Norwegian black metaller sees court date deferred to next year.
Burzum’s Varg Vikernes will stand trial in France next year on charges of “inciting racial hatred and glorifying war crimes”. A French court this week postponed the trial to June 2014 after Vikernes’ lawyer requested more time to prepare his defence.
The Norwegian musician was initially arrested in July at his farmhouse in France on suspicion of “plotting a massacre”. French authorities later conceded there was no plot and he and his wife, who was also arrested, were released.
Police were reportedly alerted to Vikernes’ activity after the known neo-Nazi sympathiser revealed on his blog that Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik had sent him a copy of his manifesto. Vikernes later appealed to fans to help him sue the French authorities over his arrest.
As one-man black metal machine Burzum, Vikernes released some of the genre’s most essential albums in the ’90s, but he has perhaps become better known for his arson attacks on Christian churches and the 1994 murder of Mayhem’s Øystein Aarseth. He was released from jail in 2009 and has in recent years lived in France with his family. [via BBC; Billboard]
