Mayhen bassist defends hotel trashing

Members of black metal band Mayhem and their crew were arrested in Tilburg, Holland last week after apparently causing thousands of dollars in damage to a hotel they were staying at.

Bass player Jørn "Necrobutcher" Stubberud has defended the band in a new interview with Dagbladet.no, saying:

"It was the last night of a three-four day tour, and we were gonna celebrate a little with the guys who had travelled with us. Unfortunately, the hotel room had to pay for this.

"Our rider says that we should get single rooms in three-star hotels. But the local promoter put us in double rooms in a hotel that hadn't been refurbished in sixty or seventy years. When one of us sat down on the bed, it broke. After that, a mirror went, somebody cut themselves a little, there was some blood, and some more stuff got broken.

"We weren't really sober, and we were nine guys: the band, the crew and two Dutch drivers. In the morning, when we finally fell asleep, the police arrived. They saw all the broken rooms, and water was flooding out of some of the pipes. They didn't bother to do any interrogations, they just arrested everybody. Because it was early in the morning, everybody wasn't sober and somebody became a little aggressive. The mood wasn't really great when we were arrested.

"I mentioned to the police that I at some point thought things had gone too far. I think it was when the TV went. For the prosecution, it became a point that I had tried to stop the whole thing. Everybody else was found guilty of complicity."