Black Metal Musicians Are Crazy

Black metal musicians are crazy. That is a time-tested proven fact.The entire scene was founded on craziness and in the blackest reaches of Scandinavia, it continues.

Yep

The most iconic feature of black metal is of course the corpse paint. This of course was started by a man known by his stage name as Dead. Dead was the vocalist for Mayhem. That was before he blew his brains out of course. The suicide letter read "Sorry for making such a mess". Dead's stage name wasn't entirely for show. He was very close with the land of the deceased. By close I mean he buried his clothes before concerts so they'd have the smell of rotting and regularly had severed pig heads as part of Mayhem's stage decoration. The corpse paint was just another way he brought himself closer to the dead. Nowadays it's hard to find a black metal band without corpse paint (as I mentioned yesterday). This is either out of respect or just plain tradition, I'm not sure.

Dead, looking lively.

The entirety of founding black metal members were crazy too, not just Dead. They all used to gather in a record shop named Helvete where I'm sure they did very evil things. Not to mention all the church burnings, murder and unwanted attention this group of guys were getting. You read that right, none of this black metal stuff was ever meant to become big. In fact, it was originally made as a genre of music people wouldn't want to listen to.

Over time, the scene has become a bit more tame and less insane. The biggest black metal group is quite a bit less satanic and quite a bit more into having hissy fits that some band members left. However, there are still some less popular people hiding in Norway. Taake is one band that comes to mind. Their only member, U. Hoest, has every bit of black metal spirit as the founding members of the genre. In March 2007, Hoest appeared on stage with a swastika painted on his chest. During the concert he also spat and threw beer bottles at the audience. There was a big controversy about it, and the band released the following statement:

...we truly apologize to all of our collaborators who might get problems because of the Essen swastika scandal (except for the Untermensch owner of that club; you can go suck a Muslim)!

In April 2007, Hoest made a further statement:

My previous statement clearly states that I apologize only to our collaborators who might get problems because of the scandal. This means that I take full responsibility and should receive all "problems" myself. But what problems did I get? We raped Essen on one of the first days of the tour and the word spread within minutes. For the rest of the tour I was such an easy target for verbal or physical abuse on stage, walking around the venues, in the streets, etc. But I didn't receive any confrontation. So keep your pathetic internet debate going, but don't think for one second that I take any of you seriously. Furthermore, I never did anything to make Taake a "big" band. I was hoping to lose some fans with the Nekro EP, so now I certainly expect to get rid of some more.

U. Hoest, what more is there to say?

Thank you Wikipedia.

I think I've made my point. Musicians in the black metal scene are crazy. I didn't even mention all the Varg Vikernes/Euronymous stuff. Nor did I mention the near-hundreds of documentaries on the subject. Just give it a quick google if you want to know more.

-Zombie Viking