January 1, 2025 • 43 mins
In the 1990s international media was captivated by a bizarre epidemic of church arsons in Norway, often attributing these crimes to so-called Satanic groups and individuals in Norway's black metal scene. This was wrapped up in the larger phenomenon of "Satanic Panic", a widespread fear that shadowy, devil-worshipping cabals secretly control human civilization. So is there any truth to the story? Tune in as the guys explore the true story of the infamous Scandinavian church burnings.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
And we're returning. We sure hope you like the episodes
investigating religious related subjects and conspiracies in the world of spirituality,
because guess what, there's another one.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And do you like death all of it?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Like metals, You're like, wait, what are those?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Hee lung is A is a band that I really like.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Their kind of paganis Oh my gosh, I remember you
sent me one of those in right before recording an episode.
Maybe it was this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
No, no, it was because I think this one, this
one might be the one with just you two on it.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Oh maybe I think.
Speaker 5 (00:35):
Oh, I don't know, call it's been a long time,
but I do remember I probably mentioned on this there's
a documentary called Before the Light Takes Us that addresses
a lot of the things we talk about in this
episode pertaining to Norway's black metal scene, a spate of
church burnings that captivated the media in the nineteen nineties.
I distinctly remember a Spin magazine feature in the nineties
(00:58):
when I was a kid, and I think I cut
some of these pictures out and pace them on my
wall of different Norwegian black metal singers, one of whom
I forget the name, kept a severed crow head and
a bag and he would sniff it at a time.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
He would play.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Dad the former lead singer Mayhem possibly.
Speaker 5 (01:13):
Yeah, you're almost entirely right why there was a whole
feat because you wanted to smell that is fely mentally ill.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
He wanted people to bury him before shows so he
could smell like the grave.
Speaker 5 (01:25):
And there is also a dramatized account of the story
in the film Lords of Anarchy starring the Culcan that
nobody talks.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
About that much.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Kieran, I love Kieren.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
It's the younger one, Rory. I want r third. There's
a third Culkin.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Mcaulay will always the third heat.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
You never see the third Culkin coming.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
But anyway, movies apparently man, but I am interested in
checking it out. But yeah, this is obviously a pretty
interesting pet subject for all three of us, and it
wraps into the larger phenomenon of the Satanic panic.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Oh yeah, the last thing, guys. Kieran Culkin was on
SmartLess recently and it was one of the best episodes
I've heard of.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
He's one of the best interview He just is himself.
I absolutely love that guy.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, did you know he didn't learn until after the
fact that the other people in succession were actors doing
a script.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Yeah, he was just there.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
He just apparently.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Love that guy.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Hey, let's talk about some satanic black metal.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff. They don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
My name is Nol, my name is Matt Had.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
We had a stare off just as who is gonna start?
Speaker 4 (02:53):
I really should have said, they call me Matt. Ben
is in a location far away, and yet we can
still feel his ever present.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Influence because it's ever present. That's his very nature. That's correct,
omni present. He sort of hangs above us like some
sort of cosmic cloud.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Again, his presence is known. We are here with special
guest producer Seth He's out there, Seth Ory, He's doing
his thing. Wait, I'm looking at him and I'm seeing
hands moving. I can't tell what it is, but it
looks intricate and awesome. Wow.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Can we give him a nickname? Seth Death, Seth Metal,
Seth Metal. Yeah, you got it.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
That's better Seth Metal Seth Super Producer Johnson. Is that okay?
I're we allowed to divulge your last day on the show,
all right? Cool? He said, it's fine, Seth Metal Superproducer Johnson.
That is your new title and it will be forever more. Hey,
we're gonna do a quick check in you guys because
something extremely exciting is coming to us in the future,
(03:55):
probably not next year, probably twenty twenty one. Matrix the
Fourth is happening now.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
It's called that the working title. Yeah, Matrix the Fourth
Is that like a Highlander kind of situation?
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Yeah? There can only be four?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, well, I mean, don't a lot of people discount
two and three? Can't we just wipe the slate and
make this two?
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Oh? How I wish we could nol Yeah, are.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
You one of those naysayers of two and three?
Speaker 4 (04:20):
I'm not a naysayer so much as a close close
You're right, it's close your eyes and like pretend it
didn't happen, gotcha, And not necessarily because there are there
are highlights, I should say in all three films.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
But I just remember the guy on all the TVs,
the kind of Wizard of Oz character.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Yeah, what was his name the Key Mask, No, the
Key Masters, the Commissioner, the Commissioner, Yeah, yeah, no, the
Architect Architect.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
That was I was close. It was an official title
of some sort.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
But you guys is coming officially. We're gonna get more Neo,
more Trinity, more everything.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Directed by Alone Washowski.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Yeah, just Lana, that's okay. You think that's gonna be
a right? Who knows?
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Oh, I have a theory.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
It's very obvious theory. But you know, Keanu is like,
it's the key anaisance right now. He is on fire
blowing up the world with all these John Wick movies,
doing his own stunts, you know, just running around shooting stuff,
blowing things up all him and they're just like, you
know what, people need another matrix.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
That's right. Well, you know those movies are such an
interesting comment on society, right, It's it's very much that
science fiction commentary of the future thing. Sure, So I'm
interested to see how it's manipulated or changed in some way.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I think I'm not as big of a matrix head
as you are, but I will say I think it's
a very important film because it did a really good
job of sort of pushing more heady science fiction like
Philip K. Dick kind of stuff into the forefront of
you know, culture, and so I will forever be grateful
for that. I think if it wasn't for the Matrix,
we wouldn't have gotten things like Scanner Darkly and some
(06:00):
be weirder franchises that wouldn't have happened. I'm having a
hard time identifying any others. Can you think of any.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Four Bears to the Matrix? No, not necessarily.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
All I know is that it four bears came before.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Yeah, four bears I met. You can say a lot of.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Gosh, those are both the same word. What's the word
for the thing that comes after.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
The cascade of science fiction? Hard science fiction? Right, that's
kind of what you're talking about. But the Matrix really
did popularize this kind of more heady science fiction. You're right,
and thank you for that, with Chowski's and Neo's and
trinities and morephesis.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
What are we doing today, We're not talking We're not
doing a Matrix episode.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
We're not talking about that today. We are officially exploring
music music because the music soundtrack, thinking about the soundtrack
of the Matrix. But anyway, okay, we'll get away from that,
how music can affect us both individually and collectively. And
you know, the three of us here today, both you
and Seth and I have a very personal connect to music,
(07:01):
and I thought we would start maybe by talking about that.
How is music affected you, Neil?
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, I mean I grew up playing violin, and I
sang in the church choir and all that stuff, and
it started kind of kind of like gave up violin
in favor of the electric guitar and started being in
rock bands, started doing early on kind of some metally
type stuff actually, and then got more into like Smashing
Pumpkins and indie rock, and then gradually graduated more towards
(07:27):
like pavement and that kind of that kind of stuff.
But I got definitely got my start in much heavier
music for sure.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
Nice see For me, I grew up playing drums in
a praise band at a church, and that was all
music was for me for years and years and years.
And the connection that music had to religion was so
so close, The two were so intertwined that it was
difficult for me to even explore music outside of that
(07:55):
because I was kind of stuck in this one place
for so long at least mentally, but you know, as
your journey. I also found my way towards lots of
other genres and ended up really enjoying some of the
heavier things in life, including well, really classical heavy metal.
I really doubt it all Like Bach. When I say
(08:16):
classical heavy metal, I mean some of the classics from
the sixties, seventies, eighties. I was really enjoying learning about Sabbath.
Like some Sabbath, I very much did so. Again, today
we're talking about music. We're talking about how powerful and
highly connective music can be.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, and the act of writing it, performing it. It
is a conduit between human beings people working together to
create music, and with that creation there is thought and
intention sometimes behind the actual material. The act of listening
to music connects people to those creators, and it's all
this kind of giant web of interconnectedness, of sharing and ideas.
(08:54):
It almost can become its own kind of I don't know,
religion might be a strong word, but it's definitely a
way of identifying with lots of different people that share
the same either values or the same kind of aesthetics
that you do.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
No, you're absolutely right, listening to music connects us the
listener right to those those people who are creating it,
to the you know, the instrument choices they're making, the
words that they're saying. And in a lot of ways,
it can also connect us to ourselves because music can
help unlock or maybe enhance the way that we're really feeling,
the way, you know, what we're really thinking, stuff that
(09:31):
we're not allowing out into the world openly. A lot
of times music is that way to kind of have
us connect back to ourselves. And you know, a lot
of us get to choose the music that we hear.
Of course, that isn't true for all people in all situations,
but a lot of us get to decide which vibrations
and concepts stimulate our brains on a regular basis. Think
(09:51):
about it, our iHeart and Pandora stations or Spotify and
YouTube playlists, and these choices that we're making, they're all
influenced by a ton of factors, including our location in
the world, our background, you know, how we grew up,
the prevailing culture or wherever that is, and almost an
infinite number of other circumstances that lead to what we're
(10:12):
listening to at any given moment, especially regularly.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, and it really can become its own kind of
microcosmic cultural experience. So many times over the year, specific
cultural movements within music have been associated with violence with
a particular eliciting a particular response, or at least sometimes
they're lumped in with that. Here are some examples across
the world, from la to Paris, to New York City
(10:38):
to Moscow, there have been several genres of hip hop
that have lyrically addressed the violent circumstances facing communities and individuals.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Then if you travel down to Mexico, Central America, you'll
encounter these things that are called narco corridos or drug ballads,
and in these there are explorations of people living on
the other side of the law, generally within the the
realm of the drug trade. Now today's episode, again those
are just two examples. There's been violence associated with music
(11:08):
across space and time. But in today's episode, we're heading
over to northern Europe and we're gonna check out a
place that's collectively known as Scandinavia, several different countries that
are beautiful, sometimes frigid just in temperature. But again, you know,
you can't let yourself be influenced by just what you
(11:28):
see on television in the way a place like Norway
is shown, because that is not everything within that country.
There are all kinds. There's so much diversity that occurs
over there, both natural and human made.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, despite what you might see depicted in mass media,
kind of lazy depictions of this region as being one
particular thing. And today we're exploring some strange controversies, the
conspiracies surrounding the Scandinavian metal scene, the spates of church burning,
and allegations of Satanism.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
That's right, Satanism. Every time we cover anything that touches
on this. I don't know there's an error about the
episode just coming into the studio. I was in here
earlier when Seth came in, and I was almost not startled,
but I was in my own world here researching this
(12:23):
stuff alone, and uh got spooked. You spook yourself, not
necessarily spooked, but it's it feels like I'm doing something wrong,
if that makes sense, just by even studying a word
like Satanism.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Well, I think a lot of that might have to
do with your background.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
I think it's all connected.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Of very Christian upbringing, and this is sort of like
off limit stuff because at the end of the day,
I mean, there's different flavors of Satanism. Right, there's you know,
legitimate pagan kind of devil worship, and then there's Satanism
as more of a form of protest or like a
political movement.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Absolutely, So let's just before we get into too much
of that, let's asked the quote, give the facts. Right,
here are the facts. What is metal?
Speaker 4 (13:05):
Oh? Metal like the genre?
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Oh boy, Now let's talk about the material.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Okay, Yeah, so metal is pretty tough to define. There
are a lot of reasons for that. Music critics over
the years and historians. We try, we as in humans,
try very hard to categorize things like this and specifically music,
because we have industries like the radio industry, that in
(13:33):
the record industry that want to put things into categories
so that you can sell them and you can package
them and you can talk about them in a certain way.
Metal is one of those things that is it's so
spread out in what could be considered metal types of metal.
But there are a few people who have gone through
(13:53):
and said, Okay, this is how we are going to
define this genre.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
It's pretty cool. The term have you metal? I don't
even know. This was first used in a way to
describe music in the sixties in the song Bond to
Be Work.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
It's so weird to me that that was considered middle
by Steppenwolf.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
The name of the band sounds more metal than the
actual song. Like, to me, that just sounds like old
school rock and roll kind of you know, But there's
a lyric specifically in that song that says.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Heavy metal thunder yeah, And that's according to you, Oh God, don't.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Actually oh right, we're big fans out No, we don't
have I think we're okay.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
And also according to Chad Bauer, the gentleman who was
talking about Born to Be Wild, he notes that quote
most considered groups like Black Sabbath, led Zeppelin in Deep
Purple to be the first heavy metal bands.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I can totally get behind that, because, I mean, all
of those bands take the tradition of kind of blues
and like bar chords, but they kind of add a
little chug to it and have these riffs that sort
of have this like very shared aesthetic. Led Zeppelin, to me,
I would argue, is maybe less metal than Deep Purple
and Black Sabbath. Led Zeppelin's a little more like really
(15:08):
leaning on the blues side of it a little bit
heavier and almost making their own kind of subgenre. But
you know, these are the experts, so who are we
to judge? From there? The concept evolved and branched off
into an absurd number of subgenres and genres related to
the sound. While associated with or influenced by metal, you
couldn't really describe them in that specific way. Today. For
(15:31):
a fantastic look at the history of metal and its
various genres, we highly recommend checking out this site from
MI I T Yeah MIT in Boston and that was
metal dot MIT.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Dot e du.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
It gives you a really cool kind of like what
do you say, like an interconnected kind of like chart
that tracks the evolution of metal.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Right, it's awesome, it's heavy metal, it's MIT heavy metal
one oh one, and it says shattering ear drums since
two thousand and six. And if you read through this,
it's fantastic. It gets into so many details. If you
really want to, you know, learn about that. There's got
to be a music show out there that you can
listen to that's gonna go over all this stuff, or
just go to this website cause it's a fantastic reed.
(16:15):
Today we're just you know, we're gonna drill down a
little bit further, just into one specific genre of metal. Again.
We talked about Scandinavian black metal, and that's really where
we're gonna remain for the rest of the episode. So
go learn about metal if you wish, come back, and
then we'll continue. We'll be right here. See, I told
(16:38):
you we were here the whole time.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
We never really leave.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Hey, Seth, just checking in. How how are you feeling
about our discussion of metal thus far? Do you want
to bring up the trytone or the Devil's integer, the
Devil's chord change. I forget exactly what it's called. This
is like the flatted fifth. Oh man, you guys, familiar
flatted fifth.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Sounds pretty evil?
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Well it again, it is. It does sound evil, and
it was it was coined the I think it was
the Devil's Oh. I can't remember exactly. I didn't actually
write this down. This is me pulling from old, old,
old knowledge that's deep in my head somewhere. It's a
musical interval, let's see, composed of three adjacent hole tones.
(17:22):
I don't really know what that means. I just know
that one of them is a flatted fifth of the three.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
And this actually is this contained in metal music.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Yeah, Black Sabbath in particular. If you go to that
MIT site we were talking about, it talks about them
using this to great effect because it's it almost feels
like a note that shouldn't be there. If you're writing
a traditional song with chord changes that are in the
same key or something, this flatted fifth is almost it's
(17:51):
eerie almost, or it throws you off a little.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Sort of like the blue note and blues or jazz.
It's the thing that makes it kind of sad. This
is the thing that makes it kind of evil. Metal
thrown up my horns when I say that. So yeah,
making no mistake though. What we're talking about is Scandinavia,
which is ground zero for heavy metal. In twenty thirteen,
the Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bilt tweeted quote Finland and
(18:16):
Sweden seem to be the global leaders in metal bands,
along with a map sourced from CIA dot gov a
metalarchives dot com showing just how many metal bands originate
in Sweden, Finland and Norway. This is very important to
remember for later and people have actually studied Swedish and
Finnish in an attempt to better understand some of their
(18:36):
favorite metal bands.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Oh yeah, very much so. And you guys, we need
to take a quick break. Then we'll get right back
in and keep this rabbit hole going. And we're back
talking the Scandinavian black metal. Now, according to the metal
(18:57):
blog Invisible Oranges sounds interesting, right, it's by Cosmo Lee.
The popularity of metal in any given region can be
arguably reducible to a few factors. Now, there's a researcher
that was consulted here named Donald McGuire, and he wrote
a paper called Determinants of the Production of Heavy Metal Music. Now,
(19:20):
this guy, he went deep. He explored fifty five different
factors and found that the number of heavy metal that
is produced in any given area depends on seven things.
Are you ready for these? And seth, I'm gonna be
looking to you to see if you agree with any
of these, because it's it doesn't seem real to me,
But there's some sand to this. Number one, the percentage
(19:42):
of the population that is Catholic.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
The percentage of the population with zero religion.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Okay, so those are two interesting, possibly opposing things. Number three,
the latitude of the country.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Whether the country has a Scandinavian legal history.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Number four, the number of years that that country was
under Marxist.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Rule, and the number of the population that are males
between the ages of fifteen and twenty four.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
And finally the number of concert halls per one million persons.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So this isn't a perfect system by any stretch of imagination,
but attracts with what we know about Scandinavian history, demographics,
and culture. And you can read the full analysis over
there at Invisible Oranges as well as the paper published
in Metal Music Studies.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
Really interesting, right, So if we break some of this
stuff down, if you have a percentage of a population
that identifies at least as Catholic, then another significant portion
of a population that identifies as having no religion, you
can see how there could be some people at odds
there when you throw in the latitude of the country
at least. This is what I'm inferring, is that you're
(20:48):
bringing in how warm generally and how humid the climate
is in any given country. And also you know, depending
on the elevation and in the area where people are located.
I wonder if elevation, I wonder if you should have
put elevation in there somewhere. That would have been fascinating.
But you know, then the other ideas of just literally
(21:10):
saying does it have a Scandinavian legal history fascinating, And
then the whole Marxist rule thing, I don't know. I
want to learn more about that, so I'm going to
go back and read some more about that later. But
for now, let's just keep going on here because we've
pretty much established what metal is a little bit at least,
and we also know that metal itself, several versions of it,
(21:32):
is supremely popular within the Scandinavian countries that we mentioned above,
you know, Sweden, Finland, Norway.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Yet in the States, the US and abroad, it's always
kind of had a bit of a controversial image, right.
So during the Great the Satanic Panic in the US,
heavy metal music, along with dungeons and dragons, were both
sided its contributing factors and everything from violent assaults like
the murder the child murders at robin Hood Hill. Yeah,
(22:02):
those guys were all metal fans, and they were sort
of railroaded because of that that fact alone, and you know,
was implied that because they listened to heavy metal music,
they were participating in some sort of satanic rituals, which
brings us to another factor, the rise of devil worshiping,
or the perceived rise of devil worshiping during that period,
and property damage and more.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
And it's crazy there because things range from annoyances like
property damage and riff raff coming around here listening to
their heavy metal music and messing up my garbage cans
to literally murder. That's that's at least the perceived stuff
going on here from portions of the US population. And
just to add to all that stuff, anything culturally that
(22:46):
becomes a little bit popular that is contrary to some
of the what I guess what the powers that be
would wish the established culture would be. I don't know
if that even tracks is making sense to anyone listening
out there. But anytime something is a little outside of
the regular thing, especially when it comes to religions in
(23:10):
or the popular religions in an established area, it can
be viewed I think that it's seen as anti establishment,
and a lot of times these movements are meant specifically
to be anti establishment or anti norm I guess. Now
in Scandinavia, particularly in Norway, there is a genre that
(23:31):
we've kind of mentioned here called black metal, and this
in particular was cited as the cause of an intense
anti Christian terrorist campaign. That's right, an anti Christian terrorism campaign,
and black metal was cited as being a part of
a conspiracy to protest the country's dominant religion through the
(23:54):
act of literally burning down the most sacred sites of
people's faith in Norway churches. Now here's a big question
was this true. Was black metal truly to blame for
this conspiracy to burn down churches across Norway. We're gonna
(24:15):
explore that, and we're gonna talk about reasons that it
may have just been a little bit of propaganda at
the hands of media in the vicinity in Norway to
fight back against some anti establishment movements. But we're gonna
find out. So let's move forward. Here's where it gets
crazy right here, right here, all right, I'm ready for it.
(24:38):
I feel like I just set up all that stuff
as in, like we're gonna find out, we're gonna do this,
We're gonna we're gonna check into it. Well, guess what,
we already researched it. We're in here recording it right now,
and it's absolutely true that black metal itself in some
way had to do with this conspiracy to burn down
churches in Norway.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Between nineteen ninety two and nineteen ninety six, no less
than fifty successful or attempted church burnings were attributed to
musicians and fans of the black metal scene in Norway.
So CNN describes black metal in this way, and this
is very very good description. Black metal is a subgenre
of heavy metal music that typically takes on anti Christian, satanic,
and paganistic themes. Black metal songs typically have a fast
(25:20):
tempo they called blast beats and featuring the feature shrieking.
I've always refer to them as kind of witchy vocals
like like that, yeah, yeah, and also heavily distorted guitars,
more so than just like your metal zone pedal, you know. Yeah,
any guitarists out there, a lot of the audience might
remember the boss metal zone. Yes, classic metal good distortion.
It's more of a wall of It's an absolute, distrustioning
(25:44):
wall of distortion, like like static almost like it's almost
bordering on atonal. But then there are shreddy rifts and
lead licks and everything like that, and unconventional song structures
so lots of weird time signatures, tempo changes, things like that,
and some of the big bands in that scene that
the term black metal actually comes from, the British group Venom.
(26:05):
It was one of the most influential black metal bands,
and there were other acts like Bathory, Mayhem, Barzoom, Immortal Emperor,
and my personal favorite Gorgoroth, whose lead singer plays a
big part in some of these stories. So it's important
to note that these acts of church burning or vandalism,
property damage, what have you, they could be actually considered
(26:28):
acts of domestic terrorism with one unified aim, and that
is to protest the very existence or you know, the
hegemony the kind of dominance of Christianity in Scandinavia, a
country that was founded on a pagan or Odinist kind
of set of beliefs and then sort of taken over
(26:50):
by Christian Christian beliefs, and these churches very much represent
that hegemony in that kind of you know, other force,
that kind of zen and maybe steers the history of
this part of the world away from their more you know,
kind of the Viking type roots.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
It's interesting to see it as almost cultural vengeance against
that kind of thing or you know, taking back the
power of the history in some way. It certainly doesn't
excuse the acts in any way, but it is interesting
to see it in that light. So let's jump to
the the documentary Satan Rear Media. Satan Rides the Media, okay,
(27:34):
and in it, prominent members of Norway's black metal scene
are asked.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Satan rear media means in English, Satan rides the media.
I got it.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
That's not like abtitle. Apologies, Yeah, I should have specified that. Yeah, yeah,
it's we would call it here and Nolan, I would
call it Satan rides of the media. So they take
the Norway's black metal scene and they ask a bunch
of people about these instances of church arson and inside
it there's a guitarist named Jorn Ing Tunsberg and he
(28:04):
was convicted for a church arson and he answers or
at least considers this question by saying, quote, the reason
behind burning asy church was that Norway is always so
moral Christian morals, rules and regulations are always religious. The
more Christian, the more you hate it. You understand that
(28:26):
Norway should not be Christian, as in, you understand who
he's speaking to. You understand that Norway should not be
Christian and then he says, and that is the reason
for burning asan church. It's asan e church. The point
is very symbolic really, so it kind of gets to
what we're talking about. It's a reaction to something that
(28:46):
they view as improper.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
So this other fellow named Varg Vikerns, who was imprisoned
for charges including the murder of a fellow black metal
musician named Eronymus. Uronymous was in a band called Mayhem
and Vickers was in a band called Barzoom. He was
also imprisoned for the charges of burning down three churches
and the attempted arson of a fourth. So this is
(29:10):
how he responds to this notion of what Christianity means
to him as a native Norwegian quote, the church has
behaved so disgracefully, basely and cruelly in Norway. It's incredible
when they talk about Satanism. When someone burns a church,
they ought to look to themselves and remember all the
sacred places they have burnt, they being the Christians, and
(29:31):
ruins on top of which they have built their churches.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Wow. Again, that whole thing just feels like metal lyrics.
They have a point there, right, when you think about
the Crusades, you think about the things that the most
popular religions in the world have done as a large group.
Certainly isn't to vilify any of the individuals, right, but
as institutions over time, for hundreds and hundreds of years,
(29:58):
many of them have don and some fairly horrific things.
So if you look to other documentaries and interviews, you'll
hear black metal musicians offer similar things. As a gentleman
named call gaa Hl his realname is Christian ivand Espittal,
(30:19):
he's the guy that's in Gorgorath, That's the dude. That's
the dude, and in Metal a Headbanger's Journey. This dude
unapologetically expresses his supportive church burnings, and it's kind of
unsettling because he also expresses his desire to see more
church burnings. Let's just burn them all. And here's his quote.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
He says, church burnings and all of these things are,
of course things that I support one percent, and it
should have been done much more and will be done
much more in the future. We have to remove every
trace from what Christianity and the Semitic roots have to
offer this world. Satanism is freedom for the individual to
grow and to become superman. Every man who is born
(30:59):
to be king, because king, every man who was born
to be a slave doesn't know Satan whoa You kind
of get a pretty serious sense that he is literally
anti Semitic because he's talking about how the Semitic roots
and you know, religion and culture are inherently a bad thing.
And he's kind of espousing some like almost nichean kind
(31:21):
of like the same things that Hitler would have talked
about as far as like, you know, becoming the superman,
and there is very much a kind of Aryan flair
to what he's saying.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Yeah, well, and here in you know, we've had several
examples here at this point of people either supporting or
at least lending a tiny bit of support to these
church burnings that were occurring in Norway in Scandinavia, and
it's easy to maybe think, oh, well, then everybody in
(31:51):
the black metal scene has this view the black metal
as a genre, as a music and as a culture
means that it's anti all of this stuff in church burnings.
They would view church burnings as a good thing. But
you have to remember that doesn't mean just because we
have three or four doesn't mean that the whole thing
(32:12):
is monolithic. It doesn't mean that all the musicians and
fans support this practice, but it is, you know, something
in the wheelhouse of what we were wanting to explore
when we set out to do this episode, which is,
can music itself or the culture surrounding and music influence
us and influence our actions? And when I say us,
(32:33):
I mean everybody. Anybody could it. And at least it
appears in this way that the shared outlook or in
motivation for a lot of this type of music does
seem to be steering at least quite a few of
the people involved in it in a certain direction. But again,
if you tried to say all of black metal is
(32:55):
doing this at all times, it would be like saying
all fans of hit pop or whatever. Anyone who's ever
attempted to freestyle of Verse are one hundred percent on
board with drive by shootings, which is like one of
the stupid stupidest things you could say. And I feel
dumber for even mentioning. It.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Don't feel that way, Matt, but it needed to be said.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
It's an equivalency.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah, And furthermore, it seems that the supporters of church
bringings are themselves not a unite in front in the
first place. Some folks like Var Vickerns seem to argue
in favor of what they see as a culture war.
In his blog post, Vicarans argues that the conflict between
pre Christian Norway and modern Christianity is similar to the
fear and conflict between some modern Europeans and Islamic culture.
(33:41):
Should also be noted that the core of vickerns beliefs
are rooted in racial ideology, which is also seems to
very much be the case for Gaul.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
Yeah, you definitely see the echoes there. Now, there are
others involved with this stuff who are not a part
of the black metal scene, lone actors outside of Norway
who may simply be disaffected, isolated people. Overwhelmingly the people
who took part in this were young men, and perhaps
they were just seeking an outlet for some inner rage,
(34:12):
some personal conflict, some conflict that they see as a
wider thing. But it doesn't necessarily have anything to do
with what we've been speaking about prior to this.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
So it follows then that the original waves of church
burnings were based on this kind of religious fanaticism, the
idea that pre existing Norse mythological beliefs were the true
creed of the region, and that Christianity had to be
uprooted and driven from the land in its entirety. So
the association with a Christian Satan therefore doesn't make a
(34:41):
whole lot of sense in that context, right. Why would
a religious fanatic commit an act of violence in the
name of a supernatural being that his or her actual
religion doesn't even acknowledge.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
That is pretty weird, right, We were talking about that
a little bit off, Mike, Just how in order to
truly believe in some kind of religious satanism you would
have to essentially take the or be a Christian but
just an anti Christian, rather than have another view. It's
really strange.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
So denying the idea of Christianity would also make it
where you would have to deny the existence of Christian
Satan or a Lucifer. So there'd be no reason whatsoever
in this frame of thought for Satan to exist, much
less to be supported by physical acts of violence. Fun fact,
how much of a cultural supremacist is Vickarans Well? He
actually refers to Christianity as a quote immigrant religion.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
How racist is he?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
He constantly complains that the character based on him in
the fictional film Lords of Chaos is a quote fat Jew.
This guy is kind of a hot garbage person.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
That is unfortunate that that person has those beliefs and
says those thinks. Okay, so we're gonna take another quick
word from our sponsor, and then we're gonna come back
with our conclusions and what we've found here. We're back.
(36:08):
So the question remains how much of the satanism that's
extolled in Black Metal, at least at the time that
the church burnings were happening, was genuine, how much of
it was ideological, or how much of it was true
theistic satanism that we've talked about before on the show,
and how much of it was more or less window
dressing or pr meant to provoke and garner attention. Because remember,
(36:30):
these are musicians. They have bands, they have obligations a
lot of times to sell a certain number of records,
and you need to get your name out there. This
is certainly one way to do it, but you could
also wind up in jail, which would probably be a
bad call. But we do know that there were true
believers in the Scandinavian black metal scene. Uronymous this guy
that we've talked about earlier. He was often credited as
(36:54):
one of the primary founders of the actual Satanic movement.
He described himself as a theistic Satanist.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Exactly in an interview by Asa Lafenpera for Kill Yourself
magazine charmingly titled magazine, Uronymous put his beliefs in this
way quote, I believe in a horned devil, a personified Satan.
In my opinion, all the other forms of Satanism are
bullsh I hate that some people think up idiotic ways
(37:23):
of making eternal peace in the world and dare to
call it Satanism like so many do. Satanism comes from
religious Christianity, and therefore it shall stay. I'm a religious
person and I will fight those who misuse his name.
People are not supposed to believe in themselves and be individuals,
be individualists. Rather, they are supposed to obey, to be
(37:44):
the slaves of religion. I think he's being tongue in
cheek here. I don't I know.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
It seems like.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
A smart alec.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
It seems like so much of it is just a commentary,
it's cultural commentary. But again, in a way, these are
these are artists, right, These are people who are massively
creative when they when they make music, when they you know,
decide what their band's gonna look like, what the stage
is gonna be like, what the album cover is gonna
look like. It certainly isn't hard to imagine that there's
(38:15):
also some creativity happening here when you're speaking with a
magazine such as this. But you know, to this day,
long after Uronymous is murder, remember this was a whole
other thing, right by varg Vickerns. Yeah, people argue about
how much of his image Uronymous, how much of it
was sincere, and how much of it was truly attention
(38:36):
seeking or you know, posturing or again kind of an
act on purpose to be a part of the stage
show and a part of the version of himself that
exists within his music.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
And yet none of this stuff, none of these realizations
are gonna unburn any churches.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
So there it is.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
There was in fact, an active conspiracy to burn churches
in Norway in the nineteen nineth But however coordinated these
attacks might have seemed outsiders, the reality is they were
motivated by a number of different, at times completely contradictory reasons.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
Right, Yeah, you're talking about religious fanaticism led some people
to set fire. Others appeared to be attention seeking. They
seem to be displaying provocative behavior on purpose for a
different reason.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yes, some acceptance seeking or proving themselves to be part
of a group of isolated loners, which is really interesting
to write, I'm part of this group of isolated people.
Well it's the counterintuitive, right.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
Yeah, but again it makes sense in another way. And
you know they're also cultural and ideological and sometimes racial
supremacists that were in play there, as we saw at
the end. But as for a true you know, shadow
of Satanism that's looming over Scandinavia, we still have to
ask ourselves in the end how much was true satanism
(40:00):
on the part of the individuals involved. There were some,
but we can't prove much more than that. How much
of this whole thing was influenced by the media coverage,
by a bit of hysteria. I mean, there are a
lot of churches burning around in a fairly short period
of time. That could be pretty scary, and it would
also cause people to turn on their TVs and watch
(40:20):
a news station and buy newspapers.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, and how many of these incidents were just attempts
to get attention. More than twenty years later, these questions
kind of still remain, and.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
I don't know how we're truly gonna get rid of
all of them, but we do know there's more to
look at here, and perhaps we'll continue down this rabbit
hole a little bit, you know, at a later date,
but for now, we're gonna leave it at that. Churches
were burned, for sure, and enough people within the black
metal scene in Norway and the rest of Scandinavia, enough
(40:55):
people seem to be in on it and happy about.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
It, yeah, willing to talk about it. There's a really
interesting documentary called Before the Light Takes Us that is
about all of this stuff. Really interesting, goes into great
detail about the feud between bar Zoom and Mayhem and
that murder and how that kind of fed into this
scene and a lot of the kind of I don't know,
for lack of a better term, identity politics behind this stuff,
(41:21):
because it was these kind of factions about like who
could be more evil and who, you know, was more
a true believer. But even within that there is a
lot of posturing. And I mean, you know, these we
haven't even talked about this. These these black metal artists,
they wear corpse paint and I have a very which
is white makeup and you know kind of runny black
eye like liners around their eyes, sort of looking almost
(41:43):
like a king diamond that that the artist or whatever
or like sting the wrestler. Yeah, I have a very
distinct memory of a really great article because a lot
of this happened when I was a kid who was
in Spin magazine and an interviewed a handful of like
kind of like big figures in the Scandinavian black metal scene.
And I remember one of them like had a decaying
(42:03):
crow that he kept in a bag and every time
he would like perform, he would like sniff the decaying
crow in the bag so that he had the set
the smell of death in his nostrils. So, I mean,
there's definitely a drive among some of these folks to
be very authentic and to absolutely i don't know, for
lack of a better term, practice what they preached, and
(42:25):
some of that involved burning down churches.
Speaker 4 (42:27):
Yeah, and sniff and crows. That is just that's a
way to win me over.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
It's right let us know what you think you could reach.
You to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy
Stuff Show.
Speaker 4 (42:49):
If you want to call us dial one eight three
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Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
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If you got more to say they can fit in
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Speaker 1 (43:07):
We are the entities that read every single piece of
correspondence we receive. Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the
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Speaker 4 (43:37):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
And we're returning. We sure hope you like the episodes
investigating religious related subjects and conspiracies in the world of spirituality,
because guess what, there's another one.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And do you like death all of it?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Like metals, You're like, wait, what are those?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Hee lung is A is a band that I really like.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Their kind of paganis Oh my gosh, I remember you
sent me one of those in right before recording an episode.
Maybe it was this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
No, no, it was because I think this one, this
one might be the one with just you two on it.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Oh maybe I think.
Speaker 5 (00:35):
Oh, I don't know, call it's been a long time,
but I do remember I probably mentioned on this there's
a documentary called Before the Light Takes Us that addresses
a lot of the things we talk about in this
episode pertaining to Norway's black metal scene, a spate of
church burnings that captivated the media in the nineteen nineties.
I distinctly remember a Spin magazine feature in the nineties
(00:58):
when I was a kid, and I think I cut
some of these pictures out and pace them on my
wall of different Norwegian black metal singers, one of whom
I forget the name, kept a severed crow head and
a bag and he would sniff it at a time.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
He would play.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Dad the former lead singer Mayhem possibly.
Speaker 5 (01:13):
Yeah, you're almost entirely right why there was a whole
feat because you wanted to smell that is fely mentally ill.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
He wanted people to bury him before shows so he
could smell like the grave.
Speaker 5 (01:25):
And there is also a dramatized account of the story
in the film Lords of Anarchy starring the Culcan that
nobody talks.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
About that much.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Kieran, I love Kieren.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
It's the younger one, Rory. I want r third. There's
a third Culkin.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Mcaulay will always the third heat.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
You never see the third Culkin coming.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
But anyway, movies apparently man, but I am interested in
checking it out. But yeah, this is obviously a pretty
interesting pet subject for all three of us, and it
wraps into the larger phenomenon of the Satanic panic.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Oh yeah, the last thing, guys. Kieran Culkin was on
SmartLess recently and it was one of the best episodes
I've heard of.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
He's one of the best interview He just is himself.
I absolutely love that guy.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, did you know he didn't learn until after the
fact that the other people in succession were actors doing
a script.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Yeah, he was just there.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
He just apparently.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Love that guy.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Hey, let's talk about some satanic black metal.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff. They don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
My name is Nol, my name is Matt Had.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
We had a stare off just as who is gonna start?
Speaker 4 (02:53):
I really should have said, they call me Matt. Ben
is in a location far away, and yet we can
still feel his ever present.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Influence because it's ever present. That's his very nature. That's correct,
omni present. He sort of hangs above us like some
sort of cosmic cloud.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Again, his presence is known. We are here with special
guest producer Seth He's out there, Seth Ory, He's doing
his thing. Wait, I'm looking at him and I'm seeing
hands moving. I can't tell what it is, but it
looks intricate and awesome. Wow.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Can we give him a nickname? Seth Death, Seth Metal,
Seth Metal. Yeah, you got it.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
That's better Seth Metal Seth Super Producer Johnson. Is that okay?
I're we allowed to divulge your last day on the show,
all right? Cool? He said, it's fine, Seth Metal Superproducer Johnson.
That is your new title and it will be forever more. Hey,
we're gonna do a quick check in you guys because
something extremely exciting is coming to us in the future,
(03:55):
probably not next year, probably twenty twenty one. Matrix the
Fourth is happening now.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
It's called that the working title. Yeah, Matrix the Fourth
Is that like a Highlander kind of situation?
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Yeah? There can only be four?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, well, I mean, don't a lot of people discount
two and three? Can't we just wipe the slate and
make this two?
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Oh? How I wish we could nol Yeah, are.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
You one of those naysayers of two and three?
Speaker 4 (04:20):
I'm not a naysayer so much as a close close
You're right, it's close your eyes and like pretend it
didn't happen, gotcha, And not necessarily because there are there
are highlights, I should say in all three films.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
But I just remember the guy on all the TVs,
the kind of Wizard of Oz character.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Yeah, what was his name the Key Mask, No, the
Key Masters, the Commissioner, the Commissioner, Yeah, yeah, no, the
Architect Architect.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
That was I was close. It was an official title
of some sort.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
But you guys is coming officially. We're gonna get more Neo,
more Trinity, more everything.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Directed by Alone Washowski.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Yeah, just Lana, that's okay. You think that's gonna be
a right? Who knows?
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Oh, I have a theory.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
It's very obvious theory. But you know, Keanu is like,
it's the key anaisance right now. He is on fire
blowing up the world with all these John Wick movies,
doing his own stunts, you know, just running around shooting stuff,
blowing things up all him and they're just like, you
know what, people need another matrix.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
That's right. Well, you know those movies are such an
interesting comment on society, right, It's it's very much that
science fiction commentary of the future thing. Sure, So I'm
interested to see how it's manipulated or changed in some way.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I think I'm not as big of a matrix head
as you are, but I will say I think it's
a very important film because it did a really good
job of sort of pushing more heady science fiction like
Philip K. Dick kind of stuff into the forefront of
you know, culture, and so I will forever be grateful
for that. I think if it wasn't for the Matrix,
we wouldn't have gotten things like Scanner Darkly and some
(06:00):
be weirder franchises that wouldn't have happened. I'm having a
hard time identifying any others. Can you think of any.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Four Bears to the Matrix? No, not necessarily.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
All I know is that it four bears came before.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Yeah, four bears I met. You can say a lot of.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Gosh, those are both the same word. What's the word
for the thing that comes after.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
The cascade of science fiction? Hard science fiction? Right, that's
kind of what you're talking about. But the Matrix really
did popularize this kind of more heady science fiction. You're right,
and thank you for that, with Chowski's and Neo's and
trinities and morephesis.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
What are we doing today, We're not talking We're not
doing a Matrix episode.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
We're not talking about that today. We are officially exploring
music music because the music soundtrack, thinking about the soundtrack
of the Matrix. But anyway, okay, we'll get away from that,
how music can affect us both individually and collectively. And
you know, the three of us here today, both you
and Seth and I have a very personal connect to music,
(07:01):
and I thought we would start maybe by talking about that.
How is music affected you, Neil?
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, I mean I grew up playing violin, and I
sang in the church choir and all that stuff, and
it started kind of kind of like gave up violin
in favor of the electric guitar and started being in
rock bands, started doing early on kind of some metally
type stuff actually, and then got more into like Smashing
Pumpkins and indie rock, and then gradually graduated more towards
(07:27):
like pavement and that kind of that kind of stuff.
But I got definitely got my start in much heavier
music for sure.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
Nice see For me, I grew up playing drums in
a praise band at a church, and that was all
music was for me for years and years and years.
And the connection that music had to religion was so
so close, The two were so intertwined that it was
difficult for me to even explore music outside of that
(07:55):
because I was kind of stuck in this one place
for so long at least mentally, but you know, as
your journey. I also found my way towards lots of
other genres and ended up really enjoying some of the
heavier things in life, including well, really classical heavy metal.
I really doubt it all Like Bach. When I say
(08:16):
classical heavy metal, I mean some of the classics from
the sixties, seventies, eighties. I was really enjoying learning about Sabbath.
Like some Sabbath, I very much did so. Again, today
we're talking about music. We're talking about how powerful and
highly connective music can be.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, and the act of writing it, performing it. It
is a conduit between human beings people working together to
create music, and with that creation there is thought and
intention sometimes behind the actual material. The act of listening
to music connects people to those creators, and it's all
this kind of giant web of interconnectedness, of sharing and ideas.
(08:54):
It almost can become its own kind of I don't know,
religion might be a strong word, but it's definitely a
way of identifying with lots of different people that share
the same either values or the same kind of aesthetics
that you do.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
No, you're absolutely right, listening to music connects us the
listener right to those those people who are creating it,
to the you know, the instrument choices they're making, the
words that they're saying. And in a lot of ways,
it can also connect us to ourselves because music can
help unlock or maybe enhance the way that we're really feeling,
the way, you know, what we're really thinking, stuff that
(09:31):
we're not allowing out into the world openly. A lot
of times music is that way to kind of have
us connect back to ourselves. And you know, a lot
of us get to choose the music that we hear.
Of course, that isn't true for all people in all situations,
but a lot of us get to decide which vibrations
and concepts stimulate our brains on a regular basis. Think
(09:51):
about it, our iHeart and Pandora stations or Spotify and
YouTube playlists, and these choices that we're making, they're all
influenced by a ton of factors, including our location in
the world, our background, you know, how we grew up,
the prevailing culture or wherever that is, and almost an
infinite number of other circumstances that lead to what we're
(10:12):
listening to at any given moment, especially regularly.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, and it really can become its own kind of
microcosmic cultural experience. So many times over the year, specific
cultural movements within music have been associated with violence with
a particular eliciting a particular response, or at least sometimes
they're lumped in with that. Here are some examples across
the world, from la to Paris, to New York City
(10:38):
to Moscow, there have been several genres of hip hop
that have lyrically addressed the violent circumstances facing communities and individuals.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Then if you travel down to Mexico, Central America, you'll
encounter these things that are called narco corridos or drug ballads,
and in these there are explorations of people living on
the other side of the law, generally within the the
realm of the drug trade. Now today's episode, again those
are just two examples. There's been violence associated with music
(11:08):
across space and time. But in today's episode, we're heading
over to northern Europe and we're gonna check out a
place that's collectively known as Scandinavia, several different countries that
are beautiful, sometimes frigid just in temperature. But again, you know,
you can't let yourself be influenced by just what you
(11:28):
see on television in the way a place like Norway
is shown, because that is not everything within that country.
There are all kinds. There's so much diversity that occurs
over there, both natural and human made.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, despite what you might see depicted in mass media,
kind of lazy depictions of this region as being one
particular thing. And today we're exploring some strange controversies, the
conspiracies surrounding the Scandinavian metal scene, the spates of church burning,
and allegations of Satanism.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
That's right, Satanism. Every time we cover anything that touches
on this. I don't know there's an error about the
episode just coming into the studio. I was in here
earlier when Seth came in, and I was almost not startled,
but I was in my own world here researching this
(12:23):
stuff alone, and uh got spooked. You spook yourself, not
necessarily spooked, but it's it feels like I'm doing something wrong,
if that makes sense, just by even studying a word
like Satanism.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Well, I think a lot of that might have to
do with your background.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
I think it's all connected.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Of very Christian upbringing, and this is sort of like
off limit stuff because at the end of the day,
I mean, there's different flavors of Satanism. Right, there's you know,
legitimate pagan kind of devil worship, and then there's Satanism
as more of a form of protest or like a
political movement.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Absolutely, So let's just before we get into too much
of that, let's asked the quote, give the facts. Right,
here are the facts. What is metal?
Speaker 4 (13:05):
Oh? Metal like the genre?
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Oh boy, Now let's talk about the material.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Okay, Yeah, so metal is pretty tough to define. There
are a lot of reasons for that. Music critics over
the years and historians. We try, we as in humans,
try very hard to categorize things like this and specifically music,
because we have industries like the radio industry, that in
(13:33):
the record industry that want to put things into categories
so that you can sell them and you can package
them and you can talk about them in a certain way.
Metal is one of those things that is it's so
spread out in what could be considered metal types of metal.
But there are a few people who have gone through
(13:53):
and said, Okay, this is how we are going to
define this genre.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
It's pretty cool. The term have you metal? I don't
even know. This was first used in a way to
describe music in the sixties in the song Bond to
Be Work.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
It's so weird to me that that was considered middle
by Steppenwolf.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
The name of the band sounds more metal than the
actual song. Like, to me, that just sounds like old
school rock and roll kind of you know, But there's
a lyric specifically in that song that says.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Heavy metal thunder yeah, And that's according to you, Oh God, don't.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Actually oh right, we're big fans out No, we don't
have I think we're okay.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
And also according to Chad Bauer, the gentleman who was
talking about Born to Be Wild, he notes that quote
most considered groups like Black Sabbath, led Zeppelin in Deep
Purple to be the first heavy metal bands.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I can totally get behind that, because, I mean, all
of those bands take the tradition of kind of blues
and like bar chords, but they kind of add a
little chug to it and have these riffs that sort
of have this like very shared aesthetic. Led Zeppelin, to me,
I would argue, is maybe less metal than Deep Purple
and Black Sabbath. Led Zeppelin's a little more like really
(15:08):
leaning on the blues side of it a little bit
heavier and almost making their own kind of subgenre. But
you know, these are the experts, so who are we
to judge? From there? The concept evolved and branched off
into an absurd number of subgenres and genres related to
the sound. While associated with or influenced by metal, you
couldn't really describe them in that specific way. Today. For
(15:31):
a fantastic look at the history of metal and its
various genres, we highly recommend checking out this site from
MI I T Yeah MIT in Boston and that was
metal dot MIT.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Dot e du.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
It gives you a really cool kind of like what
do you say, like an interconnected kind of like chart
that tracks the evolution of metal.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Right, it's awesome, it's heavy metal, it's MIT heavy metal
one oh one, and it says shattering ear drums since
two thousand and six. And if you read through this,
it's fantastic. It gets into so many details. If you
really want to, you know, learn about that. There's got
to be a music show out there that you can
listen to that's gonna go over all this stuff, or
just go to this website cause it's a fantastic reed.
(16:15):
Today we're just you know, we're gonna drill down a
little bit further, just into one specific genre of metal. Again.
We talked about Scandinavian black metal, and that's really where
we're gonna remain for the rest of the episode. So
go learn about metal if you wish, come back, and
then we'll continue. We'll be right here. See, I told
(16:38):
you we were here the whole time.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
We never really leave.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Hey, Seth, just checking in. How how are you feeling
about our discussion of metal thus far? Do you want
to bring up the trytone or the Devil's integer, the
Devil's chord change. I forget exactly what it's called. This
is like the flatted fifth. Oh man, you guys, familiar
flatted fifth.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Sounds pretty evil?
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Well it again, it is. It does sound evil, and
it was it was coined the I think it was
the Devil's Oh. I can't remember exactly. I didn't actually
write this down. This is me pulling from old, old,
old knowledge that's deep in my head somewhere. It's a
musical interval, let's see, composed of three adjacent hole tones.
(17:22):
I don't really know what that means. I just know
that one of them is a flatted fifth of the three.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
And this actually is this contained in metal music.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Yeah, Black Sabbath in particular. If you go to that
MIT site we were talking about, it talks about them
using this to great effect because it's it almost feels
like a note that shouldn't be there. If you're writing
a traditional song with chord changes that are in the
same key or something, this flatted fifth is almost it's
(17:51):
eerie almost, or it throws you off a little.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Sort of like the blue note and blues or jazz.
It's the thing that makes it kind of sad. This
is the thing that makes it kind of evil. Metal
thrown up my horns when I say that. So yeah,
making no mistake though. What we're talking about is Scandinavia,
which is ground zero for heavy metal. In twenty thirteen,
the Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bilt tweeted quote Finland and
(18:16):
Sweden seem to be the global leaders in metal bands,
along with a map sourced from CIA dot gov a
metalarchives dot com showing just how many metal bands originate
in Sweden, Finland and Norway. This is very important to
remember for later and people have actually studied Swedish and
Finnish in an attempt to better understand some of their
(18:36):
favorite metal bands.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Oh yeah, very much so. And you guys, we need
to take a quick break. Then we'll get right back
in and keep this rabbit hole going. And we're back
talking the Scandinavian black metal. Now, according to the metal
(18:57):
blog Invisible Oranges sounds interesting, right, it's by Cosmo Lee.
The popularity of metal in any given region can be
arguably reducible to a few factors. Now, there's a researcher
that was consulted here named Donald McGuire, and he wrote
a paper called Determinants of the Production of Heavy Metal Music. Now,
(19:20):
this guy, he went deep. He explored fifty five different
factors and found that the number of heavy metal that
is produced in any given area depends on seven things.
Are you ready for these? And seth, I'm gonna be
looking to you to see if you agree with any
of these, because it's it doesn't seem real to me,
But there's some sand to this. Number one, the percentage
(19:42):
of the population that is Catholic.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
The percentage of the population with zero religion.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Okay, so those are two interesting, possibly opposing things. Number three,
the latitude of the country.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Whether the country has a Scandinavian legal history.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Number four, the number of years that that country was
under Marxist.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Rule, and the number of the population that are males
between the ages of fifteen and twenty four.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
And finally the number of concert halls per one million persons.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So this isn't a perfect system by any stretch of imagination,
but attracts with what we know about Scandinavian history, demographics,
and culture. And you can read the full analysis over
there at Invisible Oranges as well as the paper published
in Metal Music Studies.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
Really interesting, right, So if we break some of this
stuff down, if you have a percentage of a population
that identifies at least as Catholic, then another significant portion
of a population that identifies as having no religion, you
can see how there could be some people at odds
there when you throw in the latitude of the country
at least. This is what I'm inferring, is that you're
(20:48):
bringing in how warm generally and how humid the climate
is in any given country. And also you know, depending
on the elevation and in the area where people are located.
I wonder if elevation, I wonder if you should have
put elevation in there somewhere. That would have been fascinating.
But you know, then the other ideas of just literally
(21:10):
saying does it have a Scandinavian legal history fascinating, And
then the whole Marxist rule thing, I don't know. I
want to learn more about that, so I'm going to
go back and read some more about that later. But
for now, let's just keep going on here because we've
pretty much established what metal is a little bit at least,
and we also know that metal itself, several versions of it,
(21:32):
is supremely popular within the Scandinavian countries that we mentioned above,
you know, Sweden, Finland, Norway.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Yet in the States, the US and abroad, it's always
kind of had a bit of a controversial image, right.
So during the Great the Satanic Panic in the US,
heavy metal music, along with dungeons and dragons, were both
sided its contributing factors and everything from violent assaults like
the murder the child murders at robin Hood Hill. Yeah,
(22:02):
those guys were all metal fans, and they were sort
of railroaded because of that that fact alone, and you know,
was implied that because they listened to heavy metal music,
they were participating in some sort of satanic rituals, which
brings us to another factor, the rise of devil worshiping,
or the perceived rise of devil worshiping during that period,
and property damage and more.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
And it's crazy there because things range from annoyances like
property damage and riff raff coming around here listening to
their heavy metal music and messing up my garbage cans
to literally murder. That's that's at least the perceived stuff
going on here from portions of the US population. And
just to add to all that stuff, anything culturally that
(22:46):
becomes a little bit popular that is contrary to some
of the what I guess what the powers that be
would wish the established culture would be. I don't know
if that even tracks is making sense to anyone listening
out there. But anytime something is a little outside of
the regular thing, especially when it comes to religions in
(23:10):
or the popular religions in an established area, it can
be viewed I think that it's seen as anti establishment,
and a lot of times these movements are meant specifically
to be anti establishment or anti norm I guess. Now
in Scandinavia, particularly in Norway, there is a genre that
(23:31):
we've kind of mentioned here called black metal, and this
in particular was cited as the cause of an intense
anti Christian terrorist campaign. That's right, an anti Christian terrorism campaign,
and black metal was cited as being a part of
a conspiracy to protest the country's dominant religion through the
(23:54):
act of literally burning down the most sacred sites of
people's faith in Norway churches. Now here's a big question
was this true. Was black metal truly to blame for
this conspiracy to burn down churches across Norway. We're gonna
(24:15):
explore that, and we're gonna talk about reasons that it
may have just been a little bit of propaganda at
the hands of media in the vicinity in Norway to
fight back against some anti establishment movements. But we're gonna
find out. So let's move forward. Here's where it gets
crazy right here, right here, all right, I'm ready for it.
(24:38):
I feel like I just set up all that stuff
as in, like we're gonna find out, we're gonna do this,
We're gonna we're gonna check into it. Well, guess what,
we already researched it. We're in here recording it right now,
and it's absolutely true that black metal itself in some
way had to do with this conspiracy to burn down
churches in Norway.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Between nineteen ninety two and nineteen ninety six, no less
than fifty successful or attempted church burnings were attributed to
musicians and fans of the black metal scene in Norway.
So CNN describes black metal in this way, and this
is very very good description. Black metal is a subgenre
of heavy metal music that typically takes on anti Christian, satanic,
and paganistic themes. Black metal songs typically have a fast
(25:20):
tempo they called blast beats and featuring the feature shrieking.
I've always refer to them as kind of witchy vocals
like like that, yeah, yeah, and also heavily distorted guitars,
more so than just like your metal zone pedal, you know. Yeah,
any guitarists out there, a lot of the audience might
remember the boss metal zone. Yes, classic metal good distortion.
It's more of a wall of It's an absolute, distrustioning
(25:44):
wall of distortion, like like static almost like it's almost
bordering on atonal. But then there are shreddy rifts and
lead licks and everything like that, and unconventional song structures
so lots of weird time signatures, tempo changes, things like that,
and some of the big bands in that scene that
the term black metal actually comes from, the British group Venom.
(26:05):
It was one of the most influential black metal bands,
and there were other acts like Bathory, Mayhem, Barzoom, Immortal Emperor,
and my personal favorite Gorgoroth, whose lead singer plays a
big part in some of these stories. So it's important
to note that these acts of church burning or vandalism,
property damage, what have you, they could be actually considered
(26:28):
acts of domestic terrorism with one unified aim, and that
is to protest the very existence or you know, the
hegemony the kind of dominance of Christianity in Scandinavia, a
country that was founded on a pagan or Odinist kind
of set of beliefs and then sort of taken over
(26:50):
by Christian Christian beliefs, and these churches very much represent
that hegemony in that kind of you know, other force,
that kind of zen and maybe steers the history of
this part of the world away from their more you know,
kind of the Viking type roots.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
It's interesting to see it as almost cultural vengeance against
that kind of thing or you know, taking back the
power of the history in some way. It certainly doesn't
excuse the acts in any way, but it is interesting
to see it in that light. So let's jump to
the the documentary Satan Rear Media. Satan Rides the Media, okay,
(27:34):
and in it, prominent members of Norway's black metal scene
are asked.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Satan rear media means in English, Satan rides the media.
I got it.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
That's not like abtitle. Apologies, Yeah, I should have specified that. Yeah, yeah,
it's we would call it here and Nolan, I would
call it Satan rides of the media. So they take
the Norway's black metal scene and they ask a bunch
of people about these instances of church arson and inside
it there's a guitarist named Jorn Ing Tunsberg and he
(28:04):
was convicted for a church arson and he answers or
at least considers this question by saying, quote, the reason
behind burning asy church was that Norway is always so
moral Christian morals, rules and regulations are always religious. The
more Christian, the more you hate it. You understand that
(28:26):
Norway should not be Christian, as in, you understand who
he's speaking to. You understand that Norway should not be
Christian and then he says, and that is the reason
for burning asan church. It's asan e church. The point
is very symbolic really, so it kind of gets to
what we're talking about. It's a reaction to something that
(28:46):
they view as improper.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
So this other fellow named Varg Vikerns, who was imprisoned
for charges including the murder of a fellow black metal
musician named Eronymus. Uronymous was in a band called Mayhem
and Vickers was in a band called Barzoom. He was
also imprisoned for the charges of burning down three churches
and the attempted arson of a fourth. So this is
(29:10):
how he responds to this notion of what Christianity means
to him as a native Norwegian quote, the church has
behaved so disgracefully, basely and cruelly in Norway. It's incredible
when they talk about Satanism. When someone burns a church,
they ought to look to themselves and remember all the
sacred places they have burnt, they being the Christians, and
(29:31):
ruins on top of which they have built their churches.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Wow. Again, that whole thing just feels like metal lyrics.
They have a point there, right, when you think about
the Crusades, you think about the things that the most
popular religions in the world have done as a large group.
Certainly isn't to vilify any of the individuals, right, but
as institutions over time, for hundreds and hundreds of years,
(29:58):
many of them have don and some fairly horrific things.
So if you look to other documentaries and interviews, you'll
hear black metal musicians offer similar things. As a gentleman
named call gaa Hl his realname is Christian ivand Espittal,
(30:19):
he's the guy that's in Gorgorath, That's the dude. That's
the dude, and in Metal a Headbanger's Journey. This dude
unapologetically expresses his supportive church burnings, and it's kind of
unsettling because he also expresses his desire to see more
church burnings. Let's just burn them all. And here's his quote.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
He says, church burnings and all of these things are,
of course things that I support one percent, and it
should have been done much more and will be done
much more in the future. We have to remove every
trace from what Christianity and the Semitic roots have to
offer this world. Satanism is freedom for the individual to
grow and to become superman. Every man who is born
(30:59):
to be king, because king, every man who was born
to be a slave doesn't know Satan whoa You kind
of get a pretty serious sense that he is literally
anti Semitic because he's talking about how the Semitic roots
and you know, religion and culture are inherently a bad thing.
And he's kind of espousing some like almost nichean kind
(31:21):
of like the same things that Hitler would have talked
about as far as like, you know, becoming the superman,
and there is very much a kind of Aryan flair
to what he's saying.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Yeah, well, and here in you know, we've had several
examples here at this point of people either supporting or
at least lending a tiny bit of support to these
church burnings that were occurring in Norway in Scandinavia, and
it's easy to maybe think, oh, well, then everybody in
(31:51):
the black metal scene has this view the black metal
as a genre, as a music and as a culture
means that it's anti all of this stuff in church burnings.
They would view church burnings as a good thing. But
you have to remember that doesn't mean just because we
have three or four doesn't mean that the whole thing
(32:12):
is monolithic. It doesn't mean that all the musicians and
fans support this practice, but it is, you know, something
in the wheelhouse of what we were wanting to explore
when we set out to do this episode, which is,
can music itself or the culture surrounding and music influence
us and influence our actions? And when I say us,
(32:33):
I mean everybody. Anybody could it. And at least it
appears in this way that the shared outlook or in
motivation for a lot of this type of music does
seem to be steering at least quite a few of
the people involved in it in a certain direction. But again,
if you tried to say all of black metal is
(32:55):
doing this at all times, it would be like saying
all fans of hit pop or whatever. Anyone who's ever
attempted to freestyle of Verse are one hundred percent on
board with drive by shootings, which is like one of
the stupid stupidest things you could say. And I feel
dumber for even mentioning. It.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Don't feel that way, Matt, but it needed to be said.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
It's an equivalency.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah, And furthermore, it seems that the supporters of church
bringings are themselves not a unite in front in the
first place. Some folks like Var Vickerns seem to argue
in favor of what they see as a culture war.
In his blog post, Vicarans argues that the conflict between
pre Christian Norway and modern Christianity is similar to the
fear and conflict between some modern Europeans and Islamic culture.
(33:41):
Should also be noted that the core of vickerns beliefs
are rooted in racial ideology, which is also seems to
very much be the case for Gaul.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
Yeah, you definitely see the echoes there. Now, there are
others involved with this stuff who are not a part
of the black metal scene, lone actors outside of Norway
who may simply be disaffected, isolated people. Overwhelmingly the people
who took part in this were young men, and perhaps
they were just seeking an outlet for some inner rage,
(34:12):
some personal conflict, some conflict that they see as a
wider thing. But it doesn't necessarily have anything to do
with what we've been speaking about prior to this.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
So it follows then that the original waves of church
burnings were based on this kind of religious fanaticism, the
idea that pre existing Norse mythological beliefs were the true
creed of the region, and that Christianity had to be
uprooted and driven from the land in its entirety. So
the association with a Christian Satan therefore doesn't make a
(34:41):
whole lot of sense in that context, right. Why would
a religious fanatic commit an act of violence in the
name of a supernatural being that his or her actual
religion doesn't even acknowledge.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
That is pretty weird, right, We were talking about that
a little bit off, Mike, Just how in order to
truly believe in some kind of religious satanism you would
have to essentially take the or be a Christian but
just an anti Christian, rather than have another view. It's
really strange.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
So denying the idea of Christianity would also make it
where you would have to deny the existence of Christian
Satan or a Lucifer. So there'd be no reason whatsoever
in this frame of thought for Satan to exist, much
less to be supported by physical acts of violence. Fun fact,
how much of a cultural supremacist is Vickarans Well? He
actually refers to Christianity as a quote immigrant religion.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
How racist is he?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
He constantly complains that the character based on him in
the fictional film Lords of Chaos is a quote fat Jew.
This guy is kind of a hot garbage person.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
That is unfortunate that that person has those beliefs and
says those thinks. Okay, so we're gonna take another quick
word from our sponsor, and then we're gonna come back
with our conclusions and what we've found here. We're back.
(36:08):
So the question remains how much of the satanism that's
extolled in Black Metal, at least at the time that
the church burnings were happening, was genuine, how much of
it was ideological, or how much of it was true
theistic satanism that we've talked about before on the show,
and how much of it was more or less window
dressing or pr meant to provoke and garner attention. Because remember,
(36:30):
these are musicians. They have bands, they have obligations a
lot of times to sell a certain number of records,
and you need to get your name out there. This
is certainly one way to do it, but you could
also wind up in jail, which would probably be a
bad call. But we do know that there were true
believers in the Scandinavian black metal scene. Uronymous this guy
that we've talked about earlier. He was often credited as
(36:54):
one of the primary founders of the actual Satanic movement.
He described himself as a theistic Satanist.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Exactly in an interview by Asa Lafenpera for Kill Yourself
magazine charmingly titled magazine, Uronymous put his beliefs in this
way quote, I believe in a horned devil, a personified Satan.
In my opinion, all the other forms of Satanism are
bullsh I hate that some people think up idiotic ways
(37:23):
of making eternal peace in the world and dare to
call it Satanism like so many do. Satanism comes from
religious Christianity, and therefore it shall stay. I'm a religious
person and I will fight those who misuse his name.
People are not supposed to believe in themselves and be individuals,
be individualists. Rather, they are supposed to obey, to be
(37:44):
the slaves of religion. I think he's being tongue in
cheek here. I don't I know.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
It seems like.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
A smart alec.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
It seems like so much of it is just a commentary,
it's cultural commentary. But again, in a way, these are
these are artists, right, These are people who are massively
creative when they when they make music, when they you know,
decide what their band's gonna look like, what the stage
is gonna be like, what the album cover is gonna
look like. It certainly isn't hard to imagine that there's
(38:15):
also some creativity happening here when you're speaking with a
magazine such as this. But you know, to this day,
long after Uronymous is murder, remember this was a whole
other thing, right by varg Vickerns. Yeah, people argue about
how much of his image Uronymous, how much of it
was sincere, and how much of it was truly attention
(38:36):
seeking or you know, posturing or again kind of an
act on purpose to be a part of the stage
show and a part of the version of himself that
exists within his music.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
And yet none of this stuff, none of these realizations
are gonna unburn any churches.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
So there it is.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
There was in fact, an active conspiracy to burn churches
in Norway in the nineteen nineth But however coordinated these
attacks might have seemed outsiders, the reality is they were
motivated by a number of different, at times completely contradictory reasons.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
Right, Yeah, you're talking about religious fanaticism led some people
to set fire. Others appeared to be attention seeking. They
seem to be displaying provocative behavior on purpose for a
different reason.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yes, some acceptance seeking or proving themselves to be part
of a group of isolated loners, which is really interesting
to write, I'm part of this group of isolated people.
Well it's the counterintuitive, right.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
Yeah, but again it makes sense in another way. And
you know they're also cultural and ideological and sometimes racial
supremacists that were in play there, as we saw at
the end. But as for a true you know, shadow
of Satanism that's looming over Scandinavia, we still have to
ask ourselves in the end how much was true satanism
(40:00):
on the part of the individuals involved. There were some,
but we can't prove much more than that. How much
of this whole thing was influenced by the media coverage,
by a bit of hysteria. I mean, there are a
lot of churches burning around in a fairly short period
of time. That could be pretty scary, and it would
also cause people to turn on their TVs and watch
(40:20):
a news station and buy newspapers.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, and how many of these incidents were just attempts
to get attention. More than twenty years later, these questions
kind of still remain, and.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
I don't know how we're truly gonna get rid of
all of them, but we do know there's more to
look at here, and perhaps we'll continue down this rabbit
hole a little bit, you know, at a later date,
but for now, we're gonna leave it at that. Churches
were burned, for sure, and enough people within the black
metal scene in Norway and the rest of Scandinavia, enough
(40:55):
people seem to be in on it and happy about.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
It, yeah, willing to talk about it. There's a really
interesting documentary called Before the Light Takes Us that is
about all of this stuff. Really interesting, goes into great
detail about the feud between bar Zoom and Mayhem and
that murder and how that kind of fed into this
scene and a lot of the kind of I don't know,
for lack of a better term, identity politics behind this stuff,
(41:21):
because it was these kind of factions about like who
could be more evil and who, you know, was more
a true believer. But even within that there is a
lot of posturing. And I mean, you know, these we
haven't even talked about this. These these black metal artists,
they wear corpse paint and I have a very which
is white makeup and you know kind of runny black
eye like liners around their eyes, sort of looking almost
(41:43):
like a king diamond that that the artist or whatever
or like sting the wrestler. Yeah, I have a very
distinct memory of a really great article because a lot
of this happened when I was a kid who was
in Spin magazine and an interviewed a handful of like
kind of like big figures in the Scandinavian black metal scene.
And I remember one of them like had a decaying
(42:03):
crow that he kept in a bag and every time
he would like perform, he would like sniff the decaying
crow in the bag so that he had the set
the smell of death in his nostrils. So, I mean,
there's definitely a drive among some of these folks to
be very authentic and to absolutely i don't know, for
lack of a better term, practice what they preached, and
(42:25):
some of that involved burning down churches.
Speaker 4 (42:27):
Yeah, and sniff and crows. That is just that's a
way to win me over.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
It's right let us know what you think you could reach.
You to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy
Stuff Show.
Speaker 4 (42:49):
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Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
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If you got more to say they can fit in
that voicemail, why not instead send us a good old
fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
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correspondence we receive. Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the
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Speaker 4 (43:37):
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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