Mayhem’s Necrobutcher Says He Planned to Kill Euronymous Himself But Varg Beat Him to It
“It’s funny with the karma, you know, bad karma there,” the bassist says.

During a conversation with Consequence of Sound, Mayhem bassist Jørn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud talked about the 1993 murder of guitarist Øystein “Euronymous” Aarseth, who was stabbed to death by bandmate Varg “Count Grishnackh” Vikernes.

Necrobutcher said that he planned to murder the guitarist himself, but was beat to the punch by Varg.

He explained:

“In the middle of the process of the songwriting and stuff [for Mayhem’s 1987 debut ‘De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas’], our buddy Per Ohlin [‘Dead,’ vocals] decided to take his own life.

“I felt very sad about that and was struck by sorrow for a long time. I still actually feel sorrow about that. But the first year was particularly bad. Especially since my friend – ‘friend’ – Euronymous took fucking photos of [Ohlin’s] corpse.

“So that didn’t help much with the grief. I felt like I needed to go over and kill that Øystein Euronymous, fucking backstabber. But you know, it’s funny with the karma, you know, bad karma there…

“‘Cause he went behind my back, called Varg Vikernes, got him to play bass on the album and then that was kinda bad karma, I guess, because we all know what happened to him…

“OK, I can tell it right now, because I’ve been holding it in for many years, but actually I was on my way down to kill him [Euronymous] myself.

“And when it happened, I saw the morning paper, thinking, ‘Fuck, I gotta get home to my place and get out all the weapons and drugs and shit I had in my house, because they’re coming to my house because I’m probably going to be the No. 1 suspect for this.’

“But little did I know that the Norwegian police already knew that Count Grishnackh [Varg] was going down also to kill him.

“Because they bugged his phone, and he actually talked about this killing before he went to Bergen so the cops already knew that he was coming, so they probably were thinking to themselves, ‘We didn’t nail this guy for the church burnings, so let’s nail him for murder, and get rid of this fucking guy in Oslo the same time.’ So that’s basically what happened.”