Bad news, black metal dudes: Varg Vikernes of Burzum fame has been arrested once again. Now don’t start tearing up and smearing your corpse paint; he hasn’t technically been charged with anything yet. The 40-year-old Norwegian native, who was just released in 2009 from his maximum sentence of 21 years in prison in Norway, was apprehended in Southwestern France with his wife recently for suspicions of plotting an act of terrorism.
Vikernes had been previously imprisoned for the the murder of Øystein Aarseth a.k.a. Euronymous, the guitarist of Mayhem, as well as for torching about four churches for shits and giggles. Normal black metal stuff. But this time, investigators have suspected that he might stage a large “terrorist act” or “massacre”!
Vikernes’s wife, French gun club member and fellow Nazi-sympathizer Marie Chachet, had recently purchased four rifles legally with her shooting permit. That puts one ding on France’s homeland security terror alert. Vikernes also received through the post a copy of a manifesto penned by none other than Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right terrorist responsible for the July 2011 Oslo bombing and Utoeya Massacre which left 77 dead. Breivik sent the manifesto from prison, and this put an additional ding on the radar.
But that’s it. Buying guns legally and receiving a terrorist’s manifesto spawned an investigation that led to the arrest of the couple and a search of their home. Vikernes had even written an online article titled “War in Europe: Part V” regarding the received manifesto in which he criticized Breivik for killing more innocent Norwegians than Muslims. Vikernes concluded his think piece by calling Breivik a “Zionist agent” and a “Christian loser.” So I wouldn’t say the two are in cahoots right now. Granted, upon the Vikernes’s 1993 arrest, police discovered a stockpile of 150 kg of explosives and 3,000 rounds of ammunition in his home, which led to some speculation that he was planning to blow up Blitz House, an Oslo anti-fascist organization. So let’s not put terrorism past the guy. But he and his wife will likely be released with no other evidence to convict them, unless France has implemented a new Minority Report division that can predict the deed.