Suicide Album Cover

October 20, 2006 1:12 AM

I'm looking for the story beind an album cover for (i think) a death metal band. The picture on the cover was supposedly taken by one band member posing with another band member that had committed suicide.

If I remember correctly, the lead singer of the band had killed himself via pistol. Another band member crawled through a window, found his bandmate dead and took a picture of himself posing with the dead body of the singer. They then used this picture for the cover art of one of their albums. I remember seeing the photo and the story but I can't remember the specifics.

posted by bob sarabia to media & arts (5 comments total)

That would be "Dawn of the Black Hearts."

The dead fellow being "Dead" AKA Per Yngve Ohlin, the band is Mayhem. And the genre is black metal, which is different from death metal.
posted by Matt Oneiros at 1:35 AM on October 20, 2006

Damn, I knew I had the wrong genre.
posted by bob sarabia at 1:40 AM on October 20, 2006

I also misremembered the photo to be of the bandmate posing with the corpse. He just took a picture of the body. Thanks Matt.
posted by bob sarabia at 1:44 AM on October 20, 2006 [1 favorite]

I like this tale:

According to Hellhammer, Euronymous took pieces of Dead's brain and made a stew, in which he put ham, frozen vegetables, and pepper. "He'd always said he wanted to eat flesh, so he figured this was an easy way." Euronymous also claimed to have collected and forged fragments of Dead's skull into necklaces, sending pieces to those he felt 'worthy' (amongst those rumoured to be in possession of such pieces are the members of Swedish black metal band Marduk). Hellhammer has said he made a necklace from Dead's skull fragments as well.

The (if the above is true) cannibal was later stabbed to death by another band member. Nice guys.
posted by pracowity at 5:25 AM on October 20, 2006

Also of interest is the reported text of Dead's suicide note:

"Sorry about the mess."

So very Norwegian.
posted by nowonmai at 7:33 AM on October 20, 2006