True Crime Campfire - When Nerds Attack - KVLT: The Crimes of the Norwegian Black Metal Scene Pt 1

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

Robert Johnson was a Blues singer in the 1930s who was said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his talent. He died, inexplicably, at the age of 27, right at the peak of his fame. No one has been able to confirm the cause of his death, so the rumor of his Luciferian trade lives on. Musicians are often accused of worshiping the devil by conspiracy theorists and moral purists alike. Whether it’s true, is usually left up to the listener. Today, though, we’ll be discussing a group of musicians who admitted to their evil intentions from the moment they picked up a guitar and the impact of their actions would be felt by the community for decades to come. Join us now for part one of this diabolical true story.Sources:Lords of Chaos by Michael Moynihan and Didrik SøderlindBlack Metal: Evolution of the Cult by Dayal Pattersonhttps://www.musicgenreslist.com/metal-music-genre/https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mayhem-mn0000335302/biographyhttps://metalinjection.net/black-metal-chronicles/black-metal-history-month/an-illustrated-history-of-corpse-painthttps://www.last.fm/music/Mayhem/+wikihttps://www.villagevoice.com/until-the-light-takes-us-a-norwegian-black-metal-documentary/https://www.macrotrends.net/states/minnesota/murder-homicide-rate-statisticshttps://knoema.com/atlas/Norway/Homicide-rate#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20homicide%20rate%20for,per%20100%2C000%20population%20in%202021.Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Shop with Racketon, and you'll get it. What's it? It's the best deal, the highest cash back, the most savings on your shopping. So join Racketon and start getting cash back at Sephora, Uniglo, Expedia, and other stores you love. You can even stack sales on top of cashback. Just start your shopping with Racketon to save money at over 750 stores. Join for free at racketon.ca. Or download the Racketon app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N, Racketon.ca.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Robert Johnson was a blues singer in the 1930s who was said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his talent. He died, inexplicably, at the age of 20, Right at the peak of his fame. No one has been able to confirm the cause of his death, so the rumor of his Luciferian trade lives on. Musicians are often accused of worshipping the devil by conspiracy theorists and moral purists alike. Whether it's true is usually left up to the listener. Today, though, we'll be discussing a group of musicians who admitted to their evil intentions from the moment they picked up a guitar, and the impact of their actions would be felt by the community for decades to come.

This is another when nerds attack. Join us now for part one of Cult, the crimes of the Norwegian black metal scene. Campers, I think this is the first episode, which we're going to give a blanket trigger warning for pretty much the entire thing. This story involves suicide, homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, and straight up Nazism. So take care of yourself and listen at your discretion.

All right. It's 1991. We're on a street corner in Oslo, Norway, standing in front of an unassuming store. The door is unlabeled, the windows painted black, so unless you know what you're looking for, you might assume it was vacant. However, a select few people knew that if you entered the shop,

you'd find yourself in hell. Well, specifically, a record shop called hell. Actually, it was called Helvetta, the Norwegian word for hell. There was a mannequin, dressed in a cloak, lurking near some shelves, and the walls were suffocated with black paint and religious artifacts, some of them stolen from local churches. Candlelight flickered against the decor and the albums, adding to the general miasma.

On any given day, you might find a few pale teenagers slouching around the place, looking artfully bored and evil while a leather-clad man with long dark hair held court. This was the owner of the shop, a guy called Uystein Orchut, known by most people as Euronymous. He swiped this little nom de plume from a demon from Greek mythology who was said to eat the flesh from corpses in the underworld. Fun. Our Euronymous, though, was mostly just concerned with keeping his flagging shop open, signing more black metal bands to his record label, and maybe grabbing a hamburger later. But by August of 1993,

Euronymous would be murdered, and the Norwegian black metal scene would be forever tied to violence and the destruction of over 50 churches. So how do we get here? Well, to explain that, we're going to have to discuss the history of black metal. I'm so sorry.

Now, when it comes to music, I don't think you can get any more controversial or broad than you will when you discuss the metal genre. For one thing, there are approximately 18 quadrillion different subgenres. Okay? I consulted Google to help me list just a few. We've got heavy metal, speed metal, thrash metal, power metal, death metal, slam death metal, black metal, true Norwegian black metal, depressive suicidal black metal. That one sounds like fun.

Atmospheric black metal, Viking metal, folk metal, symphonic metal, gothic metal, math metal, hair metal, kawai metal, I swear to God. pirate metal, new metal, and I'm just going to stop now because I'm pissing myself off at this point. Y'all get it, right? Now, you've probably heard of the heavy metal band Metallica or Slayer, which is a thrash metal band, or even Slipknot who fits into the groove metal genre. It's not exactly an underground music scene, but you've got very specific pockets of very specific sound, and God help you if you misclassify someone. Metalheads really don't like it.

If you want to see a metalhead's forehead veins pop, Call Slayer Hair Metal and see what happens. Now, listen, some of y'all are going to tune out a little on the music history lesson here, like, for example, me. And I don't blame you, okay? Just trust me when I tell you it's leading somewhere, specifically to arson and murder and possibly cannibalism. So hang in there with us, okay?

Now, according to the book Lords of Chaos, authors Michael Moynihan and Didrick Sotland, I really hope I said that right, estimate that Norwegian Black Metal originated with three bands, Britain's Venom, Denmark's Merciful Fate, and Sweden's Bathory. Venom's drummer, who goes by the stage name Abadon, said that when they were first starting out in 1979, the band was drawing inspiration from a bunch of different sources. We'd take some of the diabolical content of Black Sabbath, and we'd mix it with some of the stage presence of Kiss and with the originality of Deep Purple.

I listened to the band's 1981 LP, Welcome to Hell in preparation for this episode, and I have to say, That's a pretty accurate description. It's a little heavy, a little punky, kind of novel. Now, they mentioned diabolical content, by which, of course, they mean Satan stuff. But the Satanism of their lyrics was really more of a bit for their stage show rather than a sincerely held belief. They had lyrics like, prepare the altar now and hear the virgin cry. Hold fast the sacrifice for now it's time to die. which I'm sure had some poor British mothers clutching their pearls,

but in a 1985 interview, their frontman, Kronos, said, look, I don't preach Satanism, occultism, witchcraft, or anything. Rock and roll is basically entertainment, and that's as far as it goes. But this wasn't the case for everybody in the scene. Merciful fate, who emerged right around the same time as Venom, did consider themselves Satanists. Their lead singer Kim Bendix Peterson's read Anton LeVey, Satanic Bible and was immediately drawn in. He said, I read the book and I thought, hey, this is

the way I live my life. This is the way I feel inside. To be clear, Levean Satanism is mostly just very edgy atheism. They don't believe in the literal devil. They use Satan as a way to describe an adversary to the Christian church. So again, not literal devil worship for Mr. Diamond, just in opposition to Christianity. And we're watering this down a lot because if we did And we'd be doing this as like a 10-part series. I mean, but if you really do want to dig more into all that, like, Levean Satanism stuff, like, you certainly can. There's tons of resources out there. So, you know, go for it if that's how you want to spend your time.

Yeah. I mean, you all already know that I have done that. I have done that. So just know, you're in good company. Combining influences from the Satanic Bible, deep purple and black Sabbath, merciful fate quickly made a name for themselves. internationally in the early to mid-80s. Part of their immediate success was their stage presence. King Diamond wore black and white face paint and used a microphone stand attached to a cross made of two human leg bones.

Nerd. They're actually still active. King Diamond is still up there. That old man has got that face paint on to this day. Is he still easing the leg bone mic stand? Yeah. Oh, boy. Well, bless him.

It's good to know he's found himself. I know. Finally, we've got Bathory, named after the 18th century countess, Elizabeth Bathory, who has been accused of bathing in the blood of virgins in an effort to stave off aging. Which, by the way, has been called into question in recent years. So the story might not actually be true, but it does make a pretty sick name for a metal band. Yeah, honestly, it's pretty elite. Anyway, according to Moynihan, Bathry has actually never played a live show ever in their entire career,

which I'm actually not sure if that's true. The band themselves said they played some tiny shitty gigs before they got extremely famous, but by 1985 they stopped performing entirely. There are dudes lurking in forums all over the internet that claim to have an old VHS tape of the show, but when asked to put up or shut up, they choose the latter. Part of the problem was that there's only one consistent member, Thomas Forsberg, who uses the stage name Quarthon. Sounds like a transformer.

It sounds like quothon. Bath recalls themselves Viking metal, and almost all of their promotional material features them with long, blonde hair hanging down around their faces, wilding giant swords with no shirts. That's hot. Shut up. The music is probably the main link we have to black metal so far. It's very atmospheric, distorted, noisy. with growled vocals that are incomprehensible to anyone without liner notes handy. Many of the lyrics discuss, quote, black magic and Satanism funneled through a bit of

Scandinavian innocence and teenage melodrama, which made them come off even more extreme in the end. Whenever anybody asked if they really meant all the, you know, Satany stuff, Korthon, who had been all of 15 during the recording of their first album, says they did. But now, looking back as a grown-up, he thinks he was just being a rebellious teenager. I mean, he was interested in the darker, spookier sides of humanity like a lot of us are. I mean, look at us doing a true crime podcast. You know, we're nobody to talk. And he just used his music to express that.

Okay, still with us? Wake up. We're getting ready to get to the good stuff. All right. So, Norwegian black metal took the atmospheric sound of Bathory, the flamboyant, macabre stage presence of merciful fate, and the rebellious sensibilities of venom started all up in a cauldron with the satanic and magical imagery of all three. And yes, that's Magic with a K. Y'all heard it. Black metal also

sprinkles in some shrieking vocals in a raw, unpolished sound. Put it in the land of the midnight sun at around 27 degrees Fahrenheit and voila. You got yourself a black metal band. Is it more complicated than that? Sure, but if I let Katie ruminate on musical subgenres, this is going to be like a 12-part series and nobody's going to be happy with that, especially Katie. Yeah. I went a little crazy on this one. Well, more than I usually do. I'm having a visceral reaction to all Scandinavian accents at this point. Hey, I'm just grateful you were willing to listen to the stuff. To me, it just sounds like a bunch of chainsaws having a fight club. It was not my scene. I tried to do a little impression of one of the vocal stylings of one of these dudes to my husband earlier. And I really, I think I seriously hurt my throat. So I'll suffer for it tomorrow. It's just, ah. You're just screaming. You're just screaming. Anywho. So at the time that black metal was festering, Norway as a whole was a pretty conservative place. Foreign films were censored if they were deemed too salacious or violent. Horror films had to be imported and even then they could be censored or banned. Even Monty Python's Life of Brian got banned. In Sweden, the film was advertised as a film so funny, it's banned in Norway. Of course, when you outright say, censor stuff, you're usually just going to create more interest in it, you know, than if you just

allowed people to see it. And I can't help but wonder if that's what created the vacuum that allowed black metal to thrive. Especially when combined with the, I guess you'd call it naivete, that can only come from living in a very sheltered society with a really low crime rate. Norway's crime rate is about 0.5 murders for every 100,000 people. Whereas Minnesota, which is a US state of similar size is almost at two. Norway was safe, sheltered, and maybe just a little bit impressionable. According to Michael Moynihan in Lords of Chaos, quote, early black metal bands like Venom might not have been very serious about their image, but many young Norwegians may have been unable to realize this. So when Venom were tongue-in-cheek, Norwegian kids took them dead

seriously. I just love that because it reminds me the juggalo. It's like, no, no, we don't really want our fans to take a hatchet to their neighbors. Well, okay, but maybe you should specify that, guys, because, you know, some of your boys ain't getting the joke. Just try putting something in the line or nose and do not actually commit murder. Be good. Anyway, I mean, Violent Jay and Shaggy Tudope would never, but... Never. Some other fans ain't getting the joke. In Norway, the new black meddlers prided themselves on being as evil as possible. In various fanzines, bands would proclaim their intention. Spoken in imperious tones.

Reminds me of that douchebag we covered a while back who went by Dark Heart. Oh, God. Dark fart? Dark fart, yeah. In one interview, an up-and-coming guitarist said, Our purpose is to spread fear and evil. One member of the band, Abruptum, called himself It, as he was too evil, to have a human name. Nerd!

How people take this shit seriously? Like, that just makes me want to fall on the floor laughing. And you just see these teenage boys just eating it up. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Nurt. And another, a real creative type extolled the virtues of violence and told a reporter, just to walk down the street and kick a boy is stimulating. Okay.

Good to know. A boy. A boy. Just a boy. No. Like, what? Boy. It's so weird.

Later in that same article, the guy who we will learn. so-so-much-about claimed to support Stalin, Hitler, and other fascist dictators. Calm down there, Frederick Nietzsche. Gone were the days of corny but harmless Satanism, replaced instead by young men who seemed to sincerely believe that they needed to be the most evil, repugnant humans possible in order to gain respect from fans and other bands alike. The first Norwegian black metal band, by all accounts, was called Mayhem.

They were founded in 1984 by Uistian Orr Sert, known as Euronymous, on guitar, John Suburud, aka Necro Butcher on bass, vocalist maniac, or Sven Eric Christensen, and drummer Chettle Mannheim. Oh, what, no dark ominous stage name referencing something dark and or ominous? Nope, just Chettle. He was out, I guess he was out the day they were handing out nicknames. It's tragic, really. He was eventually replaced by a guy called Hellhammer.

Well, I can see why. I mean, you've got to have the name. I was going to say, I have to assume it has something to do with his... Your shit together, chettle. His lack of nickname. As far as I can tell, mayhem was also the first ban on the scene to slather on the corpse paint. This is another consistent theme throughout the black metal genre. Corpse paint is black and white face paint, initially used to convey the look of a rotting corpse,

but can now be used to just look evil or shocking. Back to the juggaloes again. copycats. Yeah. Juggalo's are like a parasite, you know? They just take little things from various, various, you know, musicians and cultures, and they just create, honestly, something beautiful, right? Like raccoons.

Like raccoons. Which we love. Oh, my God. Juggalo's are the raccoons of music? They are, absolutely. And we love raccoons, and we love juggalo. Yeah. We love you, jugglers.

You give us endless entertainment. Whoop, whoop. So. Okay, so we've got the corpse paint, from which the black meddlers themselves were most likely copying from King Diamond or Alice Cooper and Kiss and the Misfits. Before long, it became the signature look of black metal bands everywhere. Anyway, by 1988, Maniac had dipped and was replaced by an 18-year-old named Pair Ingva Olin, who was simply known as Dead. Dead certainly helped their extreme image. he was known for mutilating himself on stage to the point where he'd get sick from the blood loss.

He'd smash a bottle and gouge at his chest, making sure to splash the audience with his blood. Jesus, Jones on a popsicle stick. Why? Hepatitis. People, how many times do I have to say it? At least one more time. At least one more time. I guess, yeah.

Mayhem was also known for using pig's heads purchased from the local butcher to decorate their stage. At one show, an audience member actually took a bite out of the pig and made himself sick. Oh, sure, sure. You know, like you do. I mean, of course, I'm sure we just don't understand because we're not hardcore. Right. Or as black meddlers would say, cult. If you're not cult, you're not black metal.

It's spelled KVLT, by the way, all caps, to make it look more Scandinavian. It's a superlative, like punk, as in that's black metal as hell. It's spelled K-V-L-T because they are pretentious CV-N-T's. Worked that one out. Anyway, Dead is kind of a weird figure in the scene. He's probably the most notorious vocalist for Mayhem, and from what I gathered, most of his contemporaries liked him, which was weird in and of itself, because the entire black metal scene is made up of the cattiest fucks you've ever heard of. Like, it makes the fact that no one outright hated him a rarity. They're just like little middle school, middle school girls.

They're just so catty. He had kind of a quiet humor about him. He was also shy and kind of depressive, a bit of a downer, really, but described as, quote, nice. One friend, when asked about a fond memory, told Moynihan that dead hated cats and once chased one down with a knife wearing just his underwear. The cat escaped just fine, but the whole ordeal did look. a little bit like a Scooby-Doo chase scene. And when we say he was morbid, we mean it. Dead leaned into the edgy, offensive swagger prevalent amongst his brethren.

He told fans of his dream of performing in India and slaughtering a sacred cow on stage. God, that's awful. He wanted to use real human skulls in their sets. He wanted to set up a table saw on stage and mutilate himself in front of crowds. Dead, Hellhammer, and Euronymous all lived together. together in a rented house in Oslo, which really just sounds like a setup for a sitcom to me. You know, three metal dudes, all sharing a house, getting up to some comedic shenanigans together. Like, you know, their parents are coming for Thanksgiving and they have to pretend to be normies,

you know, hiding their corpse paint and increasingly absurd places until finally it all comes tumbling out of the linen closet and splatters all over somebody's dad. Right. Or Hellhammer accidentally scheduled two dates at the same time and Euronymous and Dead have to help him do his makeup and cover for him while he runs between both girls. Somebody ate a big bite out of somebody else's raw pig's head in the fridge, you know, just good, clean fun. There actually was a sitcom story. Dead apparently hated synth music, and one time Euronymous was up like super late playing

a synth album just over and over and over. So to finally get some sleep, Dead took his pillow and just went outside to sleep in the woods. Which worked for a while until Euronymous took a shotgun outside. started trying to hunt some birds, because why wouldn't you do that in the middle of the night? No, dead just could not escape this guy, just zany antics, left and right in that house. There definitely was a sort of, this shit cannot be real quality about life in that house. In what amounts to a horror thriller show, Euronymous was rumored to have a laboratory in the basement, I'm sure you had to pronounce it, laboratory, where he would brew up homemade explosives or fire bombs.

Now, this would never be confirmed for sure, but considering some of the stuff he got up to later, I would guess that there probably was a little bit of light arson happening at the house. But overall, all was peaceful at Mayhem Manor, at least until April 1991, when Euronymous came home one day to find the door locked. And for some reason, the guys only had one key between the three of them, so Euronimus had to find a window to climb through. Only one window was unlocked, the window to Dead's room. and when Euronymous clambered through, he nearly landed right on Dead's corpse.

Dead, wearing a white t-shirt with I-Heart Transylvania on it, had slit his wrists with a knife and then shot himself in the head with a shotgun. Eronomus looked at his dead friend and read the note he'd left, which said, Excuse all the blood. Maybe he paused for a moment, but then he turned right around to head to the store. He needed a camera, see, to take pictures of the body. and it was only after he'd finished his little photo shoot of what remained of his friend that he finally called the police. Yeah, we don't know either, y'all.

Remember what we said about these dudes and evil? It's not a joke for them. As for the photos, one of them would later be circulated as an album cover for Mayhem's album, The Dawn of the Black Hearts. Do not go looking for it if you're easily upset by gore. The picture is genuinely horrific. I came across it by accident and it's seared into my memory. I wish I could eternal sunshine it out of there. It's so bad I thought it was fate.

Yeah, that's how awful it is. Most of Dead's friends were unsurprised by his suicide. He spent most of his life obsessed with death ever since a year's experience in his youth. After Dead's, well, death, many rumors swirled about Euronimus's role in the tragedy. To be clear, Euronimus was unequivocally not involved before. for the fact. But afterwards, wow, he wasn't going to let the death go to waste. Now, we already said content warning on everything, right? This next part is gross. Hellhammer recalled a rumor, which we really, really, really hope wasn't true, but probably

was that Euronymous took some of Dead's brain and cooked it in a stew and ate it so he could claim himself to be a cannibal. Bro, okay. First of all, what is we're all? with you and second, you can say you're a cannibal anyway. There's no way to check. They don't hand out cannibal cards, dude. Oh my God. In another rumor, Euronymous took some of the shards of skull from the scene and distributed them like reliquaries to various friends and bandmates. Good Lord. Finally, Euronimus allegedly told some friends that he thought about sawing off dead's arm to display in the house, but thought maybe the coughs would be curious about what happened to it.

so he decided against it. Maybe, yeah. Maybe, perhaps. These are, of course, unsubstantiated rumors, mostly recalled by Hellhammer and, you know, come with a big blinking neon allegedly sign. Euronymous did like that people thought he'd murdered dead, though, and encouraged several people to continue the rumor.

He thought it made mayhem sound more evil. Yeah, bands involved in actual murder probably do come across as little extra evil. Good business. decision really, I guess. do, though, was politicized Dead's suicide to the point of satire. He spun the whole thing to make it about how Black Metal was the only true metal and how Dead took his life because of how lame metal had become. In a letter to a fan, he wrote, Dead killed himself because he lived only for

the true old black metal scene and lifestyle. It means black clothes, spikes, crosses, and so on. But today, there are only children in jogging suits and skateboards and hardcore moral ideals. They look as normal as possible. These stupid people must fear black metal, but instead they love shitty bands like Deaside, benediction, napalm, death, sepultura, and all that shit. We must take the scene to what it was in the past. I'm angry. But at the same time, I have to admit that it was interesting to examine a human brain in rigor mortis. Death to false black metal or death metal. Also, to the trendy hardcore people. This man actually wrote out Arr. He wrote out Arr.

Wow. Okay, so you think this man took his own life because he was mad at the posers? Yeah, that seems legit. Euronymous, for all of his faults, every single one of them, was incredibly talented at the Art of the Sale. He could sense that the fans of black metal were hungry for the most extreme music out there, along with a band, that encompassed all things repulsive or even nauseating to the average citizen. Nerds! Okay. So, in 1990s, so in 1990s, Eronomus opened up his record shop, Helvetta, and started his record label, which he dubbed Death Like Silence Productions. Eronomus wanted to make the shop Black Metal exclusive, but that didn't keep the lights on. So instead, he begrudgingly agreed to carry...

Ugh, death metal. He wrote, I'd rather be selling Judas Priest than Napalm Death, but at least now we can be specialized within death metal and make a shop where all the trend people will know that they will find all the trend music. This will help us earning money so that we can order more evil records for the evil people. I'm sorry, guys. This is just, oh, you, yoy. But no matter how much shitty music we have to sell, we'll make a black metal loke for the shop. Do you think they also sold new kids on

the block? I freaking hope so. I hope that on a daily basis, Uronomus had to deal with some 13-year-old kid with braces coming in and asking for the new kids on the block album. And he, like, hands are a torch, like, grudgingly, aisle four. Dear God. In designing his shop, Uronomus initially wanted to make the interior so dark that patrons would have to carry around torches to see their records, just what I was talking about, just said. He also wanted to decorate with polystyrene headstones because apparently he was going for that. razor-sharp Halloween Express aesthetic. For whatever

reason, the decor was mostly black metal posters on the wall, and whatever they could find that looked cool by candlelight. Now, this is around the time that Burzum slinks into the picture. Burzum is a one-man band founded by a specimen called Christian Varg Vekernus.

Vekernes is by all accounts, probably the most notorious and, in my opinion, definitely most annoying individual to come out of the black metal scene in Norway. Varg was born in 1973 in Bergen, Norway, to Helene Bohr, an employee at an oil company and an unnamed father who worked as a computer engineer. At six, Varg's family moved to Iraq, while his father worked for Saddam Hussein, building some kind of computer program. This was right around the time that Saddam had formally taken office in Iraq. This is, to Varg's own recollection, the first time he became aware of race.

The other students would receive corporal punishment, while Varg, who was the first time, the only white student would not. To his mind, that made him superior. There was also an incident in which he called a teacher that was berating him, a monkey. If there was a cue, Varg would get to go to the front of it. Instead of thinking, hmm, I'm the son of a foreign employee of this country's most powerful person. Maybe that means that they're treating me differently because of that. He thought, oh yes, everyone can see I'm better because of the color of my skin.

It's a pretty juvenile and imprecise logic, but if I had to pick two words to describe Varg, aside for shithead and racist, those would probably be it. His views still haven't matured much beyond this. And don't get me wrong, Varg isn't the only racist moron we're talking about. You couldn't swing a dead cat around the Norwegian black metal scene without hitting a white supremacist or a fascist. There's a picture of necro butcher in front of the Nazi flag in that Lords of Chaos book. Ew. Eronomus admired dictators of,

like Pol Pot. This whole group is a festering polyp of fuckery. So as Varg got older, his views got more and more extreme. As a child, an older neighbor made him play with the German half of his World War II toy soldiers, which he came to like, partially because of the aesthetic and partially because he enjoyed imagining killing American soldiers. What a cute little scamp he must have been. And then, as he got older, he got his hands on antique SS helmets and weaponry. He He said he joined the skinheads when he was a teenager. He said that the Nazi flag in his room made his father hysterical, but also that his dad was concerned with various ethnic groups moving into Norway, and his mom was worried he'd bring

home a black girl. Wow. Sounds like the perfect racist storm. Mm-hmm. Varg started playing the guitar at 14, and when he was 17, he joined a black metal band called Old Funeral? Um, that doesn't make sense. I know.

Was the funeral for someone who was old? Or like a funeral that happened a long time ago? Or maybe a funeral right that was old? You know, the world they never know. Varg looks back at his days an old funeral with disdain. These guys were just interested in eating. They didn't care about my sawed-off shotgun or my dynamite or any of those things. They were just interested in hamburgers and food.

They had absolutely no interest in the weapons that I liked. Is he for fucking real? He sounds like a middle schooler. All they wanted was to get food and no one listened to me about my weapons or my favorite white supremacists. By the way, he does not stop talking about how obsessed his buddies were with food. Like in another conversation with Michael Moynihan, he talked about how he got into the occult and Satanism. He started playing role-playing games with older friends and just like everyone's mom feared, It was a one-stop train ride straight to the occult bookstore.

Varg got his hands on all kinds of occult books, filled with magic and esoterica. He follows this anecdote up with, the music guys weren't interested in that stuff at all. They only cared about food. I feel like Barg would not enjoy hanging out with me because, first of all, I'm not a, you know, Nazi. But also, I never shut up about food. No, no. So just one of the many reasons why Varg and I wouldn't grow.

No, for the past, like, hour I've been thinking about when I'm going to have for dinner. Like, that's, you know. He finally left old funeral after a couple of years and founded his own band, which he initially titled Urukai, after the breed of orc from Lord of the Rings. Varg took a lot of his early imagery from Tolkien. Like, a lot, a lot. Burzum itself is a word from Tolkien's fictional language of Mordor, the evil kingdom ruled by Sauron. It means darkness and is one of the words written in black circles.

speech on the one ring. You know, like, in the darkness, bind them. In addition to that, Varg's stage dame for a long time was actually Count Grishnach. Grishnach is a captain for the orc forces. Yeah, he's the one that tries to kill Mary and Pippen, little hobbits, you know, but is killed by the warriors from Rohan. In the movie, he gets crushed by Treebeard for all the Lord of the Rings nerds out there. Mm-hmm, that's the one.

Also, Varg spelled it wrong. He added a sea. such a fake fan Fake geek boy Anyway Varg is a total fucking nerd boy who adores Tolkien but like in the most annoying possible way

For example when he talks about the books he can't seem to help trying to cram in a little anti-Semitism He goes We were drawn to Sauron in his lot But not the hobbits those stupid little dwarves I hate dwarves and elves The elves are fair but typically Jewish

arrogant saying we are the chosen ones, so I don't like them. Which, yikes. All the yikes on all the bikes. And how dare you? How dare you impugn the hobbits? Right? Uh-uh. I'm not standing for that. Oh, shit. Anyway. Today, Varg insists that his interest in Satanism was simply a method to bring his true beliefs, Norse paganism, to the unwashed masses. It wasn't until after his band Borsam took off that he started preaching about Odin. This is kind of his singular talent. He recalls events or his own actions differently, depending on the point he's trying to make at the moment, and tells the stories like even he believes them. His personal history is especially up to interpretation.

For example, he told Michael Moynihan that he was a skinhead when he was interviewed for Lords of Chaos in the 90s. Now, though, he says that there were no skinheads in Bergen. Okay, cool, dude. So Borsam put out their first album, self-titled, in 1992, on Uranus. Lemis's label. And every black metal dude that I've ever met will not shut the fuck up about it. It's allegedly the very best black metal out there. Reading music writers talk about it feels a little bit like they're in on some joke that you don't understand. Like everyone is like, don't tell her. Don't tell her. Don't tell her. The film, until the light takes us, which is a documentary about

the Norwegian black metal scene, seems to be so enamored with Varg that they feature a slideshow that one critic called, quote, fitting a schoolyard crush. Whatever Varg put in that album, metalheads seem unable to put it down, or shut up about it. I've heard it. I have also read Varg's insane Nazi opinions, and frankly, even if I thought it was a good album, that would be enough to turn me off. But no, it's all, okay, okay, I know he sucks, but it's a really sick album. I guess those people are entitled to their opinions, but I'd also like to push them all into lockers.

One by one, like sweaty dominoes. Also, metalheads, if I just said something that hurt your feelings, just know, from the bottom of my heart, I meant it. I swear to almighty God, shout, if we get death threats over this nerdy bullshit, I am coming for you. Okay, the opinions of the Katie are not necessarily those of those of. the Whitney. I don't give a shit about any of this stuff. You called it. You called it. You said it sounded like chainsaw fight club. I know, but that was literally the first time I ever even heard the damn stuff. Okay. All right. All right. Whatever. Send me the hate mail. It's fine.

Yeah. Winnie doesn't have to hear it. Give a shit. I'm sure. Ah, he's a great song. So Burzum's first album was an immediate success. And Varg and Euronymous kind of became besties for the rest of Varg would often travel the seven hours from Bergen to Oslo and would sleep in the basement of Helvetta and talk music and go to shows. The buzz around Helvita grew and grew and Euronymous became kind of a figurehead, holding cord over whoever was hanging around at the shop. His most trusted homies called themselves the Black Circle. One member was the drummer of a band called Emperor, Bored Aitune, who was known as Faust. He was introduced to Varg on one of these visits and was impressed by Vargs for last. lack of a better word, stick-to-itiveness.

He said, I liked him because he was able to do things. Geez, I can do things, too, dude. We can all do things. The downshot of that, though, was that, quote, if he did something that went well, then he wanted to do it ten times more that evening if it was possible. Yeah, I can't stand that. It's like, calm your tits.

Like, tomorrow's another day, right? Those real high-octane people, exhausting. Interestingly enough, Faust remembers that when he first met him, Varg was very specifically anti-Nazi and very much into devil worship, a claim that Vekronist denies. But like we said before, Varg has a, shall we say, unique way of recalling his life. By which I mean he's a liar, liar, unwashed black pants on fire. The Black Circle didn't really have a consistent membership. There was no organization.

It was kind of like whoever showed up on any given day would be part of it. The crimes started as petty, stealing a candelabroar. from the local church, vandalizing the house of a guy who threatened one of them, little things, mostly inconsequential, behavior that was to be expected from a group of angry, rebellious, disenfranchised young men. I believe that Varg and Euronimus friendship was probably the ignition point for much of what happened in Norway over the next few years. Euronymous had set himself up as a mythic figure, the spokesperson for the black metal scene,

and Varg was a charismatic leader with a rebellious streak. It's really no surprise when they started committing bigger crimes. Now, Norway is a majority Christian country, although not necessarily a dogmatic one. There's a saying there that goes, Norwegians will visit church on three occasions in their lives, and on two of them, they'll be carried in, referring to a baptism, a wedding, and a funeral. That said, Norwegian Christian churches are cultural centers and historical marvels. Some of them, called stave churches, are wooden structures that are over a thousand years old.

They're gorgeous architectural spectacles. I don't have the chops to describe them, but Michael Moynihan did a fine job. He wrote, sheathed and scaled reptilian wood shingles, stylized dragonheads often rear up from the upper gable points of the churches, adding to the foreboding effect. The external aura of the more elaborate staff churches conveys an impression of part wooden cathedral, part haunted house. That sounds awesome. Of the original structures across northern Europe, only 32 of the original structures across northern Europe, only 32 of them were still standing in the early 90s.

One of these was called the Fantoft Church. It was built in Bergen in the 12th century, and like most of its kind, married the old pagan traditions to the Christian iconography. It's surrounded by trees, so many that sometimes it's hard to see the Dragonhead Eves, and on Saturday, June 6th, 1992, allegedly around 6 a.m.,

somebody lit a match and burned the Fantofth Church to the ground. It didn't occur to authorities until much later that the crime had been committed in the sixth month, on the sixth day, and at 6 a.m. 666, the devil's number. Two months later, the spree would start in earnest when Revheim church burned. Then three weeks later, Holman-Cullen Chapel fell victim to an arsonist. Over the next several months, many more churches were set aflame, including Armia, Skul, Haakoto, Osana, and Sarpsborg.

I'm sorry if I butchered any of those pronunciations. The blaze at Sarpsborg was set on Christmas Day and resulted in the death of an unnamed firefighter. His death would be the first of many that the Norwegian black metal scene would be responsible for. And we'd love to tell you about all that, but y'all saw it coming, I'm sure. We've got to end it there for part one. But don't worry, because part two is where we really get rolling into some major insanity. So that was half of a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have part die for you next week.

But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Madison, Lacey with an E, Beth, Megan, Caroline, Alex, Gabriela, and Nicholas. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes even two, plus so much extra content. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker at $5, a rad enamel pin while supplies last at 10,

virtual events with Katie and me, and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you. So if you can, come join us at patreon.com slash true crime campfire. And for great TCC merch, visit the true crime campfire store at spreadshirt.com.