Old Funeral

Old Funeral was a Death Metal band associated with Bergen and an early point of connection between Varg Vikernes and the musicians who would shape Norwegian Black Metal. Its significance in the account lies less in documented releases or performances than in this transitional role: Vikernes left the group dissatisfied with its concerns, while musicians from its later remnants went on to form Immortal.

Identity and Bergen Setting

The book places Old Funeral in Bergen, on Norway’s west coast, where Vikernes lived. It describes Bergen as a city with an aristocratic sense of independence from other parts of the country, particularly Oslo. Vikernes had played guitar for years before joining Old Funeral, then a Death Metal band; the account does not give the group’s formation date or a full membership history.

Vikernes’s Period in the Band

At the time, Vikernes was identified as Kristian Vikernes; he later legally changed his first name to Varg. A charismatic teenager absorbed by successive fixations, he joined Old Funeral but soon became dissatisfied with what he regarded as the band’s superficiality and juvenile concerns. Playing with the group nevertheless brought him into contact with people who would become important in Black Metal, including musicians who later formed Immortal and Øystein Aarseth, known as Euronymous.

Leaving Old Funeral marked a change in how Vikernes pursued music. He formed a one-man project to exercise complete control over his work. Initially named Uruk-Hai, it was renamed Burzum, a Tolkien-derived word meaning darkness. The account presents this move toward solitary authorship as a departure from the group setting in which he had first made those scene connections.

From Death Metal to Black Metal

Old Funeral is identified as a Death Metal band, while the surrounding scene was taking shape through music and shifting attitudes rather than a fixed ideological rulebook. The book emphasizes that the boundaries of Norwegian Black Metal changed over time and that influential personalities helped define them. Old Funeral’s place in this transition is therefore specific but limited: it was Vikernes’s earlier band, not described as a Black Metal group in its own right.

The band’s later history connects it more directly to the new genre. Immortal emerged from the remains of Old Funeral, linking the earlier Bergen group to one of the bands that soon claimed the Black Metal name. Vikernes’s path and Immortal’s beginnings thus diverged from the same starting point: one led from the band toward Burzum, the other from its remnants toward a new group.

Place in the Scene’s Network

By mid-1991, Darkthrone, Burzum, Immortal, Thorns, Enslaved, Arcturus, and later Emperor were in contact with Aarseth, who planned to release most of them through Deathlike Silence Productions. Old Funeral is not listed as part of this circle; its connection runs through the musicians it helped bring together, especially Vikernes and the later members of Immortal. The book describes the scene around Aarseth’s record shop as selective and status-conscious: acceptance depended on being trusted and regarded as serious in one’s views. Against that backdrop, Old Funeral matters as an early musical and social link in a network whose identities and boundaries were still being made.