A Blaze in the North American Sky

Note: This article serves as the introduction to
“A Brief Oral History of U.S. Black Metal”,
also in this issue.

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“Here we find the dream world of a teenager thinking he’s a demonic overlord, suffering from delusions of grandeur. He knows it’s just a dream, but he refuses to admit it’s not real. Maybe he’s been reading too much Tolkien or been playing too many role-playing games, but the thing is: He’s bored with the world of the grown-ups, with the harsh dullness of living in a more or less capitalist society. I think it is interesting that black metal exploded in Norway immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the final demise of the idea that fighting against the bourgeoisie and capitalist conservatives, including Christianity, could be defeated by revolutionary socialism. Now there is only one strategy: Burn the churches to inflict harm. It’s all part of an escape from reality… Old black metal has an aspect of aesthetic fanaticism that I find beautiful. Some of the best black metal ever is made by fifteen-year-old kids with a four-track sitting in their father’s basement making what they believe is the greatest music ever, because they’ve been brainwashed into thinking that.”

— Svein Egil Hatlevik, of Norwegian bands/projects Umoral, Fleurety,
Pronounced “Sex,” and Zweizz, in discussion with the author.

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A little over a year ago I went to the Norwegian city of Trondheim to attend a mostly indie rock, non–heavy metal festival so I could meet Snorre Ruch, a.k.a. Blackthorn, a black-metal musician likely best known for his connection to the murder of another black metaller, Øystein Aarseth, a.k.a. Euronymous, on August 10, 1993. While Ruch didn’t actively participate in the murder, he knew the general idea when he helped the killer, Kristian “Varg” Vikernes, drive east from Bergen to Aarseth’s apartment in Oslo.

As the story goes, Aarseth answered the door in his underwear, Vikernes confronted him, chased him through the hall and down a flight of stairs, and ultimately stabbed him a total of twenty-three times with a dull knife. The final deathblow was a wound through Aarseth’s forehead. When Vikernes removed the blade, Aarseth fell down another flight of stairs, in Varg’s words, “like a sack of potatoes.” Also according to Vikernes, Ruch was shocked when he came upon the carnage. As Ruch put it in an interview in the book Lords of Chaos: “When I stood outside Øystein’s door I heard noise inside and Øystein came out, with [Vikernes] on his heels, covered in blood, rushing down the stairway… I realized that this was going to hell. We had intended this to happen in the apartment,...