Jon Kristiansen

Jon Kristiansen, better known as Metalion, was both a participant in and a chronicler of Norway’s underground extreme-metal scene. Through Slayer magazine and recollections built from years of contact with musicians, he offers a close view of Norwegian Black Metal’s emergence: its isolation, its developing standards of authenticity, and the transformation of Mayhem from a raw local band into one of the scene’s defining groups.

Identity and Underground Work

Kristiansen published Slayer magazine from his home in Sarpsborg for seventeen years, as described in the book. He was not simply a distant commentator: he had been observing and participating in Norway’s extreme-metal underground for as long as anyone in the country, and his recollections were used to piece together the scene’s early history. The magazine became one of the durable records of a musical world that initially had few participants and little public visibility.

His commitment was personal as well as documentary. Kristiansen described Black Metal and Death Metal as central to his life and destiny, with no alternative to total dedication. That intensity helps explain why a magazine could function as more than a publication: it connected people who had first encountered the music in isolation and preserved accounts of a scene whose members and boundaries were still taking shape.

Discovering Mayhem

Kristiansen’s enthusiasm for the music began in 1982, a year after Venom released its first singles. At that point, he recalled, there was almost no comparable activity in Norway; he pursued the music alone and knew no one else who shared his interest. It took several years to find others with similar tastes. The first issue of Slayer appeared in 1985, turning his solitary commitment into a means of reaching a scattered underground audience.

That same year, outside a Motörhead concert, he encountered members of Mayhem. They told him about their band while he was selling the magazine. The contact developed over the following months, but the group had not yet made a demo when they first met. Mayhem recorded its first demo, Pure Fucking Armageddon, in the summer of 1986. Kristiansen remembered it as exceptionally primitive and brutal for its time, a sound more extreme than anything else he had heard then.

Mayhem’s live history was still slight. Before Kristiansen met them, the band had played only one show, largely covering material by Celtic Frost, Bathory, and Venom, with its original singer, Messiah. He recalled that they had no real songs of their own at that stage. His testimony therefore captures an early point before the group’s later reputation had solidified: a small band with an extreme sound, but only the beginnings of a distinct body of work.

Releases, Reputation, and Image

Mayhem followed its first demo with a second and then released the Deathcrush mini-album in 1987. In Kristiansen’s account, the band began to build a name and attract serious fans only after that release. The slow pace of its output was associated with either financial difficulties or Øystein Aarseth’s insistence on controlling every aspect of production. The scarcity of live performances added to the significance of the few that took place; they became remembered milestones rather than routine appearances.

Kristiansen also recalled that Mayhem’s early look was not yet the deliberately macabre uniform later associated with Norwegian Black Metal. The members wore black clothes and leather jackets, which he regarded as ordinary for the time. Aarseth subsequently adopted corpsepaint for concerts and band photographs. The shift marked a distinction between simply dressing within an existing metal style and constructing a conspicuous visual identity—one that became a recognizable feature of the emerging genre.

Witness and Historical Record

Kristiansen’s value to the book lies partly in the precision of his recollections: the first contact, the absence of demos, the covers at Mayhem’s lone early show, the sound of the 1986 recording, and the band’s gradual rise after Deathcrush. These details give the scene a chronology that is less mythic than its later reputation. They show a development made through small encounters, scarce releases, and a growing circle of listeners rather than a fully formed movement appearing all at once.

His access to information about the church burnings also had limits that matter. Asked how he learned of the first church burned in Bergen, Kristiansen said that his information came directly from Aarseth, who told him that Grishnackh had burned it. His account establishes how news circulated inside the underground, but does not present Kristiansen as an eyewitness to the arson. Across the book, he serves most clearly as an insider chronicler: close enough to record the scene’s language and turning points, while his testimony remains distinguishable from events he learned about second-hand.