If you’ve spent more than five minutes in the deeper trenches of heavy metal, you’ve seen it. It’s a grainy, black-and-white photograph. A young man lies on a bed, his skull shattered by a shotgun blast, his brains literally spilling out onto the floor. It isn’t a movie prop. It isn’t a clever practical effect from a 1990s horror flick. It is the actual corpse of Per "Pelle" Ohlin, better known as Dead, the vocalist for the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. This image serves as the cover for the bootleg live album The Dawn of the Black Hearts, and honestly, it remains the most controversial artifact in the history of extreme music.
People talk about "edge" in music all the time. Usually, it’s a marketing gimmick. But here? This was real. This was a turning point where a subculture stopped being just about fast drums and screeching vocals and started being about genuine, terrifying reality.
What actually happened in Kråkstad
To understand why this record exists, you have to look at April 1991. Mayhem was living in a dilapidated house in the woods near Kråkstad, Norway. They were broke, starving, and deeply immersed in a self-inflicted cycle of isolation. Dead was a guy who was obsessed with the concept of death—not in a "cool rockstar" way, but in a deeply pathological, tragic way. He used to bury his clothes in the ground to get the smell of decay on them before a show. He kept a dead crow in a bag just to inhale the scent of rot before he sang.
He was unwell.
On April 8, he was left alone in the house. He slit his wrists and throat before finally using a shotgun to finish the job. He left a note that famously began with, "Excuse all the blood."
When Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth, the band's guitarist, found the body, he didn’t call the police immediately. Instead, he went to a nearby shop, bought a disposable camera, rearranged some of the items around Dead’s body, and took pictures. One of those photos ended up as the cover of The Dawn of the Black Hearts. It’s a move that many, including Mayhem’s bassist Necrobutcher, found utterly unforgivable. Necrobutcher later admitted he wanted to kill Euronymous himself for doing that.
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The bootleg that became a legend
It's a common misconception that this was an official Mayhem release. It wasn't. The album is a bootleg, meaning it was released without the band's formal permission by a guy named Mauricio "Bull Metal" Montoya, who ran Warmaster Records in Colombia. He was a pen pal of Euronymous.
The audio itself is a recording of a live performance in Sarpsborg, Norway, on February 28, 1990. If you listen to it, the quality is pretty terrible. It’s lo-fi, noisy, and chaotic. But people don't buy or stream The Dawn of the Black Hearts for the pristine audio engineering. They seek it out because it represents the raw, unfiltered birth of Norwegian Second Wave Black Metal. It’s a historical document of a band that was literally falling apart while creating a new genre.
The tracklist usually includes:
- Deathcrush
- Necrolust
- Funeral Fog
- Freezing Moon
- Carnage
- Buried by Time and Dust
These songs are now considered classics. At the time, they were the sounds of a very small, very disturbed group of teenagers in Oslo trying to out-evil each other.
The myth-making and the fallout
The image on the cover did exactly what Euronymous wanted it to do: it solidified Mayhem’s reputation as the most dangerous band in the world. It turned a tragic suicide into a marketing tool for "True Norwegian Black Metal."
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In the years following the release, the stories grew. People claimed Euronymous made necklaces out of pieces of Dead’s skull. They claimed he ate pieces of Dead’s brain. While the brain-eating part is widely dismissed as a fabrication to shock the press, the skull fragment story was confirmed by several people in the scene, including Morgan "Evil" Steinmeyer Håkansson of the band Marduk.
This level of extremity wasn't sustainable. Within two years of Dead's suicide, Euronymous himself would be murdered by Varg Vikernes of Burzum. The "Dawn" was over, replaced by a reality of prison sentences and headlines.
Is it even "Art"?
There is a massive debate in the metal community about the ethics of this album. On one hand, you have the purists who say black metal is supposed to be "ugly" and "hateful," and therefore the cover is the ultimate expression of the genre. On the other hand, most sane people look at it as the exploitation of a mentally ill young man by a "friend" who was more interested in building a brand than saving a life.
Dayal Patterson, who wrote the definitive book Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, explores this nuance. The scene wasn't just about music; it was a pressurized environment of youth, extreme ideology, and genuine mental health struggles. The Dawn of the Black Hearts is the peak of that pressure cooker exploding.
The impact on the 2026 metal scene
Even now, decades later, the shadow of this record is everywhere. Modern "DSBM" (Depressive Suicidal Black Metal) owes its entire aesthetic to the tragedy of Dead. But the industry has changed. Today, labels are much more conscious of mental health. You wouldn't see a "major" indie label like Nuclear Blast or Century Media touching something like this with a ten-foot pole.
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Yet, the bootleg persists. You can find it on Discogs (though it’s often banned from sale), and the image is burned into the collective consciousness of the internet. It has become a sort of "shibboleth"—a way for fans to prove they are "truly" into the underground by being able to stomach the sight of it.
What most people get wrong
A lot of people think the photo was taken by the police. It wasn't. It was Euronymous.
A lot of people think it’s the band's debut album. It isn't. It's a live recording from a year before the suicide.
A lot of people think the band got rich off it. They didn't. It was a Colombian bootleg.
The reality is much more pathetic and sad than the "satanic" legend suggests. It was a group of kids in a cold house, a suicide that should have been prevented, and a guitarist who thought he could use a tragedy to sell a few more tapes.
How to navigate the history of extreme metal responsibly
If you are a collector or a new fan trying to understand the roots of the genre without supporting the exploitation of tragedy, there are better ways to engage with Mayhem’s legacy.
- Listen to De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas instead: This is the actual masterpiece. It features Dead’s lyrics but was recorded after his death with Attila Csihar on vocals. It is widely considered the best black metal album of all time.
- Watch the documentaries with a grain of salt: Until the Light Takes Us provides a great visual atmosphere, but remember that the people being interviewed are often performing a character.
- Read the primary sources: Look for interviews with Necrobutcher (Jørn Stubberud). He is one of the few people who was there and speaks about the era with a mix of honesty and regret. He has been very vocal about how much he hated the "Dawn" cover and how it disrespected his friend.
- Support modern mental health initiatives: Many modern metal festivals and labels now partner with organizations like Hope for the Day to ensure that the "grimness" of the music doesn't translate into actual tragedy for the artists or fans.
The Dawn of the Black Hearts is a relic of a time when the lines between art and crime were blurred to the point of disappearing. It remains a stark reminder that behind the corpse paint and the stage names, there were real people who were struggling. Understanding the history is important, but glamorizing the tragedy is exactly what the scene has been trying to move past for thirty years.
If you are looking to build a collection of "True Norwegian Black Metal," focus on the music and the atmosphere, rather than the snuff-film aesthetics of the early 90s. The genre is strong enough to stand on its own without needing to exploit the death of a 22-year-old.