18th century artist to sue Norwegian black metallers Mayhem
German born artist Johann Joachim Püschel claims that the designer of Mayhem’s iconic logo plagiarised a detail from his work, The Keeper of the Infernal City, that he engraved way back in the mid 18th century.
During a chance encounter with founding member Euronymous in the afterlife, Püschel recognised the batwings on the deceased guitarist’s Mayhem logo t-shirt as being eerily familiar.
He told us: “I saw zis strange longhaired midget standink in ze dark corner of der avterlife with ein schwarz candle all drippink wax on his hand. He vass vearing a garment of clothink emblazoned with vot looked like ein detail from mein artvork. I demanded to be knowink from vhere he haf obtained der garment from. Der svine dropped der schwarz candle und ran avay screamink like ein girl.”
The dead kraut artist continued, “but then I am bumpink into notorious evil kinder vinkle-touchink dancer Michael Jackson, who ist tellink me der logo was ov his favourite musik group – ein schwarz metals band from Norvay called Mayhem.”
Speaking from his ivy and moss covered grave yesterday, Püschel’s badly decomposed skeleton slammed the cult black metal band: “das designer of der Mayhem logo haf totally ripped off mein engravink of a demon that I haf painstakingly engraved in der year of der lord 1755. If you are lookink closely, der wings are almost exackly der same. Ach! The svinehund!”
Having recruited a lawyer specialising in back-from-the-dead-artist-and-underground-metal-band-logo-plagiarism claims to represent his case, Püschel now hopes to get his bony hands on several ten’s of euros backdated to the mid-1980’s which he believes are owed to him.
In response, the original designer of Mayhem’s logo, “Nella”, issued a flustered statement from his woodland cabin in Norway: “This is complete bullshit, I have no idea who the hell this Johann dude even is and I’ve never met this Keeper of the Infernal City guy either. Anyway how can he sue me or Mayhem if he’s dead? Things might be different in the afterlife and Germany but there’s a law against that in Norway.”
A spokesman for Mayhem’s record label told us that the band were too drunk on their own sense of self-satisfied smugness and artistic bankruptcy to make any comment on the subject whatsoever, though it’s understood that Hellhammer confirmed he would indeed play the drums “for any cunt wot asks me, yeah?”
However, a representative of the Centre for Hessian Studies defended the adaptation of the 18th century artwork in Mayhem’s logo: “metal music like that of the old Mayhem (pre-1994) harks back to a time before the comfortable and safe plastic world of today. Like Püschel’s engraving, it depicts and even glorifies the horrific and fantastic to stimulate our dormant imaginations and so that we might remember to appreciate existence to its fullest extent, no matter how harsh the reality may be.”
Tags: black metal, euronymous, logo, mayhem, nella
July 24th, 2009 at 7:57 am
How witty and funny!.. Not.
July 24th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Subhuman
July 24th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
inbred
July 24th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
MAYHEM RULES! TRUE NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL!
July 24th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Whoever writes these articles is a loser. The entire concept for this website is excessively pretentious and wankery.
July 26th, 2009 at 3:51 am
This is a bit cheap. Just sounds like the guy who wrote this wanted to show off his knowledge about obscure XVIIIth century German engravers.
Wasted both my time and his…
July 26th, 2009 at 5:01 am
“The entire concept for this website is excessively pretentious and wankery.”
lol. Wanker. Pretentious is an expression that people throw around far too often these days. Literally anything can be said to be pretentious. Even you, you pretentious fuck.
But, all the other ‘pretentious’ comments aside, I found this pretty funny.
July 26th, 2009 at 10:59 am
it’s understood that Hellhammer confirmed he would indeed play the drums “for any cunt wot asks me, yeah?”
ROFL!
July 29th, 2009 at 10:38 am
You guys need to calm down. Take a bubble bath, maybe listen to some Enya. Shit is chuckle-worthy.
July 30th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
I agree.
August 1st, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Very funny guys.
August 1st, 2009 at 7:02 pm
You are a very funny funny men? To make and bake the joke that feeds a fish.
August 2nd, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Some of these articles are funny, but what point does it serve on this website?
It’s supposed to be about anti-humanism, not some guy’s blog about hilarity of black metal.
August 3rd, 2009 at 5:12 am
Morbid_Lad: in the modern world we consider metalheads to be amongst the most fertile ground for receiving anti-humanist ideas, as the best of their preferred music is openly and obviously against humanism.
Thus we target them with articles that we hope both entertain and inform. But fear not, we’re working on material related to matters outside of metal music too.
Onwards, metalheads against humanism!
August 9th, 2009 at 7:34 am
This article is full of immature jokes on the German language, written in English, which in fact is a bastard of German, French and Latin which makes it even more distasteful. It could have been a quite enjoyable and maybe funny article but this just screwed it all up for me. Too bad.
August 9th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Would you be interested in writing for The Neave Online Publication? I love your writing style and I feel like you would fit in perfectly with the other writers.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:04 am
^ ^ ^ … Oh dear I think someone upset the Germans, haha.
August 30th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Lol, well we all know what they do when that happens.
September 10th, 2009 at 11:44 am
I love the trolls that leave their “Oh, I hated this article so much that I read the entire thing. Twice. Just to stoke the fires of my indignation and outrage so that I could badly insult the writer.” Pretentious wankery indeed.
Good job, this one made me laugh.
September 21st, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Seriously, this isnt actually funny, or even that convincing. The logo hardly bears any resemblance really. Its pretty lame.
November 23rd, 2009 at 4:16 am
Nothing fails like success.
February 19th, 2010 at 9:55 am
Manheim (original Mayhem drummer and friend of Nella, designer of the Mayhem logo), apparently enjoyed this article:
http://blog.manheim.no/1203444253_about_that_logo.html
Scroll to the bottom for the comments! Good work, heh.
May 25th, 2010 at 12:21 am
[...] as a PC mercenary (having retracted some of his more controversial statements on race at times) “for any cunt wot asks me, yeah?” , seems to speak boldly enough in this film, where he proclaims his admiration for Faust having [...]