On April 8, 1990, Euronymous (real name Oystein Aarseth), guitarist for Norwegian Black Metallers Mayhem, broke into the apartment of the bands singer, Dead. Euronymous found dead lying in a massive pool of blood, shotgun at his side, staring with unseeing eyes at his own brain.

This we know because the first thing the excited guitarist did was rush to a nearby store for a disposable camera. He then took a series of grisly pictures. All snapped out, Euronymous picked up pieces of Deadís shattered skull which, at a later date, he would make into a necklace. He also pocketed several pieces of Deadís brain which, it is alleged, he later ate. THEN he called the police.

On August 10, 1993, Euronymous, wearing only his underpants, opened his front door to fellow Norwegian black metaller Varg Vikernes, AKA Count Grishnackh, pictured left. Varg proceeded to stab Euronymous a total of 24 times, mostly in the back but at least once in the head.

"Bam! Through his skull. I actually had to knock the knife out, it was stuck in his skull and I actually had to pry it out..." bragged Vikernes from his prison cell. "I hit him directly into his skull and his eyes went boing! And he was dead!"

The puppy dog-eyed Vikernes has since become something of a pin-up boy for the racist right. The Internet boasts several websites which consist primarily of photographs in which Vikernes poses moodily looking for all the world like the evil brother the Hanson boys never had.

Vikernes isnít exactly finding jail heavy going.

"Itís too nice in here," he moans. "Itís not hell at all. In this country prisoners get a bed, toilet and shower. Itís completely ridiculous. I asked the police to throw me in a real dungeon and also encouraged them to use real violence!"

In between working on his solo band, Burzum, and designing Nazi T-shirts, Vikernes finds time to give extensive interviews in which he boasts about his familial connections to Vidkun Quisling - the fascist collaborator who ruled wartime Norway on behalf of the Nazis and who sent many of the countryís Jewish community to the gas chambers. Overflowing with pseudo-spiritual gobbledygook and seething Semitism, Vikernes is tediously obsessed with the absurd concept of "racial purity" and has even gone so far as to state that looking into brown eyes is like "looking up an arsehole".

"The guitar is a European Invention, like the synthesizer," babbled Vikernes in a recent, typically uncritical interview. "However, the music played on the guitar is mostly nigger music." Vikernes then goes on to sneer at the "primitive, degenerate, subhuman mentality" this "nigger music" (i.e., everything in your record collection) allegedly promotes.

Varg has now turned his back on satanic metal (which he regards as tainted by "non-Aryan" influences) and renounced Satanism in favour of the ancient Viking religion of Odinism. This has, hardly surprisingly, gone down well with his new-found neo-Nazi fanbase.

On Saturday 12, 1997, Norwegian police arrested five members of the self-styled Einsatzgruppen neo-Nazi terrorist organisation (named after the wartime SS murder squads). They also seized sawnoff shotguns, bulletproof vests, dynamite and a war chest containing 100,000 Norwegian Kroner (about £15,000). The money had, allegedly, been supplied by Vargís mother. The police claimed that the group were planning to use the money and weapons to bust Vikernes out of prison.

The excesses of theNorwegian death metalheads and the sceneís ongoing dalliance with the racist right are well documented in the recently published book, Lords Of Chaos (Feral House). In it we also learn of the activities of a bunch of American fans of the Florida band, Deicide. These high school dudes, styling themselves The Lords Of Chaos, burnt down, in quick succession, a supermarket trailer, a Baptist Church and a tropical bird aviary. One of their teachers then interrupted them in the act of throwing a tin of peaches through a school window. So they later went round to his house and murdered him with a shotgun. Police claimed that the lovable lads were also planning to steal Mickey Mouse and Goofy costumes and then wander round Disneyland "shooting black tourists with silenced handguns".

In lords Of Chaos we learn of the numerous church burnings and grave desecrations that blighted Germany, France and Scandinavia (and, on at least one occasion, Britain) when the black metal scene was at its zenith. And we meet characters like Black metal fanzine editor Bard Eithun, who stabbed and kicked a stranger to death in an Oslo park. And nerdy Hendrik Mobus, a German satanic rocker who strangled a fellow student to death with electric flex.

Lords Of Chaos also takes the lid off the network of neo-Nazi death metal fanzines that have flourished in the wake of Vikernesí imprisonment and subsequent elevation to status of ëracial heroí. Hellhammer (real name Jan Axel Blomberg), drummer with Mayhem (who are still going, despite their bereavements), told the authors, "Iíll put it his way, we donít like black people. Black metal is for white people." And the book also reproduces a particularly noxious polemic from a group calling itself "Wiking Hordes" (sic) which advises "all true black and death freaks" to boycott the Asian, South American and South European "dick sucking pigs" who allegedly "trade the true Aryan North European and North American bands!" The flyer then advises its readers to "fuck them up the ass" and ends with the hysterical slogans "DEATH TO FALSE METAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and "DEATH TO ALL NOT-ARYAN PEOPLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (sic).

Another black metal flyer featured in Lords Of Chaos consists of a collage composed of Nazi flags, an upside down cross and pictures of Charles Manson, Varg Vikernes, Euronymous and Adolf Hitler (whose head, bizarrely, has been placed ontop of the body of a winged demon). The accompanying text reads, "Wake up, whites! Christianity is a joke! Christians and Jews idealise mentally retarded individuals... Jesus Christ was a mentally retarded homosexual...The only good nigger is a dead nigger..."

And we learn about Norwegian band, Darkthrone, who seriously embarrassed their British label in 1994 when they released the following sleevenotes: "We would like to state that ëTransylvanian Hungerí is beyond criticism. If any man should attempt to criticise this LP, he should be patronised for his obviously Jewish behaviour." Faced with label disapproval, a press backlash and a distributorís boycott, Darkthrone soon caved in and issued a press release which claimed that they were "absolutely not a political band" and attempted to explain that "the word ëJewí is frequently used instead of ëjerkí or ëstupidí in Norway."

This pathetic apology failed to mention that the artwork for the album also contained the prominent slogan "NORWEGIAN ARYAN BLACK METAL" and that drummer Fenriz had previously claimed that, "We are fascist in outlook..." And you thought that black metalheads were just Gothís with attitude?

Although Satanic and occult influences in rock can be traced back through Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones (all the way, in fact, to 1920s bluesman Robert Johnson), the genre of satanic or black metal started in the late-1970s with the Newcastle band, Venom. Although regarded as shocking at the time, Venomís image - all bumfluff ëtaches, studded wristbands and spandex jump suits - now seems hilariously dated, more Viz than The Book Of The Dead. Venom were nonetheless a massive influence on the death metal scenes which soon flourished on both sides of the Atlantic.

Sweden produced Bathory (who liked waving swords and posing in the woods whilst dressed in Conan The Barbarian style furry knickers) while America gave us Slayer and Deicide (the latterís main claim to fame being the demented gibberings of lead singer Glen Benton, who once boasted an inverted cross burnt onto his forehead and who quickly developed a full-blown persecution complex about "the Holy Ghost" which, Benton claimed. was continually trying to destroy Deicide with evil Christian "magick"). Just how serious most of these musicians were about their ëSatanismí is a moot point. To Christian Fundamentalists who, in one way or another, have been hounding rockíníroll since the 1950s, everything that falls outside their narrow and bigoted reading of the Bible (including all other religions) is, by definition, satanic. It is doubtful, for instance, that the Sunday school teachers who recently garnered headlines by telling their young charges that Diana Spencer was burning in hell, have any rock music in their record collections - never mind CDs by Impaled Nazarene or Marilyn Manson.

Satanism is a movable feast. Many of the bands shoehorned into the satanic category, like Britainís Inkubus Sukkubus, are in fact pagan. Others - like Cradle Of Filth, Marilyn Manson and Christian Death - are influenced more by the philosophically coherent Satanism of Aleister Crowley and Anton LaVey than by the Hammer Horror shock-Satanism of the ëtrueí black metal bands. And while Manson styles himself the Anti-Christ Superstar, and Christian Death delight in releasing record sleeves showing Jesus Christ buggering a naked woman and Cradle Of Filth issue a T-shirt featuring a masturbating nun on one side and the slogan ëJESUS IS A CUNTí on the other, only a total ignoramus or a born again Christian would attempt to lump these sensationalist antics in with the racist rantings of Varg Vikernes and his ilk. But it happens.

Art-goths Cradle Of Filth spent their recent tour of France having to defend themselves against unfounded allegations of involvement with the far-right after the makers of a French documentary about neo-Nazism gratuitously used a clip from a Filth video to illustrate a point about Nazi rock music.

But while it should be made clear that the black metal scene is by no means inherently racist, it is also true that its dalliances with racism and Nazism didnít start (or end) with Varg Vikernes.

As early as 1988 the Swedish band Bathory were including neo-Nazi imagery in their sleeve artwork and making thinly veiled references to the SS in their lyrics. In the same decade, the American band Slayer attracted a substantial Nazi-skinhead following. This might have had something to do with the bandís use of a Nazi eagle for their logo, their habit of referring to their fans as ëThe Slaytanic Whermachtí and the release of a gleefully voyeuristic lyric entitled ëAuschwitz-The Meaning Of Painí. Slayer singer Tom Araya also told NME about his admiration for General Pinochet - the murderous fascist dictator of his native Chile.

Nor is it possible to entirely disassociate black metalís Satanism and paganism from itís current Nazi tendencies. Varg Vikernesí pathetic ideological slide from shock-horror satanic rocker to full-blown Odinist race warrior was obviously facilitated by Satanismís amoral elitism and its oft-avowed hatred of those it regards as ëweakí. Nor do you have to search too far through the literature of those espousing a return to pre-Christian religions before coming across references to the ëvirusí of Judaeo Christianity - language that might just as easily come from the mouth of a full-blown Nazi. The Satanism and paganism, of some, if not most of those involved in the black metal, pagan and satanic rock scenes is either a gratuitous shock tactic or a profoundly held religious/philosophical belief no more absurd, dangerous or worthy of censorship than the mainstream views which the metalheads seek to subvert. But when those views shade into racism, when Satanism becomes fascism, what then? Would we be right to censor the death metal Nazis?

Tiziana Stupia runs the Bristol label, Misanthropy. Misanthropy release records by Burzum and Mayhem.

"My personal Philosophy is anything esoteric, mysterious, occult, yíknow?" she explains. "All the bands come from the same angle, yíknow? Basically we donít like idiots."

How do you define ëidiotí? "Well, yíknow, the people. The artists that I work with, they have to be individual and they should possess a certain amount of intelligence..."

Is there anything you wouldnít touch? Anything youíd back away from? Because of the politics perhaps?

"Uuuum! Pfft! Iím not really sure. I wouldnít promote, like, a totally Catholic kind of music, a church music. In general Iím quite easy-going. As long as it doesnít offend me personally and not much offends me, otherwise I wouldnít work with Burzum, heh heh!" So you donít have a problem with Vargís anti-semitism?

"No. I donít. Actually, on September 14 we have a compilation CD coming out which is about freedom of speech. Iím here to promote artists and music and 1ím not here to scrutinize their personal viewpoint. I really donít care what they personally believe because you canít ask everybody your political opinion, yíknow? I mean you just canít do that, jah? Because that defies the whole point of art. The CD is called ëPresumed Guiltyí and it has, like, a witch on the front being burned because this is a total witch-hunt here. Everything gets like blown out of proportion all the time and if you donít agree with the populist left-wing opinion of today then obviously you are a witch and ëwitchí is interchangeable with ëNazií."

This is a view which is echoed by several of the websites dedicated to Burzum, one of which (http://www.anus.com - I kid you not) claims that Vargís music "stands as a testament to the sharing of human ideas through the meta-logic of inspecifically (sic) articulated contextual ideas..."