The early Norwegian black metal scene was a music scene and subculture in Norway during the early 1990s, based around black metal. Identified by some as a cult – "The Black Circle" or "Black Metal Inner Circle" – it consisted of youths ranging from late teens to mid-twenties, many of whom gathered at the record shop Helvete ("Hell") in Oslo.
The scene was the focus of controversy due to the strong anti-Christian beliefs of its members and the crimes they committed. There were two cases of murder, over two-dozen cases of arson, and other allegedly "Satanically-motivated" crimes. The scene drew the gaze of the Norwegian and international media, who often exaggerated the claims surrounding its members. For example, one Norwegian TV channel aired an interview with a woman who claimed that "Satanists" had sacrificed her child and killed her dog.During the 1980s, black metal was a loose grouping of a handful of metal bands who shared Satanic lyrics, although most of the "first wave" bands referred to Satanism only for shock value.During 1990–1992, a number of Norwegian artists, who were strongly influenced by those bands, began performing and releasing a new kind of black metal music. The surge of interest and popularity that followed is often referred to as the "second wave of black metal". The Norwegian bands developed the style of their 1980s forebears as a distinct genre of heavy metal music. This was partly thanks to a new style of guitar playing developed by Snorre 'Blackthorn' Ruch of Stigma Diabolicum/Thorns and Øystein 'Euronymous' Aarseth of Mayhem, in which guitarists played full chords using all the strings of the guitar in place of power chords using only two or three strings. Gylve 'Fenriz' Nagell of Darkthrone has credited them with this innovation in a number of interviews. He described it as being "derived from Bathory" and noted that "those kinds of riffs became the new order for a lot of bands in the '90s"
Visually, the dark themes of their music was complemented with corpsepaint, which became a way for black metal artists to distinguish themselves from other metal bands of the time....... TO BE CONTINUED.
