ELEGY TO UNDERGROUND MUSIC — FOR METALION
Sarpsborg is Norway’s city of paper mills. It breathes like a giant printing press; for half the year the dusky chill in the air blends with the silence of snow. The spruce and pine forests are the source of that breath. In the winter fog, trunks that stand straight as pillars are cut down, turned into pulp, white foam, fine paper dust; by morning that dust settles over the town like a thin veil. Growing up here means hearing the rustle of paper before the words themselves, feeling the whisper of trees between the letters. In this city, paper is not merely the industry’s breath but a skin that absorbs the echoes of the past; and from beneath that skin, the underground’s breath will one day rise.
Back then, in Sarpsborg’s quiet mornings, perhaps no one noticed, but the spirit of the underground was careening about, searching for a body, an eerie moan reverberating through dark corridors. The name of that pen, that stubbornness, that breath was Jon “Metalion” Kristiansen — the first voice of a resonance the underground had yet to hear. Even as he had only just stepped out of childhood, the passion was already in his veins. In his own words, it was a fate, and there was nowhere else to be carried. A typewriter, a few photographs, a handful of handmade pages... And soon those pages would take the name Slayer Mag and become the fanzine with its finger on the underground’s pulse. Metalion was learning to scream within words, to forge a language of his own, to solder together the links of a tape-trading (the cassette-swap) chain that circled the world with nothing but words, and to place the silence itself in brackets. He didn’t know it yet, perhaps, but this was already a form of worship — the sharpest, loneliest way to exist.
In the summer of 1985, just before Motörhead took the stage at Oslo’s Jordal Amfi, a shadow moved through the doorways: Jon “Metalion” Kristiansen. Tucked under his arm was a stapled sheaf — Slayer Mag’s second breath. Scissor marks on the page edges, the sweet-sour chemistry of glue on his fingers, and on his face the pride that says, “those who want to see will make the effort to find.” Two gazes broke away from the crowd that day: Øystein Aarseth (Euronymous) and Jørn Stubberud (Necrobutcher). This was not just a Motörhead concert. It was the meeting of a frequency that recognizes itself — hearts beating in the same rhythm, nerves carrying current along the same paths, souls trapped in the same chasm and struggling to breathe. The first step of a friendship, of an underground circulation.
When the dust of that summer settled and winter pressed up against the threshold, a note appeared in the pages of Slayer Mag: “15 February 1986 – Ski, Folkets Hus. Be there or die.” In the margin, a hasty line: Effects coming from the butcher. The smell of blood. A foggy night. That notice was not merely an announcement; it was the first pulse that set a rhythm to the underground’s hum — the ratification of a new friendship, the news of an early, formative performance in Ski, the small town where the band’s founders lived.
It would be understood in the years to come that without Metalion’s writing and archive, the memory of this scene would be maimed. Had the voice of the underground not been etched onto the page, much would have been lost to the dark. Later, everyone wrote something, told stories, remembered; but had he not written, all those years, those memories, and the mutual recognition of those who drew the same breath would have remained incomplete. The music’s circulation might even have congealed, like a clogged artery. Thankfully, those cut-and-paste pages became a worldwide remembrance carved into Norway’s mist. Slayer Mag recorded not only bands, albums, and interviews from across the globe, but the spirit of an era itself.
What we see today in those still-unfaded traces is not merely a fanzine; it is a conviction. For every word that passed through Metalion’s hands is a signature in the underground’s sacred ledger. If we can speak from the ashes of that era today, it is because he was the one who kindled the first ember of those ashes.
These pages are dedicated to the man who lit that ember. For though the papers have long since turned to ash, he still casts light simply by being.
