Per “Dead” Ohlin (January 16, 1969 – April 8, 1991)

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Born Per Yngve Ohlin (sometime was referred to by friends and family as Pelle), he was later known for his stage name, Dead. Ohlin was born in Stockholm, Sweden and suffered from sleep apnea as a child. There are varying accounts as to how his spleen ruptured when he was 10 years old; some sources state he was in an ice skating accident and other suggest that the cause was from being beaten so horribly due to bullying at school. Regardless of how it occurred, he was taken to the hospital and was for some time clinically dead. The incident greatly affected him afterwards as he became obsessed with death and dying. It has been suggested that Ohlin had a rare mental disorder called Cotard’s Syndrome, in which the afflicted person believes they literally or figuratively dead; in Ohlin’s case this most likely stemmed from the trauma he experienced.

Ohlin struggled with depression throughout his short life, which caused him to withdraw further into himself and display behavior that was disturbing and gruesome. 

In 1986 he formed the band Morbid. Over a year later he became frustrated with the direction the band was going in and contacted members of the band Mayhem by sending the bassist Jørn 'Necrobutcher' Stubberud a demo tape and a dead, crucified mouse.  Ohlin moved to Norway in 1988 to join Mayhem as their lead singer and lyricist.

In various interviews, musicians who met and worked with Ohlin all agreed that he was a strange person who kept to himself, had weird ideas, kept people at a distance, and generally appeared despondent.  The drummer for Mayhem, Jan Axel 'Hellhammer' Blomberg described him as “depressed, melancholic, and dark”, while the Mayhem guitarist Øystein 'Euronymous' Aarseth stated in an interview, "I honestly think Dead is mentally insane. Which other way can you describe a guy who does not eat, in order to get starving wounds? Or who has a T-shirt with funeral announcements on it?"

On stage Ohlin wore black and white corpse paint on his face. According to Necrobutcher, "It wasn't anything to do with the way Kiss and Alice Cooper used makeup. Dead actually wanted to look like a corpse. He didn't do it to look cool".  Prior to a show, Ohlin found a dead crow and then decided to keep it in his pocket and would take it out to smell it in order to have the scent of death in his nostrils. Hellhammer stated in an interview, “Before the shows, Dead used to bury his clothes into the ground so that they could start to rot and get that grave scent. He was a corpse on a stage. Once he even asked us to bury him in the ground — he wanted his skin to become pale."

Ohlin engaged in self-harm on stage and around friends, cutting himself with knives or broken bottles.  His mental state worsened considerably over time, which ultimately lead to his suicide at the age of 22. Ohlin slashed both wrists and then his throat at his home, then went out into the woods and shot himself in the forehead. 

His suicide note:

Excuse the blood, but I have slit my wrists and neck. It was the intention that I would die in the woods so that it would take a few days before I was possibly found. I belong in the woods and have always done so. No one will understand the reason for this anyway. To give some semblance of an explanation I'm not a human, this is just a dream and soon I will awake. It was too cold and the blood was coagulating all the time, plus my new knife is too dull. If I don't succeed dying to the knife I will blow all the shit out of my skull. Yet I do not know. I left all my lyrics by "Let the good times roll"—plus the rest of the money. Whoever finds it gets the fucking thing. As a last salutation may I present "Life Eternal". Do whatever you want with the fucking thing. / Pelle.


I am unable to find any decent, live footage of the band. This is the best I could come up with.  



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