Croatia is not the first country that comes to mind when someone hears the words «black metal». It has no frozen mountains and no Vikings, but it has been through a lot. And in the middle of all that, one man decided to make some noise: Boris Behara, also known as Boris T, the mind behind Tryglav, a one-man black metal project that started in Croatia and matured in Italy.
“`From war to Italy
Boris Behara was born in 1989 in Croatia, back then part of Yugoslavia. A few years later the Yugoslav wars broke out. His father feared for their lives and sent Boris and his mother to Italy, staying behind himself. He grew up in Arezzo in Tuscany, but he proudly calls himself a Croatian black metal artist.
As a kid he started with nu metal, his first record being Linkin Park and then Slipknot. Little by little he moved to the more extreme side, went to shows like Exodus, and through magazines discovered Burzum and Mayhem. At the same time he loved 80s horror films.
The birth of Tryglav
In Italy the black metal scene was almost non-existent. He himself has said that only 30 people turned up at one show. He joined several bands, but none of them lasted, as the members drank and skipped rehearsals. In 2018 he reached his limit and decided to do something entirely his own.
The name is no accident: it is the three-headed Slavic god Triglav, who looks upon the sky, the earth and the underworld, keeping the balance between light and darkness. It is also a mountain in Slovenia. To Boris it felt like himself: past, present and future.
From a small flat in Italy he did everything alone: guitars, drums, lyrics, mixing. He worked a regular job by day and did the music at night, changing every track three or four times before he considered it ready.
The records
In 2019 he released the debut «Night of Whispering Souls», a cinematic blend of melody and aggression, inspired by 80s horror films. The instruments and the production were his own, while the vocals were handled by a session singer.
Four years later, in 2023, came «The Ritual». A concept album with its own cinematic world: the story unfolds in the 17th century and begins with a man dying in his bed, while his parents call for plague doctors. Musically it is sharper and colder, and critics described it as a modern war epic disguised as black metal.
The heart and the persistence
Behind the music there was something much darker. Boris went through two open-heart surgeries. The first left him exhausted, with no certainty that he would ever play again. The second almost ended the project. He now takes heart medication for the rest of his life.
As he himself has said, that period was chaos: a pandemic, two surgeries and an album he accidentally deleted when he had already finished it. Even so, he never stopped writing, recording and uploading videos.
Norway and the next step
Over the years YouTube became more than a hobby. He started with drum and guitar covers, then spoke openly about the difficulties of a one-man project, and ended up making vlogs. When he moved to Norway, the birthplace of black metal, he filmed the places he had read about in magazines: studios, cemeteries, burned churches, quiet towns. He does not glorify the crimes, he simply shows the history.
Norway fed his creativity. He tours Europe and gathers a loyal following, while working on the next album, on which for the first time he will sing himself. You don’t need a whole scene to make something that lasts.
More on the same side of metal: Øystein «Euronymous» Aarseth: The Rise and Fall of the Mayhem Founder.
See also
See also: the story of Mayhem, the band that made and destroyed the black metal scene, and the tribute to Varg Vikernes.
