Shamaatae joined his first band, Conquest, aged eleven, the band later evolving into Grotesque. On leaving Grotesque, Shamaatae formed a technical death-metal band called Disinterment, who recorded one demo and played a few gigs before splitting up. At the end of 1992, Shamaatae decided to return to black metal and Arckanum was started. Initially a full band, it became a solo project after six months. After several releases, by 1998 Shamaatae had discontinued working with Necropolis Records because they went under, and turned his attention to writing books on the subjects of Pan, anti-cosmic Satanism, Old Norse traditions, runic witchcraft and chaos-gnosticism. He was still involved in music during this time still working with Arckanum and playing drums with The Hearsemen. Arckanum's latest album ÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞ was released on the 1st of June 2009. Antikosmos and ÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞ featured the guest appearance of Set Teitan of the bands Dissection and Watain.

Arckanum's lyrics deal mainly with the worship of Chaos, as well as anti-cosmic Satanism in the vein of Dissection. He is noted for writing lyrics resembling Old Swedish, and he has stated that he tries to write his lyrics as grammatically correct as he can. In his latest two albums however, the language is clearly meant to resemble Old Icelandic.

Arckanum's lyrics deal mainly with the worship of Chaos, as well as anti-cosmic Satanism in the vein of Dissection. He is noted for writing lyrics resembling Old Swedish, and he has stated that he tries to write his lyrics as grammatically correct as he can. In his latest two albums however, the language is clearly meant to resemble Old Icelandic.