Norwegian black-metal pioneers Mayhem may be about to kick off a new chapter, in the form of their latest album Daemon, but they'll never outrun the infamous story of the murder of their founding guitarist Øystein Aarseth, a.k.a. Euronymous, at the hands of Burzum main man Varg Vikernes, a.k.a. Count Grishnackh, who was playing in Mayhem at the time. In 1993, Vikernes stabbed the 25-year-old Euronymous over 20 times in the head, neck and back, a crime immortalized in the book and, later, movie Lords of Chaos. Now, a recent interview with Heavy Consequence has revealed a new twist in the oft-repeated tale: Mayhem's founding bassist, Necrobutcher, a.k.a. Jørn Stubberud, claims that he was also planning to take Euronymous' life.
"I can tell it right now, because I've been holding it in for many years, but actually I was on my way down to kill him myself," said Necrobutcher, who still plays in Mayhem. "And when it happened, I saw the morning paper, thinking, 'Fuck, I gotta get home to my place and get out all the weapons and drugs and shit I had in my house, because they're coming to my house because I'm probably going to be the No.1 suspect for this.'
"But little did I know that the Norwegian police already knew that Count Grishnackh [Vikernes] was going down also to kill him. Because they bugged his phone, and he actually talked about this killing before he went to Bergen so the cops already knew that he was coming, so they probably were thinking to themselves, 'We didn't nail this guy for the church burnings, so let's nail him for murder, and get rid of this fucking guy in Oslo the same time.' So that's basically what happened." Watch the interview above.
