This time, we bring you original letters written by Euronymous himself (the guitarist and leader of the band who got murdered by Varg Vikernes in 1993 for those who don’t know) who was an epistolary enthusiast. Euronymous was corresponding with a whole bunch of contacts all over the globe, spreading the word the old-school way. One of his current correspondent was Morgan A.K.A Evil from Marduk, a die-hard fan of the band at the time, but you’ll also find here letters written to a peruvian contact named Pocho Metallica (what a fucking sick name!!!) and last but not least the infamous letter announcing Dead’s death.
Of course there might be more Euronymous letters that can be found on the internet or even originals on e-bay and this is only a sample.

Last but not least, these letters were used with kind permission of Chagrynn from Death Row For Traitors which is the ultimate ressource about the life, work and death of Euronymous in order to keep his memory unstained by Vikernes shit storm.

What appears the most from these letters is that Mayhem was really damn broke and was mainly trying, like any other garage band, to survive, get their expenses paid and trade some records to keep the underground alive. Definitely punk and D.I.Y! Of course these letters are also enriched by the Mayhem folklore, they smell like blood, sweat and poison, and Euronymous his mainly responsible for the myth around his band (which by the way never survived his loss) but they show a different side of the norwegian horde.
I really enjoyed reading that stuff so I hope you will too! I mean, how couldn’t you enjoy the prose from a man who used to sign autographs saying: “May the blue bird of happiness never shit in your tea”!

Letter I:

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Check the other parts of The Mayhem Archive here and here.

And yes click on the letters to see it bigger, stupid.

Letter II:

Letter III:

Letter IV:

Letter V:

Letter VI:

Autograph:

Check part I here.

Evil: How come you left Morbid and moved to Norway to join Mayhem?

Dead: As everyone knows (or should now): 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 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 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 problems was that short after I joined the band we were out of rehearsal places…

E: You have said that the “Deathcrush” EP will be released again, what about it?

D: 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.

E: Tell me about your new LP “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas”. When will it be out? Any old Mayhem songs on it?

D: Good question… I wish I knew when! It’s planned to contain 8 tracks and to be released on D.S.P. as antimosh 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.

E: How would you describe a gig with Mayhem, with all your effects?

D: 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 go 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 “Necro Lust” we began to throw around those pig heads. Only 50 were left, I liked that! The non-evil wimps shall not 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 who 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 Defecation, 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 Venom… 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 hardcore 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.

E: What is your opinion on Satanism and Occultism?

D: 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.

E: Do you relate to their bands?

D: Yes, some…

E: What are your main influences?

D: 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.

E: Tell me something about your lyrics… What does the contents explain?

D: 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 superstitions 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 lit 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, pop 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 lyrics are about an extraordinary evil coven that are the book. But I must change a lot of the lyrics. That satisfied me 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.

E: How is the Norwegian death / black metal scene?

D: 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!

E: 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!

D: 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.

E: What are your plans for the near future?

D: 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 do 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!

E: Last words…

D: What would that be??? Wipe your ass folks!

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(pictures by Cooking with Satan, do not use without authorization)

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