something interesting to read
i kinda nod while reading this
When writing any given feature it inevitably amounts to a game of text based 'Tetris', a desperate struggle to to fit in as much as possible without a hodge-podge screen filling. Not only have you got to strike a balance between your own words and those of the interviewee, but you've got to maintain a degree of coherency and narrative . In some cases this results in having to leave some of the 'best' bits out in order to keep a feature from just becoming the sort of loose and aimless Q&A where journalism goes to die.
The Burzum cover story of issue #194 was one such feature, and for obvious reasons was probably the most challenging I have ever done. As a result, there were a great many interesting things that Mr Vikernes had to say that I just couldn't include for the aforementioned reasons, and for the simple space constraints of print magazines. So below I present you with a few extracts and extras, some entirely fresh and some just the full transcript of quotes used in the feature, unabridged with just my original questions and the answers provided. Enjoy.
You have distanced yourself from 'black metal' many times over the years but with 'Belus' are making an unequivocal return to a genre with which you still show a great deal of disdain, at what point did you decide you wanted to revisit it? Despite what has happened to the genre since, given your contributions to its foundations, do you still view it as your genre?
"You must have misunderstood if you believe that I describe Belus as black metal. I make an unequivocal return to metal music, sure, but black metal is a term used to describe the parody of Norwegian black metal anno 1991, so I shun it like the Black Death, and would not belittle my work by using such a term to describe it.
"Black metal was a name given by Euronymous to the music of Darkthrone and Burzum, to describe our revolt against the trendy death metal scene in 1991, and he used it because he knew the term from a Venom album, a band he for some incomprehensible reason cared much for. The term quickly became popular, and after a while many bands used the term to describe their music – for all the wrong reasons, of course, and not knowing what it really was all about, but still. I don't care much for the term, at least not anymore. The copy-cat bands sort of stole it in 1992-1993, and they can have it and keep it for themselves for all I care. I flirted with the idea of making up some new name, like Elf Metal, Fantasy Metal, or something like that, to describe my own music, but I forgot all about it and now I don't really care. Uruk-Hai was a thrash metal band, so why not use that term for Burzum as well?
"What is black metal today anyway? My disdain is for the Norwegian copy-cat and informer bands from 1992-1993, and I really know very little about the rest of the black metal scene of today."
You seem to refer to black metal as a microcosmic genre limited to Norway in '91, but where do you see bands like Von or N.M.E in this context? You call the current blanket use of the term a parody but many of the legions of Satan worshippers (not that that is something you yourself subscribed to) that would come after believe that they were/are following the 'true' black metal, even to this day with the likes of Watain et al. What is the essence that they are missing? Could you not rightfully refer to your music now as black metal and simply dismiss the copycats, rather than abandon something whose very foundations you were part of? Or was it already too late by '92?
"When I refer to Black Metal I do normally refer to the microcosmos of Norway anno 1991, because that's the origin of the genre. The name was older, Euronymous had it from an old Venom album, but what we did had nothing to do with Venom. To my knowledge Venom was even at the time they released the 'Black Metal' album seen as a bad joke, and hardly anybody took them or their music serious, and to my knowledge nobody used the term Black Metal for any type of music. It was merely the name of a another worthless Venom album. So, Black Metal as the name of a genre was invented by Euronymous in 1991, to describe the music of Darkthrone (he had heard the promo), Burzum (he had heard the demo) and Mayhem.
"Black metal was not as much a music style or an image as it was a focus on being different from the rest. Von appeared in 1992, a year later, so Von were not a foundation, an origin of black metal, but being different, original and very good Von were a black Metal success. Von were tasty fruit of the Black Metal tree, but not one of the roots, so to speak. I have never even heard of N. M. E., so I cannot say anything about them. Nor have I ever heard of Watain, so I cannot talk about them either. Considering the fact that I have not even heard of them though, I feel safe to say that they mattered no whit to the beginning of black metal. Finally, I must say that I have never heard of any legions of Satan either, and when I did now it just made me laugh, 'cause that's just rediculous.
"The essence they are missing? Well, they use 'corpse paint' (I am now talking in general about black metal bands), but seem to have no idea what this was all about. They wear spikes and nails and seem to believe these are an important ingredient when playing black metal. They all look the same. They apparently all say the same (with the exception of the NSBM bands of course, who all say the same too, only they at least make some sense), and from what I have been told they all sound the same as well. In short; they appear to me and probably all else as well as a flock of followers, doing this or that only because someone else has done the same before them, and they believe or perhaps hope they become like this person because they do the same as him, look like him, sound like him. And so forth.
"This person is the original, the rest are poor copies. And when I say today's black metal is a 'parody' of black metal, that's excactly what it is, only that's not the intention of the bands, of course. Even Euronymous was horrified by the many 'parodies' who entered his shop in 1992 and especially in 1993, one looking more silly than the other, but tolerated them because he had a shop and needed customers, badly. Today these same parodies walk around, still looking like tasteless clowns sponsored by the local hardware shop, and talk about their 'friendship' with Euronymous, Gylve and others, as if there ever was any friendship between them, and how they were a part of the beginning of nlack metal. They were not. They were the end of black metal.
"The essence they are missing is integrity, creative originality, opinions of their own, at least some good taste for sure, leader mentality, strength of character, at least some wisdom, a well developed intelligence, courage to enter the wilderness, so to speak, where no man has gone before, and so forth. This is what black metal was all about, and you know I am right when you look at Gylve of Darkthrone, the most important character of black metal. He is the quintessence of black metal, with all the qualities mentioned above and with all his other 'peculiarities'. Gylve in person is himself true black metal, as it was supposed to be!
Sure, I could have used the term for 'Belus'/Burzum if I wanted to, but I really don't want to. I simply don't want to be associated with this genre, because it is but a parody of something that used to mean something; black metal as it was supposed to be. And I can dismiss the copy cat bands regardless...
"Besides, Burzum is Burzum no matter what genre I place my music in. I never cared much for the term Black Metal anyway. Black was never my colour..."
What was the origin/meaning behind the use of corpse paint? Were the gauntlets/spikes/chains/weapons etc linked to the same idea or purely aesthetic?
"The common thing to do is to follow the corpse paint thread back to Kiss and further all the way to Alice Cooper, and to most bands this is probably the correct thread to follow. When used the way it is commonly used, today and indeed before, I guess it's quite obvious as well, that Alice Cooper was the original.
"When you look at it from a different, non-metal perspective though, you need to follow a completely different thread, and you need to follow it through the mist of time all the way back to Antiquity. Throughout Europe, in all the European cultures, it was custom to see the world as being one world for all beings; for man, for spirits and later for deities too. These different beings existed in the same world, the same realm, alongside each other. However, only the initiates could see the spirits and later the deities, and in order to do so they needed to put on a mask. We know this best from the Greek theatre, where all the actors wore masks to impersonate the deities, and to see them, but we also know this well from the older traditions; from sorcery. On certain festivals the sorceror hung his clothes in the holy tree, so that it looked as if he had hanged himself. He then covered his entire naked body and face with ash from a sacred fire, to look like an elf (meaning 'white', originally being a name for the spirits of the dead). When he did he was able to see them as well, and thus communicate and interact with them in all sorts of ways. The ash was the mask. The ash was the 'corpse paint'. There is much more to say about this, and of course I do in my book, Sorcery and Religion in Ancient Scandinavia, but this will do to explain the original use of 'corpse paint'.
"The modern use of corpse paint in what is known as black metal is, from my perspective, originally meant to enable us to (in a romantic way) be able to better connect to our forebears, to be able to see a world long gone. Only the elves (with the original meaning of the word) are left of this long lost world, and we can connect to them mentally by putting on masks, like the sorcerors once did.
"I have no right to tell anyone how this mask is supposed to look, or to tell anyone how to do this, but... I feel a need to point out that this is the original meaning of trying to look like a dead person.
"For all I know Alice Cooper had this in mind too, when he started using a mask, but I don't think so. It takes a lot of knowledge about our culture to know this.
"The face paint we see in modern black metal is perhaps nice as some sort of war paint, to scare the crap out of old women and little sensitive girls, but it is not corpse paint.
"The primitive arms and armour could be related to the original use of corpse paint, because it too is an escape from reality, but I really don't see what spikes and bullet belts have to do with any of this. Especially not when combined with axes and such. Really; bullet belts with blanks and no guns is just ridiculous."
Have you been yet been consulted with regards to the 'Lords Of Chaos' movie or been informed about it in any official capacity, is it still hiding under the protection of being 'based on true events'? Have you taken any steps legally or have you just ceased to concern yourself with another depiction of a Varg you don't see yourself as?
"A guy from another film company told me about this project in 2005 or 2006, but I have never heard anything from the producers, although I have written two letters to them telling them they have no right to use my name or story. Oh, and I wrote to them when I first heard about this and then one more time a few years later.
"My guess is that this movie will never see the light of day. The main actor and the only reason normal human beings might have had to see this film, Jackson Rathbone, is out, and their script is widely known as being nonsense from a to z. Anyone involved in this production must know that they are going to be ridiculed and attacked for so openly trying to falsify (this tiny bit of) history. Further, all potential investors must know that Euronymous' family might sue (his father is a solicitor)."
buti hindi nagsapakan si mustaine at hetfield dito 
love the sounds..head bang! 
