Black metal and churches burnings are headlines once again, making for one of the more unsettling aspects of 2019 thus far. February of this year witnessed the release of Lords of Chaos, a fictionalized account of the rise of the pioneering black metal band Mayhem. By April, a budding black metal musician by the name of Holden Matthews was arrested for setting fire to three historic black churches in the state of Louisiana. Of course, Louisiana has its own dark history of black churches being burned. But church burnings have very much became one of the founding myths of the black metal community.
This too traces back to Mayhem. The group had been founded in 1984. Throughout its initial run (until 1993), the driving force had been Øystein Aarseth, who went by the name of Euronymous. By the early 1990s, the band had generated much hype around itself despite having only issued a handful of demos, bootlegs, and one EP. Their proper debut album wouldn't even be issued until 1994, after the first incarnation of the band was defunct.
Despite this, band members were largely able to focus on the group full time without being burdened with holding down a job. Euronymous was even able to procure his own record store in 1991, Helvete (which means "hell" in Norwegian), which generated little to no income, but which served as a rallying point for the emerging Norwegian black metal scene. How exactly Mayhem was able to establish a reputation within the metal community and financially support themselves with so little output from the band (which rarely played live either) is one of the more curious aspects of their saga that has been little explored.
According to Dayal Patterson's Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, at least some of the funding for Helvete came from Euronymous' parents, of whom few details are available on. Presumably, they also helped financially support Euronymous during his time with Mayhem in addition to the record label he launched around the time of opening Helvete. Another future Mayhem member, Varg Vikernes (of which much more will be said below), also appears to have come from a well-to-do family. Lena Bore, Vikernes' mother, reportedly gave $20,000 to a neo-Nazi clique in 1997 to break Varg out of prison after he was convicted of murdering Euronymous.
But what of the other band members and hanger-ons? In Patterson's work, it is hinted that some supported themselves through various illicit acts, most notably selling drugs and firearms. But this may not have been the case in the early days. Many of the participants in the early scene are described as coming from solid middle class background, but even the middle class of the 1990s would have struggled to come up with $20,000. On the whole, one is left with the impression that there was some real money backing up the early scene, though naturally few researchers have explored this angle. (more...)
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| Dominique Venner |
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