David "Blackmoon" Parland (RIP) was the guitarist and founder of many black metal and death metal bands. The two most famous, albeit not always for the right reasons, are Necrophobic and Dark Funeral.
In each case, Blackmoon only ever participated in the debut, leaving the bands shortly after... and it really doesn't take a genius to notice the drastic change in direction of both bands, following his departure from each.
Necrophobic was once part of the "top tier" of Swedish death metal before turning into an Arch Enemy clone, and Dark Funeral is nowadays more associated with insipid and mediocre metalcore than with any serious black metal like Parland once envisioned.
Blackmoon Talks Dark Funeral, Necrophobic
In one of his last interviews before passing away, David Parland laid down his case against the modern "trendy" black metal scene and the lack of innovation therein.
Regarding the creation of DARK FUNERAL, it happened because of two things: I wasn't satisfied with some parts of NECROPHOBIC, for example the drumming, and at the time, and some other things that made me see that there wasn't that much future for the band. Then I met Ahriman and well, I had nothing against ****, and we were both going for the idea to create some very extreme Black Metal. [...] There was both a lack of creativity in NECROPHOBIC and the total opposite [of] what I wanted. Leaving NECROPHOBIC was just a question of time. It was a little irritating though that most of the tracks on Darkside are mine. Even the cover idea was mine; I called Necrolord and told him how I wanted it to look.
He also lays out a vision of the "big three" of black metal: Dissection, Marduk and Dark Funeral.
Back in 94-95, the big three Black/Death Metal bands were DISSECTION, MARDUK, and DARK FUNERAL. Those were very special times, since the Black Metal scene hadn't yet been exploited and was still pretty much a very underground thing. Black Metal was something people actually were scared of. [...] Nowadays, not that many Black Metal bands are very scary... the extremity and the feeling of belonging to something forbidden, special in those old times were very strong. It was a kind of magic that most likely never can be recaptured again.
Of course, Dissection turned to glam rock with "Reinkaos" and Dark Funeral turned to garbage metalcore after Parland's departure, so you could replace either band with Bathory or Morbid.
"Ahriman couldn't even play some of the riffs"
The most interesting part of the interview is precisely about Blackmoon leaving Dark Funeral, the very band he founded. He isn't kind with "Lord" Ahriman Svanberg, a person who "couldn't even play the riffs" according to Parland (and others).
That rumour that I recorded more of the guitars [on the DARK FUNERAL debut] is partially true. Ahriman recorded however 80-90 % percent of his guitars, but couldn't even do some riffs, because he had weak grip from **** off too much. I'm seriously considering kicking him out at that point.
Blackmoon allegedly got into two physical altercations with Svanberg, and left him begging twice.
I left a year later, in the summer of 1996. That wasn't planned, of course, but the tensions between me and Ahriman were just too big to be able to continue together at the time. He got physical (fistfights) two times with me, and since then I felt I could never work with him again. I had beat the **** out of him and he was begging "No, please, someone help me!" [...] Actually, just right before I left, we talked about kicking Ahriman out of the band. Then it was him and [the vocalist] who had some disagreements. [...] Anyway, that never happened. The band went on tour a week after I left, and the backstabbing from them was simply horrible. The saw me as the enemy, whereas I hadn't done shit other than building the band from scratch.
Shortly after the passing of David Parland, Mikael "Ahriman" Svanberg got his "revenge" as he took to social media to claim, in a despicable move, that Parland was actually crazy and "schizophrenic" and was planning a "terrorist attack" like Anders Breivik. All of this was later proven false, but amplified online via rumours.
In reality, David Parland had committed suicide at the age of 42, not because of mental illness, but because he had become addicted to painkillers after a car accident in 2011. RIP legend.
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