Satanic verses: the origins of Roman Catholic black metal

In his youth in the early 2000s, Emil Lundin became obsessed with the idea of recording the world’s ‘most evil album’. The lanky, long-haired Swede formed a black metal band and set to work.

He faced an immediate obstacle. In making history’s most nefarious musical creation, he could hardly use Swedish, with its sing-song tones. English was also out of the question: he didn’t want to sound like Abba. That left Latin, the native tongue of the occult and, it is said, of demons.

In a quest for suitably devilish lyrics, he pored over arcane texts. That led him to Latin editions of Sayings of the Desert Fathers – bad-ass early Christian monks – and St Augustine’s Confessions . Before he knew it, he was sleeping on a concrete floor, rising in the night to pray and fasting until his cheekbo