Dead (musician)
Encyclopedia
Per Yngve Ohlin better known by his stage name Dead, was a Swedish
black metal
vocalist best known for his work with Norwegian black metal band Mayhem
. He also performed as vocalist of the Swedish death metal
band Morbid
on their demo December Moon.
Roadrunner Records
ranked Him #48 out of 50 of The Greatest Metal Frontmen of All Time.
, Sweden. During his childhood, he had many brushes with death. As a young child, he suffered from sleep apnea
and it was difficult to wake him up from it. Later, at the age of ten, he had an episode of internal bleeding
when his spleen
ruptured after an ice skating accident. He had to be rushed to a hospital, where he was for a time clinically dead. After this near-death experience he became enthralled with death and dying.
In 1986, he founded the Swedish death metal group Morbid
, with which he recorded a demo tape called December Moon. Shortly afterwards, however, he decided the band wasn't going anywhere, and through Metalion, the editor of Slayer Magazine, he got in contact with the members of Mayhem. According to Necrobutcher, he initially sent them a small package inholding a demo tape, a letter, and a crucified
mouse
. Although Necrobutcher lost the package itself, he kept the tape which had Ohlin's contact details. Ohlin moved to Norway and joined the band in 1988.
described Dead as "a very strange personality ... depressed, melancholic, and dark". Likewise, Mayhem guitarist Euronymous
once stated "I honestly think Dead is mentally insane. Which other way can you describe a guy who does not eat, in order to get starving wounds? Or who has a t-shirt with funeral announcements on it?" Drummer Kjetil Manheim
later likened Ohlin's personality to that of Marvin the Paranoid Android
.
According to Emperor
drummer Bård "Faust" Eithun
:
On the cover of Mayhem's Live in Leipzig
, Ohlin printed a message which said: Jag är inte en människa. Det här är bara en dröm, och snart vaknar jag. Det var för kallt och blodet levrades hela tiden (roughly translated: I am not a human being. This is just a dream, and soon I will awake. It was too cold and the blood kept clotting
all the time). In an article, journalist Chris Campion wrote that Dead may have suffered from Cotard delusion
; meaning that he believed himself to be dead as a result of childhood trauma.
", which involved covering his face with black and white makeup. According to Necrobutcher, "It wasn't anything to do with the way Kiss
and Alice Cooper
used makeup. Dead actually wanted to look like a corpse. He didn't do it to look cool". Hellhammer claimed that Dead "was the first black metal musician to use corpse paint".
To fulfill his corpse-like image, Dead would bury his clothes and dig them up again to wear on the night of a concert. According to Hellhammer:
During one tour with Mayhem, he found a dead crow
and kept it in a plastic bag. He often carried it about with him and would smell the bird before going onstage, to sing "with the stench of death in his nostrils".
In an interview for Slayer magazine, Dead explained how he and the band tried to weed-out poseurs at their concerts:
onstage with a blade or broken bottle. However, he also tried to do so while with his friends, who would have to subdue him and patch him up. Although this upset many of his friends, Euronymous became fascinated with Ohlin's suicidal tendencies—seemingly because it fit Mayhem's image—and he would often encourage Ohlin to kill himself.
In early 1991, Varg Vikernes
sent Ohlin several shotgun shells as a present for either his birthday or Christmas. In April, Ohlin was left alone in Mayhem's countryside house. On 8 April 1991, Ohlin slit his wrists and throat with a kitchen knife, but eventually tired of waiting and shot himself in the forehead with a shotgun using the shells sent by Vikernes. He left a brief suicide note, which apologized for having used the gun indoors and ended with: "Excuse all the blood".
The body was found by Euronymous, who had to climb through an open window as the doors were locked and there were no other keys to the house. Upon finding the body, he got a camera and took several pictures of the corpse. He also allegedly kept bits of Ohlin's shattered skull. His motive for doing so is unclear; Necrobutcher speculated that forcing others to see the pictures was a way for Euronymous to cope with the shock of seeing his friend dead. After Hellhammer developed the photos
, Euronymous initially promised to destroy the pictures, but ultimately did not: He would carry an envelope with the images in Helvete, and eventually one of the pictures found its way as the cover of the bootleg live album Dawn of the Black Hearts
, which was released in 1995.
The suicide caused a rift between Euronymous and his friends, who were disgusted by his attitude towards Ohlin before the suicide, and his behavior afterwards. Necrobutcher and Manheim said that they ended their friendships with Euronymous. Manheim later speculated that Euronymous had wilfully left Ohlin alone in the house so that he would have a chance to kill himself. Ohlin's suicide was said to cause "a change in mentality" in the black metal scene and was the first in a string of infamous events carried out by its members.
An obituary in a Swedish newspaper stated that Ohlin's funeral was held at Österhaninge kyrka (Eastern Haninge Church) on Friday 26 April 1991 at 10:00 am. He was buried at Österhaninge kyrkogård (Eastern Haninge graveyard) in Stockholm.
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
black metal
Black metal
Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure....
vocalist best known for his work with Norwegian black metal band Mayhem
Mayhem (band)
Mayhem is a Norwegian black metal band formed in 1984 in Oslo, Norway and regarded as one of the pioneers of the influential Norwegian black metal scene...
. He also performed as vocalist of the Swedish death metal
Death metal
Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal. It typically employs heavily distorted guitars, tremolo picking, deep growling vocals, blast beat drumming, minor keys or atonality, and complex song structures with multiple tempo changes....
band Morbid
Morbid (band)
- Biography :Morbid was formed in Stockholm, Sweden in 1986. With Per Yngve "Dead" Ohlin as the group's founder and mastermind, they had a revolving door of members before settling on the line-up of John "John Lennart" Hagström and "TG" on guitars, Jens Näsström on bass and Lars-Göran Petrov on...
on their demo December Moon.
Roadrunner Records
Roadrunner Records
Roadrunner Records is an American record label that concentrates primarily on heavy metal bands. It is currently a subsidiary of Warner Music Group.-History:...
ranked Him #48 out of 50 of The Greatest Metal Frontmen of All Time.
Biography
Ohlin was born in 1969 in StockholmStockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, Sweden. During his childhood, he had many brushes with death. As a young child, he suffered from sleep apnea
Sleep apnea
Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder characterized by abnormal pauses in breathing or instances of abnormally low breathing, during sleep. Each pause in breathing, called an apnea, can last from a few seconds to minutes, and may occur 5 to 30 times or more an hour. Similarly, each abnormally low...
and it was difficult to wake him up from it. Later, at the age of ten, he had an episode of internal bleeding
Internal bleeding
Internal bleeding is bleeding occurring inside the body. It can be a serious medical emergency depending on where it occurs , and can potentially cause death and cardiac arrest if proper medical treatment is not received quickly....
when his spleen
Spleen
The spleen is an organ found in virtually all vertebrate animals with important roles in regard to red blood cells and the immune system. In humans, it is located in the left upper quadrant of the abdomen. It removes old red blood cells and holds a reserve of blood in case of hemorrhagic shock...
ruptured after an ice skating accident. He had to be rushed to a hospital, where he was for a time clinically dead. After this near-death experience he became enthralled with death and dying.
In 1986, he founded the Swedish death metal group Morbid
Morbid (band)
- Biography :Morbid was formed in Stockholm, Sweden in 1986. With Per Yngve "Dead" Ohlin as the group's founder and mastermind, they had a revolving door of members before settling on the line-up of John "John Lennart" Hagström and "TG" on guitars, Jens Näsström on bass and Lars-Göran Petrov on...
, with which he recorded a demo tape called December Moon. Shortly afterwards, however, he decided the band wasn't going anywhere, and through Metalion, the editor of Slayer Magazine, he got in contact with the members of Mayhem. According to Necrobutcher, he initially sent them a small package inholding a demo tape, a letter, and a crucified
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
mouse
Mouse
A mouse is a small mammal belonging to the order of rodents. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse . It is also a popular pet. In some places, certain kinds of field mice are also common. This rodent is eaten by large birds such as hawks and eagles...
. Although Necrobutcher lost the package itself, he kept the tape which had Ohlin's contact details. Ohlin moved to Norway and joined the band in 1988.
Personality
In interviews, fellow musicians often described Dead as odd and introverted. Fellow bandmember HellhammerJan Axel Blomberg
Jan Axel "Hellhammer" Blomberg is a three time Spellemannprisen award-winning heavy metal drummer. He is most well known for his drumming with the band Mayhem, with which he began his career...
described Dead as "a very strange personality ... depressed, melancholic, and dark". Likewise, Mayhem guitarist Euronymous
Euronymous
Øystein Aarseth , who went by the pseudonym Euronymous, was a Norwegian guitarist and co-founder of the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem...
once stated "I honestly think Dead is mentally insane. Which other way can you describe a guy who does not eat, in order to get starving wounds? Or who has a t-shirt with funeral announcements on it?" Drummer Kjetil Manheim
Kjetil Manheim
Kjetil Esten Haraldsson Manheim, , was the drummer for the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. During this time, he went by the stage name Manheim.-Biography:...
later likened Ohlin's personality to that of Marvin the Paranoid Android
Marvin the Paranoid Android
Marvin, the Paranoid Android, is a fictional character in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. Marvin is the ship's robot aboard the starship Heart of Gold...
.
According to Emperor
Emperor (band)
Emperor was a Norwegian black metal band formed in 1991. They dissolved in 2001, but reunited in 2006 and again in 2007 for a few festival dates and brief US tours. The group was founded by Samoth and Ihsahn .-Biography:...
drummer Bård "Faust" Eithun
Bård Faust
Bård Guldvik "Faust" Eithun is a Norwegian drummer. He is best known for his work with early black metal band Emperor, especially on the releases As the Shadows Rise and In the Nightside Eclipse...
:
"He [Dead] wasn’t a guy you could know very well. I think even the other guys in Mayhem didn’t know him very well. He was hard to get close to. I met him two weeks before he died. I’d met him maybe six to eight times, in all. He had lots of weird ideas. I remember Aarseth was talking about him and said he did not have any humour. He did, but it was very obscure. Honestly, I don’t think he was enjoying living in this world, which of course resulted in the suicide."
On the cover of Mayhem's Live in Leipzig
Live in Leipzig
-Credits:*Dead - vocals*Euronymous - guitar*Necrobutcher - bass*Hellhammer - drums...
, Ohlin printed a message which said: Jag är inte en människa. Det här är bara en dröm, och snart vaknar jag. Det var för kallt och blodet levrades hela tiden (roughly translated: I am not a human being. This is just a dream, and soon I will awake. It was too cold and the blood kept clotting
Coagulation
Coagulation is a complex process by which blood forms clots. It is an important part of hemostasis, the cessation of blood loss from a damaged vessel, wherein a damaged blood vessel wall is covered by a platelet and fibrin-containing clot to stop bleeding and begin repair of the damaged vessel...
all the time). In an article, journalist Chris Campion wrote that Dead may have suffered from Cotard delusion
Cotard delusion
The Cotard delusion or Cotard's syndrome or Walking Corpse Syndrome is a rare neuropsychiatric disorder in which people hold a delusional belief that they are dead , do not exist, are putrefying, or have lost their blood or internal organs...
; meaning that he believed himself to be dead as a result of childhood trauma.
Performances
For concerts, Dead went to great lengths to achieve the image and atmosphere he wished. From the beginning of his career he was known to wear "corpse paintCorpse paint
Corpse paint or corpsepaint is a style of black-and-white makeup, used mainly by black metal bands during live concerts and photo shoots. The makeup is used to intensify the bands' imagery of evil, inhumanity, and corpse-like decay. It is most commonly used just on the face, but also on arms and...
", which involved covering his face with black and white makeup. According to Necrobutcher, "It wasn't anything to do with the way Kiss
KISS (band)
Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,...
and Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
used makeup. Dead actually wanted to look like a corpse. He didn't do it to look cool". Hellhammer claimed that Dead "was the first black metal musician to use corpse paint".
To fulfill his corpse-like image, Dead would bury his clothes and dig them up again to wear on the night of a concert. According to Hellhammer:
Before the shows, Dead used to bury his clothes into the ground so that they could start to rot and get that "grave" scent. He was a "corpse" on a stage. Once he even asked us to bury him in the ground - he wanted his skin to become pale.
During one tour with Mayhem, he found a dead crow
Crow
Crows form the genus Corvus in the family Corvidae. Ranging in size from the relatively small pigeon-size jackdaws to the Common Raven of the Holarctic region and Thick-billed Raven of the highlands of Ethiopia, the 40 or so members of this genus occur on all temperate continents and several...
and kept it in a plastic bag. He often carried it about with him and would smell the bird before going onstage, to sing "with the stench of death in his nostrils".
In an interview for Slayer magazine, Dead explained how he and the band tried to weed-out poseurs at their concerts:
Before we began to play there was a crowd of about 300 in there, but in the second song "Necrolust" we began to throw around those pig heads. Only 50 were left, I liked that! ... We wanna scare those shouldn't be at our concerts, and they will have to escape through the emergency exit with parts of their body missing, so we can have something to throw around. ... If someone doesn't like blood and rotten flesh thrown in their face they can fuck off, and that's exactly what they do.
Self-harm and suicide
In time, Ohlin's social situation and his fascination with death caused his mental state to worsen greatly. He would often cut himselfSelf-harm
Self-harm or deliberate self-harm includes self-injury and self-poisoning and is defined as the intentional, direct injuring of body tissue most often done without suicidal intentions. These terms are used in the more recent literature in an attempt to reach a more neutral terminology...
onstage with a blade or broken bottle. However, he also tried to do so while with his friends, who would have to subdue him and patch him up. Although this upset many of his friends, Euronymous became fascinated with Ohlin's suicidal tendencies—seemingly because it fit Mayhem's image—and he would often encourage Ohlin to kill himself.
In early 1991, Varg Vikernes
Varg Vikernes
Varg Vikernes is a Norwegian black metal musician, writer, philosopher, religious and political activist, arsonist and convicted murderer.Vikernes was born near Bergen, Norway. In 1991, he founded the one-man music project Burzum, which quickly became popular within the early Norwegian black metal...
sent Ohlin several shotgun shells as a present for either his birthday or Christmas. In April, Ohlin was left alone in Mayhem's countryside house. On 8 April 1991, Ohlin slit his wrists and throat with a kitchen knife, but eventually tired of waiting and shot himself in the forehead with a shotgun using the shells sent by Vikernes. He left a brief suicide note, which apologized for having used the gun indoors and ended with: "Excuse all the blood".
The body was found by Euronymous, who had to climb through an open window as the doors were locked and there were no other keys to the house. Upon finding the body, he got a camera and took several pictures of the corpse. He also allegedly kept bits of Ohlin's shattered skull. His motive for doing so is unclear; Necrobutcher speculated that forcing others to see the pictures was a way for Euronymous to cope with the shock of seeing his friend dead. After Hellhammer developed the photos
Photographic processing
Photographic processing is the chemical means by which photographic film and paper is treated after photographic exposure to produce a negative or positive image...
, Euronymous initially promised to destroy the pictures, but ultimately did not: He would carry an envelope with the images in Helvete, and eventually one of the pictures found its way as the cover of the bootleg live album Dawn of the Black Hearts
Dawn of the Black Hearts
Dawn of the Black Hearts is a bootleg live album by the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. It is infamous for bearing a photograph of Mayhem's vocalist, Dead , after his suicide in April 1991. This photograph was allegedly taken by Mayhem's guitarist, Euronymous , upon discovering Dead's body...
, which was released in 1995.
The suicide caused a rift between Euronymous and his friends, who were disgusted by his attitude towards Ohlin before the suicide, and his behavior afterwards. Necrobutcher and Manheim said that they ended their friendships with Euronymous. Manheim later speculated that Euronymous had wilfully left Ohlin alone in the house so that he would have a chance to kill himself. Ohlin's suicide was said to cause "a change in mentality" in the black metal scene and was the first in a string of infamous events carried out by its members.
An obituary in a Swedish newspaper stated that Ohlin's funeral was held at Österhaninge kyrka (Eastern Haninge Church) on Friday 26 April 1991 at 10:00 am. He was buried at Österhaninge kyrkogård (Eastern Haninge graveyard) in Stockholm.
Discography
| Title | Band | Recorded | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Morbid Rehearsal | Morbid | August 7, 1987 | Demo album |
| December Moon | Morbid | December 25, 1987 | Demo album |
| Dawn of the Black Hearts Dawn of the Black Hearts Dawn of the Black Hearts is a bootleg live album by the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. It is infamous for bearing a photograph of Mayhem's vocalist, Dead , after his suicide in April 1991. This photograph was allegedly taken by Mayhem's guitarist, Euronymous , upon discovering Dead's body... |
Mayhem | February 28, 1990 | Bootleg live recording Bootleg recording A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging... |
| Freezing Moon/Carnage | Mayhem | April 1990 | Studio recording Studio recording The term studio recording means any recording made in a studio, as opposed to a live recording, which is usually made in a concert venue or a theatre, with an audience attending the performance.-Studio cast recordings:... |
| Live in Leipzig Live in Leipzig -Credits:*Dead - vocals*Euronymous - guitar*Necrobutcher - bass*Hellhammer - drums... |
Mayhem | November 26, 1990 | Live performance Concert A concert is a live performance before an audience. The performance may be by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, a choir, or a musical band... |
| Out from the Dark Out From The Dark Out from the Dark is an album by the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. It consists of a rehearsal from early 1991, but it was not officially released until 1996.... |
Mayhem | Early 1991 | Demo album |