In the previous article, we left off with some quite interesting questions… which was the reason for the anger between the Swedish death metal side and the Norwegian black metal side, that in the past could be described as pure hatred… which was the cause that led to so much hatred between the members of these two genres…
We could have an idea thinking about the two neighbouring Countries and it wouldn’t be the first time that two “next door” nations cannot stand each other, but this is a promptly denied theory since Euronymous highly wanted to produce the works of the Swedish black metallers called Abruptum after having founded his recording label, the Deathlike Silence Productions. He provided them a contract; actually, his target was to open a branch of the Deathlike Silence in Sweden in partnership with Morgan Steinmeyer Håkansson, a well-known Swedish musician, the Marduk and Abruptum’s leader.
Therefore, the Norwegian black bands and the Swedish black bands were on good terms, so it was not a question of patriotism.

The pressure was born because of a series of piss-takes that some members of the Swedish death metal world turned against Euronymous and the growing black metal community.
Death metallers sardonically wondered where Euronymous thought he could go with his messy ideas and how he could create something more interesting than death metal, considering themselves always more popular as a genre and enjoying already a certain attention… Euronymous happened to get to know these remarks and the answer was immediate; in fact, the Mayhem’s leader blamed his Swedish fellows saying «…to be some fucking poser in sneaker, playing crap music and dressing with shit-hole Adidas».
From now on, they started a verbal back-and-forth, but before long they went into action.

Between the 26th and the 27th July 1992, at night, Varg Vikernes ordered to one of his fangirl to set fire to the house of the Therion’s guitarist (Swedish heavy death metal band), Christofer Jan Johnsson. It didn’t properly work, but before leaving, she left a message in a piece of paper on the front door stuck with a knife; the text was «The Count was here and will be back». The Count is Varg Vikernes who used to make himself called Count Grishnackh at that time. A few days after the fire, Johnsson received a letter from Vikernes in which he promised he would be back to complete his work, threatening to kill the Therion’s guitarist and his family.
Shortly after this event, it was the turn of the Paradise Lost (British doom death metal band) who were “friendly” welcomed by black metallers… when their tour was in Oslo, their bus was literally destroyed with stones by a group of young black metal members who said that the band would have ended up the same way of their bus if they would have seen them again in Norway.
In December of the same year, the Deicide tour was in Scandinavia; when the American death metal band played in Oslo, nothing special happened this time, but a few nights later, before the performance, a bomb exploded at the Fryshuset Club in Stockholm, which completely destroyed a wall of the place and there were some injured among those present. At the beginning, the detectives believed the attack was meant for the Deicide, only later it was understood that the bomb should have exploded during the performance of the Gorefest, the backing band, a Dutch death metal band, politically correct but it was considered useless and loser by the black metal members.
The police never succeeded to discover the real culpable, they even check out outside the black metal environment without good results; however, Glen Benton, the Deicide’s leader, has always been convinced that it was the fault of some black metal obsessed supporter, who wanted his band been a target.