The Disturbing History of Silencer

*TRIGGER WARNING* This article mentions suicide, self harm, mental instability, and is not for everybody.

   A fall pastime for me and Zach "Thank God I'm a Car Guy" Ganshirt, is going into the woods and discovering hidden places long forgotten by time, also known as Urbex. Well We also like to jam some spooky stuff on the way and recently we threw on some black metal, but probably not the black metal you are used to. When you think "Black Metal" you probably think of bands like Mayhem, Darkthrone, or Emperor right? You may not be too familiar with what's called "Depressive Suicidal Black Metal" or "DSBM" for short.   

   Well this night we threw on a band called Make a Change...Kill Yourself and talked about a song where the vocalist literally recorded himself puking in a toilet for a couple minutes...yeah gross right? Well we went through some bizarre gimmicks black metal bands did, and of course the whole Mayhem thing was brought up been then I remembered one band I discovered a couple years ago, Silencer. Silencer have a story that could be even more disturbing than Mayhem's depending on your views, after I told Zach what I knew, he grew curious and sent me some stuff he discovered which made me dig deeper as well. Just a heads up, this could make you very uneasy, hence the trigger warning.

   Silencer formed in Sweden in 1995, and has since been considered a huge influence on the DSBM style. The two main members were Leere (Andreas Casado) on guitar and Nattramn (alleged real name: Mikael Nillsson) on vocals as well as a session drummer, Steve Wolz, for their only release. Aside from a demo, Silencer have only released one album: Death - Pierce Me, a very melancholic and eerie black metal release with some of the most disturbing suicidal lyrics that some might say are as poetic as they are straight forward. 

   Now the attention grabber for this band was the vocalist, Nattramn. His vocal style was...unconventional to say the least. His vocals are agony filled shrieks and wails that you could honestly compare to a dying animal, as critics like to say. Well little is known about Nattramn, not only before the band, but also during its time, I say this because not much is 100% confirmed.

   It is speculated that during the recording of Death - Pierce Me, Nattramn would harm himself by cutting deep wounds to make his screams more genuine and agonizing. Another rumor was that he even chopped off his own hands and replaced them with pig trotters. Here is a confirmed picture of Nattramn during the recording, also the most famous one.

With his face obscured his identity remains a mystery, but supposedly he is covered in his own blood.I think we can all agree that the pig feet rumor is definitely false considering you can tell he's holding them under the bandages. This is proven even further with other pictures that we will get to later, my theory: all for shock value, hopefully not from a real pig though. Don't let this make you lose interest in the subject however because it only get wilder.

   After the record was recorded, Nattramn was admitted to Sankt Sigfrids Sjukhus, a mental hospital in Sweden. The band officially split as of 2001 without playing a single show, and Leere went on to join fellow Swedish black metal band Shining. Its unknown whether Nattramn was voluntarily admitted or admitted by his fellow band mate. Again nothing is 100% confirmed. While spending time in the hospital, Nattramn was actually quite productive. He recorded an industrial dark ambient album in 2007 under the name, Diagnose: Lebegehfehr which translates to Diagnose: Mortal Danger. While this is entirely different than Silencer's music, its still very eerie and unsettling, too much so for me to go through the whole thing to be honest.

   Another event in hospitalization was the release of his book in 2011 entitled Grishjärta which translates to "Pig's Heart". This book contained poetry in both English and Svenska, as well as dark artwork, and more pictures of Nattramn himself. Once again these are confirmed 100% to be him.

Now these look familiar right? These are allegedly also from the recording of Death - Pierce Me, but there was one more that stuck out the most to me...


                                              

In this one, we can just barely see Nattramn's face, though not enough to identify him. what I found very interesting is that not only is he not covered in blood, but there's not scars from his self harm habit. Granted you can't see his arms very well either, but judging from the other pictures it makes me think he cut all over. Some could again speculate it was all fake, I for one propose the theory that this photo was from before the recording, which could possibly have been the only time he has done it. Nothing is confirmed other than these photos are in fact him, we don't know when these were taken, this is all speculation.

   Now a big thing that shocked me in my research about Nattramn was this. During his time in the hospital, he allegedly broke out, left a note saying he was out to kill. He stumbled upon a nearby playground and nearly murdered a 5 year old girl with an axe. The police showed up and he attempted suicide by cop, aka he literally begged the cops to kill him. Now this story supposedly made news in Sweden, but you guessed it, not confirmed to be Nattramn, I've read it was a possible relative of his or just a friend from the same hospital. Once again this is all speculation. According to my sources, he was readmitted to the hospital, and shockingly enough this allegedly happened in 2001, the same year Silencer broke up. Now I could only find one forum where someone has cited a link to the news story and to make it more believable it was written in Svenska from a Swedish website. I checked the link to get some accuracy, it does bring you to an entirely Swedish website, however the page says "Hoppsan - vi kan inte hitta sidan!" For those of you non Swedes, this translates to "Oops - We Cannot Find the Page!"

   Now lets wrap this up. Nattramn, who's alleged name is Mikael Nillsson, was unknown before Silencer, was clinically insane, self harmed during recordings, then was hospitalized, wrote a book, released an ambient record, broke out and attempted murder/suicide by cop, then what? Well according to the Metal Archives he is working on a new extreme metal project, but there is no evidence whatsoever to back that up. The big thing people talk about with this band is "was any of this real?" An interesting take I found in my research was a theory where Nattramn was nothing more than an "art project" or a character basically to give the band recognition.

     Something that crossed my mind is so much was dug up on Nattramn...but what about Leere? I could find very little about Leere, pretty much only could find that he joined Shining. What was fucked up about Shining's rep was their vocalist was also notorious for self harm and would even add it to the on stage performance, and they actually wanted their fans to commit suicide because of their music. So put two and two together and I thought to myself: "What if Leere pushed Nattramn to self harm".  My first thought was if there's no interviews people on the internet must've said something right? Nope. Nothing. I know I've said it many times but this is all speculation, I can't stress it enough. The lyrics Nattramn wrote for Silencer would have really any loved one concerned about his well being, therefore it does make sense to me that he was admitted to the hospital, but I find it so bizarre that we know what hospital it is but can't confirm his real name? Well I suppose that is a confidential thing for a hospital. 

   Now as for session drummer, Steve Wolz. He is also regarded as the ex drummer for a band called Bethlehem. In my digging, people actually seem to gravitate more towards him for answers. Personally I would go to a full time member of the band before a session drummer but supposedly these people claim to have made progress. I have found two claims of people who got in contact with Wolz, one is far more believable than the other. First off was someone on a metal archives forum who claimed they emailed him and Wolz responded saying that Nattramn was a good person with a great sense of humor, however this person had a very fuck off-ish attitude towards the whole subject and I find it very hard to believe any average Joe would get access to his email. Now the second one had a screen shot. 

This was a Facebook message only intended to confirm if Nattramn was a real person. This person claims this conversation was from 2016 and posted 10 months ago on reddit, not only that but this person claims to have gotten in contact with something called HAL which Nattramn is affiliated with. There is a screenshot of the email, but I will not include it only because it contains a slur, but it seems to just be confirming that a record has shipped, but then it says "Holy Trinity Kris (Spirit) Peder (Father) Nattramn (Il Capitano). My opinion, Steve's picture in the message doesn't look precisely like him but all pictures of him he has long hair and is obviously younger, however I can believe at the very least he would give this much info about Nattramn. As for the HAL email, I heavily doubt it was Nattramn himself that sent it, with someone that seems to try and keep such anonymity to just have a casual yet racist response seems very farfetched. Not only that but every bizarre story and rumor on Silencer was mentioned by sites like Metal Injection, something big like this would've made headlines in the metal world for sure.  Lets say it together, nothing is 100% confirmed this is all speculation, whether you choose to believe the screenshots are real is entirely up to you.

   So this is all I could find on Silencer. A very mysterious and twisted band. In reality all we have to go on is music, pictures, and a book to really know what happened. It's as if all other records were erased and the band seems to want to keep the mystery as part of their legacy. Well there's a ton of people on the internet fed up with the antics of black metal and call everyone a dumb shit for believing in it, but hey its a big world out there and I don't doubt that there's a possibility something like this is possible. Whether you want to believe it or not is up to you. There are things about the story I believe, and some I am really not sure of, as well as a few things I have disproven to at least myself and possibly you, the reader.