Ihsahn

Ihsahn, the singer in Emperor, offers an account of Norwegian Black Metal as both a close-knit scene organized around tests of belonging and a set of ideas that changed as its participants matured. His recollections place him among the people who felt the force of its early provocations, including the church burnings, but also show him later distinguishing spectacle from philosophy. Across his account, extremity shifts from something performed for recognition into a more personal and durable way of thinking.

Identity and Place in the Scene

As Emperor emerged alongside bands including Darkthrone, Immortal, and Burzum, Ihsahn became one of the scene’s prominent musicians. The book describes him as a key personality whose thinking had developed beyond the comparatively primitive forms of Devil worship it associates with many Black Metal musicians. His significance rests not only on his position in Emperor, one of the scene’s popular and distinctive-sounding bands, but also on his later reflections about how its beliefs and practices changed.

His recollection of the Helvete record shop captures the social structure that shaped the scene. People came there seeking acceptance; trust and perceived seriousness mattered, and the shop carried an atmosphere of respect for Euronymous and the older participants. Some visitors wore corpse paint even during the day, a conspicuous display that Ihsahn considered foolish in some circumstances. Yet the clothing was only one visible part of a more consequential process: people wanted to be recognized as committed, and entry into the circle depended on judgments made by those already inside it. Ihsahn remembered the shop as a powerful environment, at once a meeting place and a setting in which belonging was tested.

Church Burnings and Collective Identity

Ihsahn described several different reasons people gave for burning churches. For some, the act symbolized opposition to Christianity; others sought to prove themselves to respected figures in the scene, while still others were drawn to the act as a way of being bad or shocking. His account does not reduce the burnings to a single motive. It shows how a shared act could carry different meanings for participants, from ideological statement to a bid for recognition or provocation for its own sake.

He first learned about the fires from the news. Later, he encountered Varg Vikernes, who told him he had burned a church and showed him photographs. Ihsahn recalled being impressed by the act and said that it resonated with anti-Christian ideas already discussed in the scene. He was excited at the time, and retained anti-Christian views later, though he said their grounds had changed. The episode thus marks both continuity and change: the opposition to Christianity remained, while his understanding of why he held it developed.

The fires also gave the scene a powerful sense of collective identity. Ihsahn remembered people being inspired to do something similar and feeling that the destruction belonged to the group. He compared that attachment to the bond formed by people making music together: in both cases, participants felt personally invested in something they had created together. The comparison reveals the scene’s internal logic without making its actions equivalent in consequence. Destruction, in his recollection, could be treated as a collective production and as a declaration of solidarity against the surrounding world.

The Murder of Euronymous and Its Meaning

Ihsahn learned of Euronymous’s murder from a television broadcast. Hearing Euronymous’s name, he immediately suspected that Vikernes had killed him, then called Samoth to share that suspicion. He knew the two men were no longer friends and that they hated one another, but Samoth initially doubted Vikernes could be responsible. Ihsahn recalled being shocked, in part because he had known Euronymous well. At the same time, he said that Euronymous’s death did not change anything else for him personally.

In reflecting on their conflict, Ihsahn described both men as having wanted power and leadership within the scene. He connected their competing importance to different kinds of influence: Vikernes had initiated the church burnings, while Euronymous had run the shop and helped establish the scene. Ihsahn presented this as a possible interpretation, not a settled explanation, and acknowledged that he might be speculating. His account therefore preserves the distinction between what he knew—the conflict and mutual hostility—and what he could only infer about the motives behind the killing.

From Provocation to Personal Philosophy

Ihsahn described his younger self as more extreme in dress and more concerned with demonstrating difference. Strongly displayed views were a way to provoke a response and thereby confirm his identity. As he grew older, he developed more rational views and no longer felt a need to prove either his beliefs or his identity as a Satanist to other people. The change was not a renunciation of his commitments; it was a movement away from public proof as their measure.

He also judged the early Norwegian Black Metal scene as more intent on being evil than on following a coherent Satanic philosophy. Participants took the ideal seriously, he recalled, but found it difficult to live up to a demand for such extreme hatred and evil. In his later account, Satanic philosophy could be creative rather than simply destructive: it required breaking down prior assumptions to make room for new impressions, while placing emphasis on the self and the people one cared about. He described that process as difficult and pressurizing, and believed that not everyone would pass through it.

His understanding of Satanism combined philosophical, emotional, and artistic elements. He had read Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Bible and was drawn both to its ideas and to its imagery, but described that encounter as an early influence rather than a permanent doctrinal allegiance. Over time, he took in other influences, formed his own ideas, and came to say that he shared no one else’s views in the scene. He distinguished his own Satanism from ritual practice, describing it instead as a philosophy connected to explanations for anti-Christian behavior. The music he created mattered just as much: he sought to invest it with his emotions, and regarded that creative and spiritual dimension as growing stronger with knowledge.

Ihsahn treated this commitment as central to his life, not as a posture he could abandon when it became inconvenient. He said that he could not imagine becoming anything other than a Satanist, even if he had been raised in another environment, and that the belief had affected his thinking and his whole life. It could bring difficulty: he lived in a small town where people knew who he was, and he encountered skepticism at work. At times anonymity would have been easier, but he said those costs were not enough to make him give up his beliefs. His development therefore ends not in moderation understood as withdrawal, but in a quieter certainty: he no longer needed to perform conviction for an audience because he regarded it as an enduring part of himself.