Thulean Archives

The inner circle. Is there anything to that, or is it just absolute nonsense? Let's find out. I have already explained to you how the purpose of black metal was originality,^[1] anti death metal and doing something of your own, not following the herd and so forth. But you see, this was not the motivation for all of us. For Euronymous, for example,^[2] black metal was about gatekeeping. And the purpose of gatekeeping, for his sake, was not about originality, was not about forcing people to do something of their own. It was about preventing others from reaching success.^[3] You see, both Darkthrone and Burzum released albums in February and March 1992, and they had pretty great success, you know, relatively speaking. And then Immortal came with their album in September 92.^[4] And then I think Enslaved and Emperor released some sort of album where they had 50/50 in late 92.^[5] And all sorts of bands started to change from death metal to black metal. And it became really popular. It became a new trend, as I have explained. And in the meanwhile, Mayhem was not very successful. They barely rehearsed. And it was made up of only Hellhammer and Euronymous. Because Necrobutcher didn't want anything to do with Euronymous at the time.^[6] And from Euronymous' point of view, all of this was a disaster. Because everybody else became famous,^[7] everybody else sold records, everybody else became popular. But Mayhem was just sitting there doing nothing. So he started with what essentially was gatekeeping,^[8] trying to keep others from playing black metal. You see, Euronymous became so desperate that at one point he visited a band and threatened them and told them, you're not gonna play black metal. And all the time, his motivation was to prevent others from becoming more famous than Mayhem. And mind you, this is something I realized in hindsight, I didn't realize at the time. So when he started with this "black circle", which was intended by him to be some sort of "black metal mafia" that would, you know, make sure that nobody else played black metal, we played along because we didn't take it seriously, and we pretended that his fictional "inner circle" existed for a short time, mind you. And his point here was to sit in his shop and prevent others from becoming successful. Because that was his objective. That was his whole purpose behind all of this, to prevent others from reaching success when his band was a failure. And I'm pretty sure this was his problem in 1991, too,^[9] when he started objecting to these death metal bands. Because the death metal bands he talked about are really famous.^[10] They became big bands, and they were really popular. And as from his point of view, he was 24 in 91, I think, or maybe 23. And from his point of view, they were just kids and why would they have success when his "veteran" band was a failure? He didn't like that. And that's what The inner circle was all about. His little idea that others shouldn't play black metal because he didn't want them to become more famous than Mayhem was. And like I said, the others didn't really take it seriously,^[11] played along for some time and didn't really realise what his motivation behind all this was. In one word, he was really envious. And mind you, when I made the interview, in a January 1993, I made an anonymous interview. I wanted to be anonymous. And of course that didn't work because the journalists doxed me.^[12] But that was my intention because the purpose of the interview was to give attention to black metal and in particular his shop. And the effect of that interview was that the journalists were interested in talking to me. They weren't interested in talking to this chubby, crop top wearing freak show in Oslo. They wanted to talk to me. I had accidentally become famous, I had accidentally^[13] received a lot of attention and he was incredibly envious. And because of that he became hostile towards me and in particular when I didn't want anything to do with him. And on top of this, as he saw it, Burzum had become famous because of him. Because Burzum had been on his "great" DSP label. And he had very aggressively promoted Burzum in 1992^[14] in the black metal scene. And spread all sorts of rumors, but very few of them are true. But anyhow.^[15] And he had done that because he wanted, you know, to scare people away from the scene. To gatekeep. And I know I've said this before, but you can read all about this in "To Hell & Back Again: My Complete Story" the book, where I go into details about all of this. But if you can't get that book or can't afford it, I think you can still be able to pick up the whole story piece by piece by watching my videos. I'll keep talking about this subject,^[16] and eventually I think I will have covered the whole topic. Thanks for watching.

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1. ... in one of my videos.
2. The only example I know of...
3. "If you have not listened to metal music as long as I have, you are not
   trve bruh... and cannot play Black Metal."
4. Immortal did NOT claim to play black metal...
   To avoid having to deal with this BS.
5. A split...
6. ... he no longer had a vocalist either...
7. The recording of DMDS was not finished until mid 1993.
8. In mid 1991.
9. In early 1991...
10. Having his vocalist pull the plug on himself did NOT help...
11. Nobody else had such petty ideas...
12. ... after promising not to, of course.
13. Introvert Varg was NOT happy about it...
14. ... as part of his gatekeeping efforts.
15. I didn't know about all of this, and did not care about little that I knew about.
16. For free.