“a MaYHEM INTERVIEw STaRTEd EVERYTHINg”
MORTIIS EXPLAINS HOW THE NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL SCENE EXPLODED
Thou Shalt Suffer still had some of that evil, Satanic vibe about it. By the time we recorded the first Emperor EP, we’d decided to bring in the keyboards and that more epic atmosphere, so all the stuff we’d been doing then culminated in Emperor.”
“They wanted to move more in the black metal direction,” says Mortiis, reminiscing about the day he was asked to join Emperor. “I don’t think they called it that at the time, they just wanted to do something darker and more occult.”
Although this would become a popular pastime in Norway in ’91, Mortiis knew he was getting involved with something very special. “The cool thing about Emperor in the very early days was that they immediately seemed quite original,” he says. “Maybe that’s because Ihsahn doesn’t come out of that underground death metal scene, he came out of trying to be a fuckin’ great musician. He was a really musical guy, so that added to this whole thing being a bit different.”
“We wanted to create music that sounded fucking larger than life,” explains Ihsahn. “That’s why we put all those keyboards in, and all that reverb – we wanted it to sound like a soundtrack to the most epic, violent, dark movie ever! It was almost delusions of grandeur in an artistic sense. With our music we wanted to paint endless dark forests with a constant full moon, and to live that fantasy. There was such a strong dedication to that, not even lifestyle, just this fantasy world that we’d created!”
Within two years, that fantasy world had turned sour. Euronymous was murdered by Vikernes, and after a notorious spate of church burning, assault and murder, by the mid-90s Ihsahn was the only member of Emperor not in prison. Mortiis, who had left Emperor in 1992 and quickly retreated into his dungeon to begin a 25-year solo career, remembers how quickly the scene imploded.
“It didn’t last long. We’d take our lyrics and try to live them as much as possible, which didn’t end well. Once you got into that whole downward spiral of being crazy and extreme, it was bound to dissolve. It was like a cult; one person would spur everyone on and it became this loud, screeching feedback effect where it was bound to end in insanity. That scene got really scattered and messed-up in
1993, but by that point it was spreading across the world, lots of bands were popping up, it was too late to stop.
And it’s still here, so fuck, man, we did something right. Kinda.”