Neo Nazi Black Metal Icon Arrested Over Alleged Massacre Plot

Controversial Norwegian black metal musician Varg Vikernes, best known for his genre-defining work in the '90s with Burzum and his neo-Nazi sympathising, has been arrested in France on suspicion of plotting a massacre.

According to Reuters, French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said they swooped after Vikernes' wife Marie Chachet recently bought four rifles. Authorities feared that Vikernes, who is a neo-Nazi sympathiser and has links to Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, was plotting a terrorist attack.

Valls said, “Having received the manifesto before [Breivik] committed his crimes and having been sentenced in Norway in the past for murder, this individual, who was close to a neo-Nazi movement, was likely to prepare a large terrorist act.”

Cachet had a gun permit when she purchased the weapons and Valls said, “The investigation will notably establish the conditions in which these [rifles] were acquired and their real objective.”

One-man-band Burzum's albums from the mid '90s are critically acclaimed, but his life and career has been shrouded with murder charges and jail sentences. In 1994 Vikernes was arrested for the murder of guitarist Øystein Aarseth – aka Euronymous – of Mayhem as well as the notorious church burning incidents.

After he was released from jail in 2009 Vikernes moved to France and Burzum began releasing albums again from 2010 under the Byelobog Productions label, Byelobog meaning 'white God'. His latest album was released earlier this year.

In July 2011 Breivik shocked the world when he murdered 77 people in a killing spree in Oslo and a nearby island. In the following prosecution, French authorities found that Breivik had sent a copy of his 1,500 page anti-Muslin and pro-war manifesto to Vikernes.

The notoriety of individuals such as Vikernes has long overshadowed the Norwegian metal scene, which was the subject of a 2009 documentary Until The Light Takes Us.