Per Yngve Ohlin was a Swedish vocalist for the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. He was known as "Dead", and liked to dress up as a corpse, sometimes burying his clothes weeks before a concert so that they could be rotting and worm-infested when he performed. While on one tour, he kept the corpse of a raven in a plastic bag, inhaling from it before performing in order to smell death. He would also cut himself with knives or broken bottles while performing, on one occasion even having to go to hospital to recover from the blood loss. On April 8, 1991, a fellow band member found him dead -- actually dead. He had tried to slit his wrists, but the knife was too dull, so he had shot himself in the head using a shotgun, leaving a note that read "Excuse all the blood" and further apologizing for using a shotgun in the house. His friend jumped in the car and drove to buy a disposable camera so that he could record the tableau, which he later used as an album cover. For real. He also took fragments of the skull to make necklaces, or perhaps to mail out to worthy metal bands....all rumours which he later denied.
It's easy to Google the image of his actual corpse on the album cover, if you're interested; I won't put it here because it's pretty grisly and you may not want to look at it today.
Sources: Wikipedia, Fan Site
8 comments:
I hate to be mean-spirited, but the jag who took those photos was murdered a couple of years later by an equally sociopathic associate, and I feel justice was served. He was never anything but nasty as hell to a person who obviously had severe mental problems. I hope the poor guy is resting in peace. His life was obviously not a happy one.
Per Yngve Ohlin R.I.P
You were the reson i took up Death Metal .
Never forgotten
R.I.P
Anonymous:
Mayhem was black metal just as much as it is now.
Wtf is wrong with you =|
well, Euronymous was hardly a friend... thanks a lot for this blog.
In Life Eternal, one of the last songs Dead wrote, he proclaims "What will be left of me when I'm dead?/There was nothing when I lived/What you found was eternal death/No one will ever miss you." But it's been eighteen years to the day since Dead killed himself, and we're still remembering him, and missing him.
Dead was a deep and private man, with much going on under the surface. Everyone mourns his death, saying his suicide was a terrible tragedy, but he knew more about life and death than most people are comfortable with. For him, suicide was not a tragedy, but a triumph of sorts, a release.
So happy deathday, Dead.
DEAD... you are really the person who got me into BLACK METAL..your memory lives on dude
eu vou degolar todas as suas gargantas
Yege... He probably needed help. Maybe he had a mood disorder called "melanchonic depression". Thats how he felt all the time. He didin't like anything in this life... thothing but pain and death brought him some kind of pleasure as it seems. Euronymous said that he only lives for black metal.
Im so impressed with his obssesion in DEATH.
And I love him... I think of him a lot... I dont know why is he so special to me.
I wish theres a way we can know him better.
Post a Comment