Per Yngve "Pelle" Ohlin (16 January 1969 – 8 April 1991), known professionally as Dead, was a Swedish musician, best known as the lead vocalist and lyricist of the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem from 1988 until his suicide in 1991. Prior to Mayhem, he performed as the vocalist in the Swedish death/thrash band Morbid. Roadrunner Records ranked him No. 48 out of 50 of The Greatest Metal Front-Men of All Time.
Dead was known for his morbid personality and obsession with death. He hoarded dead birds, wore shirts with funeral announcements printed on them and wore corpse paint—being one of the first in black metal to do so. Acquaintances and peers described Ohlin as difficult to befriend or understand. Already intensely introverted and depressed, Dead's personality and demeanor would only become more withdrawn leading up to his death, a progression marked by such patterns as harming himself offstage among friends and isolating himself for long periods in his bedroom.
Dead died by suicide in April 1991 at the age of 22. An image of his cadaver was used as the cover for the unofficially released live album The Dawn of the Black Hearts (1995).
Early life
Per Yngve Ohlin (sometimes called "Pelle") was born on 16 January 1969 in Västerhaninge, Stockholm County, Sweden, to parents Anita Forsberg and Lars Ohlin, who divorced soon after his birth. As a young child, Ohlin suffered from sleep apnea. At the age of ten, he suffered internal bleeding when his spleen ruptured after what he claimed was an ice skating accident. However, in the Swedish metal book Blod eld död (English: "Blood Fire Death"), his brother Anders stated that Dead was frequently bullied in school and one day sustained a ruptured spleen as a direct result of a severe beating by bullies. Because of the injury, Ohlin had to be rushed to a hospital, where he was briefly declared clinically dead. After a few years, the incident resulted in a fascination with death, and later inspired his stage name. The event also likely induced his possible Cotard's syndrome.
As a teenager, Ohlin developed a taste for heavy metal and rock music, citing bands like Black Sabbath, Kiss, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, AC/DC, Motörhead, Venom, Metallica, Bathory, Sodom and Mercyful Fate as his favourites. Despite his love for Bathory, he was very displeased after their change in musical style and consequently referred to Quorthon as "a wimp".
Career
Morbid and Mayhem
In early 1986, Ohlin founded the Swedish death/thrash metal group Morbid, with which he recorded a demo tape called December Moon. Disappointed that the band wasn't "going anywhere", he decided to contact members of Mayhem as he was aware the group were in need of a new frontman following vocalist Maniac's departure. According to Mayhem bassist Jørn "Necrobutcher" Stubberud, Dead initially sent the band members a small parcel containing a demo tape, a letter detailing his ideas for the future and a crucified mouse. Mayhem drummer Jan Axel "Hellhammer" Blomberg claimed that Dead "was the first black metal musician to use corpse paint", although this statement has been proven to be debatable as Mayhem guitarist Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth can be seen wearing corpse paint in live footage as early as 1985. To complete his corpse-like image, Dead would bury his stage clothes and dig them up again to wear on the night of a concert.
In an interview conducted by Marduk guitarist Morgan Håkansson and published in the fanzine Slayer, Dead explained how he and the rest of Mayhem would expel poseurs at their concerts. Reciting the events of one particular show, he claimed, "Before we began to play there was a crowd of about 300 in there, but in the second song 'Necrolust' we began to throw around those pig heads. Only 50 were left." He and the other members enjoyed this sort of practice; he concluded with, "If someone doesn't like blood and rotten flesh thrown in their face they can FUCK OFF, and that's exactly what they do."
Dead made a brief appearance in the 1986 music video for Candlemass' "Bewitched".
Personality
In interviews, fellow musicians often described Dead as odd and introverted. Hellhammer described Dead as "a very strange personality […] depressed, melancholic and dark."<!--See Lords of Chaos, p. 51.--> Likewise, Euronymous once said, "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?" Former Mayhem drummer Kjetil Manheim later likened Dead's personality to that of Marvin the Paranoid Android.
According to Faust: "[Dead] wasn't a guy you could know very well. I think even the other guys in Mayhem didn't know him very well. He was hard to get close to. I met him two weeks before he died. I'd met him maybe six to eight times, in all. He had lots of weird ideas. I remember Aarseth was talking about him and said he did not have any humor. He did, but it was very obscure. Honestly, I don't think he was enjoying living in this world, which of course resulted in the suicide."
Stian "Occultus" Johannsen, who briefly took over as vocalist after Dead's suicide, remarked that Dead did not even possess a normal perception of himself: "He [Dead] didn't see himself as human; he saw himself as a creature from another world. He said he had many visions that his blood has frozen in his veins, that he was dead. That is the reason he took that name. He knew he would die."
According to a longtime pen pal known as "Old Nick", Ohlin disliked technology. He would only ever write letters to himself or others using longhand style and would never resort to the use of a PC. Old Nick concluded "technology in general made him [feel] uncomfortable. He just rejected it altogether, finding refuge [instead] in a world made of forests and woodlands." Dead also had an unusual interest with porphyria due to its connection to the mythology of vampirism.