Lords of Chaos (Deathlike Silences chapter) and the Once Upon a Time in Norway and Pure Fucking Mayhem documentaries.
Had to write that down. No intention to take a piss or anything (doubt you will suppose that anyway), and as stated, I like your weblog; again, thanks for that.
By the way, I have also posted on that topic on http://r-a-b-m.blogspot.com/2009/11/folkblack-metal-against-nsbm.html and http://r-a-b-m.blogspot.com/2010/09/euronymous-and-his-views-on-communism.html.
Well, as I said in my article I am only speculating - guess no-one besides those who knew Euronymous personally over a long period would know how and why he thought and behaved the way he did.
Anyway, thanks for the links you sent - but - and I know this will come as a surprise to a lot of readers of this blog - I never shared any of Euronymous´ political views. So, in other words, no thanks to left-wing politics/ideologies just as no thanks to right-wing politics/ideologies. In my view politics (AND political correctness !!!) don´t have any place in Black Metal. I am very glad that Euronymous kept his political views out of Mayhem. I seriously doubt that he was even serious in them. He might have been for a while (being member of that communist party and all that) but I guess if he was alive today he would have dropped them years ago.
I just posted those links as they fitted the whole discussion about his world view, not to advocate whatever political views; I don’t even know how I found that “RABM” weblog, and I don’t visit it regularly. I know you wrote “a lot of readers of this blog” and not “you”, but I never suspected you neither to share Euronymous’ political views nor anybody else’s. When it comes to the interpretation of these, I have a nice quote from an interview with the German band Katharsis, taken from the Horrible Eyes fanzine (the passage I left out refers to another question within the same interview):
A lot of the so called Black Metal misanthropes who dwell in countries with a "democratic" character express the wish to live in a country under totalitarian banner, for instance Euronymous was attracted by dictatorships such as Romania or Albania. I’m quite sure he would not have found comfort if he really had to dwell there, haha. What do you think? I can imagine that you are at least fed up by this decadent, humane & awfully Americanised polluted Federal Republic...
D.:I still regard Euronymous’ dedication to Leftist dictatorships more or less symbolical. Because the interesting aspect about both, historical Communism and historical National Socialism, is that practice and reality differed so much from the planned or declared development of the theory/Weltanschauung, respectively. The promises of a golden and glorious future turned to a huge pile of shit, death, madness and despair. This makes it attractive for many extreme minds, since the logic behind it can to some degree be regarded as anti-Christian according to the Revelation of St. John and many other bible passages (e.g., the Antichrist is said to be the one "who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God", 2 Thessalonians 2:4). Sad enough from the Black Metal perspective, in the end Armageddon did not come. At least not yet. Remember the prophecy of the kings of terror?
About our nice peaceful country, I expect the next fierce and catastrophic war within the next 15 years because something is clearly out of order right now: The break has become far too long for the historical measure. Then the big-mouthed war fanatics and wannabe-misanthropes will be sorted, and there will be no time and place left for the sheep among wolves. So you see I basically share your objections regarding probable show-offs, but at the same time you cannot expect everybody to avoid praising cruelty in general and war atrocities in special because he could be a victim himself one day. That’s a fucking Christian notion I daresay (Live by the sword, die by the sword, blablabla...) and I feel reminded of Question 5 a bit, but maybe you tried to make a test or something. Who cares about victims, anyway. Nay, this is Black Metal Propaganda!!!! And not the Sermon of the Mount! Stamp down the wretched and the weak. Kill God’s children. Terror and Destruction. Moreover, everybody who really believes in those stupid "14 words" meaning, belongs into the oven, too. Exist to destroy, not vice versa. Praise Death!
First point: No way to see either side advocate communist or other political views (which Euronymous explicitly kept out of Mayhem, fortunately).
Second point: I would say Drakh put it very well. Coming from a communist party, it would fit the later Euronymous to use communist dictatorship, something he therefore knew about, as the tool to show praise of extremes (though Fenriz had been into socialism as well and yet referred to other forms of political extremism). Euronymous surely was serious about communism while in his party, and serious in his praise of darkness, death and Satan – the very roots of the music he stood (and, though dead, still stands) for.
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