THE MADMAN OF TEMECULA

"I've always hated 99% of Earth's population. Even as a kid I couldn't fucking stand them. Last month I nearly ripped someone's face off for disrespecting 'Masters of The Universe.' He saw my collection and was like 'Oh, that orange guy.' No motherfucker, these characters mean everything. They're symbols and mythologies. I was raised on the Norwegian legends, and all of them represent different incarnations of The Old Gods. But to this asshole, they were just chunks of plastic to bang together as a mindless kid. You fucking zombie, that's Beastman, not orange guy. He's the ruler of the jungle, he wrangles the beasts of the Earth. You disrespect him and you fuck with what I stand for. This shit is fucking serious!"

These are the words of Edwin Borscheim, arguably the most extreme shock rocker in America, if not the world. Not since GG Allin's death in 1993 has anyone came close to topping the legend, yet Borscheim hits the same altitude of abomination, even if avoiding the task of eating his own shit on stage. GG was a lunatic freak and prevented serial killer who found freedom in punk rock instead of slashing up poor hookers. His charisma was legendary, his quotes immense, his lunatic plan to remodel the world in his own twisted image second to none in the history of rock n' roll… and then came Borscheim…

To flip on a Kettle Cadaver DVD is to view Edwin live in action hammering 8 inch nails through his cock and scrotum to a 2X4, raping a skinned coyote with a high powered saw blade strap-on, staple gunning his face raw, tearing out his fingernails, savagely attacking hecklers in the crowd, jamming two dozen hypodermic needles in his skin, or wrapping razor wire around his chest, face and schlong for kicks. And now comes the new Edwin --an even bloodier, more gruesome version of his old self --abandoning the oldschool days of Kettle Cadaver for an all-out conversion to black metal terrorism.

Hanging out with Edwin Borscheim is kind of like hanging out with Freddy Krueger, except that he hunts you down in your dreams not to slaughter you, but simply to hang out ‘cause you're just as depraved. Just as the Son of a 100 Maniacs would lead you around his boiler room showing off his neat finger knife trinkets, Edwin enthusiastically does the same.

We're inside his HQ, this ghoulish shack of doom he built from the ground up. I'm the first journalist outside of the Germans to ever step foot in here, and they flipped him a grand for the privilege. The interior hosts a massive collection of death-weapons he created through blacksmith arts and crafts. All of the leather he made himself – gauntlets, full war suits studded with barbaric spikes, weird BDSM shit. Since the slaughterhouse wouldn't let him slay the cow, he purchases the fully carved skin and drags the bloody clump home over his shoulder, dragging a mutilated trail through sandy back-roads...

The entrance to Edwin's fortress is covered in gigantic rusted nails and surrounded by quaint booby traps such as literal bear traps. The interior is shadowy and gothic in the truest non-HIM sense, and you feel like you're in the lair of a Handy Andy Nosferatu, because the entire structure is hammered together with chopped lumber. It's like an authentically menacing version of Mandel's underworld in Little Monsters. Edwin sleeps in a coffin and there is real blood splattered all over the walls. Same with the floors, and Manson Family-esque satanic writings spray painted across the walls. Black candles, occultist mirrors, giant Carpathian Forest flag.

"You wanna see some crazy shit?” Edwin says as he flicks through the footage of a video recorder. On the tiny screen – the only thing illuminating the chamber --are two girls he's faced backwards, backsides exposed, both handcuffed and mute, and he's staple gunning their backs with three-inch deep industrial sized magnums. There are at least a hundred in each of their backs, and they're not even making a peep. Then he lifts a chalice, pops some of these juggernauts out with a butter knife, and fills the thing up with dripping plasma. He pauses the HI8 before it gets any crazier. Impressed, I say: "Wow, that shit's fucking hot. Where do you find girls like that?” His reply: "You gotta create ‘em.”

Every writer alive exaggerates things ever so slightly for the purposes of sensationalism and effect. But once again, I cannot stress more firmly how dead serious Edwin is. He is one of the most intense individuals I have ever met.

Borscheim exists in some other dimension attained through Neitzscean will – this brutal tyrant with the cunning dementia of Loki. He moves with the wolf-like grace of Danzig – ripped, crazed; a wide black Mohawk with shaved-to-the-skin sides, Kettle Cadaver logo tattooed on the left hemisphere. His knuckles are tattooed with the names of his pet dogs, quite possibly the only living beings he has any true love for.

He seems at all times to be swinging between two polarizations --one where everything is a sort of warped cartoon of black humor; the other a nightmare world where he could snap on you in a heartbeat. Yet he has an almost child-like exuberance for adventure. He has an inherently European vibe, due to his Norwegian immigration. He has a distinct way of talking, this slang-heavy accent on par with a mafia underling from Long Island.

Not that I have even begun to unfurl his epic back-story. You see, in Temecula --a town 2 hours north of San Diego – lay a sparse settlement within a complex of mountainous valleys. Halfway to Los Angeles, in this very desert, lays a satanic compound where pagan black mettalers collide to live in a world between Road Warrior Urungus and the multi-hoofed army of the four horsemen. And the ringmaster antichrist of these hordes met me in person at a billiards hall last summer. We then had a discussion of great historical importance…

Said Borscheim on June 22^nd 2006, while referring to his legendary squat The Mower Shack:"Those days were pretty wild. I used to pick up squatter kids and let them live on my property in exchange for labor. We would have all kinds of different parties there. Most of them to make money, but then we also had our exclusive Plague shindigs where you could see bands like Pernicious and Sol Evil. It was an exciting time --we'd pretty much created our own reality. I was clueless of the outside world. When 9/11 hit, I didn't even know until almost a week later.”

"That place had endless opportunities. We had these dog kennels and we'd host these bear-knuckle fight parties where people would beat the fuck out of each other. If you were to look at this scene from the outside, it might seem a bit childish with the war paint and old fashioned weapons. But this is what attracts the young and there is nothing like the enthusiasm of the youth…

**Back to the Present, this chilly January night. The situation has crept ever so slowly from "formal journalist guy meets Satan incarnate.” No, this is on par with Scarecrow and The Joker kicking it at the League of Doom. It's not about ideology, it's not about press – it's two sick fucks getting ripped & ranting depravity…

Yet we need to back up this tale, again. Five hours ago I was sitting in the Greyhound SD terminal and breaking news flashed that the French government had declassified all of their X-Files and flatly admitted the existence of alien spacecraft. It ran once as a quickie blurb before returning to the top story of every 15 minute brief --a two year that old accidentally ate crystal meth in Kansas…

I fell asleep on the bus, and went deep under in an exhausted lapse of REM. I thought I was an Eagle soaring over the mountains, swaying to the bus rhythms… Snapped out immediately, groggy, pushed out of the bus, Edwin emerges from the darkness with red suspenders and white laced boots, shakes my hand with a slick professional death-grip, and we immediately hop into his buddies' truck.

The night is freezing and ominous, the moon full and bright when a cop speeds behind us and flips on his lights at 75 MPH on the freeway. It is no secret at that moment how allergic Edwin and I both are to the coppers; that same paranoiac, neurotic spider sense. Everyone is obviously a walking felony in this car. Miraculously, the squad car switches lanes, hits the gas, and zooms passed us doing 95 MPH. The cold-blood rush fades slowly...

As we approach Edwin's compound his dogs run to the fence. "Never pet the dogs, it's faggot shit. I see someone pet my dogs and I swear I'll beat their fuckin' face in.” Up the hill is his little trailer in the middle of a dead field. His neighbors are far separated, and they have wooden fence posts and wandering roosters.

It is Devils Rejects incarnate. His entire backyard is this satanic al Qaeda training ground, and there are weird structures of steel and chicken wire that he welded together for cage-match fighting. There's also a giant gargoyle head he created by hand, like an Aztec remnant, surrounded by a mix of black ash and sand...

The inside of Boscheim's trailer is divided into three main motifs --Danzig worship, He-Man toys, and a giant wall of horror DVD's & WWII docs. There is an oil painting someone made of Edwin in a Frazetta-type barbarian background with flaming volcanoes. He's beefed up, bluish and clutching a deranged machete.

Eddie takes me outside to the shack fortress, and that's when we catch up to the staple gunned darlings. He begins shuffling through junk drawers, tossing random items on the ground. The wood block he nailed to his genitals, a barb wired crown with strands of his hair and chunks of skin stuck to its barbs, hypodermic needles with dried blood in the chamber. "Ah, here they are.” He passes me some BM propaganda flyers fashioned after the oldschool Norwegian ones you see in the sidebars of Lords of Chaos. They are all based around the SoCal Plague network, the supposed terrorist organization in which Lord Mörder from Sol Evil was convicted.

One flyer is an anti-Lord Daishe (Sumeria) flyer that has his corpse-painted face with a universal "NO” encircled by "NO TRAITORS, NO SNITCHES, NO RATS, NO NARCS” and reads: "This bastard helped the authorities in prosecuting Lord Mörder of Sol Evil. Destroy Daishe now!” Another is a bloody, demonic Ray Shipley that says "FUCK DAISHE, HAIL LORD MÖRDER. Lord Mörder betrayed by Daishe of Sumeria. Support Black Metal! Support Sol Evil! Not police Puppets like Sumeria!”

There are a few basic S.C.B.M. (SoCal Black Metal) ones, yet the most bluntly iconic is of a white-hooded corpse-paint druid with a spiked club behind a barb wire fence. There is a universal "NO” sign crossing out the word "HARDCORE” and surrounded by the words "NO FAGS, NO TRENDIES, NO STAGE, NO BANDS.”

***It should be appropriate to mention at this juncture that Ray Shipley, a.k.a. Lord Mörder is the right hand man of Edwin Borscheim, and both were instrumental figures in this renegade empire. In case you haven't heard, Lord Mörder is the first black metaller in the history of the United States to be tried as a "Satanic Terrorist."

In early 2003 Mörder's black metal outfit Sol Evil was at their peak, having completed a successful tour with Enthroned. Not long after, Sol Evil's drummer Berzerk --a gauntlet-clad, leather and spiked black metal warrior – swore off his die-hard Satanic ideology and committed himself to a faith-based rehab clinic. He gave himself to the Born Again pathology, took up the crucifix and, overnight, cleansed his former image.

This did not sit well with Lord Mörder, the band, or any in their immediate circles. It is an indisputable fact that worldwide, the black metal scene is unrepentantly and fascistically antichristian, because Christianity is viewed as the ultimate fascism. The essence of black metal is drenched in heathenism and fanatic mental segregation from both society and all white light religions. Black metal strives for the deepest pits of blasphemy; it is an orgy of audio terror and darkness. In its deepest sense, the efforts of BM strive for a liberation through the deepest core of alienation --a finalized process of man above god fused with a Neitzschean will to power…

The die-hard Satanists of this underground are viciously committed to a code of "death before dishonor.” None ever forget or forgive their Quislings, and retribution could come in any form. Lord Mörder is one such Satanist, wholly enamored in his own myth, having erased all boundaries between the stage and physical reality. One cold February morning, he and Sol Evil's guitarist Arminius, "sent a message” in the most blunt of all fashions.

At 5am they sped past the rehab clinic housing Berzerk and popped a couple handgun shots aimlessly at the building. Mörder fervently insists they had no plans on committing direct violence against Berzerk or anyone else. In their eyes, it was simply a way to rattle his nerves and forever draw the line. Berzerk didn't require physical retribution. He was invisible --a bad joke, a bathroom poetic; dead to them and gone forever…

What Mörder and Arminius didn't know is that they'd succeeded in terrorizing Berzerk so badly that he'd contacted the authorities. Fixed with a wire and appearing at Mörder's home to "make amends,” the police recorded whatever blatant statements they could before the SWAT team charged in. As charges were formulated, Mörder was discovered to maintain an already colored legal history including grave desecration and church vandalism.

The prosecution immediately demanded a duel verdict of life in prison without the possibility of parole. To make matters worse, Sumeria bassist Lord Daische was allegedly coerced by authorities to make statements against the two (which Daische has vehemently denied). This has caused a massive rift in the SoCal BM underground, with Sumeria itself as one of the most high-profile touring BM bands from the region.

Due to the fanatical nature of the crime, the authorities needed little to convince the jury of Mörder's status as a perceived Charles Manson/Varg Vikernes archetype. The prosecution was the first in United States history to utilize the seminal BM book Lord of Chaos as a reference guide. From that definitive history of the Norwegian church burnings, they pulled every belligerent statement from the members of Burzum, Absurd, and Mayhem to influence the jury.

In the eyes of the law, he was also the ringleader of "The Plague" --a supposedly International Satanic Terrorist Organization mirroring Norway's legendary "Black Circle.” In reality though, "The Plague” was simply a name given to his crew of friends and like-minded bands they often played with (including Kettle Cadaver), not uncommon whatsoever in any metal, punk, or industrial scene you'll find in operation today.

A top-notch defense team could do little to reprimand the jury's opinion. With dozens of live show flyers lined up as evidence featuring an endless procession of inverted crosses, burning pentagrams, and "destroy the Christians" outbursts in the margins, the life sentence loomed heavy over what was legally a 3 year maximum penalty of discharging a firearm in public. For an action that few outside the immediate BM underground at large could understand, Mörder was left trying to explain himself to a system which looked at him as nothing other than a terrifying psychopath that best be dealt with by throwing away the key.

In the end they secured non-life plea bargains with trumped up "hate crime" charges, instantly giving three times the legal limitation. Mörder got 15 years as an accomplice, Arminius 25 for firing the weapon. The media covered it up as not to start any commotion, and this story has long been buried or publicized in highly obscure metal zines…

And here I am at the second version of The Mower Shack, Edwin's new lair, in the heart of this savage tale: "See that Snake Mountain box on the floor? Know how on the side panel it shows all of the features to make it look way bigger and magical than it is? Like the a picture of an action figure in the slime pit, then one of an axe battle on the castle top, and one of Skeletor's laboratory? That's a big part of what inspired me.”

Edwin shows me all of his tattoos. One is of the machete he created on the wall of his shack, a sketch of his torture rack, his band logo. Everything in Edwin's world is highly personal, reinforcing the world he's fanatically courted into reality…

Edwin keeps ranting about Axel Rose being that alpha-male of rock vocalists, how Misfits over-merchandising has destroyed anything cult about the band, and about his 2004 "Naked Tour” which was "more of a rock n' roll thing.” He elaborates a tale of trying to get a band he'd beaten up on a compilation he was putting out, and when he went to their house 20 cars pulled up to protect them. "Shit man, I was just trying to be friendly. It's not my fault they suck. You want a comp that represents all of the scene or what?”

Devon (drummer of Kettle Cadaver) shows up with plastic sheeting covering a bloody, fresh tattoo, and Edwin launches on a Mayhem rant. He pulls out a shoebox of 600 photos. He took a snapshot of every nook of the labyrinth beneath the Helvete store in Norway where all the legendary BM bands used to practice. Next he flips on the new Kettle Cadaver 12 video DVD collection Among The Damned. And I thought the self-mutilation in the first DVD was bad; live clips and industrial miniatures of Borscheim doing blacksmith stuff like Leatherface in his chainsaw shed…

He's kind of weird about playing his "ego masturbation ballad” acoustic song – a kind of "Man That You Fear” which features Edwin on mountaintops dueling both environment and his own personal nature in poetic, somber contemplation…

There is a "glam” video in a nightclub that looks like The Viper Room, red curtains and hot goth chicks making out and dancing with snakes. Then my favorite – a Roadwarrior post-apocalypse homage of his crew fighting each other in dune buggies and shooting arrows. In this video he plays the red-mohawked villain complete with assless leather chaps. It concludes with a "two man enter, one man leaves” broadsword duel between Edwin and one of the Sol Evil guys, fire explosions spewing everywhere…

Next he speeds through the documentary the Germans made on his wrestling, which has a weird Gummo vibe to it, like pro wrestling as this thing that comes out of poverty, ignorance, and desperation. At his segments peak he's showing the crew Masters of the Universe figures and says something along the lines of, "Some kids grow up wanting to be doctors or the president. I wanted to be this” and points to Skeletor. "And you know I'm closer than probably anyone in America.”

He pulls out a briefcase and inside it has a police report that details everything that cops confiscated from Mörder's house when the arrest went down. It is about 10 pages long and convictable items include: "One copy of Marilyn Manson's ‘Portrait of An American Family' compact disc, one copy of Ted Bundy autobiography, maps of California, pair of handcuffs, anti-Christian heavy metal flyers.” They even added a Smashing Pumpkins album to the list.

Edwin waves around a cassette tape that has all of the wire tapped conversations from Berzerk of Sol Evil and Daishe of Sumeria. "How the fuck did you get that?” Edwin just chuckles maniacally. "I have my ways.”

The moment has finally come to start the interview, and I hit play in the middle of a conversation:

"…threw him into the goddamn drum set, like a full Irish Whip. Whap, right into this guy and you see the camera [makes crashing noise]. Then I hit the bus driver, I run out and grab him during one of the songs. Then I threw him on the stage and he tries to grab some other guy, and this guy goes flying through the drum set. All these other meathead metal faggots are just standing there…

"Dude, there's no evil and brutality here. Cheeseburgers are not fucking black metal. Fucking pussies... And that guy keeps standing around, practicing how to be fuckin' ‘Johnny Evil?' At the end of the night he's still standing there like ‘oh, you're not cool.' I'll fucking strangle him. You're not fucking cool either, standing around with hippie hair bullshit. Oppress the maggots, keep ‘em fucking down.”

"What do you think of Phil Anselmo?”

Edwin Borscheim: "Everyone hates him, I think he's cool. I met him once and he remembered the Kettle Cadaver CD, he sung some lines from it. He had the Celtic Frost tattoo, all that shit.”