In 1995, Mayhem released their infamous live album titled 'Dawn of black hearts". At first glance, it's nothing new that a band releases a live album, however, it's the original album cover that was horrifying. The album cover features a picture of the former Mayhem vocalist Per ''Dead" Ohlin when he committed suicide.
Per "Dead" Ohlin
Ohlin was born on January 16, 1969, in Sweden. Ohlin suffered sleep apnea and had a ruptured spleen from being bullied as a kid. He was pronounced clinically dead for a while before being resuscitated. It was from this that Ohlin would become obsessed with death and the feeling of it. Ohlin would take the stage name Dead and join Mayhem in early of 1988. He would soon become an important leader in the Norwegian Black Metal scene that was developing primarily because of the efforts by Mayhem. Dead was an important figure because he inspired the corpse paint for the genre. Dead used corpse paint in an effort to look like a corpse and even going as far to burying his stage clothes before a gig, to make it smell like buried earth and look like a corpse. He also kept a corpse of a crow in a paper bag, he would sniff it before a performance. Unfortunately, Dead was so obsessed with death that he started to do bodily harm to himself. Even during live performances, he would cut himself with knives or broken bottles. Dead himself was an introverted person according to bandmates of him and friends from the Norwegian black metal scene that met him. He was described as quiet, disconnected and isolated. Unfortunately, his obsession with death would lead him to commit suicide. Before dying he contributed to Mayhem's 1994 album "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" where he wrote the lyrics to all the songs on the album. His final song titled "Life Eternal" would be the last song he wrote and left it along with his suicide note.
Ohlin and bandmate Øystein "Euroynmous" Aarseth who was one of the founding members and guitarist of Mayhem. Aarseth and Ohlin didn't get along really well as Aarseth took an interest in Ohlin obsession with death and even encouraging Ohlin to commit suicide.
Death
Ohlin committed suicide on April 8, 1991, after being left alone at the band's house. Ohlin had written a suicide note with the beginning saying "Excuse all the blood" and wrote about how he felt that he wasn't alive and it was all a dream and he'll wake up. Ohlin had committed suicide by slitting his wrists and shooting himself with a shotgun in the head. Eurooymous would find Ohlin's dead body and before calling the police, he would go purchase a camera and take photos of his dead body. He would also take parts of Ohlin's skull and make a necklace out of it, in which he'd give to "worthy" musicians. Aarseth would use Ohlin's suicide for the black metal scene and say that Ohlin committed suicide because Black Metal had become trendy. The picture of the suicide would be used as the cover for "Dawn Of The Black Hearts".
Ohlin's story was tragic as he suffered from his obsession with death that would lead to his suicide, and his death being used for Black metal. Despite his short life he did make an impact on the genre and has his vocals on live albums he made with Mayhem before his death. For the curious here's the album cover
