Dead, do you always wear your corpsepaint?
I wear my corpsepaint when I should really concentrate and live into my lyrics and that is on stage!
I think your voice sounds like a possessed, slaughtered goat! Is this maybe because you have fucked so many goats?
Maybe my vocals has something to do with my dark subconcious, but goats without AIDZ is ok.
It seems like you are into the dark side of life, maybe you can tell us about some blasphemous rites you have done?
I had never been into christianity. I pissed in an altair for baptizing just five minutes before the ritual of baptizing. I hate christians cuz they’re fanatics and don’t respect others.
They are too fucking good and nice.
Do you think handicapped have a right to live a normal life?
Only one comment: RIDE THE LIGHTNING!
Do you like Svensk surstrømming?
There are limits for how stupid questions we answer, I think it smells like Olof Palme does now...
Tell us about your experience with the unknown...
I hope I can’t see, I hope I can’t hear. But if I can I must tell you that I had horrible things to do with.
Have you ever thought of making a track with Swedish lyrics?
No, we leave that to Mephisto!
What do you think of racists?
To be a racist or not is too political for us. We don’t care at all!
Is it true it is less coco nuts in Sweden after Olof Palme died?
The only thing I know is that Olof Palme is dead... But what is coco nuts?
Do you think MORBID will play death metal in say, ten years?
We already played for ten years...HAHAHA! (Puke). No, serious (again). We shall never stop to play as we do now. More technical maybe and never change the image because we do what we really want to do. And we hope to never grow up. Maybe we are a different band. I wanted to start the really black metal band who believed in what we got into. I know it was a lot of black metal bands before they got famous. There is so many fucking bands who have done the first record very evil and on the second one they pose out and say: 'Well we have grown up now...' No names. The reason is money and they have never been into Satan, just their early image. Maybe black metal is out and they can't get any money from that anymore but they have to get new fans. And I must tell you the stuff we get into will we never pose out from. And I hate those bands trying to be between good and evil sides and tries to get an occult image. They really don’t believe in anything, they just want an image. And there is also bands who really believe in those things the image told, but they really can’t play (and that is too bad very too bad I think). If a band can play and have very dark image it is something new.
How does it feel to be members of one of Swedens best black/death bands?
We thought we were playing metal, but it feels nice anyway...
Do you think MORBID will produce high quality death metal in the future?
Of course we will progress, and when we speak of progression we mean that we keep the same speed, but we will get more technical. Not like DESTRUCTION who excuses their slow down on the Mad Butcher 12" as progress.
Can you please tell us something about your relationship towards the darkside, satanism etc. How serious do you take it?
Now I have to tell you some history. My mum told me when I was a baby I slept so intensive so I turned white! So she had to check me all the time if I were still alive! This is serious! That is true! Maybe the whole thing started there? And maybe it started before that? My great great grandmother was a sorcerer but only white magic. I have never been into fucking white magic! I have always hated the christianity and all faiths who had anything to do with god, but especially the christianity. And I have always been insanely into horror! And when I discovered satanism I have been insanely interested in that. Seriously I want to get into a cult because it is difficult to understand something from a book with a lot of scripts in sumerian, hebrew, etc. And of course it is difficult english. And it is very dangerous to do something wrong... And to really a lot of dark things and to the magic right. So I need a cult. But that’s another thing. All cults are different. But I must tell you, no one of us is normal.
Anything fucked up to say at last?
The sense of humans. The feed needs.
How come you left MORBID and moved to Norway to join MAYHEM?
As everyone know... or should know is that MORBID never was a real band. However after the "December Moon" demo the band kinda split up. I don't know the reason why, but we were all very different and couldn't compromise on how MORBID should be or sound like. What's most mysterious to me is how everybody could change so much. When I and John formed the band, the band was looking for some members for the band and asked them about the thought of having a Black Metal band as Black Metal should be, but it never turned out that way. They all seemed to be totally into the idea at first, but... well... I must say that I don't think the 2nd MORBID demo is in the same vein as the first. But why the hell do I talk about MORBID in an interview when the band never should have been featured???? I talked to EURONYMOUS on the phone and he explained how his view of how the most brutal stage show would be and we discussed the problem that everybody wants everything to be so normal, boring and wimpy. And we totally agreed on that, I should come over and try out some rehearsals, to find out how I would fit in the band. And I guess I do fit 'cos I've been singing here ever since. But the problem was that short after I joined the band we were out of rehearsal places...
You have said that the "Deathcrush" mLP will be released again, what about it?
We want to release it again, but we just don't know how the hell we can afford it. It was wrong to limit it and now the copies are being sold for far too much money and that wasn't the idea at all. Those who want it can't get it unless they are millionaires. We will never release anything limited with MAYHEM again.
Tell me about your new LP "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas". When will it be out? Any old MAYHEM songs on it?
Good question... I wish I knew when! It's planned to contain 8 tracks and to be released on D.S.P. as anti Mosh 003. When the 2nd edition of the MERCILESS LP has sold out and paid, the next band will go into studio (IMPERATOR from POLAND). When their 1st edition has paid we'll go into a studio and record our LP. After the tour we have planned, if it doesn't fuck up, we will have a session of concentrated work on the material that is missing for the LP. I can't say much more about the release.
How would you describe a gig with MAYHEM, with all your effects?
We haven't had a real gig yet, 3 shows in Norway, but only one with parts of our stage show. We had some impaled pig heads, and I cut my arms with a weird knife and a crushed coke bottle. We meant to have a chainsaw, but the guy who owned it, had left when we came to get it. That wasn't brutal enough! Most of the people in there were wimps and I don't want them to watch our gigs! Before we began to play there was a crowd of about 300 in there, but in the second song "Necrolust" we began to throw around those pig heads. Only 50 were left, I liked that! The non evil wimps shall listen to our music. We had a great time throwing the heads on each other. I got angry at some idiots who had their heads up in the air, so I wiped the blood on my arms all over again. We wanna scare those shouldn't be at our concerts, and they will have to escape through the emergency exit with parts of their body missing, so we can have something to throw around. Some imagine for some weird reason that Death Metal is something normal and available for everyone. Unfortunately they are right... If you have seen pictures of bands like DEFECTION, BENEDICTION or RIGHTEOUS PIGS etc. you know what I mean. If you go into an ordinary school, you will surely see half of them wearing MORBID ANGEL, AUTOPSY and ENTOMBED shirts, and once again I will vomit! Death/Black Metal is something all ordinary mortals should fear, not make into a trend! Some years ago it did not exist at all. When MORBID had it's first gigs almost no one had heard that kind of music before. METALLICA or VNA... But hopefully those who jumped on to Death Metal will leave it soon to the real people who have always listened to it. It took some years or so till the trendy HC bands jumped over to Grind. It took shorter time till Grind was out, and I hope it won't take long before they leave Death Metal to us who do not choose music after fashion. That's one reason for having a stage show. The wimps will not ever understand it, and I won't explain it to them either. But they got pissed off at our shows and that is what we want. If someone doesn't like blood and rotten flesh thrown in their face they can FUCK OFF, and that's exactly what they do. We are trying to turn the scene back to what it once was, when no Death Metallers were wearing Adidas shit and looked totally normal. The hassle is of course to bring stuff from the slaughterhouse to gigs abroad.
What is your opinion on Satanism and Occultism?
That's a great possession of mine! But to learn about Magic takes time. It's necessary to know a lot about it before trying some curse on the neighbors or something like that. It needs a lot of time. I don't have much time, especially right now. But I'm more into legends of Eastern Europe. They are not known of here, but people still believe in them. Each castle has got it's own history with a bloody past... that's what obsesses me most. The Balkan countries is where I want to live.
Do you relate to their bands?
Yes, some...
What are your main influences?
I think we now have captured an own style, but from the start it was only VENOM that existed. That can be heard in the "Pure Fucking Armageddon" demo, the one I like the best. As for me I'm influenced by the Carpathian castles and Pophyrians.
Tell me something about your lyrics... What does the contents explain?
So far, I've written the lyrics to all the songs after "Deathcrush": "Funeral Fog", "Freezing Moon", "Buried by Time and Dust" and "Pagan Fears". Mostly they deal with how I feel when I wrote them. It's hard to explain, and they are very different too. I can explain "Funeral Fog", it's about a legendary place in the middle of the Carpathian horse shoe. A swampland called Shurlock Basin which is surrounded by fearful superstition and the weirdest beings are thought to haunt the place. That I thought about when I write that song and started to imagine a heavy fog light up by the full moon. This fog oozed up from that place. Drifting woefully in silence to extinguish the lives of the local people. And bring their souls to Lord Satan. "Pagan Fears" is the newest song made by us, and it's a bit strange. It reminds me of "Chainsaw Gutsfuck" but it is not as brutal. Anyway, the lyrics talk of some people living in an ancient and barbaric society, (Fucking Hell how I hate the word society, when it is used as a topic in lyrics, but of course I don't mention that word in "Pagan Fears"!) and the idea, that the past isn't dying, but remains in some faded reality, and that they'll not die out, but remain in the past which is actually not dying, to haunt people in the future, pup up in their minds. The time itself exists and is eternal, so is it vanishing? They realize they remain forever. That was a strange idea I've walked around with till I had to write it down. We don't have any concept in particular in the lyrics and not only I am writing them. Before it was mainly NECRO BUTCHER who wrote most of the stuff and he has explained to me what it was like. He was almost asleep, then he suddenly thought of a song title. He had to write it down quickly. And after some minutes it happened again and again. The day after he tried to read what he had written down that night and he found out he couldn't read the handwriting he had written in no light and the pen had been fucked up. But some lines were readable and they became "Deathcrush". the most difficult one so far is the one that will be the title track on "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas". The lyric is about an extraordinary Evil Coven that are the book. But I must change a lot of the lyric. That satisfied with the music so we dropped all the music. Then I found out the lyrics weren't evil enough and it didn't describe the enormous force enough. Anyway, we will involve ourselves very much in this particular song.
How is the Norwegian Death Black Metal scene?
Scandinavia hasn't got any scene. Only wimps and trendies are here. Too many ordinary people and fuckheads! Don't come to Scandinavia! I wanna move from here!
What would you think of people talking shit about you and MAYHEM? Saying that you are posers because you have such a great live show!
I'm not interested in what they used to listen to or what they are trying to tell me. We do what we like and that is enough for us.
What are your plans for the near future?
That once and for all nothing will screw up and rip offs shall shut up so we can go away on our first abroad tour, which has been delayed for more than two fucking years now. We were very close many times, but in the last minute we found out that no gigs were planned. Now it's been a while since I last cut myself (and others) so I need to a live show. We really need to play live soon. We also hope our delayed LP can be recorded soon. I hope that the scene will be better and that people will realize that rip offs, trends and wimps are ruining it!
Last words...
What would that be?? - Wipe your ass folks!
Has anything been released after "Deathcrush"? If not, when can we expect some more stuff from MAYHEM and what (LP/CD)?
Not really... Well, we've recorded a few rehearsalsongs (which we never released). What we've done is doing new material all the time and dropping them for better songs. We have very different ideas of how we shall sound like and it's hard for us to make songs that we are satisfied with. These shall not sound like anything else and not be bounded to the moment of now. What I mean with that is that we first have to forget of how all the other bands sound like and not to bounded to any time to avoid trends and to find originality. Yeah, it's now a really long time since "Deathcrush" was released and we've got many requests of a new vinyl but it's hard to make new material that doesn't become ordinary or usual after a year. However, in the latest time we have released two songs for a compilation LP that will be released by Chicken Brain Records in this summer. The songs are "The Freezing Moon" and "Carnage". "The Freezing Moon" is a new one while "Carnage" is from the first demo "Pure Fucking Armageddon" that we did the mistake to limit only to 100 copies and it's not avaible now. But we thought the song "Carnage" was worth to be picked up again. We haven't signed anything (of course) for CBR and we'll not get anything of the profits for the selling records later. I don't think we'll let any other label give out something with us in the future cause there's no reason to do that and we'll never sign any contract neither sell our band to fat multi-labels that don't give a fuck about the music. Fat deals ain't no investment as some believe, only a bad try to get rid of the job behind everything that's necessary to do but not impossible to do by one self. We got idea of that we have to use the so Darkened Black name "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" for something a long time ago. That title comes from a story of a book with that name, which is Latin for "Lord Satan's secret files" and it's thought to exist in only one copy and I won't give up searching for it... We had a finished lyric for that song and the music to it was almost complete also. By then we had to drop all the new songs we were onto making cause of a festival in Poland that was supposed to be then... If fucked up and we later should pick up those songs, more or less finished, we'd forgot about them but we have to use that song "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" by all means... It'll be the most complicated thing we ever have been involved in. That is also what the LP, that we hope will come out soon, will be entitled.
Talking about live shows, judging by what you have told me about your show (impaled pigheads and such stuff), you seem to have a very brutal stageacting. Aren't you afraid that perhaps some moron takes it too seriously beats up someone (or hurts him seriously)?
There's always some fuckheads that do not understand what it's all about and cannot stand others that are there for the music and the problem is at almost every concert not depending of what band is playing I think. If someone's diving or something there's often some asshole who cannot see what that is and then wanna start up a fight of that reason. Idiots that go to concerts only to throw bottles and destroy for both the band the crowd shouldn't be there. We haven't had many liveshows and that one we could have those "effects" there were many into Speed Metal and Glam-Fag-Rock and they left as soon as the pigheads begun to fly around in there... But something I do hate indeed is mosh! I can't accept it exist children that think of themselves as funny and noisy recording demos after demos after a couple of weeks after one more trendy band has formed. A kid of 11 years or so has listened to CARCASS and the day after he finds out he shall form a band along with pals from school. It's like that these bands got created and they never care or know of, they only fuck with the scene by their hundreds of demos that are teeming everywhere and it sounds all the same! I REFUSE to listen to that! And especially never laugh to their fun-pics, fun-lyrics or fun-noise they make... To all those things that are supposed to be childish and non-seriously funny, it's only themselves that manage to laugh but no one else does! I think it was necessary to tell of that, too.
Do you use any other effects than pigheads on stage?
Pigheads, as well as other heads, is what we try to have at all gigs. But also others are kind of planned at the futureshows. It needs sick ideas and also money as well as it gotta suit to the place we're playing at... For example if we use impaled pigheads in an Islamic country we'll surely get killed then. Another thing is that what's the most disgusting thing to do right here to fuck with the wimps might not be the same effectful somewhere else and if we ever come to for example India, the most evil thing that we can do there that I have in mind will be to sacrifice a "holy cow" on stage. I wanna have stage equipment at our shows of Transylvanian landscape, instruments of torture that are from the 1st century real trees from a dead forest, spotlights that are used to "paint" dark colors of dusk and later moonshine... Different animalheads and human craniums hanging in meat hooks by chains from the dead trees and the heads have huge screws in their eyes... That's what I think would make the perfect mood. But if we can build such things by ourselves pay for the giant expenses it surely will be include and make it portable also, I can't imagine if we will ever be able to make. But to tell of what else we as the show or effects is when I cut myself up. Something I study is how people react when my blood is steaming everywhere but that's not why I do it. I like to cut, in others preferably, but it's mostly in myself. That I can't do too often which makes me a bit mourning... The nearest thing is three gigs in Sweden which will probably be in the end of May and I think of if I can take a highly tuned kitchen saw machine that's cutting and sawing faster that it's possible to control it... That would be a nice thing to have there I think. Another band here, that's the one of the guy that'll set this whole thing up by the way, will try to get a goat that they shall sacrifice on stage by a fireman's axe but I just can't remember the band name. Another Black Metal band that'll play there is Grotesque (from gothenburg) + some other death metals. If it shall be "gore" that it gotta be REAL effects and only snuff is real!
Will you always play death/black metal, or can we expect a change of the style?
Maybe now we have learned more of our instruments since the start... Of the present time the only we have to compare with of a new recording are the two tracks that'll be on the Swedish compilation LP, I have no idea of what responses it'll be from it. But yes, we have changed a bit, but nor more that what can be expected after almost three years since last recording and two new members. And it is a difference between the first P.F.A. demo ("Pure Fucking Armageddon" - ed) and "Deathcrush". I can't tell much more that my own thoughts of how a band shall sound. That is to keep the sound and spirit that once existed in the time of what now is "old fashioned Black Metal" of VENOM and the earliest bands that came by then like SODOM, POISON (German of course!), BATHORY, DEATH and so on before they either vanished or wimped out to get big bucks and groupies. What has happened after that is hard to ignore when one got reminded by tolly unserious and senseless demos of noise with either vegetarian or anti-everything lyrics or no lyrics at all - can they never realize they're all fuckheads and should never form those fun-bands that each such dude is in 30-50 crap bands with thousands of half-second songs? But they can eat their fucking (polluted) salad believing that they do the scene a big favour while I stick with what I worship and that so many other seem to be indeed scared of - Once there was something illful that ordinary wimps feared and never understood. Something none had heard anything like of ever before. There were less numbered bands and the scene was new and not big but there was a friendship, so limited but strong. In leather and spikes.
Do you only listen to death/black metal, or also something else? In America it seems as if many people listen to many different musicstyles, not only metal. So what do you think of it?
Each place seems to me having an own scene. And mostly it can be noticed if a band is American by their sound. I've never been there, only heard lots of strange comments by friends who visited it. I better keep these comments untold... Do you believe me when I say that I don't listen to anything else that Death/Black? To me that's what exists and nothing else. I listen to what I find to be evil or black for the evil's sake. That's why I begun listen to it. Satanic sound of pure evil illful brutally that I wouldn't get out of grey matter! I still like it that way and that's why I continue having about the same ideas of it. In lyrics I try to express various evil thoughts and the same in for example drawings. That's one reason why I think effects on stage show is of much importance.
Your voice reminds me of QUORTHON from BATHORY and that leads me to the next question. I read that you and QUORTHON aren't what one could call friends, so could you tell me about what's up with that or don't you want to talk about it?
Why is QUORTHON talked of so often? (I don't mean by you but from so many...). I don't think he invented Occultism or the deathway of singing. I listen to the early stuff by BATHORY only. Like the first LP and the compilation LP's, but later he lost all the ability to crush and kill. I don't think so many outside of Scandinavia have met him but I can tell you it's not worth the try. Some dudes I know more or less know that guy, but I've met him only once. He is one of the worst motherfucking wimps I've had the misfortune to meet! Do you by the way know it's his DAD who's "the boss" and he runs his record label and QUORTHON goes nowhere without his daddy... "QUORTHON" has changed his real name now to Ace and he doesn't have the slightest of any Occultism and especially not of the arts his lyrical stuffs content! I just don't understand WHO makes the lyrics... Could it be the Boss? The only interest QUORTHON has is to fucking around rockclubs and the so-called Vvornth, the drummer, he picked up from a GLAMROCK band!!! How strange how everything he says in interviews is changing completely all the time...in the earliest days of BATHORY he explains how important it is with the darkness in songs and he's writing of the satanic influences he has cos that's his greatest possession. He also explained of a gig that fucked up in the earliest line-up of BATHORY before he became a one-man band for two LPs - the reason why that gig wasn't possible to set up was cos of the extreme stage-show they were supposed to have then. Things for example sacrifice a lamb...that's NOT how he talking now at all. He became for a while so totally against satanism, black magic and so on to change AGAIN to "nothing is wrong with satanism, black art, the evil etc. but what I hate is the satanists"... More amazing than ever I think! He's a fuckhead and he's too much of a superstar and he can't talk to normal people cos he's far too fucking famous for that! Haven't seen any likely case of wimpism before! WOE! And he didn't like the sacrificed quineapighead impaled on an upside-down cross with nailed eyes that I thought smelled so nice...
And now on some quotes by DEAD which he made in Nyar's personal correspondence. Read this dudes...
What I prefer in movies is when they're underground produced (like "Evil Dead" and "Bad Taste"...) or the classical HORROR sort - not "gore" but ESPECIALLY snuff, thought I haven't seen many snuff movies. It's hard to know what is snuff in those movies cos usually not the whole movie is snuff... Have you seen "Cannibal Ferox" (it's got about 20 other titles and it was banned in 32 countries!), it's got 20 minutes of snuff in it. One of the most STUPID things I've seen on TV, it was a movie review on a Swedish TV (a long time ago), and they talked about how horrible and awful some movies can be to see and later they show the movies they suggested everybody not to see, like for example "Cannibal Ferox"... It's hard to imagine such brainless dudes having something like that, but anyway the movie clips they showed there were great, hehe. I like to research in how one reacts when watching real deaths, or preferably real corpses (not on video but for real). A friend of mine who works in a morgue has told me that those who use to work with preparing autopsies, after a long day's or night's work have to "return to reality" before they just can walk out from there to go home or anywhere... The smell of rotting bodies uses the affect really different on people really. I've heard that of when there are new nurses to a hospital they got checked out in if they can stand the smell and the sight of dead humans by calling them down to the morgue floor (but not yet in there) where it's always that smell, even if it's not so strong, just can be noticed. And those who get pale and look like they'll vomit at any minute are told to leave that, the others may be "qualified" for working in there. There was one thing about censorship that I liked, I was at a friends place, when he actually should be in school (that dude was by the way the bassist in early MORBID and this was more than 4 years ago), when some teacher from school rang him and told him they needed pupils to watch some gory censored clips cos there was only one guy from that school and we joined that thing, we were 3 guys and 10 girls... What was great was the really gory clips with the most perverted and sadistic things. Sadistic murders, sadistic porno, kinky shit and lesbian stuff, the chicks in there really looked funny...