Interview with Dead, 1988 from Slayer Mag #6

DEAD, DO YOU ALWAYS WEAR YOUR CORPSEPAINT?

I wear my corpsepaint when I should really concentrate and live into my lyrics and that is on
stage!

I THINK YOUR VOICE SOUNDS LIKE A POSSESSED, SLAUGHTERED GOAT! IS THIS

MAYBE BECAUSE YOU HAVE FUCKED SO MANY GOATS?
Maybe my vocals has something to do with my dark subconscious, but goats without AIDs is ok.

IT SEEMS LIKE YOU ARE INTO THE DARK SIDE OF LIFE, MAYBE YOU CAN TELL US
ABOUT SOME BLASPHEMOUS RITES YOU HAVE DONE?
Dead: I had never been into Christianity.
Pedophile: I pissed in an altar for baptizing just five minutes before the ritual of baptizing.
Dr. Schitz: I hate Christians ‘cuz they’re fanatics and don’t respect others. They are too fuckin’
good and nice.

DO YOU THINK HANDICAPPED HAVE A RIGHT TO LIVE A NORMAL LIFE?

Only one comment:Ride the lightning!

DO YOU LIKE SVENSK SURSTRØMMING?

There are limits for how stupid questions we answer. I think it smells like Olof Palme does now...

TELL US ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH THE UNKNOWN...

I hope I can’t see, I hope I can’t hear. But if I can I must tell you that I had horrible things to do
with.

HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT OF MAKING A TRACK WITH SWEDISH LYRICS?

No we leave that to Mefisto!

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF RACISTS?

To be a racist or not is too political for us. We don’t care at all!

IS IT TRUE IT IS LESS COCO NUTS IN SWEDEN AFTER OLOF PALME DIED?

The only thing I know is that Olof Palme is dead...But what is coco nuts?

DO YOU THINK MORBID WILL PLAY DEATH METAL IN SAY, TEN YEARS?
We already played for ten years...Hahaha! (Puke). No, serious (again). We shall never stop to
play as we do now. More technical maybe and never change the image because we do what we
really want to do. And we hope to never grow up. Maybe we are a different band. I wanted to
start the really black metal band who believed in what we got into. I know it was a lot of black
metal bands before they got famous. There is so many fucking bands who have done the first
record very evil and on the second one they pose out and say: 'Well we have grown up now...'
No names. The reason is money and they have never been into Satan, just their early image.
Maybe black metal is out and they can’t get any money from that anymore but they have to get
new fans. And I must tell you the stuff we get into will we never pose out from. And I hate those
bands trying to be between good and evil sides and tries to get an occult image. They really
don’t believe in anything, they just want an image. And there is also bands who really believe in
those things the image told, but they really can’t play (and that is too bad very too bad I think). If
a band can play and have very dark image it is something new.

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE MEMBERS OF ONE OF SWEDEN’S BEST BLACK/DEATH

BANDS?
We thought we were playing metal, but it feels nice anyway...

DO YOU THINK MORBID WILL PRODUCE HIGH QUALITY DEATH METAL IN THE
FUTURE?
Of course we will progress, and when we speak of progression we mean that we keep the same
speed, but we will get more technical. Not like Destruction who excuses their slow down on the
Mad Butcher 12" as progress.

CAN YOU PLEASE TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR RELATIONSHIP TOWARDS THE
DARK SIDE, SATANISM, ETC. HOW SERIOUS DO YOU TAKE IT?
Now I have to tell you some history. My mum told me when I was a baby I slept so intensive so I
turned white! So she had to check me all the time if I were still alive! This is serious! That is true!
Maybe the whole thing started there? And maybe it started before that? My great great
grandmother was a sorcerer but only white magic. I have never been into fuckin’ white magic! I
have always hated the Christianity and all faiths who had anything to do with God, but especially
the Christianity. And I have always been insanely into horror! And when I discovered Satanism I
have been insanely interested in that. Seriously I want to get into a cult because it is difficult to
understand something from a book with a lot of scripts in Sumerian, Hebrew, etc. And of course
it is difficult English. And it is very dangerous to do something wrong...And to really a lot of dark
things and to the magic right. So I need a cult. But that’s another thing. All cults is different. But I
must tell you, no one of us is normal.

ANYTHING FUCKED UP TO SAY AT LAST?

The sense of humans. The feed needs.

Interview with Dead, From Battery #5 1990

HAS ANYTHING BEEN RELEASED AFTER "DEATHCRUSH"? IF NOT, WHEN CAN WE
EXPECT SOME MORE STUFF FROM MAYHEM AND WHAT (LP/CD)?
Not really...well, we've recorded a few rehearsalsings (wich we never released). What we've
done is doing new material all the time and dropping them for better songs. We have very
diffirent ideas of how we shall sound like and it's hard for us to make songs that we are satisfied
with. These shall not sound like anything else and not be bounded to the moment of now. What
I mean with that is that we first have to forget of how all the other bands sound like and not to
bounded to any time to avoid trends and to find orginality. Yeah, it's now a really long time since
"Deathcrush" was released and we've got many requests of a new vinyl but it's hard to make
new material that doesn't become ordinary or usual after a year. However, in the latest time we
have released two songs for a compilation LP that will be released by Chicken Brain Records in
this summer. The songs are The Freezing Moon and Carnage. The Freezing Moon is a new one
while Carnage is from the first demo Pure Fucking Armageddon that we did the mistake to limit
only to 100 copies and it's not avaible now. But we thought the song Carnage was worth to be
picked up again. We haven't signed anything (of course) for CBR and we'll not get anything of
the profits for the selling records later. I don't think we'll let any other label give out something
with us in the future cause there's no reason to do that and we'll never sign any contract neither
sell our band to fat multi-labels that don't give a fuck about the music. Fat deals ain't no
investement as some believe, only a bad try to get rid of the job behind everything that's
neccery to do but not impossible to do by one self. We got idea of that we have to use the so
Darkened Black name De Mysteriis Dom. Sathanas for something a long time ago. That title
comes from a story of a book with that name, wich is Latin for "Lord Satan's secret files" and it's
thought to exist in only one copy and I won't give up searching for it...we had a finished lyric for
that song and the music to it was almost complete also. By then we had to drop all the new
songs we were onto making cause of a festival in Poland that was supposed to be then...if
fucked up and we later should pick up those songs, more or less finished, we'd forgot about
them but we have to use that song "De Mysteriis..." by all means...it'll be the most complicated
thing we ever have been involved in. That is also what the LP, that we hope will come out soon,
will be entitled.

TALKING ABOUT LIVE SHOWS, JUDGING BY WHAT YOU HAVE TOLD ME ABOUT YOUR
SHOW (IMPALED PIGHEADS AND SUCH STUFF), YOU SEEM TO HAVE A VERY BRUTAL
STAGEACTING. AREN'T YOU AFRAID THAT PERHAPS SOME MORON TAKES IT TOO
SERIOUSLY BEATS UP SOMEONE (OR HURTS HIM SERIOUSLY)?
There's always some fuckheads that do not understand what it's all about and cannot stand
others that are there for the music and the problem is at almost every concert not depending of
what band is playing I think. If someone's diving or something there's often some asshole who
cannot see what that is and then wanna start up a fight of that reason. Idiots that go to concerts
only to throw bottles and destroy for both the band the crowd shouldn't be there. We haven't had
many liveshows and that one we could have those "effects" there were many into Speedmetla
and glam-fag-rock and they left as soon as the pigheads begun to fly around in there...but
something I do hate indeed is mosh! I can't accept it exist children that think of themselves as
funny and noisy recording demos after demos after a couple of weeks after on more trendy
band has formed. A kid of 11 years or so has listened to CARCASS and the day after he finds
out he shall form a band along with pals from school. It's like that these bands got created and
they never care or know of, they only fuck with the scene by their hundreds of demos that are
teeming everywhere and it sounds all the same! I REFUSE to listen to that! And especially
never laugh to their fun- pix, fun-lyrics or fun-noise they make...to all those things that are
supposed to be childish and non- seriously funny, it's only themselves that manage to laugh but
no one else does! I think it was necesary to tell of that, too.

DO YOU USE ANY OTHER EFFECTS THAN PIGHEADS ON STAGE?

pigheads, as well as other heads, is what we try to have at all gigs. But also others are kind of
planned at the futureshos. It needs sick ideas and also money as well as it gotta suit to the
place we're playing at...for example if we use impaled pigheads in an Islamic country we'll surely
get killed then.Another thing is that what's the most dusgusting thing to do right here to fuck with
the wimps might not be the same effectful somewhere else and if we ever come to for example
India, the most evil thing that we can do there that I have in mind will be to sacrifice a "holy cow"
on stage. I wanna have stage equipment at our shows of Transsynvanian landscape,
instruments of torture that are from the 1th century real trees from a dead forest, spotlights that
are used to "paint" dark colos of dusk and later moonshine...diffirent animalheads and human
craniums hanging in meat hooks by chains from the dead trees and the heads have huge
screws in their eyes...that's what I think would make the perfect mood. But if we can build such
things by ourselves pay for the giant expenses it surely will be include and make it portable also,
I can't imagine if we will ever be able to make. But to tell of what else we as the show or effects
is when I cut myslef up. Something I study is how people react when my blood is steaming
everywhere but that's not why I do it. I like to cut, in others preferably, but ti's mostly in myself.
That I can't do too often wich makes me a bit mourning...the nearest thing is three gigs in
Sweden wich will probably be in the end of May and I think of if I can take a highly tuned kitchen
saw machine that's cutting and sawing faster that it's possible to control it...that would be a nice
thing to have there I think. Another band here, that's the one of the guy that'll set this whole
thing up by the way, will try to get a goat that they shall sacrifice on stage by a fireman's axe but
I just can't remember the band name. Another Blackmetal band that'll play there is Grotesque
(from gothenburg) + some other death metals. If it shall be "gore" that it gotta be REAL effects
and only snuff is real!

WILL YOU ALWAYS PLAY DEATH/BLACK METAL, OR CAN WE EXPECT A CHANGE OF

THE STYLE?
Maybe now we have learnded more of our instruments since the start...of the present time the
only we have to compare with of a new recording are the two tracks that'll be on the Swedish
compilation LP, I have no idea of what responses it'll be from it. But yes, we have changed a bit,
but nor more that what can be exspected after almost three years since last recording and two
new members. And it is a difference between the first P.F.A. deo (Pure Fucking Armageddon -
ed) and Deathcrush. I can't tell much more that my own thoughts of how a band shall sound.
That is to keep the sound and spirit that once existed in the time of what now is "old fashioned
Blackmetal" of VENOM and the earliest bands that came by then like SODOM, POISON
(German of course)!, BATHORY, DEATH and so on before they either vanished or wimped out
to get big bucks and groupies. What has happened after that is hard to ignore when one got
reminded by tolly unserious and senseless deos of noise with either vegetarian or anti-
everything lyrics or no lyrics at all - can they never realize they're all fuckheads and should
never form those fun-bands thateach such dude is in 30-50 crap bands with thousands of half-
second songs? But they can eat their fucking (polluted) salad believing that they do the scene a
bg favour while I stick with what I worship and that so many other seem to be indeed scared of -
Once there was something illful that ordinary wimps feared and never understtod. Something
none had heard anything like of ever before. There were less numbered bands and the scene
was new and not big but there was a friednship, so limited but strong. In leather and spikes.

DO YOU ONLY LISTEN TO DEATH/BLACK METAL, OR ALSO SOMETHING ELSE? IN

AMERICA IT SEEMS AS IF MANY PEOPLE LISTEN TO MANY DIFFERENT MUSIC
STYLES, NOT ONLY METAL. SO WHAT DO YOU THINK OF IT?
Each place seems to me having an own scene. And mostly it can be noticed if a band is
American by their sound. I've never been there, only heard lots of strange comments by friends
whi visited it. I I better keep these comments untold...Do you believe me when I say that I don't
listen to anything else that Death/black? To me that's what exists and nothing else. I listen to
what I find to be evil or black for the evil's sake. That's why I begun listen to it. Satanic sound of
pure evil illful brutally that I ouldn't get out of grey matter! I still like it that way and that's why I
continue having about the same ideas of it. In lyrichs I try to express various evil thoughts and
the same in for example drawings. That's one reason why I think effects on stage show is of
much importance.

YOUR VOICE REMINDS ME OF QUORTHON FROM BATHORY AND THAT LEADS ME TO

THE NEXT QUESTION. I READ THAT YOU AND QUORTHON AREN'T WHAT ONE COULD
CALL FRIENDS, SO COULD YOU TELL ME ABOUT WHAT'S UP WITH THAT OR DON'T
YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT?
Why is Quorthon talked of so often? (I don't mean by you but from so many...). I don't think he
invented Occultism or the deathway of singing. I an listen to the early stuff by BATHORY only.
Like the first LP and the compilation LP's, but later he lost all the abillity to crush and kill. I on't
think so many outside of Scandinavia have met him but I can tell you it's not worth the try. Some
dudes I know mre or less know that guy, but I've met him only once. He is one of the worst
motherfucking wimps I've had the misfortune to meet! Do you by the way know it's his DAD
who's "the boss" and he runs his record label and Quorthon goes nowhere without his
daddy..."Quorthon" has changed his name rea name now to Ace and he doesn't have the
slightest of any Occultism and especially not of the arts his lyrical stuffs ceontent! I just don't
understand WHO makes the lyrics...could it be the Boss? The only interest Quorthon has is to
fucking around on's rockclubs and the so-called Vvornth, the drummer, he picked up from a
GLAMROCK band!!! How strange how everything he says in interviews is changing completely
all the time...in the earliest days of BATHORY he explains how important it is with the darkness
in songs and he's writing of the satanic influences he has cos that's his greatest possession. He
also explained of a gig that fucked up in the earliest line-up of BATHORY before he became a
one-man band for two Lps - the reason why that gig wasn't possible to set up was cos of the
extreme stage-show they were suppossed to have then. Things for example sacrifice a
lamb...that's NOT how he talking now at all. He became for a while so totally against satanism,
black magic and so on to change AGAIN to "nothing is wrong with satanism, black art, the evil
etc. but what I hate is the satanists"...more amazing than ever I think! He's a fuckhead and he's
too much of a superstar and he can't talk to normal people cos he's far too fucking famous for
that! Haven't seen any likely case of wimpism before! WOE! And he dind't like the the sacrificed
quineapighead impaled on an upside-down cross with nailed eyes that I thought smelled so
nice...

AND NOW ON SOME QUOTES BY DEAD WHICH HE MADE IN NYAR'S PERSONAL

CORRESPONDENCE. READ THIS DUDES...
"What I prefer in movies is when they're underground produced (like Evil Dead I and Bad
Taste...) or the classical HORROR sort-not "gore" but ESPECIALLY snuff, thought I haven't
seen many snuff movies. It's hard to know what is snuff in those movies cos usually not the
whole movie is snuff...have you seen Cannibal Ferox (it's got about 20 other titles and it was
banned in 32 countries!), it's got 20 minutes of snuff in it. One of the most STUPID things I've
seen on TV, it was a movie review on a Swedish TV (a long time ago), and they talked about
how horrible and awful some movies can be to see and later they show the movies they
suggested everybody not to see, like for example Canniba Ferox... It's hard to imagine such
brainless dudes having something like that, but anyway the movie clips they showed there were
great, hehe. I like to research in how one reacts when watching real deaths, or preferably real
corpses (not on video but for real). A friend of mine who works in a morgue has told me that
those who use to work with preparing autopsies, after a long day's or night's work have to
"return to reality" before they just can walk out from there to go home or anywhere...the smell of
rotting bodies uses the affect really different on people really. I've heard that of when there are
new nurses to a hospital they got checked out in if they can stand the smell and the sight of
dead humans by calling them down to the morgue floor (but not yet in there) where it's always
that smell, even if it's not so strong, just can be noticed. And those who get pale and look like
they'll vomit at any minute are told to leave that, the others may be "qualified" for working in
there"

"There was one thing about cencorship that I liked, I was at a friends place, when he actually
should be in school (that dude was by the way the bassist in early MORBID and this was mroe
than 4 years ago), when some teacher from school rang him and told him they needed pupils to
watch some gory cenceored clips cos there was only one guy from that school and we joined
that thing, we were 3 guys and 10 girls...what was great was the really gory clips with the most
perverted and sadistic things. Sadistic murders, sadistic porno, kinky shit and lesbian stuff, the
chicks in there really looked funny..."

Interview with Dead, done by Evil from Marduk. It is from Slayer Mag 10
1994

HOW COME YOU LEFT MORBID AND MOVED TO NORWAY TO JOIN MAYHEM?
As everyone know...or should now is that Morbid never was a real band. However after the
"December Moon" demo the band kinda split up. I don't know the reason why, but we were all
very different and couldn't compromise on how Morbid should be or sound like. What's most
mysterious to me is how everybody could change so much. When I and John formed the band
the band was looking for some members for the band and asked them about the thought of
having a Black Metal band as Black Metal should be, but it never turned out that way. They all
seemed to be totally into the idea at first, but...well...I must say that I don't think the 2nd Morbid
demo is in the same vein as the first. But why the hell do I talk about Morbid in an interview
when the band never should have been featured? I talked to Euronymous on the phone and he
explained how his view of how the most brutal stage show would be and we discussed the
problem that everybody wants everything to be so normal, boring and wimpy. And we totally
agreed on that, I should come over and try out some rehearsals, to find out how I would fit in the
band. And I guess I do fit 'cos I've been singing here ever since. But the problems was that
short after I joined the band we were out of rehearsal places...

YOU HAVE SAID THAT THE "DEATHCRUSH" MLP WILL BE RELEASED AGAIN, WHAT
ABOUT IT?
We want to release it again, but we just don‘t know how the hell we can afford it. It was wrong to
limit it and now the copies are being sold for far too much money and that wasn't the idea at all.
Those who want it can't get it unless they are millionaires. We will never release anything limited
with Mayhem again.

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR NEW LP "DE MYSTERIIS DOM SATHANAS". WHEN WILL IT BE
OUT? ANY OLD MAYHEM SONGS ON IT?
Good question...I wish I knew when! It's planned to contain 8 tracks and to be released on
D.S.P. as anti Mosh 003. When the 2nd edition of the Merciless LP has sold out and paid, the
next band will go into studio (Imperator from Poland). When their 1st edition has paid we'll go
into a studio and record our LP. After the tour we have planned, if it doesn't fuck up, we will
have a session of concentrated work on the material that is missing for the LP. I can't say much
more about the release.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE A GIG WITH MAYHEM, WITH ALL YOUR EFFECTS?
We haven‘t had a real gig yet, 3 shows in Norway, but only one with parts of our stage show.
We had some impaled pig heads, and I cut my arms with a weird knife and a crushed coke
bottle. We meant to have a chainsaw, but the guy who owned it, had left when we came to go
get it. That wasn't brutal enough. Most of the people in there were wimps and I don‘t want them
to watch our gigs! Before we began to play there was a crowd of about 300 in there, but in the
second song "Necrolust" we began to throw around those pig heads. Only 50 were left, I liked
that! The non-evil wimps shall listen to our music. We had a great time throwing the heads on
each other. I got angry at some idiots who had their heads up in the air, so I wiped the blood on
my arms all over again, We wanna scare those shouldn't be at our concerts, and they will have
to escape through the emergency exit with parts of their body missing, so we can have
something to throw around. Some imagine for some weird reason that Death Metal is something
normal and available for everyone. Unfortunately they are right... If you have seen pictures of
bands like Defection, Benediction or Righteous Pigs etc. you know what I mean. If you go into
an ordinary school, you will surly see half of them wearing Morbid Angel, Autopsy and Entomed
shirts, and once again I will vomit! Death Black Metal is something all ordinary mortals should
fear, not make into a trend! Some years ago it did not exist at all. When Morbid had it's first gigs
almost no one had heard that kind of music before. Metallica or VNA... But hopefully those who
jumped on to Death Metal will leave it soon to the real people who have always listened to it. It
took some years or so till the trendy HC bands jumped over to Grind. It took shorter time till
Grind was out, and I hope it won't take long before they leave Death Metal to us who do not
choose music after fashion. That's one reason for having a stage show. The wimps will not ever
understand it, and I won't explain it to them either. But they got pissed off at our shows and that
is what we want. If someone doesn't like blood and rotten flesh thrown in their face they can
FUCK OFF, and that's exactly what they do. We are trying to turn the scene back to what it
once was, when no Death Metallers were wearing Adidas shit and looked totally normal. The
hassle is of course to bring stuff from the slaughterhouse to gigs abroad.

WHAT IS YOUR OPINION ON SATANISM AND OCCULTISM?

That's a great possession of mine! But to learn about Magic takes time. It‘s necessary to know a
lot about it before trying some curse on the neighbors or something like that. It needs a lot of
time. I don‘t have much time, especially right now. But I'm more into legends of Eastern Europe.
They are not known of here, but people still believe in them. Each castle has got it's own history
with a bloody past... that's what obsesses me most. The Balkan countries is where I want to
live.

DO YOU RELATE TO THE BANDS?

Yes, some...

WHAT ARE YOUR MAIN INFLUENCES?

I think we now have captured our own style, but from the start it was only Venom that existed.
That can be heard in the "Pure Fucking Armageddon" demo, the one I like the best. As for me
I'm influenced by the Carpathian castles and Porphyrians.

TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR LYRICS... WHAT DOES THE CONTENTS EXPLAIN?
So far, I've written the lyrics to all the songs after "Deathcrush", "Funeral Fog", "Freezing Moon",
"Buried by Time and Dust" and "Pagan Fears". Mostly they deal with how I feel when I wrote
them. It's hard to explain, and they are very different too. I can explain "Funeral Fog", it‘s about
a legendary place in the middle of the Carpathian horse shoe. A swampland called Shurlock
Basin which is surrounded by fearful superstition and the weirdest beings are thought to haunt
the place. That I thought about when I write that song and started to imagine a heavy fog lit up
by the full moon. This fog oozed up from that place. Drifting woefully in silence to extinguish the
lives of the local people. And bring their souls to Lord Satan. "Pagan Fears" is the newest song
made by us, and it‘s a bit strange. It reminds me of "Chainsaw Gutsfuck" but it is not as brutal.
Anyway, the lyrics talk of some people living in an ancient and barbaric society, (Fucking Hell
how I hate the word society, when it is used as a topic in lyrics, but of course I don't mention
that word in "Pagan Fears"!) and the idea, that the past isn't dying, but remains in some faded
reality, and that they'll not die out, but remain in the past which is actually not dying, to haunt
people in the future, put up in their minds. The time itself exists and is eternal, so is it vanishing?
They realize they remain forever. That was a strange idea I've walked around with till I had to
write it down. We don't have any concept in particular in the lyrics and not only I am writing
them. Before it was mainly Necro Butcher who wrote most of the stuff and he has explained to
me what it was like. He was almost asleep, then he suddenly thought of a song title. He had to
write it down quickly. And after some minutes it happened again and again. The day after he
tried to read what he had written down that night and he found out he couldn't read the
handwriting he had written in no light and the pen had been fucked up. But some lines were
readable and they became "Deathcrush". The most difficult one so far is the one that will be the
title track on "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas". The lyric is about an extraordinary Evil Coven that
are the book. But I must change a lot of the lyric that satisfied with the music so we dropped all
the music. Then I found out the lyrics weren't evil enough and it didn't describe the enormous
force enough. Anyway, we will involve ourselves very much in this particular song.
HOW IS THE NORWEGIAN DEATH BLACK METAL SCENE?
Scandinavia hasn't got any scene. Only wimps and trendies are here. Too many ordinary
people and fuckheads! Don't come to Scandinavia! I wanna move from here!

WHAT WOULD YOU THINK OF PEOPLE TALKING SHIT ABOUT YOU AND MAYHEM?
SAYING THAT YOU ARE POSERS BECAUSE YOU HAVE SUCH A GREAT LIVE SHOW!
I'm not interested in what they used to listen to or what they are trying to tell me. We do what we
like and that is enough for us.

WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE NEAR FUTURE?

That once and for all nothing will screw up and rip offs shall shut up so we can go away on our
first abroad tour, which has been delayed for more than two fucking years now. We were very
close many times, but in the last minute we found out that no gigs were planned. Now it's been
a while since I last cut myself (and others) so I need to do a live show. We really need to play
live soon. We also hope our delayed LP can be recorded soon. I hope that the scene will be
better and that people will realize that rip offs, trends and wimps are ruining it!

LAST WORDS...
What would that be?--Wipe your ass folks!

DO YOU THINK WE CAN EXPECT A NEW LP FROM YOU GUYS DURING 1991?
Euronymous: Yeah, we are now working hard on new tracks for the next LP, and at this
moment we need about 3 ½ more before we have the 9 tracks which are necessary. This time it
won’t be more delayed, if not something extreme happens, like if Hellhammer disappears again.
Dead cuts himself too much on a gig, or I lose my passport in Albania or something...

ABOUT YOUR LP, WILL IT BE CONCEPT DEALING WITH THIS BOOK "DE MYSTERIIS
DOM SATHANAS" ONLY?
Dead: No, it won’t be a concept LP. Only one song on it will have to do about the book. But to
explain a bit closer about that particular song would be weird ‘coz it wasn’t enough evil and it
didn’t fit. So we saved it to be the last book itself. I must find it before some wimpy mainstream
jerk will do that. I think I’ll have an expedition on my own around the world to find it. It’s so dark,
darker than death.

SINCE YOU (EURONYMOUS) HAVE A CERTAIN POLITICAL VIEW, WOULD YOU EVER TO
CONSIDER TO WRITE ABOUT THAT IN SOME LYRICS?
E: No, that will never happen. Even though I’m active in the most extreme communist party here
(Albania inspirations), I leave to the Punks to write about that in the lyrics. Nowadays tons of
bands are writing "social awareness" lyrics and they still dare to call it Death Metal. BULLSHIT! I
play in a Death Metal band, or maybe you should call it Black Metal, and the most important
thing then is Death! Bands who claim to play Death Metal and are not into Death itself, are
fakes, and can start to play punk instead. It’s a big trend today to look totally normal with these
goddamn jogging suits and sing about "important matters", and call it Death Metal. These
people can die, they have betrayed the scene. Death Metal is for brutal people who are capable
of killing, it’s not for idiotic children who want to have funny hobby after school. I’ll write more
about this later. I’ll just end up saying even if I’m personally very much into studying the great
works of Mao, Stalin and so on. I think the band is much more important, and Death and Black
Metal is my life.

FOR A LONG TIME THE BAND DIDN'T HAVE A REHEARSAL PLACE, WHAT DID YOU DO
DURING THIS TIME?
D: Good question...After that we couldn’t be at the old Vomit’s place anymore we had for a very
short time our own place (2 weeks or so) before they cut off the electricity and later on tore
down the whole place...by then Hellhammer had joined the band. What we did then was to find
somewhere to live (well, some things go before rehearsal place). We could stay for some month
mostly at each place and those have been at friends, half broken down houses, forests and
camping places, etc...But luckily it’s much better now, evil if we can’t stay here so much longer.
For really long time we were out of any place to rehearse at all and what we could do then for
the band was not much else than replying on the mail.
HOW MUCH MATERIAL HAVE YOU WRITTEN WHICH YOU HAVE THROWN AWAY? HOW
MANY SONGS DO YOU HAVE NOW?
E: Probably 50-75% of all the riffs I make will be thrown away sooner or later, because after
awhile it is not good enough. I don’t want to make any mainstream music, so each riff must be
something special, and then it takes very long time to make the music. We have five new songs
now ("Funeral Fog", "Buried By Time and Dust", "The Freezing Moon", "Pagan Fears" and one
new without any lyrics), but if you’re thinking about the total number of songs which we have
and will play live, it’s nine songs + this new one which we will not play live before some time.

AT CERTAIN TIMES IT SEEMS LIKE THE BAND IS LIVING ON THE EDGE OF

STARVATION. HOW LONG CAN YOU LIVE THE LIFE YOU DO?
E: It’s true that we’ve been through some hard times, generally we have very little food, but we
can eat at least some bread each day. And sometimes we just don’t have anything at all, and
must go out to steal food to survive. These periods fortunately don’t last more than a couple of
weeks. It’s very frustrating to live like this. It’s been like this for a couple of years now. I don’t
know how long we can keep it going. It better change soon, or we might get some line-up
problems again. I now hope the record label will help, in the last month I have been able to buy
some food because of the label, and that’s great. When we get some more records out, it will be
better, especially when the Mayhem LP comes.

EURONYMOUS, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE CURRENT SITUATION IN EASTERN

EUROPE? DO YOU THINK IT IS GOOD WHAT HAPPENS?
E: The question is a bit difficult, because there are two answers. All the revolutions you have
seen in E.E. are just as they could be taken from Marx/Lenin/Mao, and the party I’m in is totally
supporting it, because of the communism means total freedom, and that it should be the people
who decide things, not the government or the capitalists. But on the other hand, I’m personally
very fascinated by the countries like Albania, North Korea or Kampuchea, which have been
running a very hard line and which have closed for the rest of the world. I really regret that I
didn’t get the chance to go to Romania while it was like in the old days, but at the least I’ll be
going to Albania soon. Ok, I didn’t think Romania was a very good place for people to live on,
but there were other reasons for that then Ceausescu. You see, the main reasons for the
problems in the Eastern Europe have been their big foreign debt and a lot of corruption.
Romania owed lots of money to other countries, and Ceausescu decided to get rid of this debt
quickly. So he shipped everything the country produced away, and in a couple of years he
would actually have got rid of that foreign debt and Romania would have been very rich country.
He could of course have avoided building himself a palace to himself, but that’s the same the
big capitalists do over here, and they have also got rich by exploiting people. Ceausescu was a
very popular person before, also here in the West, and I still consider him as comrade.

WHY DO YOU THINK SO MANY BANDS ARE TRYING TO COPY NAPALM DEATH,
CARCASS, MORBID ANGEL OR DEATH? AREN'T PEOPLE CREATIVE ANYMORE?
E: No, creativity disappeared in the middle of the ‘80s. I think 95% of the bands today are
worthless shit. There are just a few who manage to capture the brutality and evil which the
ancient bands like Sodom, Destruction, Bathory, Possessed, Venom, Hellhammer/Celtic Frost
and so on had. It’s very important that the music is filled with dark moods and that the music
smells of destruction, but no bands manage to do that. But instead, they suddenly occur in the
scene and rip off another band like ND, which has made something original. Take bands like
Deicide. They play so incredible standard, their music is really ment for all the idiot children who
started to listen to Metallica after "Master of Puppets." The last Napalm Death LP is also a part
of this extremely boring mainstream which people dare to call Death Metal. I think Merciless
(Sweden) play much more brutal than most of the so called Death Metal bands do today.
Merciless really play music which feels like a jackhammer in the brain. I think the main problem
is that Death Metal is now commonly available and accepted. The underground is dead. In the
ancient days, it was extremely unpopular and extreme to play in a band like Mayhem. Most
people hated us, and each time a new LP came out, it was something so raw and evil that you
were freezing on your back, and you really got a kick from listening to it. Now Death Metal is
commercial, and bands like Cadaver have even played gigs for their parents. This is not good.
This does not help the underground. It’s killing it. Real Death Metal should be something normal
people are afraid of, not something mothers can listen to. Ask any 12 year old idiot on the street
which bands he or she listens to, and the answer will probably be Guns N Roses, Metallica,
Napalm Death and Morbid Angel. It’s all a big boring trend for idiots, and unfortunately all these
idiots always start to play in bands or make a zine. When bands like Master’s Hammer, Rotting
Christ or Merciless makes demos/records I’m happy because they bear the spirit from the
ancient days when Death Metal was something evil. And I refuse to have anything to do with all
the mainstream trendies in the scene today. If I had played in a band like Napalm Death I would
have been so angry that I would have split up the band immediately as a protest. Death Metal
should not be played on MTV or be on TOP 10, because that is killing the scene. If this ever
happens to Mayhem, if we become a trend band (which is very unlikely to happen), then I’ll stop
playing. That’s a promise. I don’t want to see Mayhem records in supermarkets in USA like you
can with ND and Morbid Angel.

YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T LIKE SO MUCH HARDCORE. DOES THAT INCLUDE THE
PEOPLE WHO PLAYS IT, OR IS IT THE MUSIC YOU DISLIKE ONLY?
D: I don’t listen to Hardcore. And I don’t like the people. I don’t hate Hardcore itself, but what it
later became when all those "attitude" which seemed to include Bermuda shorts, baseball caps,
and so fuckin’ on. I think it was trend and I hated it ‘til those vegetarians switched to make
something else fashionable instead. Which was the same such crap of course, but then I didn’t
hate Hardcore anymore...

NOW SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR LABEL. WHAT DO YOU LISTEN TO WHEN YOU DECIDE
TO SIGN A BAND?
E: I just have to like them a lot. If I like them, it means that they are not one of the mainstream
idiot bands, and that is enough for me. If the bands look like old Sarcofago/Hellhammer, it is the
best of course, but I give the bands total freedom concerning everything. I generally hate bands
who wear light clothes and jogging suits and shit like that, but even if a band looks totally boring,
I’ll sign them if they make really good music. Merciless…they don’t look exactly brutal, but I just
love their music so much. If I had to choose between signing them and Morbid Angel, I’d sign
Merciless without delaying a second. Also I love Satanic bands, but I don’t care if they sing
about eating carrots, if the music is great.

WHAT KIND OF DEALS DO YOU GIVE THE BANDS?

E: We pay all the recording and pressing costs, and when we split the profit 50/50 with the
band. That’s the only fair way of doing it.

DO YOU HAVE ANY WRITTEN CONTRACTS AND SO ON?

E: Yeah, we always have written contracts. There are two things which are good when we do it
that way: Both sides will know exactly what they can expect of the other, so no
misunderstandings can occur. In the contract it will be written how much they get, when they get
it and so on. It’s the best for the band. It will be written that we have total copyright and
ownership of all recorded material, cover and master tapes. This is of course not to prevent the
band using this material themselves, but if they get signed by some capitalist label some day,
the label will of course try to get the rights for themselves so they can suck more money out of
it. And it’s this which we will prevent. After we released the Merciless LP, Merciless were
contracted by Active Records (who have released Candlemas, Atheist etc), who wanted to buy
the rights. If they had done that, we wouldn’t have been able to sell anything at all, and we’d
lose tons of money and maybe we couldn’t have continued the label. Because we had the
contract, Active had to contact us instead, and we refused of course, even though they offered
us a lot of money. I think we should get about $30,000, but we told them to fuck off. On the
contract with Merciless we hadn’t thought about getting the rights for the cover, and this has
now resulted in that CBR (the label Merciless is signed to now) has made t-shirts with the cover,
and we can’t do anything about it. We always learn from the faults we do, and we’ll not repeat
that on the next record. So the contract is not for controlling the band, it’s for avoid being ripped
off by money hungry labels.

HOW MANY COPIES DO YOU RECKON TO SELL OF EACH RELEASE?

E: It’s a bit hard to say, because we have only released one record which has not been on the
marked for a very long time. I’m sure about selling somewhere between 4-6000 records, but I
hope for 10,000!
IN HOW MANY COUNTRIES DO YOU HAVE DISTRIBUTION?
E: So far we have been concentrating on Europe. We’ve sold quite a lot in France, Germany
and Greece, and Sweden of course. I’ve also sent some records to Japan. 60-70 I think, and a
few to Australia. But lately I have started to send some packages to South and Central America
as well, and will continue with that and expand into North America soon. I’ve contacts in about
55 countries now, but not all of them are possible to send records to the Eastern Europe, USSR,
and the poorest countries of Asia/South America, because the records are extremely expensive
for them, even if I give them the cheapest price possible. It’s realistic to think that I’ll be selling
records to about 45 countries, and more later.

YOU HAVE PRODUCED THE MORTEM EP "SLOW DEATH." IS THIS SOMETHING YOU
WILL DO AGAIN? PRODUCING, ETC...?
E: I don’t know. If someone wants me to help, I’ll of course help them as good as I can, but I’m
not a good producer as I haven’t been much in the studio myself. But there is one thing I’m
aware of which proffessional producers are not, and that is that it is not enough to give the band
clear and good sound. You must also put forward the identify of the band so they don’t sound
like all the other bands. This really lacks on all the new records today. Just listen to Morgoth,
Obituary and so on. All the producer has managed to do is to rip off Death and make a standard
sound. It’s important to get a totally special sound like the first albums of Sepultura, Bathory,
Destruction, Sodom, Possessed, Carcass, Sarcofago etc. had. It sounds much more brutal that
way. Listen to Sodom or Sepultura now. One thing is that their music stinks, but the sound is
weak and polished. I think it sounds shit.

ARE YOU STILL PLANNING TO RECORD YOUR LP IN FRANCE? WOULDN'T IT BE

EASIER AND CHEAPER TO RECORD IT IN SWEDEN OR NORWAY?
D: No, we won’t (record it in France). According to the delay of more than two years many plans
for recording as well as touring have screwed. When I had the idea of going to that studio in
France, it was ‘coz we’d heard they got some promotion from somewhere and it would be
almost free to record anything there. That was why. Now, we just hope we will make it with
"Kaellen," the dude who engineered for Cadaver, as the producer. It will probably be in Norway.

HAVE YOU BEEN IN CONTACT WITH OUR FRIEND MARCI LATELY?

E: This is very irritating, because we have just heard that he has moved to Chicago! How he
managed to do that is a mystery, but our revenge will hit him there as well. Unfortunately, the
poison we gave him wasn’t strong enough to kill him, but I won’t rest before he is dead. Coming
to America was his dream, and we hate that he probably is happy now. But we also know that
the poison caused him pain and that he suffers a lot from it, and in the end he’ll also probably
get cancer...if we don’t kill him before that. He’s going to die.

DEAD, DID YOU THINK OF MAYHEM BEFORE YOU JOINED? DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE
CHANGED THE MUSICAL AND LYRICAL DIRECTION OF MAYHEM?
D: When I heard "Pure Fucking Armageddon" it’s no bullshit that I thought it was the most brutal
I’ve heard, and I think it still is. You know that at that time Necro’s lyrics were Black Metal. It’s
not the same on "Deathcrush," and then it wasn’t only Necro who wrote the lyrics. The
"Deathcrush" lyrics aren’t bad at all but they are later what became gore or trendy. I’m now
writing what I think is Black Metal from my view. But I must say that I think my lyrics are different
from each other. So far I’ve been the one to write the new lyrics, except for some we dropped. I
hope this will change, but we have some problems to cooperate. Necro & me will do a better try
to work something out in the future. It must be black metal! I think everything has drifted away
from what it once was, or should be. After Venom’s "At War With Satan" the scene died and the
trends clone bands and mainstreams appeared instead. Everything comes from our Almighty
Venom so no one can say their influences come from something else. Even if they think they
are something original by wearing "normal" clothes and succeed in looking 100% boring. Wimps
shall die and only Venom was real. That was the scene! And that is what I try to pick up in lyrics,
what I think black metal was.

AS WE KNOW, DEATH METAL IS THE NEW TREND, BUT DO YOU THINK IT WILL FADE
AWAY LIKE CROSSOVER AND GRIND CORE ONCE DID?
E: All trends will sooner or later die, and I will welcome the death of the trendy "Death" Metal
people who are just fakes in my opinion. I think and hope that in one year, only the type people
will be left and the others have gone back to disco or whatever they listened to before they
"discovered" Morbid Angel. I’d like to see a scene where the music is something gruesome and
evil that normal people fear, and where the people in the scene all look like Hellhammer or old
Sarcofago, spikes and chains rule! The scene must also be out of reach for normal idiots,
because I think it only should be fore extreme people. If someone thinks this is stupid and that
the scene should be open-minded, have various attitudes etc, etc...then he is one of the
persons I don’t want to see our gigs. I don’t mind if most of the idiots in the scene hates me and
think I look stupid in corpsepaint, black clothes and spikes, because Mayhem is not for them.
My parents don’t like Mayhem, but I think this is how it should be. Just the same-it’s not the idea
that every idiot shall like us either. If all idiots in the scene, or if my parents liked us, then
something would be wrong. Sore throat and ENT are right-the scene is dead. I’d just like to save
the rest of it and create a new one with only brutal people. Everyone else-Fuck off. Our music is
just as much for you as for my parents.

DO YOU LIKE NORWEGIAN BANDS? DO YOU THINK THE NORWEGIAN BANDS ARE A
BIT MORE ORIGINAL?
E: I like Balvaz, Cadaver, Darkthrone and Immortal (Ex Amputation). Thy Abhorrent is also ok.
By the way, watch out for a possible LP of Immortal on DSP. If you want to listen to bands that
are really original, then listen to Rotting Christ! Their music is so Dark, so BRUTAL! ARGH!!

WHAT WILL BE THE ULTIMATE GOAL FOR MAYHEM? WHAT YOU THINK YOU WILL
MANAGE TO DO DURING YOUR CAREER?
E: I don’t know if we have any ultimate goal, for me it would be perhaps to play live in Albania,
North Korea, Laos, Vietnam or Kampuchea. But the other guys may have other ideas about this.
I’d also be happy if we could continue to release records without too much problems, and
manage to make a living out of that + the label without having to sell records to mainstream
people. This lowlife should not have any access to Death Metal.

FINALLY, DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE EX. MEMBERS OF MAYHEM ARE UP TO NOW?
E: Yeah, we have more or less contact with all of them, but some of them live their own lifes and
we see them only rarely. This especially goes for Manheim and Messiah. Manheim is married
with an idiot chick and is working in an insurrance company. He has become a totally normal
person. Messiah is only into Hardcore as far as I know, and he has some strange Hardcore
band (Within’ Range) I don’t even know where he lives now, but sooner or later he will turn up
again. Yesterday I got the new Impostor demo where he does the vocals, so he still lives. The
Vomit guys are playing in a band called Børre og Bløderne which is some kind of strange punk.
I haven’t seen them for quite some time either. But Maniac has been in regular contact with us,
he was here some weeks ago, he’s still the same old dude.