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
