Chapter 9: Black Metal’s Medieval King: The Apotheosis of Euronymous Through Album Dedications

Since his death in 1993, Euronymous, guitarist of Mayhem and head of the underground label Deathlike Silence Productions, has emerged as a kind of ‘patron saint’ of black metal. Moreover, the iconography of invocations to Euronymous in album dedications aligns the ‘fallen warrior’ with the emergence of a new Dark Age precipitated by the music itself. This essay traces the development of the trope of Euronymous as a medievalised king in second wave black metal, a now-global genre that grew out of the early nineties scene in Oslo.