Website / The Black Metal Dialogues

Comedian/actor/writer/musician Dave Hill had long been perversely fascinated with the Norwegian Black Metal scene, especially how committed the musicians seemed to be to their extreme posturing. In 2004 he came across the website of the band Mysticum and, to see what would happen, sent them an email under the alias of "Lance, the King of Black Metal", mocking their music and chiding them for not staying true to the black metal ethos by using the internet. To his surprise, he received a reply, not from the members of Mysticum but from Saiihtam (aka Mathias Løken), the owner of Mysticum's record label, Planet Satan Revolution.

From this emerged a lengthy correspondence between the two men, lasting several months, with each exchange going off in a crazier and crazier direction. For his Troll work, Hill always stayed in character as Lance, an eighteen-year-old Subway employee from Gary, Indiana who leads several black metal bands, headed by Witch Taint, which Lance believes is the most extreme metal band in history. Lance, who possesses a monumental ego but little in the way of brains or common sense, gets more desperate as he goes, while Saiihtam remains patient with the young man, in good-but-not-perfect English, while also being a bit deluded in his own way.

The entire long, hilarious email chain is collected here.

Hill eventually turned Witch Taint into a real comedic black metal band, with himself and Phil Costello (of the metal parody band Satanicide). Hill and Costello have also done a stage show based on the Dialogues, with Hill as Lance and Costello as Saiihtam.

The Black Metal Dialogues contain examples of:

• all lowercase letters: Lance's emails use this format.
• Badass Decay: invoked
  • Lance opens the exchange by accusing Mysticum of not being extreme metal but rather "strummy bullshit", suggesting that there must be another band called Mysticum that's truly badass, because the Mysticum he heard definitely wasn't.
  • Saiihtam bemoans Fenriz of Darkthrone becoming a "beer-drinking humorist."
• Basement-Dweller: Lance literally lives in his mother's basement, but insists that he's not an example. He also has to share his computer with his mom.
  "i live in the basement in the same house but it is totally my own place and i can do whatever i want. i just use her computer sometimes to school people on black metal and other stuff. last saturday i had a party and she couldn't say shit even if i was playing burzum on full volume or something. i went up to the kitchen to get some orange juice and she asked me to turn it down and i said no. let's see you try that shit."
• Canis Latinicus: Witch Taint's albums include Infernicus Dictus Dei Rectum and In Dominus Perineum Satanus.
• Comically Missing the Point: Lance and Saiihtam both throughout the exchange, except Lance is doing so intentionally, while Saiihtam is being The Comically Serious.
• Cringe Comedy: The main source of the humor here, with Lance making a total ass of himself and Saiihtam trying to stay dignified and cool while being totally perplexed by Lance's antics.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Lance says he wants to meet Varg Vikernes of Burzum (a convicted murderer and arsonist who was in prison at the time) so he can call him a "New Age pussy".
• Dude, Not Funny!: Saiihtam eventually gets mad at Lance for mocking Mysticum.
• Emo Teen: Lance is an example of a very clueless one of these.
  "black metal has nothing to do with being happy. it should make you want to live in darkness, perhaps with a babbling brook nearby that would mock you in the night."
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: Besides Witch Taint, Lance's other bands have names like Unholy Chalice and Summer's Eve (the latter being the brand name of a line of feminine hygiene products is a joke that completely sails over Saiihtam's head, presumably because it doesn't exist in Norway).
• Gruesome Goat: A major part of Witch Taint's iconography. Lance proposes having a goat with the letters "WT" painted on it in pig's blood join Witch Taint for their debut concert.
• The Hermit: Lance believes that any true black metal musician should live in a cave.
• Hypocritical Humor: Practically once an email for Lance, starting at the beginning of his initial message where he chides Mysticum for having an email address even though he obviously has one too (which Saiihtam points out in his reply). He also accuses Mysticum of "trying really hard to get on the radio", but also asks "are you guys on MTV?"
• I Am the Band: Lance claims to lead several black metal bands, but in each case it's just him playing all the instruments, though he refers to the bands as "we" (and at one point claims that his cousin and his cousin's friend are in the band).
• Kayfabe: Lance has genuine trouble understanding that black metal musicians are human and don't spend all their time brooding in darkness and worshipping Satan, and Saiihtam's attempts to explain this are just met with accusations that his black metal qualifications are suspect.
• Large Ham Title: For Lance, there's The King of Black Metal and The Blackest of the Black.
• The Malaproper: Saiihtam's command of English is far from perfect, and his emails contains some misspellings and word misusage. One oddity is that he uses the word "barefaced" three times to characterize the tone of Lance's messages, apparently as some kind of synonym for "insincere" or "sarcastic", which are the exact opposites of what "barefaced" actually means.
• Minimalism: Lance's idea for a Witch Taint music video.
  "there is a closeup of a human eyeball on the screen and then a closeup of a goat. then the screen goes black and the music starts. then the viewer is left to wonder what happened. they cannot handle it."
• Overly Narrow Superlative: Before just asserting that he's The King of Black Metal, period, Lance claims the title of The King of Black Metal...in Gary, Indiana.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Saiihtam calls out Lance a few times for his posturing. Lance just ignores it.
• Retired Badass: Saiihtam tries to portray himself this way.
  "I also have 2 kids and a wife, so my life is also dedicated to them besides my music interests. So maybe i am interupting [sic] the picture you have of me. Whatever. I have grown beyond sacrificing animals and stuff like that."
• Sarcasm-Blind:
  • Saiihtam never quite seems to catch on that he's being trolled, even when Lance goes totally over-the-top. You'd think that the "King of Black Metal" using an email address mentioning smooth Soul legend Lou Rawls in the username would've clued him in from the start.
  • Lance also has shades of this.
    "i would however permit you to release an album from my band witch taint if you think you could handle it. i must warn you- it is truly black, some people say unlistenable. it is so black in fact that when i played it for a 'friend' recently he said 'if you don't take this music off i am going to kill myself!' this is how black it is."
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Saiihtam finally mocks Lance by calling him "The Whitest of the White" (as a takeoff on his The Blackest of the Black) and just stops responding.
• Sdrawkcab Alias: Saiihtam is just a sinister-looking, misspelled version of "Mathias" backwards.
• Secret Test of Character: After Saiihtam expresses disappointment in Lance's demo, Lance claims that he merely sent out a less extreme song as a test to see if he was ready for the real "pummeling". Then he takes Saiihtam's final rejection of him as merely a test to prove his readiness to enter the elite of black metal.
• Small Name, Big Ego:
  • Dear lord, the Goodyear Blimp isn't anywhere near as inflated as Lance's ego. He insists Witch Taint is so good that Saiihtam will want to devote his label full-time to their music. He also amends his title to "The King of Black Metal and about 50 other fucking things," and touts Witch Taint as "extreme beyond the most extreme of extremes."
    "i can't expect everyone to be a totall [sic] badass all the time like me."
  • Saiihtam himself is occasionally guilty of this, calling an album of leftover Mysticum material he's trying to push a "masterpiece of black grimness."
• Speak Ill of the Dead: Lance accuses Euronymous of having been a Sell-Out before his murder, then adds "i don't mean to badmouth a dead guy, don't get me wrong."
• Troll: Dave Hill's original intention in writing to Mysticum, but once Saiihtam sent a fairly sincere response, Hill used the exchange to develop the truly pathetic character of Lance.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Lance tears into Saiihtam for being a black metal purveyor but opening his email with a cheery salutation.
  "okay, let me break it down for you. first of all, i don't think anyone who is truly into black metal would start an e-mail by saying 'hi!' you are not working at a smoothie shop buddy, you are representing black metal."
• The World Is Not Ready: Lance claims that he doesn't share his music with people because "it would destroy them."
  "i recorded and played everything on the record myself and when i was finished, played the record for myself and myself alone because i was the only one who was black enough to handle it!"
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: Lance claims that one of his metal bands is called Mystikum, rather than Mysticum.