Thy Serpent

Thy Serpent is identified as a band outside Black Metal that nonetheless drew some of the genre’s visibly marked audience to its shows. In the book’s account of the Finnish scene, the group also provides a vantage point on the distinction between the music, its followers, and the crimes associated with them.

Identity and Musical Position

Thy Serpent is described as not being a Black Metal band. Even so, it attracted some corpsepainted fans to its performances, a detail that places the group in contact with the scene without making it part of the genre itself.

Sami Tenetz and the Scene

Sami Tenetz, who wrote about Black Metal for the Finnish Heavy Metal magazine Suomi Finland Perkele, also played in Thy Serpent. His position thus joined musical participation with commentary on the scene. He argued that few people around him were committed Black Metal followers, and that some were drawn to the trend because of its criminal associations.

Tenetz also resisted attributing those followers’ troubled mental states to Black Metal or Satanism. He pointed instead to problems at home. His account distinguishes the band and the music from the behavior of a portion of the audience, rather than treating the scene as a single group with one cause or motive.

Place in the Finnish Scene

The book contrasts Finland with Norway, where crimes connected to Black Metal were associated with prominent artists: in Finland, it says, they emanated from fans. Thy Serpent’s connection to corpsepainted concertgoers belongs to this account of audience and scene, but the evidence does not identify the band or Tenetz as participants in those crimes. The distinction is central to the limited portrait available: Thy Serpent is presented as adjacent to Black Metal through its audience and its member’s writing, not as a Black Metal group or as a criminal actor.