Thulean Archives

Do you even understand just how much role playing games influenced Black Metal? Let's find out. if you have paid any attention whatsoever on this account, you will see that I talk about my own role playing game all the time. And why am I so obsessed, you could say, with role playing games? Let's find out. Two let's find out in one video? Who cares? I'm unhinged. The thing is, even before I started playing the guitars, I started playing MERP, a role playing game, Middle Earth Role Playing. That's not a very nice acronym, but still. MERP. And when I wasn't playing role playing games or, you know, going to the rifle range or going to the dojo after training karate(?) or something, I was playing the guitars. And that was my teenage years, really. So when I purchased my guitar, I think in 87, about one or two years after I started playing role playing games. And I was very much into role playing games. And frankly, I think I knew the lore in Middle earth better than the lore of our own world, really. And when black metal was started, the point of black metal, to the guys in Western Europe,^[1] that would be the only the Immortal guys, or Funeral guys, Hades guys, and so forth. The point in Western Europe with black metal was to revolt against the trendy death metal. The idea that all the death metal bands sounded exactly the same. They went to the same studios to record their albums and so forth. And we. We wanted original music. So the concept we fought for was some originality, and you had to have your own concept. And my concept, of course, became fantasy, really. And this was obviously inspired by my role playing game hobby. So the lyrics, you know, spells of destruction and channeling the power of souls and so forth, was all based on role playing game ideas. Now, granted, I really want to talk about this all the time, but I do that in other videos. So let's continue here. this is an AD&D first edition game adventure, "The Temple of Elemental Evil". And as you can tell, this is the inspiration for a certain debut album. And if we zoom out a little bit, you can obviously see the inspiration for the cover artwork of the second Burzum album. So I would argue, more than anything else, my main inspiration, you know, for artwork, for lyrics, and for the whole foundational concept of Burzum was fantasy from role playing games of course. You could even say that because of this, you have Burzum. And of course, you also have this that you can buy from Amazon if you know how to read and can do basic math and have an imagination. Now, if you like this video and want more, press like and follow. If you don't like it. Is there a dislike button on TikTok? If so, use it. Thank you for watching.

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1. Western Norway.