- ORIGINAL STORY © - BY: VARG VIKERNES - http://www.burzum.org/eng/library/a_burzum_story02.shtml
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It has been kind of interesting to see how some people have felt a need to make up stories regarding the why I ended up killing Euronymous. It is sad to see that people make up stories just because the truth is uncomfortable to them.
In 1991 most of the metal musicians in Norway believed Euronymous was a so-called cool guy, but in mid or late 1992 most of us realized that he was not. When DSP (Deathlike Silence Productions), his label, released the Burzum debut album, in March 1992, he had to take up a loan to be able to pay for it. He couldn't afford it himself, and he loaned the money from me. When he sold all the Burzum albums he paid his private bills rather than print more records - or pay me back the money he owned me (and I never saw any royalties either, for that sake). So when he was sold out he had no money to print more records. This is probably the reason why some people think I killed him for money, but certainly I wouldn't have gotten my money back by killing him. Breaking his legs would probably have worked, but not killing him. I can always get more money if I want to and I never invest any more than I can afford to loose, anyhow. I have a very relaxed relationship to money, so this rumour is just silly, and it was only talk about 36.000 NOK anyhow (about 5100 USD, about and average month's pay in Norway).
I took the consequence of his incompetence and stupidity and started up my own label, called Burznazg (in Tolkien's Black Speech that is "Dark Ring"), that was later (in late 1992) changed to Cymophane (Greek: "Wave to appear", the name of a gem that is shaped like an eye), and decided to do everything myself. I didn't need him. All he did was to sit on his fat arse in his shop and drink Coca Cola and eat kebab anyway. His shop was going down the drain, and it was only a matter of time before he (and thus DSP) was bankrupt.
We hadn't given up on him just yet though, not completely, and as a final attempt to get his shop going we agreed that I should do an interview for a newspaper to give metal-music some attention. He was out of Burzum albums, but he had other albums for sale in his shop. When I did the anonymous interview in January 1993 I exaggerated a lot and when the journalist left we - a girl and I - had a good laugh, because he didn't seem to understand that I was pulling his leg. He took everything dead serious. Unfortunately he went to the police the next day (the 19th) and had me arrested, and (the 20th) his newspaper printed his version of what I had said while I was in a holding cell unable to tell anybody that it was just a load of crap I had said to create some interest in a music genre - to help Euronymous get some customers for a change.
The interesting thing is that when I was arrested Euronymous closed down the shop instead of taking advantage of the situation, because his parents thought the attention was too uncomfortable! So the "evil" Black Metal hero did what his mother and father told him to! Pretty pathetic, alright, but by doing so he also made all my efforts more or less pointless. I spent six weeks in custody because of that, and all he did was to close down the shop! The customers came in droves, but to a closed shop! How stupid is that?!
When I got out from prison I was pretty disillusioned by all that had happened in the media, and the police had made such a mess for me when they had their raid in my apartment that it was hard to run Cymophane like I had planned to. At the same time DSP had (possibly because of the media stunt) gotten a distribution deal with a company in Oslo, and could start printing and selling DSP records again.
