Neseblod Records

At first glance, Neseblod Records looks like an unusually overcrowded record shop in Oslo. Vinyl, CDs, cassette tapes, old shirts, posters, flyers and memorabilia seem to occupy almost every available piece of wall and floor space. Look a little closer, however, and it becomes clear that this is also an unofficial museum of Norwegian metal history. Some of the objects are ordinary second-hand records waiting to be sold; others are unique pieces connected to bands and musicians who helped shape the Norwegian black metal scene. And beneath it all is a basement with a history far more important than its modest appearance suggests.

Neseblod Records is located at Schweigaards gate 56, in the same premises once occupied by Helvete, the notorious record shop opened by Mayhem guitarist Øystein “Euronymous” Aarseth in 1991. Helvete – simply meaning “Hell” in Norwegian – existed for only a couple of years, but its influence was enormous. At a time when the Norwegian black metal scene was still small, the shop provided something it had previously lacked: a physical meeting place. Musicians from Mayhem, Burzum, Emperor, Thorns and other bands spent time there, exchanged music and ideas, argued about what black metal should be and helped create a scene that would soon become known far beyond Norway.

Euronymous also ran his independent label Deathlike Silence Productions from the premises. The label became important to the development of extreme metal, releasing records by artists including Merciless, Burzum, Abruptum and Sigh. Some musicians stayed in the building for periods of time, while the basement became particularly closely associated with the group of musicians and friends later described as the “Black Circle” or “Inner Circle”. The name has sometimes been presented as if this were a formally organised secret society, although people who were actually part of the scene have given a much less structured picture. What is certain is that Helvete became its social centre.

The basement is still the most historically significant part of the building. In one small room, the words “BLACK METAL” were painted across the rough wall during the Helvete period, with the letter T formed as an inverted cross. Members of the early scene were photographed there in corpse paint, and those images have since become some of the most familiar photographs from Norwegian black metal history. The wall remains in place today. Countless visitors have recreated those old photographs in front of it, turning a piece of casual graffiti made by a group of young musicians into one of the genre's most recognisable historical landmarks.

Helvete closed in 1993 amid financial difficulties and increasing attention surrounding the black metal scene. By then, several church arsons had been connected to people within the environment around the shop, and Norwegian newspapers had begun treating black metal as a national scandal. Euronymous himself was murdered in Oslo by Varg Vikernes of Burzum on 10 August 1993. Helvete was gone, but the mythology surrounding the little shop in Schweigaards gate only grew during the years that followed.

After the premises had been used for other purposes, Neseblod Records moved into part of the former Helvete location in 2013. Run by Kenneth and Grethe Neseblod, the shop gradually developed into something considerably more than a place to buy music. Their collection includes rare records and demo tapes, correspondence from the international underground, old fanzines, photographs, concert material, vintage clothing and personal objects associated with musicians from the metal scene. Some items are for sale and some very definitely are not, which can make browsing the shop feel slightly different from browsing an ordinary record store. You never quite know whether the object beside the record you are looking through is merchandise or a small piece of music history.

Among the memorabilia on display are rare rehearsal tapes and objects associated with Mayhem and other important Norwegian bands. A more recent addition is the skull prop used by Mayhem during performances connected with the Grand Declaration of War period in the early 2000s. It now hangs inside Neseblod alongside material spanning several decades of extreme metal history. The collection is not arranged with the clinical order of a conventional museum. Things overlap, shelves overflow and memorabilia appears almost wherever there is room for it. In many ways, that lack of polish is part of what makes the place feel genuine.

On the evening of 9 April 2024, that collection came dangerously close to suffering a much greater loss. A fire broke out in the basement of the building, causing extensive smoke and soot damage throughout Neseblod Records. Parts of the lower floor were badly damaged, and old shirts, records, tapes, letters and other irreplaceable material were lost. Because much of the most valuable black metal memorabilia was stored upstairs, a large part of the historical collection survived. There was also immediate concern about the famous basement wall, but after the damage could be assessed, Neseblod confirmed that the original “BLACK METAL” graffiti had survived the fire.

The shop reopened, and the damaged basement was gradually rebuilt. The fire nevertheless added another layer to a building already unusually rich in music history. Much of the early Norwegian black metal scene existed in rehearsal rooms, rented flats, small clubs and other places that have either disappeared or changed beyond recognition. Schweigaards gate 56 is different. You can still descend into the same basement where musicians gathered in the early 1990s and stand in front of the same rough wall seen in photographs from the period.

Neseblod is still very much a working record shop, with metal, punk, hardcore and rock packed into its shelves, but its significance goes well beyond what is available for sale. It preserves objects from an underground culture that nobody involved could reasonably have expected would one day attract visitors from across the world. That may be the strangest part of the place. The graffiti in the basement was not painted as a historical monument, Helvete was never intended to become a museum, and the people hanging around there in 1991 certainly did not know that fans would still be photographing the walls more than thirty years later.