If you are a fan of Mayhem or you are a devotee of the entire genre of death metal, the 25th anniversary of the legendary band from Oslo is the perfect time to recall the most outrageous events from the life of the band and of course, the tragic death of its frontman.
Mayhem – working in Oslo
With the band moving out deep in the forest of Oslo, Mayhem began rehearsing, writing and preparing their materials for the De Mystriis Dom Sathanas album. The musicians who took part in the work on the album were Dead, Euronymous, Necrobutcher and Hellhammer. Their band had already started to get a lot of attention with their sound, image and horrifying acts performed on the stage during their music shows.
The death of Dead
Yet, there comes a turn in the tide when the current frontman of the band who was Dead at the moment, was found dead, no pun intended, in one of the houses owned by the band on April 8, 1991. Evidently, Euronymous found his soulless body laying with his slit wrist wide open and head blown off by a shotgun near him.
He left a footnote which was publicly available later on. The footnote started with “Excuse all the blood” and a very modest explanation of all the tragic event. The things the musician shared in his footnote claimed he believed his life had just been a dream and in the reality, he had not been a human. He believed his act of death would awake him. The words in the footnote also showed he did not expect others to understand him. The rest of the text ended up saying that Dead had not made such a decision at that moment and it had happened 17 years before the act. Dead also left the lyrics for the song Life Eternal attached at the end of the footnote.
Euronymous was very cool about this dramatic event. He went to the nearest store and bought a camera. When he came back he arranged the whole scene with Dead’s body in a presentable way and snapped a picture of him and the place. In one of the interview, Necrobutcher recalls how Euronymous called him over the phone and he was all pretty excited about it in a way which differs from typical grievance. Euronymous found the act committed by Dead as something very powerful. Needless to say, Necrobutcher thought the bandmate had lost his mind and probably wanted to exploit the incident for the band’s namesake.
The reasons behind the death
Euronymouse later went on claiming Dead had killed himself because the black metal scene had become all “Trendy” and mainstream to cater the band’s image.
As you can imagine, the theme of the performances of Mayhem gave a birth to a large number of rumour and legends about this mysterious event. Some fans of probably, haters of the band spread the story about Euronymous making a necklace out of the Dead’s fragment of skull as well as a stew with the Dead’s scattered brain. Certainly, the band later denied the latter as utter nonsense.
Still, in the interview given in 2018, Necorbutcher told Loudwire that he had been planning to kill Euronymous since his mistreating approach to Dead’s departure had disgusted him. Obviously, this gave some thoughts about the death of Euronymous which actually happened on the 10th of August, 1993. Yet, the truth was another shocker. Euronymous was murdered by another person who happened to be Varg Vikernes of Burzum.
The murder of Euronymus
Varg and Ruch were the later bandmates of Mayham playing bass and guitar. He drove 518 km from Bergen to the Euronymous apartment which was located in Oslo. after some confrontation with Euronymous, the victim was stabbed him to death. Varg claimed that Euronmyous had threatened him with tortures which would lead to death and making a video record of the entire brutal act. The pretext for such insidious behaviour would be an unsigned contract. He also claimed that Euronymous had planned to hand over the unsigned contract to him while Varg was struggling for air. Euronymous was found dead outside his apartment with around 23 fatal wounds. There were two serious bruises of the head, five wounds straight in the neck as well as sixteen on the back. Varg claimed that most of Euronymous back wound was from broken glass that he had fallen on during the struggle.
The arrest of Varg and Ruch
Varg Vikerness was arrested within few days and was locked for 21 years behind the bars while Ruch were to serve 8 years for complicity in murder. In the interview given on October 15, 2019, Necrobutcher admitted that he was planning to go down the road and kill Euronymous to avenge his bitterness that raised from him being replaced by Varg only to find out the murder had already been committed by Varg.
As you can see that this band has quite a history, with this they still remained actively grotesque with their new members.