England

England is presented as a formative source for the musical and occult currents that later fed into Black Metal, not as the home of the Norwegian scene itself. The book traces two related strands: the renewed visibility of occultism around the end of the 1960s, and the raw, confrontational sound developed by English bands such as Venom. Both strands supplied precedents that musicians elsewhere could take up and transform.

Occult culture and popular music

During the 1960s Flower Power period, many young people in Britain and the United States turned away from inherited Christianity while searching for other forms of spiritual meaning, including Eastern mysticism and the teachings of numerous cults and sects. In this context, occult interests that had largely receded since the early decades of the century became more visible. The account treats this revival as a broad cultural change, not as evidence that all musicians or listeners shared a single belief system.

Aleister Crowley acquired an influence and prominence after his death that he had not enjoyed during his lifetime. Underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger helped bring his image and ideas before a new audience. Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin both scored music for Anger’s Crowley-inspired films, including Invocation of My Demon Brother and Lucifer Rising. The book distinguishes their levels of engagement: it describes The Rolling Stones’ connection as dabbling, while Page’s interest extended to collecting original Crowley books and manuscripts and taking a financial share in London’s Equinox occult bookshop, named for Crowley’s journal.

Venom and the English metal lineage

A more direct musical line begins with Venom, formed in 1979–80 in Newcastle upon Tyne by three musicians who adopted the stage names Cronos, Mantas, and Abaddon. Their chosen names and deliberately excessive presentation announced a band intent on pushing beyond the conventions of its contemporaries. Their sound drew on older Heavy Metal groups, including Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Judas Priest, while also absorbing the impact of Punk. Abaddon’s account of the band’s influences connects Deep Purple and Black Sabbath with the stage presence of KISS; elsewhere, he places the Sex Pistols alongside those older groups in the mix that shaped Venom.

The result was not simply a heavier version of its predecessors. Venom retained a fast, blues-based rock foundation but played it with a primitive aggression then more commonly associated with Punk. Its lyrics and presentation intensified the dark mysticism inherited from earlier metal, giving it a blunt, youthful edge. That combination drew some listeners from beyond the usual Metal audience, even as many Metal fans dismissed the band as pointlessly offensive and musically inept.

From English precedents to Norway

The book places Venom among three principal pioneers—alongside Mercyful Fate and Bathory—whose music, appearance, and philosophy helped establish the precedents for Black Metal’s later development in Norway and elsewhere. It acknowledges that other bands, including Slayer, Hellhammer, and Sodom, could also be included in this history, but gives priority to the earlier trio for chronology and primary impact. England’s contribution is therefore part of a wider lineage, not a claim that the later Norwegian genre was merely an English import.

In Norway, Mayhem occupied a locally defining position comparable to Venom’s broader importance. The Norwegian scene’s identity, the account stresses, depended as much on outlook and belief as on sound; its boundaries shifted, and no fixed rulebook governed it. By mid-1991, Darkthrone, Burzum, Immortal, Thorns, Enslaved, and Arcturus, followed later by Emperor, were in contact with Øystein Aarseth, who planned to release many of them through Deathlike Silence Productions. The English precedents mattered as material to be taken up, but the Norwegian scene formed its own atmosphere and criteria for belonging.

A scene shaped by place and recognition

That local character becomes visible in the Oslo record shop around which Aarseth’s circle gathered. Musicians and visitors were not accepted automatically: Ihsahn recalls an atmosphere in which people had to be trusted and regarded as serious before they were welcomed. Corpse paint, sometimes worn in the daytime while people shopped, made the scene’s identity visible beyond the music itself. The contrast clarifies England’s place in the history presented here: English bands and occult currents supplied influential sounds and images, while Norwegian participants built a distinct scene through their own relationships, practices, and standards of recognition.