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Jake Brennan (13:25)

More Disgraceland, be sure to listen every Thursday to our weekly After Party Bonus episode where we dig deeper into the stories we tell in our full weekly episodes. In these After Party Bonus episodes we dive into your voicemails and texts, emails and DMs and discuss your thoughts on the wild lives and behavior of the artists and entertainers that we're all obsessed with. So leave me a message at 617-906-6638 disgracelandpodmail.com orisgracelandpod on the socials and join the conversation every Thursday in our After Party Bonus episode. Limu Emu and Doug Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Ferry unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates Excludes Massachusetts Per Olin was from Sweden. He moved to Norway at the age of 19 to sing in the band Mayhem. He wasn't the band's original singer, but he was by far its most legendary. By all accounts, Olin was a kind and sensitive kid, albeit with a very dark side. Olin was obsessed with death. With dying. He claimed he'd wanted to die ever since he was three years old. His obsession with death and black metal led him to change his name to Dead and Dead, fully committed to the role in a way that would make most method actors feel inadequate to prepare for Mayhem gigs. Dead would bury his clothes in the Ground, so that when he eventually wore them on stage, they'd have the stench of the earth on them. Just as a corpse would before shows. He'd walk around inhaling the rotting stench of a dead bird he'd carried around with him in a bag because he wanted the smell of death in his nostrils. When he performed on stage, Dead would cut himself, dousing himself and bandmates and the audience with his blood. He wore all black and like most metal heads, he had a taste for denim, leather, studs, spikes. He painted his face white and blackened the area around his eyes to look more like a corpse. Not in a theatrical Alice Cooper or Kissway, but in a scary as All Hallows Eve way. With Dead fronting Mayhem, the band's reputation and influence grew and Norway's black metal scene grew wings. Its pilot was Mayhem's founding guitarist, Eystin Arseth. Arseth was by all accounts the charismatic leader of the Norwegian black metal scene. Before founding Mayhem, in Deathlike Silence Productions, the record label that released Mayhem's albums, Aerisith changed his name to Euronymous to complete his transformation from polite upper middle class Norwegian boy into full blown black metal God. Euronymous and Dead were joined at the hip. They were not only bandmates, they were also roommates. They listened to Motorhead and Bathory records, talked politics, dissed poser commercial metal bands like Death angel and Napalm Death, and plotted their band and their scenes rise to infamy. The hopes and dreams portion of their story, though it didn't last. Dead became withdrawn. He was likely clinically depressed, but this was a time, a place and a scene where such self awareness was not allowed. Some believe the Dead suffered from what is known as cauter delusion, a rare mental illness in which the affected person believes that they are dead, that they are actually a walking, putrefying corpse. This illness manifests after a life threatening trauma like the beating Dead took as a schoolboy, where he ended up in the hospital with a ruptured spleen. An experience that, it has been reported, left him clinically dead for a period of time. Whatever the reason, his obsession with death became all consuming. He got his hands on some snuff films on vhs. He watched them and then he watched them again and again and again. He sat alone in his room and he cut himself. He stopped eating in an effort to obtain starving wounds. He told friends he believed that his blood had frozen in his veins and that he was a non human and didn't belong on earth. That he died as a child and longed for the deep sleep he'd experienced for a brief period as a boy. On April 8, 1991, per Ohlin, aka Dead, singer of Mayhem, the world's preeminent black metal band, sat down on his sofa and began to write a note. Its first words said, excuse all the blood. When authorities found the note, Dead's blood was indeed in need of an excuse. It was everywhere. Dead had slit his wrists, then he slit his own throat, and somehow, after all of that, managed to fire off a shot from a shotgun directly into his forehead. Dead was dead at 22 years old. Hieronymus discovered Dead's body, and he assessed the situation with the cold dispassion of a grizzled homicide detective. And then he moved fast, not to call authorities or family, but instead he moved quickly out the door, down the street to purchase a camera. He hides it back to the apartment where Dead's exploded skull and bloodied body lie in the early stages of rigor mortis and began taking pictures. Hieronymous knew a good album cover when he saw one. He then began collecting bits of his friend's skull and brain. The shards from the skull would make for great necklaces and the bits of brain Hieronymous would later boil down into a stew and consumed so that he could claim the vaunted status of cannibal. Let's see those from Napalm Death eat some brains, posers. We'll be right back after this.

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Jake Brennan (21:10)

This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios New film Springsteen. Deliver Me from Nowhere starring Golden Globe winner Jeremy Allen White and Academy Award nominee Jeremy Strong. Scott Cooper, the director of the Academy Award winning movie Crazy Heart, brings you the story of the Most pivotal chapter in the life of an icon. Springsteen. Deliver Me from Nowhere, Only in theaters October 24th. Get your tickets now. Dead's grisly suicide would be immortalized on the COVID of Mayhem's 1995 live bootleg dawn of the Black Hearts. The photo is arresting. It's the type of thing you wish you could unsee, but you can't. The irony, of course, is that this is a live album with a real life picture of a Dead guy named Dead on the COVID The album's closing track is one of Mayhem's first compositions, Pure Fucking Armageddon. In Pure Fucking Armageddon was exactly what the black metal scene was about to unleash onto Norway. To be from Norway in the early 90s and to be truly in the black metal, it meant that you had to be truly evil. The type of evil that went way beyond the B grade horror movie lyrics from Black Sabbath. The type of evil that was much scarier than some long haired skateboarders in baggy shorts and painter's caps listening to anthrax and crushing cans of Meisterbrau on a school night. To be truly black metal meant you had to live for death. You praised Satan not because you really believed in Satan, but because it was so fucking subversive to believe in Satan. You declared war on society and all things moral, particularly Christianity. You listened to and made raw, primitive sounding heavy metal. You had no patience for poser metal bands who didn't take death and destruction seriously. The goal for Norwegian black metalheads was to be truly evil, to completely subvert democratic morality and to banish poser metal bands back to the punk rock ghettos they crawled out of. Euronymous, in the scene he lorded over, had a new charismatic personality. Varg Vikannis, AKA Count Grishnak, the one man engine behind the new exciting black metal band Burzum. Euronymous agreed to release Burzum's records on his Deathlike Silence Productions label. And Varg, through the strength of his Manson esque gaze and the excitement of his fresh new band, quickly ascended to an unofficial leadership role in the fast growing scene that now included a flock of new bands like Dark Throne, Immortal and Enslaved. Varg was committed to the cause as Euronymous and Dead before him. But Varg's commitment infused black metal Satanism with an even more toxic and racist ethnonationalism. Varg believed Christianity had purged Norway of its heritage by casting aside Norse tradition. He took this shit personally. Varg was out for revenge against Christians, Blacks Homosexuals, posers and basically anyone who wasn't a nihilistic blue eyed pagan. Metalhead Euronymous record shop Helvette, which in Norwegian translates to hell, served as a meeting place for himself, Varg and other scenesters, a group that would later be called the Black Circle. But it was outside a morbid angel show in Oslo where plans came together to bring Norway to its knees in fear. Shortly after, graves were found vandalized. The home of Christopher Johnson, frontman for so called poser death metal band Therion, had been set on fire. A note was stuck to his door with a knife. It read, the Count was here and he will come back. A homosexual man was killed randomly stabbed over 30 times and left to bleed out in the woods behind Olympic Park. And then the fire started. The first church to go was the Fantas Stave Church, one of Norway's historical treasures. It made national headlines. Next the Revheim Church, then the Hohmankollen Chapel in Ermoya Church. Satanic symbols started showing up around the sites of the burnings. Norwegians had no idea what was happening. The press covered the artisans breathlessly. And as the coverage expanded, more churches burned. The Black Metal rebellion was on. Norwegian black metal heads were literally carrying a torch for their scene. And black metal was no B grade horror flick. It was full on evil, real evil. A step further than any metal scene had gone before. Band leaders became heads of arson squads continuously trying to outdo one another. More churches burned. The Skold Church, the Haujeto Church, the Assane Church, the Sarpsburg Church. That one took the life of a firefighter. Over 30 churches had been set ablaze. The press blamed an until now unknown, unnamed, unimaginable clan of Satanists. There were after all, satanic symbols discovered at the burn Seeds. And who else would be desecrating graves? But authorities were slow to pounce on the Satanist theory. Some held out hope that all of the fires and the other assorted crimes were all just a big accidental coincidence. Bottom line, nobody had a clue who was behind the terror. Fear was rampant and there was no real boogeyman in sight. Not until January 1993 anyway. That's when Varg Viganist decided he had had enough with the rumors surrounding who was behind the church burnings. The press blindly milling about for a nameless group of Satanists was one thing, but back at Helveti, the Black Circle seemed to be giving Euronymous way too much credit for the church burnings. When Varg knew the real deal, it was he, Varg Vikernes Count Grishnakh, who spearheaded the arson effort. It was he who was putting the black metal scene onto the international map and onto the front page of Kerrang magazine. Varg had had enough. He decided to try to cheekily set the record straight by giving an interview to a daily newspaper. In it, he claimed he knew who burned the churches and who murdered the homosexual man in Lillehammer. It took local police about five minutes to identify Vargas. With his penchant for being photographed with torches, knives, chainmail and long hair. It was easy for them to mark him as a person of interest. And it wasn't long before they were onto the entire scene. And within no time, authorities had found a Burzum flyer promoting the band's new album, aptly titled Ashes. On it there was an image depicting the burning of Van Tuff Stave church. The flyer also had on it Varg's address. For all his high minded, Norse, Viking, neo racist, pseudo intellectual horseshit, the Count sure seemed like a fucking moron. The police showed up at the address on the flyer and found him holed up with enough explosives to blast them all to hell and back. He was taken into custody before he could use them to blow up a cathedral in celebration of Mayhem's next album release. Now that's how you throw a record release party. Remarkably, Varg was released for lack of evidence. He was now the BMOC of black metal. His ego grew. So did his animosity for his friend Hieronymus, whose dabbling in cannibalism notwithstanding, Varg believed Euronymous wasn't truly evil. He thought he was soft and believed he was a closet homosexual. Furthermore, Euronymous didn't share Varg's fascist leanings. Varg was a devoted follower of Stalin and of Hitler's ss. Euronymous, despite his black metal identity, was a socialist who collected government welfare and still took money from his parents to help get by. Further complicating their relationship, Euronymous owed Varg money for unpaid BURSM royalties. Then Varg heard a rumor that Euronymous was planning on killing him. Not just murdering him, but kidnapping him, torturing him, filming the torture, and then killing him on film. The circumstances around dead suicide, the rumors of Hieronymous cannibalism, the church burnings, grave desecrations, rumored death of a homosexual man at the hands of someone in the scene, and the harassment of other people, poser metal bands, all caused Mayhem's reputation to ring out worldwide. But a snuff film showing the torture and murder of one of the scene's biggest stars. That would truly be something. True evil. Let's see. Dave Mustang rub out James Hetfield on film. Megadeth. More like mega pussies. It all made sense to Varg. Euronymous was an insecure egomaniac who felt threatened by Varg's growing rep. And practically Euronymous owed him money. So murdering him was a handy way to erase a debt. Varg was enraged. He wasn't going to let a brown eyed socialist closet homosexual who owed him money get over on him. Euronymous had to be confronted, and fast. When Varg turned up at Euronymous apartment unannounced at three in the morning, it was under the guise of signing his Bursum record contract. This was something that Euronymous, despite the time of night, was very keen on making happen. Bursum was one of his record label's moneymakers. Without a signed contract, there were no royalties to collect. He buzzed Varg in to let him up to his fourth floor apartment. It would prove to be a crucial mistake. Varg wasn't there to sign any papers. He was there to find out what in the fuck was going on and to put an end to this beef one way or another. Euronymous opened the door in his underwear. And when Varg asked him about his plans to murder him, Euronymous attacked. Varg kicked him in the chest. Varg was stunned. He. He grabbed Euronymous and threw him to the floor. Euronymous quickly got to his feet and ran toward the kitchen. Varg assumed to grab a knife or some other sort of weapon. Maybe the shotgun the dead shot himself with. Varg knew Euronymous kept it handy. The count was not afraid. He was determined. He grabbed his own knife and took off after Euronymous, catching up to him before he could find a weapon. And Varg stabbed him. But Euronymous managed to keep moving back toward the door and out of the apartment. He broke down the hallway, screaming for help and ringing as many doorbells as he could along the way. Varg was hot on his trail, close enough to continue stabbing him all the way down the stairwell. Euonymous could do little, but he somehow stayed on his feet. His momentum kept hurtling him down the stairs. His adrenaline. Adrenaline kept the screams for help coming at a piercing volume. The horrific sounds kept the neighbors terrified and paralyzed in their apartments. And Varg's hate kept the stabbings coming. 22 of them, until Euronymous could run no more. His momentum slowed. He staggered to a wobbling standstill for a second or two before falling to his knees, bloodied and gasping for breath, he looked up to face his murderer. His one time friend and comrade in arms, Varg Viknis. Who then took his knife in both of his hands, raised it above his head and silently called upon the great Norse gods of thunder. And with the pure Viking rage that was his lineage, Varg brought the knife down straight into the skull of Euronymous. He died instantly. Varg was arrested nine days later. An informant gave authorities all they needed on Varg for the killing of Euronymous in the church burnings. Another member of the Seed Bard, Fost Ethian, drummer for the black metal band Emperor, admitted to the murder of the homosexual man in Lillehammer's Olympic park. He claimed he just wanted to see what killing a man felt like. He got eight years for killing a man in cold blood for no reason other than that the man was gay. Way to go Norway. Pure evil with little consequence. Varg pled innocent to all the charges and turned his trial into a sideshow that no doubt made Charlie Manson proud. Playing the role of Satanist neo fascist and pagan warlord. If the rebellious shoe fit, Varg wore it in the press. They ate it all up quickly, making Count Grishnak Norway's public enemy number one. Varg Vikennes was convicted for arson for three of the 30 plus church burnings, attempted arson of a fourth, possession of illegal explosives and the murder of Euronymous. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison, which unbelievably is the maximum penalty allowed in Norway for murder and arson. Amazing. Pure evil with little consequence. Again, way to go Norway. Norwegian black metal is bigger than ever. Second generation bands like Gorgoroth have taken the genre far beyond the cold, dark Norwegian forest to every corner of the world the horrors carried out by Dead Euronymous. Varg and others from the original black metal scene built a notorious reputation for the genre to attract new generations of followers with Mayhem. Still sells records and still sells out shows. Sure, it's with one original member. And yeah, their shows these days have more in common with the Vegas Review than the Dark of the Black Hearts bootleg. But my point is that despite or possibly because of the band's horrific acts, there was a large and active international audience for Norwegian black metal, a genre of music that was built on a foundation of murder, arson, cannibalism, and what can only be described as the most extreme form of musical rebellion to ever exist. Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com if you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgracelandpod.com Membership members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgraceandpod.com membership for details, rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at Disgraceland pod and on YouTube at YouTube. Com @gracelandpod Rocka Rolla He's a bad, bad man.