Dead (musician)

Per Yngve "Pelle" Ohlin (16 January 1969 – 8 April 1991), better known by his stage name Dead, was a Swedish musician who was best known as the lead vocalist and lyricist of the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem from 1988 until his death in 1991. Prior to Mayhem, he performed as the vocalist in the Swedish death/thrash band Morbid.

Quotes

• Before we began to play there was a crowd of about 300 in there, but in the second song 'Necrolust' we began to throw around those pig heads. Only 50 were left. [...] If someone doesn't like blood and rotten flesh thrown in their face they can FUCK OFF, and that's exactly what they do.
  • Evil: Mayhem. In: Jon Kristiansen: Metalion: The Slayer Mag Diaries. Brooklyn, NY: Bazillion Points Books 2011, p. 290.

• Excuse the blood, but I have slit my wrists and neck. It was the intention that I would die in the woods so that it would take a few days before I was possibly found. I belong in the woods and have always done so. No one will understand the reason for this anyway. To give some semblance of an explanation I'm not a human, this is just a dream and soon I will wake. It was too cold and the blood kept clotting, plus the new knife is too dull. If I don't succeed dying to the knife I will blow all the shit out of my skull. Yet I do not know. I left all my lyrics by "Let the good times roll"—plus the rest of the money. Whoever finds it gets the fucking thing. As a last salutation may I present "Life Eternal". Do whatever you want with it. / Pelle. I didn't come up with this now, but seventeen years ago.
  • Dead's suicide note, Johannesson, Ika; Klingberg, Jon (2011). Blod Eld Död [Blood Fire Death] (in Swedish). Alfabeta.

Song lyrics

• Chainsaw in my bleeding hands
  As I start to cut you in two
  Your guts are steaming out
  And I just love the sight
  Maggots crawling in her cunt
  I just love to lick that shit
  Bury you in a slimy grave
  You will rot forever there
  • “Chainsaw Gutfuck,” Deathcrush (1987) as quoted by Loudwire [1]

• When it’s cold!
  And when it’s dark!
  The Freezing Moon can obsess you [...]
  Diabolic shapes float by
  Out from the dark
  I remember it was here I died
  By following the freezing moon
  • "Freezing Moon," De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (1994) [2] [3]

Quotes about Dead

• It wasn't anything to do with the way Kiss and Alice Cooper used makeup. Dead actually wanted to look like a corpse. He didn't do it to look cool.
  • Necrobutcher of Mayhem [4]

• Before the shows, Dead used to bury his clothes into the ground so that they could start to rot and get that grave scent. He was a corpse on a stage. Once he even asked us to bury him in the ground — he wanted his skin to become pale.
  • Hellhammer of Mayhem [5]

• I honestly think Dead is mentally insane. Which other way can you describe a guy who does not eat, in order to get starving wounds? Or who has a T-shirt with funeral announcements on it?
  • Euronymous of Mayhem [6]

• [Dead] wasn't a guy you could know very well. I think even the other guys in Mayhem didn't know him very well. He was hard to get close to. I met him two weeks before he died. I'd met him maybe six to eight times, in all. He had lots of weird ideas. I remember Aarseth was talking about him and said he did not have any humor. He did, but it was very obscure. Honestly, I don't think he was enjoying living in this world, which of course resulted in the suicide.
  • Bård Guldvik "Faust" Eithun of Emperor (band) Moynihan & Søderlind 2003, p. 54.

• [Dead] didn't see himself as human; he saw himself as a creature from another world. He said he had many visions that his blood has frozen in his veins, that he was dead. That is the reason he took that name. He knew he would die.
  • Stian "Occultus" Johannsen Moynihan & Søderlind 2003, p. 59.

• He started to cut himself. With a knife. We were so used to it, we put him in handcuffs, and left him lying in the corner. He didn’t stop drinking. Later, we drove into town and left him in front of the police station, just to make sure that he didn’t do more stupid stuff to himself, and went on partying.
  • Dolk of Kampfar [7]

• It isn’t every day that you get to see a corpse, so you have to make the most out of it.
  • Euronymous of Mayhem [[8]]

• Before the suicide, everything was playful. After, everything became darker. How could it not? Euronymous was so close to Pelle
  • Jonas Åkerlund of Bathory (band) [[9]]

• The lyrics that he wrote for us were so deep and so personal and so heartbreaking and everything at the same time. [...] Beautiful, dark, great, all the emotions are in there. He was a true genius, that guy.
  • Necrobutcher of Mayhem [10]

• I might punch you in the face if you wear [the photo of Dead's corpse] on a T-shirt.
  • Necrobutcher of Mayhem [11]

• "Freezing Moon" is possibly the greatest black metal song ever written.
  • Nick Ruskell of Kerrang! [12]