Death Archives: Mayhem 1984-94 by Jørn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud
Mayhem are the most influential Black Metal band in the world, and obviously no strangers to controversy. Death Archives offer never before seen photographs and unique insight into one of music’s most extreme subcultures.
During the band’s ongoing career, now spanning thirty years, bass player and only surviving band member from the original line-up, Jørn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud, has collected enormous amounts of photographs, video diaries and memorabilia. In this unique documentary book, Stubberud shares the first groundbreaking years of Mayhem’s existence including their first photo-sessions in full corpse regalia; recording sessions, and exclusive stills from live video footage of their earliest gigs. In Necrobutcher’s Death Archives he shares rarely seen photos of the band before death of singer Pelle “Dead” Ohlin and murder of guitarist Øystein “Euronymous” Aarseth.
Once Mayhem established their unique sound, The Norwegian Black Metal scene grew ferociously and globally finding common ground in violent imagery, horror iconography, fierce anti-Christian views, which ultimately led to over fifty church fires, among them the iconic Fantoft Stavkirke in Bergen. The violent nature of the music also led to the brutal murder of Øystein “Euronymous” Aarseth in 1993 by Varg “Count Grishnak” Vikernes internationally known as Burzum.
Today, Norwegian Black Metal is one of the most distinct and controversial subcultures in the music world, its popularity spanning globally from China to Mexico. The book is not only a documentation of a band – it is also a story about Norway, and a unique Norwegian subculture where a deep fascination for authentic Nordic culture and nature is deeply immersed.
Death Archives: Mayhem 1984-94 by Jørn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud with Svein Strømmen & Christian Belgaux and an Afterword by Thurston Moore
Mayhem were the definitive black metal band, but a book by bassist Necrobutcher sheds some light on the ultimate darkness
“Mayhem’s story is the definitive black metal saga. It has a darkness which lies beyond most of our daily comprehensions, and a continuing influence and legacy that sees not only the genre, but also the fans, continue to be both fascinated and influenced by these true pioneers.”Lars Ulrich, Metallica
“For decades, I’ve witnessed all these hacks cashing in on my band Mayhem, my music, my image, my name, my pictures, telling my story in books and documentaries, in films and magazines. It would be fine, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s all fucked up with the wrong things. The journalists start calling me every fucking time one of these books come out like ‘What do you think of that?’ and I’m thinking I should just write a book myself and tell how it really was, to end all of this speculation and bullshit. I make music and I thought it would be easy, but it wasn’t. It took well over a year. It’s a lot of work, unbelievable.”Jørn ‘Necrobutcher’ Stubberud
It’s an extraordinary, devastating story. It’s a tale of suicide, its a tale of murder, it’s a tale of church burnings, and it’s a tale of a group of young men setting out (and succeeding) in changing the world of heavy metal forever.
Below, Ecstatic Peace Library publisher and Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore shines a light on Mayhem, the band whose tales came straight from Hell.
There are very few bands in the history of rock’n’roll that are undeniable as genuine innovators. Mayhem is one of them.
These young men connected in a place that would subsequently galvanize a global phenomenon of one of the most radical, polarizing sub-genres of not only music but a philosophical consideration of life in relation to nature, the conflicted existence of humanity and the all consuming power of inspirational energy.
Mayhem grasped the pathos and humor in the satanic fascination of England’s great metal trio Venom who released the classic Welcome To Hell LP in 1981 (followed a year later by the scene defining Black Metal LP) from whence Mayhem named themselves after the track Mayhem With Mercy in their merciless birth in 1984. Developing from a metal spewing crew covering underground metal tunes and raw originals and releasing the legendary Pure Fucking Armageddon demo cassette (1986) followed by the classic Deathcrush EP (1987) Mayhem struck up a providential place in metal history with the 1988 inclusion of Swedish vocalist Dead, who already gained notoriety as the singer in Swedish death metal miscreants Morbid.
Dead realized Mayhem was the band he needed to be in (and, as legend has it, sent a demo to Necrobutcher in a package containing a crucified mouse)! Alongside founding members bassist Necrobutcher and guitarist Euronymous and with new drummer Hellhammer (joining around the same time as Dead) Mayhem, by 1988, was completely and utterly notorious. Ironically this line up of Mayhem, so critical in the band’s fractured lineage, can only be heard on grey area releases with the most official LP Live in Leipzig (recorded 1990) being one of the best in all its guttural, yet searing, rawness.
Dead was the person who brought the theatrical statement of wearing corpse paint in performance, not as a reference to any Kiss/Alice Cooper trope, but to express the most intimate relationship of man and nature, the living corpse howling its bloodlust. Dead was the kid who felt death as his ultimate gesture and invocation of the expulsion of self. He was truly a child of darkness in a world teeming with strange light. He saw beauty inverted as a prism into nature’s fury and chaos but he also regarded its eloquent relationship with the cycle of birth, decay and mystery. When a young person writes within his last lines, “I belong in the woods and have always done so…I’m not a human, this is just a dream and soon I will awake” it is the voice of not only a soul in desire to bleed into the earth, to be in a place his consciousness craves, so disconnected and in depression to his human form, but that of a bedeviled poet at odds with the beatific philosophy of humanitarianism. To feel remorse for Dead, the boy brutally bullied in his youth, finding shards of salvation in the alien comradery and power in Death and Black Metal, is to deny the genuine truth of a remarkable individual’s short time on Earth. His was to come and express the reality and irreality of mortification through the expression of annihilating sound and passion.
In these pages we gain access into the days and nights of one of the wildest, seriously most frightening bands in the history of amplified sound. We can see an intoxicated feeling of raw power and emotion manifest as art bleeding into reality. Within the lexicon of remorse, pain, anger, disgust and turmoil a northern air of friendship, joy and enchantment comes into play. And… all hell breaks loose.
Here is a fan video with the message from Anders, the brother of Per Yngwe Ohlin (Dead) from Mayhem. I was planning to include the original Fb post here but it disappeared. The music for the video is a bit weird, I don’t know why it isn’t Mayhem or Morbid but some Tatu-like Russian music instead. Well, in the end the message is the most important anyway, you can always turn off the sound and play ‘Life Eternal’ like I am doing now.
Börje “Boss” Forsberg — owner of Black Mark Records and father of late BATHORY mainman Thomas “Quorthon” Forsberg — passed away in the early morning hours of Thursday, September 14. A post on the Black Mark Production web site reads: “After many years of serious illness, his big heart has given up.”
Börje’s death comes more than thirteen years after the passing of his son, who was found dead in his apartment in Stockholm, Sweden on June 7, 2004. The 39-year-old, widely considered to be one of black metal’s founding fathers, reportedly died of heart failure.
Although Quorthon’s blood relation with Boss was staunchily denied — for reasons that are unclear — throughout BATHORY’s lifespan, the musician’s real identity was confirmed after his tragically early death.
BATHORY’s career-spanning box set, “In Memory of Quorthon”, was released in June 2006 via Black Mark. The package contained three CDs, one DVD, a book and a poster.
In a 2010 interview that Börje “Boss” Forsberg gave to Sweden Rock Magazine, he spoke openly about his son, how BATHORY came to be and all the unreleased BATHORY material that was still in the vaults. The magazine also published the last photo taken of Quorthon. This was all done with the blessing of Quorthon’s family.
METAL GRAVEYARD 