Original Euronymous Letters Up for Sale

Poor Euronymous. It’s like one day, you’re just this innocent kid, making rock n’ roll with your buds, running a record store, and preaching violent, militant bigotry, and the next day, your sociopathic, RPG-loving friend who’s envious of all the attention you’re getting stabs you twenty-three times. A tragic tale as old as time. Could have happened to any of us.

The co-founder of Mayhem and Svarte Sirkel and proprietor of metal’s most famous record store may be dead, but he lives on in our hearts. And now, for a few hundred dollars, he can also live on in your memorabilia collection. Serialkillersink.net, “a website dedicated to selling original items from infamous criminals, mass murderers and serial killers,” has come into possession of five letter and envelope sets written by one Øystein Aarseth himself in 1992. Written on a typewriter (the envelopes have Aarseth’s actual handwriting on them), these one-of-a-kind pieces of black metal history include all sorts of fascinating  revelations, such as Euronymous’ willingness to respect the tastes of Madonna fans, his talent for insult comedy “…most of these bands aren’t DEATH metal at all, they’re life metal”), and the fact that he thought Necrobutcher was a “wimp.” There’s also one which begins “Dark shall the kingdom be”  and is signed “War and sodomy,” which is how I plan to start and conclude every correspondence for the rest of my life, or at least the rest of the day.

You can check out a couple of samples of the goods below; all of the letters are viewable here. As of this writing, two of ’em have already been sold, but three are still available for either $250 or $300.