On the morning of June 6, 1992, Fantoft Stave Church in the countryside just outside Bergen, Norway, was burnt to the ground, a fire lit by Varg Vikernes of Burzum – Count Grishnackh as he was then aliased. It kicked off an association with Norwegian black metal that would go down in infamy. More people should do this, they reckoned. One such candidate in the international black metal underground was a young Japanese metalhead named Mirai Kawashima, from Tokyo, who in communications the Count enthusiastically encouraged to follow his example. There was just one problem. “He was boasting that he’d burned down some churches and told me to do the same in Japan,” Mirai recalls today. “I remember answering him that here in Japan almost nobody believed in Jesus Christ and we seld...
