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.”