Well as you few people that watch me must have notices i changed my avatar with an uglier one... I'm working on a new deviation since two months, so this is my excuse for the lack of updates... See ya on the road ...

I'm not a cannibal, but I found this article and wanted to share it for it's bizzarre nature...


Butchering the Human Carcass for Human Consumption

by Bob Arson

This is a step-by-step guide on how to break down the human body from the
full figure into serviceable choice cuts of meat. As in any field, there
are a number of methods to the practice, and you may wish to view this as a
set of suggestions rather than concrete rules. You will notice that the
carving of the larger or "commercial" cuts down into smaller specific or
"retail" cuts will be only mentioned in passing, and not concentrated upon.
Also, the use of human fat and viscera is generally avoided, and left only
to the most experimental chef. These choices, along with recipes and
serving suggestions, are nearly infinite in variety, and we leave them to
you. We've found these guidelines to be simple and functional, but
recognize that there is always room for improvement and we welcome your
suggestions.

Before getting to the main task, it must be mentioned that the complete
rendering of the human carcass requires a fairly large amount of time,
effort, and space. If the consumer does not wish to go through the ordeal
of processing and storing the bulk of the entire animal, an easy
alternative is as follows. Simply saw through one or both legs at the
points directly below the groin and a few inches above the knee. Once
skinned, these portions may then be cut into round steaks of the carver's
preferred thickness, cut into fillets, deboned for a roast, etc. Meat for
several meals is thus readily obtained without the need for gutting and the
complexities of preparing the entire form.

The human being (also referred to throughout culinary history as "long pig"
and "hairless goat" in the case of younger specimens) is not generally
thought of as a staple food source. Observing the anatomy and skeleton, one
can see that the animal is neither built nor bred for its meat, and as such
will not provide nearly as much flesh as a pig or cow (for example, an
average 1000 pound steer breaks down to provide 432 pounds of saleable
beef). The large central pelvis and broad shoulder blades also interfere
with achieving perfect cuts. There are advantages to this however,
especially due to the fact that the typical specimen will weigh between
100-200 pounds, easily manipulated by one person with sufficient leverage.

Here the caution in choosing your meal must be mentioned. It is VERY
IMPORTANT to remember that animals raised for slaughter are kept in tightly
controlled environments with their health and diet carefully maintained.
Humans are not. Thus not only is the meat of each person of varying
quality, but people are also subject to an enormous range of diseases,
infections, chemical imbalances, and poisonous bad habits, all typically
increasing with age. Also as an animal ages, the meat loses its tenderness,
becoming tough and stringy. No farm animal is ever allowed to age for
thirty years. Six to thirteen months old is a more common slaughtering
point. You will obviously want a youthful but mature physically fit human
in apparently good health. A certain amount of fat is desirable as
"marbling" to add a juicy, flavorful quality to the meat. We personally
prefer firm caucasian females in their early twenties. These are "ripe".
But tastes vary, and it is a very large herd.

The butcher will need a fairly roomy space in which to work (an interior
location is suggested), and a large table for a butcher's block. A central
overhead support will need to be chosen or installed ahead of time to hang
the carcass from. Large tubs or barrels for blood and waste trimmings
should be convenient, and a water source close by. Most of the work can be
done with a few simple tools: sharp, clean short and long bladed knives, a
cleaver or hatchet, and a hacksaw.

Body Preparation: Acquiring your subject is up to you. For best results and
health, freshness is imperative. A living human in captivity is optimal,
but not always available. When possible make sure the animal has no food
for 48 hours, but plenty of water. This fasting helps flush the system,
purging stored toxins and bodily wastes, as well as making bleeding and
cleaning easier. Under ideal conditions, the specimen will then be stunned
into insensitivity. Sharp unexpected blows to the head are best,
tranquilizers not being recommended as they may taint the flavor of the
meat. If this is not possible without exciting the animal and causing a
struggle (which will pump a greater volume of blood and secretions such as
adrenaline throughout the body), a single bullet through the middle of the
forehead or back of the skull will suffice.

Hanging: Once the animal is unconscious or dead, it is ready to be hoisted.
Get the feet up first, then the hands, with the head down. This is called
the "Gein configuration". Simple loops of rope may be tied around the hands
and feet and then attached to a crossbar or overhead beam. Or, by making a
cut behind the Achilles tendon, a meathook may be inserted into each ankle
for hanging support. The legs should be spread so that the feet are outside
the shoulders, with the arms roughly parallel to the legs. This provides
access to the pelvis, and keeps the arms out of the way in a ready position
for removal. It's easiest to work if the feet are slightly above the level
of the butcher's head.

Bleeding: Place a large open vessel beneath the animal's head. With a
long-bladed knife, start at one corner of the jaw and make a deep
"ear-to-ear" cut through the neck and larynx to the opposite side. This
will sever the internal and external carotid arteries, the major blood
vessels carrying blood from the heart to the head, face, and brain. If the
animal is not yet dead, this will kill it quickly, and allow for the blood
to drain in any case. After the initial rush of blood, the stream should be
controllable and can be directed into a receptacle. Drainage can be
assisted by massaging the extremities down in the direction of the trunk,
and by compressing and releasing, "pumping", the stomach. A mature specimen
will contain almost six liters of blood. There is no use for this fluid,
unless some source is waiting to use it immediately for ritual purposes. It
acts as an emetic in most people if drunk, and it must be mentioned here
that because of the eternal possibility of AIDS it is recommended that for
safety's sake all blood should be considered to be contaminated and
disposed of in some fashion. It is not known whether an HlV-infected
human's flesh is dangerous even if cooked, but this is another item to
consider when choosing a specimen, someone in the low-risk strata.

Beheading: When the bleeding slows, preparation for decapitation can be
started. Continue the cut to the throat around the entire neck, from the
jawline to the back of the skull. Once muscle and ligament have been sliced
away, the head can be cleanly removed by gripping it on either side and
twisting it off, separation occurring where the spinal cord meets the
skull. This is indicative of the method to be used for dividing other bones
or joints, in that the meat should generally be cut through first with a
knife, and the exposed bone then separated with a saw or cleaver. The
merits of keeping the skull as a trophy are debatable for two principal
reasons. First, a human skull may call suspicious attention to the new
owner. Secondly, thorough cleaning is difficult due to the large brain
mass, which is hard to remove without opening the skull. The brain is not
good to eat. Removing the tongue and eyes, skinning the head, and placing
it outside in a wire cage may be effective. The cage allows small
scavengers such as ants and maggots to cleanse the flesh from the bones,
while preventing it being carried off by larger scavengers, such as dogs
and children. After a sufficient period of time, you may retrieve the skull
and boil it in a dilute bleach solution to sterilize it and wash away any
remaining tissue.

Skinning: After removing the head, wash the rest of the body down. Because
there is no major market for human hides, particular care in removing the
skin in a single piece is not necessary, and makes the task much easier.
The skin is in fact a large organ, and by flaying the carcass you not only
expose the muscular configuration, but also get rid of the hair and the
tiny distasteful glands which produce sweat and oil. A short-bladed knife
should be used to avoid slicing into muscle and viscera. The skin is
composed of two layers, an outer thinner one with a thicker tissue layer
below it. When skinning, first score the surface, cutting lightly to be
sure of depth and direction. The diagram of the skinning pattern is an
example of strip-style skinning, dividing the surface into portions easy to
handle. Reflect the skin by lifting up and peeling back with one hand,
while bringing the knife in as flat to the skin as possible to cut away
connective tissue. The external genitals present only a small obstacle. In
the male the penis and scrotum can be pulled away from the body and
severed, in the female the outer lips skinned as the rest of the body. It
is important to leave the anus untouched at this point, and a circle of
skin should be left around it. You need not bother skinning the hands and
feet, these portions not being worth the effort unless you plan to pickle
them or use them in soup. The skin can be disposed of, or made into fried
rinds. Boil the strips and peel away the outer layer, then cut into smaller
pieces and deep-fat fry in boiling oil until puffy and crisp. Dust with
garlic salt, paprika and cayenne pepper.

Gutting: The next major step is complete evisceration of the carcass. To
begin, make a cut from the solar plexus, the point between the breastbone
and stomach, almost to the anus. Be very careful not to cut into the
intestines, as this will contaminate the surrounding area with bacteria and
possibly feces (if this does happen, cleanse thoroughly). A good way to
avoid this is to use the knife inside the abdominal wall, blade facing
toward you, and making cautious progress.

Make a cut around the anus, or "bung", and tie it off with twine. This also
prevents contamination, keeping the body from voiding any material left in
the bowel. With a saw, cut through the pubic bone, or "aitch". The lower
body is now completely open, and you can begin to pull the organ masses
(large and small intestines, kidneys, liver, stomach) out and cut them away
from the back wall of the body.

For the upper torso, first cut through the diaphragm around the inner
surface of the carcass. This is the muscular membrane which divides the
upper, or thoracic, and the lower abdominal cavities. Remove the
breastbone, cutting down to the point on each side where it connects to the
ribs, and then sawing through and detaching it from the collar bone. Some
prefer to cut straight through the middle, depending on the ideas you have
for cuts in the final stages. The heart and lungs may be detached and the
throat cut into to remove the larynx and trachea. Once all of the inner
organs have been removed, trim away any blood vessels or remaining pieces
of connective tissue from the interior of the carcass, and wash out
thoroughly.

Remove the Arms: Actual butchering of the carcass is now ready to begin.
Cut into the armpit straight to the shoulder, and remove the arm bone, the
humerus, from the collar bone and shoulder blade. Chop the hand off an inch
or so above the wrist. Most of the meat here is between elbow and shoulder,
as the muscle groups are larger here and due to the fact that there are two
bones in the forearm. Another way of cutting this portion is to cut away
the deltoid muscle from the upper arm near the shoulder (but leaving it
attached to the trunk) before removing the limb. This decreases the
percentage of useable meat on the arm, but allows a larger shoulder strip
when excising the shoulder blade. Purely a matter of personal preference.
Cut into and break apart the joint of the elbow, and the two halves of each
arm are now ready for carving servings from. Human flesh should always be
properly cooked before eating.

Halving the Carcass: The main body is now ready to be split. Some like to
saw straight through the spine from buttocks to neck. This leaves the
muscle fiber encasing the vertebrae on the end of the ribs. The meat here
however is tightly wrapped about the bone, and we find it more suitable (if
used at all) when boiled for soup. Thus, our preferred method is to
completely remove the entire backbone by cutting and then sawing down
either side from the tailbone on through.

Quartering the Carcass: The halves may now be taken down, unless your
preparation table or butcher block is very short. This is inadequate, and
you will have to quarter while hanging, slicing through the side at a point
of your choosing between rib cage and pelvis. Now is also the time to begin
thinking about how you would like to serve the flesh, as this will
determine the style of cuts you are about to make. These will also be
greatly affected by the muscular configuration (physical fitness) of your
specimen. First, chop the feet off at a point about three inches up from
the ankle. The bones are very thick where the leg connects to the foot. You
will want to divide the side of meat into two further principal portions:
the ribs and shoulder, and the half-pelvis and leg. In between is the
"flank" or belly, which may be used for fillets or steaks, if thick enough,
or even bacon strips if you wish to cut this thinly. Thin and wide strips
of flesh may also be rolled, and cooked to serve as a roast. Trim away
along the edge of the ribs, and then decide whether you will cut steaks
from the flank into the thighs and rump, and carve accordingly.

Cutting the Top Quarter: Although not actually 25% of the meat you will
get, this is designated as one-fourth of the carcass as divided into major
portions. You may trim away the neck, or leave it to be connected with the
shoulder, or "chuck". The first major step with this mass is to remove the
shoulder blade and the collar bone. The best and easiest way we have found
is to just cut along the outline of the shoulder blade, removing the meat
on top and then dislocating the large bone. To excise the collar bone make
an incision along its length and then cut and pry it away. Depending upon
the development of the breast, you may decide it qualifies as a "brisket"
and remove it before cutting the ribs. In the female the breast is composed
largely of glands and fatty tissue, and despite its appetizing appearance
is rather inedible. The ribs are the choice cut of the quarter. An
perennial favorite for barbecuing, you may divide into sections of several
ribs each and cook them as is, divide the strip in half for shorter ribs,
or even carve rib steaks if the muscle mass is sufficient.

Cutting the Lower Quarter: This is where most of the meat is, humans being
upright animals. The muscle mass is largest in the legs and rump. The bulk
is so comparatively large here that you can do just about anything with it.
The main pieces are the buttock or rump and the upper leg, the thigh. Our
typical division is to cut the leg off at the bottom of the buttock, then
chop away the bony mass of the knee, at places two to three inches away in
either direction. Before doing this, however, you may want to remove the
whole calf muscle from the back of the lower leg, as this is the best cut
in its area. The upper leg is now ready for anything, most especially some
beautiful, thick round steaks. The rump will have to be carved from the
pelvis in a rather triangular piece. The legs attach at the hip at a
forward point on the body, so there will be little interference as you
carve along the curve of the pelvis. Remaining meat will be on the thighs
in front of the pelvis.

And that's basically it. An average freezer provides plenty of storage
space, or you may even wish to build a simple old-fashioned smokehouse
(just like an outhouse, with a stone firepit instead of a shitter). Offal
and other waste trimmings can be disposed of in a number of ways, burial,
animal feed, and puree and flush being just a few. Bones will dry and
become brittle after being baked an oven, and can be pulverized.

Bob Arson's White Devil Dinky-Dao Mothafucka Bobbacoo Sauce

Marinade/Baste/Dip/Bloody Leroy Mix

Ingredients:

1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
1 6 oz. can tomato paste
1 cup black coffee
3/4 cup beer (Killian's Red preferred)
3/4 cup fruit juice (citrus: orange/pineapple/mango type)
2 tblsp. whiskey
1 tblsp. lemon juice
1 tblsp. worcestershire sauce
1 tblsp. vinegar (red wine garlic preferred)
3 cloves garlic. minced
3 jalepeno peppers, minced
1/4 large onion, minced 1/8 red, 1/8 white preferred)
2 1/2 tsp. liquid smoke
2 tblsp. brown sugar
1 tblsp. molasses
1 1/2 tblsp. crushed red pepper
1 cube beef bouillon
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 1/2 tsp. paprika
1 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
3 dashes basil
3 dashes oregano
3 dashes savory
ashes of one fine thin joint

Well, first of all i'd like to thank all of you for your words and how you made me feel.. And I feel like a change now. Darkness will be over soon. Thanks again guys and grls.

Yesterday i was noticed by my grlfriend that she was fucking my best friend... what can i do? what should i do? help, please

Norway's Neo-Vikings are on a quest to end Christ's reign on Earth. Along the way, they're burning medieval churches, slaughtering their rivals, and playing Black Metal Till the dark gods return. Darcey Steinke goes to hell and back.

The sky is blanketed by swollen, gray clouds, Under this leaden bell jar, an hour outside Oslo in the Norwegian Countryside, lie the remains of Holen Church - just the pink granite foundation and several piles of charred pine. Among the fire's ruin, burnt pages from hymnals fly around, chaotic as brown moths. Blacksmith-forged nails lie mingled with the femurs and yiabiae of ministers buried a hundred years ago beneath the church's floorboards. Burned to the ground last May, Holen is the most recent catastrophe in Norway's ongoing national disaster: 22 churches, some dating to medieval times, destroyed by arson over the last four years.

A little white-haired man kneels at his wife's gravestone, one of the many that surround the site where the church once stood. He is weeding the daisies and begonias as he prepares to leave behind some cut roses
in a mayonnaise jar. When I ask who did this , he shakes his head and speaks in heavily accented English. "The Satanists" he says wearily.

To the unsuspecting visitor, Norway is a fairy-tale land of wooden gingerbread houses, lace curtains flapping out of windows, blue glass bottles on the sills. Fir trees line the fjords, and just about everyone is
blonde, high cheek-boned, and cruelly beautiful. Oslo, Norway's capital is overrun with pastel apartment buildings, and gift shops selling troll dolls, replica Viking pendants, and Norwegian reindeer sweaters.

In a stone building downtown, a lone, neatly dressed junkie out front leans into a nod, the only clue that one of hell's many chambers looms six flights above. The band Mayhem used to practice here, in a room
framed by a puke-stained carpet below and swastika flags tacked up overhead. Viking swords and Inverted Crosses hang from the walls Hellhammer, the only surviving member of Mayhem, Norway's
first Black-Metal band, pushes videos of Nosferatu and The Satanic Rites Of Dracula out of the way so he can sink down into a Black Vinyl couch.

Norwegian Black Metal was born in the late '80's, the product of a unholy union between death-metal churn and Viking bloodlust. It melts speed metal's thrashing guitars with an ambient subtext that shows
up in everything from darkly symphonic synth to medieval lute solos. The vocalists tend to sound like the poor little possessed girl in The Exorcist, screeching and gurgling lyrics about evil powers, Satan, the
nighttime woods, trolls, and Norse Gods. Back then, the members of Mayhem lived together in the Devil's House-black, with two lofty towers- in a tiny town called Krakstad. "People there were very
superstitious," Hellhammer recalls, smiling. "When we went into a shop, all the old ladies would run out. In Sunday School they told the children that our house belonged to the devil."

Mayhem didn't do much to dispel that notion. On stage, the lead singer, Dead, wore clothes that he'd buried in the ground until they were rotten and filled with bugs. He was a tall, extremely skinny young man with skin so white it was nearly blue. Even During Rehearsals, Dead wore his "Corpse Paint"- white and black makeup inspired by the plague. When he was performing, Dead inhaled from a plastic bag
holding a decayed raven. "He needed to get the stench of death before every song," Hellhammer explains.

Dead, appropriately enough, was the first to die. In 1991 he committed suicide with a shotgun blast to the head. "It didn't really surprise me," says Hellhammer. "He was a strange guy, always talking about
BCarpathian castles and the Pophyrians and how this life is only a dream." His suicide note read, simply, "Excuse all the blood." Hellhammer and Euronymous, Mayhem's Guitarist, found Dead dead-legs
akimbo, his brain tissue and blood splattered on the walls and sheets. Euronymous didn't seem to mind the mess at all. In fact, says Hellhammer, "he took pieces of the brain and made a stew. He put in ham, frozen vegetables, and paprika. He'd always said he wanted to eat flesh, so he figured this was an easy way."

Hellhammer is dressed in the official Black Metal uniform: boots, jeans, a leather jacket; all black. A Thor's hammer pendant and a pentagram dangle around his neck, but he's more the playful puck than the dark master. He reassures me that he didn't eat any of the wicked stew- "I would have puked." A heartbeat later, he sheepishly admits that he did make a necklace for himself out of skull fragments he found between Dead's bloody sheets.

Black Metal wasn't always so Black. In the early '80's, British bands like Venom considered themselves a musical component of the horror entertainment industry, and they played out their role as Satan's
cheerleader's with an appropriate sense of camp. But something happened when Black Metal crossed the North Sea. For Norwegian Black Metal bands, it's more than just a stage act: They are committed
Satanists fighting to get Christianity out of Norway, and bring back Ancient Pagan ways. They advocate the revival of ancient Viking practices, for instance, and engaging in blood feuds and revenge killings.
Other bands quickly joined Mayhem on the Black-Metal scene, including Darkthrone, Immortal, Enslaved, Burzum and Emperor. Each has put out several records on small labels like Head Not Found and Euronymous' own Deathlike Silence.

Euronymous was the fat spider in the Black-Metal web, more interested in being evil than depressed like Dead. He told Hellhammer he had no feelings; pain, he said, was the same as pleasure for him. In corpse
paint, Euronymous resembled a demonic mesh of Divine and Bela Lugosi-stout, with long black hair, a pointy devil's beard, and a mustache waxed so the tips curled around like a pig's tail. His interest chemicals led him to build an elaborate laboratory in the basement of the black house, filled with beakers and glass distilling tubes, Bunsen burners and vaporous acids. He usually went around in a black cape, but in the lab he wore a white scientists's coat, with gold buttons and a high collar. He spent hours down there laughing maniacally and mixing illegal chemicals together. An explosion once caused one of his potions to spill onto his hand. " It flamed up like a torch," Hellhammer remembers. "Even underwater it just kept burning."

In the early '90's, Euronymous also owned Hell, a record store in Oslo that served as the Bat cave for the Black-Metal movement. Members of the self-proclaimed Inner Circle crashed on mattresses in the basement, moist and dark like a dungeon. Parties at Hell were legendary: huge, chaotic, candle lit affairs, where devotees wore corpse paint, black capes, and replicas of Viking gear. Many cut themselves with knives and broken bottles; particularly inspired groups would go out to desecrate graveyards, knock down stones, and spray paint pentagrams and the number 666. Hellhammer remembers people shooting guns
into the side wallls; one guy hammered a nail into his own skull. Euronymous would beat himself with a bullwhip, causing blood to soak through his shirt in crimson stripes.

From his base at Hell, Euronymous became a leader of the scene. He often expressed hope that Black Metal would incite young people to violence; conceiving methods of torture, he held lengthy lectures on
how the pain would scare the victims. " It was an exciting period," says Samoth, the guitarist for Emperor. "We all hung out and talked about our hatred for Christianity and how to get the Viking religion back." All
of the Inner Circle dispised Christianity's glorification of weakness, it's sympathy for the sick and needy. So the Circle devised the idea of setting fire to the pride and glory of Norway- it's beloved wooden
churches. That would remind the people of Norway that they were all still the children of Odin.

Fantoft Church was built by Nordic wood craftsmen in the early medieval era. On it's elaborately carved columns, the scaly tails of dragons interlocked with snakes and flesh vines. It stood strong from the 12th
Century until it burned to the ground on June 6, 1992.

Another fire claimed Holmenkollen Chapel, the church King Harald V and the royal family attended. Others soon followed. In September, Samoth proudly " joined history by burning down a church." His Black-Metal colleague Count Grisnackh, who had already participated in the fires at Holmenkollen and Fantoft, went with him to incinerate Skjold Church in Rogaland. Samoth describes the experience as being almost holy. "There was a small door under the alter where we poured several gallons of gasoline, threw a match, and then ran back to the car." The pair drove all night to get back to Oslo and Hell. "There was a strange feeling in the car," Samoth tells me in his soft voice, his long, dark hair almost obscuring his features. "It was stormy, thundering and raining. We were on a narrow country road with no light except our high beams."

Count Grishnackh, the sole member of the band Burzum, has blue eyes that burn as fiercely as heat lighting; a hairline scar runs down the side of his mouth. Dressed as a Viking dandy in boots, cloaks, and Nordic breastplates and pendants, he's cold and intense, his emotions and actions based more on ideology than anything inside his heart. Orishnackh believes the Inner Circle has every right to use flames and
machine guns to accomplish its ends- after all, didn't Norway's Christian forefathers destroy pagan idols and chop off the heads of heathens?

Pouring gasoline along the walls of Fantoft's tarred wood, the Count flicked several matches into the golden puddles. As he walked away, he turned, and the sight of the flames licking up toward the tower to the cross made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He shivered.

After the Count was questioned by police-and appeared in every Norwegian newspaper in full Viking regalia-Euronymous predicted that Grishnackh would soon do something even grander to get his face in
the papers. He didn't realize he was forecasting his own death. Less than two months later, Euronymous' body was found in his apartment. Grishnackh was charged with his murder.

The Count's presence at his trial was just as outrageous as the testimony: He wore his hair in pigtails, and laughed continuously throughout the proceedings. But the facts of the case are undeniably chilling. On August 10, 1993, the Count and Snorre, the leader of the band Blackthorn, drove six hours across Norway, from Bergen to Oslo. The Count carried a copy of a record contact, intended to be the pretext for his visit to Euronymous' apartment.

Possible ways to kill Euronymous had been thoroughly discussed. The Count wanted to fell Euronymous with an ax, but then decided it would look stupid to lug an ax around a neighborhood full of apartment buildings. Another plan was to get Euronymous to demonstrate something on his computer, then stab him in the neck while he was sitting with his back turned. The Count ended up carrying a primitive arsenal- three knives strapped to his body; an ax, a bayonet, and a baseball bat were stashed in the trunk of his car.

Euronymous answered the door wearing only his underwear; according to the Count, he looked weak and tired. The two began to argue, and Euronymous turned and walked toward the kitchen. The Count drew his knife and followed. Snorre was waiting on the stairs when he heard Euronymous scream for help. The door flew open and Euronymous ran at him, blood streaming in rivulets down his face and shoulders. An autopsy found he had suffered 23 stab wounds- two to the head, five to the neck, and 16 to the back.

On the ride back to Bergen, Grishnackh and Snorre stopped at a lake. The Count took off his clothes and washed blood out of his hair and off his hands and face. He cleaned his knife and tied his bloody clothes around a rock, and let them sink into the water. But he was still exhausted and worried. He'd left the contract in the apartment, signed with that day's date, and he had forgot to wear his gloves. He didn't even know if Euronymous was alive or dead.

The next day, Grishnackh was strangely emboldened. In an almost unimaginable act of hubris, he strutted into the Voices of Wonder Records office in Oslo, dressed like a Viking warrior, with breast- and arm-plates and spiked leather gloves, and showed off his knife. Meanwhile, the police rounded up and questioned more than a hundred Black Metallers. The scene that had always been so secretive was suddenly riddled with stool pigeons. People ratted out one another; some even called anonymously to tell what they knew. Police heard about the Inner Circle feud and soon discovered that the bloody fingerprints smearing the contact belonged to the Count.

Everyone in the Black Metal Scene tells the same story; that they were baptized but never attended church, that their parents didn't believe in God. Required religion classes in school were "boring" and "bogus." Teachers made you memorize prayers no one believed. This attitude is nothing new; Norway's relationship with Christianity has always been ambivalent. In 995 A.D., Olaf I Tryggvason brought Christianity, along with plundered gold and silver, to Norway's shores. On gaining power he ruthlessly enforced the new faith onto the Norwegian people by burning down pagan temples and offering subjects a choice between baptism and death.

The Lutheran reformation in 1537, while not as bloody, was equally chaotic. Lutheran ministers sent up from Germany didn't speak the Norse language, and many were disreputable characters prone to some disputes over tithes, embezzlement, even rape. Yet Lutheranism is a somber religion known for its pietistic followers and plain alters. Its main doctrines hold that it is one's relationship to God, rather than tithes or good works that will secure a passport into heaven. This leaves Lutherans in an existential spot, standing alone without the comfort of saints or incense before a stern Germanic God. In Norway, the Lutheran church is a part of the state- the government holds the purse strings and appoints bishops, and King Harald is its official head. Still, only three percent attend church on Sundays or consider themselves active participants.

"The Satanists are right to target the hypocrisy of Norway's spiritual life," says Trond Viggo Torgerson, Norway's commissioner for children's rights. " It's a very discouraging time in our country. Everyday life is dull and consumer orientated. Most people would rather have a McDonald's in their community than a church." Torgersen hopes the fires will serve as a wake-up call, a plea from young people for more spiritual passion. But when I speak to Bishop Andreas Aarflot, and ask if the fires might be directed at the state church's bureaucratic temperament and lack of vitality, he responds with blunt anger. "These fires have not really affected the religious community. We do not consider them a challenge of any kind."

At the seminary in Majorstua, Professor Tormod Engelsviken shakes his head " There is something so medieval about all this- pagans versus Christians, both sides so literal in their interpretations." He believes that Norwegians want religion, but that there exists a spiritual void. "These Viking ideas of blood revenge, of maintaining honor, of meaningless violence...." The professor sits back, in front his shelves of theology books. " You must remember that the Vikings were quite taken with Christianity. Those violent men were transformed by the message of the New Testament- the idea of humility, of forgiveness, of the overwhelming power of love."

While out tea steeps, Nebelhexa and I carry out mugs to her back porch. We sit near a big basket of drying mint leaves, not far from a rabbit pen and some chickens. Arcane, her black greyhound, settles regally beside her. Nebelhexa tells me that she has been involved with Crowleyan magic, chaos magic even Anton LaVey's Church Of Satan. "The services are like Christian services but backwards. Nude women are used as alters, and they have orgies and stomp on blessed communion wafers. It's silly, really." she adds, tucking a long red hair behind her triply pierced earlobe. She eventually left the church, fed up with its members' materialism. "All of them kept urging me to work for a big corporation, to become a yuppie."

She met Samoth, her husband, while Emperor was opening for Cradle Of Filth during a European tour. A friend asked her to dress up like a dominatrix in black leather corset and boots. "I'd come on stage and whip the lead singer," Nebelhexa laughs. "It was loads of fun." Their romance quickly flowered. At midnight on the winter solstice last year, Nebelhexa, in a long, red-velvet dress, and Samoth, in his Viking fur coat and Thor's Hammer pendant, hiked up a snowy mountain near his parents' house. Finding a spot surrounded by trees, Samoth used his ritual heathen knife to cut Nebelhexa's palm, and then she his. "We held them together and our mingled blood dripped on the white snow." They made promises to the mighty sky father and all the tree spirits, then exchanged rings that were engraved with the Norwegian words for Thor Helps.

Nebelhexa prefer her own magic to any organized religion. She creates potions using herbs, bones, feathers, and sexual fluids, casting spells to protect her loved ones, and defending herself from enemies. Recently she's been collecting roots and weaving them together in an effort to hold together her relationship with her husband, who's serving a two-year sentence for arson. "Magic is closer to the body- you create your own harmony. It's not like Christianity, where you beg to some god."

When I bring up the church fires and Samoth's involvement in them, she appears embarrassed. She's anxious to impress on me that her husband was strongly influenced by Count Grishnackh. "The Count is a good talker. He would tell Samoth that by burning down churches they'd drive the Christians back to the Middle East and become kings." Another of Grishnackh's plans, she says, was to rape (King Harald's Sister) Princess Astrid, get her pregnant, and take over the throne. Nebelhexa shakes her head. "It's a very naive way of thinking but you have to excuse it, because Samoth was just 17. What can you expect from boys that don't like their society?" Arcane rises up to growl at a squirrel that's leapt on the porch.
Nebelhexa tells me how all her friends think she's crazy to get involved with a Satanist who burned down a church. " But they don't know him. They can't understand that my husband is an honorable Viking man."

I'd been warned by Faust that his prison was high-security, one of the strictest in Norway, but the flowers and expansive green lawns surrounding the building make it look more like a mental hospital. Like everything in Norway, the prison is clean and pretty. A cheerful female guard walks me through a metal detector; she asks me nicely if I'll leave my bag in a locker near a glass case displaying ceramic masks made by inmates, features twisted in combinations of anger and despair.

Faust bursts through the visiting-room door with the intensity of a fly finally let out of it's glass cage, wearing camouflage, gray and white, to blend with wintertime woods. Even with his broad shoulders, Faust has the same childhood grasp on reality I noticed in Hellhammer, but he's less good natured, more like the cruel little boys in Lord Of The Flies.

Rocking his chair back against the cement wall, he tells how he's always been fascinated with murder, collecting books, magazines, and T-shirts relating to serial killers. When Faust moved from his small village to work at Hell, his interest in violence intensified. He began to crease an entire moral universe based on the precepts of Black Metal. "I started thinking about macro- and micro-cosmoses and comparing human life to dust on a far-off planet in a far-off galaxy in the middle of nowhere. I made human life valueless."

In August 1992, while Faust was checking out the newly completed Olympic Park at Lillehammer, a man approached him and suggested they go together in the woods. "I hadn't been drinking or anything. I just very calmly decided to end this man's life. Maybe my subconscious was telling me that because he is gay I had that right." Faust agreed and followed him into the deep forest. As the man came forward to embrace him, Faust sunk a knife into his gut and yanked up. " He was screaming 'No!' but I just went berserk stabbing him over and over. Once he was down and the light had gone down out of his eyes, I kicked him to make sure he was dead. Then I walked home with a completely empty head, like a zombie."

Two days after the murder, Count Grishnackh, Euronymous, and Faust drove up to Holmenkollen Chapel, near the Olympic ski jump. It was to be a symbolic act of catharsis for Faust. At first they placed a homemade bomb onto the alter, but when that refused to detonate, they piled hymnals and Bibles onto the alter, poured gasoline over them, and lit a match. "We rode up the mountain to watch it burn. It was very beautiful and exciting-when we got back to the record store we could hardly sleep."

After his crime spree, Faust checked the papers every day, but after a few weeks there was nothing more about the murder. "As time passed," he says, "I almost forgot I was a killer." It wasn't until Euronymous' murder that Faust was figured and picked up. He was tried and convicted of manslaughter, and is now serving a 14 year sentence. He might regret getting caught, be he shows little remorse for the murder.
One should live by the sword, he decrees; society must return to a natural order of survival by strength. He sees himself as not a criminal but as a revolutionary in exile. Faust's favorite writer, Bret Easton Ellis, exemplifies for him the truth about human beings' natural animosity to one another. "In American Psycho he gets it down perfectly," Faust tells me enthusiastically." One minute you're looking at a man's clothes and the next you're sticking a knife in his eye."

Where Faust turned his Black-Metal murder fantasy into evil reality, Ihsahn, the lead singer for Emperor- and its only member not in jail- understands the power of metaphor. In his tailored black pants and silk shirt, his dyed hair in a braid down his back, he's an Armani vampire. The dark prince wears eyeliner and a touch of white powder; the faint purple circles under his eyes give me a feeling that he tends to wander in the woods long after dark.

When I ask why he didn't go with Samoth and Grishnackh the night they burned down Skjold church, he explains that he wasn't home when they looked for him but that he definitely would have joined in. Christianity, he believes, is for people who live in the desert and wear sandals. "It wastes love," he says. "In Norway, like in the U.S., if you're weak everybody supports you. There are special centers, 12-step programs. Everything is for the weak. Everything caters to people who are failures. There is too much pity."

Runhold, Ihsahn's girlfriend and co founder of the Black Metal Fanzine Descent, agrees. "None of the Gods in Norse mythology are weak like Jesus is weak," she tells me. Runhild is studying biotechnology; notes from her morning class are written on her hand. She's wearing a long, black-silk dress and a necklace made from raven's feet, a "love present" from an old boyfriend. She has always had a fascination with death. At 13 she wrote a school newspaper on burial rituals, and as a kid slept with her hands folded over her chest. Her obsession with death, she feels, comes from being fearless. "Most pop music plays on weakness, but Black Metal people don't believe in sacrificing yourself for others the way Jesus did. They are strong enough to live by the sword."

Ihsahn believes the vampire to be the perfect symbol of the Satanic. "Dracula feeds on others but feels passion for just a few," he explains. He also sees similarities between the vampire and the Viking. "The Viking went out and took what he needed, violently and with much bloodshed; he fed on others just like a vampire." As I prod Ihsahn about Black Metal's fascist tendencies, about the Holocaust, about how weakness is an innate quality in even the strongest human, the vampire grows testy. "Look," he says, sounding much like Lestat, wearied by weaker creatures who lack bloodthirst and courage. "You'll never understand me because you sit in the audience at a horror movie. I'm up on the screen."

In Norwegian folklore, tongues of flame flicker up from the footprints of Viking kings. Giant brown bears make their winter lairs on church alters. Flies crawl out of the mouths of every dreamer, and fairies give babies honey cakes. Like naughty children, Black Metal's true believers blur the line between fantasy and reality, the seen and unseen, play- evil and real evil. And in this superficially Christian country, where ruddy-faced blond kids glide down slopes of perfect snow against hand-painted skis, is it any wonder Black Metal would explode? It exposes the dark side, the deep melancholy and endless winter nights, of the Norwegian soul.

Black Metal continues to stun idyllic Norway with heathen ideology and terrorist acts. Last spring, Bishop Aarflot recommended that every church in Norway post guards at its gates on June 6 at six A.M., explaining that "666 is the most important number for Satanists and that all churches would be vulnerable at this time." Churches continue to be targets for arsonists, but no one I talk to is exactly sure who is now setting the fires. "It's 13- and 14-year-old Black-Metal kids who live out in the middle of nowhere," Faust tells me. "I'm glad they're keeping it up. It means the torch has been passed, that the fire still burns."

Count Grishnackh, Norway's most notorious criminal, is now a media celebrity with a cult following-he receives more than a hundred fan letters a week. In a recent interview from his cell in Ila prison outside Oslo, the Count said he no longer wanted to be associated with Black Metal. He's now strictly a neo-Nazi, an ideology he hopes to promote through an organization called the Norwegian Heathen Front. A photograph from his prison reveals that his dyed black hair has grown back to its organic Scandinavian blond, but the hypnotic blue eyes haven't changed, Son of Odin, pagan prince of the far North, the Count bides his time reading books on Nordic history and the occult. He plans to use the postal system and computer lines to influence young people before they're brainwashed by christian society. With his guidance, he predicts, the heathened youth will bring about the new pagan era by any means necessary-
Helter Skelter, Viking style.