Geez, how do I even start here with this band? With a story, you say? You got it :D

Early spring, 1999. I'm in Roswell, GA visiting family, using the internet unsupervised for the first time. "Nice, guy, who had the first pair of naked boobs you saw?" you ask. Fair question, but do I go straight for pixelated pubes like most 13 year-old boys would've done? Nope! No time: I straight-away start scouring the web for info on - you guessed it! - black metal, something, anything about this otherworldly, dangerous music that I'd happened on the summer prior. To clarify, we didn't have internet at home until a couple months after this incident, and prior to that it's not like I could just go down to the library and ask for the Satanic, hairy bands section, or get music recs from my cool older brother (only child sort of) or my cool friends (not cool). We didn't have it in school either, so this was quite literally the first opportunity that I'd had since hearing Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk for the first time the previous July to do some digging, save for the odd Metal Maniacs I'd picked up, which were only so helpful. Emperor was my gateway band, and at that point really the only proper, second-wave black metal I'd ever heard, so that's where I started. Turns out, there was a small handful of respectable fanpages devoted to the band - maybe 4 or 5, max, but 2 or 3 of those were really good, with bios, interviews, (now-vintage) photos, all the mandatory stylings of the era.

So, I read. Devoured, really, discovering references to fantastical names of bands I'd never heard of - Darkthrone, Burzum, Immortal, Gorgoroth, Satyricon - dropped with zero context as if knowing them were a given. Then, I hit the point in the bio where the author discussed the notorious events of the early Norwegian black metal scene. If you're here, you likely already know what I mean. If you don't, then head on over to my little piece on exactly that that isn't finished yet. Anyway, I read what happened, though with some confusion - English was not the webmaster's first language, and given my lack of background knowledge, a lot of the info was effectively nonsense to me. I was, however, able to glean that Emperor's very own drummer was a murderer, and also encountered the names "Euronymous", "Dead", and "Grishnackh" for the first time, positioned as central players who burned things down, killed people, and recorded timeless BM albums. God, it was so exciting coming across this stuff, these pseudonyms that were utterly alien, that I couldn't even figure out how to pronounce, belonging to real people committing impossible-sounding crimes in the legendary days (but no more nights) of blood and fire. The name "Dead" really got me. "Dead? That's it, just 'Dead'? Is that a type? How do you just call yourself 'Dead'?And why?" It unnerved me, to say the least. I still had lots to learn.

And that's exactly what I did: through the untamed wildnerness of the '90s internet (wildernet), I navigated my way to yet more info on these dudes, and that's where I finally saw it for the first time, emblazoned as a logo across the top of another fanpage: Mayhem. I was scared. No kidding: even the mere logo of the band was enough to make me feel uneasy. There was something so sinister and unearthly about it, and the appearance of inverted crosses as indelible pieces was so extreme to me that I was afraid to even have the page open while in the same house as my family.