At the same time, in Rovaniemi, a small city way up in the Arctic Circle, three Finnish teenagers were creating something totally different from what was happening in Bergen or Oslo. They called their music 'the most primitive, savage, hell-obsessed black metal imaginable.' The band name? Beherit, which means Satan in Syriac. And they were just seventeen!
Finland in 1989 was a totally different world from Norway.
Sure, both had the cold and the darkness, but that's where the similarities end.
Finland had just come out of a brutal war with the Soviet Union fifty years before. The language is nothing like Swedish or Danish, it's closer to Hungarian or Estonian! The Lutheran tradition there is harsh, with its own kind of silence and guilt, not the Catholic-style anti-Christianity you find in Norway. And Rovaniemi, up in Lapland, isn't even like the rest of Finland. It's pure Arctic, with reindeer, permafrost, and real isolation. The nearest big city is hundreds of kilometers away. You can feel the difference in the music.
## Beherit came straight out of that frozen isolation in 1989.
Nuclear Holocausto Vengeance (Marko Laiho), Daemon Fornication, and Sodomatic Slaughter.
In 1990, they recorded three demos in the only studio in Rovaniemi! Those tapes spread fast through the underground tape trading scene, and people were shocked – nobody had heard anything like it before. You can hear the Blasphemy and Sarcófago influences, that wild war metal chaos from Brazil and Canada, but Beherit had something extra. Whispered vocals, strange atmospheres, a ritual feeling instead of just pure violence.
What happened next is one of the craziest stories in underground metal!
By 1992, Finland was finally getting noticed as a real black metal force – Beherit, Impaled Nazarene from Oulu, Archgoat Official from Turku, Barathrum Orchestra.
But some Norwegians didn't like it, thinking black metal belonged to them. This led to the so-called 'Dark War.'
But honestly, most of it was just Nuclear Holocausto causing trouble for fun.
He made prank calls in the middle of the night, playing nursery rhymes and Hitler speeches to Mika Luttinen (Impaled Nazarene) and Samoth (Emperor official). He even sent a letter to Euronymous (Mayhem), pretending to be Black Crucifixion, calling him a 'Norwegian cuck.'
Euronymous wanted revenge and supposedly planned to kidnap Black Crucifixion!
Mika Luttinen thought he was getting real death threats from Norwegian black metal Nazis, so he put 'No orders from Norway accepted' and 'Kuolema Norjan kusipäille!' (Death to the arseholes of Norway) on the cover of 'Tol Cormpt Norz Norz Norz.'
It was part theatre, part real tension, and a lot of one Finnish guy just having fun causing chaos.
Beherit's label situation was just as chaotic.
Turbo Music sent them a tiny amount of money (about fifty euros!) to record their debut album. The money vanished. Nuclear Holocausto never really confirmed if it all went on alcohol, but he did say the budget was nowhere near enough.
So what did the label do?
They just took the 'Demonomancy' demo and the 'Dawn of Satan's Millennium' EP, slapped them together as a compilation, and called it 'The Oath of Black Blood' – all without the band's permission.
Laiho told Metal Hammer in 1992: 'I hate the album! It's so bad, we never wanted to release it.' But that bootleg became the way most people first heard Beherit, and now it's a classic!
The real debut album they wanted to make? Never happened. There was a tape of an unfinished version, but the only person who had it burned it so bootleggers couldn't get it. Gone forever.
'Drawing Down the Moon' came out in 1993 on Spinefarm Records, and this was the real Beherit album. Ritual vocals, weird spacey synths, and a slower, hypnotic sound instead of just blasting violence.
At the time, a lot of people didn't get it – it was too experimental for black metal fans back then. But now it's seen as one of the most original albums in the genre.
After that, Beherit split up.
Nuclear Holocausto switched to ambient electronics, releasing 'H418ov21.C' in 1994 and 'Electric Doom Synthesis' in 1995 under the Beherit name. The underground scene had no idea what to make of these records, but now they've found their fans. Then he vanished. He became a techno DJ called Gamma-G, put out a compilation called '(G)raveyard 2001 – The Ultimate Hardrave Massacre,' and moved to Thailand.
Meanwhile, the Finnish scene kept going with bands like Horna and Sargeist, all inspired by early Beherit, while Laiho was somewhere in Southeast Asia playing hard techno.
## Beherit came back in 2008!
Nuclear Holocausto returned from Thailand, got back together with Sodomatic Slaughter, and brought in Ancient Corpse Desekrator (Sami Tenetz from Thy Serpent) on guitar and Abyss on bass. They recorded 'Engram' in 2009.
The production is cleaner than the old stuff, the sound more controlled, but the Beherit spirit is still there. You still get the weird synths, the whispered vocals, and those trance-like parts that made 'Drawing Down the Moon' so unique
This isn't just nostalgia – Beherit still had something to say.
'Engram' is where we come in.
This album isn't just a Beherit comeback – it's proof of what Finnish black metal really is. Not just Norway's little brother, not a copy of someone else's scene, but something born from Arctic isolation and total chaos.
Only in Finland do you get a band that spends its recording money on booze, has their demos released without permission and turned into a classic, prank-calls their way into a fake war with Norway, disappears into techno, and then comes back from Thailand with a real black metal album sixteen years later!
'Engram' is the first real Beherit full-length in sixteen years.
It's not 'Drawing Down the Moon' – and it doesn't have to be.
[VIDEO]