DISGRACELAND - Norwegian Black Metal: Satanic Rebellion, Murder and Worse

Episode Date: March 20, 2018

Never has there been a more extreme form of musical rebellion than Norwegian Black Metal. The genre’s founding band, Mayhem, its sister act Burzum and supporting cast of musicians with names like Necrobutcher, Hellhammer, and Dead horrified Norway in the early nineties with supreme acts of terror, satanic ritualism, murder, arson, and cannibalism. By the time the ashes settled and the corpse paint chipped away, numerous band members would be dead or in jail, convicted of arson and or murder… and a new generation of young metalheads would find their way to satanism through blast beats and dead notes. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠. This episode was originally published on March 20, 2018.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

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It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. Never has their been a more extreme form of musical rebellion. the Norwegian black metal.

The genre's founding band, Mayhem, its sister act, Burzum, and supporting cast of musicians with names like Necro butcher, Hellhammer, and Dead, horrified Norway, with supreme acts of terror,

including murder, suicide, church burnings, grave desecrations, and even cannibalism. And by the time the ashes settled, numerous band members would be dead or in jail, convicted of arson and or murder. And a new generation of young metalheads would find their way to Satanism through blast beats and dead notes. Some of those blast beats and dead notes amounted to great music.

The music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Vienna Waltz Accordian, MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the license for Jump by Chris Cross. And why would I play you that specific slice of prepubescent backward pant cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on June 6, 1992, and that was the day that Varg Vigutis, aka Count Grishnak, mastermind behind the black metal band Burzum and one-time bass player for Mayhem.

set off a string of church burnings and other acts of satanic rebellion that would terrorize an otherwise peaceful nation. On this episode, waltzing Viennese accordions, backward panties, mayhem, satanic rebellion, and Count Grishnak. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. When Bo Didley released his song, Who Do You Love, in 1956? It was heard by a country reeling in the shockwaves of rock and roll. Bo sang about walking for miles on barbed wire,

Cobra snakes used for neckties, a house made from rattlesnake hide, a chimney made from human skulls. Parents, teachers in squares everywhere, warned of the new music's influence on the clean-cut youth of Eisenhower's post-war conformist America. Surely this rebellious sounding noise would cause kids to grow their hair,

smoke reefer, get pregnant, worship Satan, and die. And the squares were right. That's exactly what happened. A decade later, kids were uniformly long-haired, smoking copious amounts of dope and taking the pill. By 1969 and into the 70s, they were sympathizing with the devil at Altamont and burning their bras in Times Square.

And in the 1980s, cocaine, crack, and AIDS would claim countless amounts of young men. lives. Finally, in 1991, a heavy metal musician from Norway would go Bo Diddle Didley one better. It wouldn't be a chimney he'd make out of a human skull. It would be a necklace made out of the skull of his recently deceased friend and bandmate. Bo Didley's lyrics sounds tame now, but it only took a mere 35 years before its influence was brought to life in horrific fashion. Rebellion is metastatic. One generation's rebellion is another generation's norm. The line in the sand of what is and isn't acceptable gets redrawn with each new generation. Bo Didley was a descendant of

bluesman Robert Johnson, who hack rock journalists will eagerly tell us sold his soul to the devil. And Didley's voodou-esque braggadocio went on to inspire countless classic rockers, including satanic sympathizers Led Zeppelin, whose unabashed admiration for known Satanist Alist, Alistair Crowley, and melding of steroidal Delta Blues made it rain royalty checks, thus inspiring another band from England named Venom to take it one step further, to full-on devil worship. With song titles like In League with Satan,

Leave Me in Hell, and a Thousand Days in Sodom, Venom then went on to influence an entirely new generation of metal bands like Metallica, Slayer, Intestimate, until finally inspiring a new subgenre of heavy metal called Black Metal. Black Metal was started by Norwegian teenagers, unable to stand the strains of conformity, boredom, anonymity, and long, dark winters. Norway, a small constitutional monarchy, went through a brief Viking phase during its adolescence, flirted with fascism in young adulthood, and eventually settled lazily into a type of democratic socialism during middle age.

The country, though small, is one of the world's richest. The state takes care of its own. Government bureaucracy employs 30% of the nation, disability pensions for the unemployed are easy to come by. There isn't a lot of poverty, not a lot of income disparity. The crime rate is low, and punishments for the crimes that do get committed are lenient. Historically, there's not a lot to get pissed off about, because there's not a lot that goes on in Norway. The country's greatest cultural export is frozen fish.

Norway is kind of like Europe's answer to an American flyover state. What I'm trying to say is that if you're a Norwegian teenager, you're probably bored, and even worse than that, you're probably bored without a whole lot to rebel against. How does the saying go? Idol hands at the devil's workshop. Without overt social injustice, Norwegian teenagers look to their heritage for a target to rebel against. Inspired by venom, Bathory, and a growing group of satanic inspired. heavy metal bands in the 1980s, Norwegian teenagers saw in their country's Christian heritage or reason to rebel. Christian societies preach morality. So worshiping Satan is just about the

strongest form of rebellion one can take. Mix in nihilism, Nazism, ancient Norse Viking mythology, paganism, blistering blast beats, and speaker-shreading power cords, and you've got a strong elixir of teenage angst. Black Metal became a thing on August 16, 1987, with the release of the Norwegian band Mayhem's Death Crush demo. Critics point to Mayhem's officially released first full-length album De Mysterios de Satanus as Black Metal's genre-defining record, but it has none of the charm of the Death Crush demo from seven years earlier.

Death Crush sounds less like a band trying to make something and more like a bunch of extremely pent-up kids bashing shit around in their basement in front of blown out microphones that just happened to be pointed toward their half-broken amplifiers. Mayhem's demo, with its low-fi high-energy metal recording, it doesn't sound like anything that came before it. It sounds bleak and primitive. It sounds cold. cold.

Mayhem's death crush is inspired and inspiring. It was the landmark black metal recording that would compel hordes of bands to come. But before the Dark Thrones and Gorgorodz of the world, a polite and unassuming Swedish teenager would fully commit himself to Mayhem's satanic nihilism, so fully that he would become the genre's first casualty, its first martyr, and its first sign of the extreme evil to come. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl.

You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same problems. prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck.

I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe.

On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests. like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever and my first thing is always

can you think of anything else that you can do. Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle

in a karate stance. Like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over?

Gaten Madarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Marone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories

and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good. romance. It gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club from Hello Sunshine and IHeart Podcast, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Brought to you by Cotton, the Fabric of Our Lives. Pair Olin was from Sweden. He moved to Norway at the age of 19 to sing in the band Mayhem. He wasn't the band's original singer, but he was, by far, its most legendary. By all accounts, Olin was a kind and sensitive kid, albeit with a very dark side. Olin was obsessed with death, with dying. He claimed he'd wanted to die ever since he was. was three years old. His obsession with death and black metal led him to change his name to

Dead, and Dead fully committed to the role in a way that would make most method actors feel inadequate. To prepare for Mayhem Giggs, Dead would bury his clothes in the ground so that when he eventually wore them on stage, they'd have the stench of the earth on them, just as a corpse would. Before shows, he'd walk around inhaling the rotting stench of a dead bird he'd carried around with him in a bag because he wanted the smell of death in his nostrils when he performed. On stage, Dead would cut himself, delzing himself and bandmates and the audience with his blood.

He wore all black, and like most metal heads, he had a taste for denim, leather, studs, spikes. He painted his face white and black in the air. around his eyes to look more like a corpse. Not in a theatrical Alice Cooper or Kiss way, but in a scary as all-hallow's Eve way. With dead fronting mayhem, the band's reputation and influence grew, and Norway's black metal scene grew wings.

Its pilot was Mayhem's founding guitarist, Oistin Arseth. Arseth was by all accounts the charismatic leader of the Norwegian black metal scene. Before founding Mayhem in Death-like Silence Productions, the record label that released Mayhem's albums, Eresith changed his name to Eronomus to complete his transformation from polite, upper-middle-class Norwegian boy

into full-blown black metal god. Euronymous and dead were joined at the hip. They were not only bandmates, they were also roommates. They listened to Motorhead and Bathory Records, talked politics, disc poser commercial metal bands like Death Angel and Napalm Death, and plotted their band and their scenes rise to infamy.

The hopes and dreams portion of their story, though, it didn't last. Dead became withdrawn. He was likely clinically depressed, but this was a time, a place, and a scene where such self-awareness was not allowed. Some believe that dead

suffered from what is known as caudered delusion, a rare mental illness in which the affected person believes that they are dead, that they are actually a walking, putrefying corpse. This illness manifests after a life-threatening trauma, like the beating dead took as a schoolboy, where he ended up in the hospital with a ruptured spleen. An experience that it has been reported left him clinically dead for a period of time. Whatever the reason, his obsession with death,

became all-consuming. He got his hands on some snuff films on VHS. He watched them, and then he watched them again, and again, and again. He sat alone in his room, and he cut himself. He stopped eating in an effort to obtain starving wounds. He told friends he believed that his blood had frozen in his veins, and that he was a non-human and didn't belong on earth, that he died as a child and longed for the deep sleep he'd experienced for a brief period as a boy. On April 8, 1991, Per Olin, aka Dead, singer of mayhem, the world's preeminent black metal band, sat down on his sofa and began to write a note. Its first word said, excuse all the blood.

When authorities found the note, Dead's blood was indeed in need of an excuse. It was everywhere. Dead had slid his wrists. Then he slid his own throat. And somehow, after all of that, managed to fire off a shot from a shotgun directly into his forehead. Dead was dead at 22 years old.

Eronymous discovered Dead's body and he assessed the situation with the cold dispassion of a grizzled homicide detective and then he moved fast. Not to call authorities, or family, but instead he moved quickly out the door, down the street to purchase a camera. He hightailed it back to the apartment where Dead's exploded skull and bloodied body lie in the early stages of Rigamortus and began taking pictures.

Eronymous knew a good album cover when he saw one. He then began collecting bits of his friend's skull and brain. The shards from the skull would make for great necklaces, and the bits of brain. and the bits of brain, Hieronymus would later boil down into a stew and consume so that he could claim the vaunted status of cannibal. Let's see those pussies from napon death eat some brains. Fucking posers.

We'll be right back after this word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man.

A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever,

my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises.

And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going. And the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleepwalking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban.

Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things. Tena, Mongeau, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of

Dear Chelsea on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever.

Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Dead's grisly suicide would be immortalized on the cover of Mayhem's 1995 live bootleg, Dawn of the Black Hearts.

The photo is arresting. It's the type of thing you wish you could unsee, but you can't. The irony, of course, is that this is a live album with a real-life picture of a dead guy named dead on the cover. The album's closing track is one of Mayhem's first compositions, Pure Fucking Armageddon. And Pure Fucking Armageddon was exactly what the black metal scene was about to unleash on to Norway. To be from Norway in the early 90s and to be truly in the black metal, it meant that you had to be truly evil. The type of evil that went way beyond the B-grade horror movie lyrics from Black Sabbath.

the type of evil that was much scarier than some long-haired skateboarders and baggy shorts and painter's caps listening to anthrax and crushing cans of Meisterbrow on a school night. To be truly black metal meant you had to live for death. You praise Satan, not because you really believed in Satan, but because it was so fucking subversive to believe in Satan. You declared war on society in all things moral, particularly Christianity. You listened to and made raw, primitive-sounding heavy metal, you had no patience for poser metal bands who didn't take death and destruction seriously. The goal for Norwegian black metalheads was to be truly evil, to completely subvert democratic morality and to banish poser metal bands

back to the punk rock ghetto as they crawled out of. Euronymous, and the scene he lorded over, had a new charismatic personality, Varg Viginus, a.k.a. Count Grishnak, the one-man engine behind the new, exciting black metal band, Burzum. Euronymous agreed to release Burzum's records on his death-like silence productions label, and Varg, through the strength of his Manson-esque gaze and the excitement of his fresh new band, quickly ascended to an unofficial leadership role in the fast-growing scene that now included a flock of new bands, like dark throne, immortal, and enslaved. Varg was committed to the cause as Euronymous and dead before him,

but Varg's commitment infused black metal Satanism with an even more toxic and racist ethno-nationalism. Varg believed Christianity had purged Norway of its heritage by casting aside Norse tradition. He took this shit personally. Varg was out for revenge against Christian, blacks, homosexuals, posers, and basically anyone who wasn't a nihilistic, blue-eyed pagan metalhead. Euronymous's record shop, Helveté, which in Norwegian translates to hell,

served as a meeting place for himself, Varg, and other scenesters, a group that would later be called the Black Circle. But it was outside a morbid angel show in Oslo, where plans came together to bring Norway to its knees in fear. Shortly after, Graves were found vandalized. The home of Christopher Johnson, frontman for so-called

Poser death metal band Therion, had been set on fire. A note was stuck to his door with a knife. It read, The Count was here, and he will come back. A homosexual man in Lillehammer was killed randomly, stabbed over 30 times,

and left a bleed out in the woods behind the Olympic Park. And then the fire started. The first church to go was the Fantof Stave Church, one of Norway's historical treasures. It made national headlines. Next, the Revheim Church. Then the Holman-Colon Chapel and Ormoya Church. Satanic symbols started showing up around the sights of the burnings.

Norwegians had no idea what was happening. The press covered the Arsons breathlessly. And as the coverage expanded, more churches burned. The Black Metal Rebellion was on. Norwegian Black Metalheads were literally carrying a torch for their scene. And Black Metal was no B-grade horror flick. It was full-on evil, real evil, a step further than any metal scene had gone before. Band leaders became heads of arson squads, continuously trying to outdo one another.

More churches burned, the Skulled Church, the Huijeto Church, the Assane Church, the Sarpsburg Church. That one took the life of a firefighter. Over 30 churches had been set ablaze. The press blamed and until now unknown, unnamed, unimaginable clan of Satanus. There were, after all, satanic symbols discovered at the burn seeds, and who else would be deserceded? creating graves. But authorities were slow to pounce on the Satanist theory. Some held out hope that all of the fires and the other assorted crimes were all just a big

accidental coincidence. Bottom line, nobody had a clue who was behind the terror. Fear was rampant and there was no real boogeyman in sight. Not until January 1993 anyway. That's when Varg Vigernist decided he had had enough with the rumors surrounding who was behind the church burnings. The press, blindly milling about for a nameless group of Satanus, was one thing. But back at Helveté, the black circle seemed to be giving Uronomus way too much credit for the church burnings, when Varg knew the real deal.

It was he, Varg Vekernis, Count Grishnach, who spearheaded the arson effort. It was he who was putting the black metal scene onto the international map and onto the front page of Kerrang magazine. Varg had had enough. He decided to try to cheekily set the record straight by giving an interview to a daily newspaper. In it, he claimed he knew who burned the churches and who murdered the homosexual man in Lillehammer. It took local police about five minutes to identify Varg with his pension for being photographed wrapped with torches, knives, chain mail, and long hair. It was easy for them to mark them as a person of interest.

And it wasn't long before they were onto the entire scene, and within no time authorities had found a Burzum flyer promoting the band's new album, aptly titled Ashes. On it, there was an image depicting the burning of Vantof's stave church. The flyer also had on it Vargs' address. For all his high-minded Norse Viking neo-racist pseudo-intellectual horseshit, the count sure seemed like a fucking moron. The police showed up at the address on the flyer

and found him holed up with enough explosives to blast them all to hell and back. He was taking into custody before we could use them to blow up a cathedral in celebration of Mayhem's next album release. Now that's how you throw a record release party. Remarkably, Varg was released for lack of evidence. He was now the BMOC of black metal.

His ego grew, so did his animosity for his friend, Eronomus, whose dabbling in cannibalism notwithstanding, Varg believed Euronymous wasn't truly evil. He thought he was soft and believed he was a closet home. homosexual. Furthermore, Euronymous didn't share Varg's fascist leanings. Varg was a devoted follower of Stalin and of Hitler's SS. Euronymous, despite his black metal identity, was a socialist who collected government welfare

and still took money from his parents to help get by. Further complicating their relationship, Eronymous owed Varg money for unpaid Burzum royalties. Then, Varg heard a rumor that Euronymous was planning on killing him, not just murdering him, but kidnapping him, torturing him, filming the torture, and then killing him on film. The circumstances around dead suicide, the rumors of Eronomus's cannibalism, the church burnings, grave desecrations, rumored death of a homosexual man at the hands of someone. someone in the scene and the harassment of other poser metal bands, all caused mayhem's reputation to ring out worldwide. But a snuff film, showing the torture and murder of one of the scene's biggest stars,

that would truly be something, true evil. Let's see Dave Mustang rub out James Hetfield on film. Megadeth. More like mega-pussies. It all made sense to Varg. Euronymous was an insecure egot maniac who felt threatened by Varg's growing rep, and practically, Euronimus owed him money, so murdering him was a handy way to erase a debt. Varg was enraged.

He wasn't going to let a brown-eyed socialist closet homosexual who owed him money get over on him. Euronymous had to be confronted and fast. When Varg turned up at Eronomus's apartment unannounced at three in the morning, it was under the guise of signing his Bursam record contract. This was something that Euronymous, despite the time of night, was very keen on making happen. Bersam was one of his record labels money makers.

Without a signed contract, there were no royalties to collect. He buzzed Varg in to let him up to his fourth floor apartment. It would prove to be a crucial mistake. Varg wasn't there to sign any papers. He was there to find out what in the fuck was going. going on and to put an end to this beef, one way or another. Yeronymous opened the door in his underwear. And when Varg asked him about his plans to murder him,

Euronymous attacked Varg, kicked him in the chest. Varg was stunned. He grabbed Eronomus and threw him to the floor. Euronymous quickly got to his feet and ran toward the kitchen. Varg assumed to grab a knife or some other sort of weapon. Maybe the shock them the dead shot himself with. Varg knew Euronymous kept it handy. The count was not afraid.

He was determined. He grabbed his own knife and took off after Eronomus, catching up to him before you could find a weapon, and Varg stabbed him. But Euronimus managed to keep moving, back toward the door and out of the apartment. He broke down the hallway, screaming for help,

and ringing as many doorbells as he could along the way. Varg was hot on his trail, close enough to continue stabbing him all the way down the stomach. Aeronimus could do little, but he somehow stayed on his feet. His momentum kept hurtling him down the stairs. His adrenaline kept the screams for help coming at a piercing volume. The horrific sounds kept the neighbors terrified and paralyzed in their apartments.

And Vargs' hate kept the stabbings coming, 22 of them, until Erronomus came. His momentum slowed. He staggered to a wobbling standstill for a second or two. before falling to his knees. Bloodied and gasping for breath, he looked up to face his murderer, his one-time friend and comrade in arms, Varg Vekernus, who then took his knife in both of his hands,

raised it above his head, and silently called upon the great Norse gods of thunder, and with the pure Viking rage that was his lineage, Varg brought the knife down straight into the skull of Eronomus. He died instantly. Varg was arrested nine days later, an informant gave authorities all they needed on Varg for the killing of Euronymous and the church burnings.

Another member of the seed, Bard-Fost Ethian, drummer for the black metal band Emperor, admitted to the murder of the homosexual man in Lilliehammer's Olympic Park. He claimed he just wanted to see what killing a man felt like. He got eight years for killing a man, and cold blood for no reason other than that the man was gay. Way to go, Norway. Pure evil with little consequence.

Varg pled innocent to all the charges and turned his trial into a side show that no doubt made Charlie Manson proud. Playing the role of Satanist, neo-fascist, and pagan warlord, it the rebellious shoe fit, Varg wore it, and the press they ate at all. up, quickly making Count Grishnak, Norway's public enemy number one. Varag Vekhinus was convicted for arson for three of the 30-plus church burnings, attempted arson of a fourth, possession of illegal explosives, and the murder of Euronimus. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison, which, unbelievably, is the maximum penalty allowed in Norway for murder in arson. Amazing.

pure evil with little consequence. Again, way to go, Norway. Norwegian black metal is bigger than ever. Second generation bands like Gorgoroth have taken the genre far beyond the cold, dark Norwegian forest to every corner of the world. The horror is carried out by dead, Eronomis, Varg, and others from the original black metal scene

built a notorious reputation for the genre to attract new. generations of followers with. Mayhem still sells records and still sells out shows. Sure, it's with one original member, and yeah, the shows these days have more in common with a Vegas review than the dawn of the Black Hearts bootleg. But my point is that despite or possibly because of the band's horrific acts, there is a large and active international audience for Norwegian black metal, a genre of music that was built

on a foundation of murder, arson, cannibalism, and what can only be described as the most extreme form of musical rebellion to ever exist. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page

at disgracelampod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axus member, thank you for supporting the show. really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of disgrace land ad free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on

Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at Disgracelam Pod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at disgraceland pod. Rockerola. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.

I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriend. Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests, like Amelia

Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yello-O. I love this podcast, whether it's terrible. or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things,

Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters, never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robeye, and this is bookmarked by Rees's Book Club from Hello Sunshine and IHeart Podcast, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too

many books to your TBR pile. Listen to bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Cotton, the Fabric of Our Lives.