Dawn of the Black Hearts

Dawn of the Black Hearts is a bootleg live album by the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. It is infamous for bearing a photograph of Mayhem's vocalist, Dead (Per Yngve Ohlin), after his suicide in April 1991. The photograph was taken by Mayhem's guitarist, Euronymous (Øystein Aarseth), upon discovering the body. The album was originally released in 1995 on vinyl in an edition of 300 copies by Warmaster Records by Mauricio "Bull Metal" Montoya, owner of Warmaster Records in Colombia and pen pal of Euronymous. This original version contains eight songs from a concert in Sarpsborg on 28 February 1990, as well Mayhem's logo and title in golden ink. The album has been reissued many times by various independent record labels. Many of these reissues feature an extra four songs, recorded at a concert in Ski during 1986, with Messiah on vocals. Most of the re-releases erroneously claim that the additional songs come from a Lillehammer show and feature Maniac on vocals. Despite being a "semi-official" release, this notorious bootleg is commonly listed as one of the band's main albums. This is both due to its cover art, but also to the historic value of the recording itself, being one of the few concerts performed with both Dead and Euronymous.