Neil Gray
Part I: The Cult Awakens
If the first wave of Black Metal was about discovering extremity, then the second wave was about weaponizing it. The early Norwegians didn’t just want to play faster or sound scarier — they wanted to live Black Metal. They wanted it to be a creed, a way of life, not a musical hobby. Where Venom had laughed and Bathory had burned with solitary madness, these Norwegians tried to turn the whole idea of a band into a cultural movement.
It’s easy to forget that, at its heart, the second wave was the project of a handful of alienated teenagers and twenty-somethings from a cold, oil-soaked, middle-class Scandinavian nation that was — by most global standards — rich, safe, and boring as fuck. Norway wasn’t Brazil under dictatorship, or Thatcher’s Britain, or Cold War Eastern Europe. It was clean, polite, Lutheran, and stable. But that was exactly what made it so ripe for Black Metal: the suffocating banality of safety.
The underground that exploded in Oslo wasn’t born from poverty or oppression, but from alienation, nihilism, and boredom. The kids hanging around Helvete didn’t just want to escape normal life — they wanted to set fire to it, literally.
Mayhem: Deathcrush and the Cult of the Extreme
In 1984, guitarist Øystein Aarseth (soon to be known as Euronymous) formed Mayhem in Langhus, a suburb outside Oslo, with drummer Kjetil Manheim and bassist Jørn Stubberud (Necrobutcher). They borrowed their name from Venom, and they borrowed their initial inspiration from Bathory, Hellhammer, Slayer — basically anyone who sounded like a chainsaw chewing through a church.
But even in these early years, Mayhem had something more: intent. They weren’t trying to get signed to a big label. They weren’t aiming for MTV. They wanted to disgust, alienate, and terrify. If you didn’t understand, that was the point.
Deathcrush (1987)
Their debut EP, Deathcrush, was chaotic and amateurish. The production was garbage, the playing was sloppy, but the intent was fucking undeniable. Songs like Necrolust and Chainsaw Gutsfuck weren’t just noise — they were a dare. The infamous pink cover (even though by accident), the ludicrous lyrics, the sheer abrasiveness… it was ugly, and it was meant to be.
Tape traders across Europe and the States latched onto it. Mayhem became cult before they had even released a full-length album. Euronymous saw to that. He wasn’t just a guitarist; he was a propagandist. He positioned Mayhem not as a band but as the spearhead of something bigger: Black Metal as a weapon.
Dead: The Ghost Who Walked
The missing piece arrived in 1988 with Per Yngve Ohlin, better known as Dead. If Euronymous gave Mayhem ideology, Dead gave them aesthetic. And his vision was far darker than anyone else’s.
Dead was obsessed with death — not in the cartoonish way Metal bands sang about demons and guts, but in a quiet, unsettling way. Friends described him as “not from this world.” He carried dead animals to smell before shows. He mutilated himself onstage. His corpse paint wasn’t meant to look cool — it was meant to make him look like a rotting cadaver.
Yes, Kiss and King Diamond wore paint, but Dead transformed it into something funeral, something terrifying. Corpse paint, as Black Metal would come to call it, started with him.
With Dead on vocals, Mayhem transformed from noisy teenagers into something terrifyingly unique. They sounded like hell, and they looked like the walking dead. The problem was, Dead’s inner torment wasn’t an act.
Euronymous: The Ideologue
If Dead embodied Black Metal visually, Euronymous embodied it philosophically. He declared that Black Metal was art, not entertainment. He said it must be uncompromising, elitist, hateful of trends, and devoted to darkness.
He loved control, and he loved shock value. Some of it he probably didn’t even believe himself, but he knew how to craft myth. He didn’t just want Mayhem to succeed — he wanted to build a cult.
In 1991, he opened Helvete (“Hell”), a record shop in Oslo. This was the breeding ground of the Norwegian scene. Burzum, Emperor, Darkthrone, Satyricon, Thorns — all passed through those doors. Helvete was plastered with skulls, weapons, and pentagrams, part shop and part temple. Euronymous would hold court in the basement, preaching Black Metal’s elitist gospel to anyone who’d listen.
This was where True Norwegian Black Metal began to solidify as more than a phrase. It became a standard of purity.
Suicide and Exploitation
On April 8, 1991, Dead killed himself in Mayhem’s shared house. He slit his wrists and throat before shooting himself in the head. It was brutal. It was tragic. And it became myth almost instantly.
Euronymous found the body. Instead of calling the police right away, he took photographs. Later, one of those photographs — a grotesque document of a friend’s death — appeared as the cover of a bootleg album. Stories circulated that he collected pieces of Dead’s skull, making necklaces out of them and sending them to trusted members of the Black.Circle. Whether all of this is true or embellished, the fact remains: Euronymous turned a human tragedy into a grotesque calling card.
Historical disclaimer: This book doesn’t glorify any of this. Dead was a young man struggling with depression and alienation. His suicide was not ‘trve kvlt,’ it was a fucking tragedy. The way it was exploited is part of Black Metal’s history, but it’s also one of its ugliest scars. We can tell the story without buying into the myth.
The aftermath nearly destroyed Mayhem. Necrobutcher quit in disgust. The band staggered forward, recruiting Hungarian vocalist Attila Csihar and bassist Varg Vikernes, but Mayhem was now less a band and more a powder keg waiting to explode.
De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
Mayhem’s long-gestating full-length, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, was finally recorded between 1992 and 1993, but wouldn’t see release until 1994 — after both Dead and Euronymous were dead themselves.
The record is cursed history carved into wax. Dead’s lyrics live on in Freezing Moon, sung by Attila with otherworldly dread. Varg plays bass. Hellhammer crushes the drums. Euronymous’ guitar riffs drip with cold finality.
It is the defining Black Metal record. It sounds like a mausoleum. It’s perfect and broken, a monument built on blood and betrayal.
Darkthrone: From Death to Black
While Mayhem built the myth, Darkthrone built the sound.
Formed in Kolbotn, Norway, in 1986, Darkthrone began as a Death Metal band. Their debut album, Soulside Journey (1991), is pure Scandinavian Death — technical, polished, heavy. But almost as soon as it was released, they rejected it.
Fenriz, Nocturno Culto, and Zephyrous turned their backs on Death Metal, disgusted by its growing popularity and trend-chasing. Inspired by Bathory, Mayhem, and Euronymous’ ideology, they reinvented themselves.
A Blaze in the Northern Sky (1992)
This was their revolution. It sounded nothing like Soulside Journey. Gone was the polish. In its place: cold, raw riffs, minimalist drumming, necro production. Euronymous loved it. The record label hated it. But Darkthrone forced it through.
This was the template fofoYrue Norwegian Black Metal. It was hateful, ugly, and proud of it.
The Unholy Trinity
Darkthrone followed it with two more pillars:
Under a Funeral Moon (1993) — a suffocating slab of necro ugliness.
Transilvanian Hunger (1994) — hypnotic, minimalist, infamous for the ‘Norsk Arisk Black Metal’ liner note controversy (later explained away as a label stunt, though the damage was done).
Together, these three records became the Unholy Trinity — the blueprint that every black metal band after would measure itself against.
Fenriz the Archivist
Fenriz wasn’t just a drummer or songwriter — he was a walking underground encyclopedia. His obsession with tape trading, his endless recommendations, his pure hatred for commercial compromise made Darkthrone the voice of the underground. They refused to play live, refused to evolve, refused to “sell out.”
Darkthrone became the band that stood for Black Metal itself. Where Mayhem represented chaos and tragedy, Darkthrone represented purity and survival.
The Scene Congeals
By 1992, the Norwegian scene had found its form:
Mayhem were myth incarnate.
Darkthrone had forged the sonic law.
Helvete was the temple.
Euronymous was the priest.
And yet, hanging around the basement of Helvete were figures who would soon eclipse them all — Varg Vikernes of Burzum, Samoth and Ihsahn of Emperor, Abbath of Immortal, Infernus of Gorgoroth, Satyr of Satyricon, Ivar and Grutle of Enslaved.
The cult was growing. But the more it grew, the more unstable it became.
The ideology hardened. The hatred sharpened. And soon, words would become action — in flames, in blood, and in prison cells.
Part II: Fire, Blood, and Shadow
By 1992, Black Metal in Norway wasn’t just a sound anymore — it was a subculture, a cult, and, to outsiders, a growing threat. Helvete’s basement gatherings had hardened into ideology. Mayhem and Darkthrone had set the sonic and mythic foundations. But the next wave of bands would spread the fire wider — both musically and, infamously, literally.
This is where Black Metal crossed a line. No longer confined to riffs and corpse paint, the scene began to bleed into real violence, arson, and murder. To some, it was proof of conviction. To others, it was nihilistic stupidity. Either way, it changed Black Metal forever.
Burzum: Beauty and Horror
No figure is more synonymous with Norwegian Black Metal’s contradictions than Varg Vikernes. Born Kristian Vikernes, later legally changing his name to Varg (“wolf”), he embodied the paradox at the heart of the scene: a visionary musician who also became its most infamous criminal.
The Music
In 1991, Varg launched Burzum as a solo project. His early demos circulated quickly through the underground, catching Euronymous’ attention. Soon, Burzum was part of the Deathlike Silence label roster.
Musically, Burzum was transformative. Where Darkthrone distilled Black Metal to necro minimalism, Burzum made it atmospheric, hypnotic, immersive. Long, repetitive riffs, ambient passages, and a sense of otherworldly melancholy set it apart.
Burzum (1992) was raw but hinted at his vision.
Det Som Engang Var (1993) expanded it with longer structures and haunting atmospheres.
Hvis Lyset Tar Oss (1994) and Filosofem (1996) perfected it: ambient, transcendent, and — despite everything — beautiful.
The fact remains: Burzum’s music was some of the most influential of the entire genre. Atmospheric Black Metal, Depressive Black Metal, even Post-Black — they all trace back to Varg’s cold, hypnotic soundscapes.
The Man
But here’s the line in the sand: Varg Vikernes the musician and Varg Vikernes the man are two very different things.
Historical disclaimer: I do not, in any way, endorse or excuse Varg’s actions or beliefs. His murder of Euronymous, his role in the church burnings, and his later far-right ideology are abhorrent. They are part of the history of Black Metal, but they are not Black Metal itself.
That distinction matters. His records influenced countless bands. His life choices, however, are another story.
Emperor: The Young Monarchs
While Burzum was crafting atmosphere, Emperor were crafting majesty.
Formed in 1991 by teenage prodigies Ihsahn (Vegard Tveitan) and Samoth (Tomas Haugen), Emperor were barely out of high school when they redefined what Black Metal could sound like.
Their 1993 self-titled EP was raw but ambitious, filled with keyboards and layered guitars that pushed Back Metal into the symphonic realm. While others stripped sound down to the bone, Emperor expanded it outward — castles, forests, and cosmic darkness rather than cold basements.
Their debut album, In the Nightside Eclipse (1994), became a landmark. Recorded when Ihsahn was only 18, it fused raw Black Metal ferocity with sweeping keyboards and epic atmosphere. Tracks like Into the Infinity of Thoughts and I Am the Black Wizards became hymns of Symphonic Black Metal.
But Emperor’s rise was tangled with the chaos of the scene. Samoth was jailed for arson. Drummer Faust murdered a man in Lillehammer. Emperor’s genius was inseparable from the darkness that surrounded them.
Immortal: The Blizzard Beasts
Not every Norwegian band embraced ideology. Immortal, formed by Abbath (Olve Eikemo) and Demonaz (Harald Nævdal), built their world on something different: ice, frost, and fantasy.
Instead of churches and Satan, Immortal sang of Blashyrkh, their invented frozen kingdom. Their early albums (Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism in 1992, Pure Holocaust in 1993) were fast, frostbitten, and relentless. Abbath’s croaking rasp, Demonaz’s tremolo riffs, and blistering speed gave Immortal their identity.
By 1995’s Battles in the North, they were cartoonishly extreme — corpse paint, spikes, leather, standing in the snow like frost-demons. Yet that theatricality became part of their charm.
Immortal proved Black Metal didn’t have to be about ideology or crime — it could be about creating its own mythology. Their influence endures because they built a world entirely their own.
Gorgoroth: Satanic Extremity
If Immortal were frost, Gorgoroth were fire. Founded by Infernus in 1992, Gorgoroth pursued a more explicitly Satanic direction than many of their peers.
Their early albums, Pentagram (1994) and Antichrist (1996), were raw, fast, and violent. Unlike Immortal’s fantasy or Emperor’s grandeur, Gorgoroth were direct: Satan, blasphemy, hatred.
Later, they’d become infamous for their stage shows (crucified sheep heads, blood, mock crucifixions), but in the Second Wave they were simply part of the rising storm — keeping Black Metal brutal and uncompromising.
Fire in the Night: The Church Burnings
The most infamous hallmark of the Norwegian scene was not an album, a demo, or a live show — it was fire. Between 1992 and 1996, Norway saw over fifty church arsons, with a dozen directly linked to Black Metal figures.
The most iconic was the burning of Fantoft Stave Church in June 1992, a centuries-old wooden structure outside Bergen. Reduced to ash in the middle of the night, its skeletal remains became a chilling symbol. Photographs of the ruins appeared everywhere, and one even adorned the cover of Burzum’s Aske EP (“Ashes”).
Others followed: Holmenkollen Chapel in Oslo, Skjold Church in Vindafjord, and a string of lesser-known but culturally important churches across Norway’s countryside. These weren’t just buildings — they were national landmarks, tied to Norway’s cultural identity.
For the arsonists — primarily Varg Vikernes but also other scene affiliates — the acts were framed as a declaration of war on Christianity. Norway’s thousand-year-old churches were symbols of the foreign religion that had crushed pagan traditions. To them, the flames were both protest and purification.
But that’s the myth they told. In truth, many of the burnings were about ego, rebellion, and proving “true dedication” to the Black Metal cult. Destroying churches got attention, and attention fed the legend. Euronymous, who thrived on provocation, openly encouraged the chaos.
The Norwegian press went into frenzy, reporting every burned chapel as evidence of a Satanic cult. To the public, Black Metal stopped being a weird musical subculture and became an existential threat. Parents feared it. Politicians condemned it. And for a brief, terrifying moment, teenagers in corpsepaint were the most feared figures in Norway.
Murder in Lillehammer: Faust Falls
If the church burnings shocked Norway, the murder committed by Bård “Faust” Eithun of Emperor in August 1992 revealed just how dark the scene’s undercurrent had become.
Late one night in Lillehammer, Faust was walking alone when he was approached by a man, Magne Andreassen, who allegedly propositioned him for sex. Faust followed him into the nearby Olympic park. Without warning, Faust stabbed him 37 times with a knife, leaving him to die in the forest.
The murder was not part of any Black Metal agenda. Faust would later claim he simply wanted to kill, that he felt a sudden urge to commit violence. The brutality of it — the number of wounds, the randomness — stunned Norway when it came to light.
For Emperor, the fallout was devastating. Faust was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison (he served 9). His crime hung over the band’s legacy like a shadow, forever entwined with their otherwise groundbreaking contributions to Black Metal.
In the mythology of the Second Wave, Faust’s murder is often spoken of in the same breath as Dead’s suicide, Euronymous’ killing, and the church burnings. Together, these events created the impression that Norwegian Black Metal was more a cult of death than a music scene.
But it’s important to strip back the myth: this was not romantic, not ideological, not “grim” or “true.” It was a senseless killing, a human being brutally murdered for no reason other than that someone else wanted to feel what it was like to take a life. That fact should never be lost beneath the legend.
Fire in Vindafjord: Samoth’s Arson
While Faust’s murder was dragging Emperor into infamy, another blow landed when Samoth (Tomas Thormodsæter Haugen) was arrested for his role in the church burnings.
In 1994, Samoth was convicted of arson for helping torch the historic Skjold Church in Vindafjord — one of the many medieval wooden chapels that went up in flames during those years. Unlike some of the more opportunistic vandals, Samoth was directly connected to the Black Circle, and his involvement showed that these weren’t just hangers-on setting fires for fun. Core members of the scene were taking part.
He was sentenced to 16 months in prison, which put Emperor’s momentum on ice just as they were becoming the most musically ambitious band in Norway. The arrest, combined with Faust’s murder case, nearly killed Emperor before they had properly begun.
The irony is that Samoth was no cartoon arsonist — he wasn’t spouting manifestos like Varg, nor trying to provoke the media like Euronymous. He was quieter, more focused on the music. But his actions tied him directly to the hysteria that made Black Metal infamous.
It’s a reminder that in early ’90s Norway, almost no one in the scene was untouched by the chaos. Even the most talented musicians were being pulled into crimes that had nothing to do with riffs or atmosphere. Emperor were supposed to be leading Black Metal forward musically — instead, half their lineup was in prison.
The Show Must Go On: Ihsahn, the Anchor
Amid the blood, fire, and prison sentences swirling around Emperor, one figure kept the band from imploding completely: Ihsahn (Vegard Sverre Tveitan).
While Faust was sitting in a courtroom for murder and Samoth was serving time for arson, Ihsahn carried on writing, composing, and envisioning Emperor as something bigger than just another Black Metal band. Barely out of his teens, he was already arranging complex symphonic layers and classical influences into the music.
When In the Nightside Eclipse finally arrived in 1994, it was Ihsahn’s fingerprints all over it — sweeping keyboards, epic song structures, and a sense of grandeur that set Emperor apart from every corpse-painted imitator. Where others were content to blast and shriek, Ihsahn wanted to build cathedrals of sound, even as his bandmates were burning down the real ones.
That tension — Ihsahn’s musical ambition versus the self-destructive chaos of the scene — defined Emperor. If Ihsahn hadn’t been stubbornly focused on the art, Emperor might have gone the way of so many other bands swallowed by the infamy of the early ’90s. Instead, they became one of the genre’s most respected and enduring forces.
Emperor weren’t safe — they were born in the same fire as everyone else. But Ihsahn’s drive meant that, somehow, they outgrew it.
Murder in Oslo: Euronymous Falls
The scene reached its bloody peak on August 10, 1993. Varg Vikernes stabbed Euronymous to death in his Oslo apartment.
The murder was the culmination of paranoia, rivalry, and ego. Varg claimed self-defense, that Euronymous had plotted to kill him. Others saw it as ambition: Varg removing a rival and seizing control of the scene. Whatever the truth, the outcome was clear — Euronymous, Black Metal’s self-declared ideologue, was dead at 25.
Varg was arrested soon after, convicted of murder and arson, and sentenced to 21 years in prison. The trial was a media circus. Suddenly, Black Metal wasn’t just an underground curiosity — it was the front page of every newspaper, the subject of every talk show, the Satanic threat of Norway.
Historical disclaimer: Let’s be crystal clear here: Euronymous’ murder was not heroic, not “trve kvlt,” not part of Black Metal’s supposed war. It was a crime. A young man lost his life, another threw his away. The media milked it for Satanic panic, but the reality was far more pathetic: egos, paranoia, and betrayal.
Author’s Note: History, Not Glorification
I’m not writing this book to glorify church burnings, murder, or the extremist ideologies that infected parts of the scene. They’re part of the history, yes — ugly, brutal, and inescapable — but that doesn’t mean they’re heroic or worth celebrating.
The church arsons destroyed pieces of Norway’s cultural heritage. Faust’s murder of Magne Andreassen was a senseless act of violence, nothing more, as was Varg’s killing of Euronymous. Also, Varg’s beliefs — his racism, his nationalism, his post-Black Metal nonsense — are poison. None of that deserves worship.
What does matter, and what I’m here to capture, is how these acts shaped Black Metal’s mythology, how they pushed the music from underground cult to global infamy. To ignore them would be dishonest. To glorify them would be disgusting.
This book is about Black Metal’s story — the riffs, the atmosphere, the madness, the contradictions. That means facing its ugliest corners without bullshit or rose-tinted corpsepaint.
Collapse and Legacy
By the mid-90s, the core of the Norwegian scene was in ruins:
Euronymous was dead.
Varg was in prison for murder.
Faust was in prison for murder.
Samoth was in prison for arson.
Necrobutcher had walked away.
And yet, musically, the movement had triumphed. Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, Darkthrone’s “Unholy Trinity,” Emperor’s In the Nightside Eclipse, Immortal’s Pure Holocaust, Burzum’s Hvis Lyset Tar Oss — all released between 1992 and 1994 — created a canon that remains untouchable.
Black Metal had burned hot, violent, and brief in Norway, but its influence spread worldwide. Sweden, Finland, Poland, France, the U.S. — all took up the torch, creating their own waves.
Norway had lit the fire, and the world was watching.
